Her Best Kept Royal Secret by Lynne Graham

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOUHAVEOPTIONS,’ Gaby’s friend Liz reminded Gaby ruefully, several weeks after that night in Alharia.

Gaby grimaced. Yes, she knew the options. There was termination and there was adoption, both of which were terrifyingly final. She couldn’t face either choice and, in fact, that part of her that had long dreamt of having a family again actually wanted to celebrate the pleasure of becoming a mother. Stark terror, however, threatened to drown that guilty seedling of joy. The prospect of single parenthood was decidedly scary. Somehow, she would manage, she told herself urgently, although she suspected that her job as a nanny would become too physically demanding when she reached late pregnancy. She would have to find less taxing work by that stage, and she didn’t have much time left because she was already more than three months along.

How had the unthinkable happened? That one night in Alharia still haunted her. She would never forget waking up alone in that palace bedroom, feeling very much like a meaningless one-night stand. A servant had wakened her with breakfast in bed. Presumably, Angel had organised that before his slick and silent departure. Gaby had felt too sick with angry mortification to eat and had fled back to her own room to pack. Angel hadn’t even left her his phone number. No matter what lens she used to look back on that night, her perspective didn’t change: Angel had treated her like dirt, disposable dirt. The least he could have done was wake her to say goodbye before he left but, instead, he had settled for the easier option.

‘If you’re planning to keep the baby, you’ll need the father’s support to make that possible,’ Liz pointed out sensibly. ‘It’s hard and very expensive to raise a child alone.’

Gaby gritted her teeth at the concept of Angel being supportive in such circumstances. He would do what the law demanded for a child he didn’t want but she was quite certain that he would not wish to be an active parent. He would be angry, bitter and hostile and there was nothing she could do to change that reality. As a man who proudly conserved his royal dignity, determined not to even have his name linked with a woman’s in the press, he would scarcely welcome an illegitimate child.

‘I’ll tell him in a few months’ time,’ she remarked stiffly.

‘You shouldn’t leave it that long,’ her friend contended. ‘Give him time to adjust to the idea before the birth.’

Gaby shrugged. She knew what she had to do but she was in no hurry to do it. ‘I could have a miscarriage...or something, so I should wait. And if I leave telling him a bit longer, there’ll be no room for him to suggest a termination.’

Liz frowned. ‘Would he do that?’

‘I really don’t know but I’m not willing to put myself in that position,’ Gaby admitted quietly. ‘It’ll be enough if he knows before the baby is born.’

‘I still can’t believe you had the bad luck to run into Angel Diamandis abroad where you’d be all alone with him,’ the blonde lamented. ‘I mean, what were the odds that you would meet your first love again like that?’

Gaby wrinkled her nose. ‘He wasn’t my first love, well, not in the way you mean.’

‘Gaby, you were besotted with him, and Laurie and I hated him because he was such a player and he knew what he was doing to you when he demanded that stupid agreement from you! You would’ve got badly hurt if you had got any closer to him,’ Liz said feelingly. ‘And now look what’s happened!’

‘I’m a big girl and I got tempted. I didn’t expect this development.’ Gaby sighed, reflecting that Angel had used contraception throughout the night, although he had possibly been a little careless in not taking precautions sooner the first time. ‘If I’d been on contraception myself, I suppose I would have been safe from this happening...but I swear Angel is the only man alive who could make me behave the way I did.’

‘You and how many other women? Yes, he’s incredibly hot, but he is also very much a bad boy and dangerous.’ Liz groaned, vaulting upright as a baby’s cry sounded upstairs in the small terraced house. ‘I’d better get Robbie, and don’t forget that he arrived even though George and I were careful. Only abstinence is a foolproof method of birth control.’

Chastened by the reminder, Gaby thought about the baby she had conceived. She had seen her child on the ultrasound screen and that viewing had stolen her heart at first glance, wiping out every sensible thought.

But her pregnancy had still come as a huge surprise. Her menstrual cycle had not stopped completely until the second month and she had been so busy working short-term placements and finding a flat share that she hadn’t noticed. Her breasts had got bigger, but she had simply thought she was putting on weight. Only the final cessation of her cycle had warned her that something was wrong. Liz and her sister, Laurie, had been stunned when she had finally told them about her night with Angel in Alharia, and although her friends had then persuaded her to do a pregnancy test, she had still been genuinely shocked by the result.

Even so, she refused to let herself panic. In due course, she would make a discreet approach to Angel, although she was in no hurry to do so. After all, he had made his lack of interest in her clear by not contacting her again. Had he wished to seek her out he could’ve easily discovered where she worked, but he clearly had not wished to see her again. And that was fine. A one-night stand didn’t make a relationship, only it was more than a little disheartening to appreciate that a guy who had once flooded her flat with flowers to impress her had walked away from their night of passion with such ease, consigning their brief intimacy to history.

Her thoughts pulled her back into the past and she remembered how Angel had ferried her back to his elegant Cambridge town house after she fell down the steps in front of him. He had put plasters on her cut knees, making her feel like a child again. His friends had sat around being polite but staring, visibly unable to comprehend his interest in her. Inevitably, Angel had been part of the student elite, beautifully dressed and wealthy young people, several who also enjoyed titles or famous parents and who, even though they attended the same university, lived an entirely different and more glamorous life than more ordinary students.

Gaby had been mesmerised by those dark golden eyes fringed by inky black lashes. Breathing that close to Angel had been a challenge and when he had asked her out to dinner, she had loosed an uncomfortable laugh and had said that she was too busy studying to go out in the evenings. Realising that he was a prince, as everyone else treated him with near reverence, had turned her off rather than on and his surprise at her rejection had embarrassed her even more.

‘I’ll change your mind,’ he had told her confidently and that afternoon the flowers had arrived, ridiculously extravagant, gorgeous baskets overflowing with exotic blooms that had so cluttered her small living space that she’d had to give most of them away to neighbours and friends.

Naively, she had associated the giving of flowers with romance. The next time she had run into Angel had been at the library. Over coffee she had thanked him for the flowers, and she had been ready to say yes to dinner should he have asked her again, only Angel had told her instead that he was flying home for three weeks. Regrettably, his disappearance had only fuelled her infatuation.

‘Angel plays with girls like you, that’s all. Don’t start building fantasy castles in the air just because he’s interested in you at the moment...a moment is as long as Angel’s interest lasts,’ Cassia Romano had told her bitchily, going out of her way to bump into Gaby after a lecture and deliver that unnecessary warning.

Cassia, a blonde with the looks of a supermodel and reputedly the holder of a defunct Italian aristocratic title, had never strayed far from Angel’s side. He had treated Cassia like a friend, but Gaby had recognised that possessive Cassia was ambitious to be rather more than that.

Gaby had run into Angel his first day back in the UK and had agreed to dine out with him that evening with her emotions running on high.

‘We’ve got absolutely nothing in common,’ she had told him uneasily.

‘What does that matter?’ Angel had asked lazily. ‘We only get one chance to make the most of being young and single. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m not in the market for anything more serious.’

And that candour of his had acted on her that night like the warning jolt of lightning, blowing her romantic hopes sky-high with the truth that Angel, the ruling Prince of Themos, did not see their relationship progressing beyond the level of a fling. She should have backed off then, she reflected, five years older and wiser, but in those days she had been very much into excusing or glamorising Angel’s every flaw. She had told herself that his honesty was refreshing and that she should not condemn him for it. After all, she was still a teenager and wasn’t looking to settle down either. And that night she had decided that he would become her first lover. Never in her life had she even imagined the sheer strength of the physical attraction that Angel exuded for her.

‘You’ll only be another notch on his bedpost,’ her friends had warned her.

‘But he’ll be the first notch on mine,’ Gaby had parried, lifting her chin.

‘That’s not enough when you’re already obsessed with him. You’ll want more.’

But Gaby had already known that ‘more’ was not on offer and rather than walk away from a fling that refused to be a fantasy at that stage she had decided that she would settle for what she could get. Only it hadn’t turned out like that because, after a couple of more casual meetings, when Angel still studiously refrained from touching her in any way, she had asked him why that was so. And he had explained that he didn’t risk getting involved or being alone with a woman unless she had signed a non-disclosure agreement promising never to take photos or talk about him to anybody. He had presented the concept as being protective for both of them because it would have barred him from ever discussing her with anyone either. But the idea of signing a legal agreement to get any closer to Angel had chilled Gaby to the marrow as well as insulted her integrity.

For a start she hadn’t liked it being almost taken for granted that they would become lovers when whether she would or not was for her to decide in the moment. She had been repulsed by his lack of trust in her sex and disturbed that he didn’t already realise that she wasn’t a social climber, a gold-digger or a woman keen to attract publicity. She had told him that she couldn’t possibly sign such a document. He had done his own case no favours when he’d pointed out that every other woman he had been with in recent years had agreed to the measure. He had, admittedly, endeavoured to explain himself and had assured her that he would ensure that she had her own legal advice, but it had all been too much and simultaneously too little for Gaby when set beside her own foolish romantic hopes.

She had had a mini meltdown and had told him that she would never sign the document and that they were done. Angel had come over all blue-blooded royalty and had reacted with icy dignity, a response that had given her wounded feelings absolutely no satisfaction. Her only consolation in the final row that had followed the day afterwards was that Angel had lost his temper as well.

The next evening, her friends had accused her of moping and had dragged her out to a party. Angel had been there. He had acknowledged her with a casual inclination of his handsome dark head but had made no attempt to speak to her. An hour later she had seen him kiss another woman out on the terrace, a woman she had seen him with before, and shock and possessive rage had assailed her. While she had told herself that it was over between them, in the back of her mind she had expected him to return to her. When he had reappeared back inside, she had breezed past him and hissed in an undertone that he was a dirty, rotten cheater.

Enraged by that condemnation, Angel had called at the flat she had shared with the twins an hour later.

‘We are over. You don’t own me,’ he had told her.

And she had flung a teddy bear at him, the only thing within reach. Mortification still seized her whenever she remembered that moment.

Angel, however, had reacted as seriously as though she had thrown a brick at him. ‘You refused to sign an NDA,’ he had reminded her doggedly.

‘What sort of a man in today’s world asks a woman to sign an NDA?’ she had slammed back at him, punctuating her demand with a rather more solid pottery mug.

Angel had ducked and the window behind him had been smashed and as shards of glass went flying in all directions he had closed a hand round her arm and furiously demanded, ‘Are you crazy?’ His tawny eyes had blazed gold as the heart of a fire.

Shaken by the damage she had caused and embarrassed when her friends came rushing in to check on them, she had backed away. ‘I’m not saying sorry,’ she had told him childishly. ‘I wish I’d hit you!’

And those had been her very last words to Angel five years earlier. And that was what bothered her most about Angel. The feelings he triggered inside her were too powerful and he made her too needy. It took her back to the savage loss of her family at fourteen when she had first learned how much it hurt to lose anyone you loved. She could neither afford nor wish to develop such feelings for Angel.

Angel studied the email and gritted his teeth. He had been ignoring it in his inbox, reluctant to open it, to be forced to handle the conflicting reactions assailing him at the sight of her name. Only now was he finally reading it, only to be taken aback by its very brevity.

I need to meet with you in person concerning an urgent personal matter.

He was conscious of a savage sense of disappointment. He really had believed in his heart of hearts that Gabriella Knox differed from his previous lovers, but that she should contact him months after their Alharian encounter was revealing, he reflected with angry scepticism. Obviously, she wanted something from him, as so many of her predecessors had, and his wide experience of such approaches suggested that what she wanted was most probably money. Or another night with him?

That would have been Angel’s preferred option, but even that was controversial because he knew he could not afford to surrender to temptation again. Memories of that night had plagued him ever since and unnerved a man who considered himself stable as a rock in that line. He didn’t repeat his sexual encounters, considering it far simpler and safer to simply move on to a fresh conquest. Such recollections didn’t usually linger, nor did they have the weird effect of making him ridiculously critical of the other women he met, while just thinking about Gabriella still made him hard. So, no, he definitely didn’t want to see her again, but innate caution warned him that he had to check out why Gabriella had got in touch. And he would guard against any inappropriate further familiarity by bringing legal counsel with him, he decided with a forbidding smile. That would impose a barrier and would also ensure that he stuck strictly to business.

Three weeks later, Gaby climbed laboriously off the bus and walked towards the hotel at which Angel had agreed to meet her. So much cloak-and-dagger nonsense, she reflected ruefully. Did he really see that as still necessary? Still, she could concede that, given the choice, he would not want to be seen in public with a pregnant woman lest he was exposed as the father, but, barring anyone looking very carefully at her, she had done her very best to conceal her condition.

She wore a voluminous winter coat over a loose black knit sweater dress and long boots. She was more than eight months pregnant and had not intended to leave telling Angel quite so late, but it had taken a month for her to get a response to her email and then another few weeks to set up the appointment and regrettably she had not factored in that time lag. Perhaps she should consider herself lucky that Angel was willing to agree to an actual meeting, she thought irritably, but really approaching the Queen would have been easier than gaining access to the ruling Prince of Themos.

It was only fair that she tell him that she was having a child...a little boy. Angel had a right to know he was soon to become a father. It didn’t mean that she was expecting anything from him, she reasoned soothingly, bolstering her proud independence.

‘Are you Miss Knox?’ A man in a suit with a security bud in his ear approached her the instant she entered the hotel foyer.

Gaby stilled in surprise. ‘Yes.’

‘Please come this way,’ the man urged quietly.

She was swiftly ushered into a lift by the man, much as though she were engaging in espionage, and her mouth quirked, her sense of humour tickled. Certainly, it would be the only thing she had to smile about on this particular day, she reflected unhappily, because she was not looking forward to telling Angel news that he would not want to hear. Angel would not be familiar with being put in that invidious position, particularly when he had no control over the situation. One of the first things she had noticed about Angel was that he liked and even expected to control everything happening around and to him. He fervently guarded himself from the unexpected. And what could be more unexpected and unwelcome than an unplanned pregnancy?

Pale at that knowledge, Gaby accompanied the security man out of the lift and straight to the door, which opened ahead of them. An unfamiliar brunette in her thirties appeared in the doorway and gave her a frosty appraisal. ‘Miss Knox? Gabriella Knox?’ she queried.

‘Who’s asking?’ Gaby countered quietly.

‘I’m here, Gabriella,’ Angel’s dark deep drawl sounded from deeper in the room, cold and audibly edged with impatience.

Gaby crossed the threshold, conscious of the woman closing the door behind her and remaining with them. ‘I didn’t realise that I would have to ask to see you alone,’ she said flatly.

‘This is one of my lawyers, Petronella Casey,’ Angel informed her calmly.

Gaby lifted her head high and squared her shoulders. ‘I’m not prepared to talk to you with a third party present,’ she told him, scanning him with veiled eyes, taking in the superbly tailored grey designer suit, the wine-red shirt, a gold playing card cufflink visible at one wrist. Tall, dark, breathtakingly handsome and sophisticated, but still flawed and imperfect when he could greet a brief email with such cynical distrust and distaste.

She marvelled that he could still look so beautiful and yet act as remote as the Andes from her, as if that night in Alharia had never happened, as if she were an absolute stranger. It hurt, of course it did, but she rammed that hurt down deep inside her and strove to rise above it, trying not to dwell on the lowering awareness that any kind of involvement with Angel had always caused her pain. It was a little too late to be reminding herself now of that sobering reality, she conceded wretchedly.

The brunette stepped forward. ‘I assure you that whatever is said in this room will remain completely confidential,’ she declared, with a cool smile that might have been intended as reassuring but which missed its mark when she had ‘legal shark’ written all over her.

Gaby had no intention of being humiliated by the presence of another woman in the room while she staged a deeply personal and private conversation with Angel. ‘I’m afraid it’s a question of you leaving...or me leaving,’ she explained with quiet dignity.

‘Be reasonable, Gabriella,’ Angel intoned in the most forbidding tone she had ever heard from him.

Angel studied her in frustration, absently wondering if she had come direct from a funeral, because the long all-black outfit seemed like overkill otherwise and, what was worse, swallowed her tiny stature alive, literally covering her from head to toe. But simultaneously the colour black also threw the splendour of her shining copper hair, dark blue eyes and faultless porcelain skin into prominence, lending her the luminous quality of a star against the night sky, a poetic thought so unlike his usual thought processes that Angel almost winced for himself.

‘Why should I be reasonable when you’re being so unreasonable?’ Gaby asked sharply, flinching as her baby boy tumbled inside her and kicked hard against her bladder. He was a very active baby and a large one. A date for her C-section delivery was already set. ‘I came here to speak to you in private but if you can’t even grant me that courtesy, I’ll leave.’

The lawyer, Petronella, stepped forward without warning. ‘If you’re in agreement, I’ll wait outside, sir. You can call me back in at any stage.’

Colliding with Petronella’s intent gaze, Gaby reddened as she grasped that the lawyer had recognised the reason behind her desire for privacy. Of course, another woman would notice that she had dressed to hide her body faster than the average man and have worked out why.

Angel shifted a hand in a gesture of agreement but settled angry dark golden eyes on Gaby. Such stunning eyes, she thought with regret at the prospect of what was coming, tawny brown with the glow of honey in sunlight and ringed by lush black spiky lashes.

As the door snapped shut on the lawyer’s exit, Angel stared at her. ‘Right...just get to the point quickly and we’ll wrap this up,’ he urged harshly.

‘What did I ever do to you to deserve such a lack of good manners?’ Gaby asked in helpless condemnation.

A faint rise of red over his high cheekbones told her that she had made a direct hit and the bad side of Gaby rejoiced while the more sensible side of her winced, because riling Angel was scarcely in her best interests in her current predicament.

‘I apologise if I’ve been curt,’ Angel breathed between gritted teeth. ‘But it has been many months since our last meeting in Alharia and naturally I am curious as to why you have demanded this meeting.’

‘It wasn’t a demand, Angel. I believe it was a polite request,’ Gaby protested, struggling to keep her hot temper under control. ‘But since you urged me to get to the point, I’ll do that and free us both from this unpleasant confrontation.’

‘It is not a confrontation!’ Angel bit back at her in a seriously rattled undertone.

‘Oh, I think it is when you greet me with a lawyer by your side,’ Gaby contradicted with confidence, an icy flash lightening her blue eyes. ‘Relax, Angel. I’m only here as a courtesy and I have no intention of approaching the press in any shape or form. However, you do have the right to know that I’m...’ she hesitated ‘...pregnant.’

And the word fell like a giant rock dropped into a still pond. That imaginary resounding splash was as loud as the shattering silence.

Later she thought that she would never, as long as she lived, forget the look of pure naked antipathy and contempt that flared in Angel’s lean, hard-boned features as he intoned very drily, ‘Well, if you are, it can’t possibly be mine!’