She smiled her secretly-amused, no-BS-tolerated smile and told him, “In a manner of speaking. Your reputation precedes you. Gabrielle Washington.”
“We were just going for a drink,” I said. “To celebrate my disastrous day.” I tried to make that sound a whole lot lighter and less catastrophic than it felt, and then threw caution to the winds, risked another rejection, and asked, “Want to come?”
“You know,” she said, “since I’ve officially kissed your ass now—why not?” She glanced at Nathan. “If I’m not interrupting.”
He was looking a whole lot more cheerful himself than he had been a few minutes ago. “Now, would I ever turn that down?”
She studied him, long and slow, then said, “Ah. I heard about that, too. All right, then. I’m coming.”
That was why there were three of us snagging a table in O’Doul’s, thanks to a departing group and Nathan’s quick reactions, and, five minutes later, three of us with wine glasses in front of us, Friday night starting for real, and me realizing how much I’d missed this. Hanging out. Being…normal. Having friends.
After a couple minutes during which Gabrielle and Nathan made some pretty good inroads on their wine and I worked much more slowly on mine, Gabrielle said, “After all that excitement today, I feel like this should be tequila.”
“Tell,” Nathan urged. “That’s the only reason I’m here tonight after my week, even though Hope’s about impossible to pry anything out of. I’m hoping you’re easier.”
“I know you are,” Gabrielle said.
He grinned. “Oh, yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. Tell.”
She staged a performance, then, working through her wine along the way and loosening up with every sip. She described the meeting, and the moment when I’d started to talk, as if it had been a whole lot more exciting than it had actually been. She ended up by jumping to her feet, pounding the table with a fist, throwing her arms wide, and proclaiming, “This is for the skinny-ass little white girls like me. For the brown people, the wheelchair-bound, the sisters with junk in the trunk, and our brave veterans home from war. This is for the downtrodden people, the real people. This is for the world. This is… For Every Body!” By which point, Nathan was hanging onto the edge of the table and laughing his handsome head off, and I’d long since stopped protesting and succumbed to my own fit of the giggles.
“I shouldn’t laugh,” Nathan said, straightening up as Gabrielle sat down again, looked with disappointment at her empty glass, and accepted my nearly full one as a substitute. “My mother was a model. Family disloyalty. But damn, girl,” he told me. “Do you have to live dangerously?”
“Apparently I do,” I said, some of the laughter dying away. “Since I went from bad to worse after that.”
“Uh-oh,” Nathan said. “If we’re going to get into it, I feel sure that I need more wine. Who else?” Gabrielle waved her hand in the air, and he headed to the bar.
“OK, go,” she said as soon as he took off. “Details.”
“Uh…details about what?”
She made a beckoning motion with her hand. “Come on. You’re not that slow. Nathan. Girlfriend? Status? Details? Let’s go, because that is fine.”
“Girlfriend, yes, last time we talked,” I admitted, because the Girl Code was a thing, too. “But he’s not acting like it tonight, is he?”
“Honey,” she said, “if that meant one single thing, the world would be a whole different place.”
“Mm,” I agreed. “Satisfactorily rich parents, though. His dad’s some—I don’t know. Tycoon, though you won’t hear him say much about that. His mom’s Yasmine. You know—80s supermodel? Egyptian, wasn’t that it?”
She widened her eyes and said, “Hmm. I thought he was some mix of gorgeous. OK. On the girlfriend…I’m going to the ladies’ room. When I get back, you’ve got my details. And you’ve got my back on this, right?”
“Right.” She’d had mine, after all.
“So,” I said to Nathan when he came back with his and Gabrielle’s drinks. “Time to tell me why you weren’t your usual chipmunk-cheerful self when I showed up tonight.”
“Aw, man,” he complained, “you could tell? Here I’m going out of my way to be charming, now that I have a reason to live again.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Do I detect the shakeup of a breakup?”
“A few weeks in, and we’re all marketing-speak?”
“Nice try. Tell me about it.”
“I hate married people,” he complained, surprising me so much, I laughed out loud. “When did you get all adult like that?”
“I always have been, haven’t you noticed? And I’m not married. I’m engaged.”
“Same thing. Are you and little sister living with him? Because rumor has it that we have a car and driver doing the honors, and that it’s not a car service, it’s Scary Sam the Bodyguard Man.”
I hesitated, then said, “Yes. And don’t spread it around.”
“Hey. Did I tell when you started sleeping with him?”
“No, because you didn’t know when I started sleeping with him.” He looked like he was about to point out that he could have made a pretty good guess, and I hurried on to say, “Which is not what we’re talking about. We’re discussing your love life, not mine.”
“One word,” he said, losing a little of the chirpiness. “Over.”
“Was this…” I felt my way cautiously. Nathan and I had always been casual, always fun. I wasn’t sure how far to push. “Was this more serious, then? I didn’t get the impression you did that.”
“Well, I’m not doing it anymore,” he said. “Because it sucks. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
He started to say something, then stopped. “Go on,” I urged. Nathan had been a friend to me when I’d needed one. Time for me to step up.
“Is a man like you-know-who what every woman really wants?” he asked. “I know you do, obviously. Is that actually the dream, though? Mr. Grimly Dangerous, where you don’t know what he’s going to do next, but it’s so exciting, because you can’t read him, and he takes what he wants? Sounds like nothing but a horror show to me, but, hey, I’m a guy.”
I was stuck. And at that moment, Gabrielle came back.
“What?” she asked at the expression on my face.
“Nothing,” I said, taking another sip of water.
“Am I drinking this?” she asked, looking between her wine glass, me, and Nathan. “Or am I leaving, because things just got awkward?”
Nathan grinned, his good humor making its way out again, or maybe it was Gabrielle doing that. “Nope. I’m just oversharing, that’s all, asking Hope what women like and what the hell they want. One and a half glasses of cheap white wine, one breakup, and one otherwise irresistible straight, single, employed male Manhattanite shooting himself in the foot before he can even get started, because he can’t keep his big mouth shut.”
“You got started,” she said, then picked up her wine and said, “Know what I like?”
“No,” Nathan said, “but I sure do want to.”
She smiled, and right then and there, there was one extra person at this table, and it was me. The pheromones were colliding in midair, playing so fast and loose that I was getting turned on, and I was just the bystander. “I like a man,” Gabrielle pronounced, looking at him over the rim of her glass, her smile sassy and sweet, her almond-shaped eyes gleaming, “who’s got a sense of humor. I like a man who’s willing to talk to me and knows how to tell a woman the truth. I like a man who listens to me, and who knows how to give me his full attention. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Oh, yeah,” Nathan said. “I think so.”
“You know how hard that man is to find?”
“Not hard at all,” he said. “Not tonight.”
They gazed at each other, and the moment stretched out until Gabrielle finally broke eye contact, looked at me, and said, “So. What were we talking about? Your dismal employment prospec
ts as a fully functioning contributor at Te Mana, or Nathan’s fortunate escape?”
“Ah…“ I was sobered by the first part, but cheered by the second. “I’d rather talk about Nathan’s fortunate escape, but first…all right, I’m selfish. Am I doomed?”
Her finely chiseled face was serious, her liquid eyes sympathetic. “Yeah, baby,” she said softly. “If you were thinking this was your chance to get real and get somewhere? You are. Sorry.”
I swallowed and said, “OK. Thanks,” looked down at my water glass, then glanced at Nathan.
He’d sobered as well, and now, he said, “Do you really want to do this? The job? It’s not just a…” He hesitated.
“A what?” I asked.
He waved a hand. “Some kind of statement, some declaration of independence. ‘I am a working woman, not a toy.’”
“No,” I said. “It’s not a statement. But you’re saying that’s how it looks.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, and I saw the agreement on Gabrielle’s face as well.
“And I can’t change that?” I asked. Nathan shrugged, and I tried to laugh and said, “Hey. First world problems. ‘I must be fulfilled in my work’ and all that. I know.”
“No,” Gabrielle said. “Just life. We all care about our life. Everybody wants to be somebody.”
“Thanks.” There I went, getting weepy again. What a day. I’d gone out to forget it, and here it was, back again. “But we weren’t talking about me.”
“Shifting now,” Gabrielle said. “What caused the Serious Face, then?” she asked Nathan. “Not hers. Yours.”
His mouth twisted. “We playing, “What the Ex Said?’ I’m not going there. Guaranteed to send the new interest screaming into the night.”
“No,” she said. “It won’t. Unless it was ‘Is that all you got?’”
They smiled at each other, and Nathan said, “We’ll call that a subject for another moment. But I’m not mysterious enough, apparently, and my ‘dangerous bad boy’ needs some work.”
“Ah,” Gabrielle said with satisfaction.
“Which I might have been fairly pissed off about at the time,” he said, “but I’m feeling oddly better now.”
“So you were asking Hope,” Gabrielle guessed, “if that’s what women want? Wrong person to ask, don’t you think? Ask me instead. I don’t. The hunt for the alpha male? No, thanks. Too much work, too much aggravation, and too many real bad men to get through while you search for the one with the tough shell hiding the sweet chocolate center. Like I told you—for me? I’ll take sweet all the way up to the outside. Sweet works every time.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it, and Nathan noticed and said, “What, he’s so sweet when he’s with you? If it’s true, I don’t want to hear it. I’ll just get depressed again.”
“Ah…” Gabrielle said. “Maybe not.” I looked in the direction of her gaze and saw him. As absolutely upright as always, the crowd around the bar parting for him like magic, no trace of a smile on his face. Headed straight for me.
“Alpha” might not work for Gabrielle, but it sure worked on me, because the tingles were right back again. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him, but maybe that was because his gaze was holding mine as if he had some tractor beam locked on me, pulling me into his orbit.
I was almost dizzy. Something was going to happen tonight. Something special.
“No” had meant “no.” The question was…what was “yes” going to mean?
Hope
By the time Hemi got to the table, Nathan was on his feet, pulled there, it seemed, by whatever force it was that Hemi exerted.
Hemi looked at him, unsmiling, and said, “Hello again.”
“Hi,” Nathan said, and, no, he wasn’t exactly coming off as the Alpha Dog in this encounter. I hoped Gabrielle didn’t mind, because Nathan was a wonderful guy. He just wasn’t Hemi.
Hemi looked at Gabrielle, then, said, “Hi. How are you?” and actually smiled, too, like a regular person. He managed to act, in other words, like somebody who could sit down and have a drink with other people without scaring them half to death.
Maybe not tonight, though, because after that, he asked me, “Are you ready to go, sweetheart, or do you need a few more minutes? If you’d like to stay, I’ll phone the restaurant.”
“Please,” Nathan said, “join us.” Points for social grace, but then, Nathan had plenty of that. And Hemi had called me “sweetheart” in front of other people, which was a first. He looked like he didn’t realize he’d done it, either. It seemed to have just slipped out from under his self-control, and wasn’t that a cheering little thought?
“No, thanks,” I said, standing up and gathering my things. “We were just finishing up.” Nathan and Gabrielle would rather be alone, I was fairly sure. Besides, I’d probably pushed Hemi enough for one day, and it was exactly seven, and he had let me leave without a fuss this afternoon and had showed up in exactly the time and place we’d planned, and acted casual about it, too. I wanted to tell him how I felt about all that.
You’re thinking I wanted to see how he felt about it. That could have been part of it as well.
Hemi said, “We’ll be off, then. Nice to see you both.”
“Bye,” Nathan said. “You two kids have fun.” Which got him a sharp look from Hemi and a choked-back laugh from Gabrielle, for whose benefit, I was sure, he’d said it.
I said, “Oh,” fumbled in my bag, pulled out a twenty, and handed it to Nathan.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
“Nope. You’ve spotted me so many times, and I’m not broke anymore.”
“Hey. Friends let friends pay.”
“Ha waka eke noa,” Hemi said. “A canoe we are all in with no exception,” he explained to a very surprised-looking Nathan. “Maori saying. We’re all in the same boat, so you’ve got to paddle it together, lend a mate a hand.”
“Well, uh, yeah,” Nathan said. “That’s it. Good saying.”
Hemi nodded in farewell, then turned and shepherded me through the crowded bar with his hand on my lower back.
So many firsts today, so many changes, but being walked out by him, destination unknown, his hand practically burning through my dress, was a statement, too, and a promise that one thing between the two of us wasn’t going to change.
I wanted that promise. I was full of mixed messages, even to myself. I knew it.
We stepped from the dark air-conditioned bar into the still sticky-warm July evening, and instantly, the big black car glided smoothly up into the loading zone and Charles climbed out and opened the rear door. When Hemi and I were safely behind the smoked-glass partition and the car had pulled out into traffic again, though, I told him, “I half expected you to take me back up into the conference room so you could make your long-delayed point where it would have the most impact.”
“Did you?” he asked, his face at its most inscrutable. He didn’t say anything else for a long minute, and I started to get nervous. Had I misinterpreted everything? Was he actually furious with me after all? Finally, he said, “Maybe I want to make my point a bit more imaginatively than that.”
Oh, boy.
“You bought a new dress, eh,” he said, throwing me again.
“Uh…yes. I did. Do you like it?”
“Shoes as well.”
“Yes.” I went on, when he didn’t say anything, “You said I should shop, that I should use the cards. Am I supposed to only do it when you tell me, though, or buy what you tell me? If I’m only free to spend what I earned myself, and everything else is a…a present, tell me so. I didn’t have to buy these. I can be independent. I’d been doing it for years.”
I was getting wound up all over again, and his eyes had lightened, as if he were trying to smile but wasn’t letting himself. “Now, did I say that? I don’t think so. I signed an agreement, remember? As I recall, it said that what’s mine is yours, but maybe we should pull it out and have a wee look. I remember you signing one, too, saying you were quite happ
y to have me tell you what to do under certain circumstances. And what I want you to do right now is to open the front of that dress and show me what else you bought.”
My heart had started beating harder the moment I’d seen him headed across the bar to me. Now, it picked up the pace.
“Are we going to dinner?” I asked.
“Why?” His voice was silky, deceptively soft. “Are you hungry?”
“Um…actually, yes.” I was, but I needed something else first. My breasts were tingling, and the throb at my center was telling me it needed his hand there now.
Hemi held my gaze, and it was a faceoff.
He won, but then, we’d both known he would. My hands went to the tie at the side of my dress and pulled at it, and then I lowered the side zip until, with a whisper of cotton, the dress fell open to my waist.
He didn’t touch me. He just looked at the wisps of transparent pearl-pink fabric that made up my bra, at the feathers of lace edging the band. The moment stretched out as I watched him look at me and…not move. He finally said, “You’re wearing stockings, I noticed. Unusual.”
“Well, yes. I am.”
“Describe them.”
I almost laughed. “What?”
“You heard me. You bought new lingerie. Describe it.”
“Is this my interview for writing marketing copy, or what?” You see how I was still in there swinging?
“You can call it that, if you like.” His eyes were holding me in place, pinning me down. “Or you can just call it a question I’m asking you to answer. And I’m waiting.”
The swinging was over, because another hot, sharp spike of desire went straight to my core, so sudden and so hard that I shifted on the seat. He saw that, too. I knew right then that I was going to see some consequences for the conference room, but not in any way I’d expected or could anticipate. He was going to make it last, and he was going to make it good.
Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) Page 24