Gabriel looked at her gravely. “Did you stop loving me when I left Toronto?”
She nibbled on the edge of one of her fingernails. “Of course not.”
“If he truly loves you, he’ll love you for a long time. Maybe forever.”
“Then why wouldn’t he want to be friends?” She turned troubled eyes in his direction.
“Because it’s too painful.” Gabriel cupped her cheek. “If I’d lost you to him, I couldn’t be friends with you. I’d simply have to love you from a distance.”
“I never meant to hurt him,” she whispered.
“I’m sure he realizes that.”
“Why didn’t he try to talk to me about it when we were in Oxford?”
“He didn’t want to upset you before your lecture.”
Julia turned suspicious eyes in her husband’s direction. “Did you know about this?”
Gabriel hesitated, ever so slightly.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“For the same reason he didn’t bring it up. We wanted you to be in the best frame of mind at the conference.”
She pushed her chair back from the table. “So you and Paul discussed this? You discussed me?”
“Briefly, yes.”
“You should have told me!”
“I’m telling you now. Truthfully, Julianne, I thought he’d change his mind. But once again, Paul has surprised me.”
“You dole out information like vitamins.”
Gabriel lifted his head, a smile playing about his lips. “Vitamins?”
“You know what I’m saying. You and your secrets.” She rose to her feet, but he caught her wrist.
“I don’t have secrets from you. We agreed not to disclose everything from our pasts for the sake of moving forward. But if you want full disclosure, I’ll give it to you.” He lifted his chin in challenge. “And then I’ll ask you for full disclosure. For example, did you happen to have a conversation with Paul about dropping out of Harvard?”
“What?”
“He tore a strip off me, telling me I had to make sure you didn’t abandon your dreams.”
Julia’s eyes widened.
“When did he say this?”
“In Oxford, right after your lunch. So don’t lecture me on keeping secrets, Julianne. I’m not having lunch with old flames and telling them about our marital conflicts.”
“I wasn’t doing that.”
“Well, what do you call it, then?”
She lifted her hands and then let them drop to her sides. “It just—came out. I was worried and needed someone to talk to.”
“Did it ever occur to you that you already have someone to talk to?” Gabriel glanced between them significantly. “Someone infinitely closer?”
“I needed time to think.”
“I can understand that. I can even support it. But time to think and going to someone else to talk about our problems are two different things. That was not the right thing to do, Julianne, and you know it.” His tone was reproving.
Julia stared, expecting him to explode into temper. Surprisingly, he didn’t.
(Which demonstrated, clearly, that the Apocalypse was nigh.)
Gabriel continued. “I don’t share our problems with anyone. And yes, sometimes I dole out information, as you so charmingly put it, in order to protect you. But it is always, always, done with love.”
His fingers slid from her wrist to her hand. “I tried to persuade Paul not to cut off contact with you. Not because that was what I wanted, but because I didn’t want to see you hurt.”
Julia blinked back tears that had suddenly appeared. “What hurts is the fact that you don’t trust me.”
“I trust you.”
“But not with your family history.”
He clenched his teeth. “You know what I know—that my mother’s family disowned her and left me to foster care after her death. My father abandoned us. Do you want me to investigate such people? Just so I can discover more unsavory details?”
“They made you, Gabriel. There has to be something in your family history that’s worth knowing. And of course I don’t want you to be upset. But your family is part of you. If we have children, eventually they’ll ask about their grandparents.”
Gabriel dropped her hand, his face a mask of stone.
“If I could expunge them from my memory, I would. I won’t have our children so polluted.”
She lifted her chin. “A man as good and as brilliant as you came from that pollution. And so will our children.”
His expression softened. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“You’re right, I shouldn’t have gone to Paul with my worries. But he was my friend.” Julia continued to fight back the tears.
He pressed her face into his chest.
Chapter Twenty-seven
At bedtime, Gabriel strode into the master suite. He was barefoot, clad only in a white shirt and jeans. When he caught sight of Julianne, he began rolling up his sleeves.
“Are you still on your cycle?”
Julia was standing by the washroom, having just finished brushing her teeth and washing her face.
“I finished yesterday.”
“Good. Take off your clothes and lie on the bed.”
She stared at him.
“Now.”
His eyes seemed to burn through her. Without argument, she undressed quickly, dropping her clothes to the floor before climbing onto the bed.
“On your stomach. Eyes closed.”
She couldn’t help trembling at the tone of his voice, but she did what he said. With eyes closed, her other senses were heightened. She felt the breath of air from the open window. She could hear Gabriel’s sure footsteps against the tiled floor.
Soon he chose music to fill the air, “The Look of Love” performed by Diana Krall. Julia opened her eyes and saw that he’d turned the lights out and lit candles next to the bed. A luminescent cloud filled her gaze.
“Eyes closed,” he commanded.
She did as she was bidden and felt the mattress move. His hands found her waist, lifting her in order to slide a pillow beneath her hips. Seemingly satisfied with her position, his lips blazed a trail from dimple to dimple before coming to rest at the base of her spine.
A single finger traced up to the nape of her neck, gliding across her shoulders. Another pillow was placed under her naked br**sts before he stretched her arms above her head.