Gabriel behind her in drawstring pajama bottoms. Her eyes unwillingly lingered on his bare chest before she met his gaze. His dark eyes twinkled at her as he held up a steaming cup of coffee. “You made coffee. Thank you.”
She took a sip from her mug, relishing the burn against her tongue. “Sure.” She drew a deep breath and turned back to the view of the ocean. “It was the least I could do before I go.”
“Go?” There was something odd in his voice.
She turned back to face him, startled. “In a few hours, you’ll sign the papers to buy your father’s company. And Robby and I will go home.”
Gabriel’s handsome face looked suddenly grim. Setting down his coffee, he put his hands on her shoulders and gazed down at her. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“We had our night. It’s over.” She swallowed back her own pain, tried to smile. “We both knew it wouldn’t last.” “No.”
Laura gave him a trembling smile. “It was always meant to be this way.”
“No,” he repeated roughly. “Stay.”
“As what?”
“As. as my mistress.”
She licked her lips, yearning to agree, yearning to say anything that would give her relief from this heartbreak. But she knew that staying here as Gabriel’s mistress wouldn’t end her pain. It would only prolong it.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I would always be waiting for the day you’d tire of me, and move on to another.”
He searched her gaze. “Can’t you live in the moment? Just live for today?”
Blinking back tears, she shook her head.
“Why?” he demanded.
For an instant, she almost laughed. He looked like a spoiled child deprived of his favorite toy. Then she sobered. “I don’t want to raise Robby that way. And because…”
“Because?”
She took a deep breath. Taking her heart in her hands, she looked up at him.
“Because I love you,” she whispered.
His dark eyes widened. “You—love me,” he repeated.
She nodded, a lump in her throat. “I left you last year because I knew you could never love me back. You’ve told me so many times you will never love anyone. Not a wife.” She trembled, lifting her eyes to his. “Not a child.”
He stared at her, and Laura waited, breathless with the hope that he might deny it, that he’d say his time with Robby had changed his mind.
“There’s more to life than love, Laura,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “There’s friendship, and partnership, and passion. And I can’t do without you, not anymore. I need you. Your truth. Your goodness. Your warmth.” He gave her a humorless smile. “It warms even my cold heart.”
She caught her breath, then rubbed her stinging eyes. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it, Gabriel. I can’t,” she choked out. “I can’t just stay here, loving you, while you give me nothing in return but the knowledge that you’ll someday leave—”
He gripped her shoulders. “Marry me.”
Her eyes and mouth went wide. “What?”
“Marry me.” He picked up her left hand, looking down at the diamond on her finger. His lips curved upward. “You already have the ring.”
“But I thought your proposal was a lie!”
“It was.”
She shook her head tearfully. “So why are you saying this? We’re alone. You’ve already convinced Oliveira. You don’t need to pretend, not anymore!”
“I’m not pretending.” Bending his head, he kissed her hand, making her tremble with the sensation of his warm lips against her skin. He looked up. “I need you, Laura,” he said huskily. “I don’t want to lose you. Marry me. Now. Today.”
She licked her lips, feeling like she were in a dream.
“What about Robby?”
Setting his jaw, Gabriel straightened.
“Perhaps I can’t love him. But I can give him my name. I can give you both the life you deserve. And I can be faithful to you, Laura. I swear it.”
It was so close to everything she’d ever wanted. Gabriel would be her husband. He would be a father, at least in name, to their child. And if some part of her warned that this was a fool’s bargain, to marry a man who could not love her, she still couldn’t resist. Her heart overrode her reason and she succumbed to the temptation of her heart’s deepest desire.
With a tearful sob, she flung her arms around him in her bulky white cotton robe, kissing him as the sun finally broke, vivid and golden, over the fresh blue Atlantic.
“Yes!” she cried with a sob. “Oh, yes!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Two weeks later, Laura stared at herself blankly in the mirror.
An elegantly dressed bride in a long, white lace veil and satin sheath gown stared back at her. It still didn’t feel right. She picked up her neatly bundled bouquet of white roses and looked back in the mirror.
It was the morning of her wedding. In less than an hour she would have everything she’d barely dared to dream of—she’d be Mrs. Gabriel Santos. Robby would have his father.
So where was the joy? She should have been ecstatic with bliss and hope. So why, looking at herself in this beautiful dress, standing in a suite of this beautiful rented mansion outside her village, did she feel so…empty?
Gabriel had wanted to marry her immediately, in Rio, but he’d quickly given in to Laura’s begging when she’d asked to have their wedding in New Hampshire, so her family could attend.
“We can get married in New Hampshire, of course we can, if that’s your wish,” he’d told her. “But after the ceremony, we must live in Rio. Do you agree?”
She’d agreed. She’d been lost in romantic bliss, and all she’d thought about was getting married to the man she loved, in a beautiful wedding surrounded by friends and family.
She hadn’t bothered to think about what would happen afterward. Gabriel had already signed the preliminary contracts to acquire Açoazul SA, and he now planned to merge the company with Santos Enterprises and permanently move the headquarters from New York City to Rio de Janeiro.
Starting tomorrow, she and Robby would live far away from her family, far from the people who actually loved them. Laura would be the wife of a man who didn’t love her, a man who would offer only financial support to the child he didn’t know was his son. A child he could never love.
Now, Laura was dressed in an exquisite 1920s-style
