The Secret Spanish Love-Child (10 page)

Released from his own self-imposed inhibitions, he was communicating with his son without even being aware of it and Alex was surprised at the tightness in her chest as she witnessed that unconscious breaking of the ice. When she had been pregnant, and when she had first had Luke, she had daydreamed about what might have been had she and Gabriel—or Lucio, as she had thought of him back then—ended up together. She had fantasised about being a normal, happily married couple. In her fantasies, he had related to his son pretty much the way he was relating now, holding him on his lap with those big, strong hands and bending to smile distractedly at something his son said.

She was surprised when she next glanced out of the window to discover that they were no longer on the main road but navigating through a series of small side roads, on either side of which orchards stretched away into the distance. It couldn’t have been further from the dreary listless grey weather they had left behind in London and, for the first time, Alex felt a little kick at thinking that perhaps it had been right, after all, to remove herself and Luke from their familiar territory. He had never had the chance to go abroad. It was occurring to her that this would be just one of the things that he would be able to enjoy, being the son of Gabriel Cruz.

Trips abroad, big houses, fancy cars…they had been the stuff of Gabriel’s life, not that she had known that when they had met. Was it any wonder that he passionately wanted the same for his son?

‘We’re here.’

Alex blinked and gazed at the sprawling mansion looming into view at the end of the private avenue. A massive circular courtyard, elaborately landscaped at its centre, fanned out to impeccable lawns on either side. Whilst it bore no resemblance to the stately homes in England, it was much too big to be classified as a villa.

‘Your parents live here…
on their own
?’ Alex asked weakly.

‘There’s staff.’

‘Right.’

Gabriel looked at her incredulous saucer eyes and was catapulted back to that heady teenage feeling of having successfully impressed a girl. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced for a very, very long time and it felt good.

Against him, Luke stirred out of the catnap he had fallen into with the ease of a child and Gabriel looked down at the flushed little face staring drowsily up at him, weirdly confused and surprised. His instinct was to return the child to his mother, but he resisted the impulse and was gratified when Luke showed no signs of wriggling away.

‘I can see why you thought my place was a bit on the small side,’ she whispered to cover her nerves as the driver moved around to open the door for her. On top of everything else, she felt horribly underdressed for the occasion. She had dressed casually as a protest vote, wanting to establish from the start that she was her own person and would not be bullied by anyone. She was regretting it.

‘Will we be living here?’ Luke asked Gabriel with keen interest.

‘For a little while.’ Gabriel smiled. ‘But you’ll be able to come and visit any time you want to.’ He shot Alex a warning look, just in case she was about to protest. ‘Your grandparents would love to have you whenever you want.’

‘Nan and Gramp live in Ireland.’

‘And your other grandparents live here.’

Luke accepted that simple fact with a slight nod.

Alex barely registered that because the impressive front door had opened on a beaming couple. The man was tall and, as she drew nearer, she recognised those classically austere features, and the woman, coming towards them now, was small and round and amazingly unlined.

‘Didn’t I tell you that they weren’t monsters?’ Gabriel murmured, taking her hand, a piece of moral support which Alex knew she should object to but for which she was inordinately grateful.

He was smiling as he bent to kiss his mother and something else clicked into place in her head. Gabriel loved his parents. His marriage proposal had been his way of trying to capture what they had and provide it for his own son. Of course, there was no love in the equation and so it would never have worked out, but Alex was beginning to understand his motivations.

‘Antonio Cruz…it is a pleasure to meet you…’ He was extending his hand and smiling, as was the woman, who had also moved forward to introduce herself in accented English, but their eyes were on their grandson and Luke was positively basking in the sudden attention, allowing himself to be lifted by his grandfather and shown to his grandmother like some amazing long lost treasure, although twisting round just to make sure that Alex was still in sight.

This was hardly the cold, condemnatory greeting she had expected.

She was ushered inside the house and, when she began to awkwardly explain how sorry she was that they had not
met their grandson sooner, her apologies were waved aside amidst affirmations of delight that they were meeting him now. Every compliment was paid to Luke and, waiting in the grand drawing room, an anachronism against the opulent, traditional decor, was a shiny three-wheeled bicycle of the sort Alex had never seen before.

‘It is their way of expressing their enthusiasm about meeting him,’ Gabriel murmured softly to her. He was as surprised as she was at the warmth of their greetings and wondered whether there had been truth in his father’s remarks that the cancellation of the wedding had not been the disaster he had anticipated for them both. ‘Please refrain,’ he continued in the same low breath, ‘from giving a speech about the evils of money.’

‘I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing any such thing!’

‘Good.’

While Gabriel moved to chat to his father, his mother, Maria, drew her to one side. ‘We can watch Luke in the garden on his new bike,’ she said, not seeming to mind that he had already climbed on it and was experimenting with their gleaming polished floor as a possible racetrack.

‘You must be very proud of him,’ the older woman confided as they followed him outside, leaving Gabriel with his father. ‘Gabriel explained the situation.

‘He told us that you were unable to contact him when you fell pregnant. Distressing though it is to know that I could have met my grandson when he was a baby, we are both pleased that we are meeting him now and that Gabriel will finally be happy. As a mother, you know that is all we wish for our children.’

Alex flushed and guiltily wondered how this charming woman would react if she knew that her son
finally being happy
was not really on the agenda.

‘Cristobel was not the right one for Gabriel,’ Maria confided, chuckling when Luke paused to flash her a crooked sidelong smile that made him resemble a mini Gabriel even more than he already did.

Alex said nothing. Maria had romantic delusions about her son. She would be stricken if she knew that what was right for Gabriel
was
a woman like Cristobel who ticked all the right boxes except for that big box labelled Love, which didn’t interest him anyway.

‘You, on the other hand. The very minute I saw you, my dear,
I knew
. A mother
knows these things
.’

‘Knows
what
things?’

Completely lost, Alex turned to Maria with a perplexed frown but Gabriel and his father were emerging from the house and any explanation for that weird remark was lost as Alex was plied with questions about Luke, who had the look of a child suddenly let loose in a sweet shop.

‘Now, you must be tired,’ Maria announced once they were all inside.

Alex realised that she was. It had been a long, wearying few days and, with the horrifying hurdle of meeting his parents behind her, exhaustion slammed into her like a brick wall.

‘Your bags have been taken up and, if it is all right with you, Antonio and I would enjoy so much settling our grandson.’

Alex looked down at Luke, who looked as bright eyed and bushy-tailed as any four-year-old boy who had slept off and on and was now brimming over with boundless energy and excitement in his new surroundings, even though it was already past his normal bedtime. It would take more than a handful of stories to send him to sleep but, whilst she hesitated, Gabriel stepped into the silence and assured his parents that Luke would love nothing better.

‘We bought a few books…’ Maria smiled down at the child and held her hand out. ‘Made the room as special as
we could in the small amount of time…I hope you do not mind…’ A quick look at Alex, who shook her head and gave in to the warm feeling inside her of being accepted. More than accepted…
apparently welcomed with open arms
. Her mind drifted sleepily back to what the older woman had earlier said but she was literally too tired to analyse anything.

‘Of course, he will be in the blue room next to you…’

‘You’re practically asleep on your feet,’ Gabriel said, amused. He looked hesitantly down at his son, unsure whether the affection displayed earlier had been an anomaly, but, risking it, he stooped down to lift Luke up and was rewarded with a shy smile which was fairly thrilling. He grinned back and ventured a more robust sign of affection, throwing him up in the air and catching him as if he were as light as a feather. Alex watched, feeling vaguely left out when Luke gave a shriek of laughter and begged for a repeat performance. He had no experience of men. Alex had had no boyfriends since she and Gabriel had parted ways. There had been opportunities and she knew that some of them had ticked all the right boxes, but she had never felt inclined to take any of them up. Her life had been too busy, she reasoned to herself, with Luke and with just making ends meet and carving out an independent life for herself, for her to make space for the arduous business of getting to know a guy. Sometimes, underneath that robust reasoning, she’d thought that no man had ever come along who could hold a candle to the Lucio she had known then. But she didn’t like thinking like that and it scared her to imagine that he was now back in her life, harnessed to her against his will, a nightmare living reminder of her foolish teenage dreams.

The little game with Luke ended as Gabriel gently set him down. For a few seconds Alex knew that she had been entirely forgotten in the aftermath of his boisterous few minutes of fun with his father. From the sidelines, Maria and Antonio
were looking on with every semblance of enjoying the sight of Gabriel playing with his son and, when Maria caught her eye, the older woman’s beam became even broader so that Alex couldn’t resist smiling back, even though it was a little disconcerting to witness this much delayed bonding finally beginning to take place.

‘And now up to bed, both of you!’ Maria urged them up the magnificent staircase that forked in opposite directions at the top to accommodate the various wings of the grand house.

‘I’m sure Gabriel would like to stay and catch up with you.’ Alex shot him a telling glance which she hoped he would correctly interpret as
tell your parents the full story of our situation
.

‘Time enough tomorrow,’ Maria said comfortably. ‘And this little man will be following very soon.’

‘Since I’ve been good—’ Luke directed this question to his new found grandparents, taking full advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity but making sure that he wasn’t actually looking at Alex when he did it ‘—am I allowed some ice cream?’ He flashed them a winning smile. ‘Or even some chocolate?’ And then, finally realising that permission might be required from a higher source, he shot his mother a pleading look and she sighed resignedly.

‘You’re a horror,’ she told him grinning. ‘But first, come and have a look at your room and I’ll be checking to make sure you’re in it in an hour.’

Thoughts of a lovely warm bath gave her a renewed sense of energy as they all trooped up the stairs and turned left at the top. For the first time since she had arrived, she really paid attention to her surroundings. There was nothing restrained about the opulence of the massive house. Lush carpet was soft underfoot and numerous traditional paintings adorned the walls, conferring the impression that this was a house that had seen many generations of the same family. It was odd
to think that Gabriel had lived here as a boy. Was that why it had been so tempting to string her along under a phoney name when the chance had presented itself? Had the novelty of being anonymous been as powerful for him because of his fabulous background as the lure of celebrity might have been for someone who had come from nothing?

If only he had had a crystal ball and had seen that for every act there was always a consequence. Maybe then he might have stuck to what he had always known.

She blinked with a start when Maria paused to push open the door to Luke’s room and then, a few minutes later, the heavy wooden door that was next in line.

It was a vast room dominated by a four-poster bed, not the modern, undressed, minimalist version, but a four-poster bed of the old-fashioned variety that was only ever glimpsed nowadays in magazines or seen in period movies. It was spectacular enough to produce a gasp from Alex, as were the rest of the furnishings. The large, ornate dressing table, the rich royal-blue of the floor to ceiling curtains, the wardrobe with its panel of exquisitely fashioned glass, which was reflecting their images back at them as they stood in the doorway.

‘I have put you here…Gabriel’s room is in the other wing and I know you would have wanted to be close to your son in the room next door…’

Maria’s words echoed around her head and then crystallised slowly but surely as Alex’s wandering gaze finally alighted on the clutch of suitcases tucked neatly away in the corner of the bedroom. Hers, Luke’s…and Gabriel’s. Louis Vuitton rubbing shoulders with cheap and synthetic department store.

She looked round in confused horror, trying to meet Gabriel’s eye, but he was busy talking to his father while Luke hopped from one foot to the other, bored with the house tour and eager to get to the kitchen for whatever untold delights awaited him.

‘Um…’ Alex cleared her throat. ‘I don’t think this is quite right…’ she ventured hesitantly into a sudden bemused silence. ‘I can’t help but notice…well…’ She gestured to the offending pile of suitcases on the ground.

‘We will take care of these,’ Gabriel said smoothly, inserting himself between Alex and his parents and Maria’s puzzled face uncreased into a smile. Luke had slipped his hand into hers and was tugging.