CHAPTER 3

          Beneath heavily lidded eyes, Gabriel watched Calleigh as he led her to the black limousine purring on the street in front of the hospital. She wasn’t faking her amnesia. In spite of his initial incredulity, he now had no doubt. She had no idea of who he was or what she’d done. And now she was pregnant with his child. This detail changed everything.

          He gently helped her to the car. She had no luggage. One of his men had taken her smashed Aston-Martin to the garage, while the other had gone to make quiet amends for the smashed postbox.

          Calleigh wore the black silk dress and carried the black clutch purse from her stepfather’s funeral yesterday. The black dress clung to her breasts and hips when she walked, the silk shimmering and sliding against her hips and breasts.

          Her dark, long, glossy hair had been brushed into a fresh ponytail. She wore no makeup. It made her look so strange, so different. Gabriel had never known her to go out without lipstick before.

          Although God knew, with her lustrous skin, full pink lips, and sparkling blue eyes, she didn’t need it to cause every man she met, from the elderly hospital porter to the teenaged boy walking past them on the sidewalk, to stop and catch his breath.

          And as she turned back to face him on the sidewalk with a sweetly innocent smile, Gabriel was grimly aware that he was a galaxy away from being immune to her charm.

“Where are we going, Gabriel?” she asked, crinkling her forehead. “You never said.”

“We’re going home,” he replied, guiding her into the backseat of the limousine.

          He closed the door behind her. His body’s reaction to her was irritating and troubling. Gabriel didn’t like it because he hated her. When he’d first seen Calleigh in the hospital, she’d been curled up on the single bed beneath a thick blanket. She’d looked pale and nothing like the vivacious, tempestuous little vixen he remembered.

          Sleeping, she’d looked innocent, far younger than her twenty-five years. She’d looked small. Fragile. Gabriel had come to London specifically to destroy her. For the last three months, he’d been dreaming of it, it was his only thought. But how could he take his revenge if Calleigh not only had no memory of her crimes but on top of everything, she was pregnant with his baby?

          Tightening his hands into fists, he stalked to the other side of the car. Though it was only September, summer had abruptly fled London. A steady drizzle was falling from low gray clouds. He climbed in beside her and she turned to him without missing a beat.

“Where… Uh… Where is… our home?”

“My home…” he closed his door with a bang “My home is Marbella, in Spain.”

          She gaped at him.

“Spain?”

“It’s where I live, and I must take care of you,” he said and gave her a brief, tight smile. “Doctor’s orders.”

“So… I live there with you?”

“No.”

“We don’t live together?”

“You like to travel,” he said ironically.

“So where are my clothes?” Calleigh asked in a small voice. “And my passport?”

“I am pretty sure they’re at your stepfather’s estate. My staff will collect your things and meet us at the airport.”

“But…”

          Calleigh looked out the window, then turned back to face him and said in a rush, lifting her chin.

“I want to see my home, Gabriel. My childhood home. Where is it?”

          He gave her an assessing glance.

“Your stepfather’s estate is in Buckinghamshire if I remember well. But visiting this place, won’t help you at all. You spent one night there before the funeral. It hasn’t been your home for a long time.”

“Please, Gabriel.”

          Her sapphire eyes gleamed.

“I want to see my home. Take me there, please.”

          Gabriel's eyebrow furrowed as he looked down at her pleading face. ‘Calleigh really had changed,’ he thought. His mistress had never begged him for anything. She’d never even said please. Except…

          Except for the first night he’d taken her to his bed, when all her defenses had been briefly stripped away and he’d discovered the most desired woman in the world was, against all expectations, a virgin. As he’d pushed himself inside her, she’d looked up at him in a breathless hush with those violet-blue eyes, and he’d thought… he’d almost thought…

          He cut off the memory savagely. He wouldn’t think about how it had once been with her. He wouldn’t think how she had nearly made him lose everything, including his mind. Calleigh Swanson was a fatal habit that he’d finally broken. And he intended to keep it that way.

“Very well,” he ground out, turning back to face her. “I will take you home. But just to collect your things. We can’t stay.”

          Her lovely face brightened. Calleigh looked so young without makeup, with her hair in the casual ponytail. She looked barely old enough to be in college, far younger than his own thirty-eight years.

“Thank you, Gabriel,” she said warmly.

          ‘Thank you’. Other two words he’d never heard from her before. Gabriel turned away, leaning back in the beige leather seat as his chauffeur drove smoothly through the city. As the car merged onto the M1 heading north, Gabriel stared out at the passing rain, then closed his eyes, tense and weary from jet lag and the whiplash of the past two days.

          ‘Calleigh, pregnant…’

          He was still reeling.

          ‘No wonder she’d crashed her car,’ Gabriel thought dully. ‘Just the thought of losing her figure and not fitting into all her designer clothes must have made her crazy. All those months of not being able to drink champagne and dance until dawn with all of her rich, beautiful, shallow friends? Calleigh must’ve been more than shocked… She must have been furious.’

          Pregnant… He won’t trust her to take care of a house plant, much less a child… his child. She had not one single maternal bone in her body. She wouldn’t love a baby. She was the least loving person Gabriel had ever met.

          Slowly, he opened his eyes. He hadn’t even known about the baby an hour ago, but now he was absolutely sure of one thing. He had to protect his child.

“So, I don’t live in England…” he heard her say.

          Steeling his expression, Gabriel turned to face Calleigh. Her face looked bewildered, almost sad.

“Do I even have a home?” she added hesitantly.

          Against his will, he had the sudden image of Calleigh in his bedroom on Illa de Tagomago, spread across his large bed, with the curtains twisting from the sea breeze coming off the sparkling Balearic Sea. That had never happened, and it never would!

“You live in hotels,” he answered coldly. “Like I told you, you travel constantly.”

“So how do I hold down a job?” she said in disbelief.

“You don’t have a job. You spend your days shopping and attending parties around the world. You’re an heiress. A famous beauty.”

          She gaped at him.

“You’re joking… Right?”

“No, I’m not.”

          Gabriel left it at that. He could hardly explain how she and her depraved friends traveled in packs like parasites, sucking a luxury hotel dry before moving on to the next. If he told her that, she might hear the scorn in his voice and question the true nature of his feelings.

          Damn it! How was it possible that he’d been so caught by her? What madness had possessed him to be so enslaved? How could he make sure that his child would never be neglected, hurt, or abandoned by her after she regained her memory?

          A new thought suddenly occurred to him. If she couldn’t remember him, if she couldn’t remember who she was or what she’d done, it meant she would have no idea of what was about to hit her. She would have no defenses.

          A slow smile curved his lips as Gabriel built his new plan. He could take everything from her, including their baby. And she would never see it coming.

“So, I was here for my stepfather’s funeral,” she said softly. “But I’m not British.”

“Your mother was, I believe. You both returned to England some years ago.”

          She brightened.

“My mother!”

“She’s dead,” Gabriel informed her brutally.

          Calleigh froze, her face crumpling. Watching the swift movement of scenery on the outskirts of London through the window behind her, Gabriel remembered that her mother’s death was fresh news to her. And that he was supposed to be in love with her. He had to make her believe that if he wanted his plan to succeed.

“I’m sorry, cariño,” he said abruptly. “But as far as I know, you have no family.”

“Oh…” she said in a small voice.

          Pulling Calleigh into his arms, Gabriel held her close against his chest, kissing the top of her head. Her hair, messy and unwashed, still managed to smell like vanilla and sugar, the scents he associated with her. The scent immediately made his body go hard and taut with longing, with the immediate temptation of a long-desired vice.

          Why couldn’t he stop wanting her? After everything she’d done, the way she’d nearly ruined him, how was it possible that his body still longed for her like a dying man thirsting for water?

          Was he really a spineless masochist? Did he have no honor, no pride? ‘I have pride,’ he thought, clenching his jaw. 'But she's so damn near…' Even now, acting so sweetly demure, her innocence attracted him like a flame. He remembered the fire of passion inside her. And how he was the only man who’d ever tasted it.

          Gabriel felt himself tighten. He knew he had to stop thinking about her in bed. He wouldn’t want her. He did have some control over his own body, damn it! She clenched her fingers against his sleeve, her face pressed into his crisply tailored shirt.

“So… I’m all alone… I have no one.”

          Her voice was small, almost a whisper.

“No parents. No brothers or sisters. No one…”

          He looked down at her, tipping her chin upwards so he could see the tears sparkling in her beautiful violet-blue eyes.

“Cariño, you have me.”

          She swallowed, searching his face as if trying to read the emotion behind his expression. He schooled his features into concern and admiration and the closest attempt at love he could manage, never having actually felt it. A sigh came from her lips as she exhaled. A soft smile traced her lips.

“And our baby.”

          Gabriel gave a single grim nod. Their baby was the reason he had to make sure his control over Calleigh was absolute. The reason he had to make her believe he cared about her. It was no different, he thought sardonically than she’d once done to him.

          He would make Calleigh believe she could trust him. Make her willingly marry him. And then… then she’ll have a taste of her own medicine… The instant their marriage would be a fact, his life’s goal would be to make her remember the truth. He would be with her when she finally remembered. He would see her face as it fell.

          And he would crush her. The thought of revenge made his heart glad. Not revenge, he told himself. Justice. Leaning forward, he held her closer in the backseat of the limo.

“Calleigh…”

          Gabriel cupped her face in his large hands.

“I want you to marry me.”