He wasn’t in. Big anticlimax. But his secretary must have detected the urgency in her voice because she gave Laura his mobile phone number.
This time he did answer and in a voice that left Laura in no doubt that, whatever he was doing, he was not going to have the time to listen to what she had to say.
‘You need to cultivate a better telephone manner,’ were her first nervous words and she punctuated the observation with shaky laughter.
Hearing her voice was so unexpected that it took Gabriel a few seconds before he realised that he was talking to the woman who had plagued his thoughts the night before. He had missed a breakfast meeting because he had just not been able to get out of bed in time to make it to the Savoy and he had only just managed to get to his second scheduled meeting for the day, at an impressive smoked-glass building in Canary Wharf.
He abruptly halted his long stride through the offices of DuBarry, obliging the personal assistant who was leading him through to the boardroom to stop as well, and cupped the cell phone in the palm of his hand.
How dared she? How dared she telephone him, using his mobile phone number no less, when he was about to go into a very important meeting, after he had made it absolutely clear that he wanted nothing more to do with her? That she could take a running jump off the side of a very steep cliff! Had she no respect for a single word he had spoken?
‘What do you want?’ God, it was bloody good to hear her voice.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’
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‘You are, as a matter of fact. Now get to the point, Laura.’ He made sure to invest his voice with supreme indifference, overlaid with just the right amount of irritation that would indicate a busy man who had no time for some insignificant ex-lover. He placed his hand over the receiver and whispered to the personal assistant, a ferociously competent-looking woman in her mid-fifties with disciplined hair and a face that would terrify the most hardened of men, that she would have to go ahead of him and explain that he was dealing with a very important call, and would be in as soon as possible.
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘You have my e-mail address. You will have to learn to make decisions without running to me every two seconds. I thought I had made it perfectly clear to you that you and I are finished and the less contact I have with you, the happier I will be. Now, if that is all...’
Laura gritted her teeth together and clenched her fist. ‘I want to see you and it’s not about the house.’
‘Oh, no? Then what do you want to talk to me about?’ He glanced at his watch and realised that he would have to get a move on if he was to complete this meeting in time for his next one. Still. Disgusted though he felt with himself, there was no way he could dismiss her. Just the sound of her voice was sending his system into overdrive.
‘I want to talk to you about us,’ Laura said bluntly.
‘I really have no time for this,’ Gabriel said dismissively. I am very busy.’ The personal assistant reappeared and he glowered at her.
‘I don’t care how busy you are, Gabriel. I’m not prepared for things between us to end this way.’
‘You are not prepared?’
‘That’s right. I am not prepared and I shall just keep pestering you until you ...meet me.’
‘Oh, very well. I will drive up to the house this afternoon. I should be there early evening, but I can warn you now that there will be no point to the meeting.’
Laura was shaking by the time she dropped the receiver back onto its handset. She didn’t dare start having doubts about what she had done now that she had done it, but she couldn’t help herself. They crept in like pernicious tentacles of ivy and sought to wrap themselves around the fragile little fragments of courage she had tried to instill within herself.
By the time the workmen were leaving the house, she had analysed and re-analysed every nuance of every expression she had ever seen cross his face, searching desperately for signs of hope that he might care about her. She could deal with his pride and his indifference, provided at least some of it was just a veneer, but what if his indifference really did run bone-deep? What if Anna had been utterly wrong?
Eventually, as Laura quickly changed into a pair of jeans and a fresh top she abandoned her pointless train of thoughts and told herself that, at the end of the day, she had no choice but to see him anyway. She was carrying his baby and there was no way she would want to keep him in ignorance of that fact, even if there was a chance that she could have. A father deserved every chance to know of the existence of his child, just as the child would deserve every chance to know of his or her father. Any other route was unthinkable.