The Secret Spanish Love-Child (14 page)

Gabriel uneasily did a quick mental comparison of the woman he had now and the girl he had once possessed. The sex was as good…better even, if that were possible, but there the similarities ended. She was relaxed with him but no longer was she a slave to his every demand. Did he like that? Gabriel wasn’t sure. Given their situation, it would have been a lot easier if she had just surrendered to his superior logic.

‘I didn’t think you liked those simple pleasures.’ Alex sat down, clasped her arms around her knees and tilted her head to the sun, closing her eyes and enjoying the feeling of warmth on her face.

‘I liked them five years ago…’

Alex stilled. She had to fight against the temptation to be encouraged into thinking that the man lying on the towel, inches away from her, was the same man she had innocently
gone out with, believing him to be a carefree wanderer with great looks and an uncomplicated personality. He wasn’t. That guy was a myth. The real Gabriel snapped his fingers and watched while the rest of the world saluted and jumped to his orders.

‘The simple things in life are always the best,’ she said noncommittally, which was not what Gabriel wanted to hear.

‘Are you going to follow up that statement with the cliché about the best things in life also being free?’

Alex glanced down at him. His proximity was having its usual effect of scrambling her brains. She could hear the cool, jarring note in his voice and she was assailed by an intense desire to avoid arguing with him at all costs. The past three weeks had been a glorious ceasefire and she didn’t want to resume hostilities.

‘No. I’ve really enjoyed my time here and none of it was for free.’

‘Some of it was.’ Gabriel’s voice dropped a level and he pushed himself up to drop a kiss on her shoulder. ‘You smell of the sun,
cara
.’ He licked her shoulder, a quick, delicate flick of his tongue, and had her twisting round to face him.

Making love on the beach was something they hadn’t done. With Luke ever present and knowing that the two retainers at the house, along with the other incidental staff, were always liable to be somewhere in the vicinity, they had restricted themselves to the bedroom. Now, the prospect of making love with the sun on their bodies and the gentle rhythmic sound of the sea as background music was like a shot of adrenaline to Alex. When he carefully pulled down the strap of her bikini, she helped him along by unclasping it at the back, then she placed her hand on him, feeling his arousal and loving the way it throbbed at her touch.

A consummate lover, he had always been the one to insist on satisfying. This time, it was her turn to be in charge. If
she had had some of her scarves and a couple of handy posts sticking out of the ground, she would have tied him down, but instead she was obliged to order him not to move.

‘I’m not usually the one taking orders,’ Gabriel said with a sharp sense of anticipation, ‘but I’m willing to give it a go this time…’

It turned out to be easier said than done as he was forced to watch her do a leisurely, provocative striptease. There wasn’t much to remove but off came her top with agonising slowness and, by the time she was wriggling seductively out of her bikini bottoms, he was on the verge of losing control.

He had to close his eyes a couple of times because she was just such a turn on. Long rangy body, high breasts, no evidence of the baby she had borne years ago, although there were times when he had caught himself fantasising about how she might have looked as her belly grew with his baby inside her. No way was he going to add that further fantasy to the stockpile right now.

She offered every part of her body to his hungry mouth, allowing him to feast for a while before pulling back until he had to stop following orders and take her with a deep, possessive hunger that left them both spent and perspiring.

Between uninhibited lovemaking, and another session during which
she
was obliged to keep still while he tormented her with every sensuous touch imaginable, and their frequent trips to the sea, which was gloriously calm and warm, the exquisite picnic lunch was almost an anticlimax.

‘Enjoy yourself today?’ Gabriel asked, watching as she daintily nibbled at one of the sandwiches. He didn’t think that she was aware of what a splendid sight she made. Having rubbed her entire body with sunblock, taking his time over certain parts, which had reduced her to a quivering wreck, he had forbidden her to put her bikini on again so he could
fully appreciate every bit of her body as she sat, cross-legged, watching him with the same hunger as he was watching her.

‘No. It’s been hateful!’ She laughed and fed him some of her sandwich and then shivered as he took her finger into his mouth and sucked it thoroughly, his fabulous eyes never leaving her face.

‘One more night and then work beckons,’ he said, which was like a bucket of cold water being poured over her and she looked at him with consternation.

‘But…I thought we had a few days left…’

‘You and Luke have. Unfortunately, I received an email last night; there’s something of a crisis in one of my deals. I have no choice, my darling.’

‘So this whole
thing
was my equivalent of the last supper!’ She stood up and turned her back to him so that she could stick her clothes back on. She knew that she was being ridiculous. This
interlude
was not going to last for ever. She had known that all along. They had fallen back into bed because the lust was still there, hard and strong, but no amount of lust could change the reality of what was waiting for them back in England.

And she couldn’t let it. Because…because…

A tide of mortifying emotion swept to her face as she contemplated the pass to which she had come. Sleeping with the guy she had sworn to keep at a distance ever since he had returned to her life. The same guy who had used her and dumped her years ago had managed to infiltrate her system all over again. She had foolishly imagined that time had immunised her against his devastating personality. How wrong she had been! He had showered her with his undivided attention and single-minded sexual assault and she had fallen like a house of cards in a high wind.

And now she was in love with him all over again.

Released from the box in which she had desperately tried to shove it, the unvarnished truth rose up to stare her in the face. She couldn’t even use the excuse that he had pursued her because he hadn’t. No, he had waited and she had gone to him. Had he planned it that way or had that been just a pleasant train of events which he had seen no point in derailing?

‘Sit back down. You’re being ridiculous. Overreacting.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were going to be leaving tomorrow?’

‘Does it matter? I would have brought you here anyway.’ Gabriel stood up and put on his clothes.

‘Why?’

‘
Why?
What kind of a question is
that
?’ Gabriel was finding it difficult to understand where she was coming from. From his point of view, his behaviour from day one had been impeccable. And now, out of nowhere, she was throwing a hissy fit over nothing in particular. Hissy fits were normally the equivalent of death warrants as far as women were concerned, but of course he was in a place where his options were limited.

‘One last day of lust and passion before reality kicks in.’

‘Is that what you think?’ Gabriel spotted the chink in her reasoning before she had time to withdraw her impulsive remark. ‘That I’m going to get back to London and put what we have behind us?’ He walked up to her and tilted her adorable, suspicious face to his.

‘It’s what we agreed.’ Confusingly, Alex couldn’t quite remember the precise details of this agreement. They had been eroded by his stealthy, subtle attack.

‘Since when do we have to stick to an agreement that was made before we found out that what we had forgotten about each other wasn’t worth remembering?’ He kissed her tenderly
on her full, sulky mouth and felt her instant response. No matter that her head was shrieking at her to resist. Her body was obeying its own rules and he liked that.

Having not quite worked out how he would set about getting what he wanted, the opportunity now presented itself to him and since when had he ever been the kind of man to ignore a perfectly good opportunity?

He gave her time to breathlessly surface for air and then ran his hand along her side, down to her thighs, lingering on her inner thigh with delicate teasing fingers.

‘Stop it, Gabriel.’

‘You know you don’t want me to…You
like
me touching you…your mouth…your breasts…you like it when I get between your legs and taste your arousal…’

‘You’re not playing fair!’ Was that her voice? It sounded more of a low, husky, uncontrolled moan.

‘I don’t like playing fair. I like getting what I want. And what I want is
you
.’

He teased her a little more, letting his long, exploratory fingers drift across her stomach and circle her belly button, then he turned away so that he could start re-packing the picnic things, indiscriminately tipping them into the generous-sized basket before covering the lot with one of the linen tea cloths and heading, with his towel, to the boat.

‘Come on.’ He glanced over his shoulder to where she was standing, staring at him with a small frown. ‘We should get going, Alex. It’ll be dark very soon and when it gets dark on the water, it gets pretty disorienting.’

Giving her time to think about what he had just said, he helped her into the boat and got the motor going, sitting down to steer it away from the island.

‘I’ve never seen a sunset to compare with the ones you find here,’ Gabriel mused, thinking that he hadn’t exactly been sitting around looking at sunsets any time in the recent past. ‘I’d quite like to carry on sharing the experience with you.’

The lights of his house glittered like tiny stars in the distance as the glowing orange sun began its steady descent.

‘I don’t see how that’s going to be possible.’ Alex saw exactly how he might imagine that it would be possible.

‘Don’t you?’ He swerved the boat towards the mooring on the island. ‘I asked you once to marry me and I’m asking you again. This time I think you’ll find my reasons more persuasive. Okay, I will concede that you may have had doubts the first time I asked, but we have spent time together now and you have to agree that we’ve been getting on famously.’

Alex saw the white of his teeth as he grinned, looking away from her and out towards the jetty by his house.

‘That’s just sex,’ she mumbled and he shot her a look of censure.

‘Don’t denigrate what we have, Alex. You satisfy me and I’m pretty happy with that. Throw into the mix the fact that we have a child, a child who is now accustomed to having both his parents on tap, and what further reasons could you look for?’

Just love
, Alex thought in confusion. That one little emotion that had not once been allowed to break through the surface of his lust. And wouldn’t lust fade, anyway? Didn’t it always? Unless there was something more fundamental to tether it down?

‘How do you think Luke will feel if I disappear the second you return to England?’

‘He’s just a kid…’

‘And kids are not entitled to be hurt? Upset? Confused?’

‘I’m not saying
that
…’

‘No? Then I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ There was no way that Gabriel was going to let the sun go down on an argument. Not when he was stuck with having to return to London before the break of dawn the following morning. He spun her round to face him, his face hard and uncompromising.

‘Let’s get the facts down on the table,’ he said, grimly steamrollering her objections before she could open her mouth to voice them. He also slowed the boat because a captive Alex would be infinitely easier to handle. ‘I am a man of honour. I was prepared to marry you and you turned me down. I respected that. However, the situation has changed. You are now no longer just the mother of my child and someone I had a brief fling with years ago. We are lovers and I, for one, find that a very satisfying situation.’ An understatement if ever there was one. She had managed to eclipse the memory of every other woman he had slept with, which was no mean feat. Considering she was now bound to him with bonds that were stronger than steel, that was nothing short of being an eminently desirable bonus. What if the years and the responsibility of single motherhood had turned her into a hag? Of course, he would still have proposed, but how much more tedious the situation would have been. As it stood, he was filled with a sense of well-being at how things had turned out.

‘You can’t deny that the past few weeks have been good. I’ve made substantial progress with my son and I don’t relish the thought of having that come to an end and don’t even think of giving me a patronising lecture on the richly rewarding relationship a father can have with his son with arranged visits twice a week with the occasional weekend thrown in. What we have is a good thing and marriage will make it better.
Stability for Luke and goodbye to all stress and strain for you. No longer will you have to do things on your own. This was meant to be.’

Alex was silent. She felt manoeuvred although every word he had spoken had been the truth. What they had had been good. Was there such a thing as
too good
? Because the fly in the ointment, for her, was that, like a fool, she had hurtled back into his arms and allowed him back into her heart. The sentiment was not reciprocated. For him, their rekindled sex life was proof positive that the traditional outcome he wanted was for the taking. By
meant to be
, he really was saying
the way I intended it to be
.

‘Did you plan all this?’ she asked in a small voice, willing back foolish tears.

Gabriel frowned.
Plan
, he considered, had never had a more inhumane sound and he didn’t like that. He had lavished her with attention and had recaptured her sexy body with an enthusiasm that even he had not foreseen. He had made gigantic strides with Luke and had kept a watchful and protective eye on her when she had met his parents, sensitive to her insecurities. To try and imply that his consideration had been grounded in an ulterior motive was unacceptable.