The Glass Kitchen (26 page)

Later, after the girls had gone to bed and Portia was sound asleep, he came down the fire escape.

“This is New York,” Gabriel said, his tone sharp, waking her. “You need to keep your windows locked.”

“I do,” Portia murmured. “You came in through the glass door. Using a key you shouldn’t have. There has to be a law against that.”

She was dimly aware that he carried the cardboard sign she had posted earlier. “I take it that among your plethora of skills, reading isn’t one of them?”

“I read.” He tossed the sign aside, then slid between the sheets, pulling her close.

She rolled over onto her stomach, burrowing deeper into the sheets and blankets, hugging the pillow. Gabriel lifted up her hair and ran his lips along the nape of her neck. Then other kisses, his hands leaving her hair. “You think I’m sexy,” he said.

She groaned. “Of course that’s what you took away from the sign.”

“‘All Sexy Cat Burglars Keep Out.’”

“I should have just written ‘Keep Out.’ Simple. To the point.” It had just seemed too mean. But she wanted him to stay away. The more he came down the fire escape, the harder it was to remain in the frame of mind of being okay with an arrangement where they were nothing more than two single adults having casual sex. She was turning into a pathetic, old-fashioned cliché. The more she had sex with him, the less casual it felt. Given the man she realized he was, there was no way this could end well. She had come to understand that he wanted something from her that he hated needing. Hated that he gave in to repeatedly.

“That isn’t fair,” she gasped when he pulled the sheet low.

“What isn’t fair?” he asked, running his tongue along the shell of her ear.

“I’m exhausted. I’ve been cooking all day.”

“I’m the one who’s exhausted,” he countered, sitting up briefly to rip off his shirt and kick his shorts away. Falling back to her, he rolled her over, her arms above her head, loosely pinning her wrists with one of his large hands. His eyes flared as he took her in, her breasts high through the old T-shirt she wore. “I haven’t slept since I met you.”

“At all? Not one second of sleep.”

He grinned down at her. “Barely.” His free hand slipped beneath the soft cotton of her tee, his thigh sliding over her hips. Portia moaned into his mouth, tasting him.

“You’re like a demented cat burglar,” she murmured, gasping as his thumb brushed the peak of her breast.

“A
sexy
cat burglar,” he reminded her, running his tongue along the same path his thumb had just grazed.

“You’re also my boss,” she managed. “My upstairs neighbor. A man, need I remind you, who is trying to kick me out of my apartment.”

He had the good grace to tense at that.

“Basically,” she continued, trying her hardest to stay focused as he resumed his attention to her body, “this all adds up to a really bad idea. Beyond that—if you need a
beyond that
—one of these days someone is going to figure out what is going on here. My money is on Ariel. And as much as she likes me, I’m not sure she’s going to like
you
and me. I know Miranda won’t.”

“Let me worry about my daughters. Besides, at one point, Ariel was trying to get me to ask you out.”

“Really?”

“Really. She thought it a small price to pay for a decent meal.”

Portia snorted.

He tugged her shirt over her head and left it tangled around her wrists, his hand holding her wrists secure. There it was again. Gabriel maintaining control. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

This time, she scoffed. “I’m cute, at best.”

He met Portia’s eyes with an intensity that made her breath catch. “You are beautiful,” he said in a way that dared her to contradict him.

She loved the sound of the words, the fact that she could tell he believed it. He dipped his head, making love to her with his mouth, going slowly, never rushing. She felt the electric pull between her legs.

“Oh, to hell with the sign,” she whispered, and stopped thinking altogether.

He still held her captive, but she turned as best she could to press up against him. He laughed when she cursed at him, his palm sliding over her stomach, then lower to her hip. Portia felt as if she had stopped breathing when he brought one of her knees up, nudging her legs apart, the palm of his hand skimming down the inside of her thigh. But he avoided her center.

“Gabriel, please,” she pleaded, twisting again to free her hands, but he held her secure. She wanted more.

“I know,” he murmured against her skin. “But not yet.”

He dipped his head back to her. Her breath came in pants as he refused to allow her to move.

He stroked and kissed, then surprised her when he dropped his hand from her wrists and slipped down her body, pressing her knees farther apart.

Reality flashed into her head like lights flipped on with a switch. She had never done anything like this. She sat up and tried to pull free. “Gabriel!” she said, pushing at him.

But he was far too strong for her. “Shhh,” he said, nipping the skin of her inner thigh.

“I just don’t do that,” Portia said, even as her body shook. “I’m not comfortable with that. It’s private.”

“Not private,” he stated against her skin. “Mine,” he said so softly that she felt certain he was saying it to himself rather than to her.

She fell back at the first touch of his tongue to her core, and when he pressed her legs even farther apart, she allowed that, too. Sensation rode through her, the kind that lust lends to a girl who isn’t used to being wild. She let go, she opened to him, and when she gave in so freely, she felt a shift in him.

With a groan he reared over her like he could do nothing else, entering her hard, his careful control lost. He didn’t say anything else, just moved, fast and sure, needing something, reaching, bringing her to another orgasm. Only when she cried out did he let go completely, his body tensing and shuddering.

He collapsed on top of her and they lay that way for minutes, or maybe longer, connected, her eyes closed. She could feel his warm breath on her neck, his breathing ragged. When she opened her eyes, he pushed up on his elbows and stared at her. “What are you doing to me?” he whispered.

“Gabriel—”

He pressed his forehead to hers, then rolled away. She expected him to keep going and get off the bed. Instead, he dragged her to him, wrapping her in his arms.

“Go to sleep, Portia.”

“But—”

“Portia, sleep.”

She debated. But then he tucked her close, his chest to her back, the tension finally easing out of him completely, and she drifted off to sleep.

Twenty-six

“D
AD, REALLY,
I don’t need to go to the Shrink anymore. I’m fine. You’re fine. Miranda’s fine.” Ariel plastered a big fat smile on her face. “We’re all fine, remember?”

Which was far from true, but Ariel was tired of figuring out ways to avoid talking to the Shrink. It was exhausting to come up with new and increasingly inventive ways not to talk about anything that mattered.

Her dad sat at the desk in his study, looking out the window instead of at all sorts of business stuff spread out in front of him. Just sitting. Just looking. So not like her dad.

She felt a flicker of worry. No way her dad could die on her, too, surely.

He turned back and studied her. She studied him right back. Something was definitely different about him, though thankfully as best she could tell, he looked perfectly healthy.

An image of her mom popped into her head, dancing around her dad, laughing.
“What can I do to wipe that scowl away?”

Her dad would look back at her mom in that way of his, massively intense.

Her dad was scary, but he was really great, too. Like, she remembered that when he got home late from his office, he would come sit on the edge of her mattress even though she pretended to be asleep. He wouldn’t say anything; he’d just have a look and then lean down and kiss her forehead. She knew he did the same thing to Miranda. Miranda had told her once. Of course he hadn’t sat on the edge of either of their mattresses since their mom had died. As far as she knew, anyway.

“First off, Ariel,” he said, “I don’t appreciate you calling Dr. Parson the Shrink.”

Ariel swallowed back the retort that no amount of lipstick on a pig was going to make that pig anything but. Calling the Shrink Dr. Parson wasn’t going to make him less of a quack.

“Second, Dr. Parson said that when you’re in his office, you refuse to speak to him.”

“I talk.”

“About the weather. Or you grill him on his credentials.”

“I ask: Does a man who lives and works in the twenty-first century seriously wear a goatee and round tortoise-shell glasses? I have two words for you: Fake Freud.”

“Ariel.”

“Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t judge him based on his Freud facial hair, but come on, he has a black leather sofa. Seriously, Dad, I know everyone says you’re a genius, but maybe money smarts don’t translate into regular street smarts. I tell you, the guy isn’t for real.”

Her dad looked amused for a nanosecond before he wiped the humor from his face as fast as good old Wink swiped his big block letters from the dry board at school.

“As much as I appreciate your assessment of my intellect, I assure you that Dr. Parson is for real. And
for real
you have to go tomorrow.”

Sure enough, at 3:30 the next afternoon, Ariel found herself on that black sofa.

“Have you ever considered getting one of those Victorian-type couches, or whatever they’re called? Chesterfields. I Googled that for you. I think Freud must have had a Chesterfield in his office.” Ariel made a production of considering the idea. “Tell me, Dr. Parson, do you think Freud would have had a leather sofa in his office if they’d been available back then? Because, really, I don’t think yours is working.”

Ariel could have sworn that the guy actually blushed—at least as much as a guy with a beard could blush. No matter how hard she tried, she never managed to flummox her dad. She had to give him that.

“Ariel,” Dr. Parson finally stated, “we are here to discuss the unfortunate things that have happened to you, not my furniture choices—”

“Maybe you
should
talk to someone about your unfortunate furn—”

“Ariel.” He barked her name before pulling himself together. Ariel’s personal diagnosis? The guy was losing it.

He leaned forward. “We’ve been talking for three months. I’ve been patient. I’ve let you discuss whatever you want. I’ve asked you to write your feelings down in a journal. And I’ve done this in the hopes that you’d learn to trust me.”

She barely held back a snort.

Dr. Parson narrowed his eyes. “Ariel,” he said. “There’s one question I haven’t asked you directly, the one question that matters, the one question that I shouldn’t have to ask because you should want to talk to me about it on your own. Since that hasn’t happened, tell me: What happened in the car?”

Her heart came to a full-blown stop.

Ariel had to force herself to breathe, air in, air out. She felt the sweat on the palms of her hands. It took a second to drum up a smile.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.”

Life had been so simple before. One dad, one mom, one sister—all of them living in a house in Montclair, New Jersey.

“You’re only hurting yourself by bottling it up.”

He leaned even closer, his elbows on his knees, his tablet and pen set aside.

“Why won’t you talk about it, Ariel? Are you protecting someone?”

The words were like a kick to the stomach. She searched for something to say, something sarcastic, something to distract him. But she couldn’t find anything. The facts were just facts. Life could change in an instant.

She turned her head and focused on all those degrees framed and lined up on the plain white walls. One frame was slightly off. She had told him several times. Once he had stood up all of a sudden and strode over, straightened it, and then turned back.
“There,”
he had stated.

Ariel had seen that he regretted his show of temper. It was the only time she had liked him. It was the only time she had thought about showing him what was inside her. But then he had come back to his chair, drawn a deep breath, and settled back into his Fake Freud persona.

Now the frame was crooked again.

“I’m not keeping a secret,” she said finally. “There’s no one to protect.”

“Tell me about the accident, Ariel.” He hesitated. “Please.”

A sigh escaped her lips. “Fine. My mom was driving me to a Mathlete competition in Paramus. I was in the backseat; she was in the front.” Her leg betrayed her, swinging too fast and hitting the coffee table. She made it stop. “She was driving really fast on the Garden State Parkway. We were late. We swerved. We wrecked. The car flew over the rail. Mom died. I didn’t.”

The guy sat there for something like a full minute. Ariel knew, because she was counting, not to see how long it would take before he talked again, but to keep her mind focused on something besides the accident.

Finally he found words again. “How did that make you feel?”

How did it make her feel? How did he think it made her feel?

She glanced at the clock and stood. “Oops, look at that. Time’s up.”

Startled, the Shrink glanced over at the clock and blinked. “Ariel,” he said.

But she was already banging out the door.

Twenty-seven

F
OR THE LAST THREE WEEKS
Portia had done little more than cook for The Glass Kitchen. Now she stood in the middle of her apartment, the day’s assortment of menu items already sold and out the door, and her head swam with images of cake. But not just any cake: a festive concoction loaded with candles. She closed her eyes and knew she needed to plan a birthday party.

But for whom?

She’d have to make the cake later because she needed to get upstairs to make dinner for the Kanes. When she walked into their kitchen, Miranda and Ariel were sitting at the table. Ariel was pretending to do homework; Miranda was staring at her silent cell phone.