Mills & Boon Modern February 2014 Collection. Кэрол Мортимер
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since her work had been submitted anonymously, nobody could accuse him of nepotism.
But Gabe was feeling uncomfortable on all kinds of levels. For the first time ever his personal life had entered the workplace and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. Despite years of occasional temptation and countless invitations, he’d never dated an employee or a client before. He had seen for himself the dangers inherent in that. There had never been some hapless female sobbing her eyes out in the women’s washroom because of something he’d done. He’d never been subjected to awkward silences when he walked into boardroom meetings, or one of the Zeitgeist dining rooms.
The less people knew about him, the better, and he had worked hard to keep it that way. He was never anything less than professional with his workforce, even though he joined in with ‘dress-down Friday’ every week and drank champagne in the basement bar next door whenever a new deal was signed. People called him Gabe and, although he was friendly with everyone from the janitor to the company directors, he maintained that crucial personal distance.
But Leila was different.
She looked different.
She sounded different.
She was distracting—not just to him but to any other man with a pulse, it seemed. He had driven her to work this morning—her first morning—and witnessed the almost comical reaction of one of his directors. The man had been so busy staring at her that he had almost driven his car straight into a wall.
Her endless legs had been encased in denim as she’d climbed out of Gabe’s low sports car, with one thick, ebony plait dangling down over one shoulder. In her blue shirt and jeans, she was dressed no differently from any of his other employees, yet she had an indefinable head-turning quality which marked her out from everyone else. Was that because she’d been brought up as a princess? Because she had royal blood from an ancient dynasty pulsing through her veins, which gave her an innate and almost haughty bearing? When he looked at her, didn’t he feel a thrill of something like pride to think that such a woman as this was carrying his child? Hadn’t he lain there in bed last night just watching her while she slept, thinking how tender she could be, and didn’t he sometimes find himself wanting to kiss her for absolutely no reason?
Yet he knew those kinds of thoughts were fraught with danger. They tempted him into blotting out the bitter truth. They ran the risk of allowing himself to believe that he was capable of the same emotions as other men. And he was not.
He frowned, still having difficulty getting his head round the fact that she was sitting in his office as if she had every right to be there. ‘Anything you want to ask me?’ he questioned, picking up a pencil and drawing an explosion of small stars on the ‘ideas’ notepad he always kept open on his desk.
‘Do people know I’m pregnant?’
He looked up and narrowed his eyes. ‘Why would they?’
‘Of course. Why would they?’ she repeated, and he thought he heard a trace of indignation in her voice. ‘Heaven forbid that you might have told somebody.’
‘You think that this is something I should boast about, Leila? That an obviously unplanned pregnancy has resulted in an old-fashioned shotgun marriage? It hasn’t exactly sent my reputation shooting up into the stratosphere.’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘Up until now, I’d always done a fairly good job of exhibiting forethought and control.’
Pushing back her chair, she stood up, her face suddenly paling beneath the glow of her olive skin. ‘You b-bastard,’ she whispered. ‘You complete and utter bastard.
He’d never heard her use a profanity before. And he’d never seen a look of such unbridled rage on her face before. In an instant he was also on his feet. ‘That didn’t come out the way it was supposed to.’
‘And how was it supposed to come out?’ She bit her lip. ‘You mean you didn’t intend to make me sound like some desperate woman determined to get her hooks into you?’
‘I was just pointing out that usually I don’t mix my personal life with 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