‘What do you mean you walk?’ Alex felt the colour drain out of her face.
‘I mean,’ Gabriel asserted, ‘I won’t wait around for ever. Would you mind the thought of my bedding another woman? Getting serious about her? Do you want to see me arrive on your doorstep for my two hour stint with Luke with a woman on my arm?’
Alex felt as though the ground had suddenly been swept from under her feet. While she had been trying to sort herself out, she hadn’t paused to consider that Gabriel might have been doing his own thinking. He was a man of action. He always had been. How could she imagine that he would have sat around twiddling his thumbs while she wrestled with her own fragile emotional state? The thought of another woman sharing his bed sickened her.
Gabriel responded to the lengthening silence with something close to panic. He could feel it surging through his system like poison, bringing him out in a sweat. It was like nothing he had ever felt before and he was rocked with relief when she said, with a catch in her voice, ‘I…I don’t like thinking of you with anyone else…’
Not even her afterthought, ‘Let me think about it,’ could shake the rush of satisfaction that slammed into him. Didn’t he always get what he wanted?
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALEX had the following day to really consider the development between them. Gabriel had left the island very early in the morning and she had wakened to a note on the pillow next to her telling her that he would be in touch later, to enjoy what remained of her stay, with a telling postscript that they would discuss their situation once she was back in London.
She had stared helplessly at that note, with its bold black writing, for a long time. Her determination to stick to her guns, to be a fully fledged twenty-first century woman who wouldn’t barter her freedom for the sake of a mistake that happened years ago, seemed to have vanished in a puff of smoke. She was now having to face the fact that she had ditched all her good intentions for a man who might or might not have waged a deliberate war on her senses to get what he had wanted from the start, who had stripped her to the bare essentials and then offered her an ultimatum which he must have known she couldn’t have refused. Did he know that she had fallen in love with him all over again? Probably. She had as good as admitted that when she had confessed to him that she didn’t like the thought of him sharing a bed with another woman. The thought of that made her feel sick.
Not even the distraction of Luke and his endless excited kite-flying could distract her from the confused, hopeless train of her thoughts. So she married him because she was in love with him, because marriage would ensure stability for their son. Then what? She hadn’t heard even the remotest admission from him that the union he wanted was anything more than a business arrangement at the end of the day, albeit one with the bonus of good sex. So what would happen when the good sex tapered off? Would she be left clinging to him? Hopeful that her love might spread to him like some sort of contagious virus?
By the end of the day she was exhausted from dashing around outside and was nursing a slight headache from her relentless analysing of everything. She wished that her brain had a switch, something she could conveniently turn off when it got too bothersome.
The house felt unbearably empty without Gabriel around and it depressed her to think how quickly she had become accustomed to his presence. She put Luke to bed and was further confronted with the reality of what Gabriel had told her because Luke was only marginally interested in having a story read to him. He was much more interested in trying to find out where Gabriel was and when he would be seeing him. She was beginning to realise that she and Luke were no longer a team of two. How would Luke react if Gabriel was no longer a constant in his life when they returned to England? He was only young now, but would he come to blame her in later years for depriving him of his father?
The magic of the island seemed to have disappeared now that Gabriel was no longer in the house and when she finally sat down to the simple crab salad which had been earlier prepared for her the food tasted like sawdust.
It was a relief when she heard the sound of the doorbell. For one glorious moment she wondered whether it was Gabriel. A cancelled meeting or, even more unbelievable, he was returning because he just couldn’t be out of her company. That second thought she squashed with ruthless speed as she headed for the front door.
Both housekeepers had already left for the evening and far more likely it was one of them who had forgotten something. It was not that unusual an occurrence. They both had quarters at the house and Ana, particularly, was prone to forgetting some item of clothing or book or personal possession which she had left in her room.
But the interruption was a blessed relief from her thoughts and she was smiling as she pulled open the door halfway, looking forward to enticing whichever of the housekeepers it happened to be into some conversation. She had enjoyed practising her Spanish with both of them and was interested in their lives outside the splendid house.
In her head, there was no room for the unexpected and her shock at seeing Cristobel on her doorstep made her stumble backwards.
‘You!’
‘I know. I don’t suppose you were expecting me.’ She placed one hand on the door and Alex noticed that her nails were beautifully manicured and painted a vibrant shade of red. It was an insignificant detail but it distracted her momentarily from the nervous banging of her heart against her ribcage.
‘What do you want?’
‘To have a girlie chat, of course. What else?’
‘I really don’t think that Gabriel…’
‘But Gabriel’s not here, is he? He is in London.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I don’t do doorstep conversations.’ Cristobel flashed her a cool smile and pushed against the door.
Of course Alex could have slammed the door in her face. She was, after all, a good six inches taller than the diminutive blonde. Taller, stronger but, unfortunately, she afterwards thought, lacking in the necessary aggression. Would Bambi have come out on top against a pit bull intent on destruction?
Okay, so she wasn’t, an hour an a half later, having to apply plaster to open wounds, but her head was reeling.
She was surprised that she had managed to shove the thought of Gabriel’s ex-fiancée to the back of her mind with such single-minded efficiency. She had no idea how she had been represented in the gossip columns. Newspapers had been non-existent for the past few weeks. She had cocooned herself in a bubble and, except for the occasional vague notion that reality was waiting back home, she had successfully managed to stifle anything too demanding.
Cristobel’s appearance, she now thought, had brought all that up to the surface.
She had no idea where the other woman had gone after she had left the house and she didn’t care. She had just wanted to be rid of the venomous blonde’s presence, the blonde who had flicked her hair and looked at her with hard, bright eyes and told her that Gabriel had only hooked up with her through a misguided sense of duty, that his heart would always belong to her, that she would get him back and would have him in her bed just as soon as the whole duty thing wore off, because wear off it inevitably would.
‘You may think that you’ve won,’ she had said with a cool smile, while those diamond-hard eyes had given her the once-over and found her lacking in all the important departments, ‘but you haven’t. You haven’t got the class or the looks to keep him and the fact that you haven’t got an engagement ring on your finger is proof enough of that. A man like Gabriel might like tradition but playing happy families with a woman he doesn’t give a damn about isn’t his style. You might speak a little Spanish but you have a lot to learn about how a Spaniard thinks, especially a Spaniard like Gabriel.’
Replaying the conversation in her head, Alex groaned aloud and stuck buried her face in a pillow.
She wondered if it had been that final dig that had prompted her to say, with a calmness she hadn’t imagined possible, ‘Gabriel has already proposed. In fact,
Gabriel has proposed more than once and, not that it’s any of your business, we’ll be getting married as soon as I return to England.’ Well, it had been worth it to see that flash of anger that contorted Cristobel’s beautiful face. She had almost been tempted to spin a fairy story about Gabriel being madly in love with her, but not even she could fashion a lie that was so outrageous.
Now, of course, she was left with the residue from that brief moment of retaliation but she began to wonder whether the thought of accepting his proposal hadn’t been there, playing away at the back of her mind, since he had left, like the familiar strains of background music, just discernible but not jarring enough to require attention.
She rolled over onto her side, eyes wide open. With pernicious determination, she felt a little seed of hope bury itself inside her and take root.
Yes, she could think pessimistically about Gabriel’s proposal. Yes, she could work herself up into a lather predicting worst case scenarios.
But she loved him and wasn’t it possible that he might come to feel the same about her? He was attracted to her, there was no doubt about that, and if she continued to make herself exciting to him, then was it really inevitable that he would stray? Hadn’t she read somewhere that men were creatures of habit? Or something like that?
She hurriedly closed her mind to the unlikely thought of Gabriel being a creature of habit.
In the morning, she would leave and head back to London with her mind made up.
Decision made, Alex found it difficult to sleep. Memories of Cristobel’s attack on her were replaced by hungry curiosity as to how Gabriel would react to her acceptance of his proposal. Would he be relieved that he had finally won, got his own way? Or surprised that she had given up the fight at long last? Or would he be ecstatic and declare his undying love for her? That last improbable scenario kept her smiling for the remainder of the following day.
‘I wish we weren’t going back to London,’ Luke complained as she tugged him through airport security. No private jet this time. She was leaving ahead of schedule so that she could surprise Gabriel and what kind of surprise would it be if she had to call him to sort out his jet?
‘You’ll be seeing your dad, though. Aren’t you looking forward to that?’
Leading questions about Gabriel were always a sure fire way of captivating Luke’s attention. He had developed an inexhaustible thirst to find out everything he could about his father, although this usually filtered down to awestruck eulogies about the guy who had already succeeded in filling the role of the strongest, fastest, cleverest dad, at least compared to the other dads he pulled out of the hat from his kindergarten class. Alex had met a couple of those particular dads in question and it was easy to understand why. How could the average man, hair thinning and stomach thickening, ever compare to Gabriel? The fact was that Gabriel towered above the average human being. He would always be the one outrunning the other dads in the fathers’ race on sports days and grabbing the attention of every teacher at parents evenings.
Not too long ago, she would have found it impossible to associate Gabriel with stuff as tedious as school sports days and parents’ evenings, but she had see him throw himself into the role of winning his son over. Whatever he did, he did with the full weight of his conviction. She guessed that would include everything that got thrown at him in terms of his duties as far as Luke was concerned.
Like the irrepressible force of a powerful undertow, this brought her thoughts right back to square one: how far would Gabriel go to complete the perfect husband role? He would move mountains for his son…but for her?
She would have to lay down one or two ground rules. Capitulation wouldn’t be solely on his terms.
Arriving back in London was like suddenly finding herself flung head first into a prison cell from which she had temporarily been released. Even Luke appeared to have gone into a slump as he tightly clutched her hand through airport security. His interminable chatter had petered out to the occasional doleful and nostalgic remark about the beach or his precious kite, which he had been persuaded to leave behind due to lack of suitcase space, or the glorious big house belonging to his grandparents. Bracing talk about school the following Monday and his favourite, fish and chips, for dinner was greeted with lukewarm enthusiasm. Only the promise of phoning Gabriel met with a positive response, and since that was precisely what Alex was itching to do, she dialled Gabriel’s number pretty much as soon as she had settled Luke in the sitting room with his favourite cartoon and a snack.
About to leave for a meeting, Gabriel recognised Alex’s telephone number. Without skipping a beat, he told his secretary to cancel his meeting and, with experience born from long service, his secretary reached for her phone, also without skipping a beat.
Gabriel had been surprised to discover how much he enjoyed hearing her voice at the end of a line. He relaxed back into his leather chair and swivelled it round so that he was staring at the fairly boring panorama of grey sky, scudding clouds and tips of buildings.
‘Am I interrupting you?’
‘Wall to wall meetings,’ Gabriel said, loosening his tie. ‘But no big deal.’ He wasn’t going to be drawn into letting her think that she could do as she pleased. Work had always been the foundation of his life and, even if he had taken a break, a much needed break, for a short while, it was still the foundation of his life. It was what made him the success story he was today.
Women had never been allowed to overstep those boundaries and the fact that he had just cancelled his high level meeting for a phone call was testament to the fact that she occupied a special place. She was the mother of his son. He was quite pleased that, in a roundabout way, this seemed to elevate him to a flattering level.
‘How is Luke? Is he missing me?’ Then, before she could answer that, he continued in a roughened voice, ‘Are you missing me? Would you be insulted if I told you that I had to take a very cold shower last night because I couldn’t get you out of my head?’
How was it that the sound of his voice could do foolish things to her body? Her cheeks reddened and the telltale signs of that craving of hers spread through her body, leaving her damp and hot and flustered.
But she didn’t intend to let that reduce her to a weak, stammering mess. She thought back to Cristobel and that hideous attack on her. Had she been telling the truth? Did Gabriel’s heart really belong to the blonde? He had been drawn enough to her to propose marriage so that said something. And now here she was, on the brink of accepting his marriage proposal and, when she stripped away all the lust and sex, she was left with a business arrangement. Her return to London had been salutary in helping her remember that. As had Cristobel.
‘I’m back in London, actually.’
Gabriel smiled slowly. Her return could only mean that she was lonely without him around and, despite the fact that he had never cared for the dependent, clingy type, he realised and accepted with stunning alacrity that Alex somehow didn’t fall into this category.
‘Where in London?’
‘Where do you think, Gabriel? My house, of course.’
‘We’ll have to do something about that,’ he murmured, half to himself.
‘I’d like to talk to you, but not on the phone. Face to face. Would you be able to get away some time later this evening?’
‘I can get away right now.’
‘What about those wall to wall meetings?’
‘You’d be surprised how flexible they could be.’
‘No…’ Right now seemed a little too sudden. ‘I need to settle in for a bit. There’s stuff to do around here.’
‘Stuff to do? What stuff?’ Gabriel frowned because stuff had never been offered up as an excuse not to see him by any woman.
‘I need to get Luke changed and fed and I need to unpack and have a shower and wash my hair… Why don’t you come around six-thirty? You can have some time with Luke and then we can…chat. I’ll fix something to eat. Although I’m not sure what I’ve got in the fridge. Actually
, I haven’t got anything in the fridge. Maybe I could pop out and buy one or two things…’
‘I’ll bring something over!’
‘You don’t know what I need.’
‘You need food. I’ll bring food.’
‘Okay.’ She resisted the temptation to ask whether he knew where his local supermarket was and then concluded that he would probably send someone out to buy a few items on his behalf.
Would this be their life together? Extreme wealth and privilege that would inevitably remove Luke, and her, from the realms of the ordinary? Did she want that for her son? She realised that she didn’t. She had had a richly, rewarding and very grounded upbringing and that was something she intended to confer upon her son.
‘And I don’t want to be fussy here,’ she said, as gently as she could, predicting a blank wall of incomprehension that would greet her conditions, ‘but Luke’s had a pretty rich diet for the past few weeks. It would do him good to have simple home-cooked fare.’
‘Okay. You’re losing me here.’ Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair and fought off a feeling of having suddenly been dumped in quicksand. He had no idea what she was talking about but, strangely enough, he would still have had the conversation, given the choice between that and his meeting. ‘He’s had the finest food money could buy in Spain. Pretty healthy too.’ He frowned. ‘I’m sure there was lots of fish.’
‘Maybe you could just pick up some bread and butter and other essentials and some baked beans. Oh, and something simple for us to eat.’
‘Simple like what?’
‘I’ll leave it up to you. Anyway, I think I hear Luke. I’ve left him in the sitting room watching a cartoon. He’s missed that a bit, watching cartoons, I think… See you later.’
A Spanish Birthright aka The Secret Spanish Love-Child Page 13