drive every time I wanted to visit.’
Of course, that was a blazingly obvious piece of exaggeration but she just had to accept that Gabriel was never going to consider her modest little house as anywhere near what his son deserved. And any trip spent crawling on a busy London road for longer than twenty minutes would always constitute an arduous and unacceptable journey.
Alex had folded her arms and muttered under her breath and given him a look of open incredulity, all of which he had contrived to ignore.
But her hands had been tied. And it didn’t seem to help that he was being the perfect gentleman. She had stood on her platform and spoken her piece about not wanting either of them to sacrifice themselves to a marriage made for all the wrong reasons, had asserted her independence, had scoffed at something as Victorian as marrying for the sake of a child and had proclaimed that they could be perfectly good parents, adult, civilised and connected only by their son. She had got what she had wanted. He had been adult, civilised and perfectly friendly. In a detached, polite way that she hated.
And then she hated herself for being silly.
It had all been exhausting.
The only positive had been Gabriel meeting Luke.
She reached out her hand with her eyes still closed and placed it gently over the chubby arm draped on the cushioned arm rest separating them.
Her mouth twitched. Gabriel might have conducted the technicalities with military precision, but it had been a different story with his son. Of course, she had sat Luke down and explained to him that Gabriel, the man he had glimpsed for a few seconds, was his father, wishing heartily that there were books on how to deal with conversations like that. But Luke had accepted what she had told him with a little frown, then he had nodded slowly and proceeded to ask her about a toy he had seen on television which he had to have because his best friend had one. He was too young to fully understand the implications of what she had told him, although she was pretty sure that he would wise up soon enough.
So when Gabriel had appeared at the door and introduced himself by shaking Luke’s hand, the child had hidden behind Alex and only peeped out when Gabriel had extended the set of toy planes which he had bought as an ice-breaker.
‘I obeyed instructions,’ he had said, looking at Alex. ‘Nothing too expensive.’
They had all sat at the kitchen table and Gabriel had asked awkward questions while Luke messily wolfed down his plate of spaghetti bolognese and looked up now and again to answer something in childish detail.
Now, Luke was sleeping between them, his head drooping against her shoulder, while, on the other side of him, Gabriel frowned at something on his laptop.
Alex half opened her eyes and glanced surreptitiously at him from under her lashes. No amount of tough talking to herself could minimise the impact he had on her every time she set eyes on him. Five years on and he was still drop dead beautiful. He had discarded his jacket and now, as though aware of her staring at him, he snapped shut his computer and turned to her before she had the chance to close her eyes and feign sleep.
Gabriel looked down at the sleeping Luke and thought how easy it was when he didn’t have to wear his paternal gear. He had foreseen difficulties in bonding and he had been right. Meeting his son formally for the first time had been an uncomfortable experience. The boy had hidden behind Alex, clearly terrified at the sudden intrusion in his life of a complete stranger. Today had not been much better. He had been gratified to see Luke carrying the set of toy planes over which he had agonised for a ridiculous length of time at Harrods, but he had still looked at Gabriel with barely concealed suspicion and gripped his mother’s hand as though terrified that he might be left with the guy he had yet to refer to as Dad.
‘This isn’t going well, is it?’ Gabriel asked abruptly and Alex frowned and straightened in her seat.
‘What isn’t?’
Unaccustomed to dealing with failure on any level, Gabriel looked away and said nothing.
‘You’re not used to young children,’ Alex told him reassuringly. In his dealings with Luke, she could glimpse the vulnerability that was so alien to his nature and she knew, with some deep,