Unexpected Pleasures (20 page)

She gave a small, terse nod of her head, her eyes widening in surprise as the jeweller pushed her solitaire earrings back across the table to her.

‘I have made the calculation without including these,’ he told her quietly. ‘You should keep them. I am sure it is what your late husband would have wished.’

Sasha had to bite her lip to stop it from trembling. She was so overcome with emotion that it took her several seconds to put the earrings back on.

Ten minutes later she had left the jewellers and was walking purposefully into the bank, the cheque for the sale of her jewellery in her handbag.

Carlo had been kind and generous, but he had been old-fashioned as well. Sasha had never had any real money of her own. Carlo had deemed it unnecessary. She’d had an allowance and a credit card, the bills for which had been sent to him, but that was all. It felt strange to be paying such a large amount into her account. Strange, but empowering. Now she and the boys were not beholden to Gabriel. She could, if she wished, book them seats on the first flight back to London. But her sons would be disappointed to have their summer holiday cut short, she admitted, and for their sakes she would endure Gabriel’s company—and his charity—for a few more weeks.

But once the boys were safely back at school...

She had it all planned out. She would rent somewhere at first, close enough to the school for her to take the boys there in the morning and collect them in the afternoon. And hopefully she would find a job quickly. Later, she would look for a small property to buy. They would not be rich, but they would manage. And her sons would be happy—she intended to make sure of that.

Now it was time for her to go back to the house—and Gabriel. Sasha closed her eyes and wished for strength. She had never imagined their paths would cross again—Gabriel and Carlo were related to one another, but they had rarely met, and she had made it plain to Carlo that she didn’t want to have any contact with Gabriel. And she had certainly never suspected, not even in her darkest nightmares, that when she did see him again she would feel the way she was feeling right now.

She was almost tempted to do what he had already accused her of doing and take a lover—any lover—just to prove to herself that it was the long years without sex coupled with his presence, reactivating her memories of the sex they had had making her lie awake at night longing for him. Not Gabriel himself. Her sexual experience was limited; maybe her body had stored memories of a pleasure far in excess of that which they had actually shared. And maybe if she could show her body that it would stop tormenting her so much. Perhaps she ought to put
that
theory to the test. Sasha stopped walking and stared unseeingly before her. That was a crazy idea. Crazy and dangerous.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘Y
OUR
SONS
ARE
very fortunate in their mother,’ Professor Fennini told Sasha with a warm smile. He had arrived earlier in the afternoon, shortly after the lunch which she had made following her own return from Port Cervo. And, despite her original determination to dislike him, Sasha had to admit that he had completely won her over—and not because of his flattering remarks about her parenting. The boys had taken to him immediately, and Sasha had quickly recognised how skilled he was at dealing with children and teaching them.

He had spent most of the afternoon not so much observing but joining in with the boys’ activities, his questions so subtle that Sasha’s maternal anxieties were quickly eased.

‘I believe that school holidays should be treated as downtime for them. I don’t want them hot-housed and pushed from activity to activity. I want them to learn how to learn for themselves, and how to live and enjoy life.’

‘That is very obvious from the way you interact with them,’ the Professor told her with another approving smile. ‘I hope I have put to rest your fears regarding the term they had to board at their school,’ he continued, and Sasha tensed.

She had been relieved to have the opportunity to bring this up privately with him, and she had been even more relieved when he had assured her that from his conversation with them it was quite plain to him that, if anything, the boys had rather enjoyed the novelty of being boarders and that they had certainly not suffered because of it, but she did not want her vulnerability and fear laid bare for Gabriel to see. However, there was nothing she could say now, with Gabriel standing there with her, to warn the Professor that she would prefer him to change the subject.

‘Gabriel had told me of his own concerns with regard to that situation,’ the Professor explained. ‘It is entirely understandable that you should both have raised this issue with me, but I do assure you, Sasha, that in view of the fact that their father was dying and you were attempting to get the best medical care you could for him, you really had no other alternative. I have heard of the professor you went to see in New York. He has achieved some remarkable results with his innovative cancer care.’

‘Yes. I had hoped... But, as he explained to me, Carlo’s condition was too advanced for him to be able to do anything. With hindsight it would have been better if I’d stayed with Carlo.’

‘You did what you believed to be in his best interests,’ the Professor reassured her. ‘And, as for the twins, it was far better for them to be living amongst their friends and in an emotionally familiar and secure environment than to witness the trauma of what was happening at home. I suspect there must have been many times when you wished you had them with you, for the comfort that would have given you,’ he said in a kind voice.

It was hard for her to force back the tears threatening to fill her eyes. This was the first time that anyone had recognised how much she had longed for someone to lean on when Carlo had been dying.

‘Yes, there were,’ she admitted huskily. ‘But I didn’t want to turn them into an emotional support system for myself.’

‘I do not see you as the kind of mother who would ever do that to her children,’ the Professor said warmly. ‘We can all see how well balanced and happy they are. As I was saying to Gabriel earlier,’ he continued, ‘since it is his wish that the boys are encouraged to take an interest in the way international politics and business interact, it would be a good idea to build on their natural interest in the environment and history, which you have already encouraged.’ He was a tall man, with an earnest manner and the slightly stooped stance of an academic, and it was impossible for Sasha not to respond to his warmth and enthusiasm.

The boys were playing outside, within view of the window of the room Gabriel had turned into his office, and Sasha watched them while she waited for the Professor to finish his coffee and tell them his observations. From the noise they were making the imaginary game the boys were playing obviously involved some kind of motor racing.

She didn’t see Gabriel move to stand at her side and look down at the boys with her, but she immediately sensed that he was there. She desperately wanted to move and put more distance between them, but she was too close to the window. And he was too close to her.

‘I believe they are practising for Formula One.’ The Professor sounded grave, but when Sasha looked at him she could see that his eyes were twinkling. ‘They told me that Nico is to design the car and Sam will drive it.’

‘Ferrari had better look to its laurels, then,’ Gabriel said dryly.

‘It is good that you have allowed them to retain the closeness of their twinship and yet at the same time encouraged them to develop their individual and different skills,’ the Professor told Sasha.

‘Nico is the thinker and Sam the doer,’ Gabriel said abruptly.

Sasha stared at him, unable to conceal the shock it had given her to hear him describe the twins’ personalities so accurately after having virtually only just met them. It made her more uneasy than she wanted to admit that he could distinguish the physical differences between them so easily, but
this
. He had always been an insightful person, of course, just so long as it wasn’t
her
behaviour he was analysing. Right now, though, she was far more concerned about her sons than she was about herself.

Gabriel saw the swift, shocked look Sasha was giving him.

‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded tersely.

‘You’ve picked up on the differences between Sam and Nico very quickly,’ she admitted reluctantly.

Gabriel gave a dismissive shrug. He didn’t totally understand himself why he found it so easy to differentiate between the two boys, nor why he knew it was necessary to communicate with them in slightly different ways. He did know, though, that at some deep level they touched a part of him that he hadn’t even realised he possessed. He had always had good instincts where people were concerned, he acknowledged, and he had always been able to stand back and judge their behaviour analytically. Like he had Sasha’s? The Professor’s revelations about her reason for boarding the twins at school had been too reasonable for him to dismiss. And no one could have faked the emotion he had just seen her trying to suppress.

He could almost feel the shift in mental focus within himself, forcing him to admit the possibility that he had deliberately chosen to view the facts from a warped angle to suit his own needs. Right now his conscience was making its feelings plain, and demanding some honest answers to some harsh questions. He
did
have to acknowledge that Sasha was a good mother, didn’t he?

He would acknowledge nothing, he told himself savagely. The fierce surge of pain that came with thinking about Sasha gripped him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the Professor moving closer to Sasha as he talked to her. Immediately Gabriel moved too, stepping close beside her.

Sasha tensed. What did he think she was going to do? Tell Professor Fennini that she wouldn’t give permission for her sons to be tutored? Unlike Gabriel, she was flexible enough to change her mind. As the Professor had already said, the boys were at the stage where they were like greedy sponges, eager to soak up ideas and information and to learn new skills, provided they were delivered in the right way. She could see that with the Professor they would be. And she would be there to monitor what was going on so that she could step in if she felt it necessary.

Gabriel was obscuring her view of the boys so she stepped away, her jaw tensing slightly when she saw his mouth harden.

‘I was particularly intrigued by the boys’ life books,’ the Professor was saying. ‘It is a concept I have seen used very effectively to help troubled children, but I must admit I had not thought to use it to provide a record of a happy childhood.’

Sasha gave a small shrug. She wasn’t going to tell the Professor about her own childhood, or explain that it was through her therapy that she had learned about creating life books.

‘Originally I wanted to encourage the boys to keep diaries,’ she explained. ‘And the life books seemed a natural step. They are more interactive and fun for them. We agreed they could have private sections for their private thoughts, and open sections for what we do together.’

Gabriel listened in silence. Professor Fennini’s praise for Sasha’s parenting underlined everything he had already seen for himself. So why was he finding it so hard to let go of his preconceived and now unsustainable belief that she was not a good mother? Was it perhaps because
he
wanted to be part of the twins’ lives? And part of Sasha’s—a woman who had walked out on him? Somewhere deep inside the most private and vulnerable part of him a long-buried fear was pushing painfully through the protective layers of denial. What if the blame for Sasha leaving him lay not with her, but with him?

* * *

T
HAT
DEEPLY
BURIED
doubt, once exposed, was something Gabriel couldn’t ignore. Long after the Professor had shaken hands with him and told him enthusiastically that he was looking forward to starting work with the twins the following week, and Sasha had made it clear that she intended to spend what was left of the day with her sons, Gabriel discovered that he kept returning to the question, like a man with an aching tooth, probing the sore place even though it increased his pain.

Inside his head he kept comparing the twins’ childhood with his own; not, he recognised with a stab of shocked bewilderment, a material comparison, but a comparison of the love they received which he had not. Memories he had never allowed himself to acknowledge surfaced: images of himself as a child, holding out his arms to his foster mother only to retreat in bewilderment and misery when she responded with harsh words and stinging blows. He could hear his grandfather telling him how bitterly he resented him for being his only heir, that corrosive pride rasping in his voice. His grandfather had made no secret of the bitterness he felt towards him, Gabriel remembered.

* * *

‘C
OUSIN
G
ABRIEL
...’ T
HERE
was a distinctly wheedling note in Sam’s voice that caused Gabriel to give him a rueful look. ‘Me and Nico were just thinking that if Mum were to ask you what we wanted for our birthday next week, you could tell her that we need proper grown-up bikes.’

It took Gabriel several seconds to properly take in what Sam was saying. ‘Your birthday is next week?’ he demanded. He made a swift mental calculation. Next week... That meant Sasha had conceived the twins while she had still been living with him. And that meant that she had betrayed him with Carlo when they had still been lovers. He could feel the savagery of his anger boiling up inside him, and threatening to overwhelm him.

Sam nodded his head enthusiastically, oblivious to the effect of his words. ‘We’ll be ten,’ he told Gabriel proudly.

‘Mum says that we can’t have proper bikes until we’re eleven,’ Nico reminded his twin, but Gabriel was oblivious to the warning looks Sam was giving Nico. He needed to see Sasha and he needed to see her
now
. Leaving the two boys, he strode downstairs and found her in the living room, looking over some of the materials left by Professor Fennini.

‘I want a word with you,’ he told her grimly.

Sasha was tempted to tell him that she certainly did not want any words with him, but he had already manacled her arm in an almost painful grip and was forcing her upstairs to his suite.

‘What are you doing, Gabriel?’ she protested. ‘You can’t just manhandle me as though you own me. I won’t have it. And where are the boys—’

‘The boys are fine.’ He paused and found he needed to take a deep breath before he could say, ‘Sam has just told me that it’s their birthday next week.’

Sasha could feel the trickle of now familiar icy-cold fear seeping into her bloodstream. She would have given anything to shake her head and say no but of course she couldn’t.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said instead.

‘So they were conceived in December?’

Her heart jumped into her throat, her panic threatening to choke her. ‘I...they...there were complications, and in the end they were delivered early.’ She sidestepped his question.

‘How early? Not, I take it, three months early?’ he suggested sarcastically.

Sash could feel her face starting to burn.

‘They were conceived while you were still with me, weren’t they?’ Gabriel demanded flatly.

There was no escape. She had been dreading this for so long that in some ways she was relived that it could no longer be avoided.

‘Answer me, damn you, Sasha. They were conceived while you were with me,
weren’t they
?’ Gabriel repeated harshly. His fingers were still clamped round her arm, and as he spoke he gave her a small, almost rough shake.

Sasha was familiar with the icy coldness of his angry contempt, but she had never seen him gripped by this kind of fury before. She felt helpless against it, and very vulnerable, but she knew she couldn’t conceal the truth from him any longer.

‘Yes,’ she admitted, bowing her head and waiting for the inevitable accusation she knew must come. Carlo had warned her this might happen, but she had told him she wouldn’t let it, that she would make sure she kept the greatest distance possible between Gabriel and herself to ensure it didn’t. And, foolishly, she had even begun to feel that she was safe, and that Gabriel would never challenge her deception.

‘You were seeing Carlo behind my back—sleeping with him while you were sharing my bed, giving yourself to him when I thought you were only giving yourself to me. You were pregnant by him, but still claiming to love me!’ Gabriel couldn’t contain the savagery of what he was feeling. It had been bad enough that she had actually walked out on him without a word, but this newly discovered betrayal was more than he could endure.

Sasha looked at him uncomprehendingly.