by Penny Jordan
‘The boys are fine.’ He paused and found he needed to take a deep breath before he could say, ‘Sam has just told me that it’s their birthday next week.’
Sasha could feel the trickle of now familiar icy-cold fear seeping into her bloodstream. She would have given anything to shake her head and say no but of course she couldn’t.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said instead.
‘So they were conceived in December?’
Her heart jumped into her throat, her panic threatening to choke her. ‘I...they...there were complications, and in the end they were delivered early.’ She sidestepped his question.
‘How early? Not, I take it, three months early?’ he suggested sarcastically.
Sash could feel her face starting to burn.
‘They were conceived while you were still with me, weren’t they?’ Gabriel demanded flatly.
There was no escape. She had been dreading this for so long that in some ways she was relived that it could no longer be avoided.
‘Answer me, damn you, Sasha. They were conceived while you were with me, weren’t they?’ Gabriel repeated harshly. His fingers were still clamped round her arm, and as he spoke he gave her a small, almost rough shake.
Sasha was familiar with the icy coldness of his angry contempt, but she had never seen him gripped by this kind of fury before. She felt helpless against it, and very vulnerable, but she knew she couldn’t conceal the truth from him any longer.
‘Yes,’ she admitted, bowing her head and waiting for the inevitable accusation she knew must come. Carlo had warned her this might happen, but she had told him she wouldn’t let it, that she would make sure she kept the greatest distance possible between Gabriel and herself to ensure it didn’t. And, foolishly, she had even begun to feel that she was safe, and that Gabriel would never challenge her deception.
‘You were seeing Carlo behind my back—sleeping with him while you were sharing my bed, giving yourself to him when I thought you were only giving yourself to me. You were pregnant by him, but still claiming to love me!’ Gabriel couldn’t contain the savagery of what he was feeling. It had been bad enough that she had actually walked out on him without a word, but this newly discovered betrayal was more than he could endure.
Sasha looked at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Don’t look at me like that—as though you don’t understand what I’m saying,’ Gabriel raged. ‘You know perfectly well! You were sharing Carlo’s bed at the same time as you were sharing mine. You let him get you pregnant while you were sleeping with me. How long had it been going on? How long were you letting him sleep with you while I believed—’
‘It wasn’t like that!’ Sasha protested sickly.
‘You’re lying. Of course it was like that.’ Gabriel rubbed his hand over his eyes, as though it physically sickened him to look at her. ‘Didn’t you care about the risk you were taking, having unprotected sex with him?’
‘It wasn’t planned. It was an accident...a mistake!’
‘You can say that again. Did Carlo know that you were telling me that you loved me when you must have known you were carrying his bastards?’
Sasha raised her hand, but Gabriel caught hold of it, forcing it back down to her side. ‘Why tell me you loved me? Or can I guess...?’
‘Why not? You seem to be determined to guess at everything else,’ Sasha said fiercely.
‘There’s no guesswork involved in subtracting nine months from a year,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I suppose you didn’t want to leave me until you were sure of Carlo. And of course knowing you were carrying his child was bound to clinch the deal for him. An old man with no children, no heir, and there you were, offering him not one but two.’
‘I didn’t know it was twins then—’
‘Mum, Maria’s here...’
Quickly Sasha pulled herself free of Gabriel’s grip as she heard Sam’s voice from outside the room.
* * *
SASHA LOOKED TOWARDS the window, where the moonlight was spilling into the darkness of her bedroom. Her heart was thudding heavily and she could feel the dampness of tears on her eyelashes and face. She had been dreaming about Gabriel with such intensity that even now she was awake it was still with her.
Her nervous system could only withstand so many attacks. When Gabriel had confronted her about the boys’ birthdays, she had thought...
She and Carlo had lived very quietly for the first two years of their marriage, in Carlo’s apartment in New York. They hadn’t made any public announcement about the birth of the twins; the Calbrini family, while extensive, wasn’t close knit, and no one had ever queried the exact date of the boys’ birth.
Until now.
She was wide awake now, her thoughts haunted not just by the present but also by the past.
She and Gabriel had already been enjoying the sunshine of the Caribbean island of St Lucia for several weeks on board Gabriel’s yacht when Carlo had arrived, to check out a hotel he was thinking of buying. A chance meeting at a harbourside restaurant had led to Gabriel introducing her to his second cousin, and Sasha had immediately sensed the genuine kindness in the older man.
She and Gabriel had been together for over a year, and it had both frustrated and upset her that while sexually Gabriel was the most perfect lover she could ever imagine, emotionally he still held her at a distance.
‘Why do you never say that you love me?’ she could remember blurting out during their first Christmas together. They had been in Paris at the time, and he had taken her out and bought her the most ridiculously expensive designer clothes, plus some equally expensive and very erotic underwear.
‘Because I don’t,’ he had replied calmly.
They had been in bed in their suite at the Georges V, and Sasha could still remember the huge cold lump that had formed inside her body and the pain that had accompanied it.
‘But you must,’ she had protested desperately. ‘You must, Gabriel. You have to love me.’ She had burst into tears, but, far from comforting her, Gabriel had simply pushed back the bedclothes and got out of bed.
‘I don’t do emotional scenes, Sasha,’ he had told her coolly. ‘I don’t love you because I don’t consider that love exists. Be grateful for what we have, because believe me, there are any number of women who would gladly change places with you.’ He had pulled on his clothes, and then added callously, ‘I’m going out now. When I come back, I don’t want to be greeted by any more of this stupidity.’
She hadn’t been able to believe he could be so brutal. They had been together for months, and naïvely she had convinced herself that it was just a matter of time before he told her that he loved her. After all, he had known she loved him. She had always been telling him so, and he had never tired of having sex with her. He had spent money on her, and time with her, and in her mind she had transmuted these into the emotional bond her own neediness craved. Within half an hour she had stopped crying and convinced herself that he hadn’t meant what he’d said, that as a man he was simply reluctant to admit his feelings for her.
That had been what she had told herself in Paris, and that had been what she was still telling herself months later in the Caribbean. He did love her; she was sure of it. Otherwise why would he still want to make love to her? And he had wanted to make love to her; there had been no doubt about that. Sexually Gabriel had not only never tired of her, he never seemed to feel he had had enough of her. She had woken in the mornings to the feel of his hands on her body, sleepily squirming in delicious pleasure beneath their roving touch, and she had fallen asleep late at night with her body soft and boneless with sexual satisfaction.
They had had a simple routine on board the yacht. More often than not Gabriel would work in the morning, and then spend the lazy heat of the Caribbean afternoons making love to her—and not always in bed. Gabriel had been an
imaginative and adventurous lover, who enjoyed drawn-out, sensually erotic love-play.
She couldn’t remember now when she had first been on her own with Carlo. It might have been during one of those solitary mornings when she had left the yacht to wander round the Caribbean port’s expensive shops. She could remember, though, that she had quickly fallen into the habit of meeting Carlo for morning coffee, and how flattered she had been when he had suggested that she might like to see the hotel he was planning to buy.
Soon she had started confiding in him about her feelings for Gabriel, and he had told her the dreadful story of Gabriel’s childhood.
‘Oh, but that will bring us even closer together,’ Sasha had breathed, pink-cheeked with sympathy and fellow feeling. ‘I was dreadfully unhappy when I was growing up too. Poor Gabriel.’
Carlo, she remembered, had done his best to explain to her that the trauma of Gabriel’s childhood had not affected him in the same way as hers had her, but she hadn’t taken in what he was saying, because it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
Instead she had clung to her belief that Gabriel loved her.
She had even relayed that belief to Gabriel himself, the day before her eighteenth birthday. She had been dropping hints about her birthday to him for weeks, and finally, when they’d been in bed together that afternoon, her body still quivering in the aftermath of her pleasure, Gabriel had smoothed his hand over her stomach, causing her to tense with almost unbearable anticipation.
‘So come on, then. You’ve dropped enough hints about this birthday of yours—what exactly is it you want?’ he had demanded lazily.
She could still picture the scene all these years later: the sunlight-dappled shadows of the main cabin with its luxurious furnishings, the huge bed, its sheets tangled and pushed out of the way, Gabriel’s naked body, muscled and firm-fleshed, tanned from the Caribbean sun, the familiar look of male arousal darkening his eyes. He had leaned towards her, capturing her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and teasing it so expertly that she’d writhed with renewed longing.
‘I want you,’ she had told him emotionally. ‘I want you and your love, Gabriel, and I want us to be together for always. And—’
But before she could say any more he had released her and pushed himself away from her, getting up off the bed, his face tightening with open anger.
‘What kind of game is this, Sasha?’ he had demanded.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she had answered him, truthfully. ‘It isn’t a game. I love you, Gabriel. And now that Carlo has told me about what happened when you were a child, that brings us even closer—’
She hadn’t been allowed to go any further. He had leaned across the bed and roughly dragged her to her feet.
‘Closer? What is all this, Sasha? The only way I want to be close to you, as you call it, is when I’m having sex with you. All this rubbish about love doesn’t cut it with me. You know that—or you should do by now.’
She had never seen him so angry, and she had started to tremble, suddenly shocked out of her rosy fantasy into the cold sharpness of reality. But somehow she hadn’t been able to stop herself from begging.
‘You don’t mean that. You’ve got to love me, Gabriel, you’ve got to.’ She had been filled with panic and fear, clinging to him and sobbing, when he forcibly removed her hands from his body. ‘Tell me you love me, Gabriel...’
‘I haven’t got to do anything, Sasha. The onus in this relationship is on you to please me. That’s the way it is—you play and I pay. Look, you’re a fantastic lay,’ he had continued, ‘and I know I’m not the first man to have told you that. We’re having a good time together, and we can continue to have a good time together, but I don’t want to hear another word about love.’
Something inside her had sickened and withered when she had heard those words, but stubbornly she had ignored her own pain to protest unsteadily, ‘But you must want to get married and...and have children. We would have such beautiful children, Gabriel.’
She could still see the look in his eyes as he had stared at her and said, flatly and emotionlessly, ‘Children are the last thing I want, and I certainly don’t want them with a woman like you.’ He had left her then, and she had lain in bed, too numb to move and too afraid to let herself think.
They had gone out for dinner that evening, and she had still been in shock. She had hardly eaten anything, but she had opened her gift and dutifully admired the Cartier watch Gabriel had given her. When they had left the restaurant, he had taken hold of her in the darkness of the street, pushing aside the thin straps of her dress so that he could mould his hand around the naked warmth of her breast, caressing it with aroused urgency and kissing her so fiercely that her lips had felt slightly bruised. But she hadn’t been able to feel anything. She had still been too numb, almost distanced, from what was happening.
They had gone back to the yacht and he had almost torn the clothes off her body in his need to possess her, pushing her against the door of his cabin the moment they were inside and pulling down the top of her dress, holding her hands captive behind her back, his mouth hot against her naked flesh.
He had taken her quickly, but, typically, not before speedily stretching a condom over his erection, then almost viscerally thrusting deeply into her, and coming almost immediately.
‘Enjoy what we have Sasha,’ he had said, still breathing heavily. ‘Because I certainly intend to. This is all there is for us, and it’s all there ever will be. It’s called sex. Not love, sex. But you know as well as I do that you can’t live without it, and you can’t live without me.’ His voice had held a note of undisguised triumph.
Standing silently within the circle of his arms, Sasha had known what she had to do.
It had been three o’clock in the morning when she had walked into the foyer of the hotel where Carlo was staying. At first the receptionist had refused to telephone him, but in the end she had given in.
‘He says you’re to go up,’ she had told Sasha grudgingly.
Carlo had obviously been in bed. He’d opened the door to her wearing a monogrammed silk dressing gown, looking every inch the elderly man that he was. The contrast between him and Gabriel could not have been more cruelly underlined. Gabriel slept nude; he was a man at the height of his sexual power. There, in the harsh overhead light, Sasha saw how old Carlo was—even older than she had thought.
‘I’ve left Gabriel,’ she had said, and burst into tears.
Carlo had led her over to a chair and persuaded her to sit down. Then, quietly and compassionately, he had asked her gently, ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SASHA THREW BACK the bedcovers and got out of bed. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep now, and even with the curtains closed she could see the first pale glimmer of the coming day.
It was five o’clock in the morning, and by rights she ought to be asleep, not standing here in one of the respectable nightshirts motherhood had taught her to wear, letting her emotions be ripped to pieces on the sharks’ teeth of a decade-old pain.
She had broken down completely when Carlo had guessed her secret, as much because he had seen so easily what Gabriel had not as at his genuine compassion.
‘I wanted him to say he loved me but he wouldn’t,’ she had sobbed. ‘All he wants from me is sex. He doesn’t care about me at all.’
The romantic happy-ever-after fantasy she had created so lovingly had not so much crashed down around her as simply evaporated in the blast of Gabriel’s reaction to her pleading.
And, although she hadn’t been able to say so to Carlo, a man almost old enough to be her grandfather, tonight, for the first time when Gabriel had touched her, instead of feeling desire she had felt numb despair. He didn’t love her and he never would. But she had still clung tenaciously to her own need.
‘You want me to tell him about the baby?’ he had asked, adding meaningfully, ‘You must remember, Sasha, that he may not react as you would wish. He may even insist that he does not want this child and that you should...’
That was the moment when she had taken her first faltering step towards maturity, Sasha reflected. That heartbeat of time when she had placed her hand protectively on her still-flat belly and put aside her own need, recognising instead the harsh truth Carlo had just shown her and reacting to it.
‘No.’ She had shaken her head. ‘Gabriel must never know.’
Carlo had been wonderful then, taking care of everything, chartering a private plane, marrying her before she could refuse, and insisting that it was best for everyone if he did. He was, after all, related to her child by blood. He had no children of his own, he was a rich man who would have loved to be a father, and her marriage to him would be in name only.
She could not be Gabriel’s lover and the mother of his child, she had warned herself when she had felt her courage faltering. And she would never inflict the misery of her own childhood on her child. This baby was going to have all the love she could give it—all the love its father had rejected.
Fortunately, for the twins’ sake, the expensive and highly qualified New York doctor whose professional services Carlo had insisted she should have had been wise enough to recognise that she had a problem. The counselling she had received both prior to and after the twins’ birth had helped her to understand that the wrong kind of love could be as damaging to a child as none at all. And that, in her opinion, had been Carlo’s greatest gift to them all.
By the time the twins were taking their first unsteady steps and walking unaided she too had been taking her own first emotional steps forward unaided. They had learned and grown together, she and the twins. Her love for them had healed her.