Page 24 of Bound by Their Christmas Baby

* * *

Gabe was just a boy again and his mother, Marina, was dying. Not of any illness, but because of the drugs she slid into her veins until she was no longer coherent. She was dying and he couldn’t save her.

He remembered the fear of those times, the pain of trying to hug her and make her laugh. Of having her bat him away from her legs, push at him and say, with fury, ‘You are just like him!’

How she’d hated Gabe when she’d been high. Gabe was like his father, Lorenzo, and that was something his mother couldn’t forgive.

Raf wouldn’t know that pain. He wouldn’t know the anger that was a by-product of paternal estrangement. He wouldn’t have a father who rejected his mother and made her miserable. Raf would be spared what Gabe had seen and lived—Raf would have everything, including a mother who was cared for by his father.

Gabe just had to find a way to forgive Abigail for who she was and what she’d done—he wouldn’t let their son feel the measure of Gabe’s antipathy. At least, he hoped he wouldn’t.

CHAPTER SIX

THE DREAM HAD disturbed him and some time around dawn he woke, sweat beading on his brow, his eyes heavy with angry emotions. Jogging was something Gabe had long indulged in, particularly when he needed to blow off steam. He ran for six miles and then came back to the castle, restless and as irritable as he’d been for days.

Without knowing what he was doing or where he was going, he found his feet moving towards the stairs and then taking him upwards. One hand curled around the balustrade, part securing him, part deterring him.

At the door to their son’s room, he hesitated only a moment before pushing in. The child was awake. Lying in his crib, his huge eyes open and staring at the mobile that hung above it.

A powerful instinct fired inside Gabe’s gut. Possession, fierce pride and love. Yes, love. He’d never felt it before but now it flooded through him, unmistakable and all-consuming. He hovered above the cot, unsure what to do at first.

Then Raf made a gurgling noise and lifted an arm, his eyes locked to Gabe’s, and Gabe followed his instincts, reaching down into the crib and lifting the little boy.

He made a guttural noise of surrender as he cradled Raf to his chest, pressing his face to the boy’s sweet, downy head, breathing in his intoxicating baby fragrance.

‘You’re my son,’ he whispered, the words not entirely even. ‘And I am going to take all the care in the world of you.’ He breathed in once more. ‘I love you.’

* * *

It was a freezing cold morning and Abigail had risen at dawn. In part owing to jetlag and in part owing to dreams that had been causing her nerve-endings to reverberate, making her ache to do something really, really stupid.

She’d tiptoed past Gabe’s room, even when she’d been tempted to push his door inwards and climb into his bed. To seek his body, not caring for how pathetic that made her. How needy and desperate.

There was only one activity that ever helped soothe Abby in times of stress. She’d had to abandon ballet for the last few months of her pregnancy and since Raf had been born she hadn’t had much energy for anything other than a bit of stretching. But an urge to go back to her roots now drove her with a wild desperation.

She didn’t need much. Just a room that was lightly furnished, a bit of floor space and privacy, and she would have put money on this castle having something to fit the bill somewhere.

The perfect room happened to be just opposite the kitchen. A space that might have been a sunroom at one point and which now offered an almost blank canvas. Just a few chairs against one wall, glass doors that opened onto a deck and views of the alps in every direction. She ignored the beauty outside. Looking out only reminded her of where she was—and why—and she needed to forget for a moment. She loaded up a piece from The Nutcracker Suite and stretched for the first few minutes, and then she closed her eyes and let the music wash over her, sweeping her into a trance-like state, filling her with a sense of who she was, who her mother had been, what she’d loved about ballet. She danced and felt her worries shift away; she felt safety and security, reassurance and bliss.

She danced the entire song, and then another, but, as the third began to play, something on the periphery of her vision caught her attention and she spun sharply, breaking a pirouette mid-way with surprise, to find Gabe watching her.

No. Staring at her, as though he could eat her with his eyes, his attention finely homed in on every single minuscule shift of her body. A frisson of awareness rushed through her. She ignored it, staring back at him unapologetically, trying desperately to match the coldness he could so easily convey.

‘Did you want something?’ she asked impishly, crossing her arms over her chest, glad she hadn’t gone with her first instinct and pulled on her old leotard and tights.

‘What are you doing?’

The question was a strange one. Did he really not recognise ballet?

He frowned thoughtfully, shaking his head, as though he realised the stupidity of what he’d said. ‘You’re a ballerina?’

‘No.’ Abby remembered the angry conversations with her father, his remonstrations at her ‘quitting’. ‘I just like to dance.’

‘Is it not the same thing?’

‘No.’ The word held a bone-deep finality. She wasn’t going to discuss the career she might have had. Nor the way her father had taken her decision not to pursue it as some kind of personal affront—a perceived rejection of Abby’s mother—instead of what it really was: Abby’s realisation that she wanted different things from life.

‘You…move as though you are part of the song.’

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