To Have and to Hold (14 page)

She'd just managed to extricate herself from a chatty young couple when Richard slid an arm around her waist. “If you're in the market for a rich old husband to fund your work, Mr. Matthews thinks you're a walking work of art.”

“Tell Mr. Matthews that this work of art is taken.”

Jess froze at the sound of that deep male voice, hardly aware of Richard's arm slipping away. And then it was being replaced by a harder, more muscular one. Everything in her thrilled to life.

R
ichard took a step back. “Jess, honey, tell the gorgeous shark by your side that I was joking.”

Snapped out of her semi-shocked state, she smiled. “Richard, meet my husband, Gabriel.”

Gabe's hand moved on her hip and she bit back a responsive gasp. “Richard.”

She stood by while the men shook hands, her heart melting. She forgave Gabe everything—he'd come to support her despite having had made it clear that he was far too busy to do so. Surely that could only mean one thing.

“I see a potential sale over there.” Beaming, Richard excused himself.

Jess shifted to face Gabe without breaking his hold. “You came.” That was when she noticed the rigid angle to his jaw, the tension in the body pressed against hers. Her smile faded.

“What are you doing, Jess?” Something close to disappointment threaded through the anger. “Where is he?”

“Who?” Hope ebbed out of her drop by slow drop.

His expression grew darker. “Kayla is hysterical. She called me begging that I ask you not to take her husband.”

She felt her face blanch. “I guess that answers the question of why you bothered to show up,” she whispered, so hurt that she was numb.

“Jess, my dear.” Mrs. Kilpatrick's voice was a welcome benediction. “Can I steal you away from your husband? I want to talk to you about a possible commission.”

“Of course.” She grabbed the opportunity to move out of Gabriel's hold. But no matter the lack of physical contact, she was aware of him on the most visceral level.

Time passed and she managed to avoid him till almost the end, when she found herself drifting to stand in front of a piece bearing a Not for Sale sign. It was a meticulously detailed painting of Randall Station, one of the few landscapes on show.

“Home,” Gabe said from behind her, reading the title. “But home is somewhere else now, isn't it?”

“No. Home is a place of safety, where people don't automatically assume the worst about you.”

He touched her shoulder in an uncharacteristically soft caress. “Would it help if I said sorry?”

Startled at the idea of him apologizing, she told the absolute truth. “I'm not sure.”

“First, I get that call as I'm about to take off for Auckland, then I walk in and see you dressed as if you're waiting for a lover.” His hand stroked down her spine to rest on the curve of her hip. “I may have jumped to conclusions.”

“
May?
” she asked, struck by something else he'd said. “You were coming up here before Kayla called? I thought you were too busy.”

“I made time.”

A stubborn tendril of hope pushed its way through the hurt. Then Richard was suddenly beside her, wanting her to come say goodbye to several patrons. As a result, the next time she and Gabriel had any real privacy was when they stepped through the doors of the hotel elevator and began walking toward her room.

Her eyes resting on his face, she said, “I can't think what Kayla must be—” She came to a complete halt at her husband's muttered curse. “What's the matter?” She followed his gaze.

Her stomach curdled. Anything good that might have come about as a result of Gabe's unexpected apology had just gone out the window. Striding down the plush carpet, she faced the man slumped outside her door. “What are you doing here?”

Damon stood. “I wanted to talk to you face to face.”

“I said what I had to say on the phone.” Sickeningly aware of another couple walking out of the elevator, she tried to keep her voice low. It was hard—frustration and anger were exploding bullets inside of her. “I told you to go home to your wife.” She slid her keycard into the lock and stepped inside.

Gabe hadn't said a word to that point, but he now put his arm on the opposing doorjamb, turning his body into a very effective barricade. “I think Jess has made herself very clear.”

She placed a hand on his back. “Go, Damon. Whatever we had, it's not there anymore. I don't know that it was ever strong enough to last.” The time for gentleness had passed.

Rebellion spread across Damon's handsome face. “You're seriously choosing him over me? Jesus, Jess! Everyone knows you married him for his money.”

“You know nothing about my marriage,” she snapped, then tempered her voice at the open hurt on Damon's face. “Don't destroy our friendship like this. Please leave.”

“So he can do to you what his father used to do to his mother?” Damon's shouted question attracted the attention of a maid coming along the corridor. The petite woman hurriedly wheeled her cart in the opposite direction.

“What?” Jess frowned, aware that Gabe had gone preternaturally silent. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled in warning.

“My mother used to work at Angel before the fire. She knows all their dirty little secrets!” He reached out as if to grab her from under Gabriel's arm. “I'm not leaving you here with a bastard who's going to put bruises on you!”

Gabe's fist slammed into Damon's jaw. The blow sent him to the floor. Crying out, Jess put herself in front of Gabe, her hands on his chest. “Don't, Gabe.”

Hostility blazed in the green of his eyes and the dark red flush over his cheekbones. There was no question in her mind that Damon was sorely overmatched. In all honesty, she wasn't so sure she could handle Gabe either. But she was his wife.
“Please.”

He finally brought his hands to rest on the flare of her waist. Relief whispered through her.

Damon picked that moment to yell, “I'm not leaving till you tell me you don't love me!”

Jess felt everything in her stop. Her eyes met Gabe's. His hands dropped away and she swiveled to face Damon with a sense of destiny having caught up with her. The younger man struggled to his feet, rubbing his jaw and looking at her in a way she would have given everything for once. But that was then.

She blinked back tears. “I don't love you.”

“You're lying.”

“No, Damon.” Shaking her head, she tried to make him see the truth in her eyes. “I'm not. I don't know if I ever loved you.” She'd clung to him after losing her mother, her father and then her home itself. He'd been the last remaining part of her childhood.

His shoulders were so tight it had to hurt, but the anger seemed to be giving way to grudging acceptance. “You might not love me, but you sure as hell don't love him either. Do you?”

Her spine went stiff. “That's between me and Gabe. You don't have the right to ask me those questions.”

“Jess?” Sheer disbelief.

“Go home, Damon. For God's sake, go home before you lose Kayla, too.” As he'd just lost her friendship. How could she continue to respect a man who'd ignored everything she'd tried to tell him.

As realization dawned across his face she wanted to look away. He didn't give her the chance, striding past her in silence.

Sad for what had become of the wild but never cruel boy she'd known, she turned and walked into the room. It felt as if she'd severed the last safety rope tying her to the past. The future stretched out ahead. And it held only one certainty.

She was in love with Gabriel Dumont.

It had taken her far too long to recognize the feeling, blinded as she'd been by girlish daydreams of what love
should
be. She'd seen in Damon what she'd wanted to see, putting him on a romantic pedestal and spinning perfection out of fantasy.

Gabriel wasn't perfect, far from it. He could be so harshly distant and to expect tenderness from him would be to set herself up for disappointment. But still she'd fallen for him. Because while he might not be perfect, he was a man who'd stand by her through the tides, a man who'd respect his vows and his promises.

He was also a man, no matter what he said, who had the potential to both feel, and give, the deepest, most rare kind of love. The kind that came from the soul and left devastation behind when it was stolen away. She'd found her evidence in an acorn, a bunch of wild daisies and a smooth river-stone.

She wasn't so naive as to think he loved her, but Gabe
could
love, and love as women dreamed of being loved. If only he'd unlock that potential…but no, her husband was determined to dam up his emotions behind a barricade so thick, she was starting to lose hope of ever penetrating it.

The door closed with a click.

Giving a small start, she moved to stand in front of the uncurtained window. “I'm sorry about that.” Gabriel was a proud man, one who wouldn't have appreciated passersby being privy to his private business.

“I think you broke his heart.”

She couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic. “He'll recover. He always does.” In many ways, her childhood friend was still that—a child. It was why she'd found it so difficult to break from him. Because so long as Damon was in her life, she could pretend that nothing had changed, when the truth was…everything had. “And if he has any sense, he'll try to make his marriage work.”

“Hard words.” His hands closed over her shoulders.

“What do you want, Gabe?” Placing her palms against the glass, she stared out at the glittering city lights. “I admitted I don't love him. Isn't that enough?”

He massaged away her tension with fingers grown strong from a lifetime of physical work. “I'd never touch you in violence.”

Jolted by the unexpected reference to Damon's accusation, she tried to meet his reflected gaze, but he was hidden in shadow. “What did he mean about your parents?”

“My father loved my mother,” he said, his tone holding nothing of happiness. “Loved her so much he wanted her to be completely his. Even if he had to lock her in the basement to achieve that.”

She put a hand over his, wanting to cry. Because she knew he never would. “Did he hurt you and your brothers and sister as well?”

“Angelica was too young,” was his oblique answer. “He should've never tried to lay a finger on her.”

“You were all too young.”

“I don't talk about the past. It's dead and buried.”

“But it has a way of rising up as we saw today,” she said quietly, conscious that she couldn't force him to speak. “I'm your wife. Treat me like that matters.”

Releasing her shoulders, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. When she closed her hands over his, she brushed the raw skin of his knuckles. “I never thought you'd be the type to punch another man.” It seemed so emotional an act when control was everything to him.

“Violence runs in the family.”

“You're too smart to accept such a facile explanation.” She leaned fully into him, no longer fighting the effect he'd always had on her. Her body accepted him, knew him, needed him—sensuality was simply one aspect of that craving. “Anyone would have lashed out after what he said.”

“Defending me, Jess?”

“I'm only telling the truth.”

“So was Damon,” he said after a long silence. “Though I suppose you could argue my father rarely ever actually beat my mother. He preferred to break her spirit in ways that didn't leave a mark. I think he'd nearly succeeded until that day when he tried to drag Angelica into the basement.”

She was so worried about disrupting the moment she barely dared to breathe.

“My mother snapped, though I didn't know it then. That night, after my father passed out drunk on the couch, she gave us all a glass of milk.”

“You hate milk,” she said without thinking.

He hugged her tighter. “I didn't realize you knew.”

“I told you, I'm your wife.” And she'd keep fighting for that to mean what it should.

“My mother knew, too, and she didn't usually force any on me.” His voice was calm but she read the emotional truth in the merciless discipline with which he held his body. “That day, I threw it into a planter when she wasn't looking.

“Then, after everyone else had fallen asleep, I snuck out to go exploring at a pond about a mile from the house. By the time I came back, the house was in flames and when I tried to run inside, the people who'd come to help dragged me out.”

She ran a hand gently up his arm. “But you were burned.”

“I was faster than they expected. Got into the hallway seconds before a beam collapsed.”

“The fire,” she whispered, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “It was your mother.”