A Question of Love: Sequel to A Question of Trust

by Jess Dee

  A low moan snapped him from his reverie, and carefully, cautiously, he turned the vibe off and slid it out of Tina. She collapsed in a spent heap before him, her chest heaving.

  Gabe inched off the bed and knelt on the floor beside the head of the mattress. Every action was a challenge. He ached so damn bad, spasms tore through his abdomen.

  She turned to stare at him, her brown eyes enormous in her passion-glazed face.

  “Earlier you wanted to know if I’d kissed you because I love you.” He growled in her ear. “The answer is yes.”

  Confusion clouded her irises. “Wha…?”

  “I do love you. I have since the day Connor introduced us.” As he spoke, certainty of his feelings pushed forward in his mind. Four years may have passed. They did not dampen the intensity of his love for her one iota.

  “But you…you left us. You left…me.” Her voice was breathless.

  “Because you were with him first. I couldn’t have you.” He bit back his resentment. Connor wasn’t to blame for the course of events that had pushed him away from Tina. Their code of honor was. If not for Connor he’d never even have met Tina.

  “You did have me, Gabe. You and Connor—you had all of me. I loved you both. So very much.”

  Glass cut at his heart. The erection that had been plaguing him died a sudden death. “You loved us…both?”

  She closed her eyes on a sigh. “With everything I had. You two were my life.”

  The glass sliced deeper. Her love was a mixed blessing. How could he make her his own if she’d loved Connor as well? “I couldn’t share you.” Gabe’s voice was hoarse. The words scraped his throat. “Not once I knew I loved you.”

  “Gabe…”

  “Every time Connor was with you I wanted to tear him apart, one limb at a time.” The last time they’d made love to her, he’d hated Connor with every cell in his body. Every time his friend touched Tina, Gabe had seen red. It had been the most agonizing sexual experience of his life, being with the woman he loved and watching his best friend fuck her at the same time. “I had to leave, T. It was either that or knock Connor unconscious.” He clenched his fist at his side.

  Her gaze darted to his hand. “Y-you…never said anything.”

  Gabe shook his head. What the fuck could he have said that wouldn’t have destroyed his and Connor’s friendship, or Tina and Connor’s relationship?

  He made a concerted effort to relax the muscles in his hand and straighten his fingers. “We had our rules. I couldn’t breach them. I couldn’t betray Connor that way.”

  Tina scooched up the bed and dragged the covers over her naked body. She clutched the doona tight around her breasts while laughing cynically. “Oh, so it was okay for Connor to break the rules to be with Maggie, but not for you to break the rules to be with me.”

  “Maddie,” he corrected and squeezed his eyes shut for a second. Shit, his explanation had come out sounding all wrong. Instead of clearing up the circumstances with her, he’d made it worse. “Connor never broke the rules. I did.”

  She frowned at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “When Connor realized he had feelings for Maddie, he tried to walk away. He did it because of the rules. He did it to save our friendship.” Gabe hesitated. “I wouldn’t let him.”

  “You wouldn’t let him?” Again with the reproachful stare.

  “I’ve been there, T. I know what it’s like to walk away from the woman you love. I fucked up with you. I wasn’t about to let Connor make the same mistake with Maddie.”

  Tina flashed him a sweet smile. “Ah, Gabe, what a hero. Gosh, Maggie and Connor must be ever so grateful for your self-sacrificing ways.”

  Gabe considered correcting Tina for the third time, but one look at her face told him the use of the wrong name was intentional. She knew good and well what Maddie’s name was. “I didn’t just do it for them,” he confessed. “My intentions were selfish.”

  She eyed him with suspicion.

  “Seeing Connor and Maddie together? It brought back all the old feelings. Reminded me, again, of how damn much I loved you. I didn’t want Maddie. I wanted you.” He shrugged, although there was nothing blasé about the way he felt. “I always have.” His heart pumped overtime, and a cold sweat formed on his back. “I came to tell you that, came to see if there was any chance you could reciprocate that love.” He swallowed, terrified of her response.

  Tina’s expression turned hard. “You’re about four years too late, don’t you think?”

  “I know it’s been a while.”

  She snorted. “A while? You classify four years as a while?”

  “I classify it as a fucking eternity. Forty-eight months. Or, in our case, forty-nine months, two weeks and one day.” And not one of those days or weeks or months had passed without Gabe missing her. “But who’s counting?”

  Her shoulders seemed to sag. “Obviously you are.”

  “I’m not kidding about this, T. I love you. I’ve been in love with you all this time.” Gabe almost laughed out loud at the irony. How was it possible that a mere slip of a woman could wield such power over him? Could hold his happiness in her hands?

  “So why did you wait so long to tell me?” She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you come back ages ago?”

  “God knows I wanted to.” Gabe jumped up. “So much. It killed me, knowing you lived so close and I couldn’t have you.” He began to pace. “I left Sydney for a while. Six months.”

  Tina’s gaze followed him as he paced the length of the room. “Where did you go?”

  “Europe.”

  “What about your job?”

  “I resigned. Gave up the lease on my house too.”

  “To get away for me?”

  “You and Connor,” he corrected.

  “And when you came back? Three and a half years ago?” The accusation was implicit in her question.

  Gabe stood still and looked at her. “I still loved you.” He brushed a hand over his face. “I wanted to come to you the day my flight landed. The day Connor told me you and he had split up.”

  “So why the hell didn’t you?”

  Gabe stared at her for a long time. “I did. That night.” Armed with a massive bunch of roses and a keen willingness to beg her to love him.

  “Gee, Gabe, I think I’d have remembered if you’d shown up at my doorstep.”

  “You weren’t home,” he told her tonelessly.

  “Ah.” She nodded. “So you tried once, had no luck and gave up. It never occurred to you to come back the next day? Or the day after that?”

  “You weren’t here, but your sister was.”

  Tina narrowed her eyes.

  “Seems Leanne and Michael were staying here for the week.” It hurt just to remember. Christ, he was turning into a pussy.

  Tina nodded as her eyes filled with comprehension. “Their place was being painted. They moved in while I was away with…” Her voice trailed off.

  “With your new boyfriend,” Gabe supplied. The boyfriend Tina was head-over-heels in love with. The boyfriend who Leanne was quick to point out, was sure to become the fiancé. The boyfriend who put a stop to all Gabe’s whimsical fantasies about Tina, although the two men never met.

  “Grant,” Tina said, voicing the name he never wanted to hear again.

  “I would have come back,” Gabe told her. “Every night if need be. But your sister said you were happy, said he was the real deal. It wasn’t fair for me to interfere.”

  “So you left,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.

  “So I left,” he agreed and let that hang between them for a while. “Is he the same guy?” Gabe asked after a moment.

  She looked confused. “Same as what?”

  “Is he the one you kissed in the coffee shop today?”

  “God, no.” She wrinkled her nose. “No, Grant and I didn’t last more than a couple of months.”

  “And the one this morning?”

  “
Less than that,” Tina said. “He wasn’t right from the start.”

  Gabe stood up and paced the room, gritting his teeth to stop from swearing. He’d given Tina up for a relationship that had lasted a few fucking months? If the wall had been closer, he would have banged his head against it, hard. Fuck, what a waste of time. He could have had her for the last three and a half years. Instead he’d taken Leanne’s advice and walked away. Pretended to be the hero. And wound up lonely instead. He’d felt uprooted and alone in a city he’d lived in his whole life.

  Instead of fighting for Tina, like every instinct had dictated, he’d thrown himself into creating new roots. He’d bought a flat. The first property he’d ever owned. And he’d begun his own private practice rather than working for someone else. The new home and the practice had helped provide him with some stability, but they’d never eased the ache or the loneliness of not being with the woman he loved.

  “I don’t get it.” Tina looked at him, puzzled. “Why did you walk away three years ago when you found out I was with someone else, yet you hung around today after seeing me kiss Anthony?”

  “Because three years ago you were happy.” Or so Leanne had said anyway. “Today you looked miserable. I couldn’t just leave.” Ah hell, why not just tell her the full truth? “I didn’t want to leave. Not again. I wanted to see you, speak to you. I wanted another chance.”

  Tina dropped her head in her hands, covering her face. “Why are you telling me all this now? What do you want from me?”

  Once again Gabe dropped to his knees beside the head of her bed. “I want everything, T. I want to be with you, just the two of us. No one else to complicate our relationship. I want another chance to prove you can fall in love with me and me alone.”

  Tina shook her head. “Stop!” She threw out a hand to punctuate her plea and turned to him with tear-filled eyes. “Please, stop. It’s been too long, Gabe. Too much has happened. I… I’m too angry with you to go down this road.” She took a deep, rasping breath. “You l-left me. You left us. When I was with you and Connor I was so happy. You became my life, my rocks. And y-yes, I loved you then, but it’s not quite as simple as that.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I loved you b-both. Together.” She wrinkled her nose in concentration. “I can’t separate you from Connor, and I can’t separate my feelings for you from my feelings for Connor. When I think of you I think of Connor, and when I think of Connor I think of you.”

  She drummed the palm of her hand against her forehead in frustration. “You destroyed that. When you walked out on Connor and me you destroyed our threesome. You broke up my life and you tore out my heart. Connor and I couldn’t go on without you. We weren’t whole anymore.”

  Her words ripped through his chest. Christ, she couldn’t distinguish him from Connor. Couldn’t separate them out in her mind. He hadn’t stood out enough as an individual. He was simply one half of a whole.

  He wasn’t man enough for the one woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

  Gabe rose to his feet, the weight of his realization sitting like lead on his shoulders. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said. “And I’m sorry I broke up your life. It was never my intention to cause you pain. Please. Give me a chance to make it right. Let me prove that I can love you enough for Connor and me. Love you enough that you’ll forgive my leaving you before.”

  Tina shook her head. “I can’t do it, Gabe. I can’t pretend I’d be okay with just you. If—and that’s a big ‘if’—I ever did consider becoming involved with you again, I’d want the whole package deal. I’d want you and Connor.” Tears stood out in her eyes. “But it’s been too long anyway. Too much time has passed for me to ever go back.”

  Gabe buttoned his jeans and straightened his shirt, the pain of her admission strangling him, cutting off his air. He took a deep, ragged breath. Tried to put his thoughts in order. Tried to maintain a modicum of composure. Not easy when he felt like he’d just been kicked in the nuts.

  He gave her a small nod. “I hear you, T. And I guess I owe you yet another apology. I…it was wrong of me to seek you out after all this time. Forget about today. Forget about me and everything I told you.” He took another ragged breath. “I hope I haven’t upset you. I…I won’t bother you anymore.” He walked towards the door, his legs stiff and awkward. “Good luck with the exhibition. I’m sure with Valerie’s help your sketches will finally get the recognition they deserve.”

  “You’re leaving?” She gaped at him.

  Gabe nodded.

  “After everything you just said to me? Everything you just did to me?” She kicked the covers, and the vibrator rolled off the bed and landed on the floor with a soft thud.

  Gabe stared at it for a long moment. “I had to try. I had to let you know how I felt, on the off chance that maybe you felt the same.” He shrugged indifferently while inside his stomach cramped. “It would have been good if we could have tried again, just the two of us. But I’m not what you want anymore. I’m just…a man. Just one man. And that’s all I’ll ever be.”

  And then he couldn’t be with her any longer. Couldn’t face his failure to please her as that one man. He’d disappointed her when he’d left her the first time, and he hadn’t measured up this time round. It would be better for both of them if he just left her the hell alone.

  “Goodbye, Tina,” he said as he walked through the bedroom door. “Be happy.”

  Chapter Five

  Inadequate. Not the best way to think of oneself, was it? But that’s how Gabe felt as he walked into his kitchen when he arrived home. Always used to being in control when it came to women, he was thrown by this situation. He wasn’t man enough for the woman he loved. Alone he couldn’t measure up to what Tina wanted.

  He stopped short when he saw Connor standing by the kettle, a steaming mug in his hands.

  “Hey,” Gabe said by way of greeting. “I thought you were heading back to Melbourne about now?”

  Connor nodded. “My flight leaves in a couple of hours. I wanted to catch you and say goodbye.”

  Gabe looked at him speculatively. “Where’s Maddie?”

  Connor pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “In the living room.”

  Gabe nodded. “Did you two work everything out?”

  Connor grinned. “We sure did.”

  He smiled back. “Maddie’s good for you. I’m happy for you both.” He was. It didn’t stop the twist of jealousy in his gut. Connor had found the perfect partner. A woman who wanted just Connor.

  Gabe’s perfect partner wanted more than Gabe. She wanted Connor too.

  Connor nodded in agreement. “I’ve decided to come back to Sydney.”

  “You going to take up the job offer after all?” Connor had been in town this weekend to interview for a position. He’d been undecided about returning to Sydney. Maddie must have helped him make up his mind.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s cool.” It would be nice to have his mate back in the same city again. “When d’ya think you’ll make the move?”

  Connor took his mug and sat at the kitchen table. “Two months, max. I’ll have to find someone to replace me at work and train them up before I can leave.”

  “You going to see Maddie in the interim?”

  “Damn straight,” Connor said. “I’ll visit here and she’ll come to Melbourne. We’ll alternate weekends.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Christ, it was difficult to believe that a few days ago Maddie was with Gabe, and Connor had just entered the picture. Life had spun around almost one hundred and eighty degrees since then.

  “Gabe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I owe you a thank you.”

  Gabe raised an eyebrow in question.

  “If not for you, I’d be in Melbourne, and Maddie and I never would have gotten together.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Gabe shrugged. Maddie and Connor made a good couple. “True love doesn’t come around often. No point wasting it.”

  “Yeah
.” Connor frowned. “That’s the other reason I’m here.”

  Gabe’s lips tilted in a smile. “You going to tell me you’ve been in love with me all this time?”

  Connor snorted. “Yeah, right!” And then he became serious. “I wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?” Gabe asked, puzzled. “If this is about you and Maddie, there’s no need. You were meant to be together.”

  “It’s not about me. Or Maddie. I’m sorry I never broke the rules four years ago.”

  Gabe stood stock still.

  “You loved Tina. I should have realized then just how much and walked away.”

  “I never expected you to. She was yours first. We had rules.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing.” Connor scraped his fingers through his hair. “I was too rigid in the way I stuck to the rules. I can see that now. Trying to leave Maddie just about killed me. I can imagine what saying goodbye to Tina did to you.”

  Ripped out his heart and shredded it. “It hurt,” Gabe acknowledged. It still hurt, maybe even more now.

  Connor shook his head. Remorse lined his face. “I fucked up, mate. I should have cut her loose the minute I understood how much it messed with your head when we both slept with her.”

  “I left. There was no need to cut her loose.”

  “You left because I didn’t,” Connor pointed out. “I fucked up.”

  “I did too,” Gabe said after a minute. “I could have tried harder to win her over. I didn’t.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  Gabe sighed. “Uh huh.” Not that it made a difference now.

  Connor studied him for a few seconds. “You look like shite.”

  “Thanks, mate.” Gabe almost laughed.

  “Did you find her?”

  He poured himself a mug of coffee. “Yeah. She was at the coffee shop on the corner.”

  Connor waited until Gabe sat opposite him at the table before asking, “And?”

  Gabe shook his head. “And nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Connor narrowed his eyes.

  “She’s not interested.”