Gabrielle let go of his sleeve and turned to face her father's assistant. The blonde smiled pleasantly. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to catch you before you left. There's heavy snowfall reports for the area and Cameron would prefer that you didn't risk driving in such conditions. We've arranged a cabin for you for the night, with our compliments." She held out a keycard. "It's the MacKenzie King cabin, at the end of path. They're all marked very clearly."
Seth looked at the keycard for a moment, then slowly reached out to take it. "Tell Cameron he's a pain in the butt, but I accept the offer." He shook his head. "I can't refuse, can I?"
Darlene smiled. "You'd look foolish if you did. The snow fall warnings are quite real." As she turned away, she winked at Gabrielle.
Gabrielle cleared her throat, trying to cover her shock. Darlene was always so completely professional. It was the first time she had ever seen that professional appearance give way to anything else. But then, Darlene and she had never really got along.
Gabrielle looked up at Seth. "I was going to head for my cabin, too. Let me get my coat and I'll show you where your cabin is."
Seth nodded.
She hurried into the closet and found her coat and threw it on, aware that her heart had started to beat with a triple-time tattoo. She was grateful for this last minute reprieve, even as she was angry with her father for the bare-faced manipulation. Seth's reaction indicated that he knew he was being pushed around, too.
She felt flushed and flustered by the time she returned to where Seth stood at the doors. He had collected the bag holding her camera and laptop, and she picked up her old digital camera and slipped the carry strap over her shoulder.
"I don't know about you, Gabrielle, but I really need to be somewhere quiet and away from people," Seth said in an undertone.
She looked up at him, startled. "God, yes," she said, her breath escaping her in a rush.
He nodded. "Let's go." He pushed open the door for her.
She stepped out into the crisp, still air, pushed her hands into her pockets and drew in a deep lungful of the cold air. "It's wonderful," she sighed.
Seth stopped next to her. "Left or right?"
She turned left and they walked slowly down the wide path, enjoying the coolness. The path was well lit, with lamp posts every ten feet or so along the way. Snowflakes drifted down from a low sky. It wasn't snowing hard yet, but the clouds had a heavy, pregnant look that promised more.
"Is your family always like that, Gabrielle, or was that just for me?" Seth asked.
"That's pretty much standard for them," Gabrielle said, with a sigh. "Actually, they were a bit subdued. You had them cowed. I don't recall the last time they really listened to me talk about my friends before."
"You mean about Sofia Coppola and the new film she's directing?"
Gabrielle frowned as she watched snowflakes drift down, and tried to find the right analogy. "It was like...being able to take a full breath." She looked up at him. "I should bottle you and take you with me to every family function. I don't know how you did it, Seth. I've been living with them for twenty-eight years and I've never considered myself a coward, or short on backbone, but until you were there I've never noticed how much they had cut off my breathing. Like boa constrictors...each exhalation, they contract around you until you can't breathe anymore."
Seth's hand rested on her fingers. "I think you just answered your own question, Gabrielle. You've been living with them for twenty-eight years. I just got here. They've had time to work on you and squeeze out your breath."
She smiled. "You stayed with my analogy. That's cute."
"I aim to please."
"Do you?" she asked. "Is that why you're here, Seth?"
He glanced at her. "I know I promised an explanation, but I don't want to do it out here, where anyone can hear. Do you mind?"
She looked around. "There's no one out here."
"You'd be surprised. I'd rather wait until we're inside. Indulge me."
"Alright," she said slowly. She pointed to the cabin they were approaching. "This one is mine," she said. "I want to change my shoes for boots, and drop off the cameras. Give me a couple of minutes."
She took the heavy bag from him, leaving him standing in the lightly falling snow, a broad-shouldered man in an unexpectedly elegant European-style long dark winter coat that matched the black hair. In the low light of the late winter afternoon, his hair showed blue highlights from the lights shining from the cabins and lamps around him.
Then there were his eyes. The blue intensity of them. They saw more deeply inside her than the entire sum total of paying audience members of every movie she'd ever made.
Gabrielle hurried inside the chalet, the image of Seth lingering in her mind. She wanted to press herself against him and kiss him. No, that was too simple an explanation for what she wanted to do. Kissing was just the beginning.
She thought again of that moment in the truck, back at Seth's cabin. The almost-kiss. The tension that had screamed through her.
Seth could have taken his kiss and far, far more right then. She had been operating without a net. No safety harness and live bullets.
As Gabrielle changed her stilettos for more practical and warmer winter boots, a pair with heels that still gave her some height and protected her legs under the long coat, her body responded to the memory of the moment in the truck. She grew aroused and her heart began to beat frantically in her chest.
Then there had been the moment outside her father's study. She had been completely at Seth's mercy. If he had reached out and taken her, she would have had no defenses to raise at all. She wouldn't have even tried to struggle.
Gabrielle stared sightlessly at her boots as the truth formed in her mind.
When it came to Seth, she had no restraints. She didn't know how to stop herself. Only Seth himself had prevented them from falling instantly into bed and Gabrielle repeating history.
Again.
Gabrielle shook her head. "No," she whispered to the empty room. No, not again. This wasn't like any of the other times.
There was a huge difference.
This time, she wanted him. For the first time since she had got sober and straightened up her life, she actually wanted a man with something beyond an interest that lasted longer than thirty seconds.
Gabrielle swallowed. Lord, how she wanted him.
She finished slowly zipping up her boots.
And Seth wanted her. He'd admitted as much. But he'd walked away.
Why had he come back? Why wouldn't he kiss her?
Feeling better equipped to face Seth and the elements, Gabrielle hurried back out to where he waited and again felt the same little trip hammer in her heart and gut when she saw him.
She paused on the verandah step, six inches higher than Seth, looking down at him. "Remind me again, Seth, why you won't kiss me?"
His eyes seemed to darken at her question. "I won't kiss you until you know for sure I'm not just another Adrian, or one of his breed."
"God, I already know that, Seth," she said, her voice emerging husky with surprise and concern. "My father shoved your record at me and insisted I read it before I burn—what's wrong?"
Seth had winced and now rubbed his temples. "That's...great. That's...god, that's really sensitive information. It's high security stuff, for a start, Gabrielle. And second, you're not Canadian. And third..." He let out a breath. "I don't know what the third is. How about it's information that would get me court-martialed if I so much as breathed about it and you and your father are just handing it around the family like a tabloid newspaper? Read all about it."
His distress was genuine, coming off him in waves. She reached for him, soothing him. "No, no, Seth, you misunderstand. Only my father and I read that file and I destroyed it straight afterwards. Not even Darlene saw the inside of it. And it was just your records, not details—where you went and when, and honors. Lord, the decorations, Seth!" She curled her hands around the lapels of his coat
and shook him. "Why are you forbidden to speak of it? It's appalling!"
His hands covered hers, warm and big. "It's the nature of what I do," he said gently. "I'm supposed to be a normal person, according to the rest of the world. I can't be awarded military honors if I'm meant to be a civilian."
"It stinks," Gabrielle said hotly.
"It's fine the way it is," Seth told her. "I don't need public acknowledgement." His gaze was steady. "But that doesn't mean I'm any happier about the fact that you've seen my records, Gabrielle."
She sighed. "My father gave me the file and I couldn't not read it. I wanted to know who it was I'd driven out of my life. I thought it might show me where I'd gone wrong. I thought I'd lost you, Seth." She looked him in the eye. "I'm still not sure I haven't."
Seth's hands tightened around hers and plucked them from his coat. "Let's locate my cabin," he said neutrally.
Gabrielle suppressed her sigh. "Okay," she said, trying to match his tone. She turned left again and walked, and fought for a casual tone. "You really can't get lost around here. You just keep following this path. It makes up a great big loop. Your cabin is at the end of the loop and sits out on the lake. If you're into fishing at all, you can sit on your deck and hang a line out into the water off the edge of it in the summer. I've had ice-skating friends who use it as a skating post in the winter, when the ice is thick enough. The lodge scrapes the ice right up to the deck."
"Sounds idyllic." His tone was equally as casual.
"I used to use the cabin myself, up until a few years ago," Gabrielle explained.
"What made you trade?"
She shrugged. "Oh, I felt like a change. You know." She looked up at the night sky. The snow clouds were so low and thick, they were picking up the lights from everywhere—the lights from Jasper, cars, houses—and reflecting them back, which the thick snow cover was bouncing straight back up. The dark sky was light-filled and illuminated in a ghostly, glowing way. The snowfall had retreated to a few drifting flakes, but the bulging sky spoke of much, much more to come.
"I'm sorry," Seth murmured. "I wasn't thinking. It was all part of the big change a few years ago, right?"
She nodded.
"Did it help?"
"Not according to my family."
"I was asking you."
She bit her lip. "Coming back here the first year was torture," she confessed. "Changing cabins didn't really help all that much. I still had to deal with everyone else. I'd only been...well, 'clean' for a couple of months and everyone was still treating me like the drama queen I'd been for the last twelve years or so. It was hell on wheels. I don't think I spoke more than a dozen words the entire three weeks." She smiled at him. "My family, Seth, is a unique species. I feel like I should apologize for them."
"Don't," he said softly. "Your family and you, too, are your father's off-spring. You're all leaders, directors and managers of people. You can't help it. It just comes naturally to you and the manipulation of human nature becomes a battlefield inside the family because you've got too many directorial egos in the same space."
She'd never heard it put that way before, but now that Seth had simplified it, she realized that this was her family, exactly. Seth had captured their essence in a single afternoon.
"You're good," she breathed.
"I'm interested," he confessed.
"Why?"
"It's your family." He gave a small laugh. "And I've really never met a family like them before. You're right, Gabrielle. They're something else."
She found herself laughing suddenly, as she recalled Madison's lifted brow when Seth confessed to liking Canadian rye and Sydney's blank expression when Seth had given her the opening to fire a return salvo back.
She put her hand on the top of the fat post on end of the traditional railing edging the small entrance to Seth's cabin and waved him forward. "Your cabin."
He stepped up onto the verandah and pulled out the keycard. "It's bigger than I thought."
"Dad doesn't do things by halves."
"So I'm learning." He turned to look at her. "Do you want to come in?"
She looked at the familiar cabin. There was a formal sitting room, two bedrooms, each with their own en suite, a small kitchenette and the famous back deck. Stepping in would mean nothing more than coming in from the cold. But she hesitated. Memories swamped her and they weren't good ones. On top of that was the sensation that her father had planned this from the outset. The coming snowstorm was a convenient excuse, but in this family of manipulators, he was a master. For some unstated reason, he wanted Seth to marry her and was willing to pay a million dollars to ensure the nuptials took place. Stepping inside would just adhere to her father's plans, wouldn't it? What about her own?
What were her own plans?
"Seth, can I be honest?" she said.
He shut the door again and put his hands in his pockets. "I'd give anything for honesty." His voice was low, a deep rumble and it made her shiver.
"Even if you don't like the answer?"
"Even then." His eyes glittered in the low light under the verandah roof. His gaze was watchful.
"Okay." She took a breath. "You have to know, Seth O'Connor, you're the only man that's ever walked away from me. No one's ever done that before."
"Ever?"
"No. It was quite a lesson for me."
"It wasn't supposed to be a lesson."
"It was anyway, Seth. I didn't like what it told me about myself. 'Selfish' was the least of it. 'Ego' was in there, too."
Seth held up his hand. "You don't have to do this, Gabrielle."
"Yes, I do," she said quickly. "I'm trying to tell you why I'm not going to go inside."
"You're not?"
She shook her head. "I can't, Seth. It's not just the memories. They're rotten, gut-churning things that make me ashamed. But they're just memories and when I'm with you, they're nothing. That's why I needed to explain all the rest. You make me feel...god, Seth, you make me feel young again. Do you know how precious that is?" She smiled. "And you make me feel like if I stepped inside with you and took off my coat, I wouldn't be able to stop at just my coat...or yours. I know it's probably wicked, Seth, but I can't keep what I saw of your body during the accident out of my mind. I keep replaying it over and over and I want to see you naked again. Properly naked. And I want to be free this time to run my hands over you."
Her voice was shaking, but she needed to get the rest of it out, so she took another deep breath and pushed on. "I want to do all that, but I don't even know you. I know your military record, but I don't even know if you like coffee or tea, or if you prefer the left or the right side of the bed, or your favorite music, or slow dancing or if we're totally and one hundred percent incompatible."
"Gabrielle—"
"No, let me finish!" she said quickly.
He nodded.
She could feel the buildup of hot, hard tears in the back of her eyes. This was harder than she thought, this truth-telling. "On top of all of this, there's my father's one million dollars," she said bitterly. "I know he hasn't retracted it, has he?"
There was a heartbeat of silence. "No," Seth said at last.
"And finally," Gabrielle finished, feeling the first of her tears flow, "There's the still-to-be-explained reason you came back." She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. "Damn, I didn't want to do that." Her voice was hoarse.
He gave a low curse and pulled her into his arms and just like that she was where she had fantasized about being only a few minutes ago, tucked inside his coat and cuddled up against his chest, his arms around her.
"You're an impossible woman," he said.
"I've heard worse."
"Gabrielle, if you had any idea..." He sighed. "You think you've got the ultimate dilemma?" He lifted her chin so that she was forced to look into his eyes. "I have a proposal," he said. "It's five-thirty, thereabouts. Have dinner with me in the main building—you and me in one of the restaurants."
"A da
te?"
"Yes."
"In public?"
"You're with me. You're perfectly safe, I guarantee it."
There was something in the way he said it that made the small hairs on the back of her neck try to stand up. "Seth...do you...are you armed?" she asked softly.
"Not that you'd notice just looking at me, but yes."
Her heart thudded. "It's against the law to carry arms in Canada," she said. Her gut clenched. "Seth, are you on active duty?"
He hesitated before he answered. "Yes." His voice was low.
Her breath came faster. She stepped back from him. "Since when?"
"Since three twenty-three a.m. last night," he said softly.
Last night...when he must have retrieved her camera and her laptop.
"What else did you find in my car, Seth?"
"We should discuss this inside."
"What else did you find in my car?"
"An explosive device designed to take out your brakes."
Someone had tried to kill her. Seth had come back because someone was trying to kill her.
Chapter Seven
Gabrielle reached for the verandah rail, weak and a little dizzy with the speed of bewildering thoughts and questions slamming into her brain. "Oh my lord..." she gasped.
Seth was holding her up, picking her up. "Up you come," he murmured.
"Why me?" she whispered.
"They're not going to get you," he said. "Not while I'm here."
"But what did I do? What made them want to kill me?" she asked Seth in an undertone, clutching at his shoulder as he hurried along the path. It was snowing much harder now. Flakes clung to his black hair.
"We'll figure that out," he assured her. "Try to hold it together, Gabrielle. You're in shock. I'm going to fix that in a minute. Breathe deeply."
She could feel the tremors rippling through her and her teeth chattering. She clung to Seth and rested her head against his shoulder, listening to his heartbeat as he walked. Her body shook as she tried to encompass the awful sensation that someone in the world wanted her dead.
The worst part of it was that she had no idea why.
She heard the squeak of a hinge and the slap of a door, then indoor warmth and light fanned her face. The familiar sounds of controlled hysteria surrounded her. She recognized them as the noises of a commercial kitchen and lifted her head a little. They were in a streamlined, narrow kitchen, surrounded by sous chefs and aides, all looking harried and surprised by Seth's arrival and his burden.
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