The Secret Spanish Love-Child - By Cathy Williams Page 0,22

across for holidays…’

‘Holidays?’

‘So tell me how you see things working out…Sell it to me.’

Alex threw him a venomous, trapped look from under her lashes. ‘How do you think I feel, knowing that you would ditch the woman you love just because mistakes were made years ago and I got pregnant as a result?’

‘I know how you should feel.’ He had no intention of getting wrapped up in some caring, sharing, ridiculous conversation about his feelings for Cristobel. If Alex was finding it hard to appreciate the enormous generosity of his gesture with her, then she would be at a complete loss to understand a marriage that might have been more of a suitable arrangement than a match made in heaven. ‘You should feel a certain amount of respect for a guy who’s willing to do the right thing. Not many would.’

Alex wondered in confusion how she had managed to turn into the bad guy.

‘And you should feel a certain respect for a woman who’s willing to turn down a wedding ring and an easy lifestyle because she has principles! Not many would.’

Gabriel’s steely control slipped and he was subjected to a rush of aggressive anger. Where was she coming from? What airy-fairy planet did she inhabit? But, then again, out of all the women he had ever known, she occupied a unique spot and not just because she was the mother of his child. She was feisty and her failure to be impressed by money was staggering. The harder he pushed for what he wanted, for what he considered inevitable, the faster she would retreat. But he would get his own way. He always did and he wasn’t going to break the habit now.

Chapter Four

THE first Alex knew of what was happening behind the scenes was when she opened her newspaper three days later, as usual scanning the headlines and then sitting down to relax with the gossip pages in the centre. This was her favourite time of the day. Seven-thirty. Luke safely tucked up in bed, having, as usual, cunningly contrived to keep her reading bedtime stories to him for as long as possible. Small glass of wine on the table next to her and the television turned on but with almost no volume because, whilst she liked the comforting background noise, she wasn’t too interested in what the noise was actually about.

It irked her that since everything had come out in the open with Gabriel, she had been able to think of nothing else but him. He hadn’t contacted her. On day one she had assumed that the shock of the situation had driven him into a temporary retreat, time out to consider his options and think about what he was going to do next. But now, after three days of silence, she was beginning to think that he had simply chosen to disappear.

Which, she told herself repeatedly, meant no change for her. He hadn’t been on the scene for the past five years and so the fabric of her life would remain exactly the same. She also told herself repeatedly that it was just as well that Luke was none the wiser that the stranger who had appeared and then just as quickly disappeared had been his father.

In fact, to count even more blessings, wasn’t she glad that she had reconnected with him? Put to bed all those haunting what if and if only scenarios which had continued to jostle around in some weird Pandora’s Box in her head, clamouring for a hearing? Wasn’t it healthy that she had finally seen him for the person he really was? A man who had knowingly deceived her. He’d disappeared from her life because she hadn’t been good enough for him, hadn’t been like the Cristobel airhead to whom he was now engaged. He was a guy who made all the right noises when confronted with a difficult situation but then scarpered as fast as he could the minute he was through the door. In other words, a fully signed up, one hundred per cent member of the Creep Club.

The fact that he was still managing to get under her skin and give her, yet again, sleepless nights infuriated her.

And her low level, never-quite-gone-despite-all-efforts fury was seething just below the surface as her eyes fell on the hot gossip headlines in the tabloid which announced the end of the perfect engagement between billionaire whizz-kid Gabriel Cruz and Cristobel Rivera, daughter of import/export magnate Geraldo Rivera. It took Alex a few