Unexpected Pleasures (24 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

H
E
HAD
DONE
what he had promised himself he would do. He had forced Sasha to admit that no other man could make her feel the way he could. So why wasn’t he feeling elated? Why did his triumph feel so empty? Why was there this ache inside his chest? This driving need to see her smile at him with that same tender warmth with which she smiled at the twins?

Why had he allowed his need for her to overpower him to such an extent that he had had sex with her not once, but twice, without using any kind of protection? Why did he wake in the night longing for her closeness, wanting more than just the cry of her pleasure during sex?

But more of what? What exactly
did
he want from her? His heart knew the answer. His
heart
? He didn’t have a heart; his mother had destroyed his emotions almost before they had been formed. He had never feared loving anyone because he had never believed he was able to love. So what, then, was this feeling that ached through him?

The truth was that Sasha was a woman any man would be a fool not to love.

Gabriel stared unseeingly at his computer screen, unable to understand where that thought had come from, and equally unable to reject the truth of it. The girl who he had once held in such bitter contempt for the damage she had done to his pride had become a woman worthy of anyone’s respect, and she now had the power to inflict pain on something far more vulnerable than his pride.

Slowly, carefully, like a man lost in a tunnel without a light to guide him, Gabriel felt his way cautiously through the unknown territory of this new world of emotions he had suddenly entered, flinching when a careless movement brought him up against a sharp, painful discovery.

Was this what love was? This powerful combination of strength and weakness, of a need to have and a need to give, of wanting to protect as well as wanting to possess? When he thought back—really thought back—hadn’t he felt those things for her all those years ago, even if he had denied both their existence and their meaning?

Love. He tasted the word, rolling it around his mouth, feeling its form and shape while inside his head an image of Sasha formed.

The sound of the twins’ voices on the other side of the half-open door to his office broke into his thoughts.

‘You ask him,’ he could hear Sam saying.

‘No, you ask him.’ Nico was insistent.

A rueful smile tugged at his mouth as he guessed that the purpose of this unscheduled deputation was another attempt to get him on their side in the matter of their longed-for bicycles. Pushing back his chair, he got up and strolled over to the door, opening it and inviting them in.

The twins exchanged expressive looks, shuffling closer together in a way that was unintentionally endearing. They were still young enough to automatically seek the comfort of each other’s physical presence, Gabriel realised as he closed the door and walked back to his chair. Having undergone some kind of radical transformation, he was now suddenly discovering that not only did he have a heart, but that it was vulnerable to the most unabashed and foolish kind of sentimentality.

‘Right, so who is going to ask me whatever it is, then?’ he invited.

Another eloquent exchanged look, followed by a sharp dig in Nico’s ribs from Sam’s elbow, seemed to decide the matter.

Nico shuffled forward a couple of inches. ‘Me and Sam have been wondering if you’re our real father.’

The simple question stunned Gabriel, and when he didn’t answer, Nico continued in a kind voice, ‘It’s okay. Before Dad died he told me and Sam that he wasn’t our real father.’

‘Yes, but he did say, too, Nico, that he’d always be our dad and that he loved us very much,’ Sam put in.

‘I know that. But he didn’t tell us who our real father was, did he?’

Sam, eager now to take over from Nico, gave him a scornful look.

‘No, but that was because he said that one day, when we were old enough, Mum would explain it all to us, and that we weren’t to tell her what he’d told us. He said that he was proud of us and that we were real Calbrinis,’ Sam informed Gabriel importantly, before giving Nico another sharp nudge.

Dutifully, Nico fixed his earnest gaze on him. ‘Well, me and Sam have been thinking, and we wondered...’

Gabriel watched as they exchanged more looks.

‘We would really like if it you were our father,’ Nico said in a rush.

‘Yes, it would be really cool,’ Sam agreed.

It took from the first thunderstruck realisation of what they had said to the change of his heartbeat to a sudden heavy thud of recognition for Gabriel to recognise that such a short span of time had the power to change his whole life. As though the hitherto secret combination of a complex locking mechanism had suddenly clicked into place, a series of doors opened inside his head, allowing the truth to walk freely through them.

Of course they were his. How could they not be? The wonder was not that they were, but that he had not recognised it before now.

He walked over to his sons and crouched down beside them. Their familiar features blurred slightly, causing him to blink.

‘Do you really want me to be your father?’ he asked. It was the first time in his life that he had thought of the emotional needs of others as something more important than what he himself might want.

The boys looked at one another and then at him, wide watermelon grins transforming their faces as they nodded their heads in unison.

‘Yes.’

‘We knew it was you—didn’t we, Nico?’ Sam said smugly.

‘Yes. We both knew,’ Nico told Gabriel gravely, before reaching out and tucking his hand around Gabriel’s arm, leaning against him.

This
was why Carlo had wanted him to be their guardian, Gabriel suddenly realised, emotion clogging his throat as he knelt there, with a child—a
son—
in each arm, hugging them both fiercely to him. No wonder he had felt so instantly at ease with them, so immediately determined to protect them.
This
was what Carlo had struggled to tell him, only to change his mind. Because he had feared that Gabriel might reject the truth?

‘I think for the moment, until I’ve spoken to your mother, we should keep this to ourselves,’ Gabriel told his sons.

‘But not for too long,’ Sam countered. ‘Now that you’re our father you’ll be able to tell Mum that we can have bikes for our birthday.’

When had they thought that one up? Gabriel wondered wryly as he received a pair of happy, confident smiles. As male logic went, it seemed a reasonable exchange, but Gabriel doubted that Sasha would see it that way.

The boys went to join the Professor, sworn to secrecy and having happily assured Gabriel that they were glad he was their real father.

Against all the odds, they had the kind of sturdy emotional self-belief that he could only envy. No, not against all the odds, but because of their mother. Because
she
had given them something more precious and more valuable than any amount of money or material possessions. She had given them a mother and a father, the secure knowledge that they were loved and wanted, the loving firmness of boundaries they had been taught to respect, and most of all the emotional freedom to be themselves. Wasn’t Sasha herself the most valuable gift life had given them?

And the most important gift life had given
him
?

Sasha. He needed to talk to her.

* * *

H
E
FOUND
HER
in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. She looked up when he walked in, and then looked away again quickly. He wanted to look at her and to go on looking at her, marvelling that her body had nurtured the lives of their sons, that she was responsible for the miracle of their existence. But not solely responsible, of course.

‘The boys have just been to see me.’

‘They’re hoping you’ll persuade me to let them have bikes for their birthday,’ Sasha said.

‘They wanted to know if I am their real father.’

The water jug she had been holding slipped from Sasha’s grasp, smashing onto the tiles in a shower of broken glass.

The look on her face told Gabriel everything he needed to know.

‘Carlo was their father,’ she whispered, bending down to start picking up the broken glass.

‘No—leave it. You’ll cut yourself,’ Gabriel warned, but it was too late. Blood was dripping from her palm, where a shard of glass had slipped in her shaking hands and cut the skin.

Sasha stared numbly at the bright red blood welling from the small cut. She felt oddly separated from what was happening, as though some huge force had shunted her sideways into a place where she could only observe herself at a distance.

‘But he didn’t father them. He told them that himself, Sasha, so there’s no point denying it.’

This couldn’t be happening. She looked down at the glass.

‘This needs cleaning up,’ she told him. ‘I—’

‘I’ll do it. You come and sit down.’

How had she got here, to the kitchen chair? She watched blankly as Gabriel deftly swept up the broken glass and disposed of it.

‘Now, let’s have a look at that hand.’ Docilely she let Gabriel lead her to the sink and run cold water over her palm, before removing the first aid kit from the cupboard and putting a protective dressing over the cut.

He took her back to the table and sat her down.

‘The twins are my sons; we both know that. But what I don’t know is why you didn’t tell me at the time.’

Shock was relinquishing its numbing hold on her now. There would be time later to worry about the effect Carlo’s revelation must have had on the twins, and to wonder exactly what he had told them and why. Right now she needed to make sure that Gabriel understood that her sons were
hers
, that they were nothing to do with him.

She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Do you really need to ask that question? I’d pleaded with you to love me, Gabriel. I’d been sick virtually very morning for weeks, and I had guessed why, even if I lied to you and told you it was food poisoning. I’d even given you the opportunity to say you wanted children. I’d done everything to give you a chance to guess the truth short of spelling it out for you.

‘Carlo guessed, and he hardly knew me. Carlo understood how I felt, and how afraid I was. You’d already rejected me. What if you rejected the child I was carrying—or worse? When you told me you didn’t want children it made me afraid. Not afraid for me, but afraid for them. I thought you might put pressure on me to terminate the pregnancy.’ Sasha closed her eyes and swallowed. ‘I was afraid that I’d give in, that I’d do whatever you wanted me to do simply because you wanted it.

‘Carlo made it easy for me to make the right decision. It’s because of Carlo, not you or me, that the twins are here today. It was Carlo who fathered them, Gabriel. Because he was the one who gave them a father’s protection and love.’

Regret, shame, and most of all pain—Gabriel could feel them crawling along his veins.

‘You should have told me.’

‘Perhaps
you
should have known,’ Sasha retorted levelly. ‘I’ll never know what I did to deserve Carlo. I’ll never cease to be thankful for what he gave me. Sometimes I wonder if maybe fate sent him; not for me, but for the twins. But it doesn’t really matter which of us he was here to rescue, because out of his generosity and his compassion he rescued us all. Without him I would either have given in and let you persuade me to terminate my pregnancy, or ended up on the street, where my sons would have grown up in even worse circumstances than my own. They say that it passes from generation to generation, don’t they? That damaged children become damaging parents. I was so lucky to be given the chance to change that pattern.’

‘You’re over-dramatising,’ Gabriel said. ‘Okay, so I said I didn’t want children. But if I’d been faced with the fact that you were already pregnant—’

‘You say that now, Gabriel, but the truth is that neither of us were fit to be parents. I was little more than a needy child myself, clamouring for love from a man who couldn’t give it. Having the children was my wake-up call. Thanks to Carlo, I was able to take advantage of the very best kind of help. I already loved my babies, but I had to learn to love myself. I had to learn to accept my past, but to leave it as my past and not bring it into the present with me. Carlo was so proud of the boys. True Calbrinis—that’s what he always called them.’

The conversation wasn’t taking the course Gabriel had expected or hoped for. Sasha seemed stubbornly determined to reject his attempts to forge a bond between them via their sons. The revelations which had so awed and impressed him apparently had no impact on her. Couldn’t she see that he was a changed man? That he recognised the errors of his past and was now ready to make amends for them?

‘They are my sons,’ he told her firmly.

Sasha shook her head. ‘No. Your sons, Gabriel, would be as damaged and as tainted by your childhood as you are yourself. An adult can’t find salvation through a child. You have to give to them, not take from them.’

‘I made mistakes, I admit that. But it’s not too late...’

‘It’s not too late for what?’ Sasha asked.

It’s not too late for us, was what he wanted to say, but instead he said, ‘I know you, Sasha—’

She stopped him immediately. ‘No, you don’t know me, Gabriel. You never did. To you I’m a cheap tart you picked up off the street, a piece of flesh to provide you with pleasure. You believed I’d two-timed you with Carlo. You thought—’

He had made mistakes, Gabriel knew that, but he wasn’t solely to blame for that. Her accusations stung and made him react defensively. ‘Do you blame me?’ he demanded. ‘The night we met you told me—’

Sasha gave him a weary look. What did it matter now what she told him? ‘The night we met I was still a virgin.
That’s
how little you know me, Gabriel.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up unsteadily.

‘That can’t be true,’ Gabriel protested. ‘What about that porno film director? You implied—’