Tall, Dark... Collection

Gabriel watched the emotions that flickered across Bella’s beautiful and expressive face, too fleeting for him to be able to discern any of them accurately. ‘I did not cause the accident, Isabella, but that does not mean I have not carried the guilt of Paulo and Jason’s deaths with me every day since.’

‘But why?’ She looked totally confused now.

Gabriel turned away to look out of the window at the San Francisco skyline.

How could he ever explain to her how he had felt five years ago when he’d regained consciousness and learnt of Paulo Descari and Jason Miller’s deaths? Of Janine’s hysterical accusations?

Added to that, Gabriel had felt utter despair, even helplessness, at the seriousness of his own injuries.

The cuts and burns to his body that were still visible, five years later, in the scar on his face and those that laced across his chest, back, and legs. The crushing of his pelvis and legs had kept him confined to bed for months, with the added possibility that he might never walk again.

Worst of all, worse even than Paulo and Jason’s deaths, Janine’s duplicity, had been the knowledge that their night together had meant so little to Bella that—

No!

Gabriel refused to go there. He had not thought of Bella’s desertion for almost five years. He would not—could not—think of it now.

Now he would think only of Toby. Of his son. And Bella’s second betrayal…

He turned back to face Bella, his expression utterly implacable. ‘Toby is all that is important now,’ Gabriel told her icily. ‘I will return at ten o’clock tomorrow—or rather, today,’ he corrected, ‘at which time you and Toby will be ready to accompany me—’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you, Gabriel, and neither is Toby,’ Bella cut in immediately.

‘At which time,’ he repeated in, if possible, even icier tones, ‘you and Toby will be ready to accompany me on a visit to my father. Toby’s grandfather,’he added harshly.

Bella’s second denial died unspoken on her lips.

She had talked with her mother earlier tonight. Or rather, her mother had talked with her. A conversation in which her mother had assured Bella that the relationship between herself and Gabriel was their own affair, and for the two of them alone to unravel. However, speaking as a grandmother, she had added, she had nothing but sympathy for Cristo Danti and the fact that he had only learnt this evening of his grandson’s existence. That knowledge had been obviously so emotionally profound it had resulted in the older man’s collapse.

An irrefutable fact against which Bella had no defence.

Either earlier or now.

Her shoulders were stiff with tension. ‘Firstly, let me tell you that I deeply resent your use of emotional blackmail in order to get me to do what you want—’

‘Would you rather I pursued a legal claim, instead?’ Gabriel challenged contemptuously.

Bella swallowed hard even as she refused to lower her gaze from his. ‘That would take months, by which time I would be safely back in England.’

‘I will have my lawyers apply for an immediate injunction to prevent you, or Toby, from leaving this country,’ Gabriel warned scathingly. ‘I am a Danti, Isabella,’ he reminded her.

Her eyes flashed darkly purple at his underlying threat. ‘Secondly,’ she pointedly resumed her earlier conversation, ‘despite the fact that I resent your methods, I am nevertheless perfectly aware of your father’s claim as Toby’s grandfather—’

‘But not my own as his father!’ Gabriel was so furiously angry now that there was a white line about the firmness of his mouth and his body was rigid with suppressed emotion.

Bella looked at him sadly, knowing this conversation was achieving nothing except to drive a distance between the two of them that was even wider 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.