Page 36 of Cinderella's One-Night Baby

How she held back the tears at this question she would never know. Lucas had only asked about his father once, shortly after he’d started nursery. She’d truthfully told him that his daddy lived in another country, and had been filled with gratitude that he’d asked no more. More questions would come one day. Until a few minutes ago she’d thought the worst thing would be still not knowing how to answer them. Now terror had struck her heart that she might not be the one to answer them at all, and she had to concentrate with everything not to let the fresh swimming in her head sink her.

‘No,’ she whispered.

How did Andrés know? How was it possible that he’d discovered the truth?

Itwasn’tpossible.

Lucas’s skinny arms hooked around her neck. ‘Can I have another story?’

She kissed his nose and swallowed back tears. ‘It’s late and you need to get some sleep. I’ll read you one in the morning.’

He smacked a kiss to her lips.

After a dozen more kisses and a dozen ‘I love you’s, Gabrielle left her son on the cusp of sleep and gently closed his door.

Hand pressed to her racing heart, the sickness churning in her stomach making the nausea from telling Andrés about the pregnancy seem like a tepid test run, she lifted her chin and straightened her spine.

As terrified as she’d ever been in her life but filled with all the fight that had enabled her to get through these last four years, she found Andrés examining the photos displayed on the walls of the living section.

Andrés turned his head to her. ‘I’m sorry for waking him.’

Lucas’s appearance had dampened much of the angst and fury that had propelled him to Gabrielle’s apartment.

Guilt lay heavily in him, a guilt that had been steadily growing while he waited for Gabrielle to put the boy to bed and his attention had become increasingly captured by her photographs. The walls were crammed with them, ranging from her childhood to the present day, plenty of full family pictures from when her father, a smiling man Gabrielle bore a strong resemblance to, had been alive, going as far back as her parents’ wedding day. All the most recent ones featured Lucas, starting from when he could have only been days old. Most were of him with Gabrielle, but there were some too of him with the woman he already recognised as Gabrielle’s mother and a couple of others with the man he recognised as her brother.

He kept going back to one particular picture of the three Breton children sitting in descending age order like a caterpillar, Gabrielle barely a toddler, and comparing it to one of the most recent Lucas pictures. The resemblance between Lucas and the other Bretons was obvious but with Gabrielle’s brother, the resemblance was unmistakable. Lucas could be his doppelgänger.

The longer he’d looked at the pictures, the harder the pulse in his temple had throbbed. A hazy memory kept playing in his mind of the cloud of sadness that had enveloped Gabrielle during that brief mention of her sister when they’d been sharing a bath. She’d blinked the sadness away and replaced it with a seduction so hedonistic he’d been closer than he’d ever been in his life to saying to hell with the need for protection.

The irony of her being pregnant despite his self-denial was strong.

It had been the seductive hedonism he’d lived over in his mind since, forgetting that brief cloud, and now that cloud was all he could see.

There was a steely determination in the dark eyes locked on him which carried into her walk as she strode to stand before him. She pitched her voice low but strength resonated in it. ‘Andrés, you need to leave. We can’t talk with Lucas around, you must see that.’

He thought of the way the little boy had palmed Gabrielle’s cheek, and the pulse in his temple beat harder than ever. As much as he wanted to shake answers out of the woman pregnant with his child, that little boy sleeping his innocent sleep had burrowed into his conscience.

Breathing heavily, he rubbed the back of his neck. ‘What time is your mother collecting him tomorrow?’

‘At eight.’

‘I’ll be here for nine.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Thank you.’

Keeping a few paces behind him, she walked him to the door.

Once he’d crossed the threshold, she called his name.

He turned back to her.

The steel in her eyes blazed stronger than ever. ‘I don’t know what you think you know, but Lucasismy son, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect him, so don’t you ever threaten me with him again.’

A lump lodged in his throat. He thought again of the small boy in the too-small superhero pyjamas palming Gabrielle’s cheek. The love and trust in that gesture.

He thought too, of the undeniable familial similarity between them. The photos crammed all over her walls.

And then he looked more closely into the steely eyes and for the flash of a moment was transported back in time. It wasn’t steel ringing at him but fire. The fierceness of Gabrielle’s love for her son was the same fierce love for their children that had kept his parents together when it would have been better for them to go their separate ways.

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