The Baby Proposal

“So are a lot of guys his age.”

His eyes studied her features. “I suppose after the way you defended Bret, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“No, you shouldn’t.” She smiled as she said it. “I’m sure he feeds the same line to all women young or old who stay at the hotel. An extenuation of his job. Keep the customers happy.”

One dark eyebrow quirked. “Did it make you happy?”

“Well—yes, in a way. It’s a fun memory to take home with me.”

After a long silence he said, “I’ll have to remember that.”

His dark mood had passed.

For half an hour they made desultory conversation while they walked beneath the cathedral of trees. The soft, warm summer air played havoc with her senses and seemed to be affecting him, too. Andrea took care not to brush against him. The slightest contact of his leg or arm sent a live current of electricity through her body.

She should have been relieved when Gabe broke the spell by stopping to speak to one of the fishermen around a bend in the river. The older man didn’t seem to be having any luck, but whatever her boss said brought a light to his eye.

From his tackle basket he drew out another type of lure and put it on the end of his line. Then he began casting. Before long he had a fight on his hands. After he’d reeled in a nice-size fish, he grinned and patted Gabe on the shoulder.

“What kind is it?”

“Carp.”

“I’ve never tasted it.”

“Smoked carp is out of this world.”

“You’re full of surprises,” Andrea said as they started to circle back. “Were you born here in France to know what kind of bait would catch it?”

He darted her a curious glance. “No, I’m a native of St. Pierre et Miquelon.”

She frowned. “Is that in Belgium or Switzerland?”

“Neither. It’s a French territorial collectivity off the coast of Newfoundland.”

The mention of the Canadian province rang a bell.

“That’s right!” She stopped walking. “I remember my junior high geography teacher telling us about some islands being the only French possessions remaining in North America. A big fishing industry. As I recall, she said Al Capone used to hide out there during prohibition.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “You have a keen memory and know more about it than ninety-nine percent of the world. I’m impressed.”

“I’m flabbergasted. I’ve never met anyone who came from there. Your English is so perfect, I had no idea.”

“My mother’s an American. I hold dual citizenship.”

“Is your family still there?” She wanted to know anything and everything about him.

A shadow entered his eyes, but it was fleeting. “Yes.”

“So how come you left?”

“I had a yen to explore the world.”

“And look what happened!” she blurted with a smile. “But your fishing roots still have a hold on you.”

He nodded. “I serve on the French Fisheries Board. As a result, I’m aware of problems on the Marne after last year’s champagne harvest.”

Andrea was totally intrigued. “What happened?”

They began walking again.

“The heavy September rains washed pomace and excess grapes into the river. There’s been a massive cleanup effort to get rid of the dead fish lining the banks. I’m glad to see the old man was able to catch something.”

So his chat with the fisherman was no idle conversation.

“What’s your specific job on this board?” By now she had so many questions to ask, she couldn’t fire them off fast enough.

“To help settle maritime boundary disputes between France and Canada’s fishing territories.”

Good heavens. That would be a full-time job in and of itself. Only a man of his extraordinary abilities could take that on and run a billion-dollar corporation in the process.

“Is your island’s fishing industry in trouble?”

He stared hard at her. “If you really want to know, I’ll answer your questions while we eat dinner.”

As if he did it every day, he slid his arm around her shoulders and guided her toward an adorable sidewalk café a few doors up from the hotel. It was the kind of place just for lovers, with bistro chairs and small round tables covered in red and white checked cloths.

A few couples were dancing to an old French love song played by a roving accordionist. As soon as Gabe seated her, a waiter appeared with two glasses of white wine. Another waiter brought some freshly baked bread still warm from the oven.

“They only serve one entrée here so there’s no menu,” Gabe explained when they were alone. “You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted their fried moules.”

Andrea decided she hadn’t lived until she’d entered this land of enchantment with Gabe. She feared she was in the middle of a fantastic dream and was going to wake up at any second.

CHAPTER TWO

WHILE they sipped their wine and ate the mouthwatering bread, Andrea cast Gabe furtive glances.

The flicker of candlelight revealed the amazing color of his eyes. She’d always thought them a solid gray, but tonight the outer rim of his irises gleamed silver. With his head of swirling black hair and a five o’clock shadow covering the lower half of his face, he was the most sensational looking man she’d ever seen.

“Bon appetit,” the waiter said after placing side dishes of French fries and a hot platter heaped with mussels in front of them.

Gabe’s eyes met hers. “They’ve been cooked in a sauce of white wine, garlic and cream. Try one and you’ll understand.”

The fragrance tickled her nose. After she took her first bite, she couldn’t stop.

“My grandmother used to cook moules this way. My brothers and I would have contests to see who could eat the most.”

Andrea chuckled, wishing she could have been witness to such a sight. “I can see why. I’ve never tasted anything so delicious.”

The confidences coming bit by bit were starting to fill in the gaps that explained the man behind the corporate mask. When Andrea was finally full she put down her fork. “So, when did your grandmother pass away?”

He finished off his wine. “Two years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Maybe he didn’t like all her questions, but she was hungry for answers only he could give. “Do you have a big family?”

“I’m the second of four brothers, two of whom are twins.”

Twins—

“How lucky for you. I’m an only child.”

“They’re all married. At last count I have seven nieces and nephews. There’s my father Giles, of course; my grandfather Jacques, two aunts with husbands, children and grandchildren.”

No mention of his mom…

“Everyone lives in the same neighborhood in St. Pierre and derives their livelihood from the sea. The first Corbin we know of came from Brittany and was fishing those waters when Jacques Cartier stopped there on his return to France in the mid-fifteen hundreds.”

Fascinating. “What about your mother’s side of the family?”

“I have a lot of relatives in Chicago.”

“How on earth did your parents meet?”

“Mother was coming home from a trip to Europe when her plane had to be diverted to Halifax. She and my father were both stranded at the airport for the better part of a week due to a ferocious Atlantic storm. One thing led to another and he took her home to meet the family. They married, had children. She divorced my father when I was eighteen.”

The unexpected revelation pierced her heart. His parents’ breakup would have done terrible things to his emotions, yet he’d channeled that hurt and anger to build an empire. If he hadn’t gone down that path, Corbin PC’s might not have been, Andrea might not have ever met him. The thought made her ill.

“We survived, Andrea. Though my mother has never discussed the divorce, she and I have remained close. We see each other often. She works for a travel agency and flies to St. Pierre to visit my brothers every month.”

It was just as well one of the waiters chose that moment to clear their dishes. Andrea wanted to get to know Gabe better. She could see the pain in Gabe’s eyes as he talked about his past.

Another waiter followed with two plates of melon chunks. The dessert looked simple enough until she tasted it. “Oh—I don’t believe anything could be this divine.”

Gabe’s eyes were smiling. “It’s the champagne glaze.”

Between his nearness and the effect of the wine after all the delicious food they’d eaten, she was dangerously close to floating.

“You were going to tell me about the problems your island is facing.”

“Later,” he murmured. “Right now I want to dance with you.”

Her heartbeat accelerated to a galloping pitch as he grasped her hand and drew her into his arms.

She’d heard “La Vie en Rose” many times in her life, but she’d never danced to the live music of an authentic French accordion player before. Gabe’s hard muscled body seemed to meld with hers. She buried her face in his shoulder.

“Are you having a good time, Andrea?”

The question made her a little crazy. She was in heaven, but she couldn’t tell him that. “Thanks to you I’m having an unforgettable experience.”

“Then look at me.”

She clung to him even tighter. “I’m afraid to.”

“Why?”

“Because I smell of garlic.”

His body began to shake with silent laughter. “We both do, so there’s no problem.”

She finally raised her head, but the slight motion caused her to feel dizzy. “I—I wish I had some gum.”

“I’d rather taste the champagne on your lips.” In the next breath his tempting male mouth closed over hers in a warm kiss that seemed so natural, she opened hers involuntarily.

While they moved around the dance floor, their kiss slowly deepened and became a part of the total magic of the night. One song turned into another, one kiss grew into another. Andrea had no idea how long they communed in that halcyon state.

Gabe had begun kissing her cheeks and neck and hair, and she was making little moaning sounds while she let him. She’d forgotten they had an audience until they’d stopped dancing.

A wave of heat engulfed her at her loss of control. Breaking away from him, she walked past other diners to their table on unsteady legs to get her purse. She hadn’t drunk that much wine and couldn’t blame the alcohol for her reckless behavior. It was Gabe who’d turned her into some kind of sybarite.

Without waiting for him, she left the café and headed for the hotel. Pierre’s father stood behind the front desk, thank goodness. He nodded to her. She flashed him a smile and kept walking.

Gabe caught up to her on the staircase. When she sensed him behind her, she ran up the last few steps.

“What’s the hurry?” By this time they were both standing outside her door. She was breathless.

“I got a little carried away on the dance floor and figure it’s past my bedtime.”

His low chuckle resonated to her bones. “I should have brought you to Paris long before now. It’s wonderful watching someone else react to it for the first time.”

“You made it wonderful by bringing me here, Gabe. I’ll never forget it.” Her voice was trembling again. “Good night.” She put her key into the lock and opened the door.

“Andrea?”

Her heart thudded in her chest. “Yes?”

“Thank you for giving me a memory. I’ll come by for you at eight-thirty in the morning. We’ll raid that pastry shop next door before we do anything else. Sleep well,” he whispered before walking off.

There was no possibility of that now. He’d made the night too magical for her.

Grabbing her toiletries, she hurried down the hall to get ready for bed. But she knew she would stay awake most of the night reliving every thrilling moment with him.

A creature of habit, Andrea woke up at six-thirty though her body craved more sleep. Gabe wouldn’t come knocking for another two hours.

Unwilling to lie there in fresh anticipation of seeing him without being able to do anything about it, she dressed for work in a matching cotton blouse and skirt in a khaki color. When she’d done her hair and makeup, she packed her bag and carried it downstairs.

This time she encountered a woman at the front desk who was probably Pierre’s mother. The older woman greeted her.

“Bonjour,” Andrea responded in kind.

“Monsieur Corbin is next door eating breakfast.” Gabe was already up? “You are welcome to leave your suitcase with me while you join him.”

“Thank you.”

After the woman came around to take it from her, Andrea walked outside to an overcast sky filled with the most amazing cloud formations. She discovered tables and chairs set up in front of the patisserie. Gabe sat at one of them dunking a croissant in his coffee before eating it while he read the Figaro.

In thigh molding jeans, a burgundy T-shirt and sneakers, he gave off a sexual male aura that made her heart leap. But it was hardly the attire she expected him to wear to work.

Since her talk with him yesterday morning, nothing had gone the way she’d thought. There was no possibility of second-guessing him. It was one of the many aspects about him that increased his desirability.

As she approached, he looked up from the newspaper. His glance was swift but thorough, otherwise she wouldn’t be feeling this sudden weakness. He got to his feet in one lithe movement and helped her to sit down.

“I can never sleep in, either,” he murmured before removing his hand from her arm. Her skin continued to feel his imprint even after he’d taken his place once more.

“It’s just as well. I’m sure Emile wants to get started as soon as possible. If we hurry and settle down to business, he won’t have to keep his team working through the whole weekend.”

Gabe poured her a cup of hot coffee from the carafe without commenting. Apparently he’d been expecting her at some point. Unlike him, she was as predictable as the sun rising every morning. After last night she feared her attraction to him was transparent.

The woman who ran the shop brought out a plate of golden croissants.

“Try one,” he said. “They’re filled with spinach and feta cheese.”

She trusted him to know what was good and took a bite. He was right. It was a gourmet’s delight. But she had a fluttery sensation in the pit of her stomach that robbed her of an appetite. She reached for the coffee instead.

Gabe appeared so calm, it convinced her he’d forgotten what had gone on between them last night. “It feels like it might rain.”

“But it won’t,” he said, eyeing her over the brim of his cup.

“How soon is Emile expecting us?”

“He isn’t.”

She almost choked on her coffee. “I don’t understand.”

“Then I’ll clarify things for you.” He put down his cup and leaned forward, staring at her through veiled eyes. “I brought you to Paris for one reason only.”

She didn’t know Gabe like this. “If you’re talking about seducing me, you had your chance last night—” she joked because she didn’t have the slightest clue what was going on in his mind, let alone where this conversation was headed.

To her shock he didn’t laugh or even smile.

“You’re way off base, Ms. Bauer.” He hadn’t called her by her last name since the first day she’d interviewed with him.

Heat rose in her cheeks. “You think I don’t know that?” Talk about twisting the knife till blood gushed.

“I’ve never proposed marriage to a woman before, and thought this the ideal place.”

Marriage—

The cup slipped from her hands, spilling some of the coffee on her blouse.

“S-sorry I’m so clumsy,” she stammered as she dabbed at the stain with a napkin. “I must have misunderstood what you just said.”

“You mean about my asking you to be my wife?” His hand covered hers, stilling it.

“You’re joking of course—”

“I never joke.”

She knew that.

His was a serious nature, even brooding. The man worked harder than anyone she knew, and expected the same from the people around him. She doubted he had a frivolous bone in that tall, powerful body she found undeniably appealing.

Sometimes she glimpsed a mystifying streak of melancholy that tore at her heartstrings. After their conversation last night, she thought she understood part of the reason for it.

“You don’t marry someone when you’re not in love,” Andrea whispered, struggling to find her voice.

“We like each other.” He inserted the irrefutable fact in the same way he made a polarizing comment at a board meeting, inevitably silencing everyone. “All you have to do is remember last night to know it’s true.”

Last night…

She hadn’t been able to think about anything else. It had haunted her dreams and made her so restless she’d wanted to steal to his room and beg him to make love to her.

“Who’s to say ‘like’ isn’t preferable to love that can twist and torture the soul.” Gabe’s rhetorical question was proof his parents’ divorce had crippled him emotionally, just as she’d thought.

“Admit we have an excellent working relationship, Andrea. We know each other better than anyone else. I don’t recall us ever having a serious disagreement. There’s no doubt we’re sexually compatible.” The thumb caressing her palm was sending little darts of awareness through her system.

“You’re crazy!” As if she’d just been stung, she pulled her hand away. Beyond pain, she said, “I’ve worked with you long enough to know Gabe Corbin never does anything without it being part of a grand design.”

He sat back. “That’s true.”

She eyed him frankly. “What’s the real reason you’ve picked on me to enter into a loveless marriage?”

After subjecting her to an intimate appraisal he said, “I’m not about to allow you to throw away your chance to give birth to your own child if I can help it. We’ll make it our top priority.”

They were back to a discussion of her female problem. “You want to give me a baby—” she mocked.

“Barring unforeseen circumstances, yes, I’d like to give you a child. I want us to marry so that you can have our baby.”

She sprang to her feet and put her fists on the edge of the table. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “And don’t tell me you want to do this for me out of the kindness of your heart! What’s in it for you?” By now her curvaceous five-foot-five body was leaning toward him.

Lines darkened his features making him look all of his thirty-six years. “A way to atone for my sins,” he answered in a gravelly voice.

It never failed that when Andrea asked him a pointed question, he always came back with an unexpected answer that confounded her. This one reached a spot deep in her soul and she quietly sat down. “What sins?”

“When I left St. Pierre for college, Jeanne-Marie, one of the girls from the island, came to my apartment in New York.”

Andrea knew there had to be a Jeanne-Marie-whatever-her-last name-was somewhere in his past.

“She claimed she hadn’t wanted me to leave home and was hoping I would marry her.”

If anyone understood what it was like to love Gabe, Andrea did. The heartbroken girl would have been in agony to watch him walk out of her life.

“That was a ludicrous announcement on her part since Jeanne-Marie and I had no past together. She knew there could never be a future.

“The truth is, we slept together one time. I’m not proud of the fact that I had a one-night stand, but I did and marriage was the last thing on my mind where she or any woman was concerned.

“I told her to go back to St. Pierre. Later on I received a call from my father that she was going to marry my brother Yves.”

The picture was getting clearer. When Jeanne-Marie couldn’t have Gabe, she chose the next best thing.

“It pained me to realize I’d been with a woman my brother loved enough to marry. He deserved to know the truth about Jeanne-Marie and me before things went any further, so I made plans to fly back to the island to talk to him. But my father told me something that changed my life.”

Andrea had a premonition where this was leading. Her eyes closed tightly and she sat back down in her chair.

“He said she’d just suffered a miscarriage. Though everyone thought it was Yves’s baby, he knew differently, meaning I was the father. My father suggested that for Yves’s happiness, it might be wise if I never came back.”

“Gabe—” Gut wrenching pain tore through her. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve never been home since?”

Emotion darkened his eyes until she couldn’t see any silver. “I flew in the day my grandmother was buried, but waited till night to visit her grave. Grand-père was there alone. We talked until first light, then I left the island.”

She shook her head, aghast to think of his being estranged from his family all these years. “Why didn’t Jeanne-Marie tell you she was pregnant when she came to see you?” her voice trembled.

“The night we were together I took precautions which let her know I didn’t want there to be any consequences. She was probably afraid to tell me she’d gotten pregnant.”

“But it was your baby!” Andrea said emotionally. “You had a right to know.”

He folded his powerful arms. “I agree. However at eighteen who’s thinking clearly?”

“You were, otherwise you wouldn’t have left home to follow your dreams.”

“I got out of there because I couldn’t stand to see the pain in my father’s eyes after he and mother divorced.”

Andrea believed him, but whether he realized it at the time or not, she knew other forces had been at work prompting him to fulfill his destiny.

“I’m so sorry, Gabe.” She wished there were a better word besides sorry to convey her feelings. “I— I still don’t understand how marrying me would help you atone for your sins.”

He sucked in his breath, “You haven’t lived with my guilt. Jeanne-Marie needed me and I rejected her.”

“You wouldn’t have, if she’d been truthful with you!”

A wintry smile came and went. “Thank you for defending me, but it doesn’t relieve me of blame. I slept with her when I didn’t love her.”

“She sought you out because she was willing, Gabe. That makes her share equally in the blame.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, “but if I’d married her, she might not have had the miscarriage.”

Her heart ached for him. “You’re beating yourself up for something you were helpless to rectify without knowing all the facts.”

He shook his dark head. “None of that matters now. Our baby didn’t survive, and there’s been no way for me to make restitution. When you came to me yesterday morning, I sensed your desperation and realized there was something I could do for you before it’s too late.”

She averted her eyes.

“Knowing what was at stake, I admired your honesty in not using Bret who was obviously ready and willing to make you his wife, something I wasn’t prepared to do for Jeanne-Marie…” His voice trailed. “I believe we could make a marriage work, Andrea. We have no secrets, only the hope of getting you pregnant.”

Andrea looked up at him again. His eyes shone with an intensity she’d never seen before. If she didn’t miss her guess, he wanted a baby to replace the one his father had told him he’d lost.

Her stomach clenched because she was holding back a lie of her own by not revealing that she was in love with him. But how could she open up to him? He wasn’t asking for her love any more than he’d asked for Jeanne-Marie’s…

“I’m far from perfect, Gabe.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders, drawing her attention to the movement of rock-hard muscles beneath his T-shirt. “Our relationship would be built on honesty, not perfection.

“What I’m proposing is that we get married immediately and try to get you pregnant as quickly as possible.”

“And if I don’t conceive?” she challenged. His cold-blooded approach to something as sacred as marriage angered her.

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

“You mean divorce.”

After a pause, “Only if it’s what we both want.”

He was too shrewd an entrepreneur not to leave himself a loophole. Oh Gabe—you’re so transparent. He might just as well have pushed her off a cliff. A heart could only take so much.