She wore a smile as she window-shopped. He had to admit, without makeup and dressed as she was, he was mightily attracted to her the same as he’d been yesterday at the photo shoot for McCord Jewelers. As he’d watched Gabby play in front of the camera—and that’s exactly what she’d done as she smiled and turned and tossed her hair—he’d had to drink a couple of bottles of water just to keep his temperature down. She’d looked hot in every outfit. And not only hot, but classy, and sophisticated and over-the-top beautiful.
She bumped his arm with her elbow. “Stop worrying. I’ve done this before.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not tempting fate.”
“Honestly, Rafe, if you don’t stop worrying, you’re going to have permanent lines on your forehead.”
Reflexively, he smoothed his hand over his forehead and she laughed. He liked her laugh and he wondered why he didn’t mind her laughing at him.
Suddenly she stopped in front of a gift shop window that displayed statues, ornaments and little painted boxes that looked very expensive.
However, Gabby seemed interested only in one object—a small crystal cage housing a tiny bird. It had a golden door that opened on the side.
“That’s so delicate, yet so symbolic,” she murmured.
“Symbolic of what?”
“Of the way I feel sometimes. I’m surrounded by comfortable furniture and pretty things, but I feel trapped by all that.”
“The cage has a door,” Rafe pointed out.
She studied him for a few moments rather than the cage, their eyes meeting, locking, holding. “Yes, it does,” she agreed. “But sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I’m afraid to open the door.”
A heat began in his body that had nothing to do with the warm sun on their heads. He wanted to bring Gabby into his arms, let her body melt against his. He wanted to show her freedom and teach her about passion that could take both of them away.
Teach her? She’d been around the globe! Maybe there was nothing he could teach her.
“Do you want to go in?” he asked gruffly.
She pulled her gaze from his and took one last look at the little cage. “No, not now. Maybe someday after I have my house and have a permanent place to put things.”
“But you still want to shop for shoes.”
“I have to shop for shoes. I left London so quickly that I—” She abruptly stopped.
“That’s what your e-mail was about, your clothes?”
A group of teenage boys jogged down the sidewalk. Rafe protectively threw his arm around Gabby’s shoulders and turned her to face the window again. Their reflections stared back at them, two very different people, looking at life from their own experience. He understood Gabby was reluctant to tell him about her affair. He couldn’t push her, but he wished she’d confide in him—not only for security’s sake, but because he truly wanted to know what had happened between her and Kutras.
It would have been so easy to kiss her then, to wrap his arm just a little tighter, to turn her toward him. Easy and stupid.
Instead of kissing her, he asked another question that would take him deeper into her background. “Before you became famous, did you roam the streets? Did you go window-shopping?”
“Even in the village, someone always went with me. When I began modeling, if my mother wasn’t along, I had a chaperone.”
“A chaperone?”
“She’d been my nanny when I was growing up. She went along with me on shoots when my mother couldn’t.”
“Didn’t you rebel?”
“Against what? My parents loving me? Life on a beautiful estate with horses, tennis courts, anything I could possibly want?”
Gabriella McCord wasn’t like any woman he’d ever met and maybe that’s why she got to him. Maybe that’s why this was the first time since his wife had died that he was feeling more than desire, more than a passion that pushed him to have a physical need fulfilled.
He dropped his arm from around her. “Let’s go buy those shoes.”
He thought he saw Gabby straighten her spine and square her shoulders. Had she taken his sudden withdrawal as rejection? Just why would that rejection bother her so much? They were still basically strangers, weren’t they? Born on different sides of the tracks, let alone oceans. They’d grown up in very different surroundings.
The storefronts displayed many offerings, but Gabby didn’t seem as interested in window-shopping now. She was more like a woman on a mission and that was good. They’d get this over with and he’d take her back to the safety of her suite.
Only to her the suite didn’t represent safety. It represented that crystal cage.
The Shoe House was a small shop wedged between a dress boutique and a leather goods store. Gabby studied the window for a few moments. Her gaze seemed to linger on a pair of sandals. Then she moved quickly, opening the door and stepping inside.
He glanced around swiftly, then took a longer, more particular look. No one else was in the store. A clerk stood at the counter where the cash register was located, but she was on the phone. She called, “I’ll be with you shortly,” and he could tell she hadn’t recognized Gabby. They could easily get lost in the tall shelves and the stacks of shoes. That would make his life easier.
Gabby seemed to know exactly what she was looking for. She headed for a shelf that displayed a high-heeled shoe with spikes at least three inches, a sexy strap, the toes pointy. It was displayed in turquoise, red and white.
Gabby smiled, picked up a turquoise shoe and nodded. “That’s it.”
Her gaze assessed the line of boxes and she pulled out a size six.
Rafe knew nothing about women’s shoes.
A small wooden bench sat in front of the shelves. Gabby dropped her purse onto it and sank down, lowering the box to the floor beside her. Bumping the lid aside, she removed one of the shoes. She slipped it on, then bent over to adjust the strap into its clasp. Her fingers fumbled and she couldn’t seem to fasten it. He just wanted this whole ordeal over with.
He sank down to his knee in front of her and said, “Let me help.”
She was about to protest, but then she gave a shrug. “I should have fastened it first.”
“But then it might have been too tight,” he warned with a small smile.
“Or too loose,” she suggested, maybe just to contradict him. He’d noticed before she didn’t like him to get the upper hand.
His fingers fought the leather at first—the clasp was very small—but then he adjusted the metal buckle properly and the leather strip slipped into place.
He held her foot in his hand and couldn’t help but glance up at her. She’d removed her sunglasses and she was staring at him as if he were…a substitute for Prince Charming?
Not him.
“A perfect fit,” he admitted.
She looked a little lost in thought for a moment, but then she gestured to the box. “Let’s try the other one.”
In her shorts and bare feet, he didn’t think a woman ever looked more sexy. But he wasn’t about to comment.
Two pairs of shoes later, they stood at the counter. Gabby took out her wallet and to his surprise, she paid in cash.
“Name on the credit card,” she murmured to him, as the clerk, still on the phone, bent for a bag on the other side of the counter.
“Good thinking.”
Gabby was beautiful, intelligent and not as carefree as she looked. She apparently knew how to take care of herself and that made his job a little easier.
Finally the clerk finished her call, rang up the shoes and bagged the purchases. She took a few glances at Gabby. “You look familiar.”
Gabby didn’t get nervous or back away. She simply smiled sweetly. “A lot of people tell me that.” She swiped the bags from the counter and headed for the door.
Rafe followed her with a smile. She knew when she had to make a getaway.
Outside the shop, Gabby quickly headed back toward the jewelry store.
Rafe took the bag
s from her. “I can carry those.” When their fingers met, the shock was electric.
Gabby stepped back and so did he. Before she could see the hunger in his eyes, he pointed to a side street. “Let’s circle around that way. I never take the same route twice.”
To his surprise, she stopped and asked, “In your personal life, as well as your professional life?”
“I’ve always liked to leave the past behind,” he explained.
“You can try to take a new path, but that doesn’t mean the past isn’t always shadowing you.”
He thought of his fieldwork as a Secret Service agent, Connie’s death when he wasn’t there to protect her, the aftermath of all of it.
He thought he’d put it all behind him. But meeting Gabby had seemed to unearth it. A couple more weeks and she’d be in Italy. A couple more weeks and he’d be back in New York.
That would be best for both of them.
Chapter Seven
“Gabby, what’s wrong? Your restlessness is driving me crazy!” Spending the evening alone with her in the suite, Rafe was so aware of her that every move she made tensed his body even more.
She’d sat down at the piano and started one piece then stopped. She’d started another, then stopped again. Before that, she’d picked at a dinner they’d eaten almost in silence, checked her e-mail and tried on a few clothes in her bedroom.
Still on the piano bench, she glanced at him over her shoulder, one hand still on the piano keys. “You have your own room now. You can go in there and shut the door.”
Yes, he did have his own room, but he didn’t feel as if he was doing his job if he holed up in it. “I can’t pretend I’m a hermit when I have to keep my eye on you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said in frustration, standing up from the piano bench. “That’s the whole problem.”
“Where would you like to go?” he asked, proud of himself for the patience in his voice.
“It isn’t that I want to go somewhere specific. It’s that I don’t have the freedom to go. Do you know what I mean?”
“You’re not locked and chained in here.”
“All right. I’ll say it,” she erupted suddenly. “I’m feeling like that caged bird because you’re with me every minute of the day. No matter what I do, you know what I’m doing. It’s like having a camera on me.”
Setting his laptop aside, he stood and crossed to her. “Maybe you’ve had a camera on you too often and you don’t know what it’s like to sit in companionable silence with someone.”
“And you’re feeling completely peaceful, sitting in companionable silence?”
No, because he wanted to kiss her senseless every minute he was with her. But he couldn’t say that. “I get restless sometimes,” he admitted. “But I learned control when I was in the Secret Service. I learned to focus and stay calm.”
“I don’t want to control the restlessness. I want to just be…free.”
“Why don’t you ask Eleanor McCord if you can stay at the mansion with her? Would that help?”
“I can’t do that, especially not now.”
“Not now?”
“The whole family is in turmoil. They’re dealing with family…secrets.”
“More than the business problems?” Rafe asked, familiar with those because of his work with the jewelry stores.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the business.” She sighed. “Besides, I don’t know how much that would help. I guess part of what I’m feeling is that I don’t have a place to belong. That’s why I want to buy my own house. I can go to the market and the shops in town without raising a fuss.”
“No paparazzi?”
“That’s my dream. Maybe I can find a place with a stone wall rather than a moat.”
“That still sounds like a cage to me.”
“Maybe after this campaign of Blake’s, I’ll drop out and stop modeling. There’s an Italian designer interested in starting a purse line with me. If I did that, I’d be pretty much out of the public eye.”
All of this surprised Rafe. Didn’t Gabby need to feed her ego?
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me what you were thinking.”
“I was thinking that most people in your line of work do it for the public acclaim. They like being celebrities. Wouldn’t you miss that?”
“I was pressed into this when I hardly knew how to make good choices. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I wanted to model. My mother made sure of that before I did it. But it’s taken on a life of its own…something I can never get free from.”
There was that word again—free. She wanted to feel free. He had to keep his eye on her, but maybe he could help her out. Before they’d returned to the hotel, she’d been dressed to the nines again for an appointment with a cosmetics representative. But now she was wearing a tank top and shorts, her hair pulled back into a ponytail and he had to admit this was the way he liked her.
His gaze went to her bare feet. “I’m going to make a call. You put on some sandals. Maybe I can help you feel ‘free’ for a little while.”
Her gaze was uncomprehending, but he just smiled and took out his phone.
A half hour later, Rafe led Gabby through the back exit of the hotel. This time, however, the car wasn’t waiting for them.
She stopped short when she saw a golf cart. “What’s this?”
“Your chariot to freedom. Come on, climb in. I’m a great driver. I’ve never had an accident in one of these.”
She laughed and hopped in beside him, her arm close to his and her leg beside his. She hadn’t just been restless because she was with him practically twenty-four hours a day, but because of the tension between them, the fire that erupted whenever they touched, the undercurrent when they spoke, the electricity from being in the same room together. But now the warm night air blew around her. She lifted her face, took the band from her ponytail and let her hair blow free.
“Where are we going?” she asked as Rafe turned off the service road and onto the golf course.
“I want you to close your eyes,” he said as the golf cart picked up speed. “Pretend you’re on horseback, riding wild and free, no walls, no chains, no paparazzi.”
She hadn’t used her imagination in this way for a long time. Now she did as he asked. She let tabloid stories, flashing cameras, shouted questions, even what happened with Miko fall from her shoulders as the wind blew around her, as the headlights cut into the darkness, as Rafe plunged her into freedom. After a while, she didn’t know if they’d ridden five minutes or twenty.
When he slowed a bit, she turned toward him, placing her hand on his arm. “Thank you.”
“No thanks necessary. I was afraid you were going to run screaming out of the hotel and be captured by ardent fans.”
She laughed. “I wasn’t really that bad, was I?”
He cut her a glance. “I understand, though. Restriction is tough.”
Restriction. Control. How much control was Rafe exerting whenever he was around her? Maybe none at all. Maybe this was just his job and attraction was easy for him to corral.
“Do you wish you could spend more time with your family?” she asked.
“You mean if I didn’t have to work?”
She could tell he seemed amused.
“Something like that.”
He thought about it while keeping a steady foot on the gas. “I’d like to spend more time with my family. My mother, well, let’s face it, she’s getting older. She has her friends, work, Julie, but when I come home I see that sparkle in her eyes. I know she misses me. I know she wants to feed me.” He chuckled. “That’s the way she shows love. She likes to have me sitting at that table talking with her. It brings back memories for her of when my dad was still alive. It brings back memories of when Julie and I were growing up. She thinks I don’t know it, but I do.”
Gabby was impressed by Rafe’s insight. But then he had more experience and wisdom than she did, since h
e was nine years older. Just how much did age matter in a relationship? There was ten years difference between her mother and father.
What was she thinking? A relationship?
But so much about Rafe seemed solid and true. Since when had she been with a man who gave her that feeling?
Not ever.
“What about you and your family? If you live in Tuscany, you’ll see your mother, but how much will you see your dad?” he asked.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“You don’t know how many secrets I’ve kept,” he returned wryly.
“My dad’s thinking about retiring. When I talked with him last night, he said of course he wouldn’t do it until McCord’s financial problems are settled, or at least on the right track. But it’s in his plans and that would be wonderful.”
“You’d really give up your public life altogether?”
“I would for the right reasons.”
“And what would those reasons be?”
“To start a business that would see me into my future.”
“You probably have enough money that you’d never have to worry about working again.”
“That’s true, but I’d have to do some kind of work. I need to feel productive. But I do have to admit, if I had children, I would concentrate mostly on them.”
He was silent.
“Don’t you want children someday?” she asked, curious.
“That’s a subject I don’t get into.”
His voice had changed and become different. There was sadness in it. He’d gone back into Secret-Service-agent mode and Gabby didn’t know why. The subject of children?
She didn’t want to spoil this wonderful adventure. She didn’t want to spoil the feeling of freedom Rafe had given her. So she didn’t ask any more questions. She just faced the wind and breathed in freedom.
Gabby chose an apple from the fruit bowl in the kitchen. She tossed it up in the air and then caught it again, smiling. Her ride with Rafe had left her exhilarated, excited and even more attracted to him than she’d been before. He’d gone to his room when they’d returned and she’d wondered if they’d gotten a little bit too close while they were talking in the golf cart.
The Texas Bodyguard’s Proposal Page 9
