“Why the hell didn’t you tell me? We have your DNA—we could have done a comp to see if our blood samples were Anne’s or John Thiroux’s or someone else’s entirely.” His hands were on her elbows now, trying to gently push her away. “You let me waste an entire afternoon looking to see if Anne Donovan had a child, when you knew she did. You knew the kid’s name. You knew I was trying to track a descendent.”
“I know and I’m sorry.” She had felt guilty about that. “But the thing is, I didn’t want you to think I was a nutjob. That I had ulterior motives or a bias.” Maybe she hadn’t really had a good reason, but she had been protecting herself. Plain and simple. “Everyone for the past year has been looking at me with pity, Gabriel, waiting for me to crack. They think I’m insane, and maybe I am. But the one secret I managed to keep during this whole ugly investigation and trial is that in every generation of my family, a woman has been murdered. Can you imagine the kind of story the media would make out of that? I’d be a freak show, looked at with pity, fascination, horror. I would have no chance at a normal life.” Just the thought of the headlines, the media camped out on her lawn again, the flash photography going off in her face, filled her with panic. “I swear, some loon would probably even murder me just to be the one who sealed the ‘curse.’ ”
Why wasn’t he saying anything? He was just looking at her, eyes narrowed, frowning, head shaking slightly. “So you’re saying that every generation has had a murder? What kind of murder? Domestic violence, robbery shooting, or random unsolved murder?”
“All of them were random unsolved murders.” A chill went up her spine just saying it out loud. “My mother never seemed to think it was a big deal. She used to joke about it. I personally find it scary as hell. But I’m trying to tell myself it’s a horrible coincidence, that the women in my family who were murdered all lived edgy, dangerous lives. With the exception of my grandmother. As far as I can tell, she was just a suburban housewife.”
Gabriel had at least stopped trying to tug away from her, but now he looked puzzled. He wasn’t actually looking at her, but over her shoulder. “I find that really disturbing,” he said.
Somehow it was the right thing to say, yet the completely wrong thing she needed to hear. At the same time she wanted him to admit and acknowledge that it was weird, beyond coincidence, scary, she didn’t want him to. Because Gabriel had his own baggage. Adding hers to his created a set too heavy to haul around. It might be the very thing that would make him definitively pull away from her. Literally and figuratively.
“I know. And I can’t bear the thought of anyone knowing, of dealing with the fallout from that. Do you understand that?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I get that. But this changes everything.”
“What does it change?” she asked, a sick churning in her gut kicking into overdrive. She relaxed her hold on him. She couldn’t bind him to her by pure desperation and want. That would make her no different than Rochelle. Seeing, forcing what wasn’t there. If he wanted to pull back, she had to let him.
Even if she had fallen in love with him, which she suspected she had.
That knowledge hit her harder than she would have expected. Hadn’t she known she was in love with him? Maybe she had, and she’d chosen to ignore it, pretend that it was lust, attraction, interest brought about from their circumstances, their close proximity. Because maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe she was like Rochelle, having feelings that were false, spinning fantasies about loving him and being loved in return.
But she didn’t believe that. She knew what she felt, knew it was real, knew that she loved him clearly and poignantly for the man he was, whether he would ever return those feelings or not.
It wasn’t wise to love him, not at all self-protective, fraught with the danger of getting her heart trampled, her feelings lacerated, but God knew she couldn’t control it. That was what the last year of her life had taught her—control was elusive. She couldn’t manipulate or change certain events in her life, but she could choose to accept and live the best she possibly could. The search for control, for answers, had landed her in rehab. Sometimes there were no answers.
She had to live with that.
And if Gabriel wanted to walk, she would gather herself and move on. If anything, she had learned she was a survivor.
“This changes the respect I had for you. I thought you were lovely before, Sara, but now I think you’re truly the most amazing woman I’ve ever known.”
It almost made her cry. Suddenly and without warning, they were there, tears in her eyes, from relief and gratitude and modesty. God, she didn’t feel amazing, but she wanted Gabriel to think she was. It felt so freeing to have someone look at her and think that she had it together, that she wasn’t a wreck, a mess, a woman on the verge of a breakdown. She didn’t think she was. She had skirted the edge a few times, but never entirely fallen off, and she was tired of everyone assuming a crash was inevitable.
“Thank you,” she said, blinking hard. “I appreciate you saying that. And we can do whatever you want with my DNA for comparison.”
“We can do whatever
you
want, Sara. Only whatever you’re comfortable with.” He pulled away, but only to turn fully to her and take her cheeks in his hands. His eyes searched her, for what she wasn’t sure. “I’ve been selfish. I know how difficult all of this must be for you, and I haven’t been sensitive enough to that.”
Ironically, she felt the same way about him. “I don’t think you’ve been selfish at all. We’re just trying to wade through ugly stuff . . . It’s hard. It’s emotional. I actually think we’re doing a pretty damn good job of holding it together. Especially since we had the incident with poor Rochelle.”
He looked away and sighed, his hands falling away from her face. “I want you to take everything Alex says with a grain of salt, okay? Alex is charming, but he’s also a liar.”
Sara raised an eyebrow, not sure how he’d jumped back to Alex. “Okay. But why would he want to lie to me? I don’t even know him.”
“He lies just for the fun of hurting people.”
“So why are you friends with him?”
“I’m not. We’ve just known each other a long time.”
“So he probably brought the absinthe then?” That actually reassured her in a weird way. It was better to know how it had gotten there than to imagine something worse. That someone had been watching them, mocking her.
“Probably.”
“You drank absinthe, didn’t you? When you were having your drinking problem.” She was positive that’s what Alex had meant by his comments.
Gabriel nodded briefly, leaning down and scooping up Angel with one hand as the kitten walked past him. He settled her against his chest and scratched behind her ears. “Yeah. It was appealing because you don’t feel drunk. You feel very in control, very intelligent.”
“I understand.” And had the burning cheeks to prove it. She had felt utterly in control peeling her clothes off and touching herself in front of him. Which they had yet to discuss or even mention.
“But that’s all in the past. I don’t drink anymore at all.”
“I know.” Why did it seem like he was telling her something else? Reassuring her, yes, but himself also. And there was something lingering, waiting, hovering between them . . . like everything had been said and yet nothing.
Or maybe she was just tired and needed sleep. It had been almost two days since she’d slept, and she had gotten drunk in the interim. That wasn’t good for her body, or her state of mind. She was exhausted and hypersensitive.
Which might explain why she said randomly, “Your mistakes shouldn’t supersede your gifts.”
He brought Angel up to his face and nuzzled the fur on the back of her neck with his chin. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that your drinking problem shouldn’t prevent you from drawing and playing the piano. You have extreme talent . . . those are gifts that you can’t deny. They need to be shared.”
She wasn’t sure what she expected him to say, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t protest, didn’t agree, didn’t scoff, just put Angel down on the couch and looked at Sara. His poignant looks destroyed her, because they said everything, yet nothing. They were cries for help, tosses of defiance, pleas for understanding, hints at love, yet a barrier that warned the world off. He broke her heart with those looks, made her yearn for solidarity, togetherness, for the comfort of leaning on another person, for the pleasure of being that shoulder in return. To take care of and be cared for. To love and be loved.
“Come lie down with me,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I need some sleep.”
Apparently that was all Gabriel could offer her.
He had warned her, and she had harbored no illusions that it could be more, really, when she had thought that she could have an affair with him, some hot sex to feel good, to forget. But Gabriel didn’t do casual sex, that was obvious, and maybe she didn’t either. If she never had before, why the hell would now be different, when she was actually emotionally engaged, intrigued, longing for Gabriel in ways she couldn’t have him? Sex would be disastrous, would shatter her resistance, strip away her barriers, show him the truth about what she was feeling.
She suspected neither one of them was ready for that.
But Gabriel could and was offering her companionship, a quiet and safe place to stay, to rest.
She took his hand and walked to his bedroom with him.
Chapter Fifteen
He disappointed her.
He could sense that. Sara wanted more. She wanted him to touch her, to make love to her.
Gabriel wanted to do that. Both his body and his soul yearned for that connection with her. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he stripped away Sara’s strength, if he made her miserable and desperate and clinging.
He wanted to give her everything, to let her know how he felt, but he didn’t know how, and his mind was distracted, swirling with the implications of what she had told him about her connection to Anne Donovan.
“What time is it?” she asked as she climbed onto the bed, peeling the comforter back.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We’re just going to lie down.” He knew that Sara would worry about the time, would mentally tick away the minutes as she lay there and couldn’t find sleep, so he didn’t want her to think about it. In the past ten days she had probably slept two or three hours a night, and none the night before. He wanted her to relax, to fall deep into sleep.
Because when she woke up he was going to have to tell her about Rafe. Or at least the portion he could tell her.
Sara sighed when her head hit the pillow. “I feel like I’ve run a marathon. My joints ache.”
“Tension and alcohol. Not a good combination. I shouldn’t have let you drink last night.” He debated taking his jeans off, but figured that was an incredibly bad idea. He settled for kicking off his shoes and peeling his T-shirt off before getting in bed. Flicking his hair out of his eyes, he realized he could probably use a haircut. But he could never be bothered. Though he wondered what Sara thought of his hair, if she thought it was too long.
“Apparently there were a lot of things I shouldn’t have done last night.”
Sara was lying on her side, facing away from him so he couldn’t see her face, but her tone was wry, slightly embarrassed, and Gabriel didn’t like it. “Hey.” He was going to touch her hip, but stopped himself. “Don’t regret anything else. I don’t. You’re a beautiful, sensual woman.” And he wanted to bury himself so deep inside her that she would scream with pleasure.
“Thanks.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “But come on, you have to admit, I have reason to feel embarrassed.”
“No, you don’t.” Hand behind his head, he stared at her, frustrated, wanting her to understand. He fucking would if he could. It wasn’t her. It was totally and completely him. “See if you can get out of your lease,” he said. “Stay here until you’re ready to go home to Florida.”
Sara didn’t say anything, just stared at him, her mouth slightly open, tongue darting out to wet her bottom lip. “Why?” she asked finally.
“Because I want you to.”
“Okay.” Then she sighed again. “I want to sleep. Why won’t it ever come to me?”
“Your mind is too busy, too crowded.” Hell, he could see the wheels turning every time he looked at her. Unable to resist, he reached out and stroked the back of her hair. It was soft, springier than his, and his finger got caught in a curl.
“Do you sing?” she asked, shifting back slightly so she was closer to him.
The bed was getting warm and he was getting sleepy himself. “I love to sing. I’m just not all that good at it.”
“But you’re an artist, a musician. I bet you sing better than you think you do.”
He wasn’t being modest. He really couldn’t sing. “No, I don’t.” No matter how hard he tried, his voice was flat. He could hear music, could coax the piano to provide the right sound, but his voice was incapable of hitting the notes.
“You have to sing for me sometime,” she said, her words trailing off into a big yawn. “I want you to play ‘Beth’ by Kiss on the piano and sing it for me.”
Gabriel laughed softly. “I can do that if we download the sheet music.” She’d regret it, but it wouldn’t be a bad regret, not like another could be if he gave her what they both really wanted. “Why Kiss?”
“Because it’s the first song that popped into my head that has piano in it. My mom was a huge Kiss fan.”
“I see.”
“Gabriel?”
“Yes?” He forced himself to remove his hand from her head, though he snuck in one last stroke, pulling her blond strands out in front of him and letting them fall down onto her back.
“Nothing.” Her words were mumbled.
Disappointed, wishing she had said whatever she’d been thinking, he waited. Then realized that Sara was in the first vestiges of sleep, little rushes of air coming from her mouth. Her body was tense still, shoulders tight, arms clasped in front of her, knees jutting out.