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Gabriel stiffened and tore his mouth free. Chest heaving, he drew his thumb across her lower lip. “We will continue this later,” he promised, his voice a husky rasp against her sensitized nerve endings.
“I look forward to it.”
She received the briefest of smiles before he turned to face his private secretary. Released from the compelling grip of his gaze, Olivia had a hard time maintaining her composure. The kiss, although cut short, had been everything a woman craved. Passionate. Masterful. A touch wicked. She locked her knees and moderated her breathing while she listened to Gabriel’s conversation with his secretary.
Stewart cleared his throat again. “Sorry to interrupt, but the media found out about your daughters and Lord Darcy is meeting with your parents.”
Distantly, she became aware that Stewart was filling in Gabriel rapid-fire style about what had been on the television this morning.
“How did they get wind of it so fast?” Gabriel demanded.
Not even the ice in his voice could banish the lingering warmth Olivia felt from his kiss.
Stewart came up with the most obvious source. “The lawyer might have gone to them.”
“Unlikely. He had nothing to gain.”
“Someone in the palace, then.”
“Who knew last night?”
“The maids who were tasked with preparing the nursery,” Stewart said. “But they’ve worked for the palace for over a decade.”
Olivia considered the one who’d been straightening her room at two in the morning. The strangeness of it struck her again, but surely the palace staff was carefully screened and the woman had merely been doing as she said.
“The nanny.” Olivia knew with a sinking heart that this had to be the source of the leak. “The one I had escorted off the property.”
Stewart considered this. “The lawyer assured me she’d been kept in the dark about the twins’ parentage.”
“But that was before they’d been brought to the palace,” Gabriel said.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia murmured, aware she’d committed her first huge mistake as Gabriel’s fiancée. “I shouldn’t have taken it upon myself to remove her.”
“She was the wrong caretaker for the girls and you had their best interests at heart.” Gabriel offered her a reassuring nod. “Besides, it was going to be impossible to keep the twins hidden for long.”
Although she was accustomed to life in the public eye, she’d never been the focus of such frenzied interest on the part of the media, and the upcoming wedding had stirred them like a cane striking a wasp nest.
“If we present a united front,” Olivia said, feeling like his partner for the first time, “I’m sure everything will blow over.”
Gabriel took her hand and scorched a kiss across her knuckles. “Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
* * *
Hand in hand, Olivia and Gabriel entered the salon most often used by the family for its proximity to the back garden and the views of the park beyond. They found Christian and Ariana there. Gabriel caught sight of the television and heard the reporter. The amount of information the news channel had gleaned about the twins’ arrival late last night revealed that someone inside the house must have been feeding them information. Gabriel went cold as the reporter speculated on whether or not the powerful Sherdana royal family had paid Marissa to go away or if all along she’d hidden her daughters to keep them from being taken away from her.
“They may be painting us as the bad guys,” Christian commented, “but at least they’re not claiming we’re weak.”
Gabriel didn’t reply to his brother’s remark as Marissa’s face came on the screen. As the narrator gave a rundown of her career, Olivia moved as if compelled by some irresistible force, stepping closer to the television. Dismay rose in Gabriel as one after another, the photographs of his former lover on the covers of Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar flashed on the screen. Her legs looked impossibly long. Her face, incredibly beautiful.
Gabriel knew his daughters would be as exquisite. Would they follow in their mother’s footsteps and pursue careers in fashion? Photographers would stand in line to take their picture. They’d make an incredible pair. But was that any way for an Alessandro to make a living?
The question forced Gabriel to consider his daughters’ place in his household. They were illegitimate. With their mother’s death, that situation could never be rectified. An ache built in his chest for Bethany and Karina. At their age they would retain few memories of their mother. They’d never again know her love.
When the television began showing images of Gabriel and Marissa together, laughing, arms around each other, looking happy and very young, he realized Olivia had gone still. Picture after picture flashed on the screen, and many of them weren’t paparazzi shots. There were photos taken of them in private at friends’ homes, even a couple when they’d vacationed on a private island in the Caribbean.
Gabriel’s disquiet grew as Olivia’s attention remained glued to the news footage that recapped his turbulent years with Marissa. Naturally the reporters made their relationship sound more dramatic, the end more tragic than it actually had been.
While he watched, Olivia’s private secretary approached her and spoke softly in her ear. She nodded and came to stand before Gabriel.
