Breakaway

by Rochelle Alers

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Every doctor I’ve ever met I found to be very ethical. You’re probably no different.” Gavin winked at her. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Have you had breakfast?” she asked as he headed for the door.

  “No.”

  “It’s going to be a while before we sit down to our pork-fest, so I’ll see what I can come up with to tide us over.”

  “I like pancakes and waffles,” Gavin said before opening the door and walking out into the rain.

  Celia wondered if he’d remembered seeing a box of pancake mix in her shopping cart the day they’d met in the supermarket, or he’d assumed she would have some on hand. She also liked pancakes and waffles, but instead of slathering them with butter and syrup she preferred topping them with fresh fruit in their own juices.

  She’d returned to the kitchen and gathered what she needed to prepare breakfast by the time Gavin walked in, setting a large box filled with a variety of foodstuffs on the floor. He’d removed his boots.

  Staring mutely, she saw a package of hamburger buns, a jar of dill pickles, bottles of spices, ketchup, honey, vinegar and a large bag of wood chips.

  Gavin saw the direction of her stunned gaze. “This is for real, Celia.”

  “I suppose I’m really going to have to bring my A game.”

  “Bring it or go home, baby,” he taunted.

  Crossing her arms under her breasts, she angled her head. “Oh, it’s like that?”

  Gavin assumed a similar pose. “It’s like that. And I’m not going to soften the blow because you’re a girl.”

  “What if I resort to tears?”

  “Forget it, baby girl.”

  “What if I…” Her words trailed off when Celia realized what she was about to propose.

  “What if you what?” Gavin asked.

  “Forget it, Gavin.”

  He dropped his arms. “Oh, no, sweetheart. You have to finish what you started to say.” Celia compressed her lips tightly, dimples deepening in her flawless cheeks. Smiling, Gavin raised his eyebrows as realization dawned. “I will concede right now if you’ll allow me to seduce you.”

  Celia’s jaw dropped. He’d read her mind. “That’s not fair!”

  “Why isn’t it fair, Celia?”

  “I win and you get the spoils.”

  “No, baby. We would both win, because I’d make certain you would enjoy making love to me as I would enjoy making love with you.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “So, it would be a win-win competition.”

  “I’d like to believe it would be.”

  Pulling back her shoulders, Celia felt emotionally stronger than she had in a very long time. She was no longer the little girl who had to fight to prove her worth in a family where males dominated. She’d come to terms with being labeled a nerd because she preferred studying to hanging out with the boys who’d shown an interest in her.

  She was beyond the taunting of the girls at her college when they’d discovered she sent her laundry out instead of doing it herself. And she’d realized her lifelong dream to become a doctor the day she walked across the stage to receive her medical degree.

  It had taken a kiss from a man—the one standing in her kitchen—to shock her into an awareness that she’d accepted less than she’d expected or deserved from a man she’d planned to spend her life with.

  “I know it’s going to happen,” Celia said in a quiet voice. “When or where is something I don’t think either of us can answer right now.”

  Gavin ran his fingers through the soft curls framing her face. “We’ve got time.”

  Celia rested her forehead on his shoulder. They had the summer, and when it ended she knew she wouldn’t be the same woman she’d been last week, this week or even tomorrow.

  Celia and Gavin worked side by side in the kitchen as if they’d choreographed their movements. She felt like an actor in a film production where food had become a character. She thought of movies like Soul Food, Like Water for Chocolate, Tortilla Soup and her personal favorite—What’s Cooking?

  She sliced peaches, honeydew and cantaloupe for a fruit cup and pureed berries in a food processor as toppings for the waffles, while Gavin had begun the task of filling a pan with apple-infused wood chips, which he’d soaked in water. Within half an hour the kitchen was filled with the aroma of seasoned pork and fruity wood. Celia estimated her roast pork loin would cook in three hours, whereas it would take almost twice that long for Gavin’s.

  Celia was surprised that she and Gavin were bonding over food, when it had been medicine with her and Yale. Perhaps, she mused, there was some truth in the adage about not bringing one’s work home. Medicine was the only thing she and Yale had in common.

  Light from the hanging fixture over the kitchen glinted off Gavin’s black cropped hair as he sat opposite Celia, staring intently at her mouth whenever she opened it to take a forkful of food. He was enthralled with her delicate grace. Everything about her exuded elegance, from the way she held her silverware to her ramrod-straight posture.

  He drained a goblet of chilled freshly squeezed orange juice. “Where did you learn to cook like this?” The buttermilk waffles topped with fruit were delicious.

  “My college roommate taught me,” Celia admitted. “Before I met her I didn’t know how to turn on a stove.”

  Gavin gave her an incredulous look. “Who cooked for you?”

  “My mother employed a full-time chef, because she’d never learned to cook. It’s been a bone of contention between her and my grandmother for years.”

  Celia entertained Gavin with stories of the pranks she’d played on her parents, with the assistance of several of her cousins, how she’d come of age while in college and the physical and mental sacrifice she’d endured to become a physician.

  She gave Gavin a dimpled smile. “There you have it. The life and times of Celia Cole-Thomas.”

  “Were you named for Celia Cruz?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “How did you know?”

  Gavin winked at her. “Lucky guess.”

  Some sixth sense told Celia it was not a lucky guess, that Gavin Faulkner wasn’t what he’d presented to her. He claimed to be a personal bodyguard, admitted to carrying a firearm, although he’d managed to conceal it from her; he’d traveled widely and was on a first-name basis with wealthy people who’d sworn him to secrecy.

  “I don’t believe you, Gavin.” She’d spoken her thoughts aloud.

  His expression stilled, becoming impassive. “Why wouldn’t you believe me, Celia? You claim to have Cuban roots and Celia Cruz was Cuban, so I’d assumed you were named for the Queen of Salsa. Now, if I told you that I liked you the way a man likes a woman would you believe me?”

  There was an open invitation in the depths of his dark eyes that wrung a smile from Celia. “Yes.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I felt your erection when you kissed me.”

  “Are you always so candid?”

  “You had a hard-on, Gavin. There aren’t too many more ways to say it unless you want a clinical description.”

  Gavin held up a hand. “No, please don’t.”

  “Did I embarrass you?” she asked, teasing him.

  “I don’t embarrass easily,” he countered.

  “We’ll see.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “My, my, my,” she crooned. “Don’t tell me you’re getting defensive.”

  “There’s nothing to defend, Celia.”

  “Are you going to deny my brother hired you to protect me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Did Diego pay you to look after me?”

  A beat passed as Gavin’s internal radar went into overdrive. Celia believed her brother had hired him to protect her. “You believe your brother hired me to protect you from what, Celia?”

  She rolled her eyes and exhaled a breath. “Diego has been hovering over me like a mother
hen since I’d agreed to testify at the trial of a gang member who’d shot up the hospital where I worked.”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “What happened?” he asked, not confirming or denying he’d come to the mountains to protect her.

  Celia told Gavin everything about the shooting in shockingly vivid detail. She also revealed that she was to be the state’s only witness for the young man charged with multiple counts of capital murder, manslaughter, attempted murder and depraved indifference. Although he’d sustained a gunshot wound to the head, the fifteen-year-old, who was to be tried as an adult, had spent more than eight months in a coma. His parents wanted doctors to take him off life support but a court order overruled their request. He eventually came out of the coma and was declared fit to stand trial.

  “Although I didn’t see his face, I could identify him by his tattoo.”

  “What about his tattoo, Celia?”

  “He belongs to a street gang that has the same tattoo of a dagger dripping blood on the backs of their left hands. But to differentiate one from the other, each member adds their own unique signature under the three red drops of blood.”

  Lowering his arms, Gavin stood up and sat down next to Celia. Vera had given him sketchy details about the E.R. shooting. What she hadn’t told him was that Celia was to become the prosecutor’s lead witness.

  “What was his signature tat, baby?”

  A wry smile twisted her mouth. The image of the tattoo was imprinted on her brain for an eternity. “It was a snarling pit bull standing in a pool of blood.”

  Gavin swallowed a savage expletive. “Is there a date set for the trial to begin?”

  Celia shook her head. “I was told it wouldn’t happen until the end of the summer. The prosecutors want an airtight case before going to trial.”

  “Is the little shit out on bail?”

  Despite the gravity of the conversation, Celia smiled at Gavin’s reference to the young psychopath. “No. The judge set the bail so high his family would have to rob Fort Knox to come up with enough cash to bail him out.”

  “What makes you think I’m here at the behest of your brother to protect you, Celia?”

  Turning her head, Celia met Gavin’s resolute stare. “After I was released from the hospital, Diego hired a security company to guard my house 24/7. He’s fearful that I’ll become a victim of gang retaliation because I was able to identify one of the shooters. He sent his personal driver to drive me wherever I had to go, and he convinced my brother Nicholas to have me spend time at the horse farm when he knows I don’t like horses.”

  Gavin pressed his mouth to the column of her scented neck. “I don’t know either of your brothers, Celia, but if they feel you need protection, then I’m volunteering for the role.”

  “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  Her eyes moved slowly over his face, looking for a hint of guile. “I don’t know, Gavin,” she said after a pregnant pause. “I don’t know because I don’t know you.”

  A grin of supreme male satisfaction parted his lips. “But you will get to know me,” he crooned. “You’ll get to know everything you need to know.”

  “What if I pay you for your services?”

  “No, you won’t,” he protested. “I don’t want or need your money.”

  “What do you want, Gavin?”

  Tracing the outline of her ear with his finger, Gavin replaced it with his mouth. “I want you, Celia.” His gaze dropped to her mouth.

  She shivered from the warm breath wafting in her ear. “Are you certain you don’t want me to pay you?”

  “I’m very, very certain.”

  “Why won’t you take money from me, Gavin?”

  “Because then I’d become your employee, and I’ve made it a practice never to mix business with pleasure.”

  “Are you saying you want me to pleasure you, Mr. Faulkner?”

  Gavin was frustrated. Why, he thought, was she making it so difficult for him to get close to her? She’d told him about the shootout at the E.R., but hadn’t mentioned that one of the fatally injured doctors had been her fiancé, which led him to believe that she was still mourning a dead man.

  “No. I’m not offering to protect you in exchange for sex.”

  “Are you always so ethical?”

  “What’s it going to be, Celia? Will you permit me to take care of you?”

  Celia pondered his query. No man, other than her father, brothers and male cousins had ever offered to take care of her. The men in her family did it out of familial obligation because of the Cole dogma that the women rule and the men serve. The women were responsible for setting up and running their households, nurturing their children, while their men protected their families and perpetuated the family fortune.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Cradling her face between his hands, Gavin angled his head and sealed their agreement with a tender kiss. The intense craving to sleep with Celia had eased with her acquiescence.

  He was going to enjoy romancing the sexy doctor while waiting for his brother to surface.

  Chapter 7

  Shifting his chair, Gavin eased Celia over to straddle his lap. “What do you want, Celia?”

  She rested her forehead against his, their mouths inches apart. “Right now, I don’t know what I want. If you’d asked me what I need, then I’d tell you that I need you. I lost my fiancé in the shootout and I’ve spent the past year going through a tumult of emotions: grief, guilt, fear and outrage.”

  Gavin kissed her forehead. “Why would you feel guilty, baby? Was it because you survived when the other two doctors died?”

  Celia swallowed the lump in her throat, making it difficult for her to speak. “One of those doctors was my fiancé. Yale wasn’t scheduled to work that night, but we’d had an explosive argument the day before. He’d changed his schedule because he wanted to talk to me once my shift ended.”

  “Couldn’t he have set up another time for the two of you to talk?”

  A wry smile twisted Celia’s mouth before she buried her face between Gavin’s neck and shoulder. “If you’d known Yale, then you’d know he wasn’t one to let things sit and simmer.”

  Gavin rubbed her back as one would a fretful child. “If you don’t mind my asking, what had you argued about?”

  “I’d bought a house from my cousin and hadn’t told him about it.”

  “Was there something wrong with the house?”

  Easing back, Celia stared at the man holding her protectively in his embrace. “There was nothing wrong with the house. Nathaniel, who’s an architect, designed the house as a wedding gift for his bride. After they were divorced, I’d asked Nathaniel to sell it to me. The design has won a number of awards and it sits on prime Miami Beach real estate.”

  “It must be quite the showplace.” Gavin’s voice was shaded in neutral tones.

  “It’s magnificent, Gavin. But, Yale considered it an act of betrayal.”

  “Why?”

  Celia paused, her gaze downcast as she recalled the acerbic words her late fiancé had flung at her. It had taken a full minute for her to react to his bitter tirade. She told Gavin about the clinic she and Yale had planned to open. “Yale used his inheritance to buy the building, and what he hadn’t known was that I was going to underwrite the cost of renovating the property and the medical equipment. After he’d discovered what I’d paid for the house he went ballistic, accusing me of not loving or trusting him enough to tell him how much money I had.”

  “You weren’t married to him, so your net worth was none of his concern.”

  “When I told him that, it just made him more incensed. I moved out of the apartment and into the house because I got tired of the sniping and hostile glares. I told Yale that I wasn’t ending the engagement but needed to put some space between us. Living and working with someone 24/7 can put strain on a relationship.”

  Cradling her head in his hands, Gavin kissed the end
of her nose. “I wouldn’t know about that because I’ve never had a relationship with someone with whom I worked.” Even when he’d gone undercover with a female agent, Gavin had made certain not to become emotionally involved with her.

  “I think Yale’s ego was somewhat bruised. He hadn’t expected me to move out.”

  Gavin kissed Celia again, this time on her mouth. “You can’t blame yourself for someone else’s actions. It was his choice to change his shift. It was beyond your control.”

  Looping her arms around Gavin’s neck, Celia rested her head on his shoulder. “That’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “Believe it, Celia.”

  She wanted to believe it but when she least expected, doubt would creep in, shaking her confidence. Celia sat up straight, going completely still when she felt Gavin’s hand searching under the hem of her pullover.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to see what he did to you.”

  It was a full minute before Celia realized he was talking about the shooter. “No, Gavin. I won’t let anyone see it.”

  He chuckled softly. “I’m not anyone, sweetheart. Remember, I’m your personal bodyguard.”

  “You’re really taking this bodyguard stuff to heart, aren’t you?”

  Combing his fingers through her hair, Gavin held the mop of black curls off Celia’s small, round face. “You just don’t know how serious I am, Celia Cole-Thomas,” he whispered, placing feathery kisses over her forehead, each eye, nose and mouth. He didn’t kiss her mouth; he caressed it with his lips.

  Warming shivers swept over Celia; she was melting into Gavin’s warmth and strength. He’d appointed himself her personal bodyguard and she would let him protect her from fears and dangers—known and unknown.

  Shifting slightly, she pulled up the right side of the pullover, baring her back. “I’m scarred, Gavin.”

  Gavin lowered his hands and tugged at the hem of her shirt, pulling it up and over her head. His gaze lingered on the soft swell of firm brown breasts rising and falling above the lace of a silk bra the same hue as Celia’s complexion. “You’re not scarred, Celia. You’re beautiful.”