by Tara Pammi
If she had shown a hint of pain, Gabriel would have taken her in his arms. Would have kept her chained to his side. But his wife’s mask was back in place. Only the paleness of her face said he’d just ended their marriage.
Eleni had been taught again and again to place someone else’s needs above her own. To keep her word, no matter what.
It would take time but she would see why he had to do this. Why he was ripping out his own heart.
“Why are you doing this?” She ran a hand over her tummy, as if to protect herself. “Gabriel, I don’t even understand what you’re doing.”
“I’m freeing you, Princesa, letting you go.” He took her face in his hands, unable to resist touching her. “I should never have threatened you in the first place. Never agreed to your counterproposal. You have given me and Angelina enough of your life.
“You’re free to pursue whatever, whoever you want. Whatever future you like.”
“If this is Andreas’s doing, I swear I will rip him apart with my bare hands. Don’t do this, Gabriel. This is not right.”
“It is right, Princesa. The only right thing. The longer we continue this farce, the more I will end up hurting you. How you will convey this to Angelina and not hurt her, I will leave in your capable hands. You see, Princesa, I trust you completely. I trust you more than I ever have anyone in my life.”
He didn’t wait to see what she’d say. He walked out of the Princess of Drakon’s life, before she took everything he had.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE WEEKS FOLLOWING Gabriel’s departure were the worst of Eleni’s life. Even the cruelest days spent with her father, listening to him rage, struggling to calm him until her arms ached—they were still better than the desolation Gabriel left in his wake.
To the outward world, and thankfully for Angelina, nothing had changed. Somehow, Eleni had convinced the little girl that her father had urgent business that would take months, while leaving the window open for her that she could visit him whenever she wanted.
While Angelina hadn’t been completely fooled, she’d decided to play along, for now.
Eleni apparently didn’t have the same composure the little girl did. She had confronted Andreas, argued with him, called him names for playing God with her life, sobbed all over him, which had then resulted in a huge row between Nik and Andreas.
It had taken a hugely pregnant Mia to calm her brothers down. And at the end of it, Eleni didn’t feel even a little better.
Just that same sense of missing a vital piece of herself.
She was six weeks along now, and hiding it with baggy tunics, she still hadn’t told a soul. It was his right to know first and however furious he had made her, she still couldn’t take that away from Gabriel.
He called every night to talk to Angelina while Eleni sat there, pathetically waiting for him to ask for her, pretending to Angelina that she’d already spoken to him. When Spiros had tried to comfort her, she had asked him to leave.
She’d already messed up his life, thanks to her father.
Every cell in her wanted to tell Gabriel about the baby. She knew without a doubt that if anything could bring him back to her, it would be the news of her pregnancy. If he found out that he was going to be a father again, he would bind her to him.
But she didn’t want him like that. She didn’t want his pity, and neither did she want his duty. She didn’t want to be a wife to him if he didn’t love her.
Not even for him could she live like that again.
* * *
Gabriel walked out onto the acreage behind the stables, looking for his wife.
Stunned, he came to a standstill.
Eleni was riding the huge Thoroughbred, the same beast he had bought for her, astride, through a path cordoned off from the viewing point where he stood. It had been only a few weeks since he had given the horse to her.
Had she already tamed him?
Gabriel’s heart jumped into his throat as he saw her urge the horse toward an obstacle course that did not look remotely easy.
His heart stayed in his throat as she jumped each obstacle as if it were a child’s game. Not once did she lose her seating on the huge beast. Not once did she lose the focus or the mastery with which she ruled him.
It was almost as if the Thoroughbred and she were soul mates, so easily did the proud beast respond to her. She crouched low over him, whispering commands. Gabriel’s pulse sped up dangerously as she crouched low and took the final obstacle with a flourish he had only seen in professional jumpers.
The jumping circuit was clearly a piece of cake for her.
Slowly his heartbeat returned to normal and Gabriel wondered again if he would ever stop being surprised by her. Ever stop wanting her with that soul-wrenching intensity.
Waiting to see what she would do had been torture. After his daughter had told him Ellie’s old friend had left forever—his daughter had the makings of a spy—waiting in Barcelona to finish dealing with his mother and the aftermath of twenty years of estrangement had been torment.
He waited on the other side of the fence as she jumped off the horse, and then whispered near its ear for long, lingering minutes. If he hadn’t seen her take that obstacle course, he wouldn’t have believed it now.
The beast seemed huge next to her. She looked fragile, almost breakable, just as she had been in his arms.
He followed a few steps behind her as she led the horse to his stall.
She still hadn’t noticed him; she was so immersed in the simple task of grooming the beast. She dismissed the groom, and then filled a trough with oats and water.
Leaning against the opposite stall, Gabriel closed his eyes and let her words, soothing and full of praise, wash over him as she talked to the beast.
Just as she did with Angelina, she took tender care of him. Nothing was beneath her. Nothing was to be hurried.
Her very joy in the simple task suffused the air around them.
She spent almost a half hour brushing the stallion’s gleaming coat, all the while telling him what a good boy he was.
The stallion neighed and nuzzled into her face, and again, the same longing rose up inside of Gabriel.
She had reduced him to feeling jealous of a mute animal?
Her amused laughter filled the barn, flew inside the empty place inside of him he’d never known existed. Something settled there and he refused to question or examine it.
When she stepped out of the stall, he moved out of the shadows and in front of her. Her hair had half flown out of her tight braid, just like Angelina’s. Exertion made her skin glow like burnt bronze. Tendrils of flyaway hair stuck to her forehead, coated in sweat.
Her pulse hammering violently at her throat was the only sign that she was affected by his presence. She wore a white shirt and jodhpurs.
The tight pants lovingly delineated the womanly flare of her hips. A bead of sweat ran down her neck as he watched, and disappeared into the lush pillow of her breasts.
Her moans from the long nights they had spent loving each other filled his ears. She had been a revelation in bed, just as she’d been everywhere, willing and wanton in his arms as he taught her new pleasure after new pleasure.
Yet, he’d been the one who was always left breathless, their lovemaking going beyond the physical.
The temptation of her lush body, the scent of her arousal, kicked lust into full gear inside of him. He took a deep breath, trying to corral it now. He never wanted to hurt this woman, through words or actions, he realized.
He needed her warmth, her generous heart, her twisted reasoning, her practical efficiency.
“Hello, Princesa.”
She lifted her chin in a show of defiance but he had seen the hint of pain in her eyes. Her gaze raked over him with calculated feminine interest that made his body heat up, yet left his heart cold.
“Have you come back to proposition a new arrangement, Gabriel? Because you were right. There’s nothing you can offer me anymore.” Somethin
g about the way she said that sent a coldness unfurling in his gut. “Have you come back only after your little spy told you that I sent Spiros away, that you would not risk anything if you came back now?” He felt the loss of the warmth of her eyes like an ache in his body.
“I wanted you to make a choice, Princesa.”
“No, you made the choice for me, yet again.” Her arms went around herself, her very posture screaming rejection. “Like all the arrogant bastards littered throughout my life. You were no better than my father or Andreas, Gabriel.”
He flinched, her words landing like poisonous barbs. “Leaving you was the hardest thing I have ever done.”
Tears filled her eyes. “No, Gabriel. Fighting for me, as I have been doing for you all this time, would have been the hardest thing. Putting yourself out there, making yourself vulnerable to me, trusting me with your heart would have been the hardest thing. Christos, you didn’t even give me a chance! You just gave up on us as soon as you had no use for me.”
How had he not seen how much he was hurting her? Was she right?
Had he hidden his own fear, his own vulnerabilities and called it doing the right thing? Had any woman understood him better than she? “You’re right. I... I spent my whole life making myself tough. Not trusting anyone. When I saw you with Spiros, when I heard that I was only a vow to you, I just couldn’t bear it. It was as if my worst nightmare had come true.”
She scoffed, wiping at the tears on her cheeks roughly. Much like his daughter did when he hurt her with his insensitivity.
“Your word, your loyalty was not enough anymore, Princesa.”
“What do you mean? What is there that you need that I haven’t given you, Gabriel? How have I fallen short, yet again?”
“Your heart,” he said, reaching for her, laying his hand on her chest. Her heart thundered under his touch, filling him with such awe that he couldn’t speak for several minutes.
She eyed him warily, doubt in her eyes. “Gabriel?”
“I wanted your heart, Eleni. Your generous, kind, loving heart. I didn’t want you to be my wife because you made a promise. Or because Angelina needed you. Or because you were programmed to do anything for this damned country. Or worst of all, because we were your only chance at a family of your own. I wanted you to be my wife because your heart belonged to me. Because you belonged with me. Because you couldn’t go another day without loving me, just as I couldn’t without you.”
“Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered in such a broken voice that his heart kicked against his chest. Furious tears filled her eyes and sent fear spiraling down his spine.
“Princesa?” he said in such a gentle voice that her tears fell faster. “I cannot give you eight years of your life back. I can’t give you back a life with that man. But I would love you with all my heart. I would treasure you every day of our lives. I would give you a brood of children, as many as you want. And I would try to be the best damn husband and father the world has ever seen.”
He went on his knees and buried his face in her soft belly. “Give me a chance, Eleni, and you will never regret it.”
Eleni sank to her knees and threw herself into his arms. His embrace felt like heaven, the scent of him coiling tight around her like a safe blanket.
He was hers. Her home. Her place of belonging in the world. He was her everything. Didn’t the arrogant, thickheaded man not know that?
“I do love you, Gabriel. You saw me more than anyone else in my life has. You made me feel like I mattered even when you grumbled about it. How you could think Spiros meant anything to me after everything we’ve been together? Why didn’t you just talk to me? Why did you leave like that?”
“I had some things to set right. I... I wanted to be a different man for you in the chance that you chose me. Things that were long due.”
“What?”
He settled down onto the grass and pulled her into his lap. She felt the shuddering breath he took, burying his face in her hair. His arms were like clamps around her midriff.
Content and delirious with joy, Eleni waited. This man, this husband of hers was worth waiting for.
“My mother was barely eighteen when her father arranged her marriage to my father, against her every protest. Apparently, he was double her age at thirty-seven, much as he had fallen in love with her.
“Within a year, I was born. And she... I think the marriage killed her dreams. She resented her father, then my father. Then me.
“All through my childhood, she...she went off to clubs and parties, made friends with strange men while my father basically waited for her at home. God, I used to think him such a fool. He gave her everything she’d ask for—dresses, expensive jewelry, the latest car.
“I don’t know when she started, but she always took me with her to these parties and clubs. Maybe she felt guilty or maybe she used me as a front with my father. But all I remember growing up is lies on top of lies that she told him. I didn’t really care back then because she took me with her everywhere.
“This dazzling, beautiful creature, whom everyone loved, who became the light of every party she went to, she was my mother.
“I trusted her, adored her, would have probably killed my own father if she’d asked me to do it. But then she met this new guy. Until that, I think she was only skating the lines, seeing how far she could go without betraying her vows.
“But this painter came along and she fell for him. I instantly knew she was changing. I begged her not to see him. She promised me she would never leave me behind, that I was ‘her little big man,’ the love of her life. Only, one night, under the cover of darkness, she left with him.”
Her arms went around him and despite the heaviness he felt in his chest every time he talked about his parents, he smiled. He had meant to console her and she had disarmed him yet again.
“In the end, she stayed away for five years. When she came crawling back to him, she was pregnant with my sister.”
“Isabella?”
“Yes.”
“What did your father do?”
“Against my every argument, he took her back. I despised her for a long time...for putting him through such heartache. To the end, he never looked at another woman, never stopped loving her. She said she was sorry for what she’d done but by then the harm was done. He died a few months later.”
“Is that why you...you don’t trust women?”
He laughed and she just held on to him. Nothing could ever take away the hollow he felt when he thought of his father, the powerlessness as Gabriel had watched him waste away in the bottle, but how had he thought Eleni would do anything like that?
How had he worried about giving himself over to her?
She was the most generous, most loyal woman he had ever met.
“It’s not that I don’t trust women, querida. I just did not want a committed relationship with one. I promised myself I would never be in his position. Never love so much that even your sense of self-preservation is gone.”
“And loving Angelina?”
“Having Angelina has made me rethink everything. On one hand, I can’t believe how my mother ever walked out on me. The guilt I think is etched onto her face now.
“On the other, knowing that Angelina will be a woman one day, the idea of her stuck in a marriage to a man double her age...it gives me new perspective.
“For years, my mother wanted to see me. When I heard what your father had done to you...it tore me up. Your pain tore me up.
“And it made me realize what she must have felt. Barely a woman, and saddled with a husband double her age and a son. Caught with no escape or outlet.
“It made me think of how it would have crushed your spirit in a situation like that. I could forgive Andreas anything in the world for stopping your father from doing that to you. When I thought of you, what I had to do became simple, easy.”
“What was that?”
“After all these years, I went to see her.”
“Oh, Gabriel,” El
eni whispered into his neck, love filling her chest. “I wish you had told me this before. I wish I could have been there for you.”
“But you were, Princesa. You were in my heart. Or else I’d never have understood her pain.”
“Was she happy to see you?”
He smiled and there was a depth of joy in it. “She was. She is marrying some guy and I think she thought I wouldn’t forgive her for that.”
“Are you angry with her again?” Eleni asked, heart aching for him. Because, now she knew, it would only be because he cared. Because he wasn’t quite the ruthless man he thought himself to be.
“No. I’m not. I wanted to know more about the guy but I felt it wasn’t my place.” A hint of his pain, even resentment, maybe, peeked through in his voice. But what he had done was a huge step. Those scars, Eleni knew very well, would take time to heal. “Once I saw her, I couldn’t stay away anymore. I couldn’t not...see you, Princesa.
“Angelina told me you sent Spiros away and I breathed fully for the first time in weeks.” He turned toward her and cupped her face. “I love you, Princesa. Without fear or reservations. I love you so much that I cannot live without you for a minute.”
Heart bursting with happiness, she pressed her mouth to his and sank into his toe-curling kiss. His mouth drifted from her mouth to her nose, to her temple, to her hair, his arms almost crushing the breath from her lungs. In a deft movement, he pulled her up, a sudden urgency to his movements. “Eleni, I know what I promised, but I have a demand to make of our marriage this time.”
Laughing, she went on her toes and pressed her mouth to the pulse at his neck. The powerful man shuddered all around her. “Anything, Gabriel.”
“I want us to leave the palace, make a home somewhere else. Anywhere in this world that you want to live in. But not here.”
Eleni swallowed away the confusion within. “Because of what Andreas did?”
“Because this palace has sad memories for you. It makes you feel as if you were less than the magnificent woman you are, Princesa. I would have you happy, Eleni. You and me and Angelina and all the children we will have.”