by Jennie Lucas
“Oh no, I couldn’t,” she said. “Not with you being Laura’s employer and all. It just wouldn’t be right.”
“But I’m not her employer anymore.” He flashed Laura a dark look before leaning toward her mother to confidentially whisper, “And I wasn’t invited to the wedding. I crashed. I came to offer her a job.”
“Oh!” Ruth practically cried tears of joy. “A job! You have no idea how happy that makes me. Things have been so tight lately and you should see some of the ridiculous jobs she’s applied for, as far away as Exeter—”
“Mom,” Laura cried. “Please take Robby inside!”
“So she’s looking for a job, is she?” he purred.
“Oh, yes. She’s totally broke,” Ruth confided, then her cheeks turned red. “But then, we all are. Ever since…since…” She turned away.
Gabriel put his hands into his pockets. “I was sorry to hear about your husband. He was a good man.”
“Thank you,” Ruth whispered. Amid the lightly falling snow, silence fell. Gabriel suddenly looked at Robby.
“What a charming baby,” he murmured, changing the subject. “Is he related to you, Mrs. Parker?”
Her mother looked at him as if he was stupid. “He’s my grandson.”
Gabriel looked surprised. “Is one of your other daughters married, as well?”
“Mom,” Laura breathed with tears in her eyes, terrified, “just go! Right now!”
But it was too late. “This is Robby,” her mother said, holding him up proudly. “Laura’s baby.”
CHAPTER THREE
AS her mother turned to place Robby into her arms, Laura’s heart fell to the snowy, frozen ground. The six-month-old’s whine faded, turning to hiccups as he clung to Laura. Ruth leaned forward to hug her.
“Take the job,” her mother whispered in her ear, then turned to Gabriel and said brightly, “I hope to see you again soon, Mr. Santos!”
Laura heard the dull thunk of the door as her mother went back inside. Then she was alone with Gabriel; their baby in her arms.
Gabriel’s dark eyes went to the child, then back to her. The sound of his tightly coiled voice reverberated in the cold air. “This is your son?”
She held her baby close, loving the solid, chubby feel of him in her arms. Tears stung her eyes as she looked down at Robby. “Yes.”
“How old is he?”
“Six months,” she said in a small voice.
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “So tell me.” His voice was deadly and still as a winter’s night. “Who is the father of your baby?”
She’d wished so many times to be able to tell Gabriel the truth, dreamed of giving her son his father. With their baby squirming in her arms between them, the truth rose unbidden to her lips. “The father of my baby is…”
You. You’re Robby’s father. Robby is your son. But the words stuck in her throat. Gabriel didn’t want to be tied down with a child. If she told him her secret, nothing good would come of it. He might feel he had no choice but to sue for custody out of duty, resenting Robby, resenting her for forcing him into it. He might try to take their child to Brazil, away from her, to be given into the arms of some young, sexy nanny.
Laura would gain nothing by telling him. And risk everything.
“Well?” he demanded.
She flashed her eyes at him. “The identity of my baby’s father is none of your business.”
His own eyes narrowed. “You must have gotten pregnant immediately after you left Rio.”
“Yes,” she said unwillingly. She shivered, looking from father to son. Would he notice the resemblance?
But Gabriel turned on her, his dark eyes full of accusation. “You were a virgin when I seduced you. You said you wanted a home and family of your own. How could you be so careless, to forget protection, to let yourself get pregnant by a one-night stand?”
Gabriel had used protection, but somehow she’d gotten pregnant anyway. She said over the lump in her throat, “Accidents happen.”
“Accidents don’t happen,” he corrected. “Only mistakes.”
She set her jaw. “My baby is not a mistake.”
“You mean it was planned?” He lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “Who is the father? Some good-looking farmer? Some boy you knew back in high school?” He glanced around. “Where is this paragon? Why hasn’t he proposed? Why aren’t you his wife?”
Robby was starting to snuffle. Even in his long-sleeved shirt, he was getting cold, and so was she. Holding him close to her warmth, she shifted his weight on her hip. “I told you, it’s none of your business.”
“Is he here?”
“No!”
“So he deserted you.”
“I didn’t give him the chance,” she said. “I left him first.”
“Ah.” Gabriel’s shoulders seemed to relax slightly. “So you don’t love him. Will he cause any trouble when you take the child to Rio?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I mean—I’m not taking Robby there. I’m not going.” Her baby started to whimper as she turned away. “Goodbye, Gabriel.”
“Wait.”
The raw emotion in his voice made her hesitate. Against her better judgment she turned back. He stepped toward her, and she saw something in his expression she’d never seen before.
Vulnerability.
“Don’t leave,” he said in a low voice. “I need you.”
I need you.
She’d once loved him. She’d served him night and day, existed only to please him. She had to fight that habit, that yearning, with every bit of willpower she possessed.
“Is a hundred thousand dollars not enough?” He came closer, his dark eyes bright in the moonlight, the white smoke of his breath drifting around them in the chilly night air. “Let’s make it a cool million. A million dollars, Laura. For a single night.”
She gasped. A million…?
Reaching out, he stroked her cheek. “Think what that money could mean for you. For your family.” His fingers moved slowly against her cold skin, the lightest touch of a caress, warming her. “If you don’t care what it would mean for me, think what it could do for you. And all you need to do,” he said huskily, “is smile for a few hours. Drink champagne. Wear a fancy ball gown. And pretend to love me.”
Pretend. Blinking up at him, she swallowed the lump in her throat. Pretend to love him.
“Although I know it might not be easy,” he said dryly. Then he shook his head. “But you are not so selfish as to refuse.”
With an intake of breath, Laura clenched her hands into fists. “Maybe I am. Now.”
His sensual mouth curved. “The Laura I knew always put the needs of the people she loved above herself. I know that hasn’t changed.” His dark eyebrow lifted. “You probably stayed up all night making your sister’s wedding cake.”
Her lips twisted with a dark emotion. “I really hate you.”
“Hate me if you will. But if you do not come with me to Rio tonight…” He clawed his black hair back with his hand, then exhaled. His dark eyes seemed fathomless and deep, echoing with pain. “I will lose my father’s legacy. Forever.”
Shivering in the cold night, cradling her whimpering baby in the warmth of her arms, Laura looked up into Gabriel’s handsome, haggard face. She knew better than anyone what the Açoazul company meant to Gabriel. For years, she’d watched him scheme and plot to regain control of it. He hungered for it. His legacy.
Living in the house her great-great-great-great-grandfather had built with his own two hands, on the land her family had farmed for two centuries, Laura could understand the feeling. She looked at his face. It was a shock to see raw vulnerability in his dark eyes. It was an expression she’d never seen there before, not in all the years she’d worked for him. She could feel herself weakening.
One million dollars. For a single night of luxury in Rio, a night of beauty and pleasure. She looked down at her baby. What could that money do for her son? For her family?
&nbs
p; But oh, the risk. Could she be strong enough to resist telling Gabriel the truth? For twenty-four hours, could she lie to his face? Could she pretend to love him, without falling in love with him again for real?
On the country road in front of their property, Laura saw a parked black sedan turn on its headlights, as if on cue. She heard the smooth purr of the engine as it slowly drove up the driveway. Over Gabriel’s head, moonlight laced the ridges of the dark clouds with silver.
She closed her eyes. “You will never come back looking for me after this?” she said in a low voice. “You will leave us in peace?”
Gabriel’s own voice was harsh. “Yes.”
Looking at him, Laura took a deep breath and spoke words that felt like a knife between her shoulder blades. The only words he’d left for her to say.
“One night,” she whispered.
An hour later they arrived at the small private airport, where his jet waited outside the hangar. As they crossed the tarmac, Gabriel felt his blood rush in his ears as he stared down at her.
Laura was even more beautiful than he remembered. In the moonlight, her hair looked like dark honey. The frosty winter air gave her cheeks a soft pink glow, and as she bit her lower lip, her heart-shaped mouth looked red and inviting. For a single instant, when he’d first seen her at the farmhouse, he’d had the insane desire to kiss her.
He took a deep breath. He was tired, flying straight from Rio on his private jet. Even more than that, he was exhausted from the months of negotiations to buy back his father’s old company in Rio, to gain back the business that had been his birthright before he’d stupidly thrown it away as a grief-stricken nineteen-year-old.
He wouldn’t fail. Not this time. Gabriel glanced down grimly at his expensive platinum watch. They were still on schedule. Just.
As they climbed the steps to the jet, Laura paused, looking behind her. Shifting the baby carrier on her arm, she pulled her diaper bag up higher on her other shoulder and bit her lip. “I think we should go back to the house for a few more things—”
“You have enough for the flight?” he said shortly.
“Yes, but I didn’t pack clothes. Pajamas—”
“Everything you need will be waiting for you in Rio. It will be arranged.”
“All right.” With one last, troubled glance, she followed him up the steps.
Inside the cabin, Gabriel sat down in the white leather seat. A flight attendant offered him a glass of champagne, which he accepted. It had been harder than he’d expected to convince Laura to come. She sat across from him, suddenly glaring at him beneath her dark lashes.
Was she angry at him for some reason? God knew why. He was the one who should be angry. She’d left him in the lurch a year ago. In an act of pure charity, he’d allowed her to quit her job. It had been the act of a saint. He’d barely managed to patch up the hole she’d left in his office.
“You’d better have a very trustworthy babysitter in Rio,” she growled, refusing the offer of champagne.
He finished off the crystal flute. “Maria Silva.”
She blinked. “Your housekeeper?”
“She was my nanny when I was young.”
“You were young?” Laura said sardonically.
Gabriel’s throat closed. Against his will, memories of his happy childhood washed over him, of playing with his older brother, of the wrestling and fighting, of his nanny’s voice soothing them. Only a year apart in age, Gabriel had competed with Guilherme constantly, always seeking to best him in their parents’ eyes. He’d started some stupid battles. Leading up to the night of the accident…
Turning away, he finished harshly, “I’d trust Maria with my life.”
Laura no longer looked angry. Now she looked bemused, staring at him with her large, limpid turquoise eyes. She started to ask a question, then was distracted when the flight attendant suggested she buckle in the baby’s carrier before takeoff.
Gabriel watched her smiling down at her son, murmuring soft words of love as she tucked a baby blanket into his pudgy hand. The little one yawned again.
A strange feeling went through Gabriel.
He’d won. He’d convinced her. They would make it back to Rio in time. His plan would work. He should be feeling triumphant.
Instead, he felt…on edge.
Why? It couldn’t be the money he’d promised her. A million dollars was nothing. He would have paid ten times that to win back his father’s company. He would have given every penny he possessed, every share of stock in Santos Enterprises, the contracts, the office building in Manhattan, the ships in Rotterdam. Everything down to the last stick of furniture.
So it wasn’t the money. But as the jet took off, leaving New Hampshire behind, he looked out the window. Something bothered him, and he didn’t know what it was. Was it that he’d let Laura see his desperation?
No, he thought, setting his jaw. She knew how much his father’s company meant to him. And anyway, allowing his vulnerability to show had helped achieve his goal.
It was something else. His gaze settled on the drowsing baby’s dark hair, his plump cheeks.
It was the baby. The baby unsettled him.
Gabriel’s jaw set as he realized what the edgy feeling was. What it had to be.
Anger.
He couldn’t believe that Laura had fallen into another man’s bed so swiftly. When she’d quit her job and walked out of his life last year, he’d let her go for one reason only—for her own good. He’d come to care for her. And he knew he couldn’t give her what she wanted. A husband. Children. A job that didn’t consume her every waking hour. When, the morning after he’d seduced her, she’d suddenly said she was quitting and going back to her family, he’d given Laura her chance at happiness. He’d let her go.
But instead of following her dreams, she’d apparently jumped into a brief, meaningless affair with some man she didn’t even care about. She’d settled for poverty and the life of a single mother. She’d allowed her child to be born without a father. Without a name.
Cold rage slowly built inside him.
He’d let her go for nothing.
Gabriel looked at her, now leaning back in her white leather seat with her eyes closed, one hand still on her baby in the seat beside her. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. Even in that unflattering, pale pink satin dress, with that horrible hot pink lipstick, her natural beauty shone through. With all its deceptive innocence.
Against his will, his eyes traced the generous curves beneath her gown. Her breasts were bigger since she’d become a mother, her hips wider. And suddenly he couldn’t stop wondering what her body would look like beneath that dress. What it would feel like against him in bed.
Erotic memories flashed through him of the first time he’d kissed her, when he’d swept his laptop to the floor in his ruthless need to have her. Taking her against his desk, he’d lost data that had cost thousands of dollars.
He hadn’t cared. It had been worth it.
He’d wanted Laura Parker from the moment she’d walked into his office, looking uncertain in her country clothes and wearing big, ugly glasses. He’d seen at once that she had a kind, innocent heart, coupled with the fearless bluntness he needed in an executive assistant. He’d wanted her, but for five years, he’d held himself in check. He needed her too badly in his office, needed her expertise to keep Santos Enterprises—and his life—running like a well-oiled machine. And he knew an old-fashioned woman like Laura Parker would never settle for what a man like Gabriel could offer—money, glamour, an emotionless affair. So he hadn’t allowed himself to touch her. Not even to flirt with her.
Until…
Last year, during a helicopter flight from Açoazul’s steel factory to the north of the city, Gabriel had looked up from a report to discover his pilot had flown them right over the sharp stretch of road where his family had died nearly twenty years before.
Gabriel had said nothing to the pilot. He’d told himself he felt nothing. Then he’d go
ne back to the office. It was late, and all his other employees were gone. He’d seen Laura Parker alone at his desk, filing papers in her prim collared shirt and tweed skirt, and something inside him had snapped. Five years of frustrated need had exploded and he’d seized her. Her blue eyes had widened behind her sleek, black-framed glasses as, without a word, he’d ruthlessly kissed her.
That night, he’d discovered two things that shocked him.
First: Miss Parker was a virgin.
Second: beneath her demure exterior, she’d burned him to ashes with her passionate fire.
He’d made love to her roughly against the desk. He’d been more gentle the second time, after they’d taken the elevator up to his penthouse and he’d kissed her for hours, lying across his big bed. The night had been…amazing. More than amazing. It had been the most incredible sexual experience of his life.
Now, looking at her, a cold knot tightened in Gabriel’s chest. He’d given that up, and she’d just thrown herself away. She’d let some unworthy man touch her. Get her pregnant with his child.
Gabriel’s hands tightened into fists. Perhaps it was hypocritical to feel so betrayed, since he’d enjoyed many women the past year since she’d deserted him. But enjoy was not the right word. All Gabriel had done was prove to himself, over and over, that no other woman could satisfy him as Laura had.
Turning away, he set his jaw. He’d get control of Açoazul SA and then send Laura and her baby back to New Hampshire. He’d thought he might ask her to stay in Rio after the deal was done, but now that was impossible. As much as he missed her in the office—as much as he missed her in his bed—he couldn’t take her back now. Not now that she had a child.
He couldn’t let himself feel, not even for a moment, as if he were part of a family.
“You look tired,” he heard Laura say quietly.
He turned to her, and their eyes locked in the semi-darkness of the jet. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“A lot has changed.” He looked from her to the sleeping baby. He wanted to ask her again who the baby’s father was. He wanted to ask how long she’d waited before she’d jumped into bed with a stranger. A week? A day? What had the man done to seduce her? Bought her some cheap flowers and wine? Given her cheap promises?