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Her heart was beating slow and heavy, as if it was being squeezed in a fist. Something wasn’t right. At the margins of her mind pictures were forming, then blurring too fast for her to follow them.
She took a painful shallow breath, then another. ‘Well, you’re not the only one with unanswered questions, Gabriel,’ she said hoarsely. ‘So why don’t we answer them once and for all? Why don’t we say what has to be said, and then we can get on with our lives? That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
It was why she was standing there. Why she had stayed onThe Argentum. But when finally he turned to look at her and nodded, his blue eyes darker than she had ever seen before, she felt no relief—just a shattering sense of sadness.
CHAPTER SIX
ITWASTHEQUICK, easy rhythm of the stewards’ voices, so similar they were almost interchangeable, that grabbed Dove’s attention.
Not that she was really reading. The book in her hands was just a prop. Something to stop her from staring at the man sitting on the other side of the cabin or thinking about what she had set in motion. Up until that moment it had certainly helped with the former. The latter, not so much. Pretty much from the moment Gabriel’s private jet had taken off in Nice her brain had been preoccupied with all the possible outcomes after it landed.
Her heart beat hard and slow as the stewards walked back up the cabin, smiling politely as they passed. They were friends as well as colleagues—she could tell. That was why they sounded so alike. She had read about it in a magazine at the hairdresser’s. It was called phonetic convergence, and it was something that happened between close friends and family. She had it with her mother.
But with Gabriel that mirroring and overlapping had only ever happened with their bodies. When they’d talked he’d been guarded, careful, and there had always been a point in any conversation where he’d checked himself.
When they’d talked.
It was ironic that since agreeing to talk to her on the deck ofThe ArgentumGabriel had said approximately twenty words to her. Maybe he thought that the cabin of a plane—even a spacious private jet like this one—was not private enough for the conversation they needed to have.
But then they could have stayed on the yacht.
Turning her head slightly, she gazed down through the oval of glass at the water below. They had been in the air for nearly four hours, en route to Pico, one of the islands of the Azores off the coast of Portugal, where Gabriel owned the Quinta dos Louros—a private estate and vineyard.
She had thought they were going back to London. It had only been when they were taking off that he had told her they were flying to Pico. He’d given her no explanation, and she’d been so stunned that he had agreed to talk that it hadn’t occurred to her to argue or cross-examine him. Later, when the burn of adrenalin had faded, she’d concluded that it was just his way of regaining the upper hand and put it to the back of her mind.
Her throat tightened. But now other things were taking centre stage—specifically Gabriel’s insistence that it was she who had sent her father to end things on her behalf. The anger and pain on his face was bright and achingly clear in her memory.
Her eyes darted to where he sat, working on his laptop, his long legs taking up every inch of the generous space in front of his seat.
It wasn’t the first time Gabriel had accused her of sending her father to end their relationship, but she hadn’t given it much thought before. It had felt more like a question of semantics, not fact. He had as good as said so himself.
‘Sent. Asked. Coaxed. What’s the difference? You’re just trying to shift the blame.’
They were his words, but they could just as easily apply to her. She’d assumed he was trying to shift the blame—lying to her, and to himself, because he didn’t want to associate the billionaire businessman he saw every day in the mirror with the greedy, unscrupulous, self-serving man he had been six years ago.
She felt her heartbeat catch.
But yesterday it had been clear from the unfiltered rawness in his voice and the tense way he’d held his body that Gabriel believed what he was saying. He really did think that it had been her idea. That, in his words, she had sent her ‘snobbish father’ to do her dirty work.
Only what had she ever done to make him think that she was that kind of person?
Suddenly afraid that he might look over and answer her question, she turned and stared out of the window at the silvery blue water. A drumroll of nervousness hammered across her skin. There had been nothing but ocean for hours. But now she could see shapes appearing in the distance. Vast, jagged outcrops of rock splashed with vivid green, were rising out of the Atlantic like the spine of some huge prehistoric creature. She was looking at the Azores.
The plane landed fifteen minutes later. From the air the archipelago had looked dark, almost menacing, but as she stepped out of the plane into the pale morning light she felt her mouth drop. There was only one word that could describe what she was seeing: epic.
Everywhere was green and lush and humming with sound and life. What wasn’t green was black, and towering above the landscape was a mountain crowned in wispy clouds.
‘It’s called Montanho di Pico, which means mountain peak.’
She jumped as Gabriel’s voice cut across her thoughts.
‘It’s where the island got its name,’ he said. ‘Although it’s more than just a mountain—it’s also a volcano.’
A volcano.
Her chin jerked up towards the towering peak. Back on the boat, she’d thought they had called a truce. So naturally he’d brought her to an island which could be covered in hot lava at any moment.
‘I did wonder why we couldn’t just talk on the yacht,’ she said, her eyes narrowing on the distant summit. ‘Now it’s all starting to make more sense. Although I have to say it does feel a little contrived. I mean, we were in the middle of the Mediterranean. You could have just made me walk the plank if you wanted to do away with me.’
