Perfect Fit - Brenda Jackson [97]
Gabe leaned forward with his arms resting on his thighs. His gaze moved away from Sage and went to the roaring flame in the fireplace. For the longest time he didn’t say anything, but sat still and concentrated on the blaze. Then he spoke, his voice filled with the pain he appeared to be feeling.
“Because Lindsey successfully destroyed all the love I had for her,” he said, his voice filled with a bitterness that Sage had never heard in it before.
“Why? Because she left you for her former lover?”
“No, I would have gotten over that eventually. It was for another reason.”
Sage wondered if he would tell her the other reason and felt her stomach constrict with disappointment that he was willing to hold something back after they had agreed to always talk things through to build up the trust factor in their relationship.
She began chewing on her bottom lip, waiting patiently to see if he would say anything else. When she thought he would not, he shifted his gaze from the fire to her.
“I was never supposed to know, and even now she doesn’t know that I do know.” He sighed deeply, and continued, “And the only other person who knows, other than the person who told me, is Christopher.”
Sage sat still, seeing a rise of fury surge through Gabe and watching his shudder of pain. “Know what?” she asked softly, wanting to share in whatever anger and pain he was enduring.
He started to speak, then hesitated, as if saying the words was a pain he couldn’t bear. Finally, he met her gaze and held it. “She aborted my child.”
A shocked look etched itself in Sage’s expression. She didn’t try to hide it. She couldn’t have even if she had wanted to. “Are you sure?”
Gabe leaned back against the sofa, his arm finding its place across the back of it again. “Yes, and I had no idea she was pregnant. I guess she and her fiancé didn’t want a reminder of the time she’d spent with another man, and my child became the sacrifice.”
Sage shook her head. “But … how did you find out?”
“Carol, a woman who used to date my cousin years before he was killed in a boating accident, but with whom I’ve remained good friends over the years, worked as a nurse at the same clinic that Lindsey went to have the procedure done. Carol remembered Lindsey, but Lindsey didn’t remember her. She said that Lindsey and a man, who I assume was her boyfriend, came to the clinic. She overheard them talking in the waiting area. He was assuring Lindsey that she’d made the right decision, and that having an abortion was the only way they could move forward and not be reminded of her time with another man. Carol became suspicious and against the clinic’s policy and also invading Lindsey’s right of confidentiality and privacy; she read Lindsey’s medical records and figured that due to the timing of everything, the child was mine.”
He inhaled deeply. “Because of the way I obtained the information, there was nothing I could say or do to Lindsey without putting Carol’s job in jeopardy.”
Sage reached out and took Gabe’s hand in hers. No wonder he had trouble dealing with women on the rebound. “Oh, Gabe, I’m so sorry.”
A severely pained look covered his expression. “Yeah, so am I. After I found out, I went through a period where I didn’t want to have contact with another woman. I wanted to find Lindsey and make her tell me why she’d done it. I wanted her to explain how she could destroy another life, a life that was partly mine, just because her boyfriend didn’t want a reminder of what we’d shared. I hated myself for being so blinded by love that I couldn’t see that she never really loved me but was still carrying a torch for him.”
He looked back at the blaze again. “And I made a vow that I would never, ever get involved with a woman on the rebound, a woman with emotional baggage, a woman who couldn’t let go of her past and move on with her life. I had done so before, and what it cost me was something I could never recover.”
Sage’s heart reached out to Gabe, his pain and to