Page 53 of Cinderella's One-Night Baby

‘Now you’re the one being offensive. You know—’

‘I know that you were a twenty-three-year-old virgin with no intention of ever forming a serious relationship and you used Lucas’s father as a means to justify it.’ Pressing his hands on the table, he rose to his feet. ‘Those means have now gone. He is no longer a threat to you. There is nothing—nothing—to stop you from committing yourself properly to me.’

‘Other than I don’t want to. You’re so damn arrogant, thinking you can spring this on me and that I’ll just bow down to your will.’

‘If it’s arrogance to believe your feelings run as deep as mine do then yes, I’m arrogant. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t have feelings for me,’ he demanded. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not feeling everything I feel for you.’

She turned her face away.

He slammed his palm onto the table. ‘God in heaven, Gabrielle, what are you so frightened of? Or are you just being blind? Don’t you get it? There hasn’t been anyone else for me since the moment you pulled my car over, now look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not in love with me. If you can do that, then I will let you go and never mention marriage again.’

Gabrielle’s stomach was rolling so violently she feared she’d be sick, images flashing, her distraught sister on the floor of the bathroom, her mother turning her pillow sodden with tears, all the damage, so much damage, that came when hearts were broken into pieces.

It took all the strength she possessed to step back to the table and meet his stare.

She could hardly make her throat move let alone hold his stare to truthfully croak, ‘I left Lucas at home tonight because I was going to tell you thatthis thingbetween us...’ Her throat caught. ‘Is over.’

The clenching of his jaw was the only hint of emotion to pass his face.

And then he smiled cruelly. ‘That is not what I asked of you, Gabrielle. I asked you to deny that you’re in love with me, but you can’t do it can you? You can’t deny your feelings.’

It was the flicker in her eyes before she staggered to the door that convinced Andrés he’d had the truth all along. Gabrielle was running scared.

‘I never thought I would say this, Gabrielle, but you’re a coward.’

Her back stiffened.

‘You, the bravest person I have ever met in my life, a damnedcoward,’ he snarled. ‘All this time I thought it was me putting up the barriers in our relationship but they came from you too, and it’s you who can’t bear to let them down and see the truth. Loveterrifiesyou. All these years, hiding behind your son... You only gave yourself to me because you thought I wouldn’t want anything more from you than one night and now you want to throw away something that you know in your heart is beautiful and pure because you’re too scared to put yourself on the line. So go on, coward, run away to your lonely bed and find something else to hide behind, but don’t expect me to wait for you. I grant you your wish. Separate lives. You and I...this thing...it’s over.’

Gabrielle only realised she’d left her ballet slippers behind when she found herself in the Imperium’s car park barefoot. She didn’t even remember getting into Andrés’s elevator.

The lights that should automatically switch on at any motion within the car park stayed off. The only illumination came from what her dazed mind assumed were emergency lights because none of the exits opened.

Banging on the main doors the cars went in and out of proved futile. The duty guards, appointed to stop the public gaining access to some of the world’s most expensive cars were missing.

Restless, nauseous, desperate for fresh air, even more desperate not to think, she prowled the car park looking for another means of escape.

‘I’m sorry to tell you, sir, but she seems to have vanished.’

Only moments, mere seconds, after Gabrielle left the dining room, Andrés had gathered his wits about him to give the order for her to be driven home.

‘How can she just vanish?’ he demanded icily.

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Well don’t just stand there,’ he roared, furious at this time wasting. ‘Go and find her.’

It was on Gabrielle’s fifth circuit of the cavernous car park that her eyes finally skimmed the one car she’d been studiously avoiding.

Her feet stopped walking.

Her stare fell back on the car that had started it all.

Her eyes swam.

If this car had taken the different line, she wouldn’t be standing here. The other team would have processed it. She would never have set eyes on Andrés.

The bones in her legs weakening, she pressed a hand to her swollen stomach.

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