The Secret Spanish Love-Child (16 page)

‘Where in London?’

‘Where do you think, Gabriel? My house, of course.’

‘We’ll have to do something about that,’ he murmured, half to himself.

‘I’d like to talk to you, but not on the phone. Face to face. Would you be able to get away some time later this evening?’

‘I can get away right now.’

‘What about those wall to wall meetings?’

‘You’d be surprised how flexible they could be.’

‘No…’
Right now
seemed a little too sudden. ‘I need to settle in for a bit. There’s stuff to do around here.’

‘Stuff to do? What stuff?’ Gabriel frowned because
stuff
had never been offered up as an excuse not to see him by any woman.

‘I need to get Luke changed and fed and I need to unpack and have a shower and wash my hair…Why don’t you come around six-thirty? You can have some time with Luke and then we can…chat. I’ll fix something to eat. Although I’m not sure what I’ve got in the fridge. Actually, I haven’t got anything in the fridge. Maybe I could pop out and buy one or two things…’

‘
I’ll
bring something over!’

‘You don’t know what I need.’

‘You need food. I’ll bring food.’

‘Okay.’ She resisted the temptation to ask whether he knew where his local supermarket was and then concluded that he would probably send someone out to buy a few items on his behalf.

Would this be their life together? Extreme wealth and privilege that would inevitably remove Luke, and her, from the realms of the ordinary? Did she want that for her son? She realised that she didn’t. She had had a richly, rewarding and very grounded upbringing and that was something she intended to confer upon her son.

‘And I don’t want to be fussy here,’ she said, as gently as she could, predicting a blank wall of incomprehension that would greet her conditions, ‘but Luke’s had a pretty rich diet for the past few weeks. It would do him good to have simple home-cooked fare.’

‘Okay. You’re losing me here.’ Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair and fought off a feeling of having suddenly been dumped in quicksand. He had no idea what she was talking about but, strangely enough, he would still have had the conversation, given the choice between that and his meeting. ‘He’s had the finest food money could buy in Spain. Pretty healthy too.’ He frowned. ‘I’m sure there was lots of fish.’

‘Maybe you could just pick up some bread and butter and other essentials and some baked beans. Oh, and something simple for us to eat.’

‘Simple like what?’

‘I’ll leave it up to you. Anyway, I think I hear Luke. I’ve left him in the sitting room watching a cartoon. He’s missed that a bit, watching cartoons, I think…See you later.’

Gabriel gazed at the phone in stupefaction as he heard the distinctive sound of a disconnected line.

However, instead of fully appreciating the rest of his day and proceeding with the important business of running his empire, he managed to find himself wandering around a supermarket two hours later with a trolley and not much of an idea as to what to put in it.

At six-thirty, Alex opened the door to a dishevelled-looking Gabriel, still in his suit and holding three carrier bags with a couple more on the ground by his feet.

‘I come complete with shopping. I can’t overestimate that achievement, considering I had to battle with a trolley that seemed to have a mind of its own.’ She looked fresh and clean and sexy-as-hell in a pair of old jogging bottoms and a T-shirt that barely skimmed her flat, tanned stomach.

‘So I see. Come on in. Luke’s been clamouring for you.’

She opened the door, feeling very ordinary next to him, and Luke bounded out behind her like an eager puppy hearing the sound of its master’s footsteps. Several drawings were thrust at Gabriel, who looked at them with a gravity that thrilled Luke to death and made Alex smile because representational art was not exactly Luke’s forte. Objects were pointed out with engaging earnestness and all adult conversation was lost in the deluge of excitable childish chatter.

‘You bought the baked beans.’ She held up a four pack and turned it around with an expression of mock wonder. ‘I didn’t think you’d remember.’

So it was baked beans on toast with cheese for Luke and only when he had finally been settled into bed did she and Gabriel reconvene in the kitchen.

Having felt calm and controlled amidst the chaos of having Luke around as the centre of attention, she was now very much aware of Gabriel’s
presence
, that certain something he possessed that allowed him to own the space around him, and unfortunately her with it.

‘You never answered my question…’ His dark-as-night eyes roamed over her until she turned pink under the scrutiny.

‘What question?’

‘Did you miss me?’

Stupid question
, Alex thought.
Did a fish miss water when it was removed from it?
He hadn’t come any closer to her.
In fact, he had adopted a seat at the table while she remained standing, leaning against the kitchen counter, but she still felt as though she was being touched.

‘Is sex all you think about?’

‘It’s definitely been on my mind pretty much since I returned to London.’

Alex wondered whether she should now be expected to simper with pleasure. She folded her arms and delivered a long, cool look which was like water off a duck’s back, apparently, because Gabriel matched her look with an amused gleam in his eyes.

‘Is the Ice Queen back in residence?’

‘There’s more to life than sex.’

‘Really?’ He threw her a wolfish grin. ‘I wish you’d run those alternatives by me. I’m all ears.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Gabriel! You are
so
childish sometimes.’

‘It’s so refreshing being with a woman who feels free to criticise me,’ he said with infuriating good humour. ‘I didn’t know what you wanted to eat, by the way, so I bought a variety of things.’

‘So I saw.’ She turned to glance at the improbable stack of items residing on her kitchen counter. Fresh tiger prawns and fillet steak nudged shoulders with lots of attractive jars and bottles containing interesting-sounding sauces whilst essentials such as eggs, milk and cheese had obviously not found favour, due to their lack of immediate sex appeal. She sighed. Even when it came to food, Gabriel would always make a beeline for whatever was easiest on the eye.

She began scrutinising the products and finally did the best she could with the prawns and whatever sauces seemed the least flamboyant.

‘I’ve given a lot of thought to what you said about the benefits of getting married,’ she said casually with her back to him, even though she could feel his eyes boring into her, making her clumsy with the knife.

‘And…?’ Gabriel found that he was holding his breath. Ridiculous.

‘And I’ve decided that you’re right.’
Keep it on a business level
, Alex reminded herself.
Use the language he understands.
She flicked on the stove, busying herself with heating the sauces, while her heart continued to pound like a jack hammer inside her.

Eventually, when she could no longer hide behind the business of stirring a sauce and watching a pot of pasta boil, she turned round to look at him.

God, why did he have to be so
beautiful
? He would object to that description, but he really was
beautiful
and that sheer overwhelming, masculine beauty made it doubly difficult to talk to him with the detachment she needed. She drew in a shaky breath and moved to sit opposite him.

‘Good. I knew you would come to your senses sooner or later.’

‘You’ve become an important part of Luke’s life and it would be wrong to yank him away when he’s become accustomed to you. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to take that prolonged holiday in Spain. It might have been better for you to get to know him over here, on his own territory, where he could have maintained some kind of a distance…’

Gabriel’s mouth tightened. ‘Is it your mission,’ he asked softly, ‘to find things to say that enrage me?’

‘Of course not!’ And nor had she been fair. Didn’t she
want
what was best for Luke? Those snatched weeks in Spain had been the happiest in her son’s life. But somewhere inside her was the voice of self-protection telling her that she needed to
make sure that Gabriel didn’t think that he had scored a home run, that it was essential to maintain
some
distance between them, even if that distance was a front.

‘I’m saying that I feel I’ve been put in the position where I haven’t got much of a choice…’

‘And I should feel better? Wrong choice of wording.’

‘Sorry, but it’s the truth.’ She remembered Cristobel, the spurned ex-fiancée. She remembered his threats that he would find someone else if she walked away from him. Both were significant markers in indicating the direction she should choose to go and a complete cave-in wasn’t on the signpost.

Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair and gave her a dark, fulminating look. ‘I don’t want to have an argument with you,’ he told her with what he considered considerable self-restraint. ‘You have made me very happy in agreeing to be my wife. We should be celebrating.’ He stood up and fetched them both glasses. He had bought three bottles of wine. He opened the Chablis now and poured them both a glass, while she set the plates on the table in silence, thinking about phase two of what she needed to say.

‘Okay,’ Alex cleared her throat and gazed down at the food, which looked unappetising, despite the
no expense spared
approach to food shopping Gabriel had clearly taken. She sipped some of the wine, which was delicious. ‘There are just a few ground rules I think we need to get straight before we go ahead with this…um…plan…’

Gabriel frowned. He didn’t care for the word
plan
, even though he would have been the first to admit that marriage as a sensible merger had always been his way forward. He had become engaged to Cristobel because it had made sense at the time, and he had proposed to Alex because of the situation in which he had found himself. He was programmed into the ways of tradition. It would have been unthinkable to have continued his relationship with Cristobel, given the
circumstances. On every front, he would readily have admitted that marrying Alex was the most logical, indeed inevitable, course of action. But, somehow, he didn’t like to think that she was beginning to see it his way. It was a thought that confused him.

‘
Ground rules?
What
ground rules
? We’re not planning a military campaign.’

‘I used to think that marriage was all about romance but now I realise that it’s all about a sensible outcome. I realised that in Spain when I saw how happy Luke was, having both parents on tap. He’s only young now, but that will become more and more important the older he gets. I never thought I’d agree with you when you first asked me to marry you because it made sense. I couldn’t think of marriage to anyone in terms of a balance sheet but…’ she shrugged and looked away ‘…you were right and I was wrong.’

Gabriel wondered how it was that being right sounded so pointless. Hadn’t he got what he had wanted? Yes, he had! He focused on that and shook off his feelings of dissatisfaction.

This didn’t seem to be the right conclusion to good news. Shouldn’t they be making love right about now?

‘What,’ Alex asked with genuine curiosity, ‘turned you off the concept of marrying for love? I mean, your parents are so happy and so in love with one another…’

‘…That it should have washed off on me somehow?’ Gabriel flushed darkly. He had always felt the weight of expectation on his shoulders. That he would fall madly in love, get married and live in perfect bliss with a litter of kids until the day he died. ‘I left home at sixteen to board and then university here and, except for a few breaks in between…’ one of them being the very break that had landed him in this situation ‘…I was destined to carry the weight of my father’s legacy on my shoulders. At the time, it was going through some financial troubles. Appalling management in some of its branches.
Trouble with unions in other parts. I buried myself deep in my work. There was a lot to do and I was surrounded by other people who were similarly committed to long hours and one hundred per cent dedicated service to the various companies. You’d be surprised how many marriages fall by the wayside when there’s no husband in evidence for little Johnny’s prizegiving. You can say that that was more of a learning curve for me than my parents’ blissful contentment.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Alex murmured, truly shocked. ‘What’s the point in working twenty-four hours a day when you haven’t got the time to enjoy the fruits of your labours?’

‘Spare me the philosophizing.’ Gabriel shifted uncomfortably and shot her a veiled, brooding look because he had heard that refrain a thousand times from his mother until she had eventually given up.

‘So what’s the point in getting married if you’re never going to be around for Luke anyway?’

‘Look, shall we go and discuss this somewhere a little more comfortable? These chairs aren’t meant for a guy as big as me.’

Which had the immediate effect of distracting Alex in midflow as her gaze travelled over him, taking in his drop dead good looks and the spread of his muscular thighs on the small chair.

When she raised her flustered eyes to him, he was grinning at her. ‘So,’ he drawled, ‘where does the good sex feature in this business deal you’ve agreed to?’

‘I…I know what you’re trying to do…’ Alex licked her lips nervously and wondered at the speed with which she had been derailed.

‘What’s that?’

‘You’re trying to distract me.’

‘By telling you that I’m not very comfortable in this Goldilocks chair?’ To emphasise his point, he shifted and then
stood up to flex his muscles. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white work shirt and Alex stared weakly and compulsively at the dark hair on his forearms.

‘I was saying…’

‘I heard you. You think I’ll stick a wedding band on your finger and then disappear back off to work, only to resurface when my son’s due to graduate from university.’ He took the two steps needed to get to where she was sitting with an expression of rigid intent that Gabriel found strangely cute and endearing, and he bent over to support himself on the arms of her chair.