by Jayne Castle
“You don’t think he’ll call sooner than that?”
“I doubt it. He’ll want us to sweat a bit. It’s the only weapon he’s got left. If I’m wrong, though, and he does call, just find out what he’s offering and tell him you’ll consult with me. Then hang up and call me, understand? I don’t want you bargaining with him on your own!”
“I don’t want you giving away that restaurant, either,” she retorted. “We can get the seven hundred and fifty thousand out of him if we just hold our breath longer than he can.”
“Honey, in a situation like this things go much more smoothly if we give a bit. Believe me, I know what I’m doing.”
“If you say so,” she agreed dubiously.
“I say so.” He kissed her again, this time on the forehead, and reluctantly put her aside to pick up his overnight bag. “I’d better be going,” he said, groaning.
She walked him out to the car, watching morosely as he climbed inside and started the engine. “Goodbye, Gabriel,” she murmured wistfully, realizing just how reluctant she was to see him go. “Hurry back.”
“I’ll do that.” He smiled. “And this time I hope there won’t be any major surprises waiting. I’m not sure I could take it.”
“Nonsense,” she assured him cheerfully. “You can handle anything, Gabriel.”
He grinned, that fleeting, wolfish grin, and then he put the car in gear and drove sedately toward the main road. Samantha watched him until he was out of sight and then turned and slowly walked back into the house.
A more convenient arrangement. What was he going to suggest? That she move down to California, or that he move up here? Samantha mulled the idea over and knew it made her uneasy. The affair with Gabriel Sinclair was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. He aroused passions she wouldn’t have dreamed existed and he elicited softer emotions in her as well.
But did she really want to live with him? It sounded very much like marriage, and marriage was a state she had been so determined to avoid since the disaster with Buchanan. Her mother was right. A woman could only be really free as long as she didn’t commit herself to marriage.
The relationship with Gabriel was too new, too fragile, to warrant such a serious step as moving in with him. Or was it simply that, deep down, she feared that step because of what it would cost her?
Gabriel would be as possessive as any husband. He would insist on getting involved in her business. She was sure of that. He felt she needed a little polish and professional guidance. Scratch that “little.” He felt she needed a hell of a lot, and knowing him, he’d see to it that she got it even if he had to force it on her.
No, if she moved in with Gabriel, nothing would remain the same. He would invade every aspect of her life. And she would insist on fighting him every step of the way, especially when it came to running her own business.
Wouldn’t it be a hundred times smarter and safer to keep the affair long distance? At least for the foreseeable future? They needed time to work out some of the bugs in their relationship.
That’s what she would tell him, Samantha decided as she closed the door behind her and started down the hall to the back parlor. She would tell him they needed a little more time.
***
The unexpected call from Drew Buchanan, the one Gabriel had assured her wouldn’t come so soon, came the next morning.
It changed Samantha’s whole life.
Buchanan didn’t even give her a chance to adjust to the situation. He had seen the look in Samantha’s eyes when she had stood beside Sinclair that morning in her living room. He’d seen the way she’d leaped to the other man’s defense when he’d called Sinclair a lapdog. And he knew which buttons to push when it came to dealing with Samantha Maitland, and he pushed them without any compunction.
“Call it off, Sam. Take the hundred grand I’m willing to give you and call it even. There aren’t going to be any negotiations.”
She heard the chill certainty in his voice, and something inside her panicked.
“What are you talking about?” she managed coolly. But she knew disaster had struck. Drew wouldn’t be sounding this positive if he hadn’t found another weapon. Oh, God, what had he come up with now, and would she and Gabriel be able to find a way to deal with it? Of course they would, she told herself in the next breath. Her fingers tightened on the receiver.
“I’m talking about Gabriel Sinclair being Weston Sinclair’s son. His only son. I’m talking about a scandal which erupted a few years ago when it came to light that Weston Sinclair was hanging out with mobsters. I’m talking about a political career in ruins and how that scandal could very easily be resurrected if you and your lapdog go through with trying to take me for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And if you don’t think it will be easy to make it sound as though the son has followed in the footsteps of the father, you’re naive, Sam. Even more naïve than I thought.”
“You’re lying!”
“You want the facts and figures? I’ve got them all right here in front of me. Sure you want to hear them? They’re pretty brutal, Sam. Your partner’s father really made a mess of things. Should have covered his tracks a lot more carefully. Consorting with known underworld figures, questionable business contracts, hints of payoffs, you name it.”
“You’re slipping.” She forced a lightness into her voice she did not feel. “You can’t possibly hurt Gabriel with that kind of old news.”
“Want to bet?” Buchanan was smiling on the other end of the line. Samantha could almost see that cold, hard smile. “Not only can I resurrect all the mud surrounding his father, which certainly wouldn’t do Weston Sinclair any good now that he’s finally back on his feet, but it would be damn easy to give the Arizona papers the impression that the old “family friends” are still helping out the Sinclairs’ son and heir. Call it off, Sam, or I’ll smear your backer’s name all over Phoenix. It sure as hell won’t do his career any good, will it?”
Samantha thought with horror about Gabriel’s friend Emil Fortune. At this point even Drew Buchanan probably didn’t realize how lethal a weapon he held. If he did reopen the old scandal and imply that Gabriel was involved with his father’s questionable friends, how long would it be before his relationship with Emil Fortune came to light? Even if Gabriel could escape the mud which had once been slung at his father, how could he ever explain away his relationship to Fortune?
Furthermore, by involving Gabriel in Eric’s mess, Samantha had unwittingly caused Gabriel’s association with Fortune to become even more awkward.
Shit!
“You really are one hell of a bastard, aren’t you, Drew?”
He laughed on the other end of the line. “And you’re a soft-headed little fool who won’t have the heart to let her lover take the flak off this scandal. I’ll crucify him, Sam. I’ll nail him to the wall, and it will ruin him. No one will do business with him again. No reputable concern will want to borrow money from a possible mob associate. No one except the type who normally deal with that kind of lowlife anyway. He won’t be a venture capitalist any longer, Sam. He’ll be a frigging loan shark. Quite a comedown, hmmm?”
Samantha slammed down the phone, shaking from head to foot. As quickly as she did it, it wasn’t quick enough to prevent her from hearing Drew’s satisfied laughter on the other end of the line.
She paced the house for the next hour, frantically searching for a way out. But there was not a way out. Buchanan had neatly closed the trap, and the only way she could free herself was to sacrifice Gabriel.
Sacrificing Gabriel was unthinkable.
Samantha came to a halt beside the potted palm in the living room, staring blindly out into the Seattle mist. Unthinkable.
She couldn’t hurl Gabriel Sinclair to the wolf because she loved Gabriel. Loved him far more than she loved the idea of proving herself in the eyes of her mother. Loved him far more than proving to Buchanan that he couldn’t treat her the way he had three years ago and get away with it.
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Her taste for revenge was as nothing next to her commitment to Gabriel. She had more or less coerced him into her life, and once there he had proceeded to dominate it. Compared to her feelings for him, revenge played a pretty poor second. Samantha closed her eyes on that thought and then opened them again, suddenly able to see everything very clearly. The only really crucial factor in this whole mess now was saving Gabriel. The decision was made with an abrupt and absolute conviction, the kind of intuitive certainty which left no room for doubt. She would protect Gabriel whatever the cost.
Only yesterday she had been planning ways of talking her angel into giving the relationship more time. With all the time in the world ahead of them, it had been easy to be hesitant, to want to be sure. Samantha shook her head wryly.
Buchanan had just taught her that there was no question of her feelings for Gabriel Sinclair. None at all.
With grim resolution she picked up the phone and asked for the number of the Buchanan Group’s headquarters in Miami. When Drew eventually came on the line, she didn’t give him a chance to speak.
“You can have the restaurant for a hundred thousand,” she told him dully.
“I thought you’d see reason. I’ll have my lawyers draw up the purchase agreement this afternoon. Look at it this way, Sam. I could have made you hand it over for virtually nothing. I’m being generous under the circumstances. For old times’ sake.”
“You’re going to rot in hell Drew.” She put the phone gently down in its cradle, and then she lifted the receiver again and dialed her travel agent.
“No, I’m not going back into that damn spa! Just get me on a plane to Santa Barbara. I’ll arrange my own accommodations for the night.”
News like this had to be explained in person. She wasn’t going to tell Gabriel over the phone what she had just done. It was far too complicated. And she couldn’t stand to wait until the next day, when he would be returning to Seattle. She would go crazy overnight.
The travel agent phoned back a few minutes later to tell her she was booked on an early afternoon flight to California.
***
The house on the coast was just as she remembered it. Secluded, sheltered by its heavy landscaping, open only to the sea, it provided Gabriel with the peace and the solitude he craved.
She had brought him very little of either, Samantha thought sadly as she parked the car in the drive and sat staring at the iron gates for a moment. He’d been awfully patient with her, considering how little he cared for upsetting factors and surprises. She’d blown his placid routine to smithereens, and she had almost shattered his hard-won privacy for good. If Buchanan had gone through with his threats, Gabriel would have gone through hell watching his parents’ life vandalized again by the press and he, himself, would have lost the low profile he had worked so hard at maintaining. He would suddenly have a reputation hanging over his head, one that would undoubtedly have crippled his career.
And it would have been all her fault.
Samantha shivered at the thought and climbed out of the car. She was almost at the gate, preparing to ring the bell, when he opened the front door and stared at her in astonishment.
“Samantha! What in the world…?”
He started toward her, and Samantha took in the sight of him, loving every solid, conservative, stubborn inch. Tears pricked at her eyes, and her lips quivered as she clung to the iron gate with both hands.
“Oh, Gabriel, I’m so sorry… “
“Oh, s-s-shi … shi . Damn it to hell! Samantha, I warned you. I can’t take much more of this. What the hell is going on this time?” He flung open the gate, and Samantha almost went with it, remembering at the last minute to release her grasp on the curving bars.
And then she was in his arms, holding him fiercely, whispering his name over and over again as she buried her face against the solid reassuring warmth of his chest. His wonderful, huge hands soothed her with infinite care, threading through her hair and massaging her tense shoulders.
His words, however, were anything but soothing. “Jesus, woman! Let me have it quickly. The waiting is killing me!”
“I sold the restaurant to Buchanan for a hundred thousand.”
There was a suspended moment of total shock from the man holding her, and then his voice came in a low snarl unlike anything she had ever heard from him in the past. “You did what?”
She was seized by the arms and held far enough away from him so that his gaze could burn into her. Samantha swallowed rapidly, knowing the moments of comfort had evaporated.
“I had no choice, Gabriel. Buchanan pulled the one trick he knew would work on me.” She attempted a small, shaky smile, pleading for understanding with her eyes.
But there was no understanding in Gabriel’s expression, only cold, implacable anger. “What trick?”
“You.”
“Me!” He looked thunderstruck. “Samantha, what the devil are you talking about?”
“He knows, Gabriel,” she whispered. “Somehow he found out about your father and the scandal a few years ago. He knew everything, and he was going to resurrect the whole mess and give it to the Arizona papers.”
“Oh, my God!” He shook his head dazedly, and then he shook her. “Samantha, you folded because of that threat?”
“What else could I do?” she asked simply. “He knew so much that could hurt you and your family. What if he’d dug farther and found out about your friendship with Emil Fortune? Don’t you see? We’re lucky to be out of it with the hundred K.”
“You spent three years plotting this deal.”
“I wasted a lot of time, didn’t I?” She half-smiled. “No, I take that back. If I hadn’t gone after it at all, I would never have found you.”
“Was finding me so important?” he asked unsteadily.
“Finding you is the most important thing that’s happened to me out of this whole mess, Gabriel,” she told him gently. “I love you. I realized that this morning when Drew called. I suddenly knew what was really important in this whole mess.”
He uttered an inarticulate sound and hauled her back against him, wrapping her so tight and close she knew she would feel the ache in her muscles when he released her.
“Samantha!” He buried his face in her hair, and she felt the tremor that went through him. “Samantha. Oh, my God, lady, you are the only person on earth with the power to completely traumatize me. Life was so peaceful before you came along.”
“I know. I know, Gabriel. I’m sorry.”
“Samantha, if you apologize one more time I s-s-shall probably beat you. Just s-s-shut up, will you?”
“Our partnership would never have worked anyway. You’re always giving me orders. It’s just as well the business arrangement between us is over. Sooner or later I would have gotten tired of taking orders.”
“You never did take them very well. Samantha, are you aware of what you have done?”
“Yes.”
“Did you take into consideration the thought that you might have called me for a consultation before agreeing to Buchanan’s price?”
“No.”
“Did it occur to you that Buchanan made the threat to you instead of me because he knew I might not go along with it?” Gabriel grated.
“Yes. Drew is very adept at reading people. He knew you would have stuck by me to the end, regardless of the threat.”
“But you, on the other hand, caved in at once. Because you love me.” He sounded as if he were trying to get all the facts straight, to put all the pieces of the puzzle together before dealing with the issue at hand. Typical Gabriel Sinclair approach to a problem. Methodical.
“Yes.”
“Samantha, was I really more important to you than having your revenge on Drew Buchanan? More important than proving yourself your mother’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t take it in. That you gave up everything you’ve worked for during the past three years for the sake of what you feel for me.” He hesitated,
as if mulling it all over in his head. “Oh, hell, it was that damn promise I made you swear that night, wasn’t it? Oh, Samantha, I’m the one who’s sorry. How could you think I ever meant that oath to force you to give up everything you’ve been working for?”
“I didn’t even think about the promise. I just knew I couldn’t do anything to hurt you.” She lifted her hands to cradle his face. “Stop worrying about it, Gabriel. I’m not going to regret this. Some things I’m absolutely sure of. And I’m sure that I’ll never regret falling in love with you. Although,” she added as a whimsical afterthought, “you may very well regret it. Darling Gabriel, I’m not exactly right for you, am I?”
“You’re absolutely perfect for me.” He breathed heavily. “And you must know by now that I love you.” He wrapped her closer, molding her to him as if afraid that she might somehow evaporate.
“Do you, Gabriel?” Samantha surrendered to the enveloping embrace. “Do you really love me?”
“Come inside and I’ll show you.”
She laughed up at him, happier than she had ever been in her life. “Are you going to make mad, passionate love to me on the floor in the living room?”
“No, I’m going to make you the best pasta primavera you’ve ever tasted in your life,” he vowed, pulling her against his side and starting toward the door.
“And then?” she prompted happily.
“And then I will make love to you. But not on the floor in the living room. This time I think we’ll use the bed.”
The thing about Gabriel Sinclair, Samantha reminded herself for the hundredth time, was that you could trust him completely. And he’d said he’d loved her.
***
A long time later, after the incomparable pasta and the even more incomparable lovemaking, Gabriel lay with Samantha cradled in his arms and gazed thoughtfully up at the ceiling of his bedroom. Tucked in his arms, she slept peacefully, her leg entwined with his and the tip of one breast pressing lightly against his chest.