The Secret Spanish Love-Child (13 page)

‘You should have let me wait, Gabriel…’

‘Like I said, sweetheart. Don’t plan on getting much sleep tonight…’

And she didn’t.

A
LEX
shifted on the low futon-style bed and opened her eyes slowly. In terms of perfection, this moment of waking, with the mosquito net fluttering in the fragrant breeze that wafted through the open louvred doors, had to be right up there.

Gabriel would be walking along the beach with Luke, looking for shells or interesting pieces of driftwood. It had become something of a morning ritual since they had arrived on the island seven days ago.

Or was it six? Or eight? It had been alarmingly easy to lose complete track of time once they had left his parents’ home in the city and headed down to his secluded beach house that perched majestically above a cove where the water was as turquoise and as calm as anything she had ever seen in her life before. It was a setting that could have leapt straight out of the pages of a tourist brochure advertising exclusive homes. The house was open and modern, with a sprawling wooden veranda and bedrooms that opened on to the front lawns and overlooked spectacular views of the sea. To one side, the rectangular infinity pool was the perfect setting for their evening meals, light suppers prepared by one of the two housekeepers who kept everything in order when Gabriel wasn’t around. Which, she gathered, was actually most of the year. Ana and Edna had also proved to be immensely popular with Luke and, for the first time in four and a half years, Alex had been able
to do what many women with young children occasionally took for granted when they weren’t having to cope on their own. She had been able to relax.

And Gabriel had aided and abetted that. From that very first night sharing that bed, he had chipped away at her defences with his humour, his obvious enthusiasm to win over his son after their shaky start. So she had vowed to stick to her guns and not repeat their lovemaking…He had allowed her. Until, on night three, she had cracked and gone back into his arms.

And since then she had been on a self-justifying bandwagon. She had been weak, yes, but didn’t she deserve to snatch this time before grim reality back in England could take its toll? There would be no question of anything permanent in their relationship. In fact, Gabriel had said that himself, had told her that they were just getting closure. And if that had sent a shiver of bitter disappointment through her, she had quickly talked herself out of it because she was no longer the gullible kid she had once been. She had been a single mother for years. She had grown up and out of that obsessive, consuming love she had once felt for him. She was safe.

Now, she would happily argue with Gabriel if she didn’t agree with what he said. No longer did she creep around behind him with lovesick puppy eyes, deliriously happy to say
how high
? whenever he said
jump
.

She wasn’t sure what her parents, or her brothers, for that matter, would make of the situation. They knew that she was in Spain but their version of events had been severely edited. She had phoned and spoken to her mother a couple of times and had been vague in the face of direct questioning. Mostly, she had communicated with them by text and had been thankful for its deliberately short, uninformative format.

That awkward situation lying ahead was just something else that joined the other
something elses
waiting to be sorted out when the time came.

Stretching pleasurably, Alex slipped into a pair of shorts and a halter neck top which she had bought on one of the various shopping expeditions she had done whilst in the city.

Outside, the sun was already getting ready to unleash its full force and it was warm.

She took a minute to look round at her surroundings. Beautiful lawns, thickly planted with flowers of every bright hue, the glittering blue of the pool, the cool, airy luxury of the house behind her with its expansive wooden flooring. Every day, she felt the need to commit something new she had observed to memory, ready to be dusted down and examined at some future point in time when the reality of it had been lost.

She had even sneaked a few pictures on her mobile phone, although she knew that Gabriel would probably disapprove. He was passionate about his privacy. Which was why they were there in the first place.

She had only to walk for a few minutes before she spotted Luke and Gabriel on the beach, squatting by a rock pool, Gabriel’s hand protectively resting on his son’s stomach as Luke peered into the water.

The shadow she cast as she approached them alerted Gabriel to her presence and he looked up at her, shading his eyes with one hand.

His dark eyes gave her a leisurely once-over and he grinned as the colour crept into her cheeks. They had made love in more positions than he could remember and she
still
blushed whenever he looked at her!

‘Nice,’ he commented, while Luke frowned and poked his finger into the water, curious to see what the tiny fish in the rock pool would do.

Alex stooped down and made random conversation with her son while she waited for her heated blush to subside. But it was to no avail because back it came when Gabriel reached out to stroke the side of her arm with one finger.

‘Today,’ he said lazily, ‘I’m taking you somewhere special.’

‘I didn’t think we could get anywhere more special than this.’ In one quick flash her greedy eyes had taken in the khaki shorts, the loose T-shirt, his lean brown legs as he stooped to accommodate his son and she felt that familiar tingle in her breasts, the way her nipples tightened in expectation of being touched. The intensity and immediacy of her responses to him unsettled her but she had learned to deal with that by telling herself that she was just getting her fill of him while she could.

And it hadn’t escaped her notice that all talk of marriage had fallen by the wayside, even though she knew that it was the path his parents expected, although the subject had not once been openly breached. They undoubtedly knew their son well enough to realise that he didn’t take kindly to his boundaries being broached or perhaps they were giving him space to deal with the sudden developments in his life before trying to push him in another direction. Alex didn’t know.

‘Ana is going to have a special day with Luke…’

Luke’s ears pricked up at the sound of that and he demanded to know what was in store for him. The sun had darkened him and he slung one thin brown arm around Gabriel’s neck and looked at him with the same brown-eyed intensity that was so typically his fathers. More and more, when she looked at the pair of them, she was struck by the uncanny physical resemblances connecting them. Had Luke carried all those similar mannerisms, inherited from Gabriel, while he had still been in the womb?

While Gabriel told him about one of the local guys from the village, a personal friend and specialist kite maker who would be coming to teach him how to make his own kite, his every utterance was peppered with a deluge of excitable questions. Every so often Luke’s eyes would flick over to Alex, silently looking to her for support, then back to his father. To the innocent outsider, they would, she thought, seem to be the perfect family unit, which just went to show how deceptive outward appearances could sometimes be.

‘And now.’ Gabriel drawled lazily as they strolled back towards the house, ‘you and I are going to have a day out. I have a boat and you can’t see it from here, but it’s a twenty-five minute ride to an island. Just you, me and nature…Trust me, you’ll never have seen anything like it before…’

Luke was soon happily out in the back garden, intently watching Marco as kite number one was meticulously constructed. It had taken some doing to arrange this day to themselves and Gabriel intended to make full use of it. He had brought all his energies to work on making himself an indispensable part of Alex’s life, the challenge being that he did so without her even being aware of it. More than ever now, he knew that the unconventional relationship she advocated was not what he wanted. Having never felt any particular urge to procreate, he had now reached a point where the prospect of a ridiculous twenty-first century caring, sharing situation with the mother of his child and his son was unacceptable.

But he had known better than to voice his thoughts, instead allowing her to believe that the hotly passionate relationship in which they were now indulging was little more than a brief stroll down memory lane. She was clinging to the illusion that she wanted her independence but she would come to him. He knew it. Hadn’t she come to him with her body? Crept over to where he had been pretending not to notice her presence
and blissfully surrendered to something that was bigger and more powerful than she could control? The answer to that one was yes.

On all fronts, Gabriel was completely satisfied.

‘Who is going to drive the boat?’ she asked a little nervously. ‘You know I’m not good with all that sailing stuff.’

They had headed back to the bedroom and she was busy rummaging through her drawers in search of a bikini. Where they were going, she wouldn’t be needing one, but he let her rummage anyway, asking her to change in front of him.

‘You know how much I enjoy that,’ he said, his eyes caressing her as he lay on the bed and folded his hands behind his head.

‘Incidentally, I am going to drive. I refuse to have my day of peace and solitude with you cluttered by the presence of a boatman. Take your top off
very slowly
and then come closer.’

‘Don’t give me orders on how to change into a swimsuit!’ But Alex was laughing as she undid the little bow at the back of her neck and at her waist so that the flimsy halter top slid to the ground.

Gabriel’s bitter dark chocolate eyes flared with naked appreciation and she sauntered over to him, hands on her hips, her full mouth curved into a smile of pleasure and satisfaction. Out of all the uncertainties in her life just now, the one thing she was very sure of was the power of their mutual attraction. Gabriel wanted her, he really
wanted
her, even if she wasn’t a blonde bimbo with pneumatic breasts and big hair. He wanted her as much as she wanted him and, at least on that front, there was equality.

‘Closer,’ Gabriel growled, catching her hand and yanking her over so that she collapsed, laughing, on top of him. While
she protested about getting dressed, heading off, leaving early because she wouldn’t go unless he promised to drive the boat really, really slowly, he positioned her on top of him.

‘I agree with everything you say. Keep talking.’ He drew her down to the perfect level so that he could fasten his mouth around one breast and begin suckling on it as she supported herself in an arched position with the flat of her hands. The little shorts felt like an impossible barrier between them and she knew that she was getting wetter and wetter as he continued to lave her nipple with his tongue and mouth.

‘Now, now…’ he said, reluctantly pushing her away from him. ‘You really must stop distracting me. If we don’t get going…well…I’ll probably have to drive the boat really, really fast and I know how much you’d hate that…’

The boat, when they eventually made it there, was moored out of sight beyond the bend in the cove. Ana had prepared an elaborate picnic for them and Luke was so wrapped up in the business of trying to get a metre of tissue paper off the ground that he was barely aware of their departure.

The trip to the island was so beautiful and the weather so balmy that Alex forgot that being on the water induced seasickness. Or at least it had when she had been a child and had travelled to Normandy on a school trip in foul weather.

Also Gabriel was helpfully distracting her from the onset of any symptoms by insisting she see how to sail the boat and then making her recite all the technical terms, like a professor, so that they were at the island before she had time to think about herself and her queasy sea stomach.

And the island was beautiful.

‘I used to come here often,’ Gabriel confided. ‘The house has been completely modernised and renovated but it belonged to the family and we used to take a lot of holidays there. I can remember sailing across to this gem of an island with my father when I was a boy.’

Alex could imagine him doing the same with Luke but she didn’t say anything.

Out to impress, Gabriel gave her the full tour of the tiny island. The white sandy beach on which they had landed gave way to a thicket of trees and shrubbery but a path had been cut into the density and, in the heart of the island, a small, roughly fashioned cottage was the only sign of habitation.

Alex was impressed to death, as she had been with pretty much everything he had shown her over the few weeks they had been in Spain. Everything was testimony to a lifestyle which was ridiculously opulent and beggared belief.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked casually when they were finally back on the beach.

‘It’s beautiful, Gabriel. Everything I’ve seen since we came over here has been beautiful. Like out of a magazine. It’s amazing to think that you grew up with all of this.’ She now fully understood why he had been tempted to keep her in the dark about his fabulous legacy all those years ago. It must have been refreshing not to have dated a woman who knew exactly how much he was worth.

‘Of course—’ he gave an elegant shrug and pulled off his T-shirt ‘—my parents come from a different generation and a different place. Now, it would be madness to encourage Luke to think that all of this gives him a right to be lazy.’

‘Even though
you
obviously didn’t let it go to your head?’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment—’ he grinned at her and patted the space next to him on the towel, which he had spread on the sand under overhanging branches that reached out towards the sea ‘—considering you’ve told me a million times that I’m the most arrogant guy you’ve ever met. Not your kind of man at all.’ He waited for her to contradict the last part of his statement and was disproportionately irritated when she failed to take the bait.

‘You work hard.’ Alex approved of what he had said. She, too, didn’t want Luke to end up a spoiled brat. ‘Maybe that’s what I should have said.’

Gabriel hid his frown. ‘Of course, however down-to-earth we strive to be with him, he will always be able to enjoy considerable comfort…Frankly, I would like to bring him over to Spain as much as possible. Not just for the sake of my parents, who would be more than happy to travel to London to see him, but I find it extraordinarily relaxing to be in his company. It strikes me that I may have forgotten some of the simpler pleasures in life.’ He wondered whether he should press his point by insinuating that she, too, could enjoy such trips with them. He had tactfully avoided all mention of the future lying inevitably around the corner but perhaps his diplomacy had been misguided. For the very first time, he felt suddenly unsure of success. They made the perfect lovers and she was as obliging as he could ever have hoped for the minute she fell into his arms, but was it only lust that motivated her?