Gabrielle nodded her head, but she wasn’t in the mood to chitchat. Not that Teresa wasn’t nice enough. Older than Keiran by about five years, she was always the one he came to when he needed help.
Teresa frowned as she glanced from one to the other. “Is something wrong?”
“Very,” Gabrielle said.
“Don’t listen to her,” Keiran snapped. “She’s only here to—”
“Fire him,” Gabrielle said, feeling a little sorry for Teresa, yet the other woman must know the type of man Keiran was.
Teresa gasped. “Fire him?”
“Ask Keiran about it.”
“Shut up, Gabrielle,” he growled.
“Ask him, but I doubt he’ll tell you the truth.”
“I said shut up,” Keiran said through gritted teeth as he stormed toward her. And then he grabbed her arm and shook her.
Gabrielle shrugged him off. She was too angry now herself. “Ask him how he’s been blackmailing me to leave my husband and my family and all that I hold dear.”
“That’s enough!” Keiran suddenly yelled, lifting his hand and slapping her across the face. The sound of it ripped through the air, and Gabrielle’s head snapped sideways.
It took a moment or two for the stinging to set in. And the shock.
Teresa was the first to move. “Keiran!” she exclaimed, pushing him away from Gabrielle. “What are you doing?”
Gabrielle’s hand went to her cheek as Keiran recovered his balance then just stood there, staring at her. He looked as taken aback as Teresa did, but Gabrielle didn’t have time to feel even the littlest bit sorry for him. He’d really crossed the line this time.
She took her hand away from her face and drew herself up straighter. “Don’t ever show your face at Kane’s again, Keiran,” she said, and on that note she sent Teresa an apologetic look and left them standing in the middle of the room. She walked out the door and quietly closed it behind her with cool, calm control.
And that’s how she felt right now. Despite the slap, despite knowing what was ahead of her with Damien, she felt liberated from the clutches of her cousin. It gave her the tenacity to keep on going. If she and Damien were to have a chance at a life together, everything had to be out in the open. They couldn’t move forward until they put the past behind them.
She decided to go home first and put a cool cloth on her face to stop the stinging and redness. By the time she’d finished, Keiran’s imprint was nowhere near as bad as she’d expected, though she suspected she might end up with a bit of a bruise.
Then she drove to Damien’s office, intending to wait until he’d finished his meeting. If Keiran had done his worst like he said he had, she just hoped Damien gave her the chance to explain.
But by the time she walked into the reception area of his office, anxiety had taken hold. She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t feel worried now.
His PA was nowhere to be seen, but a slight noise emitted from his office, so she walked over to the door that was standing open. Perhaps his PA was in his office tidying up.
She gasped when she saw Damien sitting at his desk with a bottle of scotch open and a half-empty glass. He’d had his head in his hands but he’d lifted it when she spoke.
He looked at her then, and her heart faltered at the pain in his eyes and the paleness of his cheeks. As if propelled, she slowly entered the room and stopped dead in the middle of it, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing to attention.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he rasped, the words sounding as if they were ground out of him.
Her heart squeezed tight. “So Keiran did tell you.”
“There was a report on my desk this morning when I came back from seeing you.” He swallowed hard. “It said about this idiot who ran into you with his car. About the accident. About you…your unborn baby.”
It was slowly sinking in that he finally knew. Her legs went from under her as she found her way onto one of the chairs. It felt like all the oxygen had been sucked from the room. “I’m so sorry, Damien.”
His eyes pinned her to the spot. “You had another man’s child,” he said harshly.
She blinked, trying to clear her mind. She’d forgotten he would think that. “No!” She took a deep breath. “It was your baby, Damien.”
His head reeled back. “Mine!”
“The baby was yours, Damien. And before you ask, the condom broke that one time, remember?”
He sat there, barely moving, but his face said an awful lot about the pain he was feeling. She felt it, too.
All at once he pushed himself back from his desk and stood, turning around to look out the huge windows behind him, but as if he couldn’t bear the pain, he spun back to face her. “Why the bloody hell did you run five years ago if you knew you were carrying my child?”
Her throat tightened. “I just had to.”
“I wasn’t good enough to be the father of your child, was I?” he said in a low voice, like it was something he should have expected.
“No!” She was shocked he’d say such a thing. Not Damien Trent. He was born secure. He’d never had an insecure moment in his life.
But then she remembered his childhood. And she knew differently. She took a deep breath and uttered the words that could destroy all their lives. “My father told me to leave.”
His eyes sharpened. “Told you?”
“He was drunk one night and bitter over my mother. He told me to take my things and get out and never come back.”
He scowled. “But he would have sobered up the next day. Surely you must have known he wouldn’t mean it?”
“I was scared, Damien,” she said, seeing the anger burst into his eyes before she’d even finished saying the words. “I was scared that eventually he’d lose control and hit me,” she said, blinking back tears at the mere thought of it. “I couldn’t risk that happening.” Not like it just happened with Keiran.
He went quiet. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “And yet you couldn’t come to me?”
A flash of guilt stabbed at her. “No. You would have made me stay.”
“You don’t have a high opinion of me, do you?”
“I do now. I’m sorry but back then I could only think you were like my father.”
His green eyes remained steadily on her face. “I would never, ever physically frighten a woman, sober or drunk.”