‘Leila—’
‘And then this morning.’ Angrily, she shook away the hand which he’d placed on her arm. ‘This morning I found some photos stuffed away in a drawer in the wardrobe.’
He went very still. ‘So you’ve been spying on me, have you?’
‘Don’t you dare try to turn this on me! I was actually looking for a bigger home for my shoe collection—but that’s not the point! The point is that I found photos of you with a man who was clearly your father. A man you told me you’d never met. You lied to me, Gabe. You lied to me.’
There was silence in the car, punctuated only by the muffled sound of her sobs and, reluctantly, she took the handkerchief he withdrew from his pocket and buried her nose in it.
‘Yes, I lied to you,’ he said heavily. ‘I lied to you because...’
His voice faded away and it was so unlike Gabe to hesitate that Leila lifted her nose from the handkerchief to look at him. Her vision was blurred through her tears but she saw enough to startle her, for his eyes looked like two empty holes in a face so ravaged with emotion that for a moment he didn’t look like Gabe at all.
‘Because, what?’
He shook his head and turned to her as the words began to spill from his lips, as if he’d been bottling them up for a long time. ‘What if you were a man and you met a woman who just blew you away, in a way you didn’t recognise at the time—because it had never happened to you before? Maybe you were determined not to recognise it because it was something you didn’t believe in. Something which, deep down, you feared.’
Leila sniffed. ‘None of that makes sense.’
‘Hear me out.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘So you walk away from this woman, telling yourself that you’ve made the best and the only decision you could possibly make. But you’re not sure. In fact, you’re starting to realise that you’ve just done the dumbest thing imaginable, when she turns up at your home in London. And you look at her and realise what an idiot you’ve been. You realise that here you have a chance for happiness right in front of your eyes, but you’re scared. And then...’
His voice tailed off and she saw his features harden.
‘Then?’
‘Then she tells you she’s pregnant and you’re even more scared. Because this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means you can be together legitimately without having to delve too deeply into your own emotions. Yet on the other...’
‘Gabe!’ Her anger forgotten now, she leaned forward—wondering what on earth could have put such a haunted expression on his face. ‘Will you please stop talking in riddles? The fact is that you lied about seeing your father and nothing can change that.’
‘No. Nothing can change that. But what if I told you there was a reason why my mother kept his identity from me?’ He raked his fingers back through his plastered hair and his fingertips came away wet. For a moment he just stared at them, as if he might find some kind of answer gleaming back at him from that damp, cold skin.
‘After she died, I felt angry and bitter—and guilty too. But I went to London and I started working and, as I told you, success came pretty quickly.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘You told me.’
‘I embraced my new role as a successful businessman but sometimes—not often—I would think about my father. I couldn’t eradicate the curiosity which still niggled away at me. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. I wanted to confront him. I wanted to know why he’d abdicated all his responsibilities towards me. I wanted to tell him that a woman had died sooner than reveal his identity.’ He clenched his fist, as if he wanted to hit something. Or someone. ‘I guess I was looking for someone to blame for her death. Someone who wasn’t me.’
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘I was rich by this point. Rich enough to find anyone I wanted and it didn’t take long to track my father down in Marseilles, which is where he’d moved to when he’d left Provence. And suddenly I understood my mother’s behaviour. I understood why she’d wanted to protect me from him. Why she’d feared his influence on me...’
His words tailed off as if he couldn’t bear to say them but Leila leaned forward, her wet hair falling over her shoulders as she peered into his face. ‘What, Gabe? What?’
‘Which particular title shall I give him? Gangster or hoodlum?’ he questioned bitterly. ‘Because he answered to both. He was an underworld figure, Leila. A powerful and ruthless individual. I discovered that he had killed. Yes, killed. I discovered this when we met in Paris and not long afterwards he was gunned down in some gangland shootout himself. That photo was taken by one of his associates and it’s the only one of us together. Time after time I went to burn it, but something always stopped me and I still don’t know what that something is.’