The Proposal Plan (11 page)

He didn’t like the way she was heading with this. The only way to deal with her obstinacy sometimes was just to storm on regardless and so he tried again.

‘Lucy, please. I need to talk to you. Ten minutes, that’s all.’

‘What part of no do you not understand? Please, Gabriel, just go away.’

‘I’m going to say what I’ve come to say, whether you like it or not, Lu. So you can either let me in or the whole street can hear me yell it through the intercom. It’s up to you!’ He raised his voice to emphasise his point.

A long pause. And then she pressed the entry button.

Lucy opened the flat door and went back to the kitchen without waiting for him to come up the stairs. Her heart was thundering in her chest and she hoped that concentrating on the cake she was making would keep her calm. She heard the door slam as he came into the flat and she turned as he entered the kitchen.
She could see by his face that he’d probably had even less sleep than she had. There were dark smudges underneath the grey eyes.

‘I wish you’d turn your phone on now and then,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve spent the last six hours trying to call you.’

She glanced across at the phone on the kitchen window sill. ‘I know. I only turned it on ten minutes ago and it practically rang itself off the shelf with all your texts. One message would have been enough, you know.’ She picked up a wooden spoon and began beating the cake batter although it was all perfectly mixed already. At least it meant she didn’t have to look into his eyes and hold that grey gaze. Her stomach did cartwheels every time she did that. It seemed her body knew perfectly well what it wanted. To be carried by Gabe down the hall and straight into her bedroom. But she had to control her body with her mind, and that was telling her to be careful. Be very, very careful. She needed to follow her head, not her heart. She’d built her whole life around doing exactly that.
Don’t throw away twenty-three years plus a future with Ed, if you can somehow salvage one, on something that will last five minutes, Lucy
.

Suddenly he was standing very close behind her and she felt weak. If he tried to kiss her now she wasn’t sure she had the presence of mind to stop things and talk to him. But he simply reached around her and took away the bowl of cake batter. Hands left with nothing to do, she turned around and leaned back against the counter, folding her arms across her body.

‘We need to talk, Lu,’ he said simply.

She looked up at him. His eyes held hers. ‘I know,’ she said.

‘I’m really sorry about last night,’ he began.

Her heart began to sink, telling her how deep her feelings for him went. It made her feel guiltier than ever. Did he mean it was a mistake? That he regretted it? If so, how should she feel about that?

Anxious not to give away her own feelings—that would make her vulnerable—she gave a neutral answer. ‘So am I.’

His face fell a little. ‘I’m not sure you understand, Lu. I’m not sorry for kissing you. I’m really not. I’m sorry because I haven’t been honest with you and you deserve a lot better than that.’

She rubbed a hand tiredly across her forehead.
‘What do you mean you haven’t been honest?’ she asked him.

‘I don’t want you to propose to Ed.’ She stared at him. The words spun in her mind. ‘You’re not still thinking about it, are you?’ He searched her face.

‘To be honest I don’t know what to think.’ She took a deep breath and looked down at her hands. ‘Up until last night it was all clear to me and now I feel like I don’t know where I am. It’s all your fault. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t kissed me.’

Gabriel raised his eyebrows at her sharp tone. ‘Quit kidding yourself, Lu. You’re just trying to pass the buck because you feel guilty about Ed. I can understand that. I can. I feel bad about Ed, too, but that doesn’t change the facts. I might have been the one who started it but you didn’t exactly fight me off, did you?’

She felt a hot blush of shame rise in her face. He was right. It made it feel momentarily better if they both shared the blame, but that was just window dressing. She had to take responsibility for her own actions, not dilute the repercussions by using Gabriel. It annoyed her that he knew her well enough to read her mind.

He grabbed her hand, entwining his fingers
in hers. ‘That kiss meant as much to you as it did to me. Don’t deny it, Lucy. Not to me.’

She made the mistake of looking into his eyes and she felt light-headed. She would not let herself lose control again. A repeat of last night was
not
going to happen. Not while Ed was in the picture. She couldn’t erase the kiss they’d shared but she could damn well stop things going any further. With a stupendous effort she removed her hand from his grasp and stepped away, putting cooling space between them.

She had to keep a handle on the facts here or she would go under. She felt awful for discussing anything with him before she’d been able to see Ed. Just talking about the possibility of being with him felt like cheating. But the fact was that she needed proper commitment from Gabriel if they were ever to go anywhere. Proper certainty that what had happened between them was different from his usual relationships. She needed to know he was ready to commit again, not get cold feet after a couple of weeks. This had to come from him. He was the one who was incapable of taking a relationship seriously, of giving it his all. If all he was after was a fling then she would stop
the whole thing now, however hard that might be. She forced herself to ask the question that frightened her the most. ‘What do you want from me, Gabriel?’

He moved towards her again, reclaiming the space she’d put between them, and took her hands in both of his. His huge hands enveloped her small ones easily, her fingers tingling at his touch. Her heart was beating so hard she thought he might be able to hear it.

He looked seriously down into her eyes. ‘I want you, Lucy. I want you to drop the proposal with Ed and give things a try with me instead.’ He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling at the edges, the lopsided smile she loved so much lighting up his tired face.

She didn’t smile. ‘What do you mean by “give things a try”?’

‘Try being together as a couple. Not just as friends. For starters we could have a proper night out, just the two of us. Nothing heavy, just a relaxing evening. And then I thought we could both do with a break, so maybe we could think about taking a couple of weeks off, going somewhere hot. What do you think?’ He looked at her expectantly. He thought she would jump at the chance, didn’t he? Why
wouldn’t he think that? she supposed. Every other woman did.

Her heart was deflating. She could almost feel it in her chest. Disappointment flooded her. He hadn’t changed at all, had he? She remembered some of those lines, almost word for word, from the night he’d met Ed’s friends and flirted with Joanna. And why on earth did he think a holiday in the sun was the way to go? As if a relationship between them wasn’t unreal enough, he was suggesting they take it and put it in an artificial setting with perfect surroundings. When they came home she knew the honeymoon would be over. And so would their friendship. What she needed to hear was that he was prepared to throw one hundred and ten percent into it alongside their everyday lives and challenges. She took her hands away from his and walked into the sitting room.

‘What’s wrong?’ He followed her, sounding genuinely confused. ‘What did I say?’

She sat down on the sofa, elbows on knees, and blew a stray tendril of hair out of her eyes. She looked up at him and shrugged. ‘It’s more what you didn’t say, to be honest, Gabe,’ she said.

He frowned. ‘I’ve laid my cards on the table,
Lucy. This whole proposal thing of yours, spending time with you, looking at you gaining confidence, sorting things out with your dad. I realised the last thing in the world I want to do is help you get married to someone else. I tried not to show it, God knows I did, but last night it just got the better of me. And there’s no point me trying to hide it any more. I’ve fallen for you and I want you to be with me.’

‘Gabriel, our friendship means everything to me.’ She looked up at him. He was standing with his arms folded indignantly. Still frowning.
He’s not used to women knocking him back
, she thought.
I do believe he thought he’d come here and I’d just fall into his arms
. ‘So much that I’m just not willing to risk it by having a fling with you.’

‘Hang on a minute—’

She held up a hand. ‘Let me finish.’ She was firm but quiet. For once she had her temper under total control.

He looked at her impatiently. ‘OK, go on.’

‘Last night, Gabe, when you kissed me.’ She dropped her eyes shyly and looked down at her hands. ‘No one’s ever made me feel like that before.’

He was across the room in three quick
strides, kneeling in front of her, his hands on hers again. ‘Then let’s give it a go,’ he said softly, his mouth so close to hers that she could just touch it in a slight movement, take him down the hall to bed right now. ‘What have we got to lose?’

She pulled her hands away and forced herself to stand up. ‘Everything, Gabriel. And that’s exactly the problem. I don’t want to lose you as a friend and if we go ahead with this and it doesn’t work out I’m scared that’s exactly what will happen. Your relationships last five minutes. And then you can’t turn back the clock. Things would never be the same. We’d have lost everything. So if this is just about you panicking because I’m settling down, there’s no need. Nothing will change for you and me, Gabe. We’ll always be best friends, no matter what.’

He stood up next to her and looked intently into her face. ‘It’s not about that. It’s about us being more than just friends. I’ve changed, Lucy. I can make this work. And I promise you that, no matter what happens between us, we will always be friends. Always. You don’t need to worry about ruining that by being with me.’

Could she really believe that? She looked
at him and swallowed hard to keep the threat of tears at bay. She wouldn’t let him see her cry; she was absolutely determined about that.

‘I need time to think, Gabe. I feel terrible for just talking about this with you while Ed’s in the dark about what’s happened. I can’t think about anything until I’ve sorted things out with Ed. I have to make things right with him—you must see that. I can’t just pretend last night never happened. I’m not the kind of person who can gloss over that and then sleep soundly at night. All this is too sudden. I need to work out what I’m going to do.’

‘Well, you can’t still be intending to propose to him,’ Gabriel said boldly. ‘Not now.’

Her temper stirred. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Because you say so?’

‘Because of what happened. The way you just said you feel. You can’t go ahead with it now.’

‘Maybe I can’t. But even if things finish with Ed it doesn’t automatically follow that diving into a relationship with you is the right move. Try and see it from my point of view, will you? You’re suggesting I throw away a good relationship, one that was good enough, by the way, for me to be ready to marry the
guy, for you, who has the track record of a rock star for making relationships work. Already you’re suggesting we go away on holiday. What I need is to know we could work in the real world before I would ever take a chance on it working out in some unreal holiday environment.’ She sighed. ‘You mean the world to me, Gabriel, as a friend. I just don’t know if I can give that up. How do I know you’ve really changed? That you’re really ready for this—a proper, grown-up, serious relationship?’

This was getting her nowhere. The way things were headed they would end up having a row. She needed to clear her head, decide what to do. ‘I need you to leave, Gabe. I’ll call you later.’

His face fell. ‘No. I’m not leaving. We need to talk this through.’ He grabbed one of her hands. ‘Please, Lucy.’

‘I need to think!’ she shouted at him. ‘Stop pushing me, Gabriel!’ And then her voice broke a little as she lowered it and tried to speak calmly, to make him listen. ‘I need you to get out now and give me some space.’

He dropped her hand as if it were suddenly red hot. ‘OK, OK.’ He held his hands up submissively. ‘I’ll go now. Give you time to think.
But listen…’ He moved back towards her a little, as if he couldn’t stop himself, and clenched his fists. ‘Just promise me you’ll think about how it could be between us,’ he said. ‘We have so much going for us—you can’t deny that.’

She only gazed back at him steadily until he left the room and she heard the front door bang shut behind him. He hadn’t once mentioned proper long-term plans. Something in Gabriel had been broken all those years ago when Alison died. Could she really believe that one kiss with her had mended it? That he now had the capacity to give her everything she needed? Because she needed security and safety to be happy, she needed to rely on him in the same way she needed air.

Gabriel didn’t bother going home again after he left. He felt that the prospect of their relationship was balanced on a knife edge. He felt uneasy. Had he really given it everything he’d got? Had he really opened his heart to her and let her see in? Or had a decade of keeping women at a distance, avoiding any danger of loss, made him hold back? He didn’t know. But if he’d got this wrong he would lose her anyway now and he wasn’t sure he could
stand that. He knew her well enough not to paint her into a corner, knowing that would only make her dig her heels in against him. The only thing to do was to back off and give her time to think. And it had to be her choice at the end of the day. What she wanted. Not something she’d been pushed into, but something she embraced.

He turned the car in the opposite direction to his flat and made for the motorway. For Gloucestershire. He was determined to get this right. Lucy would never settle for anything less than marriage; he knew that. If he had any chance of winning her over he had to be prepared to be with her for always, to put aside all his fears that the past might repeat itself and that he might lose her the way he’d lost Alison. He had to take a leap of faith. He found with surprise that the idea filled him with nothing but hope and delight. He had spent years avoiding even the thought of it. He just hoped that when she was ready to talk, he could make her listen.