‘SO,’ SAID LEILA slowly. The word was tiny and meant nothing at all, but one of them had to say something. Something to shatter the tense, taut silence which had descended on them the moment they’d left the consulting room. Something to make Gabe move again instead of sitting there frozen, staring out of the windscreen as if he had just seen some kind of ghost.
He had brought the car to a halt in a wide, tree-lined street, and Leila was glad he’d driven away from the Harley Street clinic which had just delivered the news she had already known.
He hadn’t said a thing—not a thing—but she’d noticed the way his hands had tightened around the steering wheel, and the ashen hue which had drained his face of all colour.
She was pregnant.
Very newly pregnant—but pregnant all the same.
A new life growing was beneath a heart now racing as she waited—though she wasn’t really sure what she was waiting for.
She remembered Gabe’s barely perceptible intake of breath as the expensively dressed consultant had delivered the results of the test. The doctor had looked at them with the benign and faintly indulgent smile he obviously reserved for this kind of situation. Probably imagining they were yet another rich young couple eager to hear what he had to say. Had he noticed the lack of a wedding ring on her finger? Did anyone actually care about that kind of thing these days? She swallowed. They certainly did in Qurhah.
She wondered if the medic had been perceptive enough to read the body language which existed between the prospective parents. Or rather, the lack of it. She and Gabe had sat upright on adjoining antique chairs facing the medic’s desk, their shoulders tense. Close, yet completely distant—like two strangers who had been put into a room to hear the most intimate of information.
But that was all they were really, wasn’t it?
Two strangers who had created a life out of a moment of passion.
She turned in the low sports car to glance at Gabe. She didn’t know what to do. What to say or how to cope. She wanted something to make it better, but she realised that nothing could. Something unplanned and ill-advised had resulted in both their lives being changed—and neither of them wanted this.
The sunlight illuminated his chiselled features, casting deep shadows beneath the high slash of his cheekbones. But still he hadn’t moved. His profile was utterly motionless, as if it had been carved from a piece of golden dark marble.
She knew she couldn’t keep sitting there like some sort of obedient chattel, waiting for his thoughts on what had happened. She wasn’t in Qurhah now. No longer did she have to play the role of subservient female. She had always longed for equality—and this was what it was supposed to be about. Taking control of her own destiny. Learning to express her own feelings instead of waiting for guidance and approval from a man.
Knotting her fingers together in a tight fist, she knew something else, too. That she didn’t want this icy-eyed Englishman to feel that she had trapped him. What kind of a man was he who could sit there like a statue in the face of such news? Didn’t he feel anything? ‘Whatever happens, I’m not going to ask you for anything,’ she said. ‘You must understand that.’
Gabe didn’t answer straight away—and not just because her accented words sounded as disjointed as if she had been speaking them in her native tongue. He had learnt when to be silent and when to speak. Once—a long time ago—he had given in to the temptation of hot-headedness. But never again. It had been the most brutal lesson and one he had never forgotten. And then, when he’d started out in advertising and was clawing his way up the slippery slope towards success, he had learnt that you should never respond until you were certain you had the right answer.
Except that this time, he couldn’t see that there was a right answer. Only a swirling selection of options—and none of them were good. The facts were unassailable. A woman with a baby and a man who did not wish to become a father.
Who should never become a father.
He felt a dark dread begin to creep over his heart as he wondered whether history always repeated itself. Whether humans were driven by some biological imperative over which they had no control. Driven to make the same mistakes over and over again.
‘Not here,’ he said, his voice tight with restraint. ‘I don’t intend discussing something as important as this in the front seat of a car. Do up your seat belt and let’s go.’
But he could see that her hands were trembling as she struggled to perform the simple action. He leaned forward to help her, and her proximity left him momentarily disorientated. The warmth radiating from her body seemed to have intensified the spicy scent of her perfume. The sunlight was bouncing off the ebony gloss of her hair and her lips looked so unbelievably kissable that he was left with the dull ache of longing inside him.