Interestingly, Gabriel had once felt exactly the same way about Bella…
His father broke off his conversation and stood up at their approach, Gabriel frowning slightly as he noted the increased pallor in his father’s face. The long flight from Italy earlier in the week, and attending Dahlia’s wedding today, had obviously taken more of a toll on his father’s health than was wise.
Gabriel would suggest that the two of them leave, too, once the introductions were over. ‘Papa, may I present Isabella Scott? Bella, my father, Cristo Danti.’
Bella’s breath caught in her throat as she looked up into that stern, aristocratic face that was so much like Gabriel’s. So much like Toby’s, too…
‘Mr Danti,’ she greeted with a coolness she was far from feeling, only her cheeks echoing her inner warmth as the older man took her hand in his before raising it gallantly to his lips.
‘You are well named, Miss Scott,’ Cristo Danti murmured appreciatively as he slowly released her hand.
Bella gave an awkward smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘You are enjoying your stay in San Francisco?’
‘Very much, thank you.’
He nodded. ‘I have always liked San Francisco.’
‘It’s certainly an interesting city,’ Bella came back non-committally, very aware of Gabriel’s broodingly silent presence beside her.
No doubt he was enjoying her discomfort in this stilted conversation with his father. Just as he had enjoyed being able to force this introduction on her in the first place by the veiled threat of inviting her family to the Danti vineyards when she so obviously didn’t want his company at all.
‘It was a beautiful wedding,’ Cristo Danti continued lightly.
‘Bella does not enjoy weddings.’ Gabriel spoke for the first time. Dryly. Dark brows raised mockingly as Bella shot him a frowning glance.
Bella gave him another quelling glance before answering the older man. ‘Dahlia is a lovely bride.’
‘Yes, she is.’ Cristo Danti’s expression was slightly quizzical now as he glanced at his son and then back to Bella. ‘Are you remaining in San Francisco long, Miss Scott?’
‘Just another couple of days. And please call me Bella,’ she invited.
The older man nodded. ‘Perhaps before you leave you might care to—’
‘Mummy, Nanny and Grandad said we’re leaving now!’ Toby complained irritably as he suddenly appeared at her side, the excitement of the last week, and his late night yesterday evening, obviously making him tired and slightly querulous.
Bella froze at the first sound of her son’s voice, like a nocturnal animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
This couldn’t be happening! Not here. Not now!
Bella couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.
This was worse than anything she could ever have imagined. Worse than any of the nightmares that had plagued her dreams since she had met Gabriel again yesterday evening.
‘Mummy?’
Gabriel echoed beside her with soft incredulity.
Bella forced herself to move as she slowly turned to look at him, the colour draining from her cheeks as she saw the way he was staring down so intently at Toby.
But it was Cristo Danti, the man standing at Bella’s other side, who broke their frozen tableau as, his breath rasping in his throat, he slowly, but graciously, began
to collapse, his eyes remaining wide and disbelieving on Toby as he did so.
As he stared at the little boy who was unmistakeably his grandson…
‘D
O NOT
speak! Not one word!’ Gabriel warned harshly as he paced the hallway where he and Bella waited to hear news of his father.
Gabriel had managed to halt his father’s collapse before he hit the floor. Bella had reminded Gabriel that her father was a doctor before rushing off to get him as Gabriel helped Cristo from the room with as little fuss as was possible in the circumstances.
Even so several concerned wedding guests, including the bride and groom, had followed them to hover outside the doorway of the small unoccupied room Gabriel had found to take his father to further down the hallway.
Henry Scott, Bella’s father, had dealt firmly with those onlookers when he joined them a couple of minutes later, by ordering those guests back to the wedding reception and Gabriel and Bella out into the hallway while he examined his patient.
At last giving Gabriel the opportunity to deal with, to think of, the reason for his father’s collapse!
That small boy—Bella’s son—
His
son, too…?
Bella flinched as Gabriel stopped his pacing to look down at her with dark, accusing eyes, knowing it would do no good now to deny what had been so patently obvious to Cristo Danti that he had collapsed from the shock of suddenly being confronted by his grandson.
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘His name is Toby. Tobias,’ she enlarged shakily. ‘He’s four years old.’
Gabriel’s hands clenched into fists at his side. ‘Four years and four months to be exact!’
Bella swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’
Those dark eyes glittered menacingly. ‘Where is he now?’
Bella straightened defensively. ‘I took him back to sit with my mother and Liam. I—It frightened him when your father collapsed in that way.’
Gabriel looked at her coldly. ‘Shock is apt to do that to a man who has already suffered three minor heart attacks in the last four years!’
Bella hadn’t known that about Cristo Danti. Not that it would have made a lot of difference if she had known. Neither Gabriel nor his father were part of her own or Toby’s lives.
At least, they hadn’t been until now…
Gabriel, she had no doubt, wanted—no, he would demand—some answers from her concerning that. Just as the look on her own father’s face, as he had looked first at Cristo Danti and then Gabriel, had told Bella he would no doubt like some answers, too, once he had finished examining his patient!
She gave a shaky sigh. ‘I don’t think this is the time or place to discuss this, Gabriel—’
‘The time and place to discuss this would have been
almost five years ago when you first discovered you were pregnant!’
‘As I recall you were no longer around to talk to almost five years ago!’
His mouth tightened. ‘It was well publicised that I was in Italy at the time, at the Danti vineyards, recovering from the injuries I sustained in the car crash!’
Bella’s eyes flashed deeply purple. ‘And you seriously think that I was going to follow you there and tell you the news!’
‘You had no right to keep my son’s existence from me!’ A nerve pulsed in Gabriel’s tightly clenched jaw.
She shook her head. ‘You gave up any right you had to know about Toby by the fact that you never phoned me as you promised and only slept with me that night out of jealousy and spite because of your ex-girlfriend’s relationship with Paulo Descari!’
Gabriel’s face darkened dangerously. ‘I—’
‘Could the two of you please save your—
discussion
—until later?’ Henry Scott had opened the door of the room where Gabriel could see his father lying back on one of the sofas. ‘I think your father has merely suffered a severe shock rather than another heart attack, Mr Danti, but to be on the safe side I would like to get him to a hospital for a check-up.’
‘Daddy…?’ Bella looked across at her father uncertainly.
He gave her a reassuring smile. ‘It’s okay, Bella,’ he said gently. ‘For the moment let’s just concentrate on getting Mr Danti to hospital, hmm?’
Bella didn’t need to be told any plainer that her father had guessed Toby’s relationship to the two Danti men.
What must her father think of her?
More to the point, what must he think of the fact that Gabriel Danti, of all men, was unmistakeably the father of his grandson?
‘I would like to see my son.’
Bella had remained behind at the hotel to put Toby to bed when Gabriel and her father had accompanied Cristo Danti to the hospital. But she hadn’t made any attempt to go to bed herself. Had known—had been absolutely certain, in fact—that Gabriel would return once he had assured himself of his father’s recovery.
It was almost two o’clock in the morning, but nevertheless Bella had been expecting the knock on the door of the sitting-room between the bedroom she shared with Claudia and the one Liam shared with Toby. She had changed out of the dress she had worn to the wedding, and into fitted jeans and a black T-shirt, in anticipation of this meeting.
Gabriel looked grim, to say the least, that scar down his left cheek more noticeable in his harshly set features, his eyes fierce as he looked down at her challengingly.
Bella opened the door wider so that Gabriel could step inside the suite. ‘Toby is asleep,’ she told him calmly as she closed the door behind him before turning to face him.
That scar on Gabriel’s cheek seemed to pulse as he clenched his jaw tightly. ‘Nevertheless, I wish to see him.’
‘How is your father?’
‘Tests have shown your father’s original diagnosis to be the correct one. It was shock that caused my father’s collapse and not a heart attack. He is to remain in
hospital overnight for observation, but they expect to discharge him in the morning. Isabella—’
‘Did my father return with you from the hospital?’ Bella had already had one long, uncomfortable conversation with her mother this evening, she wasn’t sure she would be up to another one with her father once Gabriel had left.
Gabriel gave a terse nod. ‘He told me to tell you he will speak with you in the morning.’
Her eyes widened. ‘He knew you were coming here?’ Even as she asked the question Bella knew the answer; how else would Gabriel have known which suite to come to in order to see her if her father hadn’t told him?
Gabriel’s mouth thinned. ‘He realised I would want to see my son again before I left, yes.’
Bella flinched every time he said that. No matter what his biological make-up might be, Toby was her son, not Gabriel’s.
She gave a firm shake of her head. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea—’
Gabriel’s scornful laugh cut across her refusal. ‘Any concern I might have felt for your wishes died the moment I discovered you had kept my son’s existence from me for over four years!’ He made no effort to hide his contempt.
He had a son!
Gabriel still found it incredible that such a person existed. That there was a small, tousle-haired boy in the adjoining bedroom with his dark curls and eyes, and a small dimple in the centre of his still-babyish chin…
Having been denied all knowledge of him for over
four years, Gabriel had no intention of letting that continue a minute—even a second—longer!
‘Where is he, Isabella?’ he rasped furiously, her panicked glance towards the door to the right of the room enough for Gabriel to stride towards it determinedly.
‘Where are you going?’
Gabriel ignored Bella’s protest as he gently pushed that door open, recognising the sleeping boy in the first bed as Liam Scott before he turned his attention to the much smaller child in the second bed.
His breath caught in his throat as he looked down at the little boy he now knew to be his own son. Toby. Tobias.
He was beautiful, Gabriel acknowledged achingly. Absolutely beautiful. A perfect combination of his two parents.
Toby had Gabriel’s hair colour and that dimple on his chin that would one day become a cleft exactly like those of his father and grandfather. The smoothness of Toby’s brow and the long lashes that swept his cheeks were his mother’s, as was that perfect bow of a mouth with its fuller top lip.
His!
This beautiful child was of his loins. Of his blood.
Bella could only stand helplessly by as Gabriel dropped to his knees beside Toby’s bed, her protest strangling in her throat as Gabriel reached out a hand to touch the little boy, the stroke of his fingers against one slightly chubby cheek so gentle, so tender, that Toby didn’t even stir.
Her heart felt as if it were breaking, shattering, as she watched the rush of love that softened Gabriel’s
harshly hewn features. As she saw that love glowing in his broodingly dark gaze as he continued to stare at his son in wonder.
And she knew without a doubt that the last four years of sharing Toby only with her family were over…
‘I need a drink,’ Gabriel stated flatly some time later when he had reluctantly left his son’s bedside to return to the sitting-room, not waiting for Bella’s reply but moving to the mini-bar to help himself to one of the small bottles of whisky before pouring it into a glass and drinking most of it in one swallow. ‘So, Isabella,’ he stated as he looked across at her grimly. ‘What do you suggest we do about this situation?’
‘What situation?’ she repeated sharply, her stance wholly defensive as she stood across the room.
Gabriel looked at her through narrowed lids. He had made love with this woman a little over five years ago. That lovemaking had resulted in a child. A child whose existence she had deliberately kept from him. For that alone Isabella deserved no mercy from him.
His mouth thinned. ‘The situation that Toby, despite what you may have decided to the contrary, deserves to know both of his parents rather than just one!’
Her throat moved convulsively, but otherwise she maintained her defensive stance. ‘As I have already explained—’
‘As far as you are concerned, I gave up the right to know my own child because
you
believe I only went to bed with you out of jealousy and spite over my ex-girlfriend’s relationship with Paulo Descari,’ Gabriel coldly repeated her earlier accusation. ‘Neither jealousy nor
spite were part of my emotions that night, Isabella,’ he added curtly. ‘And I certainly wasn’t feeling those emotions at the time of the accident the following day either,’ he bit out deliberately.
Bella moistened lips that had gone suddenly dry as she sensed the leashed violence in him. ‘I didn’t suggest they were, Gabriel. You did.’
He gave a scathing snort. ‘It is impossible not to do so considering Janine’s claims following the accident,’ Gabriel snarled. ‘The official enquiry proved my innocence in the matter. But perhaps you would prefer to believe that I am responsible for the accident that caused the death of two other men, rather than take my word for what happened that day?’
Bella felt the colour drain from her cheeks even as she stared at Gabriel. No, of course she didn’t prefer to believe that Gabriel had deliberately caused the accident that had killed two other men. She didn’t believe it!
Gabriel might be guilty of many things, but Bella certainly hadn’t ever believed him to be guilty of that.
Gabriel looked at her coldly. ‘I did
not
cause the accident, Isabella,’ he repeated firmly. ‘That was only the hysterical accusation of a woman who took advantage of the fact that I was unconscious for several days following the crash, and so was unable to deny those accusations.’
And that accusation hadn’t been the reason Bella had made no effort to contact Gabriel following the car crash, either…
How could she possibly have just arrived at the hospital and asked to be allowed to see Gabriel when they had only spent a single night together?
If Gabriel wanted to see her again, Bella had reasoned, then he would contact her just as he’d said he would. Until he chose to do that—if he chose to do that!—she would just have to get on with her life as best she could.
Her pregnancy had been something Bella simply hadn’t taken into account when she had made that decision.
Weeks later, after her pregnancy was confirmed, Bella had been forced to make choices, both for herself and her baby. Gabriel’s failure to phone had simply reinforced Bella’s suspicion that he would want nothing to do with them. Or if he did, he had the power to take her baby away from her. Something Bella would never allow to happen. It was too late now, far too late, for her to explain or undo any of those choices…
Gabriel watched the emotions that flickered across Bella’s beautiful and expressive face, too fleeting for him to be able to discern any of them accurately. ‘I did not cause the accident, Isabella, but that does not mean I have not carried the guilt of Paulo and Jason’s deaths with me every day since.’
‘But why?’ She looked totally confused now.
Gabriel turned away to look out of the window at the San Francisco skyline.
How could he ever explain to her how he had felt five years ago when he’d regained consciousness and learnt of Paulo Descari and Jason Miller’s deaths? Of Janine’s hysterical accusations?
Added to that, Gabriel had felt utter despair, even helplessness, at the seriousness of his own injuries.
The cuts and burns to his body that were still visible, five years later, in the scar on his face and those that
laced across his chest, back, and legs. The crushing of his pelvis and legs had kept him confined to bed for months, with the added possibility that he might never walk again.
Worst of all, worse even than Paulo and Jason’s deaths, Janine’s duplicity, had been the knowledge that their night together had meant so little to Bella that—
No!
Gabriel refused to go there. He had not thought of Bella’s desertion for almost five years. He would not—could not—think of it now.
Now he would think only of Toby. Of his
son.
And Bella’s second betrayal…
He turned back to face Bella, his expression utterly implacable. ‘Toby is all that is important now,’ Gabriel told her icily. ‘I will return at ten o’clock tomorrow—or rather, today,’ he corrected, ‘at which time you and Toby will be ready to accompany me—’
‘I’m not going anywhere with you, Gabriel, and neither is Toby,’ Bella cut in immediately.