by Jami Alden
Even though she was more than ready to finish up with location shoots and get back to some semblance of a normal life, she was excited for tomorrow’s shoot. Unbeknownst to Gabe, she had a surprise planned.
Several weeks ago, she’d talked to Carrie about changing the San Francisco show topic. Originally, she was going to visit three of Chinatown’s most renowned chefs. But Gabe and his reminiscing about his Croatian grandmother’s cooking had given her a truly unique idea.
The Tadisch Grill was a landmark restaurant in San Francisco. Open since 1849, it was the oldest restaurant in the city. Although it served primarily traditional American seafood, the restaurant had its roots as a coffee and sandwich stand started by two Croatian immigrants. Since then, it had been run by a succession of Croatian families.
He didn’t know it, but he was going to join her on air and help them create a traditional Croatian feast, complete with the Prsurate he so loved.
As the crew started the process of packing up, she walked over to Gabe and caught him around the waist. She buried her face into the open neck of his shirt, the spicy, masculine scent of him sending a burst of warmth between her thighs.
Reaching a hand around his neck, she tugged his head down until his ear was level to her mouth. “I want to take you home and lick you all over,” she whispered, giggling as ruddy color flooded his face.
She snuck a glance at her watch. Oh yeah, they definitely had time to sneak in a quickie before she got back to work on her latest round of revisions.
Gabe slid his hand under her jacket, tracing a path of heat up her spine.
The shrill cry of her cell phone erupted from her pocket. Oops. She hadn’t realized she’d left it on. “Good thing…” she scanned the caller ID screen, “Tyler didn’t call five minutes ago.”
Stepping back from Gabe with an apologetic grin, she lifted the phone to her ear.
“I have great news,” Tyler boomed.
“You and Natalie are moving in together,” she teased. After their dinner in L.A., Natalie had filled in the details on the sudden change in her relationship with Tyler. Reggie had been nervous at first, not sure if it was a smart move for either one of them. But Natalie’s giddy happiness and blooming self-confidence—not to mention the way Tyler looked at her sister like she was the most perfect creation he’d ever seen—quickly put Reggie’s mind at ease.
Tyler choked out a flustered reply. “Wha—no, well, not now, but maybe…” He cleared his throat as Reggie stifled a laugh at her usually cool, glib publicist’s loss of composure. “The network wants you to do their live holiday special.”
She nearly dropped the phone. “You’re kidding.” Every year the Cuisine Network aired an hour-long, live Christmas Eve special with their top hosts. Even better, once the live broadcast was over, the show was syndicated to network affiliates and shown on regular network television.
All of the hosts participating were Cuisine Network veterans, and most had at least three different series to boast of. It was almost unheard of for a relatively new talent, with just a few seasons of one show under her belt, to be invited to participate.
Dazed with excitement, she asked Tyler to e-mail her all the details and call her later. She was simply too excited to absorb any pertinent information.
The Cuisine Network wanted her to be a star. They were banking on her to be as huge a draw as their other big-name hosts. This was it. She was finally going to make up for all the years she struggled to make ends meet as a personal chef, all the years she felt like a loser and wondered if she’d been insane to give up a steady, lucrative career in accounting to pursue her passion for food. Even her mother, who thought her show was barely a rung above a cable access program, would have to admit that an appearance on network television connoted some measure of success.
Almost immediately her breath accelerated and her heart began to pound. Was this what an anxiety attack felt like?
What if she screwed up? What if the other chefs looked down at her for her self-taught credentials and comparatively simple food preparation? What if she messed up the entire show by spilling on herself or someone else during the live broadcast?
“Reggie.” Gabe wrapped a steadying arm around her. “Are you okay? You’re white. Did something happen? Is someone hurt?” He started to pull her over to a folding chair, but she shook her head and took a steadying, head-clearing, heart-slowing breath.
Leaning into him to steady herself, she said, “No, it’s great news, actually.” She went on to explain that one of the original chefs had to cancel and the network wanted her to fill his spot.
His eyebrows drew into a thick, dark line and familiar tense lines bracketed his sensual lips. Of course he wouldn’t be as excited as she, as he had no idea what this meant. “This is a great opportunity,” she said quickly, ticking off the list of celebrity chefs participating in the live Christmas Eve broadcast.
But the more information she gave, the more cold and closed Gabe’s expression grew. Until he appeared the same man who had walked into her apartment nearly two months ago—aloof, indifferent, uncaring.
Raw panic snaked down her spine. What had she done now? “Why are you so upset? I thought you’d be happy for me.” She hated the whiny note that crept into her voice.
Her body felt cold where he’d removed his supporting arm. “I am happy for you,” he said quietly. “What I’m not so happy about is canceling the reservations for our Christmas trip I just made.”
Oh, crap. Her stomach dropping somewhere around her ankles, Reggie raised a placating hand. “I’m sorry, I forgot, but we never confirmed those plans and—”
He barked a humorless laugh. “Right. I’ll remember from now on verbal commitments don’t count unless they’re programmed into your Palm Pilot, and even then they’re negotiable.”
“That’s unfair,” she protested feebly, but deep down she knew he was right. He’d watched her cancel personal plans right and left this week as she worked to finish her book and did phone interviews to promote the upcoming season of Simply Delicious.
But what choice had she had? Her book was on a deadline, and both Tyler and Natalie had worked their asses off to get the interviews scheduled.
Then she looked at Gabe, his face set in tense lines of resignation. That awful look that said he was disappointed not just in her for casually dismissing their plans, but in himself for expecting anything better from her.
“You’ll come to New York with me,” she said, her voice cracking. “We’ll spend a few extra days in Manhattan.”
“And I’ll see you in between filming and publicity events,” he said quietly.
She didn’t bother to deny it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, staring into his face for some sign of softness, forgiveness, patience.
“I understand,” he said.
She feared he understood too much.
Gabe paced Reggie’s living room like a caged tiger. This was but one of the practical problems that came with getting personally involved with a client: no escape.
With the freaky pervert still at large, he couldn’t possibly leave her alone. A solitary, head-clearing run or beer at the bar around the corner was out of the question.
Sometimes working on his own really sucked the big one.
Reggie had tried to cheer them both up on the walk back to her place, brightly listing all of the fun things they could do in and around New York at Christmastime.
He’d managed some semienthusiastic grunts.
She’d looked at him with big, sad brown eyes, chewing on that plump lower lip of hers. “Try to understand,” she’d said for about the fifteenth time.
“I do,” he’d responded every time.
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
He’d schooled his face into an impassive mask, but that only seemed to upset her more.
Truth was, he did understand. Completely. Her career was on a slingshot trajectory, and if she could hang on and capitalize on all the op
portunities thrown her way, she’d be set.
For a while anyway.
Then she would have to go into career maintenance mode, make sure her face was out there enough, get involved in other ventures to expand her “brand.”
In the short time he’d worked with her and around others making careers out of food television, he’d learned plenty about how this business worked. How demanding, competitive, and thankless it could be.
For those who wanted to achieve great success, they had to work at it, one hundred percent of the time.
And Reggie wanted that success. He didn’t fault her for it. He knew how hard she’d worked to achieve this level of fame. Though hailed as Cuisine Network’s “overnight success,” he knew how much she’d struggled for the first five years, scraping by, listening to the harsh doubts of family and friends. She deserved every bit of fame and fortune she received.
And he was acting like a chick, pouting because she had to cancel plans they hadn’t even really confirmed.
How many times had he done that to women when he was in the forces? Granted, when a mission came up, he’d had no choice but to go. At the time, if a woman had uttered a single word of complaint, it was grounds for immediate dumping.
Shit. He of all people should understand how work commitments get in the way of romance.
Funny how things worked out. For his entire adult life, marriage and family had loomed amorphously off in the horizon, like someplace he wanted to get to someday, but was in no particular hurry to do so. It wasn’t that he had commitment issues, as many of his past girlfriends had accused, it was simply that he hadn’t met a woman he could imagine spending forever with.
Until now. A woman so busy and committed to her own career, she probably wouldn’t be able to pencil in a wedding for the next five years. But, he acknowledged, he loved Reggie enough to wait twice that long.
He had no choice but to suck it up and apologize, and after that, wait patiently on the sidelines for whatever scraps of time she could devote to him.
Something niggled at his consciousness—an interview he’d read of an entrepreneur who’d started several successful businesses from the ground up. His advice to other aspiring entrepreneurs? “Don’t do it, unless you literally can’t imagine being happy doing anything else.”
Right now, loving Reggie felt about like that. Part of him wondered if he was setting himself up for misery, even as he faced the terrifying knowledge that he’d never be happy without her.
He started down the hallway to her office, interrupted halfway by his cell phone.
Malcolm.
Gabe greeted him curtly, eager to get off the phone and apologize to Reggie before his sulk had the chance to inflict too much damage.
But Malcolm’s next words had his immediate attention. “I’ve got news on the e-mails. You’re not going to like it.”
Reggie’s office door swung open so hard it smashed into the wall, making her jump in surprise. Spinning in her chair, she saw Gabe looming in the doorway, and one look told her his mood hadn’t improved since they’d come home.
If anything, it was worse. His jaw was tight, an angry tendon pulsing near his ear. His dark eyes were icy obsidian chips, chilling her.
Her own temper boiled in response. What right did he have to be so angry with her? Didn’t he understand how important the holiday special was to her? If he really loved her, wouldn’t he be happy for her success?
She never would have guessed he could be so selfish. A creeping, sick feeling of doubt consumed her as she wondered whether she’d actually fallen in love with the real man or a heroic fantasy lover she’d created in her head.
She opened her mouth to tell him off, but his flat, almost toneless voice pierced the air.
“I know about the e-mails.”
Relief flooded her. He wasn’t mad at her! He was mad at whoever sent them. Then that sick feeling doubled in force as she wondered which of her friends or acquaintances had stooped to sending her creepy and threatening communications over the past two months. “Who—” she licked her lips nervously, almost afraid to hear the answer—“Who is it?”
His harsh grin didn’t reach his eyes. In fact, he wasn’t grinning at all, but snarling whitely against his tan skin. “Like you don’t know.”
Shaking her head mutely, she watched as he advanced. Instinctively, she pushed her chair back on its rollers, halting with a thud as she came up against her desk.
He was big and tough and burly and intimidating, and right now, Gabe looked downright scary. Every sinew coiled with rage. The muscles of his arms and shoulders actually strained against the cotton broadcloth of his shirt, and a vein pounded so fiercely in his neck she feared he was at risk for an aneurysm.
Most frightening of all was that his fury appeared to be inexplicably aimed at her.
“What I can’t figure out,” he spat the words as though they were poisonous, “is why you would bother hiring me in the first place.”
What was he talking about? “Natalie made me hire you,” she stuttered.
“Did you think I would give more validity to your story?” His Southern drawl thickened, and for once she didn’t find it sexy. He reached her chair and leaned over her, effectively pinning her in with his arms braced on either side of the desk. “Hiring me cost you a lot of money.” His cold whisper sent a shiver through her core. “But I suppose you’d do anything to buy publicity.”
Struck speechless, Reggie could only stare. He’d lost his mind. That was the only explanation. He said he had intense emotions. Maybe that was his code way of saying emotionally unstable. As in schizophrenic. Or manic-depressive. Or otherwise certifiable.
“And I bet when the two of you got tired of this whole stalker thing, Natalie could oh so conveniently dig up my past and you could ride the scandal of having hired a brutal thug as your personal security guard.”
“What do you mean, stalker thing?”
“I talked to Malcolm. The jig is up,” he growled. “I should have known when you weren’t even scared, when all you could talk about was all the press and the boost to your sales.” His eyes raked her with such caustic contempt, she thought she smelled her skin burn. “But you swung your sweet little ass in my face and I fell for every single bit of it.”
The soundtrack from Psycho rang in her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she choked around the lump of anxiety clogging her throat.
“I know everything, Reggie. I know you faked the whole thing.”
It was so ludicrous, so patently ridiculous, for a moment the words didn’t even register. Then reality slowly sunk in.
Gabe, the man she’d fallen in love with, who claimed to be in love with her, was accusing her of faking being stalked to gain more publicity. Whatever Malcolm had told him had convinced him, and based on his cold expression, he didn’t doubt his friend for a minute.
“I don’t know what you think you know,” she said, her voice shaking, “but I would never lie about something like this just to get attention.”
He straightened up to his full imposing height and pointed an accusing finger at her computer screen. “Then explain how every single e-mail you’ve received in the last week was generated from this computer.”
“We didn’t get back until three days ago!”
“Natalie should have covered her tracks a little better,” he snapped. “What about Tyler? Was he in on it too?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Am I? Then how come Malcolm can trace every other e-mail to the exact Internet cafés in the exact cities where you were working on the road?”
Her heart stopped, then throbbed painfully in her chest. The stalker had been closer more often than she’d even realized, and they’d had no idea. Which meant he could be anywhere, anytime, undetected. Was he somehow able to get into her apartment when she wasn’t here to send e-mails? God, her brain couldn’t even wrap itself around that right now.
“I don’t know, Gabe. Maybe he’s so
me kind of computer wiz, and this is a way to get your experts”—she couldn’t resist adding sarcastic air quotes—“off his trail.”
Massive arms folded across his chest, the hard lines of his face so cold and imposing, he was almost unrecognizable as the passionate lover who’d just this morning whispered he loved her as he buried himself in her. “Or maybe,” he replied, his voice once again void of any emotion, “the most obvious answer is the correct one. Except for the initial mailing, every single communication is easily traced back to you.”
“What about the phone call?” Reggie said, desperately reaching for any shred of evidence that might help him realize the sheer insanity of his accusations. “How could I have faked that?”
“Easy,” he scoffed. “You or your sister easily could have put some sap of an intern or production assistant up to playing a tape.” He reached over her shoulder for her computer mouse so quickly she flinched.
“Don’t worry,” he sneered, “I don’t stoop to beating women.”
The sound of the mouse click echoed like a gunshot in the room, and she craned her neck to see what he was doing. “Adobe Photoshop. How convenient.”
“I got it for designing my personal chef menus,” she protested. This was unreal. Obviously, he thought she’d used it to doctor up her own obscene photos! Her stomach felt like she’d eaten about ten pounds of rotten meat.
He leaned over her once again, and now she could see through the icy blackness of his eyes underneath to the raging storm of grief, pain, and betrayal. “I wanted to believe in you so bad.” Tears burned in her eyes at the slight quiver in his voice. “If you had just told me the truth, I could have overlooked everything.
“But what really kills me,” he said almost casually, as though she hadn’t said anything, “is that you were stupid enough to admit your scheme in an e-mail to Natalie.” He made a scolding sound. “Really, you should know better in this day and age to leave any kind of electronic trail.”
What on earth was he talking about?
