than the gaping chasm that already existed.
She had known when she met Gabriel again yesterday that he wasn’t the same man she had been so attracted to five years ago that she had forgotten, or simply put aside, every vestige of caution in order to spend the night in his arms.
This Gabriel was scarred on the inside as well as the outside and the coldness of his anger concerning her having kept Toby’s existence a secret from him was worse than any emotional accusations might have been.
She sighed. ‘Ten o’clock, I believe you said?’
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on her, searching for any sign of deception in her eyes or expression. He could see none. Only a weary acceptance of a situation she could do nothing to change.
The tension in his shoulders relaxed slightly. ‘We will sit down together with Toby first and explain my own and my father’s relationship to him.’
‘Isn’t that a little premature?’ Bella protested.
‘In my opinion it is almost four and a half years too late!’ Gabriel snapped.
‘It will only confuse Toby when you have no active role in his life—’
His scornful laugh cut off her protest. ‘Do you seriously believe that is going to continue?’
Bella looked at him, knowing by the implacability in Gabriel’s expression as he looked down the length of his arrogant nose at her—the same implacability in his tone whenever he now referred to her as Isabella—that it wasn’t. That it was Gabriel’s intention to take an extremely active role in Toby’s life in future.
Precisely where that left her, Bella had no idea…
CHAPTER FIVE
‘DOES Grandad live in one of these big houses?’
‘He certainly does, Toby,’ Gabriel answered him indulgently.
Bella would never cease to be amazed by the resilience of children and by her own child’s in particular.
Having lain awake long into the night dreading, planning, how best to break the news to Toby that Gabriel Danti was his father and Cristo Danti was his grandfather, she had been totally surprised by Toby taking the whole thing in his four-year-old stride.
Even his initial shyness at suddenly being presented with a father had quickly given way to excitement as he was strapped into the back of Gabriel’s open-topped sports car to make the drive over to the house where his grandfather was anxiously waiting to meet him after being discharged from the hospital earlier this morning.
Bella’s own emotions were far less simplistic as she stared out of the car window, seeing none of the beauty of the Pacific Ocean in the distance, her thoughts all inwards.
Her life, and consequently Toby’s, was back in England. In the small village where she had bought a cottage for the two of them to live in, once she had been financially able to do so, after living with her parents for the first two years of Toby’s life. She liked living in a village, as did Toby, and he was due to start attending the local school in September.
This situation with Gabriel, his veiled threats of the night before, made Bella wonder exactly when she could expect to return to that life.
Not that she was able to read any of Gabriel’s thoughts or feelings this morning. He was wearing sunglasses now, and his mood when he had arrived at the hotel earlier had been necessarily upbeat for Toby’s benefit, his attitude towards Bella one of strained politeness. Only the coldness in Gabriel’s eyes earlier, whenever he had chanced to look at her, had told Bella of the anger he still felt towards her.
The anger he would probably always feel towards her for denying him knowledge of his son for the first four years of Toby’s life…
‘Here we are, Toby,’ Gabriel turned to tell his son after steering the car into the driveway, smiling as he saw the excitement on his son’s face as they waited for the electrically operated gates to open so that he could drive them down to the house.
His son…!
Even twelve hours later Gabriel still had trouble believing he had a son. A bright, happy, and unaffected little boy who had taken the news of Gabriel being his father much more pragmatically than Gabriel had responded the evening before to learning that he had a son.
Gabriel glanced at Bella now from behind his dark sunglasses, his mouth thinning as he noted the pallor to her cheeks, the lines of strain beside her eyes and mouth.
Deservedly so!
Whatever claims Janine Childe had made against him five years ago did not change the fact that Bella hadn’t so much as attempted to inform him she was expecting his child, that she had actually borne him a son, or that she had then brought Toby up with no knowledge whatsoever of his father or his father’s family.
‘Your own family are all aware now of Toby’s paternity?’
Bella was glad she was wearing sunglasses to hide the sudden tears that had welled up in her eyes at the emotional breakfast she had shared earlier with her parents and siblings.
There had been no words of rebuke or disapproval from her parents, only their gentle understanding as she explained the situation of five years ago to them—and Claudia’s demand, as the two sisters had returned to their hotel suite once the meal was over, that Bella ‘tell all’ about the night she had spent in Gabriel’s bed. A curiosity Bella had chosen not to satisfy.
She didn’t even want to think about that night, let alone relive, even verbally, how completely she had been infatuated with the darkly seductive Gabriel Danti five years ago!
‘Yes,’ she confirmed huskily.
Gabriel nodded in satisfaction as he accelerated the black sports car down the driveway to the house that was just as grand as Bella would have expected of this prestigious area of San Francisco. It was large and gabled, slightly Victorian in style, with its redbrick structure and the white frames to the stained-glass windows.
‘You’re sure this…visit…isn’t going to give your father a relapse?’ Bella hung back reluctantly on the gravelled driveway once they were all out of the car.
Gabriel had removed his sunglasses and left them in the car, his expression mocking as he glanced down at her. ‘On the contrary, I believe its possibilities will achieve the opposite.’
Bella looked up at him, a little confused by the cryptic comment. ‘Sorry?’
His mouth tightened. ‘Later, Isabella,’ he said curtly. ‘You and I are going to talk again later.’
Bella didn’t much like the sound of that.
And she was really starting to dislike the way Gabriel kept calling her Isabella in that coldly contemptuous way!
Once Gabriel had left the previous night Bella had thought long and hard about his claim that he hadn’t made love with her five years ago, or spent the night with her, in an effort to make Janine Childe jealous. After hours and hours of going over the situation in her head, Bella had finally come to the conclusion that it really didn’t
