Charlene handed Gabrielle the letter, her face sapped of its usual sparkle. “This is a copy. The original has already been delivered to HR.”
“You’re quitting?”
The hostess squinted, drummed her acrylic nails on the desktop. “Me? No. Things are just getting juicy around here. Why would I miss out on the excitement?” She shook her shiny blond curls. “It’s your assistant. Roarke. He asked me to make sure you got this, and he took the original up to HR.”
“Roarke? I was in the office with him earlier.” They’d chatted about the resort’s upcoming events and looked at silly YouTube videos and things had almost seemed normal between them.
“I know. Weird, isn’t it? He took his stuff and walked out while you were gone. I heard a couple of the waitresses suggesting that he quit because of that man who came here asking questions. If Roarke had nothing to hide, why’d he go off the deep end and walk out on the company?”
“This makes no sense at all. That’s not like him.”
“Who’s acting like themselves anymore anyway? One of the bussers said you wouldn’t have sneaked a man into the restaurant for some rocking on the clock, but…” She shrugged. “And Jonah’s been so wound up these past few days that he hasn’t been able to perform any of those bartending tricks the guests love so much.”
“I didn’t rock on the clock.”
“That’s not what I heard. Or was it rocking in the dark?”
Gabrielle thanked the hostess for the note and felt a headache starting. Sometimes she had decent enough intentions, but her execution could use some work.
Sidling up to the bar, Gabrielle said, “Jonah, how about you take a seat. Take a break. Let’s talk about stuff that has absolutely no importance.”
Jonah’s wrinkled face pulled into a grimace. “I saw you at the hostess desk, and now you’re over here telling me to sit down. No, Gabby, I won’t do that.”
“I’m your friend. There’s no cause for you to be so prickly, okay?”
“There’s not? Strangers coming around, bringing the wrong sort of attention. The intrusive questions made every one of us feel like a wrongdoer, and that right there is a crime.”
“That’s fair to say, and I agree with you on that. But answer this completely honestly and I’ll leave you alone. Are you not offering our bartending tricks for the guests because you don’t want to, or because you can’t?”
The regret in his eyes caused her physical pain.
“Oh, Jonah.” She almost reached to pat his hand but knew he wouldn’t appreciate the pity. “Take a break. Please. You’re going to worry me. You’re my friend and you’re so rattled by this that you can’t do what you love.”
In response, the man stubbornly strode away to tend to an elegantly dressed couple interested in his recommendation.
Wounded, Gabrielle stood frozen there, watching him. She pleaded with her eyes because she couldn’t speak through the concern and anguish.
Jonah, I can’t lose you, too.
First her sous-chef, then her assistant. She wouldn’t let her favorite bartender be next.
Jonah looked her way only once and when he turned his back to her, only then did she leave.
A few determined phone calls gave her only bits of information regarding her assistant’s resignation. He definitely was gone, and he’d applied for employment at the Pinnacle, the Belleza Resort and Spa’s direct competition. It wasn’t until much later that Kim called her up to her office and shared that the man insisted he wasn’t connected to the problems their company was facing and he’d cited that the reason he could no longer work for the Parkers was Gabrielle.
“He said he couldn’t be your wingman anymore and watch you fall in love with someone else. Gabby, he has feelings for you. Did you know?”
Gabrielle felt like something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe once. She’d disposed of the shoe—both, actually—but couldn’t so easily part with the havoc this bit of truth stirred.
Geoffrey had not only been right about Roarke’s crush on her, but it’d been so intense that he felt he could no longer work with her. He’d rather work for the Belleza’s new rival.
Bizarre didn’t come close to describing this.
After work, Gabrielle called Geoffrey. When she told him that she’d lost another colleague, he was sympathetic. He suggested they go out to LA for dinner, but she had another idea and when she told him, he held her with total understanding in his eyes and in his touch.
“We went heavy on the TWIX, didn’t we?” she asked him as they entered the lobby of the Belleza Medical Center. “And the Snickers?”
“Yeah. I can’t believe she doesn’t like KitKats, though.” Geoffrey gravely shook his head at her. “Are you sure we’re going to get along?”
“She’ll adore you. She feels partly responsible for us getting together.” They entered an elevator and she selected the floor where Shoshanna was staying. “Hours before I met you, she’d challenged me to hook up with the next sexy eligible man I met.”
“Well, there are two ways I can interpret that. One is to feel flattered that you think I’m sexy. Another is to be unnerved that you might’ve picked another man.”
“Be flattered. It took a while before I made up my mind about you, though.”
“You were hard to get.”
“You waited for me. Thanks for that.” She tugged his sleeve as the doors opened. “She’s self-conscious about her scars, but I think the candy will distract her.”
They came into the room and Gabrielle said, “Shoshanna, I brought a man. And he’s got candy.” She beamed at Geoffrey. “Geoffrey Girard, meet Shoshanna Smirnov.”
Shoshanna made grabby hands for the candy. “I like you already, Geoffrey. Really, it is a pleasure to meet the man who inspired Gabby to retire the bear trap between her legs.”
They laughed and it felt more than right to incorporate him into her world. Robyn was half-smitten with him and Kimberly enamored. He could easily fit in her life, be the missing piece that she’d spent so many years ignoring.
She didn’t believe in curses, but she had faith and trusted miracles and realized that love was possible for her. She was in love. It was fast and had developed so oddly, but fairy tale romances were for princesses and she was a free-spirited chef—a dandelion swaying in the wind.
Traditional, sensible love wasn’t for her. Sudden, caught off guard love was.
She could see herself dancing with him at Kimberly’s wedding. She could, in a very abstract visual, see him in her future. The two of them, together, committed, moving toward a happy ending, even.
Swiping a mini Snickers bar, she kissed his jaw and joined in the conversation.
Chapter 10
The eve of the G&G Records gala came fast. As it slid closer, Gabrielle found herself busier than usual. On top of helping Kimberly settle on the details for what was guaranteed to be a marvelous wedding, and training temporary staff for the Pearl, she and Nicola Joon had spent a total of forty-two hours tweaking the recipe for the signature dessert the Pearl would introduce in September. The condo smelled like citrus and though she wasn’t altogether turned off by it, she was finding herself sick of finding ways to get rid of the leftover fruit the Pearl’s produce supplier had given her.
Robyn had come over and crafted a gorgeously sophisticated fruit basket, which they’d all but forced Kimberly to give to her fiancé the next time she met up with him. Gabrielle was sick of making smoothies and sorbets, and as she stood in her kitchen cleaning to try and get her mind off the whirlwind tomorrow’s massive event was guaranteed to be, she counted two oranges and a grapefruit remaining in the crate. Extracting the fruit, she put the crate away.
“What am I going to do with these things? Juggle them?” she asked herself, spying the fruit now on the counter. Before she allowed herself to be silly enough to try, she went to her bedroom closet and took out the outfit she’d bought for the gala. So many of the women would be in gowns and cocktail dresses,
but Gabrielle would wear what represented her. The shimmery leggings and gilded off-the-shoulder sweater finished with gold high heels and her boldest wristwatch and bracelets would be sensational and she couldn’t wait to see the full effect.
She wanted the night to be a success for Geoffrey and for it to be untainted with the sordidness of the resort’s recent hell. Though she didn’t dare mention it to her friends, she was nervous about the potential for disaster.
Even in a security-controlled environment, problems could arise.
She’d do whatever she could to protect her man. He’d changed her life, helped her discover real love and deserved to know she was thankful for him, too.
Pulse kicking up, Gabrielle put away the clothes and emerged from the walk-in closet to look at her bed. There was so much preparation to be done, but she knew exactly what she wanted to do for him tonight.
*
Geoffrey was close to cracking with tension. A rival record label had poached his newest client, a self-entitled diva blessed with a songbird voice and stage presence that had superstar written all over it, and based on this afternoon’s conversation with his legal group that specialized in corporate and entertainment law, they were headed for court.
It was the same damned story. Put money in front of someone to find out their true colors. Fortune drove honest people to lie and triggered hatred among friends. Some said becoming a self-made man and rising to the top in the music industry had given him a thick skin, but to him it was a steel shield. It protected him but wouldn’t allow the good things to truly reach him.
Alone in his office, designed by an internationally acclaimed architect, he was at the top of a Beverly Hills tower with the nighttime sky spread out for him. It was all glitter and darkness and meant nothing to him. His mind was stuck on lies and corporate deceit.
Of the guests who would be gathered poolside at the Belleza tomorrow evening in celebration of his empire’s newly platinum artist, which had knives at the ready to sink into his back?
A timid knock on the door had him turning his back to the windows.
“Mr. Girard, your phone’s off.” Cathy, his lead office manager, was understated beauty in her calm gray pantsuit and the diamond broach he’d gifted her on her fifth-year anniversary with his company. Her voice was absent of accusation but rife with alarm.
“I thought I’d take a break.” He swore and laughed, but nothing was funny and Cathy knew that. “I’ll turn it back on.”
“A call’s come through. Gabrielle Royce is holding. Shall I tell her you’re unavailable this evening?”
Unavailable to the one woman in his life he trusted above all others? “No, I’ll pick up. It’s getting late, Cathy. You go home.”
“It doesn’t seem fair, sir, that outside this office is a world that thinks you can want for absolutely nothing. Yet you’re starving for the one thing humans need to survive in society.”
“You can’t mean money,” he said sardonically. “I have that now.”
“Love,” she said impatiently. “You’re lonely without it and it makes me sad to see you live each day wondering who’s going to hurt you next. My feelings aren’t hurt by it because on some level I can empathize, but you’re sometimes guarded against me and I adore you as I would my own grandson.”
“I no longer think the entire world is a trap. I’ve grown up,” he told her.
“That’s good. But forgive me for not quite believing you.”
“I’m picking up Gabrielle Royce’s call, Cathy.”
“Oh.” Cathy smiled and gently retreated from the office. “Now I suppose I can start believing you.”
Geoffrey sat on the corner of his desk and picked up his phone. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Gabrielle said back. “Are you busy building megastars?”
“Not at the moment.”
“What would you say to driving to Belleza? I’d like to show you something.”
He closed his eyes, aware of the calmness waiting to settle in his bones if he’d just let it. If he could just let himself trust what he’d found in her… “Yeah,” he said, “I can do that.”
“Geoffrey, I—”
“Gabby?”
“Just I’ll see you soon.”
Maybe, he thought as he left the office and replayed what she’d started to say on the phone, if he let himself trust she would see that it was okay to do the same.
When he arrived at her condo and she opened the door, he felt his disposition change from tense and angry to taken completely aback.
Gabrielle smiled up at him, all shimmer and class in form-fitting dark pants and a baggy sweater that might be made out of gold. She’d pushed up the sleeves and one shoulder was exposed. She’d dragged her gold-dusted auburn hair to one side and had to be elevated five or six inches off the floor in her shoes.
“I’m wearing this to the gala tomorrow night, but I wanted you to be the first one to see me in it.” She reached for his necktie and lightly pulled him forward. She smelled like citrus. “Stay the night?”
“I don’t want to be anyplace else.”
They didn’t kiss, but ended up in the bedroom. He looked at the neat bed and did a double take at a bucket of ice sitting on one of her nightstands. “AC problems?”
“Nope. I want to show you something. But I’m going to need your necktie.” She waited for him to remove it before she lay it across the bed and then stripped out of the clothes he couldn’t wait to see her wearing again tomorrow. “I was thinking that I could give you my trust tonight.”
Geoffrey watched her crawl nude onto the bed. He’d recognize her cute ass anywhere. He’d traced her tattoo with his tongue the first time he’d seen it. He was hooked on her laugh. “Trust isn’t tangible, Gabby.”
“It is. Open yourself to it.” She pointed to the bucket. “I’m going to let you blindfold me and touch me with just the ice. I’m going to trust you.”
A shiver spread across his back like wings, and he hadn’t even touched the ice. But as she leaned forward and waited for him to blindfold her with his tie, he was eager to experiment.
Sex flavored with trust. This would be new for him.
“Have you done this before?” he asked, careful not to touch her, aware of her tightening nipples and the leap of her fingers against the covers.
“No.”
He reached into the bucket for a cube of ice and saw her head turn in the direction of the bucket. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t predict what he’d do with the ice.
Holding it over her, he tightened his fist around it until cool drops of water splashed onto her navel. She flinched and gasped, and then he grinned as he slid the slick cube up her abdomen to her throat and across her lips.
Geoffrey traced her body with a cube in each hand, and then took a fresh one into his mouth, sucked on it, took it out and then kissed her lips.
She sighed, the heat of her mouth colliding with the chill of his. Still blindfolded, she wrapped her arms around him and they kissed until there was nothing but heat between them.
When he withdrew, it was to tease her nipples with ice and to introduce his arctic kiss to the hot dampness between her thighs. She fumbled to hold his head steady but threw up her hands and sighed. “I trust you to take care of me.”
And he did. Twice before he let her peel off the blindfold.
“Trust between two people is supposed to be reciprocated,” she told him when her breathing steadied again and she had him on his back in the middle of the bed. “So let me blindfold you now.”
“Is this no different than sex in the dark?” he asked her as she swept up the tie.
“It’s different. Trust me.” Winking, she reached forward and took away his sight. “Lie down. I’m going to take your clothes off. All of them.”
Hearing her whisper what she was going to do had him tingling with anticipation. The tingle ran from his scalp to his spine every time she got close to whispering in his ears.
“I’m going to undo your
belt…and unzip you…”
Oh, damn, this is surreal. Sensations zigzagged across him, pierced him, and he couldn’t control his body. His hands flexed on the bed when he felt her weight leave the bed. “Where are you going?”
“Shh. Trust me.”
Another woman might snap pictures and hold them for blackmail or revenge. Another might rifle through his wallet. But not her. He trusted her.
He found the aroma of citrus in the air before he felt her return to the bed.
“Trust me,” she said now, and he felt her fingertips on his naked chest. A sheet of soft, fragrant curls brushed him. Her beautiful hair. “Geoffrey, I’m going to blow you. But you have to keep the blindfold in place.”
“Okay.”
But was it? Did he really trust her to suck him to complete pleasure when he couldn’t see what she was doing and couldn’t guide her head as she took him?
He felt her tongue on his thighs, then something snug and supple and wet circled his penis.
“What is that?”
“What is what?”
“Whatever you just wrapped around my cock.”
“Don’t take off the blindfold. If I show you what I’m doing, you’re going to get distracted. Trust me, remember?” She kissed his tip. “Trust me. Just trust me.”
Geoffrey’s flesh tingled everywhere now. He was dangled over the edge of panic and each time he prepared to pull off the blindfold and find out what the hell was going on, she tightened that juicy ring around his shaft and sucked him in tandem.
And then, when he started to feel heavy with pressure and his hips started to piston, she said, “Take off the blindfold. Watch.”
He dragged off the tie and reared up on his elbows, and there she was working him with…
“A grapefruit?” The words barely jumped from his lips before she snatched off the citrus ring and replaced it with her mouth, and in seconds he groaned and gave her everything.
She found her way into his arms, kissing his chest. “Was that your first grapefruit job?” His expression made her laugh against his skin. “Now do you get why I couldn’t let you see it too soon?”
Hot Summer Nights Page 16
