by Robyn Grady
“Ooh, bad boys.”
He grinned. “I can’t speak for Zane.”
She didn’t know about Zane Rutley either, but Gabriel Steele could make any woman melt at a hundred paces. His every move was measured, exact, and at the same time effected with inherent masculine grace. Her cheeks heated. Although he hadn’t touched her yet, she was already simmering inside.
When he stopped before her, she expected his mouth to break into his trademark sexy-as-sin smile. She expected him to sweep her up and kiss her as he’d kissed her through the magical hours of last night. But his lopsided grin remained fixed, and the gleam in his eye seemed somehow…cool.
She felt a little off balance when his fingers curled around her arm and his freshly shaved cheek rubbed lightly against hers.
His lips brushed her temple. “How was your afternoon?”
“Busy.” Her ankle throbbed to punctuate the point.
He drew away and assessed her butter-yellow dress, his gaze deliberately trailing her shape in a vaguely predatory fashion before he ushered her, a hand on her elbow, towards the outdoor setting.
He indicated an ice bucket. “Champagne?”
“You said you’d have it poured,” she teased.
“Nothing worse than when bubbles go flat.”
He popped the cork, and foam spilled over the rim to darken the timber near his feet. To take her mind off his intoxicating sandalwood scent, she inspected the champagne label.
“My father used to keep a couple of bottles of that for special occasions.”
“It’s a rare vintage.” He handed her a glass. “Is your father here with you on the island?”
The breath went out of her. “He died a few years ago.”
His gaze jumped up from his pouring of a second glass. His searching eyes clouded and his voice dropped. “Nina…I’m sorry.”
She sighed quietly. Gabriel could be so strong, yet there were times, like now, he could be so sensitive. As if he truly knew her. Knew her like no one else could.
But then he cleared his throat, raised his glass to his lips, and the deeper moment was gone.
“I bumped into someone this afternoon.” He sipped, swallowed. “He told me the most fascinating story.”
He was watching her over the rim of his glass and the glint in his eyes now seemed almost steely. She’d seen a few sides to Gabriel—uncompromising hero, charmer, believer, lover. When they’d left the cabin this morning he’d been cagey. But the vibes she caught now didn’t fit with any of that.
That pointed gleam in his gaze was enough to make her shiver. Who was the “someone” he’d spoken with?
She sipped champagne without tasting it and when he didn’t divulge more she asked, “What did this man say?”
A humourless smile tugged one side of his mouth. “I thought you might like to tell me.”
Her breath died in her chest. She closed her eyes as her stomach rolled over twice, then sank to her knees. Her throat convulsed and she swallowed.
“You know.”
His chin went up. “I know.”
She’d been caught out before she’d had the chance to come clean. Someone had let on that she was an employee of the island and, given the hard line of his jaw, Gabriel wasn’t pleased.
She managed to keep her voice steady. “Gabriel, let me explain—”
“I will. But first…”
His palm scooped behind her neck and his mouth opened over hers. The lip-to-lip contact sent jets of recognition shooting through her veins. Every cell in her body seemed to tremble, light up and press in. The renewed awareness was so strong, so vital, it was all she could do to remember that…
That this kiss was different.
Rougher.
Dominating.
When their lips parted, her world had slanted and the room seemed to spin. A pulse beat wildly in his cheek, and if he released her there was every possibility she might slide to the floor. As if reading her thoughts, he dragged out a chair. Numbness taking over, she fell into the seat.
“I took the liberty of ordering,” he told her, gesturing to the silver domes set on the table while her mind whirled on. He lifted one dome and the aroma of lobster mornay, scalloped potatoes and buttered asparagus filled her lungs.
He folded into the adjacent slat-backed chair.
“Before you tell your story, Nina, I thought you might like to know more about mine.” He removed his dome, then his napkin flicked out with a snap. “I became aware that Diamond Shores’ previous owner was interested in a buy-out when I paid for April’s wedding and reception. She has no family. After her dedication to her job these past five years, that gift was the least I could do.” He nodded amicably at her plate. “Eat before it gets cold.”
Her limbs were fifty-pound weights. Her lips and tongue were rubber.
“I…I’m not very hungry.”
He collected his cutlery and continued his thread. “You know the resort is running at a loss,” he said, in a monotone that still managed to send heatwaves shimmering over her skin. “The hand-over was low-key. Making my presence known here only to the managers was a strategic decision. It’s difficult to get an accurate idea of performance when fanfares announce your every move. I needed a clear indication of which heads should roll.”
His gaze, holding hers, was both ablaze and cold as a snowstorm. An arctic chill chased up her spine. She couldn’t bear the stomach knots a moment longer.
“I was features editor for a teen magazine,” she got out, clenching the napkin beside her plate. “I was retrenched along with others. I needed a job, but there was nothing available in publishing. It was all I knew.”
All she was.
“That was your crisis?” he surmised, and she nodded. His napkin patted one corner of his mouth. “How did you get a job here?”
“A friend’s father knew the owner. The former owner.” Or so it seemed.
“You had no experience?”
“Next to none.”
His short laugh was abrasive. “No wonder the place is sinking.”
She set her teeth, but continued, “Alice said the hours would be long but the money was good. I could make my mortgage repayments.” Blindly studying her plate, she leaned back. “I didn’t want to lose my house.”
When she levelled her gaze at him, something almost human flashed across his face. But then he took a mouthful of champagne and placed the glass down heavily.
“And yesterday?”
“Was my first afternoon off in what seemed like for ever,” she said. “I was physically and emotionally drained. Most of the staff don’t like me, you see. And it’s true I have a lot to learn. They have every right to feel undervalued. That doesn’t help the way I feel.” Lonely. Very nearly hopeless. “Yesterday I wanted to get as far away from the resort as I could. I started walking, collecting shells to send to my baby nephew back in Sydney.”
“Nephew?”
“My sister’s baby. Codie’s six months old. Jill’s a single mum. She deferred her Masters in Biology to look after him for the first couple of years and—” She stopped, sighed. “You’re really not interested in any of that, are you?”
Gabriel held his impassive face. She was a consummate manipulator, trying to find his vulnerable spot even now. Years had passed, but nothing had changed. Nina was used to getting what she wanted, and it seemed she wanted his sympathy. Wanted him to bail her out.
This afternoon, when he’d uncovered her game, his chest had filled with rage. Having known the princess fourteen-year-old Nina Petrelle had been, he’d easily joined the dots. He had no idea where the Petrelle fortune had gone, but the woman sitting across from him, trying to tug at his heartstrings, needed money badly enough to don an apron. She’d lucked out when he’d come bounding along yesterday to save her. She’d played her cards well and he’d fallen for her.
To a degree.
He didn’t like to be deceived. He’d envisaged sacking her on the spot, throwing her out of her lodgin
gs. He’d imagined the crocodile tears, her pleas, those attempts to use her femme fatale skills to get her way. In hindsight he believed only one thing she’d said.
She wanted to find herself—aka needed to have, to hold, real money again.
His money.
His lips stretched over his teeth.
Time for Act II.
“You might recall I said I’d known a Nina once.” He collected his cutlery again and cut into firm asparagus. “Tell me, have you ever known anyone else called Gabriel?”
His comment pulled Nina up. Her nape prickled with a different kind of awareness as she nodded. “A friend of my brother’s. Gabe Turner.”
“What else do you remember?”
“He was a stuffed-shirt geek who my brother, for some reason, adored.” That horrid gnawing in her gut deepened. She studied the man sitting opposite and instinctively sat back. “Why do you want to know?”
His ice-blue gaze held hers for an endless moment before he announced, “Because that Gabe is this Gabe. Gabriel Turner is me.”
Nina wanted to throw back her head and laugh. She’d never heard anything so ridiculous. Instead she paused to consider the statement more deeply.
“No,” she groaned, slowly shaking her head. “You said…your name is Steele”
But from the start hadn’t there been a distant whisper of this? Seeing him standing on that cliff a second before she’d passed out…even then he’d seemed somehow familiar. This man—the man she’d shared a bed with—he couldn’t possibly be that stiff, zero taste, no personality dweeb she remembered from all those years ago.
Could he?
“Turner was my mother’s name,” he said. “My aunt’s name. When I made amends with my father in my late teens, I took his name. Steele.”
She snapped shut her hanging jaw. “But those ugly sun-sensitive glasses?”
“Laser surgery.”
“Your hair?”
“Comb-overs were never in.”
“You look…taller.”
“I grew.”
“You’re rich.”
He grinned. “Yes, I am.”
She studied his face again, and every molecule of oxygen seeped from her lungs.
Oh, God. It was true.
Her fingers started to tingle and her heart began to pound. She needed a paper bag before she hyperventilated and passed out.
“Faith, my aunt, passed away five years ago from a stroke,” he said, colouring in the rest. “My father died from a coronary not long after we met.”
Her vision clouded and tunnelled in. Aunt Faith…yes, she remembered. His story fitted, but her brain was too overloaded to offer condolences.
As a thousand memories rained down in a battering gale, she peered into Gabe’s hard gaze and somehow managed to set her priorities straight. Not having seen her for well over a decade, Gabe Turner had shown up out of the blue and saved her life?
It was magical thinking, but she wondered whether her brother had had a hand in his buddy being in the right place at the right time. Anthony had always looked out for her in a cool, big-brother kind of way. She only wished someone had been there to look out for him when he’d needed it.
Her brow tingled.
Last night Gabriel had said he’d lost someone close. Someone who’d had faith in him when he’d had little in himself. Anthony.
An image dawned—a clear snapshot of her brother’s face—and despite the situation Nina’s mouth twitched. The image zoomed in to show Anthony’s confounded expression and a smile twitched again.
Gabriel pushed his plate aside. “You think this is funny?”
“Can you imagine what Anthony would say if he knew? He’d be thinking what a huge joke this was on us both. Gabe Turner hated me, I hated Gabe Turner more, and Anthony…well, he loved us both.”
She’d hated the way Gabe Turner had ignored her. Hated those revolting glasses. Hated the fact that his clothes were dull from too many washes and yet he still filled out trousers better than any boy she’d known. Worse, while he’d struggled to afford new socks, he’d always held his head so high. As if he was better than everyone else. Certainly better than her.
Now Gabe Turner was a wealthy man of the world. A gorgeous multimillionaire with whom she’d made love until both were so spent neither could draw another breath.
Her stomach double-flipped.
Her and Geeky Gabe. How totally weird was that?
She must have been staring at him because he pulled in his chin. “What?”
“Don’t you want to know?”
“Know what?”
“Why, when my family was so wealthy, I’m waitressing now.”
His gaze skimmed her lips, his jaw flexed, then he crossed his arms over that big delectable chest. “That question had crossed my mind.”
She was happy to answer. There happened to be a question he might be able to answer for her in return.
“Anthony’s death really shook my parents up,” she told him. “Me and Jill too, but we were young enough not to understand the full weight of the situation. That Anthony really wasn’t coming home and our lives would never be the same. He’d been the jewel in the crown of our family. Everyone loved Anthony. For a long time no one could accept he was gone.”
Gabriel’s arms slowly unravelled. “It was a tragic accident.”
“He loved speed and the idea of taking chances, pushing the limits.” Anthony had skinned his elbows and knees more than once shooting the bowl on his skateboard. “He said he was either going into the air force or to work for National Security as a secret agent.”
A distant smile shone in Gabriel’s eyes. “He’d have done it too. He had the smarts as well as the guts.”
The question burned on the tip of her tongue. She’d wanted to know for such a long time, only she hadn’t thought anyone would know—not even her father, who’d loved Anthony better than anyone. But Gabe and her brother had been so close.
“Anthony must have known he couldn’t possibly do it,” she murmured. “Not in the dead of night. The fact that the place was cursed would’ve been enough to keep me away.” She cast Gabriel—Gabe—an imploring look over the candlelit table. “Did he talk to you about going there?”
Maintaining a thousand-yard stare past her shoulder, he slanted his head and finally nodded.
Nina’s attention picked up, but rather than sharing, Gabriel only thinned the line of his mouth.
“We knew it was some kind of a dare,” she prodded. “I heard my parents talking about Roger someone.”
“Roger Maxwell.”
“That’s it. He dared Anthony to scale the north face of Mount Spectre near your school. It had something to do with a girl Anthony liked.”
“Roger started ribbing Anthony in front of her,” said Gabe, in a low, gravelled tone. “Saying he was a wimp, a chicken, which was the most idiotic thing I’d ever heard. When Anthony laughed it off and went to walk away Roger challenged him. It was only because Roger liked this girl too, and Anthony knew it. Anthony laughed again—until the girl asked whether he was afraid of the curse.”
Nina remembered. “A jilted lover was supposed to have jumped to his death there a hundred years ago. He became a ghost who guarded the peak and gave anyone who climbed such a fright that they’d rather fall to their death than face him.”
“Anthony wanted a trial run up the cliffside first,” he said. “Without Roger and the others looking on.”
“I can’t believe he risked his life to impress a girl.”
“He wanted me to come along.”
What? She sat forward. “You were there? My parents didn’t ever tell me.”
His jaw clenched. “I told him the only way I’d go was if I could manage to catch him when he fell. I knew he could be stubborn, but I didn’t think he’d try it. I was so angry with him.” He blinked and his voice deepened. “Angrier with myself.”
She knew how Gabriel felt…somehow responsible…wanting to rework history. She’d want
ed to be there for Anthony too, to convince him not to be so foolish, and all for the sake of a bet. But no amount of wishing or blame would bring her brother back.
“He made the decision to climb that rock,” she assured Gabriel now. “No one else.”
His eyes burned into space. “I was his best friend. I should’ve talked him out of it. Or physically held him back.”
The way he’d physically held herback yesterday, when he’d dragged her out of the surf and she’d refused to listen to sound advice? She’d thought at the time he was being bossy, but he’d only had her best interests at heart when he’d made sure she’d lain still in case of concussion. All those years ago when she’d hated him—or thought she had—she’d recognised that strength in him too.
Natural. Unswerving.
In her mind she saw Gabriel standing on the very edge of that cliff, the wind gusting through his hair and opened shirt, as if he was daring the gods to force him off. Her gaze roamed the lines of his face and understanding crept in. Now she knew who he was, how their pasts were connected, it seemed obvious.
“You were thinking about my brother yesterday, weren’t you?”
One dark eyebrow arched and he leant back. “I didn’t set out to climb to the island’s highest point. Heights and I don’t mix well. I’d had a quiet, uneventful bushwalk in mind, to clear my mind before heading back to the cabin.” His gaze dropped and he reached for his glass. “Then you happened along.”
She fought the urge to reach over and touch his hand. “Anthony would’ve been so proud if he’d seen you dashing to my rescue.”
His eyes snapped up, but then a shadow of a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. His gaze held hers, and as the moment wound down the space between them seemed to thrum with a different, deeper meaning.
But then he sucked back a breath and shoved to his feet. Glaring at the dark rolling sea, he drove a hand through his hair, then set his fists low on his hips. “None of that makes any difference.”
“Any difference to what?”
He faced her. “Nina, you can’t stay.”
Air seeped from her lungs. The present and its challenges rose up again and she slumped.
“You’re sacking me.” Not a question. Rather a flat-line statement.