Page 2 of Embracing Love

“How about we take a look at the brochures and decide on the changes you might have in mind?” She sat forward and decided to go through the mock-ups again. But his cell phone rang and he stared at it briefly before pouncing on it. He answered it on the first ring.

He stood up abruptly without apologizing for the interruption or excusing himself and took the call there and then.

With his back turned to her he gazed out of the window, talking in his mother tongue.

Tanya sat back, she hadn’t realized how much she’d tightened her muscles during her meeting, and now she loosened up a little and felt immediately drained. Unable to understand the conversation, she felt her impatience growing inside her like a hot ball of fire waiting to explode.

She stared at his back, saw his powerful physique and the V-shape of his torso, the broad shoulders…and looked away.

It had been a while since she’d had any kind of intimacy with a man and there were moments when her imagination would wander…as it did sometimes with Luc. Not giving in to him was a test of her resolve, which was weakening as the months rolled by. Sometimes, she hungered for the touch of a man’s lips on her mouth, for the feel of a man’s finger on her skin, for a man’s conversation.

Concentrate,she told herself.

So she forced herself instead to look at the desk, and then glanced at her wrist. For the length of time she’d been here, they’d discussed pretty much zero. The campaign wasn’t off to a sprinting start at all, and she had a feeling this was what Gabriel Valois wanted.

He changed to speaking in English just as she realized that she would be late for her next conference call. And her ears perked up, because she now understood the words and also because the tone of his voice had changed. Was he talking to his girlfriend?

No, he had a child, it sounded like. A son. She hadn’t seen a ring on the man’s finger, not that she’d been looking for one. But all the same she noticed he didn’t have one.

She seemed to notice these things more ever since she’d taken her own wedding band off. Vincent now had his own life with a new partner and a young child: something she’d been unable to give him.

Something else she had failed at.

Tanya stared at the shiny mass of Gabriel Valois’ dark hair and imagined his girlfriend running her hands through it. She wondered what the woman looked like, and guessed that he was the type of man who commanded attention just by the way he stood.

He was all tall and sharp bones, with a mass of dark hair. She listened to his conversation carefully; understood that his son had been to the dentist for braces and was now being dropped off at school by his mother. She found herself wondering what his son looked like, where the family holidayed, what sort of house they lived in, what they did at weekends. He appeared more relaxed, laughing easily with his son. And Tanya wondered how old the boy was.

Vincent’s child was sixteen months old.

Stop it.

She couldn’t stay here, waiting a moment longer. Mr. Valois had refused to turn around and acknowledge her and had continued to stare out of the window the entire time. Her decision was made.

She got up and moved to the door, opening it quietly she tiptoed out of his office. Striving to keep her voice calm, to dampen the anger and resentment she felt towards that man, she spoke to his receptionist.

“Mr Valois seems busy on a phone call and I cannot wait any longer. I have a meeting I need to attend, so if you could please let him know that I had to leave. Perhaps he could call me when he is ready to meet again?”

The girl nodded and hastily scribbled down something illegible.

Tanya escaped with a huge sigh of relief.

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