“I’ll see you later,” he said curtly. Hurt by the dismissal, Bobbi turned to open the door. She was in the process of shutting it behind her when his words halted her movements. “Bobbi . . .”
She turned back expectantly but he seemed at a loss and she watched his throat work as he swallowed down whatever words might have emerged.
“Later,” she said, putting him out of his misery. She walked away without looking back.
As usual the house was as silent as a tomb when Gabe got home. His mother, Lucy Templeton-Braddock Colbert, the sole heiress to one of the most profitable vineyards in the country, had moved out nearly ten years ago after her marriage to Francis Colbert—wealthy entrepreneur and all-round good guy. The same couldn’t be said for the loser who had fathered Gabe and Chase and who had run off to “find” himself in Southeast Asia when the twins were eight years old. As far as Gabe knew, Leighton Braddock was still blowing his seemingly endless trust fund while emulating Leo Di Caprio’s character from The Beach somewhere in Thailand. Gabe felt nothing but a distant bitterness on the rare occasions that he actually thought of the man whom he had worshipped as a boy.
Gabe had been mildly shocked when his mother and Francis had produced a baby girl less than nine months after their marriage. He and Chase doted on their ten-year-old half sister, Kim, but saw her very rarely. Gabe was too busy with GNT—Global Network Television—a subsidiary of Bobbi’s father’s multimedia conglomerate, Richcorp, and Chase was usually off working in some far-flung place.
Gabe headed straight for the den, poured himself a scotch, and downed it in a single gulp. He shuddered as the liquor burned its way down his gullet. He couldn’t think straight and the alcohol hadn’t helped at all, instead he found himself recalling how small and delicate Bobbi’s hand had felt in his and how erotic he had found the contrast between the calluses just below her fingers and the softness of her palm. Naturally that thought was immediately followed by how that same hand had felt trailing across his naked flesh the night before and . . . yeah, he was hard as a rock again. He glared down at his crotch irritated, confused, and aroused all at the same time.
He didn’t even know why he had insisted she come round for movies later. Part of him wanted them to get back into their usual routine and another part of him, the one he was staring at right now, was hoping that they would be anything but normal tonight. That part of him was completely okay with more kissing, caressing, and tasting. Yes, a little more and then some of what they’d shared last night, thank you very much.
He dug into his back pocket for his mobile phone—thinking of cancelling—but the thing started vibrating even as he reached for it. Hoping it was Bobbi wanting to cry off and thus saving him from doing it, he didn’t bother to glance at the caller ID before connecting and lifting it to his ear.
“Yes?” His eager greeting was met with a long, crackling silence. It was a bad line and he immediately knew who it was. His stomach sank as he imagined the worst. “Chase?” There was more static before he heard his brother’s faint voice at the other end of the line.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Are you okay?” Gabe asked, envisioning bombs and snipers and IEDs. His hand tightened around the phone when he heard nothing but crackling.
“I’m on my way home,” Chase said after a moment. “Can you . . . can you pick me up from the airport on Tuesday? Not sure about the time . . . flying into Joburg. Getting the first available domestic flight from there. I’ll let you know when I know.”
“What’s going on?” Chase sounded off and it concerned Gabe. “Has something happened?”
“I’ve got to go,” Chase dodged his question. “Don’t tell Mum.”
“Wait, Chase . . .” The line was disconnected before he could say anything else and Gabe nearly tossed his phone in frustration. He immediately reached for the television remote and tuned into CNN. If anything out of the ordinary had happened, they would definitely have something about it. He skipped between the BBC and CNN, but there was nothing close to what his imagination had been conjuring up.
He was still urgently surfing news networks hours later when Bobbi walked into the den. It wasn’t unusual for her to let herself in. The light in the room had changed, dimmed somewhat, and Bobbi’s slight silhouette hovering in the doorway startled him.
“Bobbi? Shit . . .” He’d forgotten to cancel.
“Yeah, that’s what every girl wants to hear when she walks into a room,” she responded wryly before ambling in clutching a covered plate and wearing indecently short denim cut-offs that immediately sent his blood pressure soaring, combined with another of her ubiquitous tanks and a pair of trainers. Like the tiny black bikini that morning, what she was wearing wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen her in previously but he had never truly appreciated the golden glow of all that revealed skin before now. Every naked inch seemed to invite his touch, and he had to curl his hands into fists to prevent them from responding to that tempting invitation.
“Faye sent dinner; she’s convinced you’ll starve if she doesn’t feed you.” She held up the plate with a grin, referring to the Richmonds’ housekeeper. When Gabe did nothing but look at her from where he was seated in front of the huge TV, the smile slid from her face and was replaced with a concerned frown.
“What’s wrong?”
“Chase called,” he replied. Bobbi quickly placed the plate on the coffee table and sat down next to him.
“Is he all right?”
“I don’t know,” Gabe shrugged. “He says he’s coming home.”
“But that’s good, right?”
“Something’s wrong . . . he didn’t sound like himself.”
“Gabe.” She took his hand and he looked over at her. “He’s fine. You spoke with him. Focus on that. You’ll find out soon enough if something’s wrong. It’s better not to allow your imagination to run riot.”
He laughed softly.
“When did you get so wise, Roberta Richmond?” She winced at his use of her full name and he remembered that she had once likened it to a “superhero’s lame girlfriend’s name.” He hadn’t ever given it any thought before but he kind of liked the simple grace of the name.
“I’ve always been wise, you guys have just never appreciated my wisdom,” she scoffed. He smiled automatically and—while he was still worried about his brother—at that moment he was even more concerned with the way her shorts had ridden all the way up her smooth, taut thighs and he was pretty damned sure she wasn’t wearing a bra under that tank top. His eyes fell to her pert breasts and his breath hitched when her nipples tightened against the thin material.
Yep, no bra. She folded her arms over her chest, looking somewhat uncomfortable.
“Cold?” he asked. His throat had gone dry and had hoarsened his voice so that the word was barely a grunt.
“No,” she denied from between gritted teeth, keeping her arms tightly folded over her chest.
“You looked somewhat cold to me,” he pointed out.
“You were staring at me,” she hissed.
“And my staring made you respond like that?” She didn’t reply and he watched as gooseflesh broke out all over her body—with so much of her skin revealed it was hard to miss.
“I should go,” she said.
“I don’t want you to go,” he stated. She chewed on her lower lip, a habit that she’d had for years but had never before made him want to suck on that lip and lick the sting away until now.
“Then what do you want?” She asked, her voice laced with frustration.
You. He looked at her mutely for a moment, the word hovering on his tongue.
“I want to watch a movie and eat popcorn and forget this entire day happened,” he said instead.
“Then let’s do that,” Bobbi said, and he could hear the relief mingled with . . . disappointment? In her voice.
Well, damn. Could it be that Bobbi Richmond wanted him too? Well wasn’t that just frikken fantastic? Knowing that she may want him i
n return was going to make it so much harder for him to resist her. That was just one more complication he didn’t need. He needed to fix this fast.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bobbi found herself outside her auto repair shop bright and early that Sunday morning. The men and Bobbi took turns taking weekends off and this was to have been hers, but she had too much invested in the business to stay away from it for a full weekend, so she usually headed in for a couple of hours on most of her days off anyway. Besides, after the confusing events of the past forty-eight hours, starting with that ill-advised drunken kiss on Friday night, she welcomed the distraction work would offer. Her employees were all at work; the shop was usually open seven days a week with the guys working shifts during the week. Weekends were their busiest times because most people couldn’t find the time to bring their cars in for minor repairs during the week.
In an effort to keep her mind away from Gabe, she had been thinking about the vintage Chevy Corvette that her team was supposed to start overhauling on Monday. It was one of her biggest accounts and her client was an old friend who had allowed her to twist his arm into renovating the old car that had been rusting beneath a drop cloth in his garage. She was excited by the opportunity. Her business was still fairly new—just over a year old—and if they did this well she could make a name for herself in the very exclusive vintage car restoration market. At the moment engine repairs, bodywork, and other small jobs were keeping the business afloat, but this beauty of a car could be the break that she was looking for.
“Hey, boss, didn’t expect to see you in today,” Sean, the youngest of her three mechanics, called when saw her.
“You know that I can’t stay away from this place,” she joked, and he laughed, before ducking his head back under the bonnet of a badly dented sedan. Bobbi headed directly to the car that she had so many hopes and dreams invested in.
“Wow, you are gorgeous,” Bobbi whispered reverently, when she came to a halt in front of the faded beauty that graced her auto repair shop floor. “Hello darling, I’m going to make you even more beautiful. I’m going to give you a makeover. Would you like that?” She ran her hands worshipfully over the sleek lines of the battered 1970 Chevy Corvette LT-1. Craig Farrow, her head mechanic, grinned when she leaned over the car’s bonnet, spread her arms wide, and lay her cheek against the cold metal. She hugged the car as if it was a living, breathing entity and really to Bobbi it was. Cars spoke to her—they clearly communicated their pain, their suffering, their wants, and their needs. She lay there for a long while before sighing deeply and standing upright to look down at the car regretfully.
“I can’t promise that it won’t hurt,” she said solemnly. “But it’ll all be worth it in the end.”
Another long sigh before she glanced over at Craig, Sean, and Pieter, her other mechanic. While Sean was cheerful, Pieter, who was only slight older, was skinny as the proverbial rake and surly and uncommunicative. He did brilliant work though and seemed content to let everybody around him do the talking. They were all standing off to the side watching her commune with the car. Craig and Sean—who had stopped what he’d been doing for the moment—looked amused while Pieter merely looked bored.
“Dya wanna start today, boss?” Craig asked. All business now, Bobbi outlined her plan of action and her timeline for the car’s “makeover.” A lot of the parts had to be imported and the cost for it was coming straight out of her pocket, since she had all but begged her friend for the opportunity to work on this baby. Jason Claiborne hadn’t been willing to foot the expense of overhauling the vintage car and had been quite prepared to leave her to rust, but he was unwilling to sell what had once been his father’s pride and joy. Bobbi had convinced him that she could restore the car to its former glory, agreeing to charge him for only the bodywork and half of the cost of the mechanical repairs if he agreed to drive the car regularly and talk her business up if anyone asked about the car. That meant she would have to pay for the replacement parts and they didn’t come cheap. The project was an ambitious one for a young, struggling business like hers and she sometimes woke up in a cold sweat knowing that she was putting all her eggs into one very rickety basket.
She hoped to keep the money trickling in with the more minor jobs but her business didn’t have much of a reputation in the area yet. Added to that, she was a woman and most people didn’t trust a female near their cars. She had discovered that women were worse than men when it came to rampant sexism; her small clientele consisted mostly of men. The only women who supported her were her so-called “Mommy Club” friends and they weren’t in the area enough to use her services regularly. She’d had women drive into her shop and take one look at her before hastily claiming to have made a mistake and driving right back out again. And more than a few men had had the same reaction. It was disheartening to say the least.
She sucked in a breath and focused on the task at hand. She had a lot riding on the grand old lady parked in front of her but she was determined to succeed. She had dreamed of owning her own shop since her early teens, when her father had allowed her to help him “tinker” on his cars. The man hadn’t been the most attentive father, content to let his children run wild for the most part while he focused on his business and the only moments Bobbi had felt close to him when she was a child was when he allowed her to help him work on one of his precious cars. It was his hobby, something he did to unwind, and he had always welcomed Bobbi with her questions and her eagerness to help.
He hadn’t quite known what to do with a girl child and had been quite happy when she hadn’t shown an interest in more feminine pursuits, at least allowing them to have some common ground. He didn’t know that Bobbi had deliberately forsaken more “girlie” pastimes so that she could have her father’s approval and could have something in common with her brothers. She had been desperate to fit into her testosterone-laden family and so dresses and make-up had been sacrificed in favor of jeans, football, and grease.
Out of that need for approval had come this genuine love for auto mechanics. Her brothers had all gone to university after high school and had gone on to become a lawyer, architect, and doctor, respectively. Bobbi hadn’t wanted to be anything other than a mechanic and she had worked at an auto shop all through high school. She had halfheartedly pursued an aimless BA degree in English Literature before eventually dropping out to get an automotive certification instead. She had studied and worked hard and had apprenticed at three different auto repair shops. Years later a combination of savings, a small business loan, and some money her mother—who had died of a pulmonary embolism when Bobbi was just five—had left in trust for her had afforded her the opportunity to open her own shop in town at the relatively young age of twenty-five. Her father had been willing to finance the whole shop but she had wanted to do this by herself. Nobody could ever accuse her of being a pampered, spoiled brat whose wealthy daddy bankrolled her life. It was bad enough that she still lived at home. It was her only viable option at the moment, with every spare cent going into the business.
Starting an auto repair shop wasn’t cheap and if not for Gabe’s emotional support and encouragement back when the idea was just a nascent seed floundering beneath mounds of crushing self-doubt, Bobbi would probably not even have tried to get it off the ground. Gabe had always made her feel like what she wanted was equally as important as her brothers’ lofty ambitions. The costs of her state-of-the-art equipment, building rental, and employee payrolls were immense and Bobbi would swallow her pride and live at home if it meant saving money on rent and food. She’d had a lot more privacy since her brothers had all moved out anyway and usually only saw her father at mealtimes. The man was a workaholic and was always closeted away in his office running the multimillion dollar family business that none of his children had wanted to take over. Instead, Gabe was the one who was being groomed to succeed him as Richcorp’s chairman.
Gabe had been Mike Richmond’s first, last, and only choice as successor once it had become clear tha
t none of his children were interested in learning anything about his huge multimedia conglomerate, which owned five local newspapers around the country, three national radio stations, four glossy multilingual magazines, and a premium cable television that serviced most of the country and a large portion of the continent as well. Gabe had been the one who had asked the intelligent questions on career day when Mike Richmond had graced his classroom—which he shared with his twin, Chase, and her brother Billy—with his formidable presence. Gabe had been the one to dog the older man’s footsteps and beg for a summer job when he was fifteen. While Chase and Billy had flirted with girls and been typical adolescents, Gabe had worked his butt off in the stuffy mailroom of the Cape Town branch of the company. He had eventually obtained his MBA—all the while working his way up through the ranks until he had reached his current status as the CEO of GNT, Richcorp’s most prolific subsidiary. Now he was poised to take over the whole kit and caboodle.
“Hey.” As if she had unconsciously summoned Gabe with her thoughts, his glossy, expensive shoes suddenly materialized at her feet. Startled, she lost focus and raised her head, hitting it on the underside of the car with a bang. Damn it!
She swore roundly and he chuckled in response to her colorful curses. He went down on his haunches and she felt his hands wrap around her ankles. Before she could question him, he dragged her out from under the car. The creeper that she was lying on eased his task significantly. He didn’t budge as he pulled her closer and she had no choice but to part and bend her knees so that they were splayed on either side of his thighs. He halted her progress before the creeper—which was long enough only to support her from shoulder to backside—could whack him on the ankles.
His Unlikely Lover Page 5
