by Penny Jordan
She would have given anything to refuse his suggestion that she join him and the architect on their inspection of the house, but her pride wouldn’t let her. So now she was suffering the outcome of that pride as every nerve-ending bombarded her body with messages that were dangerously and explicitly erotic. Gabriel might be dressed now, in buff-coloured chinos and a soft white linen shirt, but all she could see in her mind’s eye was his naked body, and it produced a sheeny dew of perspiration on her she was mortally afraid must carry the female scent of her desire for him.
She had kept as much distance between them as she could, standing to one side of him to keep him out of her line of vision, making sure she walked next to the architect and not Gabriel, but she was still acutely aware of him.
‘One thing I would like incorporated into the grounds is a hard surface circuit for the boys.’
‘For your sons’ bikes and skateboards, you mean?’ the architect asked. ‘A good idea.’
Sasha sucked in her breath, waiting for Gabriel to correct him and tell him that Sam and Nico were not his sons but his wards, but the architect was already speaking again, telling them ruefully, ‘My own sons complain that there is nowhere for them to enjoy those things since my wife says that the city traffic makes it too dangerous for them to use the roads. I must say I envy you this wonderful location you have here. You are close enough to Port Cervo to be able to enjoy its facilities without being too close, plus you have this magnificent stretch of private beach.’
‘The land has been in the Calbrini family for many generations,’ Gabriel told him, while Sasha writhed in inner torment as she remembered what use they had put the privacy of that beach to only this morning.
The architect was looking towards his hire car, obviously ready to leave. Sasha exhaled in relief and said a quick goodbye to him before making her escape, unaware of the way Gabriel turned to watch her walk away from them.
She found the boys on the terrace, talking excitedly to Professor Fennini about the afternoon trip they were going to make exploring some of the island’s historical sites. Even without turning around she knew that Gabriel had followed her onto the terrace.
Her hands were shaking so hard as she poured herself a glass of water from the jug that some of it spilled onto the table. In her desperation to put as much distance between Gabriel and herself she tried to step past him too quickly and missed her step. She would have collided with one of the wrought-iron chairs if Gabriel hadn’t reached out and covered the metal with his hand, so that she bumped into his fingers instead.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything. Her body greedily soaked up the forbidden pleasure of physical contact with his. Her hand was trembling so badly she could hardly hold her glass of water, and she could see the boys looking at her. What must they be thinking? They were too young to understand what was happening to her, of course. But her face started to burn with maternal guilt.
‘Mum, why don’t you wear your rings any more?’ Nico asked her curiously.
Her initial relief was quickly followed by fresh tension. She looked down at her left hand, bare of everything apart from her thin wedding band.
‘The car is here, boys, it is time for us to leave,’ the Professor announced jovially.
Sasha went with them to the front of the house, where the driver was waiting with the air-conditioned Mercedes Gabriel had hired to take them to the places the Professor wanted them to see, and gave each of the boys a quick hug and a brief kiss.
Gabriel was saying something to the Professor, and Sasha took advantage of their conversation to go back into the house. Her head was aching with the pressure of her distracted thoughts. She was still in shock from this morning, unable to truly reconcile what she had done with the reality of her true relationship with Gabriel. Gabriel despised her. He was hostile towards her, he had a grudge against her, and yet even knowing that she had still allowed him...
Allowed him? What had happened that morning hadn’t happened as the result of any kind of conscious decision. Like a furious storm coming out nowhere, it had been beyond human control.
‘Sasha.’
She stiffened, tempted to turn and run from him, as she had done this morning. It wasn’t just her face but her whole body that was burning now.
She forced herself to turn around and look at him.
‘You never answered Nico,’ he said. ‘Why aren’t you wearing your rings?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Because I’ve sold them,’ she told him evenly. ‘My jewellery was the only asset that was mine, so I took it into Port Cervo and sold it. When the boys go back to school I intend to use the money to buy a home for the three of us in London. Contrary to what you may think, Gabriel, I do not want to live at your expense.’
‘You sold your jewellery?’ An icy shock of angry fear sheeted through Gabriel. If she had money then she would not need him. And he needed her to need him, Gabriel suddenly recognised.
‘Yes.’ Sasha gave him a steady look. ‘The boys need a proper settled home. They are my sons, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to give them that, Gabriel.’
‘You could have—’
‘What?’ she challenged him. ‘Asked you for help?’ As she had once asked him for his love? ‘I think we both know what your reaction to that would have been, don’t we? I’ve got rather a bad headache, and I’m not in the mood for this conversation, Gabriel. What I choose to do with my jewellery is my own affair and no one else’s.’ She turned on her heel and headed for the stairs.
* * *
FOR SOME UNFATHOMABLE reason Gabriel felt as though someone had just dropped a leaden weight into his chest cavity.
Sasha was walking upstairs, and for a second he was tempted to go after her and demand to know how she could reconcile her love for her sons with what she had done to him. She had, after all, told him that she loved him. She had begged him to return that love. He could still remember the intensity of the confusion and anger she had aroused in him, the strength of his desire to reject what she was saying. Yet at the same time her words had pierced him with an unfamiliar sensation—pain, even if at the time he had refused to acknowledge it. Now that long-buried memory surfaced.
His throat felt tight and his heart was hammering painfully against his ribs—because of Sasha? Because she was a mother who loved her sons? Was he jealous of that love?
It was like receiving a sickening sledgehammer blow out of nowhere, against which he had no defences.
One of the first things his grandfather had done when he had taken Gabriel to live with him had been to show him the diamond and ruby necklace he had given to Gabriel’s mother when she had returned home.
‘This is what she sold you for,’ he had taunted Gabriel, before complaining bitterly, ‘She should have married the husband I chose for her in the first place, then maybe I would have the grandson the Calbrini name deserves, instead of a misbegotten nothing like you.’
After his grandfather’s death Gabriel had destroyed the portrait of his mother wearing the rubies she had valued so much more than him, and he had locked the necklace itself away in the Calbrini family bank vault.
This time spent here with Sasha should have reinforced everything he thought and believed about her and her sex. It should have given him the satisfaction of a due debt paid. But instead it had thrown up such huge inconsistencies in the logic of his own thinking that he couldn’t ignore them any more.
There was one thing that he could do, though. He walked out of the house and got into his car. He knew Port Cervo well enough to guess which jeweller Sasha would have visited.
The owner of the shop was reluctant to tell him at first how much he had given Sasha, but in the end Gabriel got his way. Gabriel wrote him a cheque, to which he added a substantial extra sum for ‘inconvenience’ and, having recovered Sasha’s jewellery, made his
way back to his car.
* * *
SASHA HADN’T BEEN lying about her headache. The soft roar of the Mercedes telling her that Gabriel had gone out and that she had the house to herself made her sigh shakily with relief. No need to pretend now. No need to protect herself or worry about what she might reveal for a few precious hours.
She stripped off her clothes and stepped under the shower, welcoming the cool mist of water on her tense, hot skin.
This morning on the beach...
Stop it, she warned herself. Don’t think about that. But she wanted to. She wanted to think about it and relive it and relish every second of it, secretly hoarding it away...
She switched off the shower and reached for a towel, wrapping it around herself before padding into her bedroom. This hunger possessing her didn’t mean anything, she tried to reassure herself. It was just a physical appetite, that was all... The needy girl who had been so desperate for Gabriel’s love had gone. And the woman who had taken her place didn’t need his love.
She had her sons, her self respect, a new life in front of her. What she did not need was to be dragged back into the past, to be reclaimed by a damaging relationship. Gabriel hadn’t changed; he had made that obvious. He didn’t want to change. He had built his whole life on the foundation stone of his mother’s desertion, and without that foundation.... The reality was that he wanted to despise her, Sasha acknowledged. As powerful as the sexual attraction between them was, it was built on darkness and bitterness, and that made it destructive and damaging for both of them.
She took two painkillers, and closed the shutters to block out the sunlight before crawling into her bed. Tears filled her eyes and slid down her face. They weren’t just caused by the pain of her headache, she admitted, although why on earth she should cry for Gabriel, as well as herself, she couldn’t understand.
* * *
THE HOUSE WAS empty and silent. A sensation like a huge fist gripping and crushing his heart filled Gabriel’s chest. Like an image on a screen, he saw himself striding through the darkness of the main cabin of his yacht, calling out irritably to Sasha, wanting to know why she wasn’t in his bed.
But this time she could hardly have left with Carlo. His cousin was dead, after all, and the small car Sasha drove was parked outside. It was adrenalin-fuelled anger that was making his pulse race and his stomach muscles knot, Gabriel told himself. He checked the downstairs rooms and found them empty, then moved towards the stairs.
* * *
THE SOUND OF the Mercedes’s engine purring past her window woke Sasha from her brief sleep. Gabriel was back. She pushed back the bedclothes, relieved to discover that her headache had eased. She heard Gabriel rapping on the main door to her suite, calling out her name impatiently.
‘Yes, I’m here. I won’t be a minute,’ she called back, abandoning her attempt to get dressed when she heard him come in and cross the wooden floor to the suite’s private sitting room. In another minute he would be in her bedroom. Panicking slightly, she reached for a fresh towel and wrapped it around her body, calling out to him, ‘Don’t come in, Gabriel, I’m not dressed.’ But it was too late. He’d already pushed open the bedroom door and was standing in the middle of the room, frowning darkly at her.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded sharply.
Sasha frowned. His eyes were searching the room as though he was a jealous lover, expecting to find a rival. Her imagination was playing tricks on her, she decided.
‘Why are the shutters closed?’
‘I had a headache, so I decided to go to bed for an hour,’ Sasha told him.
‘On your own?’
Sasha stared at him. What on earth had got into him? Surely he didn’t seriously believe that she had a lover hidden away in here?
‘I had a headache,’ she repeated. ‘Going to bed to get rid of it is something that people do, Gabriel.’
His mouth compressed, and suddenly Sasha could almost smell the past: the sleepy afternoon air of the yacht’s cabin scented with the sensuality of their sex. She could feel the heat crawling over her skin. Without a word, just by looking at her, Gabriel had taken her back to that time.
‘You may still go to bed in the afternoon for sex,’ she told him fiercely. ‘But I most certainly do not.’ Did she sound as though she wanted to? Was she unconsciously giving him an unsubtle message that she wanted him? ‘What did you want me for?’ she asked him. ‘I’d like to get dressed; the boys will be back soon.’
He put down the large square package he was carrying and looked at his watch. ‘They won’t be back for another two or three hours yet,’ he said, before picking up the package and holding it out to her.
‘What...what is it?’ she asked him warily.
‘Why do you not open it and see?’ He walked across the room to the door, but instead of going through it he closed it and turned around. ‘Open it, Sasha,’ he repeated coolly.
As soon as she had removed the outer wrapping paper and lifted the lid of the box inside it, to see the familiar name on the tissue paper, she knew. Her hands trembled as she removed the tissue, her mouth tightening when she found the small individual jewellers’ boxes beneath it. She opened the top box, a wave of anger surging through her when she saw the familiar diamond ring. Snapping the box shut, she looked up at Gabriel.
‘You’d better check that it’s all there,’ he told her curtly.
‘What is this, Gabriel?’ she demanded, ignoring his command, and somehow managing to keep her voice from cracking with anger.
‘It’s your jewellery. What does it look like?’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Sasha shook her head, cramming the lid back on top of the box and thrusting it away from her. ‘I sold my jewellery.’
‘And I bought it back for you.’
‘You had no right! Do you realise what you’ve done? How much did you pay for it? More than I sold it for, I’m sure.’ His silence gave her the answer. An angry flush burned her face. ‘How dare you do this to me, Gabriel? The reason I sold the jewellery was so I could provide a home for my sons and myself, so that we could have our independence from you. You had no right—’
‘I had every right.’ Gabriel stopped her, furious himself. Didn’t she realise how lucky she was? How generous he was being? Or how controlling? an inner voice suggested. How determined to keep her in debt to you? He silenced the small, self-mocking voice. ‘I have the Calbrini name to think of. How do you think it looks to have you selling the jewellery Carlo gave you?’
‘Not as gossip-worthy as you buying it back,’ Sasha said bitingly. ‘Everyone knows that Carlo died virtually bankrupt. I had nothing to be ashamed of in selling my jewellery, Gabriel. But now thanks to you—’
‘Thanks to me, what?’ he demanded dangerously.
‘Do you really need me to tell you? Why did you buy it back, Gabriel? So that it would make me feel indebted to you? Grateful to you? So that you would have control over me? By buying the jewellery back you’re forcing me to pay for it again, and to be left in debt for whatever extra you handed over to the jeweller. You’ve stolen my freedom from me, Gabriel,’ she told him, white-faced with anger. ‘Just like your grandfather stole your mother’s freedom. But I’m not her, and I won’t be bought or bullied, and I won’t be forced to live in perpetual debt to you.’
She was shaking from head to foot as the true realisation of what he had done to her began to sink in. She picked up the box and thrust it towards him. ‘Here—take it. I don’t want it. And I don’t want you. I won’t let you force me into playing the role you’ve chosen for me, Gabriel. I’m not your mother. I’m me.’
‘At least my mother didn’t sleep around and share her favours with two men at the same time. You’re right. You aren’t her. You’re a—’
It was too much for Sasha’s self-control. The anger inside her boiled ove
r. She raised her hand and slapped him across his face—hard. Immediately Gabriel dropped the box and grabbed hold of her.
Sick with shock and shame, Sasha shivered with self-disgust. This was what happened when Gabriel invaded her life. He brought with him memories from her past that aroused the kind of emotions she wasn’t equipped to withstand. Even now, with anger and shame swirling through her, she still wanted him, she admitted. She had to put some distance between them.
‘Gabriel, let me go,’ she begged, twisting and turning in his grip, forgetting that all she was wearing was a towel. It slipped off at exactly the moment Gabriel lost his self-control and picked her up bodily to stop her struggling.
Sasha sucked in an unsteady breath as she saw the look in his eyes when his hands encountered naked flesh instead of the towel.
A thick, dangerous silence gripped the room.
‘Gabriel,’ Sasha pleaded again, but it was too late. He was already kicking the towel and the contents of the cardboard box out of the way and carrying her over to the bed.
‘You’re right,’ he told her thickly. ‘You are in debt to me, and I intend to claim full payment—right here and now.’
CHAPTER TEN
HELPLESSLY, SASHA LOOKED back at him as her original anger transmuted into a sharp thrill of longing, and the hand she had lifted to push him away curled round his neck to urge him down towards her.
This, of course, was why she had needed to keep a distance between them. Because when she was near him all she could think of was how much she ached for him.
The seventeen-year-old who had gazed at Gabriel and created a fantasy world of love to enclose the two of them had had no awareness of the reality of what she would feel for him. Sex to her had been something that went hand-in-hand with love, was a mere by-product of it. She had been totally unaware of its compulsive urgency and energy, its ferocity and intensity. She had had no idea that this was how she would come to feel. That girl was not to blame for what she, as a woman, was feeling now, Sasha recognised.