6. Chapter Six
~Jennifer~
The hotel’s restaurant outdid themselves with our meal, but I could barely concentrate on the delicious food as the conversation with Gabriel honed in on the offer I wanted to make him. Finally, we got to the heart of the matter, and when he said he wanted to know, I exhaled in relief.
“There are a couple of things we could do, but in this case, I think hiring a private investigator will be the most useful. I have some connections and I’m sure I could find someone who can start work this weekend. Maybe even tonight.”
Gabe’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
I shrugged, trying to play it off. He didn’t need to know that my laptop up in my room contained a massive spreadsheet of contacts and resources, not just in California but across the country, that I could provide to my clients if they wanted more proof than what I got for them. “Like I said, it’s part of my job.”
He nodded slowly, his jaw ticking as he thought it over. “How much does it cost?”
“I’ll cover it. It’s the least I can do for making you uncomfortable earlier.”
Again, I left a lot of things unsaid in blank spaces between the lines. With no income of her own, Celine must have already used his money to pay me in the first place, so it seemed poetic that it would be used to catch her in the act instead.
How did she have access to that much money without him knowing, I wondered? How many other things had she hid from him?
“I can’t accept that,” Gabe tried to protest, but I didn’t let him go any farther than that.
“You can, and you will. A lot of these people owe me favours for sending business their way anyway. I won’t have to pay full price.”
The white lie seemed to make him feel better as he nodded slowly again. He had a habit of doing that, I’d noticed, as if the gentle motion of his head helped the thoughts to settle inside his brain. I found it rather endearing.
“I guess they’ll need to know where to find her?” he asked next. “Addresses, car info, stuff like that?”
“All of that,” I agreed. “We can go to my room and make the call together.”
His shoulders tensed at the mention of my room, letting me know he still didn’t entirely trust me. Not wanting to come on too strong, I offered an alternative.
“We can use one of the hotel’s common rooms if you’re more comfortable with that, but it would be more public.”
“It would be better in private,” Gabe had to agree.
“Then we’ll take care of it right after supper, and you can have the rest of the evening to yourself.”
I didn’t want to give him a chance to change his mind, so as soon as our meal ended, I led him up to my room. It had been a long time since I spent any time in a hotel room with a man, but a completely platonic visit like this didn’t count.
“Make yourself at home,” I offered once we were inside. I’d left my laptop on the bed, so I picked it up and headed over to the seating area, sitting in one of the armchairs with my back to the wall so Gabe couldn’t see my screen. I didn’t want to risk him accidentally getting a glimpse at something he shouldn’t while I pulled up my list of San Francisco-based PIs.
Gabe took a seat on the sofa, not right next to me but the next spot over, and he glanced around us while I tapped away on my keyboard. “This is a great room. I haven’t been in this one before.”
“It is,” I agreed warmly, shooting a smile at him over the top of my laptop lid. “You were right about the hotel. It’s been great so far.”
“You haven’t had much of a chance to relax yet, though,” he pointed out.
“Maybe not, but it’ll put my mind at ease to know that you’re going to get the answers you deserve.”
From my list, I found the top-rated guy on my list and gave him a call, but it went to voicemail. The second guy answered, but already had a full caseload that weekend. The third choice, a woman named Sarah, sounded like our best chance when she said she could begin that night.
“I’ve heard great things about you, Jen,” she said when I finished introducing myself and put her on speaker phone. “Are you branching out into real-world investigations?”
“Just in this one case,” I replied, my eyes darting to Gabe, hoping he wouldn’t read too much into her words. “I’ve got the client right here, I’ll let you speak to him directly.”
Placing the phone down on the coffee table in front of Gabe, I sat back while Sarah went over some basic details with him: his home address, his car information, the usual places where Celine might go.
“She’s been staying with her sister on and off for the past week,” Gabe explained, and his mouth twisted with the next words. “Or at least, that’s what she told me. When I went over to see her, she’d gone out. If she’s cheating, I have a feeling her sister’s aware of it.”
I honestly couldn’t imagine how that made Gabe feel. If Eda ever cheated on her husband and I found out, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell him. Well, first, I’d demand that she told him, and if she refused, then I’d do it myself. She would do the same for my partner too. I couldn’t understand the mentality of protecting a person doing something so blatantly wrong, even if they were family.
Maybe Celine had promised her sister part of the payout? Maybe they were just as rotten as each other?
“I’ll start there,” Sarah promised. “Where else might she be?”
Gabe listed off Celine’s favourite stores and coffee shops, parks and movie theaters, all the places she might spend her time. He knew so much about her. A lot of men wouldn’t be able to list any of the places their wives went on their own, but he had a whole laundry list of places Sarah could try.
“Does she know you’re out of town for the weekend?” I asked when they had finished going through all of Sarah’s questions.
“Yeah, I texted her before I left, in case she needed me.”
Of course he did. “In that case, Sarah, I’d start at their house.”
With him out of the way, Celine might get bold enough to bring her lover into her own space, and Sarah clearly agreed it would be possible. “That’ll be stop number one,” she promised. “I’ll update you as soon as I have any news.”
After thanking her, we hung up and the room fell silent as I placed the closed laptop and my phone down on the floor beside the chair, out of the way.
“I never thought I’d be doing this.” Gabriel’s lips pressed together as he stared out the window in front of him. The sun had almost set and shadows shrouded the world outside. “I thought we’d be together forever.”
“You don’t know anything for sure yet,” I reminded him gently. If and when he got his proof, there would be time for anger and sadness. Until then, speculating would only be a waste of emotion. “Try to relax tonight and take your mind off it. Watch a movie, read a book.”
He nodded as if he agreed, but a moment later, he turned those deep blue eyes of his to me. “Would it be okay if I stayed here a bit longer? Just to talk?”
“Yeah. Sure.” My answer came out a little too quickly, and I couldn’t even say why. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice, or he pretended not to. “What would you like to talk about?”
~Gabriel~
I should have gone back to my room, but the prospect of being alone with my thoughts after hiring a private investigator to follow my wife filled me with dread. Although I could have tried to turn on the TV or find a book in the hotel’s small library downstairs, it wouldn’t stop my mind from wandering. I needed something more immediate to distract me, and the woman in front of me seemed to do a good job at it.
With Jen around, things didn’t feel quite so hopeless.
“Well, we both like to talk about travel,” I reminded her, shifting in my seat so that my body turned towards her a little more. “Tell me your worst travel story.”
A laugh bubbled out of her, making a ridiculously appealing sound. “You get points for creativity. People usually ask for the good ones.”
“Everyone’s got good travel stories. Real travellers have bad ones.”
“True,” she agreed before leaning back in her seat and tucking her legs up to the side, looking completely at ease and comfortable. She wore a cream sweater and tan pants that evening, casual and not at all as blatantly sexy as the things she’d worn when we video chatted in the past. She still looked gorgeous, but in a way I found much more inviting and less intimidating than her appearance on our calls. “I’m not sure if I can think of any that were purely bad.”
“That’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one,” I blurted out, but she only laughed at my challenge.
“It isn’t. I guess I’m a bit of a hopeless optimist. Things might not turn out the way I anticipated, but that doesn’t make them a disaster. Like this one time, my phone died during the night in Berlin and Matt and I missed our express train to Copenhagen the next morning by two minutes. Two minutes!”
She threw up her hands in disbelief, and I couldn’t help but smile. “German trains are horribly punctual.”
“Annoyingly so,” she agreed, grinning back at me. Her smile lit up her whole face, making her eyes sparkle. “So, we had to rebook onto three separate trains that took ten hours to get there instead of four.”
“Ouch.” The wince that crossed my face came less from the idea of ten hours on train than it did from imagining the meltdown that Celine would have had in a similar situation. She would have found a way to blame me for it and pouted until I made it up to her somehow, probably by buying her something. A hollow ache of anxiety churned in my stomach at the mere idea of it.
I had a feeling Jen’s reaction would have been quite different, and she immediately proved me right. “We were disappointed at first, but you can’t change the past, you can only make the present as enjoyable as possible.”
“And how did you do that?”
The sparkle in her hazel eyes grew even stronger. “We filmed our own murder mystery on the train.”
“What?” I hadn’t expected that at all, and my burst of laughter made her giggle.
“Why not? We had our cameras and we had the time. Some of the other passengers got in on it too once they realized what we were doing. Even the conductor guest-starred in a scene. A masterpiece, I assure you.”
“I’m sure.” That actually sounded like a blast. I’d never travelled with anyone who would have done something like that. “I’d love to see it sometime.”
Her smile faltered, just a touch. “I haven’t watched it in ages, but I should dig it out sometime. See if it holds up.”
Fuck. Despite the brave face she put on, I could see the way the light in her eyes dimmed when I suggested it. She’d probably been avoiding it after her boyfriend died, but I hadn’t thought about that before opening my mouth.
“What about you?” she asked before I could apologize for my insensitivity. “What’s your worst travel story?”
“I’m not convinced yours counts as a bad one at all,” I pointed out.
Jen shrugged. “I warned you.”
She had, so I let it go and tried to think of which experience to share with her. We were talking about this to avoid me overthinking about Celine, so I didn’t want to bring up anything that featured her, though there were several memories that would qualify. Instead, I tried to focus on something closer to what Jen had described: a situation that could have ruined a trip but turned into a pleasant memory instead.
“Well, I’ve got a train story of my own. I was in Russia, on a small rural train by myself. We stopped in one small town and we didn’t start going again. We sat there for half an hour before the conductor made an announcement, but naturally, he spoke in Russian and I had no idea what he said. Everyone else got off the train so I did too, and tried to find someone on the platform who spoke English. No one did.”
Jen leaned forward, giving me her full attention as she always did. “What did you do?”
“I hadn’t quite figured out a plan yet when these two grandmothers came out of the little cafe in the station and linked their arms through mine, chattering at me in Russian. Though we couldn’t communicate one bit, they took me to a nearby house, fed me, let me sleep in the guest room, and took me back to the train station the next morning. They put me on a train, and sure enough, it took me exactly where I wanted to go. I tried to give them money but they refused to take it. They just patted my cheeks, and one of them slapped me on the ass when I got on the train.”
Jen’s eyes had begun to twinkle again. “That’s amazing, but very trusting on your part. What if they’d been trying to kidnap you? They might have tied you up in their basement! ”
“Honestly, getting married off to one of their granddaughters worried me more,” I admitted.
Her bright laugh filled the room. “Would that have been the end of the world?”
“I suppose I would have learned Russian eventually.”
We traded a few more stories, and a few more after that. Her sense of adventure and her good humour shone through every word, and she never once looked bored or that she’d rather be anywhere other than in our conversation.
When I finally glanced down at my watch, I swore in surprise. “Fuck, it’s after midnight. I didn’t mean to keep you so long.”
“Is it?” She seemed equally surprised as she reached down to grab her phone off the floor. Messages filled her home screen, I noticed, when she tapped on the screen to wake it up. Apparently, she had a lot of people vying for her attention.
And yet, she’d chosen to spend the whole evening with me.
It made me feel rather special.
“I’ll let you get some sleep. Sorry,” I apologized again as I got to my feet. My muscles and my bladder both protested at the movement after hours of being stationary. Honestly, I couldn’t believe so much time had passed. It felt like minutes.
“I would have kicked you out if I wanted to get rid of you,” she told me firmly. “I really enjoyed talking to you, Gabe.”
“I enjoyed it too.”
Other words lingered on the tip of my tongue, wanting to invite her to join me for breakfast or to explore the region with me the next day, but that would be completely inappropriate. She came there for a break, not to see me, not to mention the not-so-small fact that I was still a married man.
So why the hell did this feel so much like the end of a date?
“Have a good night,” I blurted out, and turning away, I rushed out of the room before any other words could find their way out of my mouth.
Time to go to bed.
~Jennifer~
The door closed behind Gabriel with a soft click and I exhaled in both relief and disappointment. I enjoyed the evening with him a lot. Too much, really, given the situation, and it frustrated me that I felt more attracted to him than I’d felt to anyone in a long time. And I shouldn’t , because after all the heartache I dealt with on a daily basis, I never wanted to be the cause of it by going after a taken man.
But was he taken, when Celine already seemed to have one foot out the door?
I didn’t even know what to feel anymore.
What I did know was that I had a string of messages that needed a reply from some of my other jobs, so despite the late hour, it didn’t look like sleeping would be in my near future.
I started with the guy who messaged me the most, his texts getting more and more agitated when I didn’t reply.
Did you miss me? ;) Sorry, I had a friend come over with a crisis. She needed my full attention but I’m all yours now.
A normal, empathetic human being might have asked about my friend, but this particular jerk had other priorities.
2 late. Got myself some other pussy tonight.
With that charming remark, he sent me a picture of himself with his hand down another woman’s shirt as she grinned drunkenly at the camera.
A grin that definitely did not belong to his girlfriend .
It seemed this trash would take himself out with very little help from me, so I sent the picture and a screenshot of his borderline-harassing messages to the girlfriend in question.
I’d barely started responding to the next guy on my list when another message popped up. Assuming it came from the girl I just messaged, I swiped it out of the way, but at the last second, I caught a glimpse of Gabe’s name.
Frowning, I exited my message and went in search of his text. What would he be messaging me about after we just spent the whole evening together?
Hey. You’re probably asleep, but I just wanted to say thanks for… well, all of it, I guess. Helping me with the PI and helping me to keep my mind off it. I left before saying thank you properly, so… thanks. Good night. Or morning, if you don’t see this until you wake up. Either way. Gabe
My cheeks ached from the wide smile that spread across them as I read his rambling message. Flustered Gabe was absolutely adorable, but what did his rambling mean? Could it be a sign that he felt more attracted to me than he let himself show, just the same as I felt towards him?
My eyes glanced up at the time on my phone: 12:37.
I shouldn’t reply. I should wait until the morning and pretend I really had been sleeping, like he assumed. Nothing good ever came from texting a stranger after midnight: I knew that, and yet, I typed out a reply anyway.
You don’t need to thank me. I told you I wanted a break from my day-to-day, and tonight definitely gave me that. Now get off your phone and go to sleep!
I will. Good night. Again.
Still smiling, I went back to my other message. That man also hadn’t gone to sleep yet, and after a few minutes of flirting, he asked for a photo. It only took me a minute to pull off the sweater I’d been wearing and put on my lace-trimmed nightgown instead, ensuring my breasts were displayed to their best advantage before taking a picture of myself in bed.
At the last second before I hit send, I realized the name of the hotel could be seen on the folder on my bedside table, and I quickly exited the text and went into my photos to edit it out. Although I’d broken my cardinal rule by spending time with Gabe in person, I had no desire to make it easy for anyone else to find me.
Satisfied the location would now be anonymous, I sent it straight from the photos app and went back to my messages while I waited for a reply. The girlfriend from the first guy of the night had come back to me and confirmed that the photo of her man and the random woman were enough for her to call things off with him. My work done there, I blocked him. That would be another one I could cross off my list in the morning.
After finishing all of that, the guy I sent the photo to hadn’t replied yet, which I found odd. However, when I clicked into our text thread to see if I’d missed something, the picture didn’t appear. It didn’t look like I sent it. My brow furrowed in confusion as I returned to my list of conversations, where it only took a second to realize my mistake.
I sent the photo to Gabe instead.
Fuck.
How the hell did that happen? I had never mixed up conversations before. I must have been distracted, I had no other excuse, though really, it was unacceptable.
I’d spent half the evening convincing Gabe I had given up on trying to seduce him, only to send him a deliberately provocative picture of myself in bed after he wished me a good night. If I didn’t say something, he would think it had all been a lie, or that I had some kind of split personality. The Jekyll and Hyde of online seductresses.
But what other options did I have? If I told him I meant to send it to someone else, that would sound even worse .
I had a rational explanation for all of it, but the idea of having to explain myself felt overwhelming, especially when we still didn’t have any concrete answers about Celine.
Desperately, I chewed on my lip, trying to decide on a course of action which wouldn’t paint me as a complete lunatic, a compulsive liar, or both, when a reply came through.
You don’t have to try so hard to get my attention, Jen. You’ve got it, believe me. Have a good night.