Chapter Five
GAbrIEL NOTED THE shock at his intrusion on Alessia’s flushed face as she scrambled to sit up, gripping one of the four-poster bed’s posts and pressing herself into it. He’d taken her by surprise in the one room in the whole castle she could expect privacy.
Too bad, he thought grimly. They were going to be married soon. Two strangers who’d spent one perfect night together were going to be tied together for life.
‘Who let you in?’ she whispered, pressing her cheek to the post. ‘What do you want?’
‘Your staff let me in—they know that they will soon be my staff too. As for what I want...?’
Did it matter what he wanted? No, was the concise answer.
He’d envisaged his child’s entire future in half a minute and known at the end of that flash into the future that his or her best chance of growing into a functional adult was with Gabriel a permanent, constant part of their life.
That his own life would be uprooted and upended was irrelevant.
He’d failed to use protection. His child had not chosen to be conceived. Therefore his wants were unimportant.
One want that was important, though, was a want for a cordial relationship with Alessia. He had no wish for a wife who despised him. He knew first-hand from his own parents’ toxic hatred of each other the damage warring parents could do to a child.
He headed to a pale blue velvet armchair placed close to the bed.
It was an elaborate piece of furniture that fitted in perfectly with the feminine vibes of the princess-perfect room.
His sister, he thought, would have gladly killed for a bedroom like this.
Although long used to riches, he had a feeling this castle would still blow Mariella’s mind.
He could take only a small crumb of solace that Alessia’s room, as with the brief impression he’d obtained of the rest of her quarters, had a warmer feel to it than her parents’ quarters.
‘I want to talk before I leave Ceres to sort my affairs,’ he said.
‘Why?’
He sat down and gazed at her steadily, trying his best to block the feminine scents of this most feminine of rooms much as he was trying to block the surging of his pulses. ‘Why do you think? We’ve pledged to spend our lives together with only cursory words exchanged between us.’
‘What else is there to say?’ Bitterness seeped into her husky voice. ‘We’ve agreed to marry and raise our child together. End of story.’
‘Our story is only beginning. I had hoped to discuss things properly with you when we had that time alone together earlier but you used it to take cheap shots at me and then invited your family straight back in before I could give a rebuttal.’
The burn of her angry eyes blazed enough to penetrate his skin.
Gabriel took a deep breath. He’d made his point. Time to move on to what he’d sought her out for in the first place—to diffuse tensions. ‘I never meant to imply that you and your family are incapable of loving a child.’
She released her hold on the bed post and straightened, her chin jutting.
Her shock at his appearance was rapidly diminishing, the regal princess remerging from the vulnerable woman who’d scrambled with shock at his appearance in her room.
With a glimmer of her earlier haughty disdain, she said, ‘You didn’t imply it. You were explicit about it.’
‘If I offended you, I apologise.’ He’d spoken the truth to make his point to Alessia and her family but, he conceded, it was a point he would have softened if he hadn’t reacted so strongly to seeing her again.
Those same feelings were rampaging through him now but he’d prepared for it before entering her room and that mental preparation made it possible for him to choose his words with his usual care.
He could look at the rosebud lips and sultry dark velvet eyes, and temper the awareness coursing through him so that it became nothing but a distant thrum.
‘Apology accepted,’ she said curtly, wriggling elegantly to press her back against the velvet headboard. ‘Now please leave. I’m tired and wish to rest.’
‘Not yet.’ He rested his elbows on his thighs. ‘We marry in three days and—’
The composure Alessia had only just found shattered. ‘What are you talking about? I thought the wedding would be in a few weeks?’
‘If you hadn’t run away from the meeting, you would know this.’
‘I didn’t run away—I thought everything had been agreed.’
‘Only the basics. Everything else is to be decided between you and me, which is why I am here.’
‘Everything like what?’
‘Our marriage. How we’re going to make it work so that we can live together and raise a child together.’
Icy panic clutched her chest. Three days was nothing.
How was she supposed to prepare herself in that time?
It was impossible. Three days! Three days until she became the wife of the man who’d ghosted her?
It was too soon! She’d thought she had weeks!
‘Who decided we’d marry in three days?’ she demanded to know, unable to keep the agitation from her voice.
‘It was a collective decision. Your family worry that news of our marriage will take the spotlight from Amadeo’s wedding. We marry on Thursday and release the news on Friday. The press then have over a month to milk it until it curdles before Amadeo’s wedding takes place.’
‘And you agreed to this?’
He shrugged. ‘Your family agreed to all my conditions. It was only fair I give them a concession in return.’
‘How magnanimous of you,’ she spat, hating that his composure was as assured as ever while all her turmoil was showing itself, feelings heightened by him sitting close enough to her that it wasn’t the ghost of his cologne seeping into her senses as it had been during the meeting but his actual cologne, splashed on his cheeks and neck after he’d shaved that morning.
It made her remember how she’d buried her face in his neck and inhaled his scent so greedily, which only made the feelings heighten.
She didn’t want to feel anything for this man or to show anything but the deserved contempt she’d managed earlier, but everything she’d had drilled in her the entirety of her life had slipped out of reach.
They could be talking about the weather for all the emotion Gabriel was showing and she hated him for it. ‘How truly benevolent.’
Gabriel recognised that Alessia’s cool facade from earlier had been well and truly stripped away. He’d been right—it had all been a facade. Beneath the haughty exterior, she’d seethed with emotion. For whose benefit had she chosen to hide it? His or her family’s?
He stared deep into those blazing velvet eyes again, the thrum of awareness heightening.
She wanted an argument, he realised. Gabriel did not fight, physically or verbally, and never would.
His parents’ marriage had been too volatile even in the supposedly happy years for him to ever allow himself to follow in their shoes and lose his calm, and it was unnerving to find himself responding to the passionate emotions Alessia was brimming with.
With a sickening jolt, he realised it was this passion that had sang to him that night.
Making love with Alessia was the only time in his adult life he’d lost control of himself, and the thrumming of awareness thickened to fully realise for the first time that marriage meant he no longer had to bury his desire for her.
Closing his eyes briefly, he inhaled to control the tightening in his loins. To regain control of his thoughts. To regain control of the biting emotions.
He shifted his chair forwards and locked back onto Alessia’s fiery stare.
Making sure to pitch his voice at its usual modulated tone, he said, ‘Considering that marrying you means I have to give up the career I excel at and move to a new country, I would say my conditions were reasonable and justified.’
‘No one asked you to give up your job.’
‘Once news of our marriage hits the press it will be impossible for me to continue. My clients employ me because I guarantee results and my discretion is guaranteed. Once I become a public figure, the anonymity I rely on to do my job effectively is gone.’
She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them in the same way she’d done when he’d first found himself falling under her spell. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a way to adapt it to the new circumstances.’
‘Adaptation is always possible, of course, but continuing the business as it is will not.’
‘You don’t have to marry me. No one’s putting a gun to your head.’
‘I’ve put a metaphorical gun to my own head.
Secrets don’t stay secret. Even if we didn’t marry, as soon as the pregnancy starts to show speculation about the father will start and sooner or later my name will leak, and I’ll still be thrust into the spotlight I never wanted.
Either way, my life as it is is over, which leaves me only two choices—marry you and be a permanent feature in my child’s life, or don’t and leave everything about my child’s upbringing to chance.
If there is one thing you will learn about me it is that I do not leave anything to chance. ’
‘And you don’t think I’ll be a loving mother,’ she stated, tremulously.
The implication had wounded her. Alessia had only known she was pregnant a few days but, once the tears had dried, her heart had swollen with an emotion she struggled to define, a combination of excitement and fear and love.
Love for a fledging being that probably didn’t as yet have a heartbeat.