‘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 trulybenevolent.’
Gabriel recognised that Alessia’s cool façade from earlier had been well and truly stripped away. He’d been right—ithadall been a façade. 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.
Many times over the years she’d wondered what kind of mother she would be. The only conclusion she’d reached was that she’d be a different mother to her own, but she couldn’t say that to Gabriel. It wasn’t just a matter of disloyalty but because he wouldn’t understand. How could he? A monarch wasn’t an ordinary person and, even with the best will in the world, they couldn’t be an ordinary parent. Their number one priority had to be to the monarchy. Alessia, though, would never be a monarch, and she thanked the good Lord every day for that.
Gabriel’s eyes had narrowed but when he answered, his words were measured. ‘I think you’re capable of it but you’re from a world where duty comes first and often to the detriment of the individual. Look at you and your brothers—all of you marrying for one reason or other to save the monarchy. I will not have our child feel forced to make those same choices.’
‘It’s a choiceyou’remaking too.’
‘For their sake,’ he replied in the same measured tone. ‘And it is up to you and me to make the best of it and create a stable home for them. It will take many compromises and concessions on both our parts but if we are both willing, then it is achievable.’
‘Will you compromise on coming to Amadeo’s wedding with me?’ she retorted, already knowing how humiliating it would be to attend Ceres’s biggest state event in decades without her new husband by her side. People would understand someone wanting to remain private and not wanting to be a working royal, but family events, even when they were state occasions, were different. Gabriel’s refusal to attend could only be interpreted as personal.
‘My conditions have already been agreed but everything else is open to negotiation. The question is, areyouwilling to make the compromises and concessions necessary for our child?’
How could this be the same man who’d made love to her with such frenzied passion? Alessia wondered, gazing at him in disbelief. From the expression on Gabriel’s face and the tone of his voice, he could be conducting an ordinary business meeting, not discussing the upturning of both their worlds; and his world was being upturned far more than her own.
On paper, he was everything she’d ever wanted in a husband. He was everything she’d waited for—a man she could respect, who made her feel and who wouldn’t sell her out. Gabriel commanded respect just by walking in a room, and there was no denying he made her feel. In the short hours they’d spent together, he’d made her feel more intensely than she’d ever felt in her life, more than she’d believed it was possible to feel. Even now, after he’d cold-shouldered her for two weeks, the intensity of her awareness for him hadn’t diminished at all. Watching his mouth as he spoke, taking in the stubble thickening on his jaw, catching those whiffs of his cologne...it all did something to her. Meeting his eye was even worse, and now she was stuck on her bed with her veins buzzing, her heart a pulsating mess, hugging her legs as tightly as she could so he couldn’t see the tremors wracking her. So yes, as much as she wished he didn’t, it was undeniable that he made her feel.
She knew too that he would never sell her out. His clients’ loss was her gain; Gabriel’s discretion was assured. And he’d made it clear he took fatherhood seriously. She should be rejoicing that he ticked all the husband boxes.
But he felt nothing for her. He wouldn’t be her prince. He’d left her sleeping and disappeared from her life as if what they’d shared had never been... But it had been. The tiny life in her belly was proof of that.
She breathed in deeply and kneaded the back of her neck. It scared her how badly she wanted the man who’d created that life with her, who’d made love to her with such intense passion, who’d brought the woman out in her, to resurface.
‘Alessia?’ he said, one of his thick black eyebrows raising at her silence.
She blinked her thoughts away and took a deep breath before meeting his gaze. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am willing to make compromises and concessions for the sake of our child.’
‘That is good to hear. It will make life easier for all concerned if we always strive for common ground.’
Unable to speak about her marriage—an event she’d always looked forward to with rose-coloured lenses—any further in such an emotionless way, Alessia changed the subject. ‘Was anything else agreed while my back was turned?’
‘Yes. The converted stable block is going to be our home here. Your father tells me it is in need of modernising. Once we have agreed what we want from the renovations, the work on it will begin immediately.’