Page 84 of Audacity

‘There was no great scandal, no dark secrets. I just felt underwhelmed. Spiritually, I suppose, and in terms of my purpose. It was a gradual process—I tried hard for so bloody long, but I tried because I felt obliged, rather than because I had this spiritual zeal in my belly, you know? God, it’s so hard to explain.

‘I loved the theological side—maybe too much. Sometimes I felt like I was more interested in winning theological arguments than helping people find God.’

I smile. ‘I can relate. We’re the same like that.’

He squeezes my hand. ‘It’s all well and good, but the imposter syndrome got worse and worse. I felt like I was behind this curtain, observing and not living. I’d be counselling a couple on marriage and think “what the fuck do I know?” I felt like I was trying so fucking hard but I was just going through the motions.

‘Some priests have this natural grace—you can see it literally flowing through them, like God has touched them with His grace—but I just felt nothing. I was getting nothing from Him, and I was constantly in my head about it. I was always trying to prove to myself that I deserved it, and that’s not how a true vocation should feel.’

‘Of all the things you’ve said to me about your faith,’ I say quietly, ‘what you said about grace at The Wolseley resonated the most. You told me you believe we don’t need to earn it—that it just flows.’

He smiles sadly. ‘I truly believe that. I just couldn’t feel it in my own heart. Something was missing for me, so when Dad started making more and more noise about retiring, I threw in the towel. I just couldn’t bear that hurt every day of knowing that I was going through the motions and trying my damnedest to serve and to pray and to have faith and simply not cutting it.’

It’s so unfair. It’s so bloody unfair that a man this good should feel like that, that he should hold himself to such superhuman standards. I bring our conjoined hands to my lips and kiss his knuckles. ‘You are the best man I’ve ever met, and I hope you find whatever’s been missing for you. I really, really do.’

When he gazes at me, his eyes are so blue and pure and heartbreaking. ‘I think I already have.’

I stiffen, tears springing from absolutely nowhere as I take in his words and his tone and his gaze. He twists on his stool so he’s facing me properly and slides his leg between mine.

‘Sweetheart.’ He pauses as if trying to find the right words. ‘The things I feel for you are things no man has any business feeling for his employee, no matter what he’s paying her for.’

I swallow. I can’t speak. Can’t move. He pushes gamely on.

‘I didn’t leave the priesthood so I could get laid, and I certainly didn’t employ you with any agenda beyond what we so clearly outlined, I promise you that. But I have fallen so hard and so fast, and—you are the most spectacular woman I have ever, ever met.’ He pauses, and the searing honesty in his eyes nearly kills me. ‘And I wonder if you feel the same way—or if I’m deluding myself here.’

I feel so many things, things I never expected to feel, never wanted to feel, things I’ve fought and denied and dismissed. But regardless of how loath I am to admit them to myself, there’s no way in hell I’d ever leave this beautiful man hanging when he’s baring his wonderful, wonderful soul.

‘I feel the same way.’ I can barely hear the admission. Tears are trembling on my lower lids, poised to break free, but I push on. ‘And I’m scared.’

His face crumples with compassion as he slides his free hand around my neck. ‘Oh my darling. Why are you scared?’

Because my entire plan for my entire career rests precariously on a very specific set of boundaries and behaviours and rules and advancement strategies involving other bosses, and falling for my current boss is not on the cards. Atall.

I don’t quite go with that line. Gabe deserves better.

‘Because feelings weren’t supposed to come into this,’ I stammer, ‘and I have absolutely no idea how to marry that with my being the woman you pay to fuck me at work. I don’t know how the hell we’re supposed to even consider a relationship within that dynamic.’

He blanches at my bluntness, then recovers. ‘You are far, far more to me than that. And, in the hope that this doesn’t freakyou out too much, I think we’ve both beenina relationship for some time.’

I stare at him, horrified. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you’re very, very good at your job—at all the parts of it. But I’d very much like to believe that when you practically fight George to be the one to get my lunch, or when I give you a foot rub just because I can, or when we’re lying together in bed in Claridges and it feels like we could lie there quite happily all day—I’d like to think those things are because we’re falling for each other and not just because you’re a committed assistant and I’m a considerate boss. Because they’re also the kinds of things that boyfriends and girlfriends do for each other, you know.’

I’m either going to laugh or cry at that little insight, so I laugh. ‘And what the fuck do either of us know about having a boyfriend or girlfriend? The priest and the prostitute? Neither of us are exactly relationship experts.’

He doesn’t look like he finds that funny. ‘Very little, clearly. Saying that, I know enough about humankind to know that the way you and I look after each other is what most people would consider very loving. Caring.’

He says the final two words carefully, as if they’re grenades that might explode upon impact. In reality, their power lies in their accuracy, because I know he’s right. If I look at how I approached my working relationships with my previous bosses, it was work and sex. Rinse and repeat. It was transactional. By contrast, Gabe and I have been devoted to each other, consumed by each other, since alarmingly early in my tenure with him, and it would do both of us a huge disservice if I wasn’t woman enough to admit that.

‘You’re right. We’ve blurred every line going, and I’ve loved every second of it. And I wasn’t totally ignorant of it—I just figured that as long as we let it all happen within the confines of ourworkingrelationship, we could fudge it.’

‘Yeah.’ He screws up his face. ‘I get that, and it was enough for a while, because it was so much more than I could ever have dreamed of. But I got greedy, and it’s not enough anymore. I want you in my bed every night. I want to walk down the street with my arm around you and shout from the fucking rooftops that the most incredible woman I know iswithme. I want my family to know, and passing you off as my assistant is just bullshit. I want a proper, honest-to-god relationship with you.’

I want to be in his bed, tonight and every night after.

I want his arm around me in public.

I want to claim this man and be by his side and celebrate him and wallow in the miracle of his existence every day. The mere thought of it has a huge smile breaking out on my face, and I drop my forehead to his. ‘Oh my God. I want that too.’

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