‘I am all right.’ Her pale mouth even managed to stretch into a wry little smile though her usual grace was missing as she walked to the nearest chair and slowly, carefully sat herself down. ‘A bambino …’ she whispered dazedly. ‘Now, that, mia caro, was quite a blow even from you,’ she admitted.
‘As you can tell, my mother is not very enamoured with babies, agape mou,’ Xander drawled lethally to Nell.
‘It is not the bambino part that repels me but the nonna part,’ Gabriela inserted surprisingly. ‘Now I understand your desire to have me explain about Vanessa and her—son.’
Nell immediately began to stiffen. ‘The desire for you to explain has always been there.’ Xander’s hands tightened on her shoulders in a gentle but determined squeeze. ‘You simply chose to ignore it.’
‘Until now …’
‘Until now,’ he agreed. ‘So start talking or so help me, Madre, I will publicly denounce you as my mother and acknowledge them!’
Nell was beginning to feel sick, very sick. A hand went up to press against her mouth. Gabriela saw it and a look of what could have been remorse crossed her beautiful face.
‘Our apologies, Helen,’ she sighed. ‘You have no idea what we are talking about and therefore are thinking the very worst. Alexander, Helen needs a glass of water,’ she concluded quietly.
With a soft curse he took his hands from her shoulders, his angry steps took him into the kitchen then seconds later brought him back again, then the man himself appeared in Nell’s vision, squatting down in front of her to offer her a glass of cool water at the same time that he touched a concerned hand to her warm brow then was lifting her fingers from her mouth and carrying them to his lips.
‘Sorry,’ he said gruffly. ‘This was not supposed to turn into a battle in front of you. I hoped that you would sleep a little longer so we could get this part out of the way before you needed to hear.’
‘Hear what?’ Nell tugged her hand free. ‘That you have another family out there that is more important to you than your own mother—or me, come to that?’
&nbs
p; ‘That just is not true.’
‘You know about Vanessa and the boy?’ Gabriela murmured in surprise.
Stupid fresh tears sprang into Nell’s eyes as she sipped at the water. Robbed of her hand, Xander brought his to rest against one of her pale cheeks.
‘Start talking, Madre,’ he rasped out.
Gabriela flinched at the serrated edge to his voice. ‘I had an affair with a man half my age,’ she confessed in a reluctant rush.
‘And broke my father’s heart—’
‘He broke mine too! Vanessa is only a few years older than Helen! He should have been shot for taking such a child to his bed!’
Vanessa? Nell’s attention picked up. She glanced at Xander to find his gaze fixed on her, narrowed and intent.
‘Both you and your father had an affair with Vanessa?’ she breathed in stricken horror.
Anger reshaped his mouth. ‘No, we did not,’ he denied and sprang up and spun away, angry tension racked across his shoulders.
Gabriela sighed. ‘You are such a fool, Alexander,’ she informed him. ‘Have you never learned how to get your priorities right?’
‘Like my father did?’ he lashed back.
‘Sì!’ Gabriela cried. ‘As we both did!’ she impressed. ‘You cannot pick between the two of us when you look for faults, Alexander. It just is not fair!’
‘You took another lover before he did,’ her son dismissed that line of defence.
‘And he had his revenge.’ Gabriela took in a deep breath and returned her attention to Nell. ‘You cannot begin to know about middle age until you reach it, Helen. No one can—not even the great Alexander, who apparently has never put a foot wrong in his life!’
As a dig at his marriage to Nell, it hit the mark.
‘Middle age eats away at your heart and your belief in yourself. You see lines where only smoothness had once been and a sagging figure where once everything had been tight. You see younger women receiving the admiring looks you used to receive.’
‘You break my heart.’