Chapter 3 Gabriel #2
I’d even asked the bartender if he knew her name.
He’d said she was a friend of the previous owners of the bar, a woman named Christina.
Desperate for answers, I called up the woman I bought the bar from, someone I’ve only spoken to twice during negotiations.
But when I asked her about Christina, she sounded confused.
She told me she didn’t know anyone by that name.
That’s the moment that I realized Christina, gave me a fake name. And that fucked me up even more.
“Sorry, man. We’ll reschedule. Or why don’t you come out to Brookhaven this weekend? Stay with Natasha at her new house, and we’ll grab a beer.”
He scrunches his nose like I’ve just suggested he stay in the building we’re working on rebuilding.
“Hell no. I’m not spending my weekend in Connecticut and especially not in Natasha’s dump until you fix it.
Plus, I know this is just a sneaky way to con me into learning how to swing a hammer so I can help you with all this construction shit. ”
I chuckle because he’s not wrong. It would be nice to have another guy who knows what he’s doing on the job and isn’t collecting a paycheck.
“Fine. Another time then.”
I turn to climb one of the ladders we brought in to check the wiring on our overhead light fixtures. Roman’s phone immediately begins blaring some obnoxious ringtone from the late 90′s.
“Ah shit,” he mutters, digging it out of his pocket.
“Who’s that?” I ask, not really paying attention. “Another one of your ‘talentless’ Miami employees?” I joke.
“No. It’s Kacey.”
“Is that the girl you’ve been seeing? You know, you mention these women, but none of us ever get to meet them. I asked Natasha if you were still dating Victoria and she asked me who the hell that was?”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t bring them around because they’re never meant to last.”
I chuckle, shaking my head. For all the money Roman makes, you’d think he could afford to get in touch with his feminine side—maybe then he’d stop tearing through the women in this city and Miami like a one-man wrecking crew.
A billionaire and entirely self-made, he’s conquered just about everything except for a real relationship.
That’s the one thing he just can’t seem to get right.
I’m convinced it stems back to his father issues.
Or maybe the girlfriend he had in high school who broke his heart for the very first time.
He swipes up to answer with a fake smile plastered across his face. “Hey, baby.”
I’m twenty feet up in the air but I can still hear Kacey’s voice blasting through the phone, sharp enough to cut glass as she shouts into the receiver. Roman winces, holding the phone away from his face like it’s about to explode.
Then he sighs, punches the mute button, and looks up at me. “So, tell me again, what’s wrong with these lights?”
“Uh, don’t you think you should be paying attention to her? She sounds pissed.”
He shakes his head. “She’s accusing me of being with another woman last night.”
I blink at him. “What? That’s… ridiculous. Didn’t you tell her about the company party?”
“I did, and that’s exactly why I’m not entertaining this bullshit so early in the morning.”
“Put her on speakerphone.”
Roman gives me a long, deadpan look. “When I tell you that I could care less about this relationship lasting, I mean it.”
I laugh. “I understand. But she at least deserves the truth.”
“This is your funeral,” he grumbles then he hits the speakerphone button just as Kacey’s mid-rant, accusing him of making out with a stranger.
“Kacey,” I say, trying to cut through her shouting. She doesn’t even take a breath to pause.
“Kacey!” I raise my voice, and this time, she stops long enough to hear me.
“What?!” she snaps.
I smile, keeping my tone steady. “Hey, Kacey, it’s Gabriel Carpenter. Roman’s cousin.”
“Oh,” she says, some of the venom draining from her voice.
But she’s still pissed. I can hear it in the heavy sigh and inflection of her voice.
I’m familiar with that tone. Been on the receiving end of it from my younger sisters who I helped raise plenty of times.
I’ll never forget the time when Rhiannon had her first heartbreak and how nothing I said could bring her down from the anger.
I learned quickly that they don’t want solutions; they just want someone to hear them.
“What do you want, Gabriel?” she says with another heavy sigh.
“I was with Roman last night. We had our holiday party at the bar for the company.”
“I’m aware,” she says curtly.
“Okay, great. Then you’d also know there’s no way he could have made out with a woman in the bar. We don’t have any female employees yet, except for Janet. And no offense to her—she’s a lovely woman—but she’s happily married and well into her sixties.”
“Though we’re trying to hire more women and promote diversity,” Roman interjects, and I shake my head. He didn’t need to say that part. It’s only going to make Kacey even more pissed.
Kacey lets out a loud, shaky breath through the phone before she spits out, “You’re both liars. I saw Roman,” and then hangs up.
“What?” I ask, completely thrown off. “How did she see you?”
“She’s just paranoid,” Roman says with a shrug. “Don’t worry. I was planning on ending things with her soon. This back and forth between Miami and New York City will never work especially when she’s this paranoid.”
Just as he goes to slide his phone into his pocket, it vibrates in his palm. He looks down at it, his brows dropping in confusion then lets out a heavy groan.
“She sent me a fucking video.”
“Of what?” I ask, tightening the bulb into the socket which does absolutely nothing. The electricity in here is an even bigger problem than I originally thought. This is going to set us back by at least three weeks if not more.
He shrugs again. “I don’t know. It’s loading. Maybe it’s her apologizing.”
I chuckle, shaking my head. My cousin is so damn messed up sometimes. He somehow always ends up with the wildest women who fall so hard and so fast they do some borderline intense stuff to keep him.
I’m not sure why they go crazy over him, except that he’s laid-back, extremely wealthy and genuinely a good guy deep inside even though he likes to make everyone else think he’s the ass-hole billionaire stereotype of every romance book.
Maybe his over-the-top niceness does come across as flirty sometimes, but he’s always been upfront with me, he’d never cheat on a woman that he was dating exclusively, and I believe him.
The video finally loads, and Roman presses play, turning the volume up at full blast. I’m hardly paying attention to the words until something catches my ear. My voice.
“What are we doing back here?”
Then there’s loud, heavy panting, followed by deep, labored sighs and my voice again—
“Fuck, that was hot.”
“What the hell…?” I look down at Roman. “What are you watching?”
Roman squints at the screen, but I’m already down the ladder and storming across the room, grabbing the phone out of his hand as a knowing grin starts to spread across his face.
“Holy shit, dude. You’re the guy she saw making out with a stranger at the bar last night! During the company holiday event? The audacity!” He fakes a scandalized grin. “So, that’s why you disappeared!”
I glance down at the screen where the video is paused.
It’s a full body shot of me, waist up, like someone was holding the camera at chest level.
The moment is frozen on screen at the exact spot after I kissed Christina—or at least, the woman I thought was Christina. And I’m looking at her like I want her.
“I don’t understand,” I mutter, rubbing my temples and staring at the image, but Roman can’t stop laughing. He’s practically on the dusty floor, losing it in a fit of tears and obnoxious laughs.
I click out of the video and scroll through Kacey’s text messages.
Kacey: You’re literally caught in 4D making out with this chick, so there’s no way you can deny it. Don’t bother calling or texting me again.
I hit call anyway, but she sends it straight to voicemail. I call again, and this time she picks up, shouting, “I said don’t contact me!”
“Kacey, it’s Gabriel, Roman’s cousin.”
“Well, what the hell do you want?”
“How did you get this video?”
“I hired a private investigator, dumbass. And your idiot, cheating cousin took the bait with hardly any effort from her. Any other questions before I delete him from my phone and memories?”
I’m left speechless, my jaw hanging open as I shake my head in disbelief.
Sure, Roman and I used to be mistaken for each other when we were kids growing up, but it’s been a few years since that’s happened.
I’ve bulked up and he’s put on more lean muscle.
And though we’ve maintained the same dark, black hair and hazel eyes, probably around the same height too, I don’t think we look that much alike.
I mean, the guy’s a solid six years older than me.
So that explains why she gave me a fake number, cornered me in the back of the bar, initiated the kiss and then ran. It was a set up.
“Nope. I think that’s it. Thank you,” I tell Kacey.
When I hang up, I hand the phone back to Roman without saying a word, just giving him a disbelieving shake of my head.
“Dude, you need to get out of the city and find yourself a woman who trusts you. She hired a fucking PI to spy on you while you were working.”
He wipes his eyes, still laughing his ass off about the mix-up, but then goes quiet and serious. “You’re probably right about that.”