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Gaby turned crimson and yanked up her jeans, her feminine core still pulsing and her nipples as hard as bullets. She had craved sex with Angel as much as though he were an addictive drug. She couldn’t believe what she had almost done, and her sole consolation was that a glance at Angel’s unconcealed tension and discomfiture confirmed that he too was full of incomprehension at what had almost transpired. Up against the wall as well, she reflected sickly, like a wanton desperate hussy.
‘Throw me out before I do something worse,’ he urged in a driven undertone, brilliant eyes shielded by his lashes to glittering stars in darkness. ‘You destroy my self-discipline...’
And she had no discipline whatsoever around him either, Gaby acknowledged with sudden shamed bitterness as she led the way back downstairs to the separate front door she rarely utilised to speed his departure. This time, however, he took her phone number.
‘The test will be done within forty-eight hours,’ he promised her before he stepped back over the wall and climbed back into the helicopter. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
And that was that, but she was shell-shocked, deeply shaken by that encounter. Angel had played with Alexios and had warmed up to their son in a way she had not known he was capable of achieving. Angel was so shuttered, so locked up in himself most of the time, and that arrogant, bold surface gloss of his usually hid the fact from the world. It was a challenge for him to loosen up, to relax his guard and yet he had done it for a baby’s benefit. He had done silly things to amuse Alexios and that had touched Gaby in the most unexpected way. Would that willingness to get down to a child’s level last? Would her son truly become Angel’s heir? For good? Or just until Angel married and had another male child with a carefully chosen royal wife?
Those were questions and concerns that were still troubling Gaby while she walked up the gentle hill behind the farm on an afternoon six days later. She was taking a break because Alexios was having his nap and Clara had friends in for lunch.
Within twenty-four hours of Angel’s visit, a technician had arrived to perform the DNA test and in due course Angel had texted Gaby to confirm that Alexios washisson...as if she had ever been in any doubt of that fact! She had to wonder why he had bothered to send that text without sending an unreserved apology with it because the year before, when she had approached him with her pregnancy, he had treated her like a gold-digging, publicity-seeking fraudster. Did he regret that now? Did he wish he had listened,believedher? Or did the ruling Prince of Themos not concern himself with such trivia as his past mistakes?
As she reached the top of the hill and stood looking out at the view, a helicopter swooped down to land in the field fronting the farmhouse. A tall man sprang out and her nervous tension rocketed as high as the skyline as she began to move back towards the house. Within minutes, the same figure reappeared and passed through the gate behind the farm to start moving in her direction. Her breath shortened in her throat and her pace slowed as she recognised that the visitor striding through the rough field grass towards her was indeed Angel. Why on earth was he here again so soon after his last visit?
‘Gabriella...’ Angel hailed her long before he reached her, black hair tousled by the breeze above his lean bronzed face, dark eyes narrowed to focus on her with noticeable intensity. Shockingly spectacular, shockingly sexy. He stopped several feet away, an incongruous picture in his designer suit against the backdrop of a windblown field.
‘I was coming back to the house,’ Gaby muttered uncomfortably, feeling rumpled and messy in the face of his habitually immaculate presentation.
‘We can walk back together.’
Gaby shot him a fleeting look of frustration. ‘What are you doing here again?’
With sheer force of will, Angel held that darting evasive glance of hers, dark golden eyes flaring bright. ‘You should know why I’m here. I did warn you. Alexios is my son, and we will have to get married. The sooner we do the deed, the sooner life can settle down again and the less chance there will be for the press to make a spectacle of us and our child,’ he concluded grimly.
‘But youcan’tbe serious about us getting married?’ Gaby argued, her steps faltering as she turned round to face him.
‘I’m deadly serious,’ Angel contradicted.
‘But why?’
‘Your son’s future is in Themos and I will not allow you to deprive him of his birthright and heritage,’ Angel countered without hesitation.
An angry flush mantling her cheeks, Gaby flung her head back, copper strands sliding back from her face to accentuate her fine bone structure. ‘I have no intention of depriving my son of anything that heneeds!’ she stressed.
‘That’s good, because he needs his father just as much as he needs his mother,’ Angel slotted in glibly.
‘What a shame you didn’t feel that way last year when I approached you!’ Gaby framed furiously. ‘If you hadlistenedto me then, you would have had much more time to decide howweshould move forward as parents, and I very much doubt that you would have come up with anything as crazy as marriage being the solution!’
‘Leave the past where it belongs and concentrate on our child for the moment,’ Angel urged with a rapier-sharp edge to his intonation. ‘Right now, Alexios is our most important concern. Let me tell you, I am determined that my son will have a far better and happier start to life than I ever had!’
‘That’s all very well,’ Gaby muttered, taken aback by that sudden shadowy revelation about his own childhood and tucking it away for later examination. ‘But marriage between us isnotthe solution.’
‘I will be straight. It is either marriage or a custody case because I will fight you through the courts before I risk allowing my son to grow up without daily access to the country which is his!’ Angel sliced back at her, stealing the breath from her lungs and freezing her in place while he strode back towards the farmhouse.
In fear, Gaby shook off her nervous paralysis and chased after him. ‘You don’t mean that, youcan’t!’ she protested. ‘Would you really try to take Alexios away from me? Are you really that cruel?’
‘I would do it with great regret because a loving mother is a huge gift and I have no desire to separate you from each other. On the other hand, Alexios belongs with his father as well and if we cannot agree a compromise, I would have no choice but to fight you.’
‘And...the only available compromise ismarriage?’ Gaby almost whispered, pale as death now.
‘Yes. That way he has both of us and we share him, and he grows up in the country which he will one day rule,’ Angel conceded, the harsher edge to his deep dark drawl easing a little. ‘He will be my priority in life... I promise you that. I will be a parent in every way possible to him. There isnothingthat he will lack...’
Wholly taken aback now by that passionate declaration of his parental intentions from a man whom she had once naively assumed couldn’t care less about such matters, Gaby swallowed hard and said nothing, which of course turned out to be a mistake when Angel continued speaking.
‘Perhaps it would be easier for you to give him up altogether and get on with your life, unrestricted by our son’s status,’ he intoned, shocking her even more with that suggestion. ‘A royal life is full of restrictions and I believe you have less interest in such a lifestyle than many women I’ve known.’
Gaby blinked while she tried to think fast about the horrible options he was putting before her. ‘All these years and that’s the very first compliment you have ever given me that didn’t relate to my looks.’
