Challenging Gabriel (Knight Security 2) by Carole Mortimer Page B

British army all those years. Gabriel had just never revealed this side of himself to her before.
    Because right now, she was the enemy. The woman who had denied him his child for the past seven years. The woman he must surely hate more than he desired. But Gabriel was incapable of physically harming a woman, and so he had made Angel’s punishment this remorseless demand for her surrender. Over and over again.
    Angel was barely aware of the tears as they began to fall down her cheeks. “I did what I thought was best at the time.” She renewed her plea for understanding. “It was never meant to hurt you.”
    Gabriel felt as if he were emerging from a dream. Or, more aptly, a nightmare. Angel had come back into his life, but only because her son, their son, had been taken from her and she didn’t know how to get him back. Gabriel would never have seen her again if that wasn’t the case. Would never have even known he had a son.
    He rolled off her and to the side of the bed before standing, his back toward her. He looked over his shoulders, eyes narrowed as he heard her gasp. “What?”
    “I… Your back…?”
    He had forgotten about that six-inch scar down the left side of his back. A scar Angel had never seen because it hadn’t been there eight years ago. “Go back to your own bedroom,” he bit out evenly.
    “But—”
    “I said go!” he repeated coldly as she remained unmoving on the bed.
    Naked and unmoving.
    Gabriel’s control would carry him only so far, and right now it was stretched to the breaking point. He didn’t want to continue making love to Angel in this mood, had no idea what he would do to her if he did. What further cruelty he might inflict on her.
    She gave another sob as she moved lithely to her feet, her footsteps light as she ran across the bedroom to open and then close the bedroom door behind her.
    Which was when the tension left Gabriel’s body and he sank down onto the side of the bed to bury his face in the palms of his hands.

Chapter 4

    “Where do you think you’re going?”
    Angel froze in the dimmed light of the hallway, fingers gripped tightly about the handle of her suitcase as she slowly turned to face Gabriel.
    He stood in the open doorway of the sitting room, naked down to the waist, faded denims resting low on his hips, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. Not the first or even the second since they had parted the previous evening, if the weariness about his eyes and mouth was any indication.
    “I’ve been waiting for you to try to leave. Care to join me?” He held up the glass. “While I tell you all the reasons that isn’t a good idea.”
    Angel left her suitcase out in the hallway as she followed him tentatively into the sitting room. There was a half-empty bottle of whisky on the coffee table in front of the sofa, to show Gabriel had been sitting there. It gave him a clear view out into the hallway as he waited for her to leave.
    She had waited until almost three o’clock in the morning to make her move, the silence in the apartment lulling her into the false belief Gabriel was asleep in his own bedroom.
    She had heard the ringing of the telephone several times a couple of hours ago, followed by the sound of Gabriel in the kitchen, and then silence. She had assumed—wrongly—that Gabriel had gone to bed. What was the saying? Assumption is the mother of all fuckups? Something like that anyway.
    Gabriel collected a second glass from the side dresser before pouring an inch of whisky into it and offering it to her. “Drink it,” he advised. “You’re going to need it.”
    She took the whisky glass in both her trembling hands, sitting down in an armchair before taking a sip, conscious of the fact she hadn’t had anything to eat since the lunch they had shared the previous day. The whisky warmed her throat on the way down before roiling as her stomach protested at the arrival of the strong liquor.
    She rested her head back against the chair. “Has something