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It was out of the question.
He should have called her back and politely made his excuses.
What he should have done before that was say goodbye and explain that as great as their night together had been, it was a one-night-only thing.
What he should have done before any of those things was rewind even further and not sleep with her in the first place.
But he should have called her back.
He’d never treated a woman so callously before. But then, he’d never reacted so strongly to a woman before or felt such a strong reaction towards him from a woman before. Or lost his mind the way he had with her.
Despite everything, he removed the folded Post-it note from his wallet and stared at the number he’d committed to memory at the first reading. It was the strength of his desire to call her back that had stopped him doing just that. Look at him now—twenty seconds of footage of her had distracted him from his preparations as effectively as a tornado hitting his hotel room.
Alessia Berruti was a princess. She was Europe’s most photographed woman. She was the antithesis of what he wanted in a partner. Gabriel’s childhood had been destroyed by press intrusion and he had no wish to experience the media spotlight again under any circumstance. It would be a disaster for his career too—anonymity was essential for him to be effective. Even a casual affair with the princess who seemingly loved the spotlight would bring press intrusion of unimaginable levels.
As scalding...asfantastic...as their lovemaking had been, he could never see or speak to Alessia Berruti again.
He had to forget her.
Another burst of unwelcome fury raged through him and he crushed the note into a tight ball. Before he could throw it in the bin—maybe burn it to ash first for good measure—his phone rang.
He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath before reaching for it. Anger was the most futile of emotions, one he rarely succumbed to. He’d suffered more of it these last two weeks than he had the whole of his life and needed to rid himself of it.
His heart managed to jolt and sink at the same time when Prince Amadeo’s name flashed on the screen.
‘Good morning, Your Highness,’ he said smoothly, refusing to allow a trace of his emotions show in his voice. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?’
‘You can explain to me how the—’ an expletive was shot into Gabriel’s ear ‘—you managed to get my sister pregnant.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘HOWDOILOOK?’ Alessia asked as she checked her reflection one last time. She’d selected a pair of deep blue fitted trousers, a simple short-sleeved, high-necked silk top a shade lighter, and a thick satin band separating the two items around her waist. After much deliberation, she’d left her hair loose. She’d originally tied it into a severe bun but Clara had said it made it look like she was trying too hard. According to Clara, the bun sent the message of ‘this is meprovingthat seeing you again doesn’t affect me in the slightest,’ instead of the ‘seeing you doesn’t affect me in the slightest’ look Alessia was aiming for.
Clara looked her up and down and nodded approvingly. ‘Perfect.’
Alessia swallowed. Her world had been thrown into chaos but she could always rely on her sister-in-law’s honesty. Clara’s ‘perfect’ answer meant Alessia had achieved what she set out to. To get through the meeting that would bring her face to face with the man who’d slipped out of her life without a goodbye and which would determine the rest of her life, she needed to look as perfect on the outside as she could. God knew she was a shambles inside.
It was Clara’s comment that she could believe Alessia to be pregnant that had started it all. Alessia must have had her head in the sand because until that point, she hadn’t put together the dots of a late period, tender breasts and nausea. Until that point, she hadn’t registered that she had no memory of Gabriel using contraception.
What fateful naivety. What brainless stupidity.
She still had no idea how she’d got through Amadeo’s party. If Clara hadn’t stayed so close throughout the evening, she probably wouldn’t have. Clara had come to the rescue when it came to the pregnancy test too. Knowing how difficult it would be for Alessia to buy one without detection, she’d popped to a pharmacist the next morning with her security detail. Let them think the test was for her! she’d said. She’d then sneaked it over to Alessia and sat holding her hand while they waited for the result to show, and hugged her and stroked her hair for an hour while Alessia sobbed over the positive result. Unfortunately, Clara was incapable of telling a lie, and when she’d returned to her quarters and Marcelo asked what she and Alessia had been doing, she’d felt compelled to tell him the truth. Even more unfortunately, their father happened to be there too.
There had been no time at all for Alessia to come to terms with her situation before her whole family and the majority of the palace staff knew about the pregnancy. Within two hours of the positive result an emergency family meeting was convened. For the second time in less than a month, Alessia was the subject behind said meeting.
Barely a day had passed since that positive result and she still hadn’t fully come to terms with it, not on an emotional level. Her family had gone straight to damage limitation mode and she’d been carried by the panicking swell with them.
If she’d thought her mother’s disappointment at her unguarded comment about Dominic had hurt, it had nothing on the cold anger she’d been hit with over the pregnancy, wounding far more deeply than Amadeo’s furious diatribe.
She checked her eyes one last time to ensure the drops she’d put in them that magically disappeared redness from all the crying she’d done were still working, then slipped her feet into a pair of silver heels, dabbed some perfume to her neck and wrists and left her quarters.
If not for a lifetime of poise, just one of the many things drilled into her from the moment she could walk, her first glimpse of Gabriel in the meeting room of her mother’s private offices would have knocked her off her feet. Her heart thumped so hard she couldn’t breathe but she kept her back straight and her head high and strolled with all the nonchalance in the world to the empty chair.
Whatever happened in this meeting, her eyes would stay dry. She was a princess and she would remember her breeding and remain regal if it killed her.
Above all else, she would not let Gabriel know that seeing him again made her feel more violently sick than any pregnancy sickness.
She’d been nothing but a night of fun for him, quickly discarded and even more quickly forgotten.
