‘Oh, all right, but you’d better ring me tomorrow and tell me everything!’
Noting down Bella’s sarcastically simplistic instructions, Tess had the feeling she wasn’t going to enjoy the next few minutes very much. ‘Thanks, Bella,’ she said dryly. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘Good luck,’ said Bella, and then raised her voice wickedly to make sure that Gabriel would hear her. ‘And tell that boss of yours that I’ve always thought he sounded very sexy, whatever you say!’
Tess put the phone down hastily. She would kill Bella next time she saw her! Faint colour tinged her cheeks as she pretended to read over the instructions that Bella had given her.
What exactly did she say? Gabriel wondered darkly. Nothing very flattering, that was for sure!
‘I didn’t realise that you were in the habit of discussing me with your friends,’ he said with a cold look.
‘I didn’t realise that you were in the habit of listening in to private conversations!’ Tess snapped back, provoked, and they glared at each other.
Tired of being dangled from outstretched arms, Harry had begun to grizzle. Remembering just in time that he needed Tess’s help that evening, Gabriel swallowed the savage retort on the tip of his tongue with an effort.
‘Look, let’s get this nappy changing over and done with,’ he growled. ‘We’ll do it together, since it’s obviously not going to be a very pleasant job.’
‘All right.’ Tess took the opportunity to back down too. The presence of Harry seemed to have a dangerously dis-inhibiting effect on both of them, and if she wasn’t careful she would find herself out of a job altogether.
The extra money she would earn on overtime tonight might be useful, but her salary was essential, Tess reminded herself guiltily. She had been looking for another job ever since Gabriel had arrived at SpaceWorks, but all those she could have applied for would have meant taking a drop in salary that she simply couldn’t afford at the moment. Standing up to Gabriel was one thing, provoking him into sacking her was another. It might be an idea to keep her mouth shut and keep her job, she reflected ruefully.
Still holding Harry at arm’s length, Gabriel carried him through to the sleekly modern bathroom that was attached to his private office. There, after some discussion, they spread out a towel on the black marble surface by the basin and laid Harry on top of it.
‘Well, here goes!’ Tess took a deep breath and resolutely unbuttoned Harry’s little body suit.
By now, Harry was crying in earnest and wriggling alarmingly, and it took two of them to stop him squirming off the marble onto the floor while they worked out how to unfasten the nappy.
Both grimaced when it finally fell apart, and they looked at each other for a pregnant moment. Gabriel found himself staring into Tess’s eyes and noticing with an odd, detached part of his mind that they were a beautiful shade of brown, the colour of clear honey, shot through with gold. He had never really seen her eyes before, he realised. Usually they were hidden behind the spectacles she wore when she was working at the computer or taking dictation, and looking into them now for the first time he felt as if he had received a tiny electric shock.
It was an odd feeling. Even odder was the strange tightening of the air between them as they looked at each other. Afterwards, Gabriel would think it could only have lasted a second or two, but at the time it seemed as if their eyes held for an eternity, and when Tess turned back to the protesting baby he felt unaccountably jarred, even dislocated.
Brushing the sensation from his mind, Gabriel set his jaw and forced his attention back to the messy business of changing Harry’s nappy.
To Tess, it all seemed unbelievably complicated. She couldn’t understand how the mothers she had seen deftly changing babies in washrooms managed on their own. She and Gabriel had to keep stopping to refer to Bella’s instructions, and running backwards and forwards to the pram to find the various wipes and creams and spare nappies that seemed to be required.
Although she would have died rather than admit it, Tess was glad that Gabriel was there. It was a relief to discover that he was even more squeamish than she was, and by the time they had finished he was looking positively green about the gills, but his hands were very steady as he held Harry still. There was something oddly reassuring about them, Tess thought inconsequentially. They were big and square and competent, with very clean nails, and for some reason she was very conscious whenever her fingers brushed against his.
At last it was over. Harry, buttoned up again, was obviously more comfortable, and he stopped grizzling when Tess picked him up and cuddled him carefully against her shoulder. She must be getting the hang of it, she congratulated herself.
‘Thank God that’s over!’ said Gabriel, disposing of the dirty nappy with distaste, and Tess found herself nodding in sympathy as their eyes met again. There was that same puzzling charge to the air, the same sense that a smile was lurking, waiting for the slightest excuse to shimmer between them, before Tess looked quickly away, more disturbed than she wanted to admit. It wouldn’t do to start thinking that she and Gabriel had anything in common, even if it was only a squeamishness about nappies!
Fortunately, that uncomfortable sense of complicity didn’t survive the trip down to the underground car park to Gabriel’s car. Tess had frequently wondered why it took so long for friends with babies to do anything, but that evening she discovered that with a baby in tow you couldn’t simply put on your coat, pick up your bag and go.
Harry refused to be put down in his pram, so they had to take it in turns to hold him while they repacked all his stuff, switched off lights and computers, and gathered up their own things. It all took forever, and then they had to negotiate the lift with the pram. They were halfway down before Gabriel remembered the papers he needed to check that night, so they had to go back up again.
His temper was not improved when they got to the car at last and had to work out how to collapse the pram. Cursing fluently under his breath, Gabriel wrestled with knobs and levers.
‘It can’t be that difficult,’ said Tess unwisely. ‘You see mothers with these prams the whole time. They can’t all have degrees in mechanical engineering.’
‘No, and they don’t all have people hanging around making pointless remarks, either!’ Gabriel snarled, and Tess bridled.
‘There’s no need to bite my head off just because you can’t do it,’ she said coldly, forgetting her earlier resolution to keep her tongue between her teeth. ‘It’s not my fault you’re in a bad mood.’
Gabriel thought that was a matter of opinion. If she had dealt properly with Harry’s grandmother, the evening wouldn’t have turned into the unmitigated disaster it was already shaping up to be. As it was, he had been forced to beg for her help, had endured a revolting session with the baby’s nappy, and was now making an idiot of himself struggling with this cursed pram.
And all he had to look forward to was an evening spent in the company of his PA, who had made no secret of the fact that she disliked him intensely. Gabriel reckoned that Tess had plenty to do with his bad mood, but he had to content himself with casting her a filthy look as he turned back to the pram. He vented his temper instead on a lever that he had already tried more than once, jerking it savagely towards him, and the pram collapsed in one smooth motion that smacked uncannily of reproach for his excessive use of brute force.
At last they were on the way, but almost immediately found themselves in heavy traffic heading south of the river to where Tess lived. Gabriel drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel as they edged forward, annoyed to find himself very aware of Tess sitting beside him.
He wished he hadn’t noticed her eyes. He wished he hadn’t noticed her legs. He wished he hadn’t noticed anything different about her, because now that he had started noticing, it was somehow difficult to stop.
There was no reason to notice her. She hadn’t done anything to attract