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 prize-giving. 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 mid-flow 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.
‘You underestimate your pulling power, my darling,’ he murmured, stroking her with his voice until her face was red-hot.
‘What…what do you mean?’
‘You know exactly what I mean. You just want to hear me say it. Shall I tell you, my darling, so that you’re in no doubt? Or I could just…’ he lowered himself so that he was kneeling in front of her ‘…show you…hmm…? Do you like me like this…? On my knees in front of you…?’
Alex bit down on the whimper that threatened to escape and tried to give him a stern look, but he was already insinuating himself between her legs and playing with the soft cotton of her T-shirt. When his fingers brushed against the bare skin of her breast, she gasped and half closed her eyes.
‘You remembered…’ He shoved up the T-shirt and felt the swift kick of hungry craving.
‘Remembered what…?’
‘How much I like it when you don’t wear a bra. I love your breasts. Have I told you that before? But I think I might have forgotten what they taste like…’
‘Gabriel!’ Alex said in a desperate voice. ‘I’m trying to talk…’
‘And I’m listening. Really. I’m all ears. Don’t mind me.’ He delicately tickled the erect bud of her nipple with the tip of his tongue and when she squirmed and moaned softly, he had to struggle to contain himself.
‘The door…’
‘I’ll close it.’ He quietly shut the kitchen door and then stood for a few seconds, just looking at her sprawled in the chair, with her rucked T-shirt and the glistening disc of her nipple where he had been licking it. Her eyes were half closed and she was breathing softly.
Talk or no talk, she had agreed to be his wife and he savoured the taste of sweet elation as he strolled lazily to continue what he had started.
CHAPTER NINE
‘WE STILL need to talk.’ Alex felt that she had let the side down by falling at the first hurdle and making love with him. How could she have the serious talk she had intended on having when his legs were wrapped around hers and the covers were half off their bodies and she could only vaguely remember making her way up the stairs with him to her bedroom?
One minute she was busily trying to get a grip on the situation and the very next minute she had sabotaged her own good intentions and fallen back into bed with him when he’d crooked his finger and given her that smile of his that could unravel every thought in her head. The devastating effect he had had on her senses the first time round was nothing compared to the effect he was capable of having on her now. She closed her eyes in resigned despair as he pushed back her hair and deposited a kiss on her forehead.
‘So we do. You can’t accuse me of not being willing to listen.’
‘How could I have a conversation when you were…were…?’
‘Having fun with you?’ Gabriel laughed throatily, his good humour fully restored after an hour and a half of very satisfying lovemaking. He slipped his hand under the bed cover and idly toyed with her breast, liking the way it responded to his teasing fingers, even though they were both too spent at the moment to take that teasing touch any further.
‘There are a few conditions to my marrying you, Gabriel.’ Somehow it didn’t feel right to be having this kind of conversation when she was lying naked next to him, nor did she want to spoil the atmosphere of contentment between them but she knew the sort of man he was, the sort who would take her acquiescence for granted and expect her to do as she was told the minute that wedding ring was on her finger. Right now, she had a certain power over him because he fancied her but that power had a time limit and it was important for her to speak her mind now. Or forever, she thought with ironic humour, hold her peace.
‘Conditions? What are you talking about? What kind of conditions?’ He propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her with a perplexed frown.
‘I don’t want to live in London. I gave it a try because I felt that I had to escape and do something for myself after I had Luke and was back on my feet, but I prefer living in the country. I’m not saying that I want to move back to Ireland or anything like that, but I’d like to have some greenery around. Maybe somewhere just outside London so that it wouldn’t be too much of a headache for you to commute in.’
‘Agreed.’
‘You agree? Just like that?’
‘Do you think it might be more fun if I argued? Granted, make up sex can be good but it’s not worth the effort in this instance.’ Gabriel lay back, hands folded behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Being the dispenser of
someone else’s wishes felt good and, whilst he had never, not even for a passing second, considered living anywhere but in the thick of it, the prospect of a slightly less frenetic pace of life was not necessarily a bad thing. Train links into central London were quick and Luke would benefit from country living. What kid wouldn’t? Fresh air, open spaces…all that corny stuff countryphiles were ever eager to mouth on about now seemed a good idea.
‘What sort of house did you have in mind? Country manor? Thatched cottage? No, maybe not that. Converted chapel? Georgian splendour? Give me some details and I can get my people working on it.’
Alex was torn between amusement and annoyance. In Gabriel’s world, where having exactly what you wanted was only the snap of a finger away, choosing a house would really not even constitute a minor inconvenience. People to source the right one in the right place, whatever the cost and just maybe one viewing so that the box could be ticked and the green light given.
‘Which brings me to my next condition,’ Alex said carefully, which earned her another frowning glance.
‘What is this?’ Gabriel asked, controlling his irritation with difficulty. ‘A lesson for me on how to jump through hoops? I should tell you that that particular form of exercise isn’t something I plan on getting used to.’
‘Marriage is about compromise. I happen to be compromising a lot to marry you because I think it would be right for Luke.’ That sounded a great deal more noble than it felt because she couldn’t think of a single thing she wouldn’t toss to the four winds for the man lying next to her. ‘And I want him to be brought up with the values I grew up with,’ she continued hurriedly. ‘Respect for other people and determination to work hard. I don’t want him thinking that he’s better than anyone else because his father happens to have a bit of money.’
‘I have more than a bit.’
‘Having a house appear out of nowhere, like magic, isn’t the right way for him to start learning those life lessons.’
‘You are the most difficult woman in the world to please! You want to move to the country. I agree. But that’s not enough.’ He leapt out of bed and Alex sat up in consternation.
A Spanish Birthright aka The Secret Spanish Love-Child Page 14
