Page 47 of Bound by Their Christmas Baby

It took Abby a moment to realise that Gabe had returned to their original topic of conversation. ‘Yes.’ She didn’t feel like talking about her father though. ‘You were fostered in Australia?’ she asked, the question catching Gabe off-guard. His face shifted into a mask of displeasure but he covered it quickly enough.

‘Yes.’

‘But you were born here? In Italy?’

‘Yes.’

Abby frowned. ‘So how did you end up in Australia? I would have thought you would stay in your own country when you lost your mother…’

‘She had recently emigrated to Australia,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘It’s where she was from, and she still had family there. A cousin, at least. It made sense to go home.’

‘How did she die?’ The question sounded insensitive even to Abby’s ears. She blamed the wine and the fact she was still reeling from the ease with which he’d limited their relationship simply to sex…

‘A drug overdose,’ Gabe said, the words cold.

‘I’m sorry.’ She reached over, cupping her hand over his. ‘That must have been awful.’

‘Awful?’ He looked at her hand as though it were a foreign object, something unexpected and strange on the table. ‘Awful is one way to describe it.’

‘Were you close to her?’

Gabe’s eyes lanced Abby. ‘Aren’t all children close to their mothers?’

Abby nodded. ‘I guess.’ She was quiet as she contemplated her next question.

‘You can ask,’ he prompted, understanding that she was holding back.

‘Had she taken drugs for long?’

‘No.’ He reached for his wine and took a sip. The silence around them was another presence at the table, heavy and sad, all-encompassing.

It was broken by the arrival of a domestic, wheeling in a trolley laden with food. Plate after plate was placed on the table and silence didn’t give way. Abby watched Gabe from beneath shuttered lashes, studying him, trying to imagine him as a heartbroken eight-year-old.

When the servant left and the food was offering delicious, tantalising aromas, Abby spoke again. ‘Did you know she had a substance abuse problem?’

Gabe was stiff. ‘I was only a child,’ he said, his broad shoulders lifting with self-recrimination. ‘I suppose I knew something was wrong, but I had no way of knowing exactly what. It started about a year before we moved to Australia.’ His expression was taut, his whole body wound like a spring. ‘It got worse once we arrived.’

Abby shifted in her chair and, beneath the table, her toe inadvertently rubbed against his calf. His eyes seared hers with the heat that was always simmering just below the surface for them.

But Abby didn’t want to be distracted by what they felt physically. She sensed that she was on the brink of understanding something important. Something important about Gabe that she needed to know.

‘Why?’

She felt the depth of emotion in him and wanted to reach inside him and hold it, to reassure him and comfort him. But she couldn’t without knowing what motivated it.

‘You want me to explain addiction?’ he asked, but the question didn’t come across as flippant as Abby knew he’d hoped. It was desperate. Angry. She could see the eight-year-old he’d been now, feel his sense of rejection.

‘Your mother’s addiction,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you know why she took drugs?’

He sat straighter in his chair, as though remembering that he was Gabe Arantini, one half of the multi-billion-dollar Bright Spark Inc, a man renowned the world over as a ruthless CEO. ‘I know why she was miserable.’

‘Why?’

His eyes pierced hers then and she shivered because there was such cold anger in his gaze that it scored her deep inside. ‘Because she made the phenomenally stupid mistake of falling in love with my father.’

She felt his words resonate strongly: a warning to herself.

‘They weren’t happy together?’ Abby pushed. The feeling that she was on the brink of something very important held her still.

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