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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 the ultimate success story. As if she ‘had it all’. The great job. The gorgeous man. Even a little baby on the way.
