by Jayne Castle
Comfort and cradling and soothing solace were among the few things that couldn’t be taken from a woman by force. They had to be freely given. But damn, how he needed her now.
Samantha loosened her grip on the banister and started across the room in response to the silent hunger she read in Gabriel’s eyes. It was not a conscious decision to go to him. It was not a decision at all. She went forward because there was no alternative.
“My poor battered Gabriel,” she whispered, touching the side of his face with delicate fingers. “What have you done? I knew I should never have left you alone to make that call.” She sank to the carpet beside the overstuffed chair, kneeling so that she could continue to stroke the line of his cheek. The brooding masculine eyes never left her face. He didn’t move as she reached out to touch him, but Samantha had the deeply intuitive feeling that it was because he was holding himself in some sort of rigid grip.
Every instinct in her warned that Gabriel was suffering, and not just from the physical beating he had taken earlier. In that moment Samantha wanted only to comfort and cherish. “Gabriel, why was that call so hard for you? What have you done by calling in Emil Fortune? Have you compromised yourself now in some way?” she asked in sudden anguish as that possibility dawned on her.
He reached up and caught one of her hands roughly in his, squeezing it tightly. “No. Emil is, in his own way, a man of honor. And he is my friend?”
She looked up at him, bewildered. “Then why are you so upset?”
“Am I?”
“Gabriel, please don’t play games with me. Tell me what’s wrong!” she pleaded.
He shut his eyes briefly, and when the mahogany lashes flickered open, she still could not read the expression there. “Nothing’s wrong. Emil says to tell you there is nothing to worry about. Kirby won’t bother Eric again.”
“But will Emil bother you?”
His mouth kicked upward for a few seconds. “He isn’t a Godfather type, honey. Not in the sense you mean. In any event he owed me a favor. As far as he’s concerned, he’s merely repaying a debt, not putting me in debt.”
“What could he possibly owe you? Oh!” She fit the evidence together quickly, bypassing a few logical routes in order to come up with the perceptive answer to her own question. “His sister’s spa? He’s grateful to you for helping her?”
“Something like that. Emil is closer to his sister than he is to anyone else in the world. When she determined to set herself up in business without any aid from the Fortune family, he was very upset. But Donna wanted a clean start with no strings attached which might embarrass her later. She came to me with a strictly legitimate proposition. I had no idea of who she was or how she was connected. I loaned her the money and the expertise she needed to get started. When Emil found out what I had done and that I hadn’t taken advantage of Donna somehow in the process, he decided I was a man he could trust.” Gabriel shrugged. “Emil doesn’t have many friends he can trust. During the past couple of years he has come to value our acquaintance.
“And the favor he feels he owes you? That’s based on his gratitude for your having helped his sister?”
“I know it’s not strictly logical. My deal with Donna was merely another business proposition to me at the time. But Emil felt he owed me something for taking care of his sister during a time when she wouldn’t accept any help from the Fortunes. And he likes me. I like him. We’re friends. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“Then if you’re not alarmed at having asked Emil for this favor for Eric…”
“For you,” he ground out with sudden fierceness. “I’m doing this for you, Samantha. Not Eric.”
She swallowed. “I understand. You make a very useful partner,” she tried to say lightly. “I have this sinking feeling that any of the other financial backers on my list would have abandoned me as soon as those two jokers walked in the door tonight!”
“But none of those other potential backers would have found himself in your bed when the incident occurred, would he?” Gabriel shot back with calculated certainty. His eyes glittered for a moment with possessiveness and a definite warning.
Samantha found herself swallowing again, and this time her mouth felt very dry. Damn it to hell! The man risks his neck for me, and now he figures he has a right to turn possessive. More than possessive. He’s looking at me as if he thinks he owns me. “You sound very sure of that.”
“Are you telling me I s-shouldn’t be so s-s-sure of it?”
He was so tense, she realized. The stammer was harsher than usual. He looked weary and in pain, and yet Gabriel looked as if he was prepared to fight this particular battle all night if need be. Samantha knew she couldn’t bring herself to lecture him on rights and equality and the fact that their relationship outside of business was supposed to have nothing to do with their partnership. Not tonight. Tonight her instincts urged her to offer comfort, not a Vera-Maitland-style lecture.
Besides, Samantha acknowledged wryly. When all was said and done, she owed this man one hell of a lot. How had a relationship which started out as a simple business partnership gotten so damnably complicated?
“Samantha?”
He wanted some recognition of the claim he obviously felt he had on her. It was, Samantha told herself, a small thing to give him tonight after all he had done. “You know very well there wouldn’t have been any other professional venture capitalists in my bed tonight,” she said with a lightness she was far from feeling. “Most venture capitalists aren’t nearly as venturesome as you are!”
“And you don’t make a habit of combining business and the bedroom,” he finished for her. “I’m the exception.” He stroked the sensitive inside of her wrist with the ball of his thumb in an absent, sensuous gesture.
“So why was it so difficult to call Emil Fortune?”
“Persistent little thing, aren’t you?” He groaned, resting his head against the wing of the chair and continuing to massage her wrist. “The truth is, I kept thinking of my father. This is how it must have been for him. I never really understood, Samantha. I did my duty. I stood by him. But I never really understood.”
“Understood what, Gabriel?” Samantha ached for him, responding now to the pain in his voice .
Gabriel took a long breath. “My father is Weston Sinclair. Does that ring a bell?”
She frowned, trying to think. “Should it?” But something nibbled at her memory.
“Only if you’re a devotee of old political scandals. Dad was a congressman on his way to being a senator. Everything fell apart for him about ten years ago.”
“Wait a second. I seem to recall my mother discussing a scandal about a congressman who got himself involved with… with, oh, Gabriel.” She groaned, remembering. “With the mob?” You couldn’t grow up with Vera Maitland and not have a high degree of political awareness drummed into you. Samantha no longer followed the political scene with Vera’s avid fervor, but in those days she had still been spending a lot of time in her mother’s home, and there such discussions were as routine as the morning milk delivery.
“Dad had some very dangerous friendships,” Gabriel said simply. “They eventually ruined his political career. The resulting scandal hit everything he had built, including his business. I was working for him at the time. I saw the whole house of cards collapse. Creditors were so thick on the ground you couldn’t move without running into one. Dad had been ignoring the business in favor of running his political career, and financially things were pretty weak. All of a sudden, when the scandal erupted, he found himself facing bankruptcy. Every warning I had given him about the business became a dire reality. It all caved in on him. On top of that, all his so-called friends, the social circle that politicians always move in, disappeared. It nearly sent my mother into a nervous breakdown.”
“And you?” she whispered.
“My wife left me because she couldn’t bear to be associated with the Sinclair family,” Gabriel told her dryly. “She came from good Bosto
n stock. From people who didn’t get involved with underworld figures.”
“But it wasn’t you who was involved, was it? It was your father? Why did she leave you?”
“Samantha, marriages involve whole families, not just the individuals. Especially marriages which are made for social or political reasons. There was no way she could remain with me and stay unmarked by what was happening to my family.”
“If she’d loved you she would have stayed!” Samantha muttered rather violently.
He looked at her. “I guess she didn’t really love me, hmmm? Oh, Samantha, you’re not that naive. Mushy, nebulous concepts like romantic love don’t hold people together during times of real stress.”
She stared at him. “Then what does hold them together?”
“Hard-edged ideas like loyalty,” he said evenly. “Loyalty, honor, commitment.”
“Those ideas only have strength if the one promising them can be completely trusted,” Samantha said slowly.
He stared at her with a flat, uncompromising stare. Samantha felt herself tremble slightly under the impact of that look. “Wise witch,” Gabriel murmured softly. “You’re absolutely right.”
“Did you… did you trust your ex-wife? Could you have asked those things of her?” Why was she asking him such incredibly personal questions? But Samantha felt a driving need to know the answers.
“Glenna could not have given me the kind of commitment it would have taken to keep our marriage intact. I knew, once I’d had a chance to really think about it, that I couldn’t have asked those things of her. It wasn’t in her to give them.”
He was still pinning her with that glittering, hawklike stare. It was almost unnatural in its intensity, a little feverish. “Gabriel,” she got out huskily. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m not in shock, if that’s what you mean.”
“But you hurt, don’t you?” Feeling very womanly, almost maternal, Samantha touched his bruised face.
“I hurt.”
“And it’s all because of me.” She shook her head, overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt. “If it hadn’t been for me, you would never have had to go through what you did tonight. You’d be safe and sound in your immaculate house by the sea. Oh, Gabriel, I’m so very sorry!”
“Don’t expect me to play the gentleman and tell you it’s nothing. I ache too much to say it was nothing,” he rasped softly.
“And phoning Emil brought back too many painful memories of your father for you to be able to say it’s nothing,” she added sadly.
“Yes.”
He made no attempt to mitigate her guilt. Now that Eric was safe, all she could think about was how unfair it was to have involved Gabriel in the mess. But God! What would she have done without him? She owed him. There was no way around that knowledge. The debt was mammoth in size, and she knew by the way he watched her that he wanted to be repaid.
“Gabriel, how can I repay you for what you did tonight?” The question was a tremulous whisper of sound in the quiet room.
His fist tangled abruptly in the seal-brown length of her hair, holding her head so that she could not look away from him even if she tried. Samantha felt the atmosphere charged with the same primitive, barbaric element she experienced when Gabriel made love to her, and she knew a frisson of fear. He was going to bind her to him further, somehow. She didn’t know how or why, but she sensed the inevitable outcome even before he spoke.
“Your brother says he can trust you,” Gabriel observed in an astonishingly neutral tone. “With his life.”
Helplessly she lifted one shoulder. “He’s my brother.”
“I’m not your brother.”
“Hardly,” she managed huskily.
“I want to be able to trust you, too.” His grip on her hair tightened as he searched her taut face. “With my life. With everything. I want to know you’ll be completely loyal to me, Samantha Maitland.”
She stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“You asked how I wanted to be repaid,” he gritted, the neutral tone vanishing. “This is what I want. Tell me that from this night forward I can trust you. Tell me that you owe as much loyalty to me as you do to that damn fool brother of yours!”
The breath was tight in her chest. “Would you believe me if I promised those things?”
“I’d believe you. You’re dangerous in some ways, reckless, a little foolish at times, but I think that if you promise me loyalty, you’ll give it.”
Her bewilderment grew. Was Gabriel afraid she’d sleep with someone else while he was her lover? Was he afraid she would try to cheat him on the Buchanan deal? Was he nervous of the possibility that he might lose control of her during the term of the partnership and that she would do something stupid and ruin everything? What was he after?
It didn’t much matter what he was after, Samantha thought as the silence stretched out between them. She owed him, and he had told her how he wanted to be repaid. She really had no choice. “Gabriel,” she said gently, “you can trust me. I won’t cheat you.”
“Either in bed or in business,” he clarified grimly.
“No.” She felt the grip in her hair relax, realized some of the tension was seeping out of him. “You’re hurt, Gabriel. Come upstairs and let me take care of you. You need to be in bed, and I have some ointment I can put on those cuts and bruises.”
Resolutely she got to her feet and reached down to tug at his arm. For a second he seemed disinclined to move, and she realized she would never get him out of the chair unless he cooperated. The man weighed a ton!
“Are you going to fuss over me?” he asked whimsically. “Cosset me and salve my manly wounds?”
“I think you may have taken one too many blows to the head,” she retorted dryly. “I’m not the domestic type, remember? Come on, Gabriel. Upstairs.” She heaved again, and this time he came up out of the chair with a groan.
“Jesus, honey, I’m not used to this sort of thing!” He gingerly touched his bruised side. “I hope you don’t expect me to just be the muscle part of this partnership.”
“Why not? You concentrate on that, and I’ll be the brains of the outfit.”
“We’re lost before we even begin,” he complained, leaning heavily on her as she slipped an arm around his waist and started him up the stairs.
“Have a little faith, Gabriel. Angels are supposed to be blessed with lots of faith. Live up to your namesake!” She staggered a bit under the weight of his arm across her shoulders.
“Believe me, honey, I’m operating on pure faith already.” The words were heartfelt. “It’s s-s-surely not common sense that’s gotten me into this situation.”
“Are you going to spend the entire duration of our partnership making snide remarks?” She edged him through the door of her room and watched in sympathy as he sprawled gratefully on the tousled bed.
“They are not snide remarks.” His eyes closed as he laid his head carefully on the pillow. “They are pithy little commentaries on the vagaries of the human condition. Especially my condition. Come and soothe my fevered brow, Samantha. I hurt.”
Samantha hurried to the bathroom to collect what little she had in the way of first aid remedies.
***
The next morning Samantha was up long before either Gabriel or Eric stirred. Dressed in a pair of narrow wool slacks and a hugely overscaled dolman-sleeved shirt done in red velour, she went downstairs to investigate the damage which had been done to her front door. Behind her she left Gabriel sleeping soundly, a condition he had fallen into rather quickly under her first aid ministrations.
There had certainly been no further sexual demands from her battered angel, she thought in affectionate amusement as she studied the broken, splintered lock on the front door. Gabriel had wanted and needed more practical help last night after the fight. He had fallen asleep while she was still applying ointment to the bruise on his ribs. He was going to be black and blue in a few places this morning.
But nothing, she decided gri
mly, would match the shiner under her right eye. She grimaced at herself in the hall mirror and then straightened her facial expression at once when it proved painful. Her only consolation was that she had dealt out as good as she had got.
Eric was the first downstairs, sniffing hungrily as he strode into the kitchen. “Bacon and eggs. Smells great. Who says you can’t cook?”
“You said it, for one.” She prodded the yellow mass in the pan on the stove. Scrambled eggs were tricky, she had learned. They tended to be either too slimy or too hard. Still, they were simpler than poached or fried eggs, and over the years she had gotten fairly good at catching them before they went from just right to rubbery.
“Geez, you’re sure a sight.” Eric studied her right cheek with a critical eye. “It looked bruised last night, but it looks a lot worse this morning!”
“Bruises always look worse a day or two later. How do you want your eggs? Hard or sort of hard?”
“Sort of hard.” He sat down at the kitchen table and poured himself coffee. “You and Gabe made some team last night.”
“Some team. If it had been up to Gabriel, I would have stayed locked up in the guest room. He thought I was going to go hysterical on him. How many strips of bacon do you want?”
“Three. You’re not the hysterical type.”
“I know that and you know that, but I guess Gabriel didn’t. He was under a little pressure at the time.”
“I’ll bet. He saved both our asses last night, Sam. We owe him a lot.” Eric sipped his coffee reflectively.
“I’ve already started making payments on the debt,” Samantha said half under her breath. Loyalty. Trust. What else would Gabriel ask of her?
“What?”
“Never mind. Have some more bacon. It’s going to burn,”