24. Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
Abbie
“ A ddress?” Gabe asks before we pull out of the shelter driveway.
I hesitate a moment, aware that my place is nothing like his, but this is not a battle I can fight. It’s not a battle at all. It’s a choice. I choose how I live and that is something I value. No one tells me what to do now and after years of living in a prison, my freedom is almost bittersweet, in ways few would understand. Embracing who and what I am, which is no one’s wife, I give him the address, and if he notices that the location is far from grand, he doesn’t show it.
Gabe has barely pulled out of the parking lot when my cellphone rings, which is in my purse, on his floorboard, despite the fact that I barely remember putting it there. I dig for it and pull it out, grimacing as I do.
“It’s Kenneth,” I say, eyeing Gabe. “My ex, but you know that by now. I just—I had to say that.” I start to ramble. I never ramble—good attorneys never ramble and I am a good attorney, and yet, right now, in this car, I do it—I ramble. “And you know, he’s probably calling to gloat over those men threatening my mother. Or hoping I’ll tell him about it and ask for help. Or he’s calling to offer me money for the shelter or I could go on.” I decline the call. “I’m not giving him the satisfaction of any of those things.” I shove my phone back in my purse. “Talk me off the ledge, Gabe. I want to call him back and know what my mother is facing.”
His cellphone buzzes with a text and he pulls it from his pocket as he halts at a stoplight, while Dexter licks me in the face. “This is Walker Security,” Gabe says. “And consider yourself off the ledge. There are no pending charges against your mother.”
“That are filed yet,” I say, rubbing on Dexter. “It could be coming.”
“Maybe,” Gabe says, reading more of the message right up until when the light changes. “Nothing more worth sharing right now.” He drops his phone in the cup holder and puts us in drive. “Still nothing on why your ex wants the shelter or rather that property.” He glances over at me. “Any new ideas?”
Unease rolls through me. I do have ideas. Lots of ideas. I don’t look at him. I stare straight ahead. “Does it matter why? He’s going to make my life hell if I don’t give it to him. I have to find a place to relocate to long term.”
I can feel his heavy look, but when I think he will push me, he doesn’t. “Maybe this ranch will work out,” he suggests, offering a positive thought.
I sigh. “As much as I wish it could, it can’t. There isn’t enough of a population to support the volume of adoptions we hope to turn weekly. I need a place in the city or maybe in Brooklyn, but I’ve looked. I can’t find anything in the budget.”
“I’ll make some calls,” he says. “I might have a few clients that need a write-off that could help.”
“Gabe—”
“Don’t tell me not to help,” he says, glancing over at me. “Haven’t you figured out that isn’t going to work with me?”
“You barely know me, Gabe.”
“So you keep telling me, but one day I will. That’s a promise. And as for why I’m doing what I’m doing to help this soon after meeting you, I’ll make a confession. You found my black soul and gave me a way to repent.” He winks, and I get this idea that he’s only half joking. Dexter picks then to lick him, washing away any seriousness hidden in the moment.
I laugh. “If your soul was black, Dexter wouldn’t love you.”
“Dexter is named Dexter for a reason,” he says. “He knows how to show his teeth and those teeth say he can kill.”
“And that means he has your black soul? It’s kismet? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yep,” he agrees, pulling us around a corner, toward my apartment.
I point to the high-rise I live in that might look fancy but it’s not. “They valet, but if you want you can wait downstairs and—”
“Not a chance in hell,” he says, pulling us to the valet stand. “I’m going up and so is Dexter.”
My chest tightens. I heard his call. He thinks he’s going to find out that I’m the one that has the black heart. That I’m lying to him in some way. He stops the car and the valets open the doors. “Hello there, Ms. Tanner,” the doorman, a kid in his twenties that always flirts with me, greets me.
“Hi, Jesse,” I greet. “We’ll only be a few minutes.”
“Keep us close,” Gabe says, stepping to my side and palming the kid some cash.
“Yes, sir,” Jesse says, looking disappointed with my newfound love life, while I’m not disappointed at all. Just regretful for all the complications it comes with. Regretful that it can’t go anywhere. Guilty that I’ve let it go on this long but I can’t help it. Gabe is like a drug I’m already finding addictive.
Gabe kisses my temple, right here in front of Jesse, and he does so in this familiar way that says we’re longtime flames when we’re not. Not yet. “I’ll be right back,” he says, stroking my cheek. “I’ll grab Dexter.”
A minute later, Dexter has exploded from the car and apparently likes Jesse because he tackles him and starts licking his face. Jesse laughs. “Is he yours, Abigail?”
“He’s Gabe’s,” I say, giving Gabe a wink of my own. “Love at first sight.”
Gabe’s eyes collide with mine, warm and wicked heat in their depths. “It sure as hell was love at first sight,” he says, and it’s clear he’s not talking about the dog, and the way he looks at me, all but turns me inside out. I know he doesn’t mean love. He means lust and of course, it was. God, it was and is. I feel this man everywhere. I’m so responsive to him, so sensitive to everything he does and says that it’s almost unreal.
“Gabe,” I whisper as Jesse interrupts with an offer, “I can walk him for you if you want.”
“That would be great,” I say, forcing myself to look at Jesse. “Thank you, Jesse.”
Gabe hands him the leash. “Thank you, Jesse.”
And with that, Gabe and I head inside the building and the lobby is a shrine of shiny gray and black marble from the floors to the security desk. Gabe wraps his arm around my shoulders and my cellphone rings. I cringe with the certainty that it’s once again Kenneth. “It could be my mother,” I murmur as I punch in the ninth floor and grab my cell from my purse.
The minute I see Kenneth’s number, I grimace and hit decline. Gabe crowds me against the wall. “It was him again.” There is almost what I would call accusation in his voice.
“Yes. It was. I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You mean you don’t want to talk to him in front of me.”
My brow furrows. “What are you suggesting?”
“That I’ll go to the moon for you, Abbie, but I intend to know everything about you, and him, before I commit.”
“I didn’t ask you to commit, Gabe. I barely know you.”
“And I know there’s something you didn’t tell me. You haven’t told me.”
“I heard that on the phone call you made. I get it. You think I’m lying. What I don’t get is why you’re standing here right now, if that’s what you think of me.”
The elevator dings. His eyes bore into mine, cutting and burning, and God, I’m aroused by his anger. How is that even possible? I don’t get aroused at anger. This makes no sense. What is wrong with me? What is this man doing to me?
“Are we getting out of the elevator?” I challenge.
He pushes off the wall and not only does he exit the car, he pulls me close and takes me with him, but the minute we’re in the hallway, he releases me, leaving me cold and—cold. I’m just cold. This man heats me up and turns me to ice, all in the same thirty seconds. I start the short walk. I don’t look at him, but I’m so aware of him, of his big, perfect body, of his temper, of his desire. He wants me, too.
I reach my door and when I pull my key out, he takes it from me, the touch of our hands electric, a sizzling connection that slides up my arm and across my chest and settles low in my belly. He opens the door and allows me to enter.
I never get the chance to take more than two steps into my loft before the door shuts and he’s right behind me, a force that radiates through me, consumes me. I can feel him looking around my humble abode that is just one large brick-lined room with an open kitchen and a separate bathroom.
I head toward my closet and he catches my wrist and turns me, walking me to him, stepping into me. “It’s him or me,” he says. “I don’t share. Choose now.”
My defenses are instant, his demand extreme, and yet, now I get why I was turned on by his anger in the elevator, why I still am. He’s jealous and it only makes me want him all the more. This probably speaks of me being way more messed up in the head than I’d like to admit, but this man wanting me this badly feels good. It feels right. He’s nothing like Kenneth. He’s nothing like any man I’ve ever known. I want him to want me like this and yet, alarm bells go off in my head. Possessive men are dangerous as my ex proved over and over. As he still does.
I can’t fall this hard, this fast for this man. I can’t fall at all. “You don’t know me well enough to make that demand,” I say.
He stares at me and then shocks me by releasing me and starting to walk—to the door. He’s going to leave if I don’t stop him.