Chapter TWELVE
IT WASN’T THE MOST romantic thing in the world to have happen, but when the full impact of Gabriel’s question hit her, Lara sensed a sudden, urgent need to be sick. Hurriedly rising to her feet, she threw him an apologetic look and ran out through the door to her bedroom’s en-suite bathroom. Once there, she crouched down in front of the toilet and was violently ill even as she heard Gabriel come in behind her.
‘Sweetheart, what’s wrong?’
As his deeply concerned voice asked the question, he stooped down behind her and gently gathered her hair behind her head so that it wouldn’t fall over her face. When she’d finished, it was to find him running some cold water into the sink and dampening a washcloth. Almost as if she was a little girl he proceeded to wipe her mouth, dabbing gently at her lips, and then he carefully helped her to her feet.
‘Wait here,’ he instructed, and as the familiar, warm, musky scent of his cologne besieged her senses and rendered her even weaker he briefly disappeared, to return with a glass of cold water. ‘Take a good long drink,’ he ordered her.
Although he patiently waited for her to finish, Lara easily sensed the concern that gripped him.
When she glanced up again Gabriel removed the glass from her trembling hands and stood it on the shelf above the sink. Then he stared at her. Many times before she had been the recipient of that intensely direct examination, but it had never been as intense as this. Disturbingly, what she saw in the depths of that glittering gaze were varying shades of anger—like the precursor to a storm—and deep, deep anguish and pain.
‘What the hell is going on, Lara? You’d better tell me.’
‘Haven’t you guessed? Don’t you know the signs?’
Suddenly overwhelmed with the situation, she shouldered past him into the bedroom. Once there, she dropped down onto the bed and brought her hands up to her face. Incredibly, Gabriel had just asked her to marry him. But was he now going to reject her because she was pregnant? She almost couldn’t bear the thought. Before she knew it scalding tears were trickling down behind her palms.
Suddenly the door opened and Gabriel was there. He was staring down at her, a muscle flinching in the side of his carved cheekbone, his expression mirroring hurt disbelief.
‘You’re pregnant.’
It was a statement of fact, not a question. Raising her head, Lara met his accusing gaze with her heart thudding and her mouth as dry as sand. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘So no sooner had we parted than you found yourself another man? I thought I was getting to know you, Lara, but now I realise I didn’t know you at all.’
Sounding despairing, Gabriel started to move back towards the door, as if he had already made up his mind what he was going to do about her admission.
But then he turned and said furiously, ‘You certainly didn’t waste your time missing me, did you? And to think I believed you when you said you were a virgin the first time we made love. What a prize idiot I was to fall for such an unlikely story!’
With his hand on the doorknob he glared at Lara, then stalked from the room. Ice-cold fear poured through her like white-water rapids as she realised he was going to leave.
Lara jumped up and ran after him.
‘Gabriel!’
She got to the living room just as he was collecting his coat from the back of the chair and she rushed forward to grab his wrist and stop him from going. Suddenly it was her turn to be furious.
‘You are an idiot. Such a stupid, stupid idiot!’ Even as the accusation left her lips a fresh bout of scalding tears rolled down her cheeks and Gabriel stared at her, clearly uncomprehending either her meaning or the reason for her distress. ‘Do you honestly think I would sleep with another man when it’s you that I love—have always loved and always will?’
His lip curled with disdain. ‘But you’ve just admitted that you’re pregnant.’ He shook off her grip on his arm. ‘Or are you going to try and convince me it was some kind of immaculate conception?’
Lara sucked in her breath in a bid to try and steady herself. ‘Before you go any further I need to tell you—I need to tell you it’s true that when we first slept together I was a virgin. I waited all these years to give up my virginity to a man I really loved because it was important to me. That man has always been you, Gabriel.’ She paused to take in another steadying breath and saw the interplay of hope and uncertainty that crossed his face. ‘The baby is yours, Gabriel,’ she finished.
‘What?’
‘Just hear me out, will you? I fell pregnant when I forgot to take one of my contraceptive pills that week we were together in New York. I didn’t do it deliberately. I would never try and trap you like that. But my head was in the clouds the whole time I spent with you—it was like a dream. I only discovered I’d missed one of my pills a few weeks after I got home. I’d been feeling nauseous and light-headed, but I put that down to being upset because I was missing you and you hadn’t been in touch. I didn’t even know if I would ever see you again.’
‘The baby is mine?’ The raincoat Gabriel was holding slid out of his hand onto the floor.
Raising her hand in an attempt to dry her tears, Lara nodded. ‘I swear it. I’ll show you the foil packet with the pill I didn’t take still in it. You can trace it back to our week together in New York. But if you still don’t believe me then I don’t know how else to convince you. I foolishly thought my word and the devotion I’ve shown you would be enough. I don’t tell lies, Gabriel. Remember I told you that once before?’
The man standing in front of her looked seriously stunned. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant as soon as you found out? I would have come back straight away.’
Shrugging, Lara gave him a wobbly smile. ‘I didn’t want to put any pressure on you or make you feel obligated, that’s why. I especially didn’t want that because of the way you were when we said goodbye at the airport. You seemed so angry, Gabriel. Angry and distant. It was as though you resented me. I knew you were already in turmoil because of your uncle’s letter and what he’d told you about your mother. I didn’t want to add to your worries.’
Gabriel was shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. ‘You really are unbelievable—you know that? You had every damn right in the world to demand I come back and take up my responsibility to you and the baby. When will you learn that you’re the important one, Lara—not me?’
‘Don’t say that. You’re very important to me, too, Gabriel.’ She followed this declaration with a puzzled frown. ‘But why didn’t you tell me you’d decided to come back and live at the manor? Were you thinking that I would automatically expect us to take up where we left off when you clearly had doubts about our relationship?’
‘You crazy woman,’ he breathed.
Fastening his hands around her slim upper arms, he pulled her against his chest. Lara’s heart went wild. As he pushed back a stray curl where it brushed against the side of her cheek she saw his intimate smile was candid and unguarded as he gazed back at her, and it rendered him even more beautiful in her eyes. That heartrending smile suggested he’d made the decision to reveal at last the real Gabriel Devenish. To reveal the honourable and decent man behind the steely corporate facade and the much admired financial acuity that he was known for. The man Lara had always known he was.
‘I didn’t want to tell you I was coming back to live at the manor until I’d taken some proper time to examine some of the hurts from my past and tried to make some headway into healing them. You didn’t deserve to be with a broken man, Lara—a man who didn’t know how to love anyone but himself.’
He grimaced painfully.
‘And I didn’t even make a very convincing job of that. I poured all my energies into my work, and my relentless desire to be the best at what I did was only because I wanted to have the admiration and praise of my peers. I was looking for validation that I was worthwhile. It wasn’t even about the money. But that ambition became the most important thing in my life. A very empty and meaningless life, when all was said and done.
‘Apart from being good at my job, I didn’t regard myself as being good at very much at all. And I didn’t have meaningful relationships because I couldn’t allow myself to be close to a woman in case I was betrayed in some way—that’s another reason why I directed all my attention into my work.
‘And as far as doubts are concerned, I can tell you that the only doubts I had were whether I was good enough to be with an angel like you,’ he continued huskily. ‘I always intended on coming back for you, Lara. Was I hoping for too much when I hoped that you would want to share the rest of your life with a man like me? As I want to share my life with you?’
Lara lifted her hand to lay her palm gently against his roughened cheek. ‘No,’ she said earnestly. ‘You weren’t hoping for too much. I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to share the rest of my life with you. Besides...no one else would want me if I couldn’t be with you Gabriel. I’d be like an empty shell. Don’t you know that you’ve ruined me for any other man because my body and soul belongs to you?’
A profoundly dazed look stole into the eyes that gazed back at her.
Gabriel’s hands tightened as they dropped down to her hips and pulled her harder against him. ‘And now you’re going to have my baby. I’m going to be a father. We are going to be parents, with a family of our own. I can’t help asking myself if I deserve to be this happy.’
‘So you don’t mind that we’ll have a baby to take care of so early in our relationship? We can’t pretend it won’t be challenging.’
‘We’ll weather any storms that come, sweetheart,’ Gabriel reassured her warmly. ‘We’ll weather them because together we’re strong and our love won’t let the challenges of life overwhelm us. Look at what we’ve already overcome. This baby will bring us ever closer—just you wait and see.’
His face came towards hers, but with a quick shake of her head Lara gently but firmly pushed him away. ‘You have to let me go and freshen my mouth before you kiss me,’ she declared. ‘Then I’ll let you kiss me senseless if you want!’
His carved lips quirked in an amused grin. ‘That’s like asking me if I need to take my next breath. If you take longer than ten seconds then I’m coming to find you—and I warn you...if you’re not ready there’ll be a hell of a penalty to pay.’ As she smiled and walked towards the door, he added, ‘And you still haven’t answered my question.’
Feigning ignorance, Lara stopped and turned to examine him. ‘What question might that be?’
‘Will you marry me? Put me out of my misery, woman, and give me your answer. A man can only take so much before he cracks.’
Her expression softening, Lara laid her hand over her heart and then, with a graceful flourish, indicated that it was his. ‘Of course I’ll marry you, Gabriel. That’s always been my intention—ever since Sean brought you home with him that very first time. He’ll be so pleased that two of the people he loved best are going to be together, don’t you think?’
It was as she turned and left the room that Gabriel finally realised fully the immense capacity to love that Lara had. Sean had possessed that capacity, too. Shaking his head, he didn’t even try and stem the tears that welled in his eyes.
* * *
His head was spinning. The woman he loved had agreed to be his wife and she was pregnant with their baby. All the things Gabriel had thought would be denied him were coming true.
He already knew that his future goals didn’t have anything to do with continuing to be a ‘mover and shaker’ on Wall Street, but were to do with being a loving husband and father, with his children growing up happy and content with two parents who adored them and who would do everything in their power to help them have a wonderful life. And they would all live together in the beautiful manor house that Gabriel had inherited from his family. Uncle Richard’s heartfelt hope was going to be realised.
The architects and designers Gabriel had hired were already helping him bring his home into the twenty-first century without encroaching on the Regency building’s historic innate beauty and grace, and he was already pleased with some of the results they had achieved. Lara had agreed that she was, too, and the room that had given them both the most pleasure was the beautiful nursery—although Lara was already insisting that the baby would share their room until she was confident that he or she was ready to sleep in a room by themselves.
Suddenly aware that the small gathering behind him in the glass-ceilinged conservatory had fallen into a reverent silence, and knowing that Lara’s parents were closest to them at the front of the seated rows, he brought his mind right back to the present and the radiant and beautiful woman at his side.
Lara looked absolutely stunning in her simple but elegant wedding gown. It was fashioned in lavender-coloured floor-length satin and her mother, Peggy, had helped her decide on it. It was the perfect choice for her daughter’s timeless beauty. The strapless design had a sweetheart neckline and a beaded appliqué underneath the bust, and the material flowed down over the waist that five months of pregnancy had clearly but not yet too obviously swelled.
His clasp on her slender hand tightened a little possessively as Lara lifted her shimmering dark eyes to his. For a man who had prided himself on addressing many corporate banquets and dinners with aplomb, Gabriel suddenly found himself bereft of words.
Clearing his throat, he leant towards his bewitching wife-to-be and asked in hushed tones, ‘Are you ready for this? You don’t want to change your mind?’
Momentarily taken aback, Lara blinked. Then her soft pink-painted lips curved in a loving, amused smile. ‘Are you serious? To use an often used cliché, for which I won’t apologise, I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life.’
Gabriel chuckled and claimed her lips in a briefly hungry kiss that he had no intention of apologising for, either. When he looked up again the professional celebrant who stood in front of them—a slender woman with copper-coloured hair and merry brown eyes—bestowed an indulgent smile upon them and reprimanded him teasingly.
‘You’re meant to kiss the bride when I pronounce that you’re man and wife, Mr Devenish, not before!’
Unable to resist, Gabriel remarked, ‘No offence, but nobody tells me when I can and can’t kiss the woman I love—the woman I adore more than life itself.’
Briefly stunned into silence, the celebrant bestowed another smile on him. Then, her gaze encompassing both him and Lara, she said, ‘Shall we proceed with the ceremony now?’
Unable to stop himself from having the last word, Gabriel twined his fingers with Lara’s and answered, ‘Trust me, I’m as anxious to get the ceremony under way and make this amazing woman my wife as you are!’
There was a delighted ripple of laughter from behind them at that declaration, and a gently respectful round of applause. As for Lara—she glanced up at the handsome blue-eyed man at her side, dressed in a flawless midnight blue tuxedo, and offered up a silent prayer of thanks for her great good fortune.
Then the voice of her brother stole into her mind, saying, ‘I always told you to go for what you wanted in life, and that if you wanted it enough you would get it...remember?’
Swallowing back her tears, Lara murmured under her breath, ‘Yes, Sean, I remember—and you were right. Thank you.’
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE HEARTBREAKER PRINCE by Kim Lawrence.
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Ten years ago one devastating night changed everything for Austin, Hunter and Alex. Now they must each play their part in the revenge against the one man who ruined it all.
Austin Treffen has the plan… Hunter has the money… Alex has the power!
Read each of their stories in the captivating Fifth Avenue trilogy,
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Avenge Me by Maisey Yates (June 2014)
Scandalize Me by Caitlin Crews (July 2014)
Expose Me by Kate Hewitt (August 2014)
And don’t miss the Fifth Avenue prequel that started it all, Take Me, by Maisey Yates!
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