“Do you see much of each other?” She held up her glass and I clinked mine to hers. “You and Gabriel, I mean.” My sister’s subtlety hadn’t improved since the last time she’d warned me about her fiancé’s best friend.
“Not really. He works a lot. But we message each other about Bethany.” That was true, but it was also true that it felt like I saw a lot of him. Everywhere I turned in the house, I was confronted by some little piece of him. The inexplicably passionate literature beside his bed. His pictures from school and university. His cologne that stayed in the air long after he’d left, and smelled as moody and complex as the man himself. Every reminder of him was a morsel of temptation that made me hungry for more. The small snippets of him in person left me famished. I’d make sure I had a great view when he reached up to get something from the kitchen cupboard. Or when he bent down to scoop up his briefcase. And the way his voice was almost a growl still made me shudder. I collected all the pieces of him and put them together in my imagination. In the dark of my bedroom. Under my sheets. It was Gabriel I thought of when I touched myself.
“That’s good,” Hollie said, taking a sip of her drink and pretending she wasn’t fishing for information.
“Is it?” I loved my sister. She’d provided a future for me that I couldn’t have dreamt about without her sacrifices, but sometimes she needed to back off and not worry about me so much. And if I wanted to fantasize about a man like Gabriel, that was my prerogative.
“You know, it’s good that you’re not in each other’s pockets.”
“I don’t know what you’re so worried about.”
“With your job being postponed and you having to be a nanny and everything, I don’t want you to have any more disappointment. I just want everything to work out.”
I grabbed her hand. “It will. It always does. We make lemonade out of lemons. That’s what the Lumen sisters do.” There was no point in focusing on the bad that had been or could be. Whatever was coming would come whether or not I worried about it first. Better to make the most of the good stuff in between, so the not-so-good stuff would be slightly more manageable. I placed a kiss on her cheek and took a sip of my champagne, wanting to change the subject. “Although I’d take this over lemonade every day of the week.”
Hollie might have been taking care of me for her whole life, but I could take care of myself now. And a crush on my boss wasn’t the worst thing that was ever going to happen to me. I didn’t have to tell her that I was pretty sure he’d been checking me out earlier. It had been a momentary chink in his armor that would have healed over by now.
“So, have you assigned seating?” I asked, sure that she would have placed Gabriel and me at opposite ends of the table.
“No.” She glanced at her watch. “We should take a seat. That way Howard won’t get irritated.”
“Howard?”
Hollie winced. “The chef. Dexter insisted we take him full time.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The idea that my sister now employed a full-time chef, when growing up we worried about having enough food to eat, was so bizarre.
“I know. I’ve told Dexter it’s completely ridiculous.” We wandered toward the dining table, which was beautifully set with endless sparkling flatware and about six glasses per place setting. It looked like there would be a lot of washing dishes after we’d left. Presumably Dexter insisted on someone taking care of that, too.
“You don’t need to be embarrassed. I think it’s amazing that you don’t have to worry about cooking, let alone whether you’re going to be able to make twenty dollars buy a week’s worth of groceries for both of us. Are these flowers real?” I asked, bending to take in the scent of the peonies arranged in mini goldfish bowls dotted about the table. Yup, they were real.
“It’s a different life, that’s for sure,” she said.
It was an easier life. One with less expectation of disaster hiding around every corner. And I couldn’t have wished anything better for my sister.
Hollie took a seat at the head of the table and I sat on a chair right at the other end. This was a close-knit group of friends, and I didn’t want to just crash into the middle of everything.
Gabriel and Dexter were the next to the table. Dexter took a seat next to my sister and to my surprise, Gabriel sat next to me.
“You okay?” he asked in a half whisper, his gaze only meeting mine for less than a second.
Goosebumps scattered across my body like dropped change onto marble. To an outsider, it was such a barren question, but from Gabriel? To me?
It was all intimacy.
All I could do was nod. How could I be anything but okay? He was sitting next to me.
The spell was broken as the rest of Dexter and Hollie’s friends took seats around the table and a waiter came around with wine. At least he knew which glass he was using, because that was at least three levels above my paygrade.
As the evening went on, the waiter in charge of the wine managed to use each of the six glasses. My glasses—and Gabriel’s—were the only ones that remained mostly untouched.
“You’re not drinking,” he said, without looking at me. It was the first time he’d spoken to me since he’d first sat down.
“You’re not drinking,” I replied. The rest of the table seemed oblivious to our conversation as they continued to banter and laugh.
“I have Bethany to think about,” he said, still staring straight ahead. “You’re off the clock. You should be able to enjoy your evening with friends.”
My evening with friends? Is that what this was? I didn’t really know anyone around this table other than my sister. “Are we friends, Gabriel?”
His chest expanded as he pulled in a breath, and as he exhaled, he pressed his thigh against mine and left it there. This was no casual brush of hands or inadvertent nudge of my knee. He was pressing his body against mine in answer to my question. And it was as erotic as if he was trailing his tongue over my breasts. My breathing grew shallow, my pulse drummed in my wrists, and the heat rose in my cheeks like he’d worked his fingers into my underwear.
I couldn’t control my body’s reaction to him when we were both fully clothed. What would become of me if Gabriel Chase and I were ever naked together?
Five
Gabriel
I rehearsed the conversation I’d have with Mike in my head as I sat in the back of the cab heading home. We were going to have diametrically opposing views on how we wanted to spend this weekend. I wanted to hang out with Bethany. Mike would want to work. I peered out of the raindrop-speckled window, fascinated with the people milling about on the streets. Where were all these people headed at just gone three on a Friday afternoon? Was I one of thousands heading home early? Was it what the rest of the world usually did while I stayed chained to my desk?
Before I left the office, I’d gotten to the end of the draft contract I’d received overnight on one of the Mike Green deals. Other than a couple of drafting issues and a correction on a tax point, I knew this was where we’d end up. I also knew Mike was going to try to make me negotiate it for the next sixty hours straight. If I lost our battle, I wouldn’t get to go home for two nights and kiss my sleeping daughter. I’d miss the entire weekend with her, and I’d risk Autumn being pissed off. So I’d jumped in a cab before Mike had a chance to call me. That way, at least I’d get to see Bethany this afternoon.