She blinked, staring up at him in shock. “No more…no more children?”
He shook his head.
“But why?” she cried.
He dropped his hands from her shoulders.
“You should know, before you marry me, why I will not change my mind.” His jaw clenched as he turned away from her. Outside the windows, rolling white fields were dotted with black, bare trees. “My parents and brother died when I was nineteen. Because of me.”
“I know you’ve spent your whole life trying to regain what you lost,” she said. “But it wasn’t your fault they died!”
“I was driving the car that killed them.” His black eyes were bleak. “My brother had just eloped with a waitress who’d had his baby while we were away at university. He’d been living with her for months, keeping it secret from our parents that he’d dropped out of school. I visited their flat in São Paulo, where they were living with their baby daughter, barely surviving on the wages he could make as a laborer. This from my brother—who should have been a doctor!”
Laura took a deep breath. “So that’s how you know how to play with a baby,” she whispered. “You’d spent time with your niece.”
He gave her a smile that broke her heart. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “But when my brother decided to marry the woman, I was sure she was a gold digger. I dragged my parents to São Paulo to break up the wedding, and we convinced Guilherme to come back with us to Rio. I hated the thought of my brother giving up all his dreams, just because he’d accidentally gotten some woman pregnant.”
“Right,” Laura said over the lump in her throat. “A child doesn’t matter to you. Not like a career.”
His jaw clenched as he turned away. “It was raining that night,” he said in a low voice. “I was driving the car so my parents could convince my brother to see reason.” Gabriel gave a hard laugh. “But instead, Guilherme convinced them he needed to go back and marry Izadora. ‘Turn the car around,’ they told me. I looked into the rearview mirror to argue. I looked away from the road only for a second,” he whispered. “Just a single second.”
He stopped, his face grief-stricken.
Laura stared at him, feeling sick.
“I slammed on the brakes. I turned the wheel as hard as I could. But the tires kept sliding, right off the cliff. I heard my mother scream as the car rolled, then we hit the bottom. They all died instantly. But not me.” He looked at her bleakly. “I was lucky.”
“Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered, coming close to him. She tried to put her arms around him, to offer comfort. But his body was stiff. He pulled away.
“I was wrong about Izadora. At my brother’s funeral she wouldn’t even look at me. I offered to buy her a house, set up a trust fund for my niece, but she refused with angry words. I’d taken her husband from her, taken the father of her child, and she told me she hoped I would rot in hell.”
Laura shuddered.
“She eventually married an American and moved to Miami. My niece is grown now.” He took a deep breath, and she saw that his eyes were wet. “She’s almost twenty, and I haven’t seen her since she was a baby.”
“You haven’t?” Laura said in shock. “But she’s your only family, your brother’s child!”
His jaw clenched. “How could I see her?” he demanded, turning on her. “Why should I be allowed to spend time with my niece, when it was my thoughtless action that caused her to lose her father? Her grandparents? They never got to see her grow up. Why should I?”
“But, Gabriel…it was an accident. You were trying to help your brother. We all make mistakes with the people we love. Your brother would forgive you. Your family loved you. They would know your heart. They’d know you never meant to—”
“I’m done talking about this,” he growled, raking his hair back with his hand. He set his jaw, and his dark eyes glittered. “You wanted to understand why I never want children. I’ve told you why.”
She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath. Tears streamed down her face as she opened her eyes.
“It’s too late,” she whispered.
“What do you mean?” he demanded. “Too late? What are you saying?”
She lifted her chin. “I’ve never had another lover, Gabriel.
How could I, when I never stopped loving you? It’s always been you. Just you.”
He stared at her. His dark eyebrows came together like a storm cloud. “That’s impossible,” he said angrily. “Robby—”
“Don’t you understand?” She shook her head tearfully. “Robby is your son.”
The echo of her words hung in the air between them like a noxious cloud.