Page 48 of A Wedding Negotiation with Her Boss

‘Can’t be with me.’

‘It wouldn’t work out, because it’s not a case of box ticking.’

Gabriel sat back and gestured expressively and, when he next looked at her, his eyes were shuttered but he smiled.

‘Fair enough.’

Fair enough?He’d just proposed, she’d turned him down and his response wasfair enough?

Yet, why would it be anything else?

Gabriel knew what he was bringing to the table. He was stupidly rich, sinfully good-looking and, all in all, a catch. Yes, she might have made noises about just enjoying what they had while they were here—but on some instinctive level he would have sensed her weakness. And that would have wiped out any misgivings he might have had about what she wanted or how serious she was about wanting to end things once they returned to London.

The equation, for him, would have been easy. They liked one another, they respected one another, they were compatible and they were hot for one another. And, if he had decided that settling down with a woman might have some advantages, then he had simply gone and drawn conclusions that had suited him.

He was, after all, a guy who was very, very accustomed to getting what he wanted when it came to the opposite sex.

But it still hurt that he could abandon his pursuit with so little fight. For a couple of seconds, she wondered if, proposal rejected by Helen, he would make his next girlfriend a candidate for the role he now saw as vacant and desirable. Now that he had started thinking along the lines of marriage being advantageous, something achievable without real emotional investment, would his pattern of dating change? Would he stop the casual business of choosing women who were easy to walk away from? Would he now start interviewing for the one who would attach without making demands he would never be able to fulfil?

Marriage brought kids as well. From his interaction with Arturio and his various kids and grandchildren, he’d seen that there were up sides to family life, that making a fortune was meaningless if you had no one to spend any of it on.

Helen thought about working for him, and eventually having to see him get involved with someone on a serious level, and she quailed inside.

‘So, let’s put that aside.’ She forced a smile while inside her heart twisted. ‘And enjoy what’s left of our holiday here. It’s been such a great place—I’ve seen so many wonderful things.’

‘Good.’ His voice was clipped. ‘Dinner awaits and then—I think I’ll do some work. There’s only so long a guy can play truant.’

Gabriel knew that it was stupid to be as unsettled as he was at her rejection.

He had never been rejected by a woman, but then he had never asked this question before. Was that it?

Replaying things in his head, he knew that he had somehow ended up making assumptions about her investment in what they’d shared.

What had made sense to him had stampeded through the reality that it wasn’t a shared conclusion.

Marriage.Suddenly it had felt right for him to ask her. He’d seen family life at its best, thanks to Arturio and Isabella, and a series of events that he could never have predicted in a million years. And, even if he couldn’t wholly embrace the business of love, even if his life lessons were just too deeply embedded, then he had realised how pointless it would be to die a billionaire with nothing left behind him in his wake.

He’d approached it from a practical point of view and because, like him, she was cool-headed and practical, he had assumed that his proposal would fall on fertile ground.

He was ashamed to think that any other woman would have bitten off his hand for a ring on her finger and all the vast benefits that came with that.

But she wasn’t any other woman.

That said, he wasn’t in the business of begging, but once he’d sat back and shrugged off her rejection he hadn’t been able to face a night in bed with her.

It had grated on his nerves that she had been perfectly normal over an exquisite dinner he’d barely tasted. She’d smiled and chatted about the things she had enjoyed and, when that had petered out, she’d fallen back on the tried and tested work-related conversation.

He had no idea what she was thinking.

Now, back in London after a largely silent flight back from Italy, and after several days making do with a replacement because she had taken a few days to go visit her father, Gabriel sat at his desk, unable to focus on much, waiting for the door to his office to be pushed open...and only now realising how accustomed he had got to her presence.

It would be odd having her back, with all the water under the bridge, but it would be good, and things would settle right back into place: of that he had no doubt.

They always did for him. If he felt unsettled now, it was just because he was dealing with a situation that many had faced, just not him.

He relaxed back into his chair, his back to the floor-to-ceiling panes of glass that separated him from the busy streets several stories below. He didn’t stand when he heard the knock on the door, but he did push back his chair, folded his arms and tilted his head to the side.

Familiarity warmed him. She was back in the office gear, the clothes that had been abandoned during their brief time out in Italy: navy skirt, white blouse, flat shoes and, he expected, a neat jacket tucked away on one of the hooks in her outer office.

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