“Ready,” Gabriel growled. Falling into the white leather seat, he took another gulp of the bottle and stared out his window.
He felt as if he were leaving part of himself behind. His wife. His child. Robby. His son. Gabriel still couldn’t believe it.
He didn’t want to go.
I have to, he told himself angrily. I have no choice. He remembered how his parents had taken Gabriel and Guilherme to visit the factories of Açoazul Steel. It had been truly a family company. His father had been president, his mother vice president of marketing. “Someday, boys,” his father had said, “this company will be yours. Your legacy.”
The jet’s engine started. Closing his eyes, Gabriel leaned his head into his hands. He still remembered the sound of his father’s laugh, the tender smile in his mother’s eyes. They’d been so proud of their strong, handsome, smart sons. He could still hear his brother saying, at twenty years old, “I never intended to have a family so soon, but now I can’t imagine it any other way. I’m happy, Gabriel. I am.”
Grief gripped Gabriel’s chest. Why hadn’t he believed him? Why had he been so sure that he was right, and his brother wrong?
“Robby’s not an accident. He’s not a mistake.”
He suddenly saw Laura’s beautiful face as she’d stood in the morning light, wearing a wedding gown as luminescent as New England snow.
“Then what is he?”
She’d looked up at him. “A miracle.”
He blinked, staring at the porthole window as the jet’s roar increased. Last year, he’d let Laura go because he’d wanted her to find a man who could love her. He’
d wanted her to be happy. He’d been so angry when he’d thought she’d thrown her dreams aside and fallen into bed with a man who didn’t deserve her.
But she’d loved Gabriel himself all this time. She’d loved him without hope. She’d taken care of their baby all on her own, while carrying such a heavy weight on her shoulders at home. She’d assumed from the start that she and Robby were on their own.
Gabriel was the man who didn’t deserve her.
He’d tried to offer her money. His name. But that wasn’t what Laura wanted. She wanted his love. She wanted…a family.
Gabriel set down the bottle. His body felt hot and cold at once.
The jet lurched forward, taxiing toward the runway.
He gripped the armrests. He had to go back to Rio, or he’d lose his family’s company forever. Açoazul SA would be dismantled. He would lose his last link to his family.
The jet started to go faster down the runway, and he sucked in his breath.
His family.
He’d told himself for twenty years that he didn’t deserve another family. And yet, like a miracle, he had one.
He had a family. Right here and now. And he was choosing to leave them.
He sat up straight in his chair. His breathing came hard and fast. What about his family’s legacy?
Legacy.
He had a sudden flashback of a million small memories of warmth and joy and home. Visiting the steel factory. Sitting on his father’s shoulders at Carnaval, watching the parades go by. Vacations in Bahia. Dinner together each night. A life of love and tenderness. Until he’d made one dreadful mistake.
“Your brother would forgive you. Your family loved you,” he heard Laura’s warm, loving voice say. “They would know your heart.”
The jet hit full throttle, racing down the runway faster and faster, preparing for takeoff.
And Gabriel suddenly realized he was about to make the worst mistake of his life. And this time it wouldn’t be an accident, a car spun out of control on a rainy road by a nineteen-year-old boy. This time it would be a stupid, cowardly decision made by a full-grown man.
He hadn’t wanted another family.
But he had one.