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Gaby patted the old lady’s thin hand comfortingly. ‘I know...’
‘So, go and deal with yours...sensibly,’ Clara stressed. ‘I’ll watch Alexios until you’re ready to introduce him to his father.’
Gaby was too respectful to tell the older lady just how far removed she was from the point of introducing her son to his very reluctant parent. Instead, she nodded as she watched a tall, frighteningly familiar figure clad in a winter coat and dark suit literally step over the low garden wall and head across the lawn to the rarely used farmhouse front door. She felt sick with stress, but her tummy was twisting with a fury she could not suppress. How dared Angel track her down after the way he had treated her at their last meeting?How dared he?There was nothing even slightly sensible about Gaby’s attitude to such an incursion into her much-cherished privacy.
As the front doorbell wheezed from long disuse, Gaby glimpsed her reflection in the hall mirror, her mass of copper hair tamed and anchored somewhat messily to the back of her head, her flushed face bare of cosmetics. So, she wasn’t exactly looking her best and why would she even think about something as trivial as her appearance at such a moment?
Her rage at Angel’s characteristic chutzpah simply boiled over. In the back of her mind were all the times she could have done with the support of her child’s father in recent months, not least when she had struggled to cope with a newborn’s demands just after her C-section or during the many disrupted and sleepless nights that had followed before Alexios had eased into a routine. There had been the rather frightening knowledge that, while friends might help, she was essentially alone and had to handle her own emergencies. Becoming a single parent with that awareness was very stressful and in the early days she had had nightmares about what would happen to Alexios if anything were to happen to her.
Gaby jerked open the front door without unhooking the security chain that allowed it to open only a few inches. Through the gap, though, she saw Angel, with his smoulderingly beautiful face that could make angels weep and poets sigh. Silky black hair flopped above his brow and striking tawny eyes set off flawless cheekbones and a full sensual mouth. Once one glance at him had sent wanton shimmers of excitement travelling through her, but this time around seeing Angel was like having an ice cube trail down her rigid spine as she deliberately chose to remember the humiliation he had doled out to her that day in the London hotel.
‘I realise that you’re probably surprised by my arrival.’
‘Gobsmacked!’Gaby shot back at him with deliberate vulgarity.
‘May I come in?’ Angel dealt her a gleaming narrow-eyed appraisal, the kind of rapier look royalty wore like a blazing shield of confidence, warning her that he was not expecting to meet with any opposition. His audacity only inflamed her more.
‘No!’Gaby snapped caustically and she slammed the door shut again. Spinning in a rapid arc, she folded her arms and paced the narrow hall.
Angel pressed the bell again. ‘I’m not leaving,’ he announced from outside, that perfect diction of his enunciating every syllable with clarity.
Gaby gritted her teeth and only just resisted the childish urge to drag the door open again and scream at him. Nobody could unleash her temper more easily than Angel.
‘Is this what you call adult behaviour?’ Angel enquired sibilantly from behind the glass door.
Her hands clenched into fierce fists. Had she had a brick in her hand she would have thrown it at him. Instead, she paced up and down the hall, battling to get her tempestuous emotions in check. He was so cool and calm, and it inflamed her when she thought of what he had madeherendure.
Yet she also knew that what she was feeling wasn’tallAngel’s fault. Time had made her more honest with herself. She had been madly in love with Angel at university and he had hurt her badly. It had not been a girlish infatuation that she could quickly put behind her, it had been full-blown over-the-top love, bordering on obsession. And, sadly for her, some lingering shard of those soft, sappy feelings had made her succumb to that one-night stand in Alharia because the attraction had been as strong as ever. Even so, she couldn’t blame him for walking away afterwards when she had been well aware of his womanising reputation.
But shedidvery much blame Angel for his attitude when she had confronted him with her pregnancy. She didn’t care that he had been taken by surprise. She had no sympathy for him on that score and much more sympathy for herself, walking round the size of a barrel for months on end while agonising about how she was to cope and survive as a single parent. And then the father of her baby had flatly refused to accepthisshare of the responsibility and had shot her down in mortifying flames. It would be a cold day in hell before she forgave Angel for that crushing rejection!
‘Gaby?’ Clara murmured from behind her. ‘I’ve put Alexios up for his nap and I’m heading out to the greenhouse.’
Gaby whirled round, taken aback to see Clara now clad in her outdoor jacket and boots. ‘OK...’
Angel appeared behind the older woman and Gaby’s jaw simply dropped at the sight of him indoors rather than outside where he should still have been.
‘I brought your visitor in through the back,’ her employer and friend informed her quietly. ‘You need to talk...and not through a closed door.’
Angel surveyed her with hidden fascination, unable to forget how long it had taken and how hard it had been to find her again. He could feel untamed emotion buzzing through him and that annoyed him when he needed to be in cool control of himself, unlike his parents, who had never been in control or even accepted that they ought to be.
Flags of embarrassed colour had flown into Gabriella’s already flushed face, Angel noted appreciatively. He didn’t think there could be a woman alive who could look as beautiful as she did without making the smallest effort to do so. There she stood, blue eyes burning bright, utterly enraged by him, in a shabby old pastel-pink sweater and faded jeans, both of which clung to her mesmerising curves like a second skin. For a split second, Angel forgot why he was there, forgot their audience, forgot everything and almost reached for her like a hot, thirsty man tempted by a drink of water. In terms of sexual need, he reasoned grimly, he was both hotly aroused andverythirsty. Annoyance at his masculine predictability chilled his overheated blood and he tilted his arrogant dark head back to study Gabriella with an assessing look. Was she the mother of his son...or not?
‘Well, I won’t say that that wasn’t embarrassing,’ Gaby breathed tightly as she marched past him back into the living area.
‘Since the lady appears to know who I am, will she be discreet?’ Angel enquired.
And that fast, Gaby wanted to thump him again. ‘Of course she will be. Clara isn’t remotely interested in you or in publicity,’ she pronounced curtly. ‘What are you doing here? What do you want from me?’
‘I would like to see the child,’ Angel intoned without any expression at all. Gaby interpreted that as Angel,unusually, watching his every word.
‘You said that child was nothing to do with you!’ Gaby reminded him.
‘May we sit down and discuss this important matter?’
‘You’re asking me to be reasonable when you were not remotely reasonable with me nine months ago?’ Gaby launched at him incredulously. ‘I can’t believe your nerve!’
The smooth, hard planes of his lean bronzed features were impassive, infuriatingly uninformative. ‘You’ve said that to me before.’
