She shook her head, aghast to think of his being estranged from his family all these years. “Why didn’t Jeanne-Marie tell you she was pregnant when she came to see you?” her voice trembled.
“The night we were together I took precautions which let her know I didn’t want there to be any consequences. She was probably afraid to tell me she’d gotten pregnant.”
“But it was your baby!” Andrea said emotionally. “You had a right to know.”
He folded his powerful arms. “I agree. However at eighteen who’s thinking clearly?”
“You were, otherwise you wouldn’t have left home to follow your dreams.”
“I got out of there because I couldn’t stand to see the pain in my father’s eyes after he and mother divorced.”
Andrea believed him, but whether he realized it at the time or not, she knew other forces had been at work prompting him to fulfill his destiny.
“I’m so sorry, Gabe.” She wished there were a better word besides sorry to convey her feelings. “I— I still don’t understand how marrying me would help you atone for your sins.”
He sucked in his breath, “You haven’t lived with my guilt. Jeanne-Marie needed me and I rejected her.”
“You wouldn’t have, if she’d been truthful with you!”
A wintry smile came and went. “Thank you for defending me, but it doesn’t relieve me of blame. I slept with her when I didn’t love her.”
“She sought you out because she was willing, Gabe. That makes her share equally in the blame.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, “but if I’d married her, she might not have had the miscarriage.”
Her heart ached for him. “You’re beating yourself up for something you were helpless to rectify without knowing all the facts.”
He shook his dark head. “None of that matters now. Our baby didn’t survive, and there’s been no way for me to make restitution. When you came to me yesterday morning, I sensed your desperation and realized there was something I could do for you before it’s too late.”
She averted her eyes.
“Knowing what was at stake, I admired your honesty in not using Bret who was obviously ready and willing to make you his wife, something I wasn’t prepared to do for Jeanne-Marie…” His voice trailed. “I believe we could make a marriage work, Andrea. We have no secrets, only the hope of getting you pregnant.”
Andrea looked up at him again. His eyes shone with an intensity she’d never seen before. If she didn’t miss her guess, he wanted a baby to replace the one his father had told him he’d lost.
Her stomach clenched because she was holding back a lie of her own by not revealing that she was in love with him. But how could she open up to him? He wasn’t asking for her love any more than he’d asked for Jeanne-Marie’s…
“I’m far from perfect, Gabe.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders, drawing her attention to the movement of rock-hard muscles beneath his T-shirt. “Our relationship would be built on honesty, not perfection.
“What I’m proposing is that we get married immediately and try to get you pregnant as quickly as possible.”
“And if I don’t conceive?” she challenged. His cold-blooded approach to something as sacred as marriage angered her.
“We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
“You mean divorce.”
After a pause, “Only if it’s what we both want.”
He was too shrewd an entrepreneur not to leave himself a loophole. Oh Gabe—you’re so transparent. He might just as well have pushed her off a cliff. A heart could only take so much.
“There is one condition. For fathering our baby and bestowing my worldly goods on the two of you for the rest of our lives, you would have to agree to it.”
She knew there had to be a condition! In fact she’d been waiting for the other shoe to fall.
If she were to marry him and they divorced, naturally he wouldn’t be ecstatic about parting with half of those worldly goods which included a billion dollars or more.
Andrea couldn’t comprehend that amount of money any more than she could comprehend the damage done to him by his parents and Jeanne-Marie.
“Beyond a healthy respect for the way you’ve made your money by the sweat of your brow, I would never want to have your wealth. The responsibility would be…frightening.”
“I’m well aware of that,” came the surprising rejoinder. “When you’re in my position of having lived hand-to-mouth before making a fortune, you acquire a sixth sense about people. I’ve learned to choose my associates carefully.”
He subjected her to an intense regard. “If you had been a gold-digger, you would never have made it through our first interview.”
A shiver ran down her spine. She imagined many women, ambitious and otherwise, had tried without success to pierce his impregnable armor. How could they know a scarred soul lived inside such a successful man?
“Don’t you want to know what my condition is?”
She shivered.
When Bret had started dating her, he’d told her there was a ruthless side to Gabe’s nature. Otherwise he wouldn’t have become a billionaire by the time he was thirty-six.
Andrea had laughed off the comment because she’d never witnessed that trait in Gabe. Though he’d always been somewhat aloof, everyone in the company admired him. He treated his employees fairly and cared about them. The man commanded the highest respect from people worldwide.
But she’d seen multiple sides of him since coming to Paris and felt no urge to laugh. In fact she was in a state of absolute panic because she could feel herself caving even though she knew he wasn’t capable of loving her or any woman.
“Gabe—”
“I’m going home to St. Pierre.”
She blinked. “You mean you want to take me with you for a visit?”
“No. It’ll be for good. Yves and Jeanne-Marie now have two teenage children, I’m no longer a threat to their marriage. I miss the sea…and home.”
“But your company—”
“I’m selling it and funneling the money into a perpetual fund for the welfare of the island which has been in economic crisis for years.”
He was giving away his billion dollars? Just like that? “When did you make this decision?”
“A long time ago. Since my family wouldn’t let me help them financially, I had to find another way to do it. The point is, I always intended to go back, and have stayed in touch with my grandfather.
“However since my grandmother’s death, he has been depressed. To make matters worse, his friend from childhood, Gorka Zubeldia, who lived next door passed away recently. His widow Karmele is planning to move to the Pyrenees any day now to join their son.”
“So you weren’t the only son to leave the island.”
He flashed her another penetrating glance. “No. When Grand-père told me that news, I had my realtor buy the Zubeldia’s house for me without Grand-père’s knowledge. It has possibilities.”
“Possibilities? In other words, it will need a lot of work.”