said. ‘Dead?’
For a long moment, there was silence. ‘At first I thought she was just sleeping. I remember thinking that I’d never seen her looking quite so peaceful. And then I saw...I saw the empty pill bottle on the floor.’
Leila’s throat constricted as she struggled to say something, imagining the sight which must have greeted the young boy as he arrived home from school. She stared at him in utter disbelief. ‘She...killed herself?’
‘Yes,’ he said flatly.
Leila felt a terrible sadness wrap itself around her heart. She had wanted to understand more about Gabe Steel and now she did—but she had never imagined this bleak bitterness at the very heart of his life. She could hardly begin to imagine what it must have been like for him. So that was why he had locked it all away, out of sight. That was why he kept himself apart—why he deliberately put distance between himself and other people.
She was stunned by what he had told her. Yet out of his terrible secret came a sudden growing sense of understanding. No longer did it surprise her that he didn’t want to trust or depend on women—because hadn’t the most important woman in his life left him?
And lied to him.
‘Did you blame yourself?’ she asked quietly.
‘What do you think?’ he bit out, his icy facade now completely shattered.
She saw emotion breaking through—real, raw emotion—and it was so rare that instinctively she went to him and he didn’t push her away. He let her hold him. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly and she could feel his heart beating hard against her breast. Pressing her lips against his ear, she whispered, ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Gabe.’
‘No?’ He pushed her away, like somebody who had learned never to trust words of comfort. ‘If I hadn’t been so persistent...if I hadn’t been so damned stubborn—then my mother wouldn’t have felt driven to commit such a desperate act. If I hadn’t been so determined to find out about my father, she need never have died. She could have lived a contented old age and been cushioned by the wealth I was to acquire, but which she never got to see.’
For a moment Leila didn’t answer, wondering if she dared even try. Because how could someone like her possibly empathise with Gabe’s rootless childhood and its tragic termination? How could she begin to understand the depths of grief he must have experienced when he was barely out of boyhood? That experience had formed him and, emotionally, it had warped him.
Up until that moment, Leila had often thought herself hard done by. Her parents’ marriage had been awful—everyone at court had known that. Her father had spent most of his time with his harem, while her mother had sat at home heartbroken—too distracted to focus on her only daughter. As if to compensate for that, Leila had been pampered and protected by her royal status but she had felt trapped by it too. She had been isolated and lost during a childhood almost as lonely as Gabe’s.
But his circumstances had been different. He had been left completely on his own. He had lived with his guilt for so long that it had become part of him. ‘Your mother must have been desperate to have taken such a drastic action,’ she said quietly.
His voice was sardonic. ‘I imagine she must have been.’
She stumbled on. ‘And she wouldn’t want you to carry on blaming yourself.’
‘If you say so, Leila.’
She swallowed, because one final piece of the jigsaw was missing. ‘And did you ever find your father? Did you track him down?’
There was a heartbeat of a pause before his mouth hardened. ‘No.’
‘Gabe—’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s enough. No more questions, Leila. And no more platitudes either. Aren’t you satisfied now?’
His eyes were blazing, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. If she’d pushed him to a point where he was likely to break. She wondered if he was going to walk out. To put distance between them, so that when they came face to face again he could pretend that this conversation had never happened.
But he didn’t do any of that. Instead, he pulled her back into his arms. He stared down at her for a long moment before bending his head to kiss her—the fiercest kiss she could ever have imagined. She knew what he was doing. He was channelling his hurt and his anger and his pain into sex, because that was what he did. That was how he coped with the heavy burden he carried.
Leila clung to him, kissing him back with all the passion she was capable of, because she wanted him just as much. But she wanted so much more than just sex. She ached to give him succour and comfort. She wanted to show him that she was here for him and that she would always be here for him if only he would let her. She would warm his cold and damaged heart with the power of her love. Yes, love. She loved this cold, stubborn husband of hers, no matter how much he tried to withdraw from her.
‘Gabe,’ she whispered. ‘My darling, darling Gabe.’
The breath he let out in response was ragged and that vulnerable sound only added to her determination to show him gentleness. Her hand flew up to the side of his face and, softly, she caressed his jaw. Did her touch soothe him? Was that why his eyelids fluttered to a close, as if he was unspeakably weary? She touched those too, her fingertips whispering tenderly over the lids, the way she had done all that time ago in Simdahab.
Beneath the tiptoeing of her fingers, his powerful body shuddered—shaking like a mighty tree which had been buffeted by a major storm. He opened his eyes and looked at her but there was no ice in his grey eyes now. Only heat and fire.
He picked her up and carried her over to the sofa, and she’d barely made contact with the soft leather before he was impatiently rucking up her filmy blue dress and sliding down her panties. His hand was shaking as he struggled with his own zip, tugging down his trousers with a frustrated little moan.
She was wet and ready for him and there were few preliminaries. But Leila didn’t want them; she just wanted Gabe inside her. His fingers parted her slick, moist folds and she gasped as he entered her, closing her eyes as he filled her.
‘Gabe,’ she said indistinctly, but he didn’t answer as he began to move.
It was fast and deep and elemental. It seemed to be about need as much as desire, and Leila found herself responding to him on every level. Whatever he demanded of her, she matched—but she had never kissed him quite as fervently as she did right then.
Afterwards, she collapsed against the heap of the battered cushions, her heart beating erratically as she made shallow little gasps for breath. She turned to look at him, but he had fallen into a deep sleep.
For a while she lay there, just watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. She thought about what he had told her and she flinched with pain as she took her mind back to his terrible story. He had known such darkness and bleakness, but that period of his life was over. He had taken all the secrets from his heart and revealed them to her—and she must not fail him now.
Because Gabe needed to be loved; properly loved. And she could do that. She could definitely do that. She would care for him deeply, but carefully—for fear that this bruised and damaged man might turn away from the full force of her emotions.
She must love him because he needed to be loved and not because she demanded something in return. She might wish for that, but it was not hers to demand.
She snuggled closer, feeling the jut of his hip against her belly. She ran her lips over the roughness of his jaw and then kissed the lobe of his ear as she wrapped her arms tightly around his waist.
‘I will love you, Gabe Steel,’ she whispered.
But Gabe only stirred restlessly in his sleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE DISTANT RUMBLE of thunder echoed Leila’s troubled thoughts.