Mills & Boon Modern February 2014 Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ my business life,’ he said, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration.

      ‘I think you’ve made that abundantly clear,’ said Leila. ‘So if you’ve finished with your unique take on character assassination cunningly designed as a pep talk, perhaps I could go and start work?’

      For once Gabe felt wrong-footed. He saw the hurt look on her face and the stupid thing was that he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to break every one of his own rules and pull her into his arms. He wanted to lose himself in her, the way he always lost himself whenever they made love. But he fought the feeling, telling himself that emotional dependence was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He knew that. He knew there were some things in life you could never rely on and that was one of them.

      But guilt nagged at him as he saw the stony expression on her face as she turned and walked towards the door. ‘Leila?’

      She turned around. ‘What?’

      ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

      Her smile was wry. ‘But you did say it, Gabe. That’s the trouble. You did.’

      Shutting his office door behind her, Leila was still simmering as she walked into the adjoining office to find Alice waiting for her and with an effort she forced herself to calm down. Because what she was not going to do was crumble. She could be strong—she knew that. And she needed to be strong—because she was starting to realise that she couldn’t rely on Gabe to be there for her.

      Oh, he might have put a ring on her finger and made her his wife, but she couldn’t quite rid herself of the nagging doubt that this marriage would endure—baby or not.

      Pushing her troubled thoughts away, she smiled at Alice. ‘Gabe says you’re to show me around the Zeitgeist building,’ she said. ‘Though judging by the size of it, I think I might need a compass to find my way around the place.’

      Alice laughed. ‘Oh, you’ll soon get used to it. Come on, I’ll show you the canteen first—that’s probably the most important bit. And after that, I’ll take you down to the photographic studios.’

      Leila quickly learnt that paid employment had all kinds of advantages, the main one being that it didn’t give you much opportunity to mope around yearning for what you didn’t have.

      Overnight, her first real job had begun and, although she was fulfilling a lifetime ambition just by having a job, she found it a bit of a shock. She’d grown up in a culture which encompassed both opulence and denial, but she had never set foot in the workplace before. She was unprepared for the sheer exhaustion of being on her feet all day and for being woken by the alarm clock every morning. Quickly, she discovered that dressing at leisure was very different from having to be ready to start work in the studio at eight-thirty. Her lazy honeymoon mornings of slow lovemaking were replaced by frantic clockwatching as she rushed for the shower and grappled with her long hair.

      ‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ said Gabe one morning as they sat at some red lights with Leila hastily applying a sweep of mascara to her long lashes.

      ‘What? Wear make-up?’

      ‘Very funny. I’m talking about putting yourself through this ridiculous—’

      ‘Ridiculous what?’ she interrupted calmly. ‘Attempt to prove that I’m just like everyone else and that I need some sense of purpose in my life? Shock! Horror! Woman goes out to work and wears make-up!’

      ‘What does the doctor say about it?’ he growled.

      ‘She’s very pleased with my progress,’ Leila answered, sliding her mascara back into her handbag. ‘And it may surprise you to know that the majority of women work right up until thirty-six weeks.’

      She sat back and stared out of the car window, watching the slow progress of the early-morning traffic. Gabe’s car was attracting glances, the way it always did. She guessed that, when viewed from the outside, her life looked like the ultimate success story. As if she ‘had it all’. The great job. The gorgeous man. Even a little baby on the way.

      From the inside, of course—it was nothing like that. Sometimes she felt as if her marriage was as illusory as the many successful advertising campaigns which Gabe’s company had produced. Those ones which depicted the perfect family everyone lusted after with the artfully messy table with Mum and Dad and two children sitting around it, giggling.

      Yet everyone at Zeitgeist knew that the model father in the advert was probably gay and that the model mum’s supposedly natural beauty was enhanced by hair extensions and breast implants.

      No, nothing was ever as it seemed.

      Nothing.

      Gabe was still Gabe. Compelling, charismatic but ultimately as distant as a lone island viewed from the shoreline. And she realised that was the way he liked it. The way he wanted to keep it. They weren’t growing closer, she realised. If anything, they were drifting further apart.

      One evening, they arrived back at the apartment after an early dinner out and Gabe went straight to their bedroom to change. Minutes later he reappeared in jeans and a T-shirt, with his face looking like thunder.

      ‘What the hell has been going on?’ he demanded. ‘Have we been burgled?’

      Leila walked over to where he stood, looking at the room behind him with a sinking heart. He had left early for a meeting this morning and somehow she’d slept through the alarm and had woken up really late. Which meant that she had left home in a rush, and it showed—particularly as today was the cleaner’s day off.

      Automatically, she moved forward and started to pick up some of the discarded clothes which lay like confetti all over the floor. A pair of knickers were lying on his laptop. ‘I overslept,’ she said, hastily grabbing them from the shiny surface. ‘Sorry.’

      Her words did nothing to wipe the dark expression from his face, for tonight he seemed to be on some kind of mission to get at her. ‘But it isn’t just when you oversleep, is it, Leila?’ he demanded. ‘It’s every damned day. I keep finding used coffee cups around the place and apple cores which you forget to throw away. Did nobody ever teach you to tidy up after yourself, or were there always servants scurrying around to pick up after you?’

      Leila flinched at the cold accusation ringing from his voice, but how could she possibly justify her general untidiness when his words were true?

      ‘I did have servants, yes.’

      ‘Well, you don’t have servants now, and I value my privacy far too much to want any staff moving in—not even when the baby’s born. So if we’re to carry on living like this, then you’re really going to have to learn to start being more tidy.’

      The words leapt out at her like sparks from a spitting fire.

      If we’re to carry on living like this.

      Biting her lip, she turned away, but Gabe caught hold of her arm and pulled her against him.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’

      ‘It does. That came out too harshly. Sometimes I just...snap,’ he said, his head lowering as he made to brush his lips over hers.

      But СКАЧАТЬ