Resolution (Saviour) (25 page)

I don’t get to finish what I’m saying, he covers my mouth with his and kisses the life out of me
. I have to pull away to breathe.

“
Fuck. Wow, Gabe, what?”

He kisses me again, not quite as passionately
.

“
I love you and that answer you just gave, is one of the many reasons why, thank you, thank you for loving my daughter, you do to her, what you do to me, you make both of us feel loved and wanted and cherished, nobody has made me feel like that since my Mum, I…”

His eyes fill with tears, as do mine, I can’t imagine growing up without that, my
Mum might be a hard faced old cow now but her and my Dad never stopped telling me and my brothers and sister how loved and cherished we were and it’s something I had wanted my kids to feel, even now as old as they are and despite my differences with their Dad, I have explained so many times over the past weeks, that we both still love them and that will never change.

“
Thanks Lauren, that’s all, thank you.”

The t
hree of us are up, out and in the car less than an hour later.

“
Where are we going? Chady?” Ava asks.

Gabe shakes his head, I shrug. I heard him on the phone earlier
and I know he has something planned but I have no idea what. Chady or Chadstone is the biggest shopping mall near us but I don’t think that’s where we are headed.

“
What sort of ring do you want Lauren, a massive diamond like Jackie’s?”

I see Gabe look across at me, I feel so awkward, we haven’t discussed any of this, not even a budget, Jason just went out and bought my first engagement ring, I had no say in it
, but I was three months pregnant and about to get married.

“
I don’t actually know Ava, I’m sure I will know it when I see it and I would prefer if your Dad loved it too.”

I look back across at him and smile and he reaches for my hand as he drives
.

“
Where are we going?”

“
The city.”

“
Anywhere in particular?”

“
A shop, where hopefully we can find something that will show you how much I love you and that we will both love.”

He kisses m
y fingers and knuckles and the back of my hand and I squirm and squeeze it my seat.

“
You didn’t buy my Mum an engagement ring did you Dad? That was just a marriage of convenience so that she wouldn’t run off and take me away from you, so you didn’t bother with all that did ya?”

I nearly die
. This child seriously has no filter; I look across at Gabe and he is laughing to himself.

“
No bub, I didn’t buy your Mum an engagement ring, does that bother you?”

“
Well, yeah it does a bit.”

My stomach flips over; perhaps bringing her with us wasn’t such a good idea after all
.

“
I mean, when she dies, I’m not going to have a big fat diamond to inherit am I?”

“
Well, you know what Ava? I don’t have any little girls, so how about I leave you my engagement ring? I can’t promise it will be a big fat diamond, I have no idea what type of ring I am after but I promise, when I die, it’s all yours.”

There’s total silence
in the car as I look across to Gabe for reassurance that I haven’t said anything wrong, he has one hand on the wheel, the other is rubbing the stubble on his jaw and I instantly cross my legs, imagining my hand, my tongue, running over that stubble from nowhere Ava’s arms are around my neck and she kisses my cheek.

“
Sit down Ava, get your seatbelt done back up, Jesus, if anything else happens to you while you’re with me, your mother will have my balls.”

“
Dad, just shush for a minute would ya, Lauren, are you serious? You don’t have to do that; I know you don’t have girls but what about…”

“
Ava, if I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t have said it, I am more than happy to leave my engagement ring to you.”

“
Thank you Lauren, I love you and I’m so glad my Dad chose you to be the person he could finally love.”

Now it’s my turn to get all cho
ked up but as I look across at Gabe, he’s wiping tears from his eyes as well; he shakes his head at me and laughs through his tears.

“
Women, please will you stop with all this mushy shit? I will crash the car if you keep making me cry and then no one will be getting an engagement ring.”

We head the rest of the way into the city in virtual
silence; Gabe finds us a park on Collins Street and puts some money in the meter.

Then
he turns to me and leans into my ear, I instantly have goose bumps from head to toe and can’t help but shudder when I feel his breath on me as he speaks. “Every day, every day Lauren, you do or say something that blows me away, you make my heart feel like it’s gonna burst out of my chest, every time I think I love you more than it’s possible to love someone, something happens to make me love you even more.”

He runs his fingertips down the side of my face and over my lips; once again, I shudder
.

“
I love you Lauren Day and I can’t wait for the day you become Mrs Wilde, now let’s go and find you the ring of yours and my daughters’ dreams.”

I smile up at him and I’m sure that I see not only that hot as holy hell smile on his lips
, but just the hint of a smile finally back in his eyes too.

“
Please you two, can you stop eye sexing each other in a public place, can we just go and buy my inheritance?”

Not wanting to spoil the moment, I stay quiet about the fact that I am not intending to change my name again, I like being Lauren Day, it’s taken me a long time to find her again and I really don’t want to give her up
, but hey, life with Jason has taught me to pick my battles, so I will save this one for another day and I smile sweetly as we are buzzed into the Jewellers shop. They seem to be expecting us and we are treated like royalty, with a glass of champagne for Gabe and myself and a soft drink offered to Ava, which madam insists is served to her in a champagne flute; I must admit, I love Ava’s style and attitude but I am terrified of what the next few years will bring, I know she’s not my daughter but I am still going to play a part in raising her and I can see there are going to be some battles ahead. Poor Gabe, he has no idea what he is in for. Give me sons any day!

I spot a ring that I love instantly and for some reason it makes me feel faint and dizzy, I don’t know if it’s excitement, or the reality of all that’s happened in my life over the past couple of months, but I feel sweat bead on my top lip and at the back of my neck and as it trickles down my back, I feel myself sway. The next thing I’m aware of is Gabe’s worried eyes looking down at me, along with a couple of the staff from the shop…

“What the fuck Lauren, are you okay? You just went.”

“
What happened?” I ask

“
You looked at the rings, looked at me and just started to slide to the floor, fuck baby, you scared the shit out of me, are you okay, do we need to get you to a hospital?”

I can’t help but smile at his overreaction; he’s squeezing my good hand so hard it’s painful.

“You’re hurting me?” I try to pull my hand away but he’s not letting go.

“
My hand Gabe, you’re squeezing too hard, it hurts.”

He looks down at my hand
.

“
Dad, let go of her hand, you’re squeezing too tight.”

He looks from my hand, to Ava, then back to me as he eases his grip on my hand but doesn’t let go
.

“
I’ve never been engaged before, thank you for asking me to marry you; sorry it took me so long to say yes.”

He laughs and lets out
the breath he has obviously been holding and shakes his head.

“
Lauren.” Is all that he says.

Ten minutes later I’m feeling fine, sitting up in a chair with a glass of iced water in my hand; I’ve spent the last five minutes arguing with Gabe tha
t I am all good and don’t need to go to hospital or home to bed. Ava has said nothing but I can tell by the way she’s looking at me and holding the fingers sticking out of my cast, that she’s worried.

“
Gabe, I am fine, please stop fussing and let me chose a ring; do you two see anything you like?”

“
You chose baby, it’s your ring.”

I scan my eyes over the rings laid out in front of me again, I love them all, they are all so ‘me’ and my head spins again just a little at the fact that Gabe bought me here to this shop and not a normal high street jeweller,
because he knows me so well; it’s just ten weeks to the day since we met tomorrow and yet he knows me inside out and my heart smiles at that thought, I swallow, hard, because after all the drama we have already had today, I don’t want to start crying as well. I look up at Gabe and he gestures to the rings…

“
Is there something there that you like?” He looks worried, is he thinking that he got it wrong, that I don’t like the rings I’m being shown? I actually feel a physical pain in my chest at the thought of him doubting himself when he has got it so absolutely right; I bite down hard on my bottom lip, I’m not sure if I want to grin like a lunatic or cry like a baby.

“
I love them all; everyone is beautiful and so different.”

The rings are obviously all antique, ranging fro
m Victorian, Edwardian, art deco, right through to big seventies style topaz and cognac coloured diamonds but my eye keeps going back to one ring. It’s an art deco cushion ring, rectangular in shape, with diamonds set into the platinum, there is a single stone in the middle, a diamond shape surrounding it, with more diamonds all around. It’s unique and I love it. I pick it up carefully and look at it; I have fairly skinny fingers but thanks to my broken arm and the cast, they are a bit puffy right now but it slides on perfectly; I look at the ring on my finger, then up at Gabe.

“
It’s beautiful,” I whisper.

“
It’s perfect,” Ava whispers.

“
It’s you,” Gabe whispers and I can’t blink back the tear I have been hanging onto anymore and it rolls, big and fat down my cheek and splashes onto the glass counter top.

We drop Ava off at around four O’clock and Gabe is pissed off when he gets back in the car because of the run in he has had with Nina for getting her back late.

“
Did you get a bollocking from the ice queen?”

“
Don’t I always?”

“
What did you ever see in her?” I ask.

“
A fuck, plain and simple, I told you, we met, I was drunk, we had sex, we made Ava, there was never an attraction, she was carrying my child, I felt I had a duty to do the right thing so I looked after her, she wanted more and threatened to leave so I married her, I didn’t love her, there was no attraction so no sex, she screwed around with someone else, I caught her and left…end of the marriage.”

I have heard all of this before and don’t really know why I am torturing myself by asking for the details again, it’s a woman thing I think, we don’t want to know the details but we have to know them, then the we over think and analyse every detail that we are told
, we certainly are a complicated gender.

“
What are you smiling at?” He asks, looking across at me as he drives.

“
Was I smiling?”

“
You were.”

“
I don’t know really, I was just thinking that women are quite complicated creatures.”

“
Well no shit Sherlock, dya think?”

We both laugh and I feel so happy and content and warm inside at the sound of his laughter
.

“
It’s good to hear you laugh.”

“
It’s good to want to laugh. Would you like to go out for dinner tonight and celebrate our engagement and your new ring?”

“
I thought we were celebrating Saturday night?”

We have
invited our friends and family over Saturday so that we can officially announce our engagement, it all still felt a bit surreal to me, can you get engaged when officially you are still married to someone else? Well, either way, that’s what we are doing, have done.

“
No, Saturday is for me and you to share with our friends and family our good news, I would like for just me and you to go out, just us, and celebrate alone; do you feel up to that?”

I actually feel great and I’m starving
.

“
Yeah, I feel fine, I don’t know what that was all about earlier, I think I was just a bit overwhelmed by everything, the accident, your Dad, us even, how fast everything has happened.”