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‘Yes...’ Gaby compressed her lips on the reminder.
‘It could be...’ Angel breathed in deep and slow ‘...that I was a little hasty at our last meeting.’
A spasm of intense satisfaction arrowed through Gaby at that unexpected admission from Angel. ‘A little hasty? Is that so?’
Picking up on her pleasure at his discomfiture, Angel gritted his even white teeth. ‘Yes, that is so. As you pointed out at the time, there is always risk attached to sexual intimacy.’
‘I do not view the conception of my son as a risk.’
Angel shrugged a cashmere-clad broad shoulder, seemingly indifferent to her sensitivity, his hard, handsome face unyielding. ‘I should have acknowledged at the time that there was a chance that I could be responsible, but I had already been through this scenario with one too many of your predecessors with the result that I was too angry to be logical. My background has made it a challenge for me to trust women.’
Gaby did not like being included in the category of ‘predecessors’ but her curiosity was piqued by his admission that he found it difficult to trust her sex. ‘It was one night,’ she conceded with a careless shrug that in no way mirrored how she felt about it. ‘Now that you’re apologising, I suppose I can follow your feelings to some degree.’
‘I was not aware that I was apologising,’ Angel framed grittily.
‘If you’re not prepared to apologise for the way you treated me that day at the hotel, I have nothing more to say to you,’ she told him truthfully. ‘Nobody treats me like that and gets away with it!’
Angel ground his teeth together again.
‘You see, I understand that you’re rude because you’re used to people tiptoeing around your royal person, but your birth and your wealth do not mean that you are better than I am,’ Gaby spelt out succinctly. ‘Or that I will let you get away with behaving as though you are.’
Angel’s brilliant dark golden eyes smouldered as though she had lit a fire behind them. ‘Message received,’ Angel murmured dulcetly, disconcerting her with that easy switch. ‘I apologise for treating you unfairly.’
Gaby hadn’t believed that he would or even could climb down off his high horse and the shock of that accomplishment knocked her off balance. ‘All right...so let’s move on. Why do you want to see Alexios? Surely you would want DNA testing before doing so?’
‘Is it true that he has green eyes?’ Angel demanded, startling her with that apparently random question.
‘Yes, it is...but what does that have to do with anything? And how did you track me down here anyway?’ Gaby pressed in a ruffled tone.
‘Let me give you a hint...you’ve been too active on social media with your friends. I’ve been searching for you for months,’ Angel revealed. ‘There were no leads until I was able to establish a link between Laurie Bannister, your friend Liz’s twin, and you. From that point it was possible to check out their connections to find out where you might be.’
‘What do you mean by searching?’ Gaby prompted in dismay at what he had revealed. It was true that she had often chatted to Liz’s twin, Laurie, online, mentioning meetings because Laurie lived only forty miles away with her husband.
‘If your son is alsomyson, we have a situation which I cannot ignore. He would not be an ordinary child—he would be aroyalchild. It was imperative that I locate you and check it out. I used a private detective agency to trace you.’
‘Through my friends,’ she repeated in horror. ‘You had someone snoop intotheirlives to trackmedown? That’s appalling.’
‘If you had left a forwarding address or told your friend Liz that it was acceptable to tell me where you were, we wouldn’t be in this position now and I wouldn’t have had to have anyone investigated,’ Angel countered without hesitation.
Gaby studied a scratched area of the pine kitchen table, mastering her resentment. It was done and too late to complain about anyone’s privacy being invaded, she conceded grudgingly. Perhaps telling Liz not to share her address, should Angel enquire, had been a step too far in mistrust...and he had enquired through staff. But then, she recognised ruefully, she had wanted topunishhim, an urge which Clara’s intervention had reminded her that she needed to suppress.
‘Look,’ she said stiffly. ‘Come into the...er...sitting room...’ Walking back across the hall, she pushed open the door of the room that was hardly ever used, crossing to the window to lift the blind and let in the sunlight. ‘Do you still drink black coffee with one sugar?’
Angel released his pent-up breath, registering that Gabriella wasn’t going to shout or throw things at him again. The strangest sense of disappointment instantly afflicted him and took him aback. No woman had ever argued with him or criticised him the way that Gabriella did and why the hell would he miss that?
‘Yes, thank you,’ he murmured with scrupulous politeness.
Angel sounded smooth as glass and Gaby shot him a suspicious glance, wondering what manipulative thoughts were currently operating behind that wickedly attractive façade of his. As she had learned in the past, he was clever,veryclever, and well able to play the long game to conceal his true purpose. But just then she had more on her mind than working out Angel’s motivation and she bent to light the gas fire in the chilly room before speeding off to check on Clara and make the coffee.
She could have taken Angel up to the small apartment above the extension where she lived but that would take him too close to her son and she wasn’t ready for that step yet. So, instead of that she put on the kettle and hurried out to the greenhouse to see Clara.
‘We’re in the sitting room, so you don’t need to stay out here if you don’t want to,’ she told the older woman gently. ‘Sorry about the shouting. I’m afraid Angel tends to send my temper sky-high.’
‘I reckon his temper is every bit as bad as yours but he’s too reserved to let it fly,’ Clara surmised as she worked at her bench, potting up seedlings. ‘He’s much too handsome for his own good, and he’ll be a truckload of trouble, but I suspect he might be worth it. Only you can decide if he is.’
‘He’s only here because he is finally accepting that Alexios could be his,’ Gaby muttered unhappily.
‘Whatever happens, you mustn’t get into a hostile relationship with him.’
