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‘I’m a possessive tyke when it comes to anything belonging to me,’ Angel confided with a gleam in his beautiful eyes. ‘I was searching for you within days of that blasted meeting that went so wrong. I was so angry with you. I still don’t understandwhyI was angry with you.’
‘Surprises are a challenge for you?’
‘No. Is it possible for us to start again with a fresh page?’ Angel asked, lacing his long fingers with her shorter ones.
‘I don’t see why not,’ Gaby conceded unevenly, emotion surging as she looked at him, another revelation infiltrating her awareness. She still loved him and the more he told her, the more he talked, the better she understood why she loved him. He had his faults, just as she had, but they were working through them. They were both older and wiser and Angel was being forced to share a lot more of himself with her, but she wasn’t about to tell him that she loved him when he had told her that he didn’t seek an emotional connection with a woman. She desperately wanted to ask him why he had said that, but she reckoned that he had already had quite enough of such stuff to discuss that day, without her choosing to add another complication that he had to explain.
‘I want to kiss you...’ Angel told her huskily, feeling as though a great weight had fallen from him, relief and a sense of peace assailing him and a whole rush of other feelings he couldn’t label following in their wake. ‘But I don’t know if—’
Gaby took the cup of coffee out of his hand and set it aside with confidence. ‘You’re a miracle worker. A couple of hours ago, I wanted to run away or push you off a cliff and now...I want to kiss you back.’
‘If I’m honest, I want a hell of a lot more than a kiss,’ Angel confided raggedly, his smouldering golden gaze telegraphing a hunger she understood right down to the marrow of her bones.
‘Kind of guessed that.’ Gaby laughed, recognising that they had moved a major obstacle in the path of their relationship and were already moving on in a better direction. And for Angel, she realised, renewing physical intimacy after all that emotional intensity was a much-needed release.
‘A sex strike would be very effective on me,’ Angel confessed with sudden appreciation.
Her nose wrinkled. ‘Kind of guessed that too.’
Angel vaulted upright and pulled her with him across to the staircase in the corner. ‘Takes us straight upstairs,’ he told her with a wickedly sexy grin.
CHAPTER TEN
ALMOSTTWOWEEKSLATER, Gaby traced idle fingers across Angel’s bronzed chest. ‘So, this not seeking an emotional connection with women,’ she mused as lightly as she could in tone. ‘What’s that all about? You made it sound like some sort of mission statement.’
Gaby wanted to know if she could ever be honest with him about how she felt about him. Or would her feelings always have to be a secret?
‘It was. It came from seeing how my father was affected by my mother. She ruined him. I think he loved her, but she wasn’t the sort of woman who made a man better and stronger for caring for her...and he was rather a weak man.’ Angel rested his head back on her lap, black lashes almost hitting his cheekbones as his long lean body stretched in relaxation. ‘I was told by a reliable source that his lifestyle only became as debauched as hers once he realised that she would never be faithful to him. Just think of how much better a man he might have been had he fallen for a classier woman.’
‘Yes, but that was him and you said he was weak. Nobody would call you weak,’ Gaby assured him with shamelessly seductive intent, slender fingers smoothing down over his bare abdomen, hearing the responsive hitch in his breath, fingertips teasing through his happy trail along the waistband of his low-slung denim shorts. ‘So, why can’t you have an emotional connection?’
‘Could be because I’m too busy handling the sexual connection!’ Angel teased with a wicked grin, rolling over and back to tumble her down flat on the rug below the trees at the edge of the woodland. It was one of the few places in the grounds of the house that they were safe from any kind of surveillance, although Gaby had heard Angel having an earnest discussion with his head of security about the risk of drones. The chances of anyone catching a snap of her in a bikini or, worse, rolling about half naked with her husband outdoors, were slim to none, she thought fondly.
The days they had spent together since the wedding had flown past at unbelievable speed, packed with outings, time spent with Alexios, nights of passion and more happiness than Gaby had even known she could feel.
He had taken them out to show them his country and they had travelled back and forth across the island, visiting the the most gorgeous beach, where Angel had built Alexios his first sandcastle and then smashed it flat to make his son laugh. They had dined at a trendy bar above the beach where everybody had watched them covertly, but they had been left in peace, neither photographed nor approached. As Alexios had dozed off in his high chair, she had realised that Angel could go nowhere on Themos without being recognised. They had spent the previous weekend sailing on his yacht with Marina in tow, so that they could go clubbing at the southern tip of the island where there was a very exclusive resort. She had swum, snorkelled, danced, slept for hours both day and night after yielding to Angel’s seemingly insatiable appetite for her, and one day had slipped so smoothly into the next that she could not now imagine a life without him.
‘You’ve got to stop trying to play games with me,hara mou,’ Angel husked, hungrily claiming her pink lips and sending her heartbeat to a racing pitch. He lifted his tousled dark head and, tawny, black-lashed eyes glittering over her, he smiled again. ‘I’m a master gameplayer and I will trump you every time. OfcourseI have an emotional connection with you.’
Her face was burning but her discomfiture was not sufficient to prevent her from saying uncertainly, ‘You...have?’
Angel grinned, pure devilment dancing in his eyes as he coiled back from her and started to gather up the picnic stuff. ‘Naturally. You’re my wife and the mother of my child. You belong in an entirely separate category.’
Gaby’s teeth gritted. It was one of those regular occasions when she still wanted to throw something at him for being the clever clogs he was always going to be. She didn’t want to be in a category all on her own, she only wanted to know exactly how he felt about her. She wanted to know his every thought and feeling too, she conceded ruefully, and neither desire was likely to be met.
They walked along the path by the lake until the house came into view again.
‘It really enraged me when you accused me of cheating on you all those years ago,’ Angel remarked without warning.
Gaby sighed. ‘I know that technically we had broken up and you were free to do as you liked, but I was upset. Who was she?’
‘An ex. It went no further than what you saw. Iwantedto upset you,’ Angel admitted, startling her. ‘An unpleasant urge to follow, I’m afraid. We were both very young, Gabriella. You, in particular, at nineteen were far too young for me. I may only be a few years older, but I was many years older in terms of sexual experience. You were just a baby in comparison, and you were right to say no to me. I reckon you had more emotional experience then than I had, though.’
‘Sometimes you surprise me.’
‘In what way?’
‘In agoodway,’ Gaby stressed helplessly because she admired his honesty as they walked back to the house by the side of the lake.
