Her Best Kept Royal Secret by Lynne Graham

CHAPTER NINE

GABYWAKENEDWITHa sense of well-being that was rare for her. It took a minute or two for her to recognise the lovely sun-drenched bedroom and reorientate herself again after all the excitement of the wedding...and the night that had just passed.

A dreamy smile curved her relaxed face, and she shook her head, thinking of that middle-of-the-night passionate encounter and suppressing a sigh. It was only sex, she reminded herself doggedly, and Angel had always excelled in that field. It didn’t mean anything either and she needed to remember that the same man had blackmailed her into marriage. It didn’t matter that he had had good intentions when he had utilised such pressure and intimidation.

Feeling a little less relaxed and forgiving, indeed annoyed that Angel could so easily make her forget what was truly important, Gaby sat up.

‘Oh, good, you’re awake,’ Angel remarked from the doorway, startling her.

‘What time is it?’

‘Half-ten...you’ve slept twelve hours...aside from the occasional waking moment,’ Angel rephrased with an utterly mesmerising sensual smile.

Staring at his lean, darkly handsome features just a heartbeat too long, Gaby turned her head away as she scolded herself for being such a pushover. But there he stood, her new husband, and he was strikingly, rivetingly spectacular, lounging there in the doorway without a care in the world, casually clad in a black open shirt and tailored chinos that accentuated every sculpted line of his lean, powerful physique. If she was a pushover in his radius now and again, she thought ruefully, at least she had some excuse.

‘Alexios?’ she queried anxiously. ‘Is he here yet?’

‘Marina’s bringing him this afternoon. Right now, all you have to worry about is coming downstairs to eat. Since we skipped dinner last night, Viola has made a banquet for breakfast,’ Angel explained. ‘And it will be served on the terrace behind the house.’

Gaby scrambled out of bed and streaked into the adjoining bathroom and then streaked out again, still naked, to grab a suitcase in search of clothes.

Angel swept it out of her hand and planted it down on the luggage rack by the wall. ‘Viola will unpack everything for you. We may not have a full staff here, but you don’t need to do everything.’

‘I’m used to doing everything,’ Gaby muttered, suddenly alarmingly aware of her nudity and wondering how she had contrived to forget that reality for even a minute. She rummaged through the case, located a sundress and vanished into the bathroom, taking in a deep breath only once she was alone again. Then she thought of that ‘P for prude’ crack and pulled a face at her own reflection. In time she would get more comfortable with that kind of intimacy, she reasoned ruefully.

When she emerged again, the bedroom was empty, and she went downstairs where Viola was waiting, her smile widening in delight when Gaby addressed her in Italian. The older woman showed her out through a door onto what Angel had referred to as a terrace, a misnomer if ever she had heard one, Gaby reflected in wonderment as she scanned her surroundings. Stone pillars ran along the rear of the house, marble stretched below her feet and fabulous classical frescoes adorned what had once been the back wall of the house. It was incredibly theatrical and unexpected and Gaby grinned.

‘I can see that, in spite of appearances at the front of the house, your grandparents brought the palace here with them,’ she remarked with a smile as Angel rose from a low wall to greet her arrival.

‘Viola told me that while my grandfather was in his library, my grandmother spent her time out here painting and working on garden projects.’

‘Viola’s worked here for a long time, then,’ Gaby commented. ‘Did you visit this house as a child?’

‘Marina brought me here to go fishing and run wild in a way that I couldn’t at the palace. Even when I was a kid, I was expected to behave like an adult there,’ Angel admitted, pulling out a chair for her at the table that was swiftly becoming laden with the variety of options Viola was wheeling out for their delectation.

‘Weren’t your parents here as well?’ she asked in surprise.

‘No, but I often brought schoolfriends here with me.’

As his lean, darkly handsome features tightened and shadowed, Gaby’s brows pleated. ‘And what was that like?’

‘Usually good fun with little adult intervention. It was different once I was older.’ Angel fell silent and looked out to the garden as though an unlucky memory had stopped him dead in his tracks. She wondered what that memory was and what had triggered it, wondering if it might explain Angel’s lack of trust in women, wondering if one of the schoolfriends had actually been a youthful girlfriend. Sooner rather than later Gaby intended to find out, but she would take one small step at a time.

Like the ‘terrace’, the garden was much more elaborate than one would have expected from the farmhouse setting. A riot of roses grew round a central fountain while box-edged beds were planted with herbs and perennials and paved paths ran between. Across to one side and screened off by a hedge, she saw the pale watery gleam of a swimming pool.

‘It’s really beautiful here,’ she said, keen to move on from the family and schoolfriends topic, which had silenced him. She knew enough to surmise now because, clearly, Angel hadn’t enjoyed a family life with his parents or a happy childhood. Either his parents had been too detached in nature or too busy as the sovereigns of Themos to spend much time with him.

Angel smiled again and she knew that changing the subject had been a tactful move, even if curiosity needled her more every time she had to do it. She had not known that Angel could smile at her as much as he did, and she liked that change. Angel had always struck her as rather dark and reserved at his core, rather than open and smiley.

She ate with appetite, helping herself to tasters from various plates and giving him a running commentary on her preferences while he ate only fruit, finally admitting that he had breakfasted around dawn, being an inveterate early riser, no matter how tired he was or where he was in the world. Seated dreamily in a rocking chair in the shade, Gaby sipped her coffee, pleasantly replete from the meal.

‘So,’ Angel murmured softly. ‘Cassia?’

And Gaby almost choked on her coffee. ‘Yes, that topic’s likely to be pretty difficult to tackle,’ she mumbled in an awkward recovery.

‘Why should it be? Cassia is not good with other women, but she is exceptionally good at what she does at the palace,’ Angel opined.

Gaby stiffened at his supportive, approving intonation when referring to the blonde. ‘Did you ever think of marrying her?’ she heard herself ask rather abruptly.

Taken aback in turn by that sudden question, Angel frowned. ‘In these circumstances I would like to say no, but it would be a lie. For a couple of months before I met you again, I did consider Cassia as a bride because I’ve never wanted an emotional connection with a woman,’ he explained curtly. ‘I don’t feel anything for her and I’m not particularly attracted to her, but I did think she would be a suitable choice for the role of future queen...and then you came along.’

‘And Alexios came along,’ Gaby filled in, striving to conceal her dismay at what he had told her, which meant that on that score, at least, Cassia had not been lying. At some stage, the blonde had been in the running to be Angel’s wife and she had been astute enough to guess that fact without him ever voicing the idea.

‘It was merely a thought,’ Angel extended as if he sensed her unease. ‘I didn’t mention the idea to her or indeed ever let our relationship become close. Once one crosses those boundaries with a member of staff it is impossible to step back.’

Some of Gaby’s healthy colour had returned to her cheeks and, indeed, she even contrived to smile at him. ‘So, you’ve never had sex with Cassia?’ she double-checked.

His frown darkened. ‘Of course not. What is this all about, Gabriella? I’m beginning to feel as though I’m on trial for something.’

Gaby raised an anxious hand. ‘No, no, absolutely not! But this topic and your explanation does lead into what I had to discuss with you relating to Cassia,’ she framed uncomfortably. ‘Yesterday, on the very day of our wedding, Cassia told me that you and she were lovers on an...er...casual basis and that that would be continuing after our marriage...’

Angel sprang upright, golden eyes gleaming dark and hard as jet with astonishment. ‘She’s an old friend. Are you sure you understood her correctly?’ he shot at her.

Gaby was knocked off balance by that immediate expression of doubt and his grim change of mood. ‘Yes, I understood her perfectly. Maybe you don’t want to believe me, Angel, but she did make that claim before the wedding. I’m sorry, but I don’t lie about stuff of that nature.’

‘I didn’t accuse you of lying,’ Angel countered tautly. ‘But in my experience, women often do tell lies about each other.’

‘And now you’re just showing your prejudice,’ Gaby told him, a chill running down her spine even if, unusually for her with Angel, she retained her calm. And she knew why: she was in shock at his flat refusal to credit her side of the story.

Angel spread two lean hands in an expressive arc of disagreement and dismissal. ‘I can accept that you don’t like her and that you don’t want to work with her. However, I’ve known Cassia since childhood, and I have never known her to be less than truthful.’

‘So, I’m the liar.’ Gaby framed that obvious deduction with gritted teeth.

Angel shrugged an unapologetic shoulder and turned on his heel. ‘Let’s not go there. I’m going out before I say anything that I will regret,’ he bit out. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Gabriella!’

‘Not half as much as I’m disappointed in you,’ she riposted, and for a split second she simply sat there before she plunged to her feet and grabbed up her phone.

‘Angel!’ she called, racing after him because he was already halfway out of the heavy wooden front door.

His arrogant dark head turned, and he shot her a winging glance as though incredulous at her audacity in daring to approach him again after what he had said.

‘I want you to listen to this...’ she murmured quietly as she opened her phone and extended it to him. ‘But, in the mood that you are in, not while you’re driving.’

‘I am not in a mood,’ Angel bit out from between white even teeth.

He was struggling not to lose his temper. It was written all over him from the flush on his exotic cheekbones to his fiery gaze right down to his knotted fists. He had ridiculously expressive body language and she wondered why it was that, even when she was mad as hell with him and reeling with the hurt that he had caused, she still just wanted to soothe him much as if he were Alexios.

‘What is...this?’ he questioned rawly, grudgingly accepting the mobile phone.

‘It’s a recording of the conversation that I had with Cassia. No, I didn’t record it... I’m not that quick off the mark or suspicious. It was Laurie who recorded it. When Cassia asked to speak to me alone Laurie didn’t trust her and she left her phone recording in the bedroom with us,’ Gaby advanced stiffly.

‘How sordid,’ Angel pronounced with slashing distaste.

‘You know what?’ Gaby elevated a dark coppery brow. ‘Sordid or not, I’m belatedly very glad to have the proof of that conversation when evidently I married a guy yesterday who doesn’t believe a word I say,’ she condemned as she walked away again.

‘Gabriella—?’

Gaby spun back, blue eyes flashing as bright as the sapphires she had worn the day before. ‘I’ve said all I want to say for now. But when you return, I will be getting some things out in the open for your benefit,’ she warned him curtly before she walked back outside again.

She was shaking like a leaf from the amount of emotion she was holding inside herself. She reached for her coffee again, but it was cold. Viola appeared with a fresh pot and began to clear the table, occasionally shooting troubled glances at Gaby’s pale set visage.

‘He was a very unhappy little boy, ignored and neglected by his mother,’ Viola whispered in Italian. ‘And a temper like...like a firework display!’

‘I can imagine that,’ Gaby commented, striving to relax sufficiently to smile reassuringly at the older woman while tucking away those nuggets of information. He must have been so hurt and damaged by that maternal negative response, she thought unhappily. The same woman who had abandoned Saif as a baby had been no warmer a mother to Angel and yet she had had every opportunity to be a parent to Angel. The first woman who should have loved and nurtured him had refused to do so. Was that why he found it so hard to trust people?

Even her? His new bride? Angel had blindsided Gaby and plunged her into shock. He didn’t trust her. He might have married her, but he didn’t have any more faith in her word than he might have had in a stranger passing him on the street and that hurt. In addition, he only trusted Cassia more because he had known the woman for years.

That was a moment of revelation for Gaby. She thought about that non-disclosure agreement she had refused to sign at university even though it had meant that she’d lost any chance of being with Angel. Why hadn’t she recognised then just how deep Angel’s distrust went? There it had been, a blatant signpost, and yet she hadn’t seen his fatal flaw. How stupid and naive was she?

He trusted Cassia more because he had known her from childhood and had presumably never witnessed Cassia’s less attractive flipside. For that reason, when he heard that recording, he would be abashed, she reflected without pleasure. But regrettably for Angel it would only figure as one more piece of proof that no woman in his life could be trusted...

Angel drove up to the mountaintop viewpoint and parked. He was in a rage because he had believed that Gabriella was superior to the other women he had known, too honest to malign an employee who had once offended her, too decent to use her newly acquired status against someone who could not fight back. When would he learn? he asked himself angrily as he climbed out of the car with the phone, ignoring the bodyguards spreading round the car park to protect him. He had worked out when he was very young that the only person he could fully rely on and trust was himself.

He hit the play button on the phone, lean dark features tense and dark and brooding. He listened and the angry flush on his cheekbones slowly drained away. His lush black lashes hit his cheekbones as his lips parted on an unspoken but vicious curse. The whole truth and nothing but the truth...even if it was an ugly truth? He knew he had dug himself into a very deep hole. A taxi hummed at the entrance to the car park, doubtless eying the flag on the SUV that signalled Angel’s presence. He sprang upright and swung back into the SUV to drive down the mountain again.

Back at the house, he strode into his grandfather’s library, needing the familiar warmth of its seclusion and the aged whiskey in the crystal decanter. He poured himself a drink and knocked it back with unusual enthusiasm. It still didn’t wipe out the image he kept on seeing of the dead look in Gabriella’s beautiful eyes and her pallor. He breathed in slow and deep while the heat of the alcohol burned the chill from his chest. He had screwed up. Why did he always, absolutely always screw up with Gabriella?

And as he paced the floor, it seemed so obvious to him why things went continually wrong with Gabriella. His childhood had screwed him up. In any relationship with a woman, he would always be waiting for the axe to fall, and so he had avoided relationships altogether once he’d left his teens behind. All because his mother had been a cold creature, more interested in her latest lover and the beautiful face that met her in her mirror than in her own flesh and blood?

Angel knew right then and there that he didn’t want to go through life refusing to have faith in others. What sort of an example would that set his son, Alexios? Alexios, in his innocence, had offered his father instant love and trust. And if he wanted to be the father and the husband that his wife and child deserved, he had to open up and share his past to give his trust as well.

Gaby sat down to lunch alone. She had no appetite, but Viola had been so attentive that she felt that she had to eat lest she hurt the older woman’s feelings. Mostly she had sipped her wine, relieved to feel a little bubbly boost from the alcohol when the rest of her felt as flat as a pancake. She wandered round the paved garden with her glass, enjoying the sunshine warming her skin and settling down on a stone seat with beautiful roses blooming all around her.

She heard the crunch of Angel’s footsteps on the gravel before he moved onto the paved path and her slim shoulders squared.

‘Will you come into the house so that we can talk?’ Angel enquired quietly.

‘I really don’t think that we have anything to talk about,’ Gaby parried, fixedly studying the rose bed directly ahead of her.

‘Please...’ Angel planted his big strong body in front of her view.

It was a word he rarely employed and he got points for it. In any case, she knew they had to talk even if she didn’t see what exactly they could discuss. ‘There’s not very much to say about your prejudice against women,’ she murmured flatly.

‘I have my reasons.’

‘Reasons you won’t share,’ Gaby cut in.

‘I will. I will talk freely,’ Angel asserted, crouching down in front of her, endeavouring to enforce eye contact. He reached for her hand, but she yanked it back and he sighed. ‘I haven’t been in what you would call a relationship before, not a proper one. I will make mistakes because I haven’t got that experience.’

‘You’ve been with more women than...probably Casanova!’ Gaby condemned wildly, wrongfooted by a humble approach that she could never ever have expected from Prince Angel Diamandis. ‘Don’t try to make a lack of experience an excuse!’

Accidentally, she connected with tawny black-fringed eyes that were the purest gold in the sunshine and her mouth ran dry.

‘That was sex and only sex, not relationships,’ Angel specified tightly.

Gaby flushed with pleasure at that admission and slid upright. ‘OK.’

He walked her silently indoors to the library she had heard about and not seen, and it was as much of an anomaly in such a house as the classic frescoes painted on the rear terrace. It was two storeys tall with a spiral staircase in one corner. Customised carved wooden bookshelves covered every wall, and the shelves were packed, upstairs and on the mezzanine above. Sumptuous sofas, armchairs and a large desk completed an ambience that would have been more at home in a Victorian mansion. And yet that very unexpectedness made her like the house even more and wish that his grandparents had survived for her to know them, because she was beginning to understand that the farmhouse had been their escape from the Aikaterina palace, a private place where they could be themselves and indulge their interests like private citizens rather than royals.

‘It’s very comfortable in here,’ she remarked, sinking down on an opulent sofa covered with striped pale green velvet and liberally fringed and tasselled.

‘I find it very hard to trust people.’ Angel leant back against the desk, visibly striving to look relaxed but taut as a bowstring to her more discerning gaze, every line of his lean, powerful physique tense. ‘It probably started when I was a kid. My mother didn’t have time for me or interest in me. She lacked the maternal gene, if there is such a thing.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gaby almost whispered, reluctant to interrupt but needing to express sympathy.

‘But possibly the most damaging event for me happened when I was fifteen...’ Angel’s voice trailed off and he compressed his wide, sensual mouth. ‘It is hard for me to tell you something I have never shared before with anyone.’

Gaby sat in the suffocating silence waiting while Angel collected himself like a male about to climb a challenging mountain.

‘I brought my best friend back to the palace for the summer vacation and she...she seduced him—’

‘She...what? How old was he?’ Gaby broke in, utterly taken back.

‘He was fifteen too. I found them in bed together and afterwards when I tried to confront her, she said, What did you expect when you brought home such a beautiful boy? She had neither regret nor shame.’

Gaby had paled as he’d spoken, and she didn’t know what to say. It was too shocking and disgraceful for her to label or contrive some trite remark, because nothing could soothe such a betrayal for an adolescent boy, or the adult son who still cringed recalling that distasteful experience.

‘I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was aware of her many lovers. She was a great beauty, but she was a heartless mother,’ he proffered stiffly. ‘I have not shared these facts with Saif...and would like your promise that this will remain a secret, because I see no reason to distress him now with the truth about our mother.’

Gaby gave a vigorous nod and muttered, ‘Of course. I won’t ever mention it to anyone.’

‘That is probably where what you see as my lack of trust began,’ Angel continued tautly.

‘Probably,’ Gaby conceded uncomfortably.

‘Then the very first woman I slept with sold the story of our encounter to an international tabloid newspaper, and several after her did the same. That was when I began to look for signed non-disclosure agreements to protect myself,’ Angel framed grimly. ‘My parents were surrounded by sleazy rumours and conjecture for the whole of their reign. There was a lot of truth in the sleaze, but I wish to create a different image for Themos. I did not want that smut and sleaze and gossip to damage the kingdom’s reputation.’

A knock sounded on the door and Angel stalked impatiently across the room to answer it. While she could have suspected some irritation on his part as Viola bustled in carting a massive tray, he, instead, took the tray from her and thanked her warmly. He settled the tray on the desk and sighed. ‘She knows I missed lunch so she has to feed me.’

‘She seems very fond of you.’

‘Yes, the older staff who work for the family were the parents that my own parents couldn’t be bothered to be,’ Angel explained wryly. ‘I was very fortunate to have them and I am equally fond of them. They went beyond their jobs to show me interest and kindness.’

Gaby got up to pour the coffee and pile sandwiches on a plate, which she extended to him. ‘Yes, I’m helping feed you!’ she said tartly. ‘I haven’t forgiven you yet, but I am starting to understand where and why you started thinking the way that you do. The real problem, though, is that you keep on making me pay for your past experiences and, regardless of what a bad time you’ve had with other women, I’m not prepared to accept that I have to pay for their sins.’

‘And I don’t expect you to,’ Angel assured her. ‘I have to change my outlook.’

‘It’s not that easy to change your basic nature,’ Gaby cut in, unimpressed.

‘It’s lot easier if you can see that you have continually wronged someone else, particularly someone who has never given me cause for such distrust,’ Angel disagreed, giving the words emphatic weight.

Disconcerted by that frank little speech, Gaby sank back down on the sofa. ‘Continually?’ she queried that use of the word.

‘I may make mistakes but I’m not stupid, hara mou,’ Angel contended. ‘We didn’t get together when we were students because of my lack of trust, but I’m a little more mature now, although looking back on the way I behaved when you tried to tell me that you were pregnant, that maturity wasn’t on view.’

Gaby suppressed a deep sigh of relief that he had truly begun to examine the way he had always treated her as though she were as untrustworthy as some of her predecessors.

‘So, you see, you can teach an old dog new tricks,’ Angel murmured with wry self-mockery. ‘I can change. I can see when I’m being unreasonable now...because it’s you.’

‘And Cassia...?’ she prompted uncertainly.

Angel munched through a sandwich in reflective silence. ‘She’ll have to leave our employ. I was really shocked by that conversation. Thank Laurie for recording it. I would never have dreamt that Cassia would tell lies like that. I did have total faith in her as an employee, but what she said... I’m sorry that I gave you the impression that I trusted her more than I trust you, because that is untrue. I simply had to think it through.’

‘But the recording helped and hit home like a sledgehammer,’ Gaby gathered with hidden amusement as he wolfed down another sandwich and she refreshed his coffee.

Her earlier sense of despair was gone. Angel was more emotionally intelligent and stable than she had believed he was, but her heart ached for the betrayal his mother had visited on him. He was damaged by the indifference and betrayal of a nasty mother and a succession of lovers, who had wanted him for his status and wealth and had then used him as a publicity tool to enrich themselves.

‘What I regret most...is that day you came to the hotel to tell me that you were pregnant, and I refused to listen,’ he confided heavily. ‘That mistake cost us both so much. All that was on my mind was the number of other women who had claimed to have conceived by me and had lied. In the following weeks I did become more rational and appreciate that I had reacted that way because I assumed you were lying as others had before you and that that belief upset me...and in some way prevented me from taking a more logical approach.’

‘I do understand that,’ Gaby murmured ruefully. ‘Even at the time I understood that, but I also assumed that you wouldn’t want anything to do with our child anyway.’

‘I’m a possessive tyke when it comes to anything belonging to me,’ Angel confided with a gleam in his beautiful eyes. ‘I was searching for you within days of that blasted meeting that went so wrong. I was so angry with you. I still don’t understand why I was angry with you.’

‘Surprises are a challenge for you?’

‘No. Is it possible for us to start again with a fresh page?’ Angel asked, lacing his long fingers with her shorter ones.

‘I don’t see why not,’ Gaby conceded unevenly, emotion surging as she looked at him, another revelation infiltrating her awareness. She still loved him and the more he told her, the more he talked, the better she understood why she loved him. He had his faults, just as she had, but they were working through them. They were both older and wiser and Angel was being forced to share a lot more of himself with her, but she wasn’t about to tell him that she loved him when he had told her that he didn’t seek an emotional connection with a woman. She desperately wanted to ask him why he had said that, but she reckoned that he had already had quite enough of such stuff to discuss that day, without her choosing to add another complication that he had to explain.

‘I want to kiss you...’ Angel told her huskily, feeling as though a great weight had fallen from him, relief and a sense of peace assailing him and a whole rush of other feelings he couldn’t label following in their wake. ‘But I don’t know if—’

Gaby took the cup of coffee out of his hand and set it aside with confidence. ‘You’re a miracle worker. A couple of hours ago, I wanted to run away or push you off a cliff and now...I want to kiss you back.’

‘If I’m honest, I want a hell of a lot more than a kiss,’ Angel confided raggedly, his smouldering golden gaze telegraphing a hunger she understood right down to the marrow of her bones.

‘Kind of guessed that.’ Gaby laughed, recognising that they had moved a major obstacle in the path of their relationship and were already moving on in a better direction. And for Angel, she realised, renewing physical intimacy after all that emotional intensity was a much-needed release.

‘A sex strike would be very effective on me,’ Angel confessed with sudden appreciation.

Her nose wrinkled. ‘Kind of guessed that too.’

Angel vaulted upright and pulled her with him across to the staircase in the corner. ‘Takes us straight upstairs,’ he told her with a wickedly sexy grin.