He would miss her. There was a simplicity to that statement that chipped away at her weak defences.
He didn’t love her but there was something there. She felt it. Surely it couldn’t be just her imagination?
‘A deal?’ Her mind was still busy with the prospect of the void opening at her feet, because go she would have to. Wouldn’t she?
‘Stay...just until I sort various things out with Bianca...and I will guarantee the cottage.’
‘Come again?’
‘I have things in place to finally deal with Bianca, to put us on an even footing. She has plans to remove Rosa to Tuscany. She will use whatever means she can to facilitate that, if that’s what she decides to do, and she will enjoy the process. Stay and I will guarantee in writing that your friend will be able to end her days where she is in peace. I will cancel all plans to develop the land around the cottage.’
‘Why is she so vindictive? You must have felt something for one another at one time...how did it get to the point where you tell me that she’ll stop at nothing to even scores with you? What did you do to her?’
Gabriel shifted and frowned, primed to resent the intrusion into his personal life.
With a trace of unease, he acknowledged that she had already crashed through barriers other women had baulked at and hastily retreated from. He wondered when that trend had started and how it was that he hadn’t knocked her back sooner. It was what he did...
However, he had to concede that he had already told her so much that clarifying his disastrous marriage added little to the equation. Besides, if he were to get her on board then he would have to meet her halfway when it came to telling her what she wanted to know.
And what was the big deal, anyway?She deserved answers to her very natural curiosity. He trusted her with Rosa. He could trust her with a few incidental details of his past.
‘I failed to give her the level of attention she needed,’ Gabriel said eventually. He sat back and for a few seconds closed his eyes, then he pressed his thumbs on them in a gesture of extreme weariness. ‘Bianca...’ he turned to Izzy, thoughtful ‘...was brought up to expect the world to bow to her and men, in particular, had a duty to put her ahead of everything.’
‘And you didn’t?’
‘Not didn’t.Couldn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When you grow up without anything you learn fast that what matters is money,’ he said flatly. ‘Not because it can buy you this...’ He glanced around at the sitting room with its priceless works of art, its expensive furnishings, its cool glass-and-marble décor. ‘But because it can buy you respect and freedom. I am untouchable, for want of a better word.’
‘You swapped the joy of love for the respect of other people? Strangers?’
‘I consider it a fair trade.’ He shrugged. ‘At any rate she decided that, if she couldn’t get the attention she craved from me, then she would look elsewhere. Divorce rapidly followed, and here we are several years later.’
‘You would back off from selling the land... Evelyn would be able to relax, knowing that she wouldn’t be pressured to sell?’
‘You have my word.’
‘Despite the fact that it’ll mean giving up what you want?’
‘I’m at the top of the food chain. I can afford the loss.’
‘Then why didn’t you offer to do that before?’
‘Because I’m not Father Christmas.’
So ruthless, Izzy thought, so cold. Yet so impossiblyhumanand so incredibly, compellinglycomplex.
He had dangled the biggest carrot in front of her and she knew that she should resent his blackmail. But then she thought of spending a bit more time with him and she couldn’t fight the weakness inside her thatwantedthose crumbs.
He couldn’t love, he said. His life experiences had propelled him into locking away his heart and throwing away the key, he said.
But theyhadsomething. Maybe he had just married the wrong woman...
She impatiently swept that thought out of her head and said coolly, ‘I’ll have to think about it.’
‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime offer,’ Gabriel countered. ‘I need your decision now.’
