Page 41 of Cinderella's One-Night Baby

‘No.’

‘The man is a bully. I have dealt with many bullies in my time.’

‘No! You can’t. Please, leave things be. I don’t want any more of his money and I will not risk Lucas for anything. It would kill me to lose him, so please, please promise you won’t do or say anything or have any contact with that man,please.’

So many emotions were contained in those beautiful dark brown eyes another blow smashed into his already bruised chest and the fury ebbed to a simmer.

How big a heart could one woman have? Gabrielle could be filled with bitterness for the cards life had dealt her, could resent the child she’d been emotionally blackmailed into raising as her own at the expense of the future she’d planned for herself, but instead, and without an ounce of self-pity, she’d taken her nephew into her heart and loved and protected him as fiercely as if she’d carried him himself.

He’d thought he’d known the night of the party that Gabrielle was a one-off but he’d had no idea of the extent of it.

She was incredible.

Palming her cheek, he brought his face down to hers, close enough to catch the faint trace of her scent...Dios, that scent intoxicated him. It was the scent that had underlined the perfume she’d worn that night, the sweet, unique scent of Gabrielle.

Staring intently into her eyes, he said, ‘It took a lot for you to put your trust in me and share what you did, and I will do nothing to abuse it.’

Her chest and shoulders rose and then she dealt another blow to his heart by attempting to smile. ‘What I told you about my mother...please don’t think she was a bad mother,’ she whispered, her eyes once again pleading. ‘She wasn’t. It’s just that my father’s death came as a huge shock to her. They were devoted to each other.’

‘And a shock to you too, I would imagine,’ he pointed out softly.

‘Of course it did but I had Romeo to lean on and he had me.’

You were ten, he resisted from saying.

Gabrielle was an emotionally intelligent woman. If she’d forgiven her mother for falling apart when she needed her most then who was he to criticise?

‘You’ll see when you meet her,’ she said. ‘She’s a very sweet and loving woman, and she’s a brilliant grandmother to Lucas, and she’ll be a brilliant grandmother to our baby too.’

Our baby.

Two words to make his guts clench...but not as tightly as they’d done a day ago. Not when his gaze was locked on the dark chocolate swirls of Gabrielle’s heavenly eyes and those pillowy lips, so ripe for kissing, were moving ever closer to his...

Or was it his lips moving closer to hers?

Dios, how was it possible to ache so badly for someone? Was it because she was carrying his child that he felt so many damned feelings for this woman? That she touched him in a way no one had ever done before?

But the ache for her had started long ago...

Gabrielle felt purged. For the first time since bringing Lucas home, she’d shared the sacrifice her beautiful sister had made for the love of her child, and sharing it had been cathartic. Necessity meant Eloise’s love for her son had to be hidden from the world, a secret kept between the three surviving Bretons and the man who didn’t want him, a secret kept tightly, the circumstances of his birth never discussed even amongst themselves. And she’d shared too, the one secret she’d kept entirely to herself, deciding it was better her family didn’t know because of the hurt it would cause them—the threat The Bastard had made to her. She’d shared it with the man who’d fathered her own child, a man she knew would never reject the life growing inside her, and as she gazed at Andrés, her senses opened up to him like the petals of a flower opening to the sun and she found herself falling into the eyes that had hypnotised her from the very first look.

Their faces were so close she could see the individual bristles of his thick beard, fill her lungs with the divine scent she’d gone to bed every night since their night together playing like a phantom into her airwaves. The sensitive tips of her breasts were barely a whisper away from touching the hard chest she’d been crushed against for comfort only minutes before, and now she could feel them stir in a tingle of anticipation and need, desire awakening and trickling with a steady relentlessness through her veins.

Their lips brushed in the lightest of caresses. The fingers pressed against her cheek tightened.

Her senses filling with the heat of Andrés’s breath, she closed her eyes...

The unexpected loud ring of a phone cut through the air.

Eyes flew open and locked back together.

The phone continued to ring.

An instant later, they pulled apart, Gabrielle’s heart hammering so loudly it was a drum in her ears.

It frightened her how much she wanted him. Terrified her how comforting it had been to just...submitherself and let him give her the comfort she hadn’t even known she needed until he’d held her so tightly.

And it frightened her to see the hunger in his eyes. Frightened her because it fed her own.

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