It was overwhelming in its horror, and Gabriel shifted left, moved out from under those smothering, clinging hands, and stumbled down the street, ignoring her pleas, the pounding of her shoes as she followed him, chased after him.
There would be no more women, ever.
Chapter Six
“Are you sure you don’t want to stop in anywhere else?” Gabriel asked, as they walked down Bourbon toward Dumaine.
“No, I definitely need to call it a night.” Sara couldn’t believe she’d danced as long as she had. Gabriel must have been bored out of his mind sitting there with his ice water while she danced through an entire band set.
But it had been so much fun, so liberating to just move to the music. To not think, to not worry, to just feel. To interact with people in such a casual, anonymous way.
She sighed, fingering the strand of beads around her neck. Lack of sleep and the wine were catching up with her, making her weary, but in a pleasant, content way. “Thanks for taking me out. I had a good time, and I appreciate you suffering through a boring night to show me Bourbon Street.”
“It wasn’t boring at all,” he said. “I enjoy your company, and I like to people watch.”
Sara told herself to accept that, take it at face value. Enjoy walking beside Gabriel. “There were definitely some people worth watching.” She laughed, picturing the older guy who had suddenly decided to break-dance. It had been worthy of an A for effort, but not much else.
“You have to hit Bourbon with the expectation that you can see pretty much anything at any given moment.” Gabriel gestured to the street to the right. “This is our turn.”
Sara glanced over and lost all her good humor. The street looked pitch black and empty, the few storefronts on it closed up and locked for the night. “This doesn’t look safe.”
“It’s fine. I walk here all the time.”
It went against every dictate of common sense to stroll down what amounted to a wide alley at one-thirty in the morning. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“There’s no other way to get home,” Gabriel told her. “We have to walk down one of these streets, and it makes sense to walk down the street we actually need to be on. We stayed on Bourbon as long as we could.” He gave her a reassuring smile and started down the sidewalk, shadows covering him. “Come on. It’s just a block and a half. We’ll be there in three minutes.”
Sara rushed after him, not because she was convinced they weren’t going to die, but because she sure in the hell didn’t want to be left alone.
“Nothing has ever happened to me,” he added.
As far as she was concerned, that meant he was statistically due to get attacked. But she wasn’t sure how much of her concern was based on good, solid common sense, and how much on the fear she grappled with from her mother’s murder. Maybe it was both, but the end result was she had clammy skin and a sick churning in the pit of her stomach. Shoving her hands in the pockets of her denim skirt, Sara glanced back and forth, back and forth. Checking every doorway, every dark nook and cranny, and ensuring she was close enough to Gabriel to grab him for assistance if necessary. His shirt was in touching distance in front of her, and she found that immensely reassuring.
Especially when she heard a shuffling sound to her right. Reaching out, she wrapped her fingers around Gabriel’s forearm to halt his progress and whispered, “Did you hear that?”
“What?” He stopped walking and glanced back at her, looking only mildly curious. Not at all concerned.
Sara’s fear was so solid and palpable she could have served it on a platter and eaten it. And she could hear the sound again.
“To the right. I hear a shuffling. Someone’s in that doorway two feet in front of you.” She was trying to pull him backward, but Gabriel was resisting. He was actually trying to move
forward
to see where the noise was generating from.
Which was ridiculous. Suicidal. There was probably some guy with a gun just waiting to rob and murder them. The logical thing to do was to turn tail and run. They could hail a cab on Bourbon Street to take them back to Gabriel’s.
Obviously Gabriel had a different plan. His involved pulling away from her and just strolling straight up to the doorway. What kind of stupid idea was that? Sara opened her mouth to scream, just in case she was going to need to alert the masses that they needed help, as he peered around the storefront window.
She held her breath as his head tipped downward and his shoulders relaxed. “It’s just a cat, Sara.”
Oh, shit, thank God
. Sara grabbed her chest and expelled a huge burst of breath. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“Sure that it’s a cat? Uh, yeah.” He sounded amused as he went down on his haunches and held his fingers out.
Okay, so that was a stupid question. Sara forced herself to move forward and see for herself that this was absolutely nothing to worry about. It was a cat, just as Gabriel had claimed. It was a kitten really, a small gray ball of fur, thin and scrawny and blinking up at them with brilliant green eyes.
It gave a small, pitiful meow as it locked gazes with her, and Sara forgot her fear. “Oh, look how sweet.” She squatted down beside Gabriel to get a better look. The kitten was emaciated, its fur dirty and matted. “Oh, my gosh, this poor thing.”
When the cat refused to sniff his fingers, Gabriel pulled his hand back. “It’s obviously a stray. No collar. Probably just a few months old, and from the looks of her ribs, she’s been on the street awhile.”
Sara reached out and stroked the top of the kitten’s head. The cat didn’t balk at the touch, and actually tilted her head and rubbed against Sara’s wrist. “I’m going to take her. I can’t leave her here like this.” The doorway was filthy, covered with cigarette butts and blobs of old chewing gum. Reaching forward, she scooped up the kitten, who didn’t squirm or try to slip away at all.
Sara expected Gabriel to protest, to make a comment about the cat’s lack of cleanliness, possible state of disease, or question where she was going to keep a cat, but Gabriel didn’t say anything. He just put his hand on the small of her back, urging her to continue walking down the street.
“She weighs nothing at all,” Sara commented as she snuggled the kitten closer in her arms, not wanting the cat to make a leap for freedom. Not that the kitten seemed inclined to go anywhere. She was collapsed against Sara’s chest and purring loud enough to be heard.
“We can feed her at my place.” Gabriel moved his hand from Sara’s back to her elbow, pausing her so he could glance past the parked cars and make sure no cars were driving down Royal Street before they crossed it.
It was a nice protective gesture, one Sara liked. One that surprised her, frankly. Gabriel seemed so internal, so focused on his own thoughts, that she wasn’t expecting that level of solicitude. But then again, he had been that way all night. Maybe when he turned off work, when he focused on the world around him, she saw his true character. It was strange that she thought of him as an introvert, even though he talked to her, sometimes quite a bit, like he had at dinner. Yet it always seemed like there was a barrier between him and everything around him, a distance. A reserve.
She didn’t feel that as he pushed open his courtyard gate. She just felt safe and protected in the dark and gloom of the poorly lit street, and she was grateful when he shut the gate behind her and clicked the lock shut. The dark, the looming buildings, the corners and shadows, had terrified her. Gabriel didn’t, even though she knew she had no concrete reason to trust him.
After all, maybe his preoccupation with murder was to quiet his own murderous intentions. Maybe he enjoyed writing true crime books the same way Ted Bundy had gotten a sick thrill from working at a crisis hotline center. He could be a killer. Anyone could. Yet, with nothing more to go on than her gut instinct and the look of sorrow, of longing, in Gabriel’s eyes, she didn’t believe that he was capable of violence. He was as damaged as she was, and it drew her to him.
“Do you have a box or something I can put the kitten in? I don’t want her getting under my car seats or the gas or brake pedals.”
“I’m sure I have something.” Gabriel jogged up the stairs and opened his apartment.
Sara followed more slowly, and by the time she got upstairs he already had a bowl of milk in his hand. He brought it to the floor in front of the couch, so Sara sat down on the hardwood floor, the kitten in her lap. It didn’t take long for the cat to smell food and venture forward, her back legs still on Sara, her front straining to reach the bowl. She lapped out tentatively, then more enthusiastically, drinking quickly. Once she glanced back, milk dripping off her nose and whiskers, and blinked at Sara before sticking her face back in the bowl.
Sara was so keeping the kitten. She was too adorable to give up, practical or not.
“Here’s a towel to use as a blanket,” Gabriel said, handing her a white towel smelling of fabric softener and so sharp in color that it looked bleached.
Gabriel had laundry skills.
“Thanks.” Sara took it, but added, “It’s probably going to get ruined. She needs a bath, and she’s going to get this towel filthy.”
“Why don’t you just give her a bath now? You don’t want to be carrying her around like that. And her fur’s all matted. It’s probably really uncomfortable for her, tugging her skin.”
Sara looked back at Gabriel as she ran her fingers lightly across the kitten’s fur. She had the sense that the room around her had gotten clear, the objects in it sharply focused, more real than they were earlier. It made no sense, but it seemed that she and Gabriel themselves were in sharper focus, and she ached again with the need to touch and be touched, to lay her head down on a man’s shoulder, and rest. The night was dark and silent, and her body weary from lack of sleep, but her mind skittered back and forth, manic and excited, the fear held completely at bay for once. She’d had a fun night. Hadn’t realized she still knew how.
Now she was sitting in Gabriel’s apartment with him, and he was offering up his shower for her to bathe the kitten. It seemed like it should be odd, that they were there together. That their paths in life had crossed.
And he was an alcoholic. Which meant they were potentially poison for each other. They both had addictive propensities.
But it was a working relationship, and a strange, budding friendship that she desperately needed, and she wasn’t going to walk away because of the slim, off chance that it would go too far.
“That’s a great idea, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. You can do it in the bathroom sink so it won’t be as scary for her.”
Sara smiled. “Thanks.” Any man who was considerate of a mangy kitten was a good man. She felt so damn safe with him, and normal. God, it felt normal, even as her head swam from lack of sleep when she stood up quickly. Or maybe it wasn’t that she felt normal. That wasn’t the right word. Normalcy was still elusive. Maybe it was that she felt alive.
For the first time in a year.
Gabriel watched Sara trying to soap up the squirming and desperate cat in his small bathroom. There was water all over the front of her tank top, dripping from the top of her hair, and splashing all over the mirror. Filthy or not, the cat didn’t want a bath, but Sara was determined. Kind and gentle, but determined.
After a chaotic five minutes, she had the cat bundled up in a towel and snuggled against her. She shook her damp hair out of her eyes, and laughed as she glanced over at him. “There. Not so bad.” She kissed the top of the cat’s gray and damp head. “You survived, Angel. From here on out, life will be a piece of cake, I promise.”
Surely he had heard her name for the cat wrong. Or she had just spoken it as a term of endearment. “Angel?” he asked cautiously.
“That’s her name.” Sara smiled and kissed the cat again. “It suits her.”
It took all his effort not to roll his eyes or to turn and just leave the bathroom. She wouldn’t understand that sort of reaction. She didn’t know, couldn’t know, wouldn’t know the truth. So he just said, “Nice. Why don’t you take her to the couch and try to dry her off a little better? I’ll get you a fresh T-shirt. You’re soaking wet.”
Alarm skittered across her face for a second before she masked it. “Great. Thanks.”
On the way to his bedroom, Gabriel paused, glancing into his office. His eye was drawn to his absinthe spoon collection. He was wandering into dangerous territory again. He was condemned to be alone, by his own sins. He couldn’t involve Sara, regardless of how tempting a simple friendship with her was. He’d get her a T-shirt and send her home, and maybe tell her she needed to work from her apartment. They didn’t need to be sitting together to sort through research.
But when he came back with a shirt, after digging through three drawers trying to find one that wasn’t too old and torn up, didn’t have a strange phrase on it, and wouldn’t swallow Sara whole like the whale did Jonah, Sara was asleep on his couch. She was stretched out fully, and the kitten was still snuggled in the towel on her chest, out cold like her owner. He couldn’t wake Sara up. That would be cruel, given that she’d been having so much trouble sleeping. He also suspected she was afraid to go outside, that the streets at night had truly terrified her.
So he found a blanket in his closet and put it over her bottom half, below the cat. Then he paced around his apartment, refusing to acknowledge that she looked battered, yet so at peace in her deep sleep. Refusing to see the way the lamplight filtered over her cheek and hid the dark shadows that offended the beauty of her face. Refusing to see the way her delicate fingers dug into the cat’s fur, clinging and cleaving, a desperate need to hold on.
He would not sketch her. He had not picked up a pencil in a hundred and fifty years, hadn’t felt the urge to do so. He did now. His fingers itched, the artist inside him wanting to reemerge and capture the view, the light, the woman, in front of him. He wouldn’t do it.