The Secret Spanish Love-Child - By Cathy Williams Page 0,53

just as soon as the whole duty thing wore off, because wear off it inevitably would.

‘You may think that you’ve won,’ she had said with a cool smile, while those diamond-hard eyes had given her the once-over and found her lacking in all the important departments, ‘but you haven’t. You haven’t got the class or the looks to keep him and the fact that you haven’t got an engagement ring on your finger is proof enough of that. A man like Gabriel might like tradition but playing happy families with a woman he doesn’t give a damn about isn’t his style. You might speak a little Spanish but you have a lot to learn about how a Spaniard thinks, especially a Spaniard like Gabriel.’

Replaying the conversation in her head, Alex groaned aloud and stuck buried her face in a pillow.

She wondered if it had been that final dig that had prompted her to say, with a calmness she hadn’t imagined possible, ‘Gabriel has already proposed. In fact, Gabriel has proposed more than once and, not that it’s any of your business, we’ll be getting married as soon as I return to England.’ Well, it had been worth it to see that flash of anger that contorted Cristobel’s beautiful face. She had almost been tempted to spin a fairy story about Gabriel being madly in love with her, but not even she could fashion a lie that was so outrageous.

Now, of course, she was left with the residue from that brief moment of retaliation but she began to wonder whether the thought of accepting his proposal hadn’t been there, playing away at the back of her mind, since he had left, like the familiar strains of background music, just discernible but not jarring enough to require attention.

She rolled over onto her side, eyes wide open. With pernicious determination, she felt a little seed of hope bury itself inside her and take root.

Yes, she could think pessimistically about Gabriel’s proposal. Yes, she could work herself up into a lather predicting worst case scenarios.

But she loved him and wasn’t it possible that he might come to feel the same about her? He was attracted to her, there was no doubt about that, and if she continued to make herself exciting to him, then was it really inevitable that he would stray? Hadn’t she read somewhere that men were creatures of habit? Or something like that?

She hurriedly closed her mind to the unlikely thought of Gabriel being a creature of habit.

In the morning, she would leave and head back to London with her mind made up.

Decision made, Alex found it difficult to sleep. Memories of Cristobel’s attack on her were replaced by hungry curiosity as to how Gabriel would react to her acceptance of his proposal. Would he be relieved that he had finally won, got his own way? Or surprised that she had given up the fight at long last? Or would he be ecstatic and declare his undying love for her? That last improbable scenario kept her smiling for the remainder of the following day.

‘I wish we weren’t going back to London,’ Luke complained as she tugged him through airport security. No private jet this time. She was leaving ahead of schedule so that she could surprise Gabriel and what kind of surprise would it be if she had to call him to sort out his jet?

‘You’ll be seeing your dad, though. Aren’t you looking forward to that?’

Leading questions about Gabriel were always a sure fire way of captivating Luke’s attention. He had developed an inexhaustible thirst to find out everything he could about his father, although this usually filtered down to awestruck eulogies about the guy who had already succeeded in filling the role of the strongest, fastest, cleverest dad, at least compared to the other dads he pulled out of the hat from his kindergarten class. Alex had met a couple of those particular dads in question and it was easy to understand why. How could the average man, hair thinning and stomach thickening, ever compare to Gabriel? The fact was that Gabriel towered above the average human being. He would always be the one outrunning the other dads in the fathers’ race on sports days and grabbing the attention of every teacher at parents evenings.

Not too long ago, she would have found it impossible to associate Gabriel with stuff as tedious as school sports days and parents’ evenings, but she had see him throw himself into the role of