The Secret Spanish Love-Child (6 page)

‘When are you going to…tell the people that you know? Your family? Your fiancée?’ she said awkwardly, to cover the silence.

‘Immediately.’

She breathed a little sigh of relief. Once that hurdle was over, once the shock was absorbed and the situation accepted by the people who mattered to him, they would be able to discuss arrangements for him to see his son. She wondered how Cristobel would receive the news. Not well, she anticipated, but it was hardly as though he had been unfaithful.

‘Then, maybe, when you’ve done that…well, and I will have told Luke about you, of course…we can try and sort stuff out…’

‘Sort stuff out…?’

‘Yes. You know. Visiting rights. I’m really happy for you to see Luke whenever you want to…’ She had stood up in preparation to seeing him to the door but now her voice trailed off because he wasn’t saying anything. And he was looking at her as though she had a screw missing. And neither of those things added up to a man on the verge of departure, having settled matters.

‘Visiting rights?’

Alex detected the odour of a trick question and she looked at him warily. ‘Yes? Visiting rights? You come to see Luke and take him somewhere for an afternoon?’

‘You don’t really think that that’s going to work, do you Alex?’

‘Not going to work?’ Alex repeated in dumb founded confusion. ‘Why wouldn’t it work? It’s what everyone else does when their relationship falls apart and there’s a child involved. Not that we ever
had
a relationship.’

‘Since when am I
everyone else
?’

She was struggling to get the gist of what he was saying but her mind wasn’t obliging. Had she misread all the signs and signals? Was he implying that his intention was to stroll out through her front door and disappear over the horizon without a backward glance at his son? Since that seemed highly implausible, she settled on the other, more likely option. He was engaged, he had his life in order. He didn’t need a murky, unwanted past misadventure rising up to wreak havoc with his perfect life and so he would keep it a secret.

‘I don’t intend Luke to be hidden away!’ She sprang to her feet, shaking, her hands on her hips. ‘He deserves better than that! So, if that’s the road you’re going down, then you’d better clear off! I can’t believe this. I really, can’t, Lucio! Gabriel!’

‘Sit down!’

‘Stop giving me orders when you’re in my house!’

‘Then stop behaving like a child!’ Gabriel had no idea what she was talking about and he recognised that she was in a pretty hysterical frame of mind. She thought he was a louse and, while he was prepared to concede some mistakes made on his part, they were mistakes only in retrospect and only in view of the current extraordinary circumstances. While he was, once again, dealing with the unique temptation to lose his temper, he noticed that she was no longer shouting. Like
a burst balloon, she seemed to have suddenly deflated. Her shoulders were slumped and, as he stood up and approached her, he could see tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

She wasn’t a crier. She’d once told him that crying was for small, dainty girls, that tears just didn’t suit her. Even when he had walked away from her
for the best possible reasons
, she had been distraught and her eyes had filled up and her lips had wobbled but she had managed to hang on to her self-control. So to see her so utterly crushed did something to him.

‘Why are you so good at making me feel so bad?’ he murmured half to himself, reaching into his pocket and extracting a pristine white handkerchief. He didn’t think she had heard him but once the words were out of his mouth, he realised that no truer ones had ever been spoken because, lurking just below the surface, just beyond the reach of consciousness, there had always been the unpleasant suspicion that he had not behaved properly towards her. Seeing her again had brought all those hidden feelings rushing to the top.

He pushed the handkerchief into her hands and then, still working on automatic, he put his arms around her. It was electrifying. His mind cleared of everything but the sensation of her against him. It was hauntingly familiar, from the length of her to the slenderness of her boyish frame. Her breasts, small and rounded and soft, pressed against his chest and he was overwhelmed by a suffocating desire to shove up her top and slide his hands underneath her bra so that he could caress her. The swiftness of his response, almost as though his body had been waiting for just this moment for a very long time, galvanized him into action and he released her abruptly and turned away.

Alex sniffed into the handkerchief, missing the sudden lack of warmth while cursing herself for having disintegrated like a fool in front of him.

‘What sort of man do you think I am?’ Gabriel demanded, sinking into the chair, half conscious of his inappropriate arousal. ‘What would give you the idea that I intend to keep my own son out of sight?’

‘You’re not interested in visiting rights.’ Alex blew her nose and subsided back into her chair. For once, she wished that she was blessed with long hair so that she could let it fall against her face like a silky curtain, blocking out her weepy, puffy eyes and blotchy skin. ‘Which means that you’re not committed to seeing Luke. I realise that all this must be a terrible shock for you, but…’

‘Stop trying to second guess me. I intend to take my responsibilities head on. I won’t be abandoning my own son because he doesn’t happen to fit in with my lifestyle. But you’re right. It’s a great shock and it will be an enormous upheaval.’ He sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair.

‘It’s not as bad for you as it could be,’ Alex said with a stab at optimism.

‘Run that by me?’

Her eyes tangled with his dark, piercing gaze and she felt her bones turn to water. This was precisely the sort of out-of-control feeling that she had to stop.

‘I’m sure Cristobel would understand. I mean, it was something that happened before you met her! In fact, chances are that she’ll feel sorry for you.’

‘Really? I’m not seeing it.’

Frankly, nor could Alex but, before she could plough on with her upbeat approach, he raised his hand to silence her.

‘I will naturally have to announce this situation to the world,’ he said heavily. ‘Starting with my parents.’ He imagined their disappointed faces. They had both seen it as their mission to marry him off and the upcoming wedding had been planned meticulously for months. He had distanced himself from as much of the tedious detail as he could get away with,
but he still knew that his parents were like a couple of kids on Christmas Eve with their excited preparations and never ending lists of people to invite.

‘Then there is Cristobel. There is no question that the wedding will have to be called off.’

For a few seconds, Alex wondered whether she had heard correctly and she stared at him with a blank, uncomprehending face.

‘What are you talking about?’ she asked in genuine bewilderment.

Gabriel wondered whether she could really be that naive. Hadn’t she already clocked that, by detonating her little hand grenade, she was, in passing, doing herself a massive financial favour? A quick glance around him was enough to confirm that hers was a life devoid of any luxury.

‘You don’t think that I would really agree to have my son brought up in these conditions, do you?’

‘These
conditions
? There’s nothing wrong with where we live! Have you any idea how hard I’ve worked to be able to afford this place? Even with Mum and Dad having to help out now and again?’

‘Yes, and here’s where I come in. You can start relaxing.’

Having digressed, Alex brought the conversation back to its origin and again asked him what he meant by having to call off his wedding.

‘I have a child and no child of mine will be raised illegitimate. Connect the dots, Alex.’

‘Are you asking me to
marry you
?’

‘I don’t see all that many choices staring me in the face, do you?’

Alex felt the weight of pain settle in her chest like a rock. Five years ago, she could have thought of nothing better than to receive a marriage proposal from this man. She would
have abandoned all thoughts of a university career without a backward glance. Now here he was, years down the road, proposing marriage because he could think of no other choice, given the situation in which he had found himself dragged. Did he expect her to feel
grateful
? She sincerely hoped not because gratitude was way down the list of things she was currently feeling.

‘Okay. So let me get this straight. You would break off your engagement to Cristobel, dump all your wedding plans to marry me because I happen to be the mother of a son you never knew you had.’

‘Like I said. Not too many options staring me in the face.’ Gabriel was surprised to find that he felt a lot less disturbed at this eventuality than he would have expected. Why was that?

Never given to the pointless luxury of introspection, it crossed his mind that his choice to marry Cristobel had perhaps been the result of silent pressure from his parents and a general logical awareness that marriage was the next step. Cristobel ticked all the boxes and she had been more than eager to oblige. On paper, it had had everything going for it. Until now. On paper, this arrangement he was proposing not only made more sense but was, in fact, a necessity.

‘We’ll have to get it done sooner rather than later,’ he mused, thinking of his parents and bracing himself for the inevitable ugly fallout. ‘My parents will doubtless be disappointed at the turn of events but knowing that we have married and given my son the Cruz surname should go a little way to easing the situation.’ He thought that Cristobel would be a rather different matter. And then there were all those wedding arrangements to un-arrange. And the further hassle of press intrusion. Like it or not, his was a public face. He would have to act swiftly to avoid even the merest whiff of a scandal.

‘I could arrange something quiet for the weekend.’ He glanced quickly at his watch and frowned. ‘Once that’s out of the way, we can go somewhere abroad until the fuss dies down. Naturally, I will only be able to be with you for a very short while. It would be impossible to leave my business concerns for too long…’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’

‘I know.’ Gabriel’s mouth twisted into a dry smile. ‘You must find it almost beyond belief that you’ve managed to hit jackpot. Who would have thought it?’

‘I have no intention of marrying you.’

‘You really don’t mean that,’ Gabriel said patiently.

‘No, but I really
do
,’ Alex said, her pulse leaping with anger and loathing. ‘First of all, we’re not living in the Dark Ages.
You
might think that sacrificing your life because of some warped sense of family honour is the thing to do, but
I
don’t.
Secondly
, Luke deserves more than the two of us trapped in a loveless marriage!’ She could see his face becoming more coldly disapproving by the second but there was no way that she was going to be browbeaten into doing something that was all wrong. ‘Do you really imagine that I’m so pathetic and desperate that I would accept marriage to you in these circumstances?’

‘Wasn’t it the thing you wanted most when we were together?’ Gabriel said with cutting smoothness.

‘That was
years
ago! Believe it or not, I’m a different person now!’

‘How different?’ Gabriel murmured and, just like that, Alex could feel the atmosphere between them subtly alter. His eyes did a lazy sweep of her body and came back to rest on her flushed face. That kick of awareness that had sprung from nowhere earlier on resurged back into life. He had a rich, graphic fantasy of taking her to bed again, feasting on
the body the way he used to. He wondered how pregnancy had changed it and the craving to satisfy that curiosity hit him swift and hard.

So wouldn’t that be a great bonus to the whole sorry situation? he wondered. If he was to be married to her, then why shouldn’t sex play a part in its success? As if his imagination had suddenly been given the green light, the urge to take her was more powerful than anything he had known before and, why kid himself, it had been there the second he had seen her in his office. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and tried to focus.

Alex looked at him and fought against the tingly feeling she was experiencing, as though she were being intimately caressed, even though he wasn’t even near her. ‘I think it’s time you went home, Gabriel and gave some thought to how we’re going to deal with this
in a realistic way
.’

‘This is a supremely realistic way of dealing with the situation.’

‘Not for me, it isn’t.’

For the first time, it was beginning to dawn on him that his marriage proposal might truly have met with a negative response. Her lips were tightly pursed and her tilted face smouldered with stubbornness. What the hell, he thought, was the problem here? Hadn’t he just done the most decent thing possible?

‘I don’t intend to be shackled to someone who would rather be somewhere else,’ Alex continued, just in case he wasn’t getting the message.

‘This isn’t about you; it’s about our child.’

‘A child you don’t even know!’

‘Naturally, getting to know him will take time.’

‘Good. I’m glad you said that,’ Alex inserted quickly, thinking on her feet, ‘because that should be your first step.’

Gabriel frowned. ‘First step?’

‘Get to know Luke. Take him out. Incorporate him as part of your life. It’s not going to be easy. You’ve suddenly found yourself landed with a four-year-old child and you have zero experience of children…’

Gabriel’s sharp brain moved rapidly on to another track. ‘Of course. And what are the other steps in this realistic scenario of yours?’ he asked with a slow smile that sent shivers racing through her. ‘Should I do the modern day thing and proceed with my marriage plans?’ There was no chance of that but he allowed a few seconds of silence, during which she might contemplate that alternative route. ‘Needless to say, Cristobel, as my wife, would have enormous input into all decisions taken regarding Luke. How do you feel about that?’