The Secret Spanish Love-Child - By Cathy Williams Page 0,44
calm as anything she had ever seen in her life before. It was a setting that could have leapt straight out of the pages of a tourist brochure advertising exclusive homes. The house was open and modern, with a sprawling wooden veranda and bedrooms that opened on to the front lawns and overlooked spectacular views of the sea. To one side, the rectangular infinity pool was the perfect setting for their evening meals, light suppers prepared by one of the two housekeepers who kept everything in order when Gabriel wasn’t around. Which, she gathered, was actually most of the year. Ana and Edna had also proved to be immensely popular with Luke and, for the first time in four and a half years, Alex had been able to do what many women with young children occasionally took for granted when they weren’t having to cope on their own. She had been able to relax.
And Gabriel had aided and abetted that. From that very first night sharing that bed, he had chipped away at her defences with his humour, his obvious enthusiasm to win over his son after their shaky start. So she had vowed to stick to her guns and not repeat their lovemaking…He had allowed her. Until, on night three, she had cracked and gone back into his arms.
And since then she had been on a self-justifying bandwagon. She had been weak, yes, but didn’t she deserve to snatch this time before grim reality back in England could take its toll? There would be no question of anything permanent in their relationship. In fact, Gabriel had said that himself, had told her that they were just getting closure. And if that had sent a shiver of bitter disappointment through her, she had quickly talked herself out of it because she was no longer the gullible kid she had once been. She had been a single mother for years. She had grown up and out of that obsessive, consuming love she had once felt for him. She was safe.
Now, she would happily argue with Gabriel if she didn’t agree with what he said. No longer did she creep around behind him with lovesick puppy eyes, deliriously happy to say how high? whenever he said jump.
She wasn’t sure what her parents, or her brothers, for that matter, would make of the situation. They knew that she was in Spain but their version of events had been severely edited. She had phoned and spoken to her mother a couple of times and had been vague in the face of direct questioning. Mostly, she had communicated with them by text and had been thankful for its deliberately short, uninformative format.
That awkward situation lying ahead was just something else that joined the other something elses waiting to be sorted out when the time came.
Stretching pleasurably, Alex slipped into a pair of shorts and a halter neck top which she had bought on one of the various shopping expeditions she had done whilst in the city.
Outside, the sun was already getting ready to unleash its full force and it was warm.
She took a minute to look round at her surroundings. Beautiful lawns, thickly planted with flowers of every bright hue, the glittering blue of the pool, the cool, airy luxury of the house behind her with its expansive wooden flooring. Every day, she felt the need to commit something new she had observed to memory, ready to be dusted down and examined at some future point in time when the reality of it had been lost.
She had even sneaked a few pictures on her mobile phone, although she knew that Gabriel would probably disapprove. He was passionate about his privacy. Which was why they were there in the first place.
She had only to walk for a few minutes before she spotted Luke and Gabriel on the beach, squatting by a rock pool, Gabriel’s hand protectively resting on his son’s stomach as Luke peered into the water.
The shadow she cast as she approached them alerted Gabriel to her presence and he looked up at her, shading his eyes with one hand.
His dark eyes gave her a leisurely once-over and he grinned as the colour crept into her cheeks. They had made love in more positions than he could remember and she still blushed whenever he looked at her!
‘Nice,’ he commented, while Luke frowned and poked his finger into the water, curious to see what the tiny fish in the rock pool would do.
Alex stooped down and