‘And?’ His dark eyebrows elevated into two sardonic arcs. ‘Aren’t I allowed to have sex on my birthday?’
She shook her head. She was still a relative novice when it came to lovemaking, but she was intuitive enough to know that something about him that afternoon had been different. Something she hadn’t seen since. There had been something wild about his behaviour that day. Something seeking and restless. She chose her words carefully. ‘You gave me the distinct impression that having spontaneous sex with someone you’d only just met wasn’t your usual style.’
‘Maybe you were just too irresistible.’
‘Is that true?’
Gabe met the steady stare of her bright blue eyes and, inwardly, he cursed. If she was a casual girlfriend, he would have told her it was none of her business, and then to get out and leave him alone. But Leila was his wife. He couldn’t tell her to get out. And the truth was that he didn’t want to.
He met her eyes. ‘No, it’s not true,’ he said quietly. ‘I seduced you that day because I was in Qurhah, a place where it’s almost impossible to buy whisky, which is my usual choice of drink on my birthday.’ There was a pause. ‘And in the absence of the oblivion brought about by alcohol, I opted instead for sex.’
CHAPTER TEN
LEILA STARED INTO eyes as flat as an icy sea as Gabe’s words hit her. Her fingernails were digging into the palms of her hands but she barely noticed the physical discomfort—not when this terrible pain was lancing through her heart and making it almost impossible for her to breathe. ‘You used me?’ she questioned at last. ‘Because you couldn’t get a drink?’
His laugh was bitter. ‘There’s no need to be quite so melodramatic about it. People have sex for all kinds of reasons, Leila. Sometimes it’s because lust just gets the better of them and sometimes because it makes them forget.’ He threw his passport down on the table and looked at her. ‘I didn’t use you any more than you used me that day. I wanted oblivion and you wanted to experiment. Am I right?’
Leila squirmed beneath the challenge of his gaze because his words were uncomfortably close to the bone. How could she deny his accusation when it was true? She had wanted to experiment, yes—but she’d had her reasons. What would he say if she told him that he had seemed to represent everything a man should be? Everything that she’d ever dreamed of. That for the first time in her life, she’d actually believed all those romantic films she’d been hooked on.
Yet, in a way, maybe that had been seeking her own kind of oblivion. She had found pleasure with a devastatingly handsome and sexy man—and for a few brief moments she had forgotten the prison of her palace life. But she hadn’t really known him as Gabe, had she?
She still didn’t.
‘What were you seeking to obliterate?’ she asked carefully.
‘It isn’t relevant.’
‘Oh, I think it is.’ She sucked in a breath and held his gaze as she let it out again. ‘Look, I get it,’ she said. ‘I get that you’re a very private man who doesn’t want to talk about emotions.’
‘So don’t ask me.’
She shook her head as she ignored the cold clamp of his words. ‘But I have to ask you—don’t you see? I know all the psychology books say that yesterday is gone. But I don’t want to go on like this—not knowing stuff. I’m having your baby, Gabe. Don’t you think that gives me the right to know something about your past, as well as the occasional speculation about what our future might hold?’
With an angry shake of his head, Gabe walked over to the window to stare out at one of the most expensive views in the world. It was ironic, he thought. You could buy yourself somewhere high in the sky, which was far away from the madding crowd. But no matter how much you spent or how much you tried to control your life—you could never keep the world completely at bay. You could only try. He could feel the hard beat of his heart as he turned round to face her.
‘It isn’t relevant,’ he said again.
‘It is,’ she argued. ‘We can’t just keep burying our heads in the sand and pretending this isn’t happening, because it is. We’re going to have a baby, Gabe. A baby which needs to be cared for. Not just cared for. Loved,’ she said, her voice faltering a little.
‘Don’t look to me for love, Leila,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I thought I’d made that clear from the beginning.’
‘Oh, you did. You made it very clear, and I wouldn’t dream of expecting you to love me,’ she said. ‘But surely our baby has the right to expect it. If you can’t show our baby love—and believe me when I tell you I’m not judging you if that’s the case—then don’t I at least have the right to know why?’
For a moment there was silence while Gabe looked at the set of her shoulders and the steady blue gaze which didn’t falter beneath his own deliberately forbidding stare. He knew what she wanted. What women always wanted. To find out why he didn’t show emotion or even feel it. It was something he’d come up against time and time again—and women were the most tenacious of creatures. Countless numbers had tried—and failed—to work him out. Powerful women, rich women, successful women—they all wanted the one thing which eluded them. They saw his cold heart as a challenge; his emotional isolation as something they wished to triumph over.
Yet Leila’s question had not been tinged with ambition—rather with the simple desire to understand. She was the mother of their baby and maybe what she said was true. Maybe she did have the right to know what had made him the person he was. But wasn’t he scared to let her close? Scared of what might happen if he did?
He surveyed her from between half-shuttered eyes. ‘What do you want me to tell you?’
Leila was so surprised at his sudden change of heart that it took a moment before she could speak, and all the time her head was telling her to go easy. Not to scare him off with a fierce interrogation.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said softly. ‘All the usual things. Like, where you were born. I don’t even know that.’
For a moment, there was silence. It reminded her of the moment before the start of a play, when the whole theatre was quiet and prepared for revelation. And then he began to speak.
‘I was born in the south of France. But we moved back to England when I was a baby—to a place called Brighton.’
‘Yes, Brighton. I’ve heard of it.’ Leila nodded and began reciting, as if she were reading from a geographical textbook. ‘It’s a seaside town on the south coast. Is it very beautiful—this Brighton?’
In spite of everything, Gabe gave a glimmer of a smile. At times she seemed so foreign and so naive but of course, in many ways, she was. Maybe she thought he came from a background like hers and telling her that he had been born on the French Riviera would only feed into that fantasy.
The truth, he reminded himself. She needed to know the truth.
‘Anywhere by the sea has the potential to be beautiful,’ he said. ‘But, like any town, there are rough parts—and those were the places we lived. Not that we stayed anywhere very long.’
‘We?’
