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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 Leila pushed him away. He thought that making love could cure everything—and usually it did. It was always easy to let him kiss her, because his kisses were so amazing that she always succumbed to them immediately. And when she was in his arms he didn’t feel quite so remote. When he was deep inside her body, she could allow herself to pretend that everything was just perfect. Yet surely that was like just papering over a widening crack in the wall, instead of addressing the real problem beneath.
Sometimes she felt as if she was being a coward. A coward who was too scared to come out and ask him whether he wanted her out of his life. Too scared that he might say yes.
She went into the bathroom and showered, and when she emerged in a cotton dress which was beginning to feel snug against her expanding waist, it was to find him sipping at a cup of espresso.
He looked up as she entered the room, and suddenly his grey eyes were cool and assessing.
‘I have a deal coming up which means that I need to go to the States,’ he said. ‘Will you be okay here on your own?’
‘Of course,’ she said brightly, but, coming in the wake of their recent spat, his words sounded ominous.
She walked over to the fridge and poured herself a glass of fizzy water, exaggeratedly wiping the few spilt drops from the work surface before going to perch on one of the bar stools.
‘How long will you be gone?’ she asked.
‘Only a few days.’
Gabe saw the tremble of her lips, which she couldn’t quite disguise, and suddenly the coffee in his mouth seemed to taste sour. Yet he knew exactly what he was doing. He was insightful enough to know that he was pushing her away, but astute enough to know that he could offer her no other option. Because the thought of getting close to her was making him feel stuff. And that was something he didn’t do.
He put down his coffee cup with more force than he intended.
If only it could be different.
His mouth hardened as he stared into the bright blue of her eyes.
It could never be different.
That night they lay on opposite sides of the bed, the heavy silence indicating that neither was asleep, though neither of them spoke. His sleep was fractured, his disturbing dreams forgotten on waking—leaving him with a heavy headache which he couldn’t seem to shift.
He was just sliding his cell phone into his jacket pocket when he walked into the sitting room to find Leila looking at his passport, which he’d left lying on the table.
‘That’s a very sombre photo,’ she commented.
‘You aren’t supposed to smile in passport photos.’
