Page 46 of A Wedding Negotiation with Her Boss

A revolution had been quietly happening inside him, and now...

Gabriel slung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, unashamed of his nakedness although, as an afterthought, he looked around him, found his boxers and stuck them on before sauntering towards her, only pausing to drag up one of the chairs by the window to join her where she was sitting.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m asking you to marry me.’

CHAPTER NINE

HELENSTAREDAThim in utter silence. Had she misheard? Had he just asked her tomarry him?

She felt a slow, steady soaring inside her. She’d fallen for this guy hook, line and sinker. What had started life as an impossible, barely recognisable crush had grown at supersonic speed into something deep, powerful and overwhelming.

Looking back, she could see that love had been stirring inside her for a long time until, with circumstances changing the dynamic, things that she had bottled up had been given room to breathe.

Had it been the same for him?

He’d always had such a colourful love life but, underneath it all, had he too been drawn to her? Had love been building up for him as well until, as with her, it had surfaced and knocked him for six?

She blinked.

‘Sorry?’ she finally said faintly.

She teetered towards the nearest chair and fell into it, but she couldn’t peel her eyes from him as her mind played with a series of lightning-fast thoughts, thoughts that were linking up and leading down all sorts of wonderful roads.

‘I’ve never thought about proposing to anyone,’ Gabriel said slowly. He stared off into the distance for a couple of seconds but then he was looking at her again. ‘My parents...’ He shook his head and shot her a rueful, crooked smile. ‘Well, you know from what I’ve said to you that they weren’t exactly the finest example of a responsible married couple with a child to consider.’

‘I know they sent you off to board at a very young age,’ Helen said softly. ‘Maybe they lacked any examples of what responsible parenting looked like, if they were both the products of only children themselves and, like you, were dispatched to school when they were too young to really deal with it.’

Gabriel shrugged. ‘I don’t deal in the whys and wherefores. I prefer to look at the end result and the end result was an important learning curve for me.’

Helen nodded. She wasn’t going to rush this. If dreams came true, then she wanted to savour the journey getting there, getting to the place where the first brick in the wall of happy-ever-after would be put in place. It had been a long time coming and she couldn’t think of anyone she would rather spend the rest of her life with than this man sitting so close to her, his dark eyes so serious and focused.

It was a crazy thought, and yet it just felt right.

‘Love? Wild, edge-of-seat, reckless love? Not for me. I lived through what the outcome of love like that could be and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’

‘Well...’

‘So, proposing to any woman, signing up to having kids? Not a route I’d ever considered. But when I’m with you, Helen, I see a union that could work.’

‘A union that could work?’

Something in this speech was beginning to make her feel a little uneasy. She had predicted where it would go. Her mind had gone hell for leather towards a future sun-filled and alive with possibility. If there was a similar heady excitement racing through him, then he was doing an excellent job of hiding it. He looked...serious and pragmatic.

‘We’ve always got along. That I’ve known, but until our relationship developed into something else, well, I’ve come to realise that we’re compatible in many more ways. Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘The sex is certainly nice,’ Helen averred, clearing her throat.

Gabriel grinned. ‘I feel I may be growing accustomed to your mastery of understatement. Fact is, being with you has shown me that there’s an alternative to a tiresome parade of women, all eager to please and in the end—and I hate to say this—all disposable. I’ll be honest, Fifi kick-started that particular line of dissatisfaction. That she wanted the whole package deal was ridiculous, but really, why? Why should the whole package deal be ridiculous? Yes, with Fifi it was, but with you? You came here and showed me that you fill gaps I never understood needed filling: compatibility; genuine friendship; no demands for emotional highs.’

‘Disposable?’

‘I don’t miss any of them when my relationship with them comes to an end, nor have I ever questioned the business of simply moving on with someone else. It always seemed the only alternative to sticking with one woman and going down the marriage route which, like I’ve said, was off-limits for me.’

‘Because you never found the right woman to love...?’

‘Love isn’t something I’m drawn to try out for size,’ Gabriel said honestly. ‘But until this—this thing that’s evolved between us—I’ve never understood that there’s a road between the two.’

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