Rock Hard

by Nalini Singh

  "Gabriel, did you mean sprint when you said walk?"

  He looked down when he heard the acerbic question and realized he'd been taking swift, long strides in his anger. Charlotte was a little breathless but the spark, it was back in her eyes, so this was one mistake for which he wasn't sorry. "Did you get to drink your coffee?" he asked, the scent of roasting beans reaching him from a cafe a couple of doors down.

  "No, but I don't want any."

  He bought her a frothy thing with chocolate on top anyway, having seen her with something similar when she'd come back from her lunches with Molly a couple of times.

  Folding her arms, she said, "Are you planning to drink one from each hand?"

  "Don't be a bad-tempered cat," he said, holding out her coffee. "I even asked them to put extra chocolate on top."

  Her eyebrows drew together, arms remaining mutinously folded.

  "Or I'll drop it in that trash bin."

  "Oh, give it to me."

  Watching her sip at the frothy concoction, he didn't make the mistake of thinking she was back to her usual self. The shock had been severe, the bruises deep. But the fact she'd been able to snap at him was a good sign that his Ms. Baird was in there. Maybe a little dented, but whole.

  They didn't talk as they crossed the street at the lights.

  Heading past the people pouring out of the train station, they went across the street that ran along the waterfront and turned left, toward the ferry building. That section was busy with commuters. He continued to stroll onward, Charlotte a quiet presence at his side. Quiet, but potent. He was aware of her every move, her every breath.

  Reaching the Viaduct, they turned right and walked through Wynyard Quarter until they came to the wide pedestrian bridge that covered the channel out of the marina to their left, the bridge's white arches sharp and stylized.

  "I like watching the bridge open up to let the tall-masted yachts through," Charlotte said, leaning with her forearms braced on the railing as they faced the sea rather than the marina.

  He pointed out a yacht on the water. "Someone's taking the day off work."

  "I hope it stays sunny for them." Charlotte fiddled with her coffee cup. "I'm sorry for how I reacted in the break room." A shuddering exhale. "I'd managed to convince myself that Richard was out of my life forever." If she'd ever permitted herself to think about it, she'd known this day would come, but the only way she'd been able to get past the fear enough to have any kind of a life was to pretend it wouldn't.

  "Hell, Charlotte, you're dealing with this better than anyone has a right to expect." His arm brushed against hers, his suit jacket a dark gray. "But you have to know I won't let anyone hurt you."

  She felt her lower lip tremble. Catching it between her teeth, she shook her head. "I can't do that, Gabriel. I can't let you take over, not after I put so much effort into becoming independent."

  "Charlotte--"

  "Do you know why Molly moved out after she qualified and got a full-time job at the library?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "Not because she wanted to, but because we both knew I was becoming too dependent on her presence." It had gotten to the point where she couldn't relax until Molly was in the house. "The first night I spent on my own after she moved out was terrifying... and liberating."

  Jaw set, Gabriel said, "I don't want to take that away from you, but we have to be smart about this--you need to take measures to protect yourself until we're certain this bastard is no longer a threat. The best protection you can have is to move in with me."

  25

  Shallow Graves & Psychopaths & a Pissed-off T-Rex

  Charlotte almost dropped her near-empty takeout cup. "What?"

  "I live in a secure building. The apartment's big enough that you won't have to see me if you don't want to."

  As if that was the problem. "You're not listening to me." Her fingers clenched on the takeout cup, the ensuing dent broadcast by a crackle of sound. "I can't go backward. I reclaimed my life after Richard. I didn't give up the town house I loved--I'm not going to do that now, either."

  She battled the emotions that tried to rise up, overwhelm her. "Do you know how hard it was? At first, I couldn't even walk into the kitchen because all I'd see was him at the stove, at the table. Molly and I found the money to replace the table, the bed, the sofa, the carpet, anything else he might've touched, and my bedroom cupboard doesn't have any doors, but I stayed. I made it my home again."

  Gabriel released a harsh breath. "I hope he does turn up. I'd enjoy the chance to--"

  "No, don't become him. Don't." Voice trembling from the force of her emotions, she put her hand on his forearm, squeezed the taut muscle. "I couldn't bear it if protecting me forced you to become like him."

  "Jesus, Charlotte, it wouldn't be like that." He shoved his other hand through his hair. "I protect what's mine. Always have, always will."

  The words rocked her, cut through the frustration to touch something newer, far more vulnerable. Sucking in a draft of the salt-laced air, she shook her head. "I know you, Gabriel. You're so angry, have been since I told you."

  His muscles grew even more tense under her touch. "Of course I'm angry. He hurt you."

  "But if you dwell on it," she whispered and laid her heart on the line, "the rage will swallow you up, and then he'll have taken you from me too."

  He didn't say anything for several minutes, his jaw working and his eyes on the water that had turned choppy with the rising wind. "For you," he said at last, "I'll try not to focus on the bastard." He put one arm around her shoulders to draw her in against him, making sure not to hold too tight. "But Charlotte, I'm not a good guy when the people who matter to me are threatened. If he comes near you, all bets are off. I will crush him and bury his fucking body where no one will ever find him."

  Charlotte shuddered, realizing she'd need to watch him. Because Gabriel was intensely protective, intensely determined. He was also ruthless and very, very smart. She had to make sure he didn't concentrate those instincts on eliminating Richard for good in a preemptive strike, but on her.

  "If you won't move in with me," he said while she was still working through her thoughts, "I'll move in with you. Or I'll hire security for you. Whatever you want. But you have to let me protect you."

  Charlotte's eyes were on the water, but her attention was firmly on the man who held her, his rage a heartbeat away from exploding and his voice raw. He'd just given her a roadmap of how she could get him to focus on her, keeping him from falling into an abyss of hate and retribution.

  Petting his chest with one hand, his body heat searing through the fine cotton of his shirt, she said, "I need a few minutes, okay?"

  When he didn't move, she touched her fingers to his jaw. "Gabriel."

  Steely eyes locked with her own. "Fifteen minutes. Then I'm coming to find you." His hand lifted as if he would shove it into her hair, haul her in for a kiss, but he curled it into a fist before dropping it to his side. "Fifteen minutes. Not a second longer."

  Heart heavy at the sign he was leashing his nature for her, she watched him walk away. Gabriel was a physical man; had she not been so screwed up, she knew full well they'd be in bed right now. She'd have eased his rage with her body, and he'd have focused all his primal instincts on her pleasure.

  But she was screwed up. And fuck it, she'd had enough. She wanted him to be able to go caveman on her if he needed it, wanted to be able to haul him to bed herself if he was being stubborn and uncommunicative, as with those phone calls. Her instincts told her that getting physical with Gabriel would fundamentally alter things between them in a good way. The man was heavily tactile, would speak with his body if she let him.

  Turning back to the water only when he was no longer in sight, a knot of angry frustration in her gut, she took out her phone and called Molly. "Hey," she said when her best friend answered sounding a little flustered. "Was Fox doing naughty things to you?"

  A guilty laugh. "Maybe, but he has to go meet Noah now anyway, so I
'm shoving him out th--"

  "Hey, Charlie," said the distinctive, gritty voice of Schoolboy Choir's lead singer. "Miss Molly will be a minute."

  "Fox!" came Molly's faint voice. "Give me the phone."

  The sound cut off, as if someone had put a hand over the speaker.

  Smiling at the image of a kiss-rumpled Molly trying to deny a man against whom she had no resistance, Charlotte waited until her friend came back on the line. "Sorry about that," Molly said, breathless again. "He's in a mood today."

  "I can guess exactly what kind of mood he's in, Miss Molly."

  "Oh, shut up." Molly laughed. "Soooo? How was your second date with T-Rex?"

  "Wonderful." The memory of the hours she'd spent with him yesterday made her want to sigh and go all gooey-eyed.

  "Then why do you sound like that?"

  "Do you have X-ray vision? How can you know something's wrong across a phone line?"

  "Because I know you. What is it?"

  Charlotte told Molly about Richard's forthcoming release, rubbing at her forehead with her fingers. "I know I need to take my security situation seriously, but I hate feeling like Richard's backed me into a corner."

  "You could look at it another way," Molly said after a small pause.

  Eyes on a catamaran coming in to dock on this side of the marina, Charlotte said, "What other way?"

  "Last time, Dick was in control, manipulating and scheming." Her best friend's anger was a scalpel. "This time, you're the one in charge. You make the decisions."

  Charlotte hadn't considered it from that point of view. "I'm still reacting to him."

  "So don't," Molly replied. "Decide what you want. Not what will make Gabriel happy or what will roadblock that pathetic monster. What will make you feel like you're handling the situation?"

  "The thing is, Molly, I want to make Gabriel happy." Seeing him laugh, smile, it lit up her world. "I can't bear for him to be so torn up."

  "That's a choice too, you know." A smile in Molly's voice. "And it's one I understand--I like making Fox happy too. Same way I like doing things to make you happy. There's nothing wrong with caring for the people we love; the problem only comes when it's one person giving all the time. When it goes both ways, you have love."

  Charlotte flushed and pushed away from the railing to start the walk back to the office. Dropping her sorely abused takeout cup in a trash can along the way, she said, "I've just started dating him."

  "Charlie, you two have been doing the tango for months," her friend responded dryly. "I mean, the foreplay must be driving him nuts."

  "You have a one-track mind."

  "I see you're following that track, so what does that say about your own mind, huh?"

  Charlotte grinned, starting to see the glimmer of a path through this. "Thanks, Moll. I'm going to think about things, act rather than react." Light sparked off her bracelet as she hung up.

  Gabriel had finally shown her how to unlock the complicated clasp last night, after she agreed to keep the bracelet. She'd decided that if it didn't work out between them, if her problems made that impossible... or if he lost his desire for her, she'd simply ensure it made its way back to him.

  That it hurt to even think about no longer being with him told her exactly how badly she'd already fallen.

  Gabriel was in no mood to find Brian Bishop waiting for him at the Saxon & Archer building. He'd taken the long route back to walk off his fury, but it returned the instant he walked into the lobby and saw the man who was nominally his parent. Brian looked drawn out and pale, but Gabriel also saw the yellowed teeth, the nicotine-stained fingernails, and the crooked nose from when a creditor had beat him up.

  His "father" had always chosen his own poisons.

  "What do you want?" he snapped after walking Brian back out to the sidewalk.

  Eyes wet, the man he'd once called Dad tried to reach out to touch his face. Gabriel backed away from it. "If it's money," he said, his voice cold, "give me your account number and I'll have it transferred." Better he pay Brian off than have the man shake down Gabriel's mother by playing on her sympathies.

  "No, son." The quavery voice of a man much older. "I just wanted to see my boy."

  "I haven't been a boy since I was six years old." Since the day he'd had his illusions about Brian permanently shattered. Brian's abandonment a year later had only put the final seal on Gabriel's view of his father.

  The other man huddled into his navy blue windbreaker. "Facing mortality makes a man look back on his life. Mine is full of mistakes--I don't expect you to forgive me, but please don't cut me out of your life."

  The plea hit a stone wall. "You made that choice." Gabriel had watched his younger brother wait for their father to come home, face pressed to the window. Sailor had been adamant Brian would come back for them, his childish pain when that proved a false hope another stone in the wall. "You threw away your family--you can't just come back and pick us up again."

  "Gabriel, son, I--"

  Gabriel sliced out a hand. "Enough. Get out and don't come back to my workplace. I'll send you the money."

  "I don't want your money." Brian's shoulders slumped. "If you ever decide you can forgive me, I'm at the Hope Hospice."

  Gabriel said nothing and the man he barely knew and no longer wanted to know finally walked away.

  "Gabriel."

  He turned at the sound of Charlotte's voice, realized she must've taken the shortest route back. "Your talk with Molly go well?" he asked, turning his back on Brian Bishop's retreating figure.

  "How did you--" A shake of her head, her eyes looking past him. "It did, but we can talk about it inside. Who was that man?"

  Charlotte was almost expecting Gabriel's shrug. "Someone I knew in another life." The words were cold enough to frost her glasses.

  "He calls you, doesn't he?"

  "It's nothing, Charlotte." His tone told her to drop it.

  Her eyes narrowed. "Fine."

  Glaring at her, he said, "That tone doesn't say fine. It says you're pissed."

  "I've just realized this relationship apparently only goes one way," she said, her conversation with Molly fresh in her mind. "I'm to be the needy, broken one who takes, but I'm not allowed to give."

  "Fuck." A growl of sound. "I don't have time for this."

  "Fine," Charlotte said again, fully aware it'd prick his temper.

  Gabriel's eyes flashed. "You want to know who that was? Brian Bishop. My fucking father. The man who left when I was seven, clearing out every cent he and my mom had in the joint account. He took the rent money, the grocery money, everything." The growl was gone, ice filming over the gray. "Now he's sick and he thinks I should give a fuck."

  Charlotte hadn't been expecting this cold blast, but she'd seen Gabriel furious before. "You're still so angry at him," she said, hesitant but able to feel the pain he refused to acknowledge existed inside him. "Maybe you should talk to him, not for him but for yourself."

  "I don't need or want advice on my fuckup of a father from you." He glanced at his watch after a statement that quickly, efficiently shut her down. The same way she'd seen him shut down business opponents in a negotiation. "We have to get back up to the office."

  Charlotte just nodded, feeling her heart crack. It wasn't the words or the way he'd spoken them in that frigid tone. It was the fact she'd believed she was learning to deal with Gabriel on an equal basis when it came to their relationship. Clearly, that was a self-deluding lie. He'd been allowing her to handle him.

  Now he'd drawn a line in the sand beyond which she was not permitted to step.

  26

  Cupcakes and Kisses

  An hour later and Gabriel was calm enough to know he'd fucked up. Badly. He'd been so angry at Brian that he'd allowed it to spill over onto Charlotte. The fact he'd done it today of all days, when she needed him to be her rock, it made him an asshole of epic proportions.

  "Goddammit." Throwing down his pen, he got up and went to find her. She wasn't at her desk
or in the break room, but since her computer screen was on and showing a partial itinerary for a business trip he was taking later this month, she had to be nearby.

  "Gabriel." His chief operations officer waved him into his office when Gabriel went back out into the corridor to hunt Charlotte down. "You have ten minutes to talk over something?"

  "Yeah." He saw Charlotte the second he left the COO's office. She was standing farther down the corridor with another personal assistant, the two of them concentrating on a tablet. From the frowns on their faces, he thought they were trying to figure something out.

  Charlotte looked okay, but when she glanced toward him, that spark he loved was missing from her eyes. Turning toward her fellow PA as the other woman made a comment, she smiled... and it wasn't his Ms. Baird's smile, rather a ghost of it.

  He'd done that.

  Charlotte returned to her desk after helping the CFO's personal assistant with an online meeting application, and found a fancy vanilla cupcake on her desk, complete with raspberry frosting and silver sprinkles. She stared at it. Gabriel had done this before, apologized to her with decadent treats, but it had always just been when he'd infuriated her. He'd never before hurt her.

  "Charlotte."

  Swiveling in her chair, she found him in the doorway to his office. He looked so ragged that her heart hurt. "Yes?" she said; she cared too much for him to push him away when he was in pain.

  "I'm sorry." Shoving his hands into his pockets, he blew out a breath. "I am angry at Brian and it pisses me off that I can't let it go."

  Charlotte rose from her desk to go to him and they both stepped into his office, shutting the door behind them. "For better or worse," she said gently, "he's your blood. It's an indelible connection."

  Gabriel walked to the windows behind his desk, his gaze on the city and on the water beyond. "I don't want it to be--he has no claim on me." Shaking his head, he folded his arms. "I can't talk about this anymore, especially when I'm worried about you."

  It wasn't the cold shutdown of before, simply a request for space. Charlotte had no problem with giving him that--emotional wounds this deep and complex didn't get solved in a single conversation. What continued to worry her was what would've happened if he hadn't made the first move? Would she have had the courage to push, to demand he trust her with his secrets?