barely aware of the gesture. She was mesmerised by the honeyed gentleness of his voice. The silvery moon was touching light fingers across his face and the shadows and angles heightened the beauty that had always had her in thrall. ‘You’re right.’
‘I am? Right about what?’ Her voice sounded pathetically feeble. And he was still doing that playing thing with her fingers although she pretended not to notice because she liked it. It was dangerous but she liked it.
‘Maybe I should have told my parents the whole unvarnished truth. Told them what you want and that they would have no choice but to accept it, but I was…’ for a minute, he almost used the word weak but that would have been going too far; weak was a word that could not possibly be associated with him and she would never have fallen for that ‘…concerned about their mental welfare. Coping with the wedding being called off and then plunged into what they might have considered an unbearably stressful situation…’
‘Understood.’
‘You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that…’
‘You are?’
‘Of course I am. I can’t think of anything worse than fighting with you.’
Alex had no idea how he had managed to get so close to her. She felt the heat from his body and, when he shifted, the brush of his thigh against hers. Her head was telling her to briskly wind the conversation up but, instead, with a frightening recklessness, she angled her own leg and the shock of nudging him and knowing the extent of his arousal was like being hit with a power surge of live electricity.
Gabriel made no effort to move. Instead, he smiled and murmured ruefully, ‘Just ignore me.’ By which he meant just ignore my unruly body and the fact that I’m unbelievably hot for you. How likely was it that she was going to do that? When she had pressed herself closer to him? When she was staring at him with hot, dark eyes and those slightly parted lips that were begging to be thoroughly kissed?
The ice queen with her issues about their past and her high moral principles about their future was melting fast but Gabriel wasn’t going to be the one to make the first move.
But he did wonder what he would do if she took him at his word, rolled over to her side and fell asleep. He had discovered a streak of stubbornness in her that had not been apparent the first time round, when she had been gloriously his for the taking.
The prospect of a cold shower was not pleasant.
‘And, while I’m in the mood for wholesale contrition,’ he continued in a voice that whispered over her like a caress, ‘I think it’s important to know that I would have stood by you had I known about the pregnancy…’ Gabriel realised that he would have and they would have married and there would have been none of this ongoing nonsense about her asserting her independence and not wanting to sacrifice her life for the sake of their child. Five years ago, there was no way that she would have turned down an offer of marriage. He could remember her youthful, adoring enthusiasm for him as though it was yesterday.
‘It would never have worked in a million years,’ Alex mumbled, thrillingly tuned in to his proximity even though she was fully aware of the health hazard it presented. ‘Look at Cristobel.’
‘Cristobel?’ Gabriel was beginning to wonder how he could ever have conceived of marrying Cristobel. She seemed like a distant figure belonging to a different and somehow irrelevant life. Still, he didn’t care for her name cropping up in conversation.
‘You would always have wanted someone who fitted the role.’ Alex felt a stab of self-pity and her eyes blurred. ‘I was your time out and you would have gone mad if you’d ended up stuck with me for the rest of your life.’
‘You’re being ridiculous. And don’t put yourself down like that. That time out, as you call it…’ this whole confidence exchanging thing was crazy…but still ‘…it felt good.’
‘I’m just being truthful. But it’s sweet of you to say it anyway…’
‘Sweet? Since when have I ever been described as sweet?’
There was such genuine outrage in his voice that Alex’s lips twitched and she eventually laughed.
‘I would have wanted to have seen you growing inch by inch with my baby inside you,’ Gabriel told her huskily. ‘I would have wanted to have seen the changes in