Authors: Rochelle Alers
Before Gabriel could blink Summer had seized a camera from a man, ripping out the roll of film. The camera ended up on the wet asphalt.
She struggled to control her temper. “Try that again, and I’ll make certain you are arrested for trespassing on school property.”
Stunned, the photographer stared at his damaged equipment. Hands rolled into tight fists, he took a step toward her at the same time Gabriel grabbed the hood on the man’s jacket, savagely jerking him backward.
“If you touch her, even breathe on her, I
will hurt you
.” He had enunciated each word slowly and precisely so that the photographer would not misconstrue his intent.
The man’s face lost all of its natural color. Gabriel Cole towered over him by a full head. “If … if you hit me I’ll sue you.”
Gabriel shook him like a rottweiler would an annoying Chihuahua, while searching through his pockets for some form of identification. He found the man’s press badge in his jacket.
“Not if I don’t sue you first, Mr. Stockwell. I don’t think I have to remind you that I have the resources to hire the best law firm in the country. I’ll ruin you
and
that rag you sniff around for.”
“You can’t threaten me.” His bravado had returned.
Gabriel curbed an urge to slap the annoying man. “I
just did.” He shoved the I.D. back in his pocket. “Get the hell out of here before I call school security.”
“Is there a problem, Gabriel?”
Summer and Gabriel turned when they recognized the assistant principal’s voice. “Yes,” she said. “This man tried to take Mr. Cole’s photograph without his permission.”
Dumas Gellis removed a small walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket, calling for school security. A minute later, two men appeared and escorted the hapless photographer into the school building for questioning.
“Are you all right, Summer?” Dumas asked, staring intently at her.
She smiled. “I’m fine.” She gave him the roll of overexposed film. “You can give this back to him.”
Dumas took the film, then bent down to pick up the camera. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. I thought after two weeks the media would forget about you.”
“There’s no need to apologize. There are some things that are beyond our control.”
“
This
I can control. It will not happen again.”
Gabriel nodded. “Thanks.” Curving an arm around Summer’s waist, he led her into the building. He did not drop his arm as they walked the length of the hallway to their office, closing the door behind them.
Turning to face Gabriel, Summer stared up at him. “You shouldn’t have threatened him with physical harm.”
“What did you expect me to do? Let him hit you?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t have hit me.”
“And why not?”
“Because he wouldn’t.” She wanted to tell Gabriel that she had been trained to take a three hundred pound
man off his feet in less than three seconds. Take him down and render him unconscious.
“You’re what—five-six and weigh about a buck twenty?”
“Five-eight and a buck thirty.”
“Big deal,” he spat out. “So, I’m off by two inches and ten pounds.”
Shrugging out of her raincoat, Summer walked over to a coat tree and hung it up. “I don’t intend to argue with you, Gabriel.”
“Nor I with you,” he shot back. “I grew up with two sisters, and there were a few times when I was forced to protect them from other boys. That’s who I am. That’s how I was raised. If that guy had touched you, I would have taken him apart. And do you really believe I give a damn about him suing me?”
She didn’t reply or turn around. He stared at her back, then turned on his heels and walked out of the office, slamming the door violently behind him. The itch was back. An annoying itch he couldn’t scratch.
There was something about Summer he found so intriguing, yet so very irritating. He’d give himself the weekend to find the answer. And if he didn’t, then he was mentally prepared to dismiss her.
After her last class, Summer retrieved her handbag and raincoat, then went in search of Gabriel, hoping she would find him in the music room. Peering through the glass on the door, she spied him sitting on a chair, one leg crossed over the opposite knee, arms folded over his chest. Opening the door, she walked in. A student sat in the back of the room playing scales on an alto saxophone.
Gabriel’s gaze widened as he smiled at Summer. He patted a chair beside him. Moving quietly across the room, she sat down next to him. She jumped slightly, then relaxed as his hand closed possessively over her fingers.
Summer felt the strength in his fingers, inhaled the clean fragrance of his cologne mingling with his body’s natural scent. In an instant everything that was Gabriel Cole seeped into her. Without hearing him speak, she recalled the drawling cadence of his baritone voice, saw the long wavy ponytail flowing down his back, remembered the comforting feel of his arm around her waist when they’d walked the hallway earlier that morning, and recalled his blatant threat to the photographer when he thought she would be harmed.
If you touch her, even breathe on her, I will hurt you
.
A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time a man, other than those on her team whose, “I’ve got you covered,” offered to protect her.
“What are you smiling about?” Gabriel whispered close to her ear.
“You,” she said, not taking her gaze off the student fingering the keys on an alto sax.
“What about me?”
“It’s what you said to that photographer when he came at me,” she whispered back.
Gabriel brushed his mouth over her ear; the hair on his upper lip tickled her skin. “I wasn’t issuing an idle threat, Summer.”
“What happened to music soothing the savage beast?” she teased. Turning her head, she stared up at him, their mouths only inches apart.
Peering down under lowered lids, Gabriel committed everything about Summer to memory: the way she stared at him through her lashes, the straight bridge on her short nose and the poutiness of her lower lip.
“There is a side of my personality that even music can’t soothe. Thankfully it doesn’t surface very often.”
She affected a mysterious smile. “Everyone wears two faces, Gabriel, but the trick is not letting your opponent unmask you.”
He stared at her, pondering her cryptic statement. “Is that what you really believe?”
She held his gaze. “Yes.”
The boy completed his scales, and Gabriel refocused his attention. “Very nice, Howard.”
The pimply faced student smiled. “Am I in, Mr. Cole?”
Gabriel nodded, smiling. “Yes, you’re in. I want you to practice your scales over the weekend until you feel
comfortable with the fingering. Monday I’ll test you to see whether I want you to play with the orchestra or the jazz band.”
“Thanks, Mr. Cole.” Removing the mouthpiece, he bent down and put the instrument inside its carrying case.
“You should always clean your horn before you repack it, Howard.”
Howard blushed. “Sorry. I forgot.”
Gabriel smiled. A few of the Weir students in the music program were quite talented, but lacked the discipline to expand their talent. He planned to identify those and work closely with them.
He stood up, gently pulling Summer to her feet. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” And she was ready for Gabriel and the time they would spend together.
He helped her into her raincoat. She anchored her handbag over her shoulder, and walked with him out of the building to the parking lot. The mist had stopped and the sun had burned away the fog, leaving a brilliant blue sky with puffy white clouds.
Gabriel held the door while she slipped into the Porsche. The car smelled new, and she thought about what Lucas had said about the sticker price. Some people would have to work ten years to save enough money to buy a car like Gabriel’s. Meanwhile he thought nothing of handing a car dealer close to a quarter of a million dollars for a vehicle he probably thought of as a toy—a very, very expensive toy. He maneuvered out of Weir’s parking lot, driving quickly through the early afternoon traffic toward Route 3.
Relaxing on her seat, Summer said, “Your car is very nice.”
“Thank you.”
“It still has a new-car smell.”
“I’ve had it for six months. It was my birthday present to me.”
She smiled at him. “You’re very generous to yourself.”
He gave her a quick glance. “I hadn’t had a new car for more than thirteen years, so I decided to make up for it.”
This disclosure surprised Summer. “But … but you’re …” Her words trailed off.
“Not a pauper?”
“Yes.”
“True,” he said candidly. “But having money doesn’t translate into buying a luxury car every year. I bought my first car when I was twenty-one. It sat in a garage for months at a time because I was on the road traveling with a band.”
He and a few of his college buddies had put together a band, playing the college and club circuit. It wasn’t until after they’d graduated that the sextet went into the Serenity Records studio to record their first album. Once released, it had become an instant hit.
“We’d spend one night in Cincinnati, the next two in Chicago before we were onto Dallas. After a while I felt like a vagabond, sleeping in strange beds in even stranger towns and cities.”
“When did you stop touring?”
“It was six years ago that we stopped touring as a group. Every once in a while we get together to do a private gig.” He had stopped to pursue a graduate degree in music education. “Right after that I was asked to write a soundtrack for
Reflections in a Mirror
. The experience was like nothing I had ever encountered before
in my life. I sat in a room, watching a film where the only sounds were dialogue and special effects. I had to view it twice before I gained enough confidence and felt comfortable enough to write the main theme. After that the entire score fell into place.”
“It fell into place perfectly.”
Gabriel gave her a modest smile. “Thank you.”
It was the last two words they exchanged until they’d left the city limits of Plymouth.
Summer looked at Gabriel. His expression was stoic, as if he had been carved out of granite. “What are you going to do after June?”
He paused, then said, “I’ve been asked to write another soundtrack. Filming will begin in Toronto in late spring and wrap sometime in early June.” He glanced at her. “How about you, Summer? What are your plans?”
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully.
It was true only because she did not know where she would be in June. If she exposed the drug ring at Weir before the end of the school year she would resign her position with the DEA. Once her true identity was revealed, she knew she could not remain at the high school.
“Have you thought of returning to the stage?”
She pondered his question. “At times I have.”
Gabriel gave her another sidelong glance. “What’s stopping you?”
Her smile was bittersweet. “It’s been a long time. I’d have to get an agent, then begin the vicious cycle of reading scripts and going to auditions and casting calls. I’m not certain whether I’m up to that again.”
There was complete silence as Gabriel crossed the Sagamore Bridge. He wondered what had happened in
Summer’s past for her to give up what once had been a very promising stage career. He was aware that she had garnered her Tony nomination when as an understudy to a popular actress, she had stepped into the role three days after opening night to rave reviews. The original lead actress had come down with a misdiagnosed case of strep throat, which eventually damaged the valves in her heart, abruptly ending her career.
Even though she did not win the Tony, Summer had become a star. A month later, her agent held a press conference stating his client was retiring because of personal reasons.
And there were times, since he was introduced to her, that Gabriel wondered what those personal reasons could have been: a failed love affair, family tragedy, or a health problem.
He was now thirty-four, and there was never a time in his life when he had been responsible for another human being—only himself once he reached his majority. But now he wanted to become responsible for someone other than himself. He wanted to take care of Summer Montgomery.
“I’ll probably set up a dance school back home,” she said. The Department had fabricated a scenario wherein she had taught musical theater at a private dance school in Washington, D.C.
“Where’s home?”
“St. Louis, Missouri.”
“Oh, so you’re one of those mule-headed Missourians that have to be convinced of everything.”
She folded a hand on her hip. “We’re not mule-headed.”
“Isn’t Missouri known as the ‘Show Me State?’ ”
“That’s because we’re not easily fooled and need a bit more convincing than most.”
Gabriel sucked his teeth. “Yeah, right. What you are is headstrong and willful.”
Shifting slightly on her seat, Summer stared at him. “Is that how you see me?”
“At times, yes.”
“You’re wrong, Gabriel.”
He flashed a dimpled smile. “If that’s the case, then prove me wrong this weekend.”
“What?” The single word exploded from her mouth.
“We take off our masks, Summer. No pretense or charades.”
“Is that what you really want?”
His smile was dazzling, attractive lines deepening around his gold-flecked eyes. “Yes.”
Closing her eyes, she nodded. “Okay.”
A spark of excitement warmed her blood. This weekend she would step out of her role as Renegade to become Summer.
It had been a long time since she could be herself. She had played the masquerade so long that she wasn’t certain where the make-believe ended and reality began.
Gabriel’s “little place” was a restored two-story, four-bedroom, five-bath farmhouse with white clapboard siding, a green asphalt shingle roof, and a generous wraparound porch set on six acres of beautifully landscaped waterfront property.
Summer gave Gabriel a narrow look when he curved an arm around her waist. “A little place, Gabriel?”
“It was little before I had it renovated. I raised the ceilings
in the bedrooms on the second floor and expanded both floors by a thousand square feet on either side.”
Summer followed him up a staircase to the second floor. Like his car, the house smelled new. Gleaming bleached pine floors, French doors, and pale walls projected an atmosphere of openness. They walked down a long hallway, stopping at a doorway at the end of the hall.
“You’re here, and my bedroom is at the top of the staircase on the right.” Cupping her chin in his hand, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Take your time settling in. I’ll be out on the front porch.”
He was there, then he was gone, but the sensations from the feel of his silky mustache remained with Summer long after she had walked into her bedroom and closed the door.
She found the bedroom large and filled with an abundance of natural light. The gabled roof made her feel as if the room was a separate structure, an intimate retreat. Walking over to the French doors, she opened them and stepped out to a private deck that offered a view of the water. A cool breeze feathered over her face, the distinctive smell of the salt water wafting in her nostrils. The tense lines on her face relaxed as she expelled her breath. She felt as if she had been holding her breath and raw emotions in check for years.
She lost track of time as she watched the foam-flecked gray waves washing up on the beach. When she turned to reenter the bedroom a clock on the fireplace mantel was chiming the hour. It was three o’clock.
She unpacked, hanging a dress, slacks, two blouses and a jacket, and putting several pairs of shoes in a walk-in closet before storing her undergarments and T-shirts in the drawers of a massive mahogany armoire.
Kicking off her shoes, she sat down on a cushioned side chair next to a table that doubled as a desk. The bedroom’s furnishings were an eclectic mix of French Country and contemporary.
Reaching for a pair of sweatpants, polo shirt, a set of underwear, and a small bag filled with her grooming aids, Summer walked into an adjoining bathroom.
Gabriel leaned against a column supporting the porch, arms folded over his chest, his gaze fixed on a field of sea oats swaying gently as if dancing to their own music. A flock of seagulls swooped down along the beach, squawking noisily as they fought over scraps of food left on the beach. His nearest neighbor’s toddler twin sons had made it a habit of leaving stale bread, for the “boids” every afternoon before their nanny put them down for a nap.
He had begun vacationing on Cotuit off-season because of its solitude. After the second year, he decided to buy the farmhouse from an elderly widow who had lived her entire life on Cape Cod.
Gabriel had returned to Cotuit after spending the past Christmas holiday with his extended family in West Palm Beach, Florida, with the intent of taking up legal residence in the state of Massachusetts. His parents thought he had lost his mind to consider moving so far north where the winters were long, bitterly cold, and snowy. He had reassured them that he had made the right decision even before he had commissioned an architectural firm to draw up plans to expand and renovate the century-old structure. He moved in permanently in May, and now looked forward to living year-round on the island.
He went completely still when he heard the soft click of the screen door, opening and closing behind him. He inhaled the scent of a sensual perfume before he felt the heat from Summer’s body.
Lowering his chin, Gabriel stared at Summer as if seeing her for the very first time. Her unbound hair floated around her face and over her shoulders. She had removed her makeup, and her fresh scrubbed face made her appear no older than eighteen.
His gaze moved lower. Her face may have look like an adolescent’s, but that was not the case with her body. A pair of hip-hugging, drawstring sweatpants failed to disguise the womanly curves of her slim hips. A smile crinkled his eyes when he noted her bare slender feet.