The Brabanti Baby

Author:Catherine Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2004-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

“THERE was no need to knock,” he said, when she entered his study. “You live here. For now at least, this is your home.”

A floor lamp in the corner shed a gentle light through the room and showed him sitting in a high-backed wing chair facing the open windows. He’d shed his jacket, pulled loose the knot in his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. A brandy snifter stood on the table at his elbow.

When she didn’t reply and instead slipped quietly into the chair next to his, he said, “I thought perhaps you’d changed your mind and weren’t coming. It’s almost eleven. Our guests left hours ago.”

“Nicola needed her ten o’clock feeding.”

“And before that? Some people stayed for a cold buffet supper. Why didn’t you join us?”

“I…had a headache.”

He laughed unkindly. “Is that the best excuse you can come up with, Eve? I had a headache?”

“Okay, I wasn’t hungry.”

“Nor was I. The mere mention of my ex-wife’s name is enough to give me indigestion, let alone the idea of rehashing her antics in their every squalid detail. But common courtesy demanded that I not abandon my guests.”

“All right, I let you down.” She bit her lip and hazarded a glance at him. Had something else happened, or was it really just the prospect of talking about Marcia that left him in such a foul mood? “If you must know, I’d had enough of your friends.”

He picked up the snifter and took a mouthful of brandy. He hadn’t looked at her once since she arrived, nor did he do so now, preferring instead to stare out at the soft Mediterranean night. What did he see there, she wondered. The blanket of stars spread across the sky, their reflection littering the sea like dancing fragments of crystal, or ghosts of his unhappy marriage?

“You found them universally unpleasant? There wasn’t one among them whose company you could tolerate a second time? That puts me in an awkward position. The Ripley-Joneses have invited us to the theater on Wednesday, and the Santoros to dinner next Monday. What am I to tell them? That you’d rather—?”

“Not universally unpleasant, Gabriel. I liked the Santoros very much. The other couple I confess I can’t quite place.”

“He’s in the diplomatic corps and she’s the former opera singer.”

“Ah, yes. Now I remember. They, too, were very charming.”

He permitted himself a small, bitter smile. “Then I’ve risked little in accepting both invitations? I don’t have to worry that you’ll embarrass me by walking out in mid-performance on Wednesday, or disappearing halfway through Monday’s dinner?”

“Of course not!” Exasperated, she said on a sigh, “Is this why you asked me to meet you here, Gabriel? So that you could pick a fight with me?”

He blinked and turned at last to look at her. “Is that what I’m doing? Forgive me. It’s not my intention.”

So he said, but his mood change proved otherwise. Her lips still felt slightly swollen, proof that she hadn’t imagined his kiss. The imprint of his body lingered on hers, hot and hungry.

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