Gabrielle went after whatever she wanted, but the whomever was another matter.
“Hi there,” called Dora from her patio. She waved a martini glass. “He’s making you wait, is he?” Not giving Gabrielle the chance to answer, she snorted dry laughter. “Don’t feel too bad, gorgeous. He’s been making me wait since the day he moved in. It’s starting to get boring, to tell you the truth.”
Gabrielle wrinkled her nose in confusion. “What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t take the bait too easily.” Dora sipped her drink and perched on a patio chair, and her short robe slid too far up her thighs. In her tipsy haze, she squinted across the courtyard. “It must be the sweet ones he likes. Hmm, tell you what. Come over here and have a cocktail with me.”
Gabrielle almost asked if the woman was planning to sleep with him. But she’d rejected him over and over and though she was here to apologize for being abrupt at the restaurant when the guard had walked in on them, she realized there were only so many times she could push someone away before he accepted defeat. His dalliance with this woman was his concern, and not Gabrielle’s. She wasn’t at risk of becoming a side fling, because they weren’t going to kiss again. “Some other time,” she called to Dora.
The woman huffed dramatically. “You sound like him. I suppose the two of you think three’s a crowd?”
Huh? “Did he tell you we’re dating or something?”
“Aren’t you? I can’t understand why he’d turned me down, unless there was somebody else.”
Gabrielle left the woman alone with her wondering and registered that Geoffrey hadn’t been mattress dancing with his cottage neighbor after all. Jealousy had worked her up for nothing. Now that she considered it, there had been dumbbells on the floor near a weight bench.
Guilt slithered around her. He’d been working out, not working Neighbor Dora. No doubt he’d noticed that she’d acted like she sat on a cactus. That apology she was planning on delivering? She’d need to make it a double. Trust was more sacred than anything, and she hadn’t given him a chance to earn hers. Her personal drama aside, she owed him respect.
Avoiding Dora’s intrigued stare, she turned and headed for the cottage. Glad that Geoffrey hadn’t locked the door, she reentered the cottage and found two suitcases stacked on the sofa in the living room. It reminded her that in only a handful of days she’d be joining him in Storey Springs, and this time they’d be on his turf. If the invitation was still open.
She’d move aside the luggage and sit down as he’d offered, and when he got out the shower they’d maybe have a cup of coffee together and the tension between them would soften.
She grabbed the suitcases’ handles and was startled to find one of them to be heavier than the other. Shifting to manage with the uneven weight, she grunted and hauled them up at her sides. As she turned, her eyes darted to a flash of movement to her left.
Geoffrey had moved swiftly, but not quick enough to spare her a glimpse of the dark patch of hair just below his abdomen.
“Damn it, Gabrielle!” he growled as his hand shot out to drag a throw blanket off a chair to wrap around his waist. He swore and hastily knotted the towel. “What the hell are you doing in here? You said you’d wait outside.”
Her hands full, Gabrielle squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t you dare insinuate that I actually planned this. I’m not a peeper.”
“Answer my question,” he demanded.
“Fine,” she replied curtly. “I figured I’d move your suitcases off the couch so I could sit down and we’d talk over coffee like normal people do. I should’ve called out that I was here, but other than that, don’t put the blame on me.”
“Open your eyes.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she said automatically. It was partially true. All she saw was the distinct arrow of hair trailing down his stomach to the curly mass between his thighs. “Really, you moved fast enough to spare us both that embarrassment.”
“You didn’t see anything?” His enigmatic dark eyes considered her as he slinked toward her. He forcefully snatched the heavier of the two suitcases. “Why is it that I don’t believe you?”
“Maybe you just have an overly suspicious mind,” she returned, annoyed. “Did you think I came up here to rifle through your things, see if you packed boxers or briefs?”
Geoffrey dragged his free hand through his wet hair but he said nothing.
“I saw pubes. There, now that’s the full truth.”
Still, he said nothing.
“I don’t need this,” she said finally, setting the suitcase down. “If you want to go back and forth with me, you should know that it’s not productive for either of us. If you still intend to include me in your weekend get-together, we could chat about that. Or you can simply forget that I was here in the first place.”
Suddenly, he was only an inch away. She saw a muscle in his jaw twitch. “There are other things I’d rather do with you…to you.”
She shivered. Her head felt lighter than a speck of dust. A fraction of a moment passed before she was pressed against him. She clutched his shoulders and hoisted herself up tight to the hard wall of his body. She tipped her face up and sniffed his aftershave lotion, and then she tasted the sensitive skin on the underside of his jaw. “Touch me,” she commanded, nipping him. “Now.”
A groan escaping, he molded his hands to her bottom and sank his teeth into her bare shoulder. “Is this what you want?”
Not really, it wasn’t. She wanted to be intimate with a man she trusted fully. She wanted to be with him, just like in the dreams that had stolen her sleep. But her sensors warned her that Geoffrey might not be dangerous, but she was dangerous when she was with him.
He released her. “It wasn’t a rhetorical question, Gabrielle.”
She silently watched him disappear down the hall and tried to clear away the cobwebs of confusion. Were men always such work? Maybe she’d been out of the dating scene longer than she’d thought. Or maybe she was simply expecting more from him than he could give.
Clearly, he had issues of his own. The biggest was most likely his quest to avoid serious relationships. But even that couldn’t explain his conflict of being aloof toward her one minute and then hot for her the next.
Unless this was all part of some off-the-wall scheme to toy with her…
A good girl wouldn’t fight fire with fire. She wasn’t a good girl anymore. Somewhere between finishing boarding school at Merriweather and bursting into culinary arts, she’d lost her halo and wasn’t interested in recovering it.
Geoffrey returned dressed in jeans and a chambray shirt. “Okay, let’s go. I’ve got to pack up my car and check out, so we can talk while I get that done.” He grabbed both suitcases and followed her outside. As he locked the door, she grabbed one of the suitcases and started down the walk.
“Your neighbor and I had a nice little chat while you were lathering up,” she said loftily. She angled her head and watched his brows furrow.
“So that must be why the jealousy disappeared.”
“Jealousy?” she echoed, and waited for him to pop open the Bugatti’s trunk so they could store his luggage.
With the sun rising at his back, he looked gorgeous and all too sure of himself. “You heard me. You saw her leave my place dressed in nearly nothing and it got your back up. No need to deny it.”
“Arrogant ass.”
He had the nerve to chuckle as he shut the trunk. “Are you no longer planning on apologizing to me?”
“No, I am. I’m sorry if I seemed as if I was blaming you for the guard coming in and finding us…well, like that. We both got carried away too fast and the truth is, I bear the responsibility.”
“You didn’t force me to kiss you. I’m not your victim.”
“And I’m not yours. I’m just clearing the air here. We can agree that we’re both at fault and it’s now understood that it can’t happen again.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Stop th
rowing that at me. You already know damn well what I want, and why I can’t go for it. What I want doesn’t matter in this. What’s best for the resort and your company’s party—that’s what matters. Can we be clear on that?”
“Okay.” But from his grim expression, it didn’t look as if it was.
“About Storey Springs. Do you still want me there?”
“You weren’t invited on the condition that we sleep together. So yeah, I still want you there. I want you to meet my people.”
“Then I will.” Frustrated that her body still demanded his, she got in her truck and turned the key in the ignition with more force than necessary and rocketed onto the main road. He was going back to the Hills today, but that changed nothing between them.
The attraction was still raising hell, and they were both too deep in it to get out.
*
“It’s not the same without you.”
From her hospital bed, with her broken leg in traction, Shoshanna craned her neck to look toward the door and she winced. “Govno! I’m not used to the burns and this horrible cast yet. I feel like I haven’t cooked anything in years.” She crooked her fingers. “Come in, Gabby. Tell me lots more about how you’re all suffering without me. I have to know someone’s as miserable as I am.”
Gabrielle entered the small room and took the visitor’s chair. “We’re all completely at loose ends without our resident sexy Russian chef.”
“That’s overdoing it.” Shoshanna smirked.
“Completely serious. No one’s cracked a potty humor joke in days and we’re all lost without your hookup reports. The men of Belleza are suffering from a sex crisis with you laid up like this.”
Shoshanna grunted a laugh. “You make me sound like a ho.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you’re not a ho.” Gabrielle smoothed Shoshanna’s red hair back. “You’re the ho. I hail to the ho.” She pretended to bow.
“Quit making me laugh. You’re evil to make me laugh. It hurts.”
Gabrielle struggled to stay positive, but she wanted to cry seeing her friend hospitalized. “I can’t understand how that wheel came off like that. I keep thinking about it.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Gabby. Kitchen accidents happen. They call it occupational hazard.” Shoshanna sighed. “My mother wants me to quit cooking, period. She thinks it’ll kill me, but I told her that if I can’t go back to cooking, that’ll kill me. Cooking is my life.”
“I understand.”
“I knew you wouldn’t think I’m crazy.”
“So what are you facing?”
“The leg shouldn’t need more surgery, if it heals well. The burns? Skin grafting.”
“Skin grafting? As in taking skin from some other part of your body and putting it where the burns are?”
“Yeah, but the transplantation’s only for the third-degree area. The burn on my arm’s going to scar, but I’m thinking about covering it with a tattoo down the line.”
“Tattoos aren’t so bad.”
“I know. You have just the one, right?”
“Yup. Just the dandelion.”
“Gabby, why are you so sad? You’re sadder today than you were when you visited me all those other times. What’s going on?”
“More weirdness at the restaurant,” she said. “Fridges mysteriously unplugging themselves and costing us big dollars. Yesterday Stu opened a cabinet and wineglasses fell out in a sheet of glass. I witnessed that. My heart jumped into my throat—I thought he might’ve been seriously injured, but thank God he’d only had a few superficial cuts.”
“How is he?”
“Oh, a couple of bandages and he was back to cooking. But still… I don’t know, Shosh. You’ve seen The Wizard of Oz, right? Know that part where the lion insists he doesn’t believe in spooks until they’re attacked in the woods and then he changes his mind real fast?”
“Gabby, are you telling me you believe in the curse of the Belleza?”
“Not exactly. But I believe someone wants me to. Someone is behind all of this hell and I want to find them.”
“Damn, you’re a scrapper.”
“Well, my team’s being targeted and I have to protect you all.”
“Any guesses? Who would want to sabotage us? The fire and the wineglasses sound like intent to maim or kill.”
“And tampering with equipment, such as a kitchen cart.”
Shoshanna swallowed. “My accident?”
“Maybe the intent wasn’t to get you specifically, but someone was bound to get hurt dealing with that messed up wheel.” Gabrielle smoothed her hair again. “You’re safer here, Shosh. But I’m going to find out who’s responsible for hurting you and I’m going to make sure they pay.”
The woman’s smile wobbled. “You’re always out to protect everyone else. Who’s looking out for you?”
“The Belleza has my back. There’s Kim and Robyn and Jonah and Stu. Stu’s been trying to get me out of the kitchen, actually. He suggested I go to a club and meet someone.”
“Well, you must. Remember what I told you? The next sexy man—”
“Oh, about that. I did meet a sexy man, and I almost hooked up with him the other night.”
Shoshanna’s expression shifted from worried to curious. “Who is he? How could you not tell me sooner?”
“All right, but I’m only telling you my dirty dark secrets because you’re stuck in the hospital and I know I can trust you to keep this on the low.”
“Tell me.”
Gabrielle shut the hospital room door and reclaimed her seat. “His name’s Geoffrey Girard.” She unburdened herself, confessing how far she and Geoffrey had gone that night at the Pearl and that in a couple of days she would be joining him on a jet to his hot springs retreat.
“Gabby, it doesn’t seem like Kim or Robyn or anyone else would think less of you for dating this man,” Shoshanna said. “You’re pulling yourself back and I’m trying to understand your position, but I don’t. I don’t know why you’re denying yourself this chance.”
“Did I not mention that he has a history as a serial dater?”
“So what? You haven’t exactly been a one-man kind of woman, right? It’s the twenty-first century. Most people have romantic pasts. I think you’re on a fishing expedition, trying to catch reasons to push him away.”
“You’re medicated. I’ll forgive you for that.”
“Bull and you know it. I just want you to understand that you deserve to be protected and happy as much as the rest of us. Find out if Geoffrey’s a man who can protect you and make you happy, and if he is, please don’t be an asshole about it.”
Gabrielle twisted her mouth. “At first, I thought he was the asshole.”
“Seems he’s a lot like you. I want to meet him. Don’t alienate this man before I have a chance to meet him.” Shoshanna closed her eyes. “Leave me alone now. I’m tired.”
Sighing, Gabrielle stood up. Shoshanna cracked open an eye. “Got any candy bars on you? Snickers? TWIX?”
“A granola bar.”
“Leave me alone.”
Gabrielle grinned, patting her shoulder. “Thanks for the talk, Shosh.”
*
“Y’all sure you can survive without me for two days?”
It was Friday and in roughly an hour Gabrielle was expected at Geoffrey’s Beverly Hills mansion to drive them to his private jet. She couldn’t get Shoshanna’s advice out of her head, and that combined with her friends’ well-meaning intent to see her dating someone and her own boiling attraction to Geoffrey was building to a volatile point. Now she was isolating herself with him.
“We’re sure,” Robyn insisted.
Kim, who’d had a gourmet breakfast delivered to the pool where they sat around a table, looked around and divulged, “I’m taking measures to get to the truth about what’s going on here.”
Robyn picked up an orange slice. “What sort of measures?”
“A PI.”
“PI? An investigator?”
“Yes.
As strange and albeit supernatural as these problems appear, I think it’s a ruse and someone’s out to destroy the place my family built. Well, I’m not going to let that happen.”
Gabrielle sipped her cranberry juice. “Any leads?”
“My parents reminded me that the Pinnacle is our direct competition.”
The Pinnacle was a new hotel that had opened its doors barely a half hour’s drive from the Belleza Resort. “Good thinking, Kurt and Ilene,” Gabrielle said of Kim’s parents. “We’ve been top dog here and the Pinnacle naturally wants some of the attention. A business’s first year is often its most crucial.”
“I think it’s too obvious. Not to mention too sloppy,” Robyn said. “Eventually the obvious suspect would be the Pinnacle. You’d think a new establishment would want to keep its hands clean of any traces. Directly harming folks over here? That’s not clean.”
“Well, we can’t afford to not suspect the Pinnacle,” Kim reasoned. “Another track to consider is that one of our own is involved.”
“What the hell? Someone on our staff?” Gabrielle couldn’t entertain the thought, but the indignation lasted for only a minute. Money motivated people to adopt uncharacteristic behavior. Money turned friends into enemies. Money could be a tool for good or for evil. “Set a fire, unplug a fridge, for what? A clear shot to a treasure that no one really knows even exists? Seems utterly stupid. Anyone who tries to cash in on this so-called treasure would be suspected.”
“There’s more than those incidents, Gabby.” Kim leaned forward. “There’s been theft. Electronic stuff, missing from guests’ rooms. A full-blown rash of theft and the only thing that makes sense is that someone who has access to guests’ suites is taking advantage.”
“I heard that someone had sneaked into the Pearl last week,” Robyn said.
Gabrielle dropped her fork onto her plate. “Uh—what?”
The guard had given her his discretion. He’d reneged?
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