He pressed a light hand to her shoulder. “Please go back. You’re
cold.”
She turned to leave and Gabriel reached out to catch her hand.
“I felt something for her, but it wasn’t love. There was guilt and lust, and some affection, but never love.”
“What will you do now?”
He wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing her into his
side. “I’ll resist the urge to react to the present she left and try my damnedest to make things up to you. You’re who I want. I’m so sorry to have injured you.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
He held her more tightly, his expression fierce. “You’re the only
one I have ever loved.”
When Julia didn’t respond, he began walking with her toward
the house. “I would never be unfaithful, I swear it. As far as what Paulina tried to do yesterday…” He squeezed her waist. “There was a time when I could have been led astray. But that was before I found you. I would rather spend the rest of my life drinking your love, then emptying all the oceans of the world.”
“Your promises are meaningless when they aren’t accompanied
by honesty. I asked if she was your mistress, and you played a word game with me.”
He grimaced. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“You’ll tire of me eventually. And when you do, you’ll go back
to what’s familiar.”
112
Gabriel’s Rapture
Gabriel stopped. He turned to face her. “Paulina was never fa-
miliar. We have a history, but we were never compatible. And we
were never good for each other.”
Julia simply stared at him skeptically.
“I wandered in the darkness looking for something better, some-
thing real. I found you, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose you.”
She looked away, surveying the trees and the path she thought
led to the orchard. “Men get bored.”
“Only if they’re stupid.”
His eyes were dark, narrowed with concern and worry. He blinked
a little under her gaze, before frowning. “Do you think that Richard would have cheated on Grace?”
“Of course not.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a good man. Because he loved her.”
“I make no claim to being a good man, Julia. But I love you. I’m
not going to cheat.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I’m not so wounded that I can’t
say no to you.”
“I never said you weren’t.” Gabriel looked grim.
“I’m saying no to you now. If you lie to me again, it will be the
last time.” Her voice held a warning.
“I promise.”
She exhaled slowly, unclenching her fists.
“I won’t sleep with you in the bed you shared with her.”
“I’ll have everything redone before we return to Toronto. I’ll sell the damn place, if you want.”
She pursed her lips. “I’m not asking you to sell your apartment.”
“Then forgive me,” he whispered. “Give me a chance to show
you that I am worthy of your trust.”
She hesitated.
He stepped toward her and took her in his arms. She accepted
him reluctantly, and they stood under the falling snow, in a darkening wood.
113
Chapter 12
Late that evening Gabriel and Julia sat together in their pajamas on the floor next to their Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Julia encouraged Gabriel to open Paulina’s gift, so all the secrets could be revealed.
He didn’t want to do it, but for Julia’s sake, he did.
He picked up the ultrasound picture in his hand and grimaced.
Julia whispered a request to look at it, and he gave it to her with a sigh.
“This picture can’t hurt you. Even if Rachel and Scott found out,
they would be sympathetic.” She traced a finger across the curve of the baby’s little head. “You could keep this somewhere private, but she shouldn’t be kept in a box. She had a name. She deserves to be remembered.”
Gabriel placed his head in his hands. “You don’t think it’s morbid?”
“I don’t think there’s anything morbid about babies. Maia was
your daughter. Paulina meant this picture to hurt you, but really, it’s a gift. You should have this picture. You’re her father.”
Gabriel was too choked up to respond. To distract himself, he
placed the rest of Paulina’s gifts by the door. He was returning them to her as soon as possible.
Julia followed him. “I look forward to wearing your Christmas
gift.” She pointed toward the black corset and shoes that were still sitting in their box under the tree.
“You do?”
“I’ll have to give myself a pep talk first, but I think it’s feminine and very pretty. I love the shoes. Thank you.”
Gabriel’s shoulders relaxed. He wanted to ask her to try his gifts on. He wanted to see her in those shoes — perhaps perched atop
Gabriel’s Rapture
the bathroom counter with him between her legs — but he kept his
desires to himself.
“Um, I need to explain something.” Julia took his hand, weaving
their fingers together. “I can’t wear it tonight.”
“I’m sure that after the past two days wearing something like that would be the last thing you’d want to do.” Gabriel stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “Especially with me.”
“It will be a little while before I can wear it.”
“I understand.” He began to extricate his fingers.
“I tried to explain this to you last night but, uh, I didn’t quite finish.”
He stilled.
“Um, I’m having my period.”
Gabriel’s mouth dropped open slightly. Then he closed it. He
pulled her into his arms, embracing her warmly.
“That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.” Julia’s voice was muffled by his chest. “Maybe you didn’t hear me?”
“So last night — it wasn’t because you didn’t want me?”
She pulled back in surprise. “I’m still upset about what happened
with Paulina, but of course I want you. You always make me feel
special when we make love. Right now, I’m not going to go there.
Or actually, have you go there. Uh, you know what I mean.” She
grew flustered.
Heaving a sigh of relief, Gabriel kissed her forehead. “I have
other plans for you.”
He led her by the hand to the spacious washroom, pausing to
press play on the stereo. The strains of Sting’s “Until” began to fill the room as they disappeared through the door.
P
Paulina sat up, wide-awake in a strange bed in Toronto, covered
in a cold sweat. No amount of repetition made the dream vary in its events or its terror. No amount of vodka or pills could remove the ache in her chest or the tears from her eyes.
115
Sylvain Reynard
She reached for the bottle by the bed, knocking the hotel’s alarm
clock off the nightstand. A few shots and a few small, blue pills and she would fall asleep again, letting the darkness take her.
She could not be comforted. Other women could have a second
child to assuage the loss of their first. But she would never bear a child. And the father of her lost baby no longer wanted her.
He was the only man she’d ever loved, and she’d loved him from
afar and then she’d loved him close by, but he’d never loved her. Not real y. But he was too noble to cast her off like the used piece of goods she was.
As she sobbed into her pillow, her head spinning, she mourned
a double loss aloud —
Maia.
Gabriel…
116
Chapter 13
Professor Giuseppe Pacciani wasn’t virtuous, but he was clever. He didn’t believe Christa Peterson when she declared that she was
willing to meet him for a sexual rendezvous. In order to ensure that their liaison actually happened, he withheld the name of Professor Emerson’s Canadian fidanzata on condition that Christa meet him in Madrid in February.
Christa was unwilling to wait that long or to sleep with him
again in order to ferret out the information, so she didn’t respond to his last email. She decided to regroup and find an alternative way of discovering the name of Professor Emerson’s fiancée.
It could be said that she was jealous and that this was her primary reason for wondering who had successfully captured the Professor’s attention when she had failed (inexplicably). It could be said that she’d begun to nurse a suspicion about a certain doe-eyed brunette, ever since Professor Emerson had almost come to blows with that
student over a mistress called Paulina.
But perhaps the most accurate explanation was her new and
rather prurient fascination with the rumors she’d heard about Professor Singer and her not-so-secret lifestyle. When Professor Emerson embraced her after his lecture at the University of Toronto, it set a good number of tongues wagging. Christa’s tongue was among them.
Perhaps Giuseppe was wrong. Perhaps the Professor did not have
a fidanzata after all. Perhaps he had a Mistress.
In order to solve this very juicy mystery, Christa contacted an old flame from Florence who wrote for La Nazione, hoping that he would provide her with information about Professor Emerson’s personal
life. While she waited for a response, she focused on an information source closer to home. In the Vestibule, all sins would be revealed.
Sylvain Reynard
Professor Emerson’s marked absence from Lobby began the
evening she tried to seduce him. So, she reasoned, his relationship with his fiancée must have begun around that time. Previously, he
hadn’t cared who he hooked up with or when. Or perhaps he and
his fiancée had been involved only causally until that fateful night.
It was possible that the Professor was far from monogamous in his
relationship and that he’d had a fiancée all along, although such an attachment would have likely made the rounds of the rumor mill.
(Toronto is, after all, a small town.)
Christa’s way forward was clear. It was likely that the Professor
and his fiancée had visited Lobby sometime over the course of the
winter semester, since it appeared to be his watering hole of choice.
All she needed to do was to find someone who worked at the club
and pump him for information.
Late on a Saturday night, Christa stalked the staff at Lobby, trying to discover the weakest link. She sat at the bar, absolutely ignoring the tall, blond American woman who was there for the same purpose, having just flown in from Harrisburg. Christa’s full, red lips curled back in disgust when the woman pulled out her iPhone and spoke
very loudly in Italian to a maître d’ called Antonio.
As the night wore on, Christa soon realized her options were few.
Ethan had a serious girlfriend, which meant that he wouldn’t be ripe for the picking. More than one of the bartenders were gay, and all the servers were women. Which left Lucas.
Lucas was a computer geek (not that there’s anything wrong
with that) who assisted Ethan with security at the club, in a technical capacity. Lucas had access to the video recordings from the security cameras, and it was he who rather enthusiastically agreed to let Christa into the club after hours so they could sift through CD upon CD of footage, starting with September 2009.
And that was how Christa found herself sitting on the vanity in
the women’s washroom with Lucas pounding into her on a Sunday
morning when she should have been in church.
P
118
Gabriel’s Rapture
Gabriel and Julia arrived back in Toronto late in the evening on
January first. They went to Julia’s apartment so she could drop off some things and retrieve some clean clothes. Or so Gabriel thought.
With the taxi waiting at the curb for them to return, he stood in the middle of her cold and shabby apartment expecting her to pack an
overnight bag. She didn’t.
“This is my home, Gabriel. I’ve been gone for three weeks. I need
to do laundry, and I need to work on my thesis tomorrow. Classes
start on Monday.”
His expression grew very dark very quickly.
“Yes, I’m aware of when classes begin.” His tone was clipped. “But it’s freezing in here. You don’t have any food, and I don’t want to sleep without you. Come home with me, and you can return tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go home with you.”
“I told you I’d have the master bedroom redone, and it has been.
The bed, the furniture, it’s all new.” He grimaced. “They even painted the walls.”
“I’m still not ready.” She turned her back on him and began un-
packing her suitcase. He took one look at her activities and strode through the apartment door, closing it somewhat loudly behind him.
Julia sighed.
He was trying, she knew. But his revelations had scorched holes
in her already fragile self-confidence, a self-confidence that had only begun to be rebuilt during their time in Italy. She knew herself well enough to know that her fear of losing him was grounded in her
parents’ divorce and in Simon’s betrayal. Although she knew all these things, it was very difficult to will herself to disregard them and to believe that Gabriel’s love would never wane.
She’d just walked to her door to bolt it when he walked in, suit-
case in hand. “What are you doing?”
“Keeping you warm,” he said stiffly.
Gabriel placed his suitcase down and disappeared into the bath-
room, closing the door behind him. He emerged a few minutes later
with his shirt untucked and unbuttoned, muttering something about
having successfully turned on her damned electric heater.
“Why did you come back?”
119
Sylvain Reynard
“I am not accustomed to sleeping without you. In fact, I’m about
ready to sell the damn condo and all my furniture and buy something else.” He shook his head and proceeded to undress unashamedly
without further conversation.
While Julia used the bathroom, Gabriel examined some of the
items she’d displayed on her card table — the book containing the
Botticelli reproductions he’d given her for her birthday, a pillar candle, a book of matches, and the photo album of pictures he’d taken of her.
As he leafed through the album, he found himself aroused. She’d
promised to pose for him again. She wanted him to photograph her.
A month earlier he never would have believed that such a thing could come to pass. She’d been so timid, so nervous.
He recalled the look she had in her eyes when he took her to
his bed after their horrible argument in his seminar. Thinking of
Julianne’s eyes, large and terrified, and the way her body trembled under his hands, diminished his arousal. He didn’t deserve her. He knew that. But her own perceived unworthiness prevented her from
seeing the truth.
He flipped through the pictures before focusing on one — Juli-
anne in profile with his hand on her shoulder, his other hand holding up her hair,
while he pressed his lips to her shapely neck.
She was unaware of the fact that he had a copy of that picture
hiding in his closet. He’d never displayed it, for he was worried about her reaction. When he returned to his newly redecorated bedroom,
hanging that photograph would be his first task.
The thought alone was more than enough to fuel his desire, so
he took the candle and struck a match to light it, placing it on the card table before turning out the lights. A romantic glow fell over the photographs and the bed just as Julia entered the darkened space.
He sat on the edge of her narrow bed, completely naked, while
she stood clutching a pair of worn flannel pajamas. They had rubber duckies on them.
“What are you doing?” He glanced at her sleepwear with barely
disguised distaste.
“I’m getting ready for bed.”
Gabriel stared. “Come here.”
She walked over to him slowly.
120
Gabriel’s Rapture
He took the fabric from her, tossing it aside. “You don’t need
pajamas. You don’t need to wear anything.”
Julia carefully proceeded to disrobe in front of him, placing her
clothes on one of the folding chairs.
He paused her movement toward the bed and placed his hands
on top of her head, almost as if he were blessing her. Then he began to touch her, passing his fingers through her long hair to her face, where he caressed her eyebrows and cheekbones. His eyes remained
stubbornly fixed on hers, the heat of their intensity searing into Julia’s consciousness.
In her whole life, no one had ever looked at her like that. Like
a blue tractor beam that froze her and pulled her in. Like she was the only woman in the room, in the world, the only woman ever.
Like she was Eve.
Something of the old Professor Emerson was visible now, espe-
cially in his expression, which was sexual and raw. She closed her eyes briefly, and his hands moved from her neck to her face, pausing for a moment.
“Open your eyes.”
She opened them and gasped at the hunger reflected back to her.
He was like a lion, eager to feed but still stalking his prey. He didn’t want to scare her off. But she was helpless in her own desire for him.
“Have you missed me touching you like this?” he asked, his voice
Gabriel's Rapture gi-2 Page 14