I’m wondering if she’s thinking about the beginning of our relationship. It’s definitely one of those ‘if I could do it all over again’ moments for me. But then again, I have those moments every day, every night. I don’t let go of her hand as we walk to the elevator, not when we’re going up to my floor, not even when I’m unlocking the penthouse door. I take encouragement from her allowing it.
Standing in the entryway of the penthouse, I turn the locks behind us. She looks down at where our hands are joined, almost as if she’s confused. She pulls her hand out of mine, giving me a dirty look. Was the act as natural to her as it was for me, causing her to do it instinctively? The TV is on in the living room, so I figure Max must be home. As I move past the narrow wall blocking off the entry from the main living area, I see Max sitting on the edge of the couch with a bowl of cereal in his lap. He looks as if he’s just woken up, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, with his black hair going in all different directions.
The click of Anna’s heels on the wood floor lets me know that she’s just a couple steps behind me. Max looks up and smiles at my arrival. “Hey man, was your date that bad? You’ve only been gone an hour.” Anna’s standing in the doorway directly behind me now and Max gets a sly smile on his face. “Brought her back, did you?” He finishes off his cereal by drinking the rest of the milk and stands up, moving around the coffee table in the direction of the kitchen.
Anna makes a disgruntled sound from behind me and, with a click of heels, steps around me. “Hello, Max.”
As his cereal bowl goes crashing down onto the floor, I’m glad we don’t have carpet, and that I don’t have to clean up the broken ceramic chunks. Max still hasn’t moved from his spot, his mouth still hasn’t closed. I clap my hands together. “Well, we’ll be in my room.”
Anna’s smiling at Max’s bewilderment, not fazed by the fact that she may have just traumatized the guy by coming back from the dead like that. As I grab onto her arm and start hauling her towards my room, she laughs in my cousin’s direction. “Nice underwear, Max.” I glance back and realize that Max is wearing his blue Superman boxer briefs with a big red ‘S’ on the crotch. Nice. I doubt he’s embarrassed though, with all the girls that have already seen them.
I feel jittery as we finally go into my room, closing the door and locking it to keep a curious Max out. Anna calmly walks over to the suede recliner I have next to the sofa and sits down, crossing one nicely-shaped leg over the other. For a long moment, I stand there, staring at her legs where the white skirt is riding up.
The skirt and blazer she’s wearing is not the type made for the respectable businesswoman. It’s more along the lines of a slutty secretary look. The whole ensemble is fitted like a second skin and the jacket shows a heck of a lot of cleavage, especially since she’s not wearing anything underneath. Except maybe a bra. Is it white lace? Don’t get me wrong, I like the outfit, a lot, but I’m a little confused as to why she was wearing it to dinner with her brother.
I’m brought out of my musings when she clears her throat, asking, “Are you done?”
I arrogantly stare back at her and grin. “Just getting started.” Because I know this is going to be the fight of my life.
Annabelle
Giving me almost no warning, he pounces on me. He’s standing by his bedroom door one second and two seconds later, he’s leaning over me, bracketing me in with his much larger body. Instead of kicking him across the room as I should, I’m curious and wait to see what he’ll do next.
Don’t have to wait long. He grabs onto my shoulders and pulls me forward to meet his lips. I shouldn’t let him, but I do. Let him devour me is more like it. It’s an odd feeling for someone like me to feel like the prey, but that’s exactly how he makes me feel as his soft lips, tongue and hands consume me.
When Gabriel murmurs, “I missed you, baby,” the sweet taste in my mouth turns sour and I’m reminded of why this isn’t a good idea. The old bitterness that I thought I’d exorcised months ago starts building within me again.
I finally lean back, bringing my legs up, and execute the move that I should have before the kiss. Gabriel gets lucky and falls back against the bed, not quite on it, when his back hits the edge of the mattress. He throws up an arm to steady him and keeps from falling on his butt to the floor.
With a tight smile and a calm demeanor that I don’t feel, I say, “There’ll be none of that.”
He glowers at me playfully and comes to his feet, straightening his expensive clothes. Pacing back and forth in front of the bed now, he watches me out of the corner of his eye. “You seemed to enjoy it.”
Giving him a smirk I don’t feel either, I smooth down my skirt. “It isn’t the first kiss I’ve faked.”
He scoffs at that, swiping his hand through the air. “It’s not dead between us.”
I make a clucking sound with my tongue ask him, “What?” Then I lift my eyebrows and mockingly add, “The love?”
Shaking his head, he dismisses my sarcasm. “We’ll get to that later. First I want to know what happened after . . . .”
Raising my eyebrows again, I put on an innocent tone, “After you tried to blow my brains out?”
He stops pacing and his whole body goes tense. Not looking at me, but instead his clenched fists, his voice is so quiet that I can barely hear him, “I didn’t really want you dead.”
I imitate his earlier scoffing sound. “Could have fooled me.” I add, “Could have also fooled everyone else and the machines the paramedics used to keep me alive in the ambulance.”
With more force in his voice, he turns to face me, “I mean it, Anna. I’d just found out about my mom and reacted without thinking.”
Okay, now I’m confused. “What about your mom?”
Gabriel looks momentarily pained before it turns into anger. “Jesus Christ, Anna! What’d you do, forget about me the moment I left?”
Clenching my teeth, I grind out, “I didn’t owe you anything, Gabriel! And I don’t owe you now either! What did you want me to do, stalk you afterwards? Come back for more of the same?” I laugh humorlessly. “I was pretty much an amateur when it came to relationships back then, but I did know that you were essentially breaking up with me. The bullet was message enough.”
His eyes narrow and he takes a step towards me. “And now you know so much more about relationships?” Just like a guy, to ignore the important parts and concentrate on the inconsequential.
Waving my hand in the air, I brush off his question, “Irrelevant.”
Realizing that I’m not about to appease his curiosity, he swiftly changes the subject, dropping a bombshell I should have seen coming, “I want you back, Annabelle.”
This time my laughter is full of nothing but genuine humor. It’s that ‘oh my god, I can’t believe that’ kind of humor. I lean forward and put my face in my palms, still laughing. “Holy crap,” I say in-between laughs, “that’s hilarious.” I peek up at him to see his disgruntled expression and then bust up laughing again.
“I’m serious,” he grunts out, looking cute in his exasperation, damn him.
Not done, I hold up a hand. “Oh, oh, wait. Just let me go get my gun so you can shoot me again. Of course I want to get back together with you, Gabriel.” Putting on a serious face, I say earnestly, “He shoots me because he loves me.”
Tired from laughing, I sigh and rub my hands slowly over my face, avoiding my eye makeup. When I’m done letting out a big breath, I uncover my face and am startled to find Gabriel in front of me again, crouching on his knees. “Anna, when I . . . shot you, I’d just found out that my mom had committed suicide.”
In reaction, I suck in a gasp. “I’m sorry, Gabriel.” What other words are there? Why didn’t Simon ever tell me?
His jaw twitches and he fixes his eyes over shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. You were just the person I lashed out at.”
I don’t buy it for a minute and the sympathetic feeling leaves me. “Well, it’s a good thing some poor m
aid didn’t walk through that door. Since you were going to lash out at the first person you saw.”
Gabriel throws his hands up in the air in vexation. “Dammit, Anna! I was out of my mind with grief!” He leans forward and palms both sides of my face. His hands are warm, familiar. I allow it, for now. His own face is just inches from mine as he solemnly grounds out, “I didn’t mean it.” His voice becomes tender, “I love you, baby. The grief I had for you totally eclipsed any grief I’ve had for my parents. When you died, so did I.” His proximity is scrambling my emotions like old times, disturbing my resolve.
“Oh yeah?” I ask, shaking off his effect on me, just getting started. “And you don’t completely hate me for your mom’s suicide? You don’t blame me?”
“No,” he says resolutely.
“And your dad?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says after a moment’s hesitation.
Very sweetly, I smile at him. “So, you didn’t shoot me because, if I hadn’t killed your father, then your mother wouldn’t be dead too?”
Green eyes stare in mine for a long moment before he answers, “At the time, that was my thought process, but in no way do I believe that now.” More firmly, he says, “You were misinformed about my father. It’s the fault of whoever hired you. It’s their fault that my mom killed herself too.”
Leaning forward, taking his hands on my face with me, with my lips just an inch away from his, I look him right in the eyes. “And what if I told you that I can prove to you what kind of monster your father was? That really, it all leads back to that fact.”
He lets go of my face and leans back on his haunches away from me. “I’d say that you’re lying, but I love you anyway.”
That sets me off and unleashes the anger that I thought I’d long gotten past. Dammit! I am still mad about him shooting me. And I’ll admit it, I’m still hurt that he didn’t love me enough not to. Despite his pretty words, I wonder if he ever loved me at all.
Trying to muster an indifferent feeling towards Gabriel, I close my eyes, deeply breathing in and out. Opening them, Gabriel is standing by the bed again, arms crossed over his chest in a defensive position.
“Do you still want to know what happened after you shot me?” I ask and continue on in a detached tone without giving him time to answer, “After Jackson dropped you off at the airport, he rushed to the hospital, not knowing whether he’d find me in an operating room or in the morgue. By the time he got there, I’d been in and out of surgery already. All patched up and still in critical condition, but stabilized. You did kill me, though, Gabriel. My heart stopped both in the ambulance and on the operating table. Several days later, before any doctor would have advised me leaving, Jackson checked me out early in the middle of the night.”
The last part is said ruefully because Jackson actually snuck me out of the hospital with the help of a doctor Simon paid a generous sum to. Renting a van, they drove me across the border to a house of Simon’s in Norway. He was there waiting, not happy.
I closely watch Gabriel’s facial expressions during my explanation, and when he grimaces throughout, I get an odd sense of satisfaction. “Anyways, I had just completed the job the day you shot me and the police were asking questions that Jackson and I didn’t want to answer,” I pause momentarily, “By the way, you shot me through a lung.”
“I’m so sorry,” Gabriel whispers remorsefully, looking genuinely contrite.
Feeling even more coldness seep into me, I continue, “You want to know why I didn’t know your mother was dead? Why I didn’t know you were going to NYU?” Tired of looking up at him, I stand and stalk over until I’m a foot away. “Because when you tried to kill me, you killed us. As I was healing from the bullet wound, I was also healing from you. I have a scar from where you shot me, the skin is tougher there.” My voice lowers automatically with the intensity of the subject, “I also have a scar over my heart. And now it’s tougher too.”
I start backing away from him, towards the door. Gabriel is silent, but hasn’t lost that dogged look in his eyes, which worries me. It makes me think that I need to protect myself from him. He can no longer touch me or my heart. I refuse to allow it. I stop and shrug nonchalantly. “Sorry if I didn’t keep in touch with you, but it was for the best. And now, it really is time for me to go.”
I spin around, deciding that this really will be goodbye for me and Gabriel. The further I get away from him, though, the more the calmness leaves me and turbulent emotions begin to surface. Almost to the door, his arms wrap around my chest from behind. I’m holding my breath, wanting to know what he’ll do, but wanting him to let me go at the same time. The sudden indecisiveness has me hating this situation all the more. The spell he’s had on me since day one is still working its magic on me.
“No,” he says in my ear. “You still love me. You’re a good actress, so good that you may even be fooling yourself, but I can feel it.” He makes a fist and lightly thumps my chest. “In here.”
My stiff posture starts to melt when he begins to tenderly kiss my neck. I bite back a moan and weakly beg for him to stop. A weakness, that’s what he is. Distracted by his mouth, I don’t realize that he’s moved us over to the bed until I feel the soft mattress beneath me. He hasn’t moved his lips away from my neck the entire time. Will it always be like this? Like we’ve never been apart?
As he rolls me onto my back and hovers over me, his soft lips move from my neck to my cleavage. And it feels so freaking good. I’m running my hands over his back as he murmurs, “I knew you still loved me, Annabelle.”
Feeling an irrational panic, I start to push his shoulders away. The suffocating feeling I have mildly resembles the time I had a hole in one lung and was gasping for breath. “Get off me, Gabriel!” I practically scream.
When he growls and shakes his head, I take more extreme measures. Those measures end in Gabriel’s nose bleeding and him on his ass on the floor. As he tries to catch the bleeding with his hand, I rush more quickly to the door this time.
Unlocking and yanking open the door, I vehemently tell him, “I don’t love you, Gabriel, and you sure as hell don’t love me.” The fact that I start to cry as I rush past a still surprised Max in the living room doesn’t mean a damn thing.
Outside the building, Jackson is parked and waiting. Seeking the sanctuary of the rental car, my first words to him are, “You knew he was in New York?”
Jackson speaks carefully, “Simon mentioned it to me a year ago when Gabriel moved here.”
“It would have been nice to know. I don’t like surprises.”
“In a city of eight million people, I didn’t think we’d run into the one person I wanted us to avoid. Figures your bad luck with men would have the target dining in the same restaurant as loverboy.” Jackson has some nerve to blame it on me after not giving me a heads up.
“Jackson,” I say menacingly.
“Well, it’s true. Though the stupid fuck probably thinks it’s fate.” He shakes his head in amazement.
Fate. Could it be? Maybe it’s bad karma, for stupidly falling in love with the betrayer in the first place. Damn, I can’t have Gabriel hunting me down again. Being back from the dead definitely has its drawbacks.
Chapter 38
Gabriel
Nothing compares to being woken up by a punch to the face. Oh, except for waking up to being punched in the face and finding yourself tied to your bed. I’m so getting a sleigh bed next time. Then let’s see her try to tie me to that.
As the pain shoots through my cheek, I come awake to hear her voice, “Wake up, Gabriel.” Well, duh. Your love tap sort of took care of that, hot devil-woman. The room is still dark, with only the city lights streaming through the open curtains, until she turns on my floor lamp by the recliner that she proceeds to sit in. So cliché. Is this the part where I’m supposed to be shaking in my boxer briefs?
“Hello, Beautiful,” I mumble out sleepily. Then I get a good look at her. Her outfit is pretty casual compared to what sh
e was wearing earlier. She has on blue jeans, a black tank top and a dark brown leather jacket. Her currently light brown hair is pulled back in a careless ponytail. She’s no longer wearing the blue contacts. God, I’ve missed her big brown eyes. But that’s not what gets my attention most, it’s the light splattering of crimson on her cheek.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, tugging at my bindings, which are both neckties I’ve never worn. Actually, one of them isn’t even mine . . . .
She looks confused by my question. “Why would I be hurt?”
Having a feeling where this conversation’s going, I say mockingly, “Well either you whisked your red Kool-Aid a little too vigorously or you have blood on your left cheek.”
Wiping at her face with her fingers, she pulls her hand back to take a look. “Oh, that.” With a shrug, she reaches down to my bedroom floor and picks up a random shirt, a white one, using it to wipe off what I’m assuming is blood. “Jackson and I were in the mood to walk through a bad neighborhood earlier tonight.” Looking disgruntled she says harshly, “He could have told me I had blood on my cheek.”
With a thud, she brings her boots up to prop on the footboard of my bed. Well, at least someone’s comfortable. My arms are starting to ache from being spread out all sacrificial-like. “How’d you get in?”
One corner of her mouth rises. “I’ve got mad breaking-and-entering skills.”
“Max let you in?”
She laughs. “Yeah, he let me borrow one of his ties too. We had a nice little chat.” She makes a clucking sound, ruefully shaking her head. “You really need to get over me, Gabriel.” After a pause, she adds, “But I can kinda understand why you haven’t. Because I got mad bed skills too.”
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