Reckless Night in Rio

chapter FIFTEEN




GABRIEL had to hurry. Every second he wasted with Laura was like a grain of sand falling through a fatal hourglass. He had to leave at once.

And yet he couldn’t.

Leaving her felt like a death. He took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘This isn’t over,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ll be back after I close the deal in Rio.’

‘Of course.’ Laura’s shoulders straightened, even as her lower lip trembled. ‘I will never stop you from seeing Robby. I hope…I hope you’ll see him often. He needs his father.’

Gabriel heard the music start to play downstairs and thought of the guests surrounded by white roses and candlelight, waiting for the wedding ceremony to begin. He clenched his hands, feeling that same strange spinning, sinking feeling in the region of his chest.

‘Remember,’ he said tersely, looking at her. ‘This was your choice. I wanted to marry you.’

She swallowed as tears streamed unchecked down her pale cheeks. ‘I’ll never forget that.’

No, he thought suddenly. It couldn’t end like this. Not like this!

With a sudden, ragged breath, he seized her in his arms. Pressing his lips against hers, he kissed her with every ounce of passion and persuasion he possessed. He never wanted to let her go.

She was the one to pull away. He saw tears falling down her cheeks as she stepped back, out of his reach. ‘Goodbye.’

He sucked in his breath. But there was nothing he could do. Nothing to be done. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said heavily. ‘In a few days.’

She gave him a wan smile. ‘Robby will be glad whenever you choose to visit.’

He left the room. Went out the door. Walked past her mother, who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He went outside into the cold winter air to the limo waiting outside. Gabriel felt a sudden pain in his chest when he saw that someone—one of Laura’s friends, perhaps—had written Just Married across the back window in white shaving cream, and attached aluminum cans to the back bumper to drag noisily down the road.

His hands clenched as he flung himself heavily into the backseat of the limo. Carlos, who’d apparently been texting someone as he waited in the driver’s seat, jumped.

‘Mr. Gabriel! What are you doing, so soon…? And where is Mrs. Laura?’

‘She’s not coming,’ he replied tightly. His throat hurt. ‘And she’s not Mrs.’

‘But senhor… What happened?’

Gabriel looked bleakly out the window, at the beautiful fields of endless white. ‘Just go.’

Laura stood by the closed door until the sound of Gabriel’s footsteps faded away.

Sagging into a chair, she covered her face with her hands. She’d been happy to be a bride, a single mother no longer—so pleased to finally leave the scandal behind her. She thought of her baby, downstairs now with one of her cousins, and a sob came from her lips.

But she’d had no other honorable choice. If she’d been willing to accept a life without love forever, what would that have done to her soul? What would that have taught her son?

She’d done the right thing. So why did she feel so awful?

She heard the door squeak open and looked up with an intake of breath.

Her three sisters, all dressed in elegant bridesmaid gowns, stood in the open door with their mother. ‘Why did Gabriel storm off like that?’ Ruth asked tremulously. Then she saw Laura’s tearful face. ‘Oh, sweetheart!’

A moment later, Laura was crying in their arms as they hugged her, and her scowling little sister Hattie was cursing and offering to go punch Gabriel in the face. That made Laura laugh, but the laughter turned to a sob. Wiping her eyes, she looked up at them.

‘What do I do now?’ she whispered.

Her mother searched her gaze. ‘The wedding is off? Is it for sure?’

Laura nodded with a lump in her throat. ‘He said he didn’t love me, that he would never love me. Or Robby, either.’

Her mother and sisters stared at her with a unified intake of breath. Then Ruth shook herself briskly.

‘Well then. I’ll go downstairs, tell everyone to head home.’

Laura folded her arms, her belly sick with dread and grief. ‘It’ll cause such a scandal,’ she whispered. She stared at the patterns on the carpet as the full horror built inside her. ‘Just when all the rumors were coming to an end.’

‘Weddings get canceled all the time,’ Becky said staunchly. ‘There’s nothing scandalous about it.’

‘Zero scandal,’ Hattie agreed quickly, pushing up her glasses. ‘It’s totally uninteresting.’

‘Not even as interesting as when Mrs. Higgins’s cow knocked over the Tast-E Burger truck,’ Margaret added.

‘It’ll be all right, sweetheart,’ her mother said, softly stroking Laura’s hair as she sat beside her. ‘Just stay here. I’ll handle everything.’

It was very tempting. But with a deep breath, Laura shook her head.

‘I’ll ask your uncle, then,’ Ruth said quickly. ‘He’s waiting to walk you down the aisle. He can simply make a little announcement and—’

‘No,’ Laura choked out. ‘I did this,’ she whispered, rising to her feet. ‘I’ll end it.’

Climbing onto his private jet at the airport five miles away, Gabriel nearly bit the stewardess’s head off when she offered him champagne. As she scurried off to the back cabin, he grabbed the entire bottle of Scotch from the galley and gulped straight from the bottle, desperate to feel the burn. But when he pulled the bottle from his lips, he realized the pain in his chest had only gotten worse.

It was his heart. His heart hurt.

‘Ready, sir?’ the pilot said over the intercom.

‘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.

Gabriel saw the white fields fly past the window. The jet started to rise, lifting off from the ground, and he leapt to his feet with a scream.

‘Stop!’