“What are you doing?” Tess glanced around the parking lot, obviously concerned they were attracting an audience. “Are you out of your mind?”
Without answering—because it seemed obvious what it was she was doing—Gabriella slid her legs down to the ground. With a ragged breath, she stepped around Cruz, smoothing shaky hands down the front of her shirt.
Tess came to a hard stop, her slim, toned calves braced in a militant stance. Just beyond her the door to The Daily Grind swung open. Dakota and Malia stood there, watching the little drama unfold with bright curiosity in their eyes.
“Really, Gabby?” Tess propped a hand on her hip, indifferent to the girls several yards behind her. “I mean I get that he’s fucking eye candy, but where’s your dignity? First Jason and now him?”
She felt Cruz stiffen. They weren’t even touching but he radiated tension. She sent him a quick glance.
His expression was empty as his lips peeled back from his teeth to say, “She didn’t want your fucking ex to touch her.”
“I beg your pardon?” she raged.
“You heard me. Wake the hell up. Your ex assaulted her . . . and then you did the same when you slapped her.”
Tess gasped, her gaze flying to Gabriella. “You told him?”
She lifted her chin. “Yes. We’re . . . friends.”
A dangerous tension radiated from Cruz. “Go ahead and tell your ex that if he ever touches her again, I’m coming for him.”
Tess’s big brown eyes flew wide in her face.
“Tess.” At the sound of Gabriella’s voice, her sister looked to her. “If you ever hit me again . . . I won’t roll over and take it like I did last time. I’ll hit you back. And I can’t promise I won’t ruin your perfect nose.”
Tess’s mouth sagged open. It was a moment before she found her voice and then she was yelling, “I’m not going to stand here and let—”
“Keep your voice down,” Gabriella snapped, her gaze drifting to the girls. Tess followed her gaze and spun around.
“Dakota!” Her gaze flitted from her daughter to Malia next to her. At the sight of Malia, her eyes narrowed in displeasure. “Dakota . . . come here.”
Dakota’s face reddened and she sent an apologetic look to her friend before walking with clear reluctance across the parking lot toward her mother. She stopped before Tess, scuffing her shoe on the ground. “Yes?”
“Dakota,” she said in a voice that was full of reprimand. “Did you forget the conversation we had?”
Dakota lifted her chin defiantly. “No.”
“So you’re saying you just decided not to obey me. You chose to deliberately defy me.”
She sighed heavily. “Mom, there’s nothing wrong with—”
“You are not allowed to associate with that girl, understand?” Tess stabbed a finger in the air for full impact. “I don’t want to see you with her again.”
Gabriella sucked in a sharp breath, ashamed that this was actually her sister. This was even worse than Tess slapping her. That had been an attack on Gabriella. She was the only hurt party then. This she was doing to Dakota and Malia.
“Tess,” she said sharply.
Her sister swung on her, her eyes blazing. “Don’t! She’s my child. You don’t get to lecture me . . . and you’re hardly in a position to do so anyway.” Her scathing gaze flipped to Cruz.
Dakota’s face burned a deep tomato red and she looked down, suddenly extraordinarily focused on her shoes.
Malia’s eyes welled with moisture and she looked at her brother as though beseeching him for rescue.
Cruz muttered a profanity and then strode forward, shrugging past Gabriella and Tess and grabbing his sister’s hand. “Come on, Malia. Let’s go. We’ll go get some dinner. What do you feel like?”
Relief flashed over Malia’s face the second before she turned away.
Bleak frustration and regret welled up inside her as she watched the brother and sister walk away. She wanted to call them back. Go after them. Make everything that just happened . . . not happen.
She wanted this world to be a better place and not brimming with narrow-minded people like her sister.
Gabriella turned on Tess. “How are we even related?”
“Oh, don’t get so self-righteous with me.”
“You’re such a bitch!” Dakota burst out and then ran back into The Daily Grind. Presumably to the bathroom where all teen girls fled in moments of distress. Gabriella knew that firsthand.
“Nice.” Tess shook her head. “Thanks, Gabby.”
“Me?” She flattened a hand to her chest. “How am I responsible for this?”
Tess started stalking toward the café, calling out over her shoulder, “Maybe when you’re a mother, you’ll understand.”
Understand that her sister was mean and judgmental? She didn’t need a kid to see that.
She looked back out at the parking lot, her gaze searching for Cruz and Malia. They were already gone. She exhaled, an awful, sinking feeling coming over her. She knew she wasn’t responsible for her sister, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel the blame. That didn’t mean she didn’t regret it and wish she could do something to take it all back.
Cruz kept the conversation light, deliberately trying to cheer his sister up. She didn’t need to know that he was furious. As in want-to-drive-a-fist-through-a-wall furious. It was one thing when people treated him like shit but another thing when people hurt his sister.
She started crying the moment she got into the car. He sent a text to Piper that he was taking Malia out for nachos. That’s what they settled on after five minutes of driving around. Nachos and queso and guacamole. Pure comfort food. By the time their Cokes arrived, her tears had dried and she was laughing as he told her a story about a kid at the gym who had gotten tangled up in a volleyball net and it took Cruz and another member of his staff half an hour to free him
“You should have just cut the net.”
“Those nets cost good money,” he protested.
“Well. You should put in an indoor soccer field,” she suggested, swirling a chip through the queso, making sure every inch of it was covered.
“The place isn’t big enough for that, but I’m still planning to add more features. There’s room for a soccer field out back, and I’m thinking about some batting cages outside, too.”
“That’s so cool.” She nodded. “Everyone is talking about it at school.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She fiddled with her straw. “There’s not a lot of places for kids to go after school and on weekends. The summers are the worst. There’s nothing to do in this town.”
“Well, that’s what I was hoping to provide.”
She grinned. “And all the girls keep telling me I have a hot brother.”
He shook his head. “I’m sure when they see me they think: old man.”
“Hardly,” she replied. “You’re not that old.”
He guessed he should be glad they weren’t harassing her because of him—especially considering how many people disliked him in this town. Gabriella’s sister and manager were prime examples of that. Maybe the younger generation would be more open-minded.
He could only hope for her sake. He had thicker skin and couldn’t care less. He wanted to think that his sister wasn’t being penalized for having him for a brother . . . for having the last name Walsh.
“Sooo . . .” Malia began as she lifted a chip laden with meat and cheese from the platter they were sharing. “Dakota’s aunt. She’s cute.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively at Cruz.
He chuckled and shook his head. “There’s nothing there, Malia.” And really, there wasn’t. They’d fooled around. As kids and again recently. Sure. He’d made her come multiple times. Orgasms he could still feel. Still taste on his tongue. Still dreamed about and had him waking with a boner.
But they were nothing.
“Didn’t look that way to me.”
He shifted in the booth. Getting grilled abou
t your love life by your fifteen-year-old sister wasn’t exactly comfortable.
“Your imagination is getting carried away.”
“Really? I thought you were going to eat her face in that parking lot.”
He stilled. “You saw that?”
She shot him a disgusted look. “The Daily Grind has wall-to-wall glass windows.”
He winced. Yeah. He should have exhibited better control. Although with Gabriella he wasn’t exactly a model of self-restraint.
“Everybody saw,” she added.
“And did you see her sister?” he countered with a shake of his head. “That pretty much sums up why there is no me and Gabriella Rossi.”
It had never been clearer to him that he and Gabriella came from two different worlds. They were incompatible. She’d called him a friend in that parking lot. He didn’t see how they could even be that. Not in this town. Not in this life.
He couldn’t believe that earlier this week he had entertained thoughts that they were meant to be. Such thoughts smacked of permanence and wedding rings and minivans. Shit. What had he been thinking? That wasn’t him. That wasn’t even a future him.
As far as the town of Sweet Hill was concerned, he was a felon. Felons did not settle down with good girls like Gabriella Rossi.
“That bitch? Uh. Yeah. She was kinda hard to miss. Poor Dakota. How’d you like that for a mother?” Malia stabbed a chip viciously into the bowl of queso. “But . . .” She whipped her chip and held it aloft. “I also saw Gabriella get fired for sticking up for you. She seems pretty cool to me. So who cares what kind of sister she has? Just because her mom is terrible doesn’t make me stop wanting to be friends with Dakota. You judge people on their own merits.”
If only everyone in the world thought the way this fifteen-year-old kid did.
Yeah. Gabriella had defended him and gotten fired as a result. He would never forget that. No one had ever stuck up for him before. It kind of made him all the more desperate to have her. But that actually only convinced him he needed to leave her alone. He could bring nothing good into her life. He had gotten her fired, for God’s sake. If that wasn’t a sign for him to stay away, what was?
“She might be a decent person, Malia, but that doesn’t mean we’re right for each other. It’s complicated. We would never work.”
She bit into another nacho and chewed, looking unimpressed with his answer. When she finished her bite, she asked, “I don’t think it’s that complicated. You’re a guy. She’s a girl. You’re both single. You’re clearly into each other from the way you were making out—”
He snorted. “It’s that clear, huh? When did you get so good at relationship analysis? Are you thinking about becoming a therapist or something?”
“Yes, it is that clear. And stop deflecting, please.”
He shook his head. When he’d left for prison his sister was just a little girl watching cartoons and now she was this too-smart-for-her-own-good individual capable of looking after herself. “I’m not even looking for a relationship.”
“You’re such a liar.”
He straightened, offended. “Why do you say that?”
“No one isn’t looking for love. It’s part of the human condition. We want love and companionship. Not everyone finds it, but we want it.”
He was quiet for a long moment. He took a drink from his glass, wondering if he had ever been so optimistic and full of hope. His sister was a sweet kid. He didn’t want to crush her by informing her that he had given up on the idea of love and happily ever after pretty much by the age of twelve. Her brother was a broken man and no woman was ever going to fix him.
He decided to humor her instead of dropping that truth on her. “Well, I might be looking for love.” Somehow he managed not to choke on the words. “But I’m not looking for it with Gabriella Rossi.”
Even as he said the words, his throat tightened against them. He felt something for Gabriella. He couldn’t deny that. He certainly wanted her like he had never wanted another woman. No woman had come close to affecting him the way she did.
But that wasn’t love. He was certain of it.
Nineteen
A day passed with no sighting of Cruz. She occupied herself, deciding it was time to declutter Nana’s house. Not exactly a wild Saturday, but then Gabriella never was one to have too many of those.
Her grandmother never tossed out a magazine and she subscribed to several. Convincing Nana she needed to get rid of some of the magazines was a real chore. Gabriella had to hold each one up to her and half of them Nana insisted on looking over again to make sure they could be trashed. It made for a very long day and four very large garbage bags sitting at the curb. Both she and Nana were wiped out by dinnertime, so they just ordered a pizza.
“I like you not working and staying here with me,” Nana announced as Gabriella finished washing their dishes.
“Well, unfortunately it doesn’t pay the bills. You’re getting around much better. I’m going to have to head back to Austin soon.” She stacked the last plate in the dish rack. It was true. Her time here was dwindling. She hadn’t been simply trying to make Cruz feel better when she told him she didn’t care about losing her job. She didn’t care. She would have had to turn in her notice soon anyway.
“Bah! Why do you want to do that?”
“Because I have a job there, remember, Nana?”
She waved another hand in dismissal. “You can work here. I just saw Clint Brown the other day. He brought up you working for him. Said he’d like to retire soon and he needs someone to take over the paper when he does.” She stabbed a finger in Gabriella’s direction. “He meant you, Dumbo. That’s what he was implying. You could have your own paper. Imagine that, Gabriella!”
She had to admit it did sound tempting. Her own paper to run . . . she alone would make all decisions, decide on the staff and what to print, decide on what sponsors and advertisers to work with. Except it was Sweet Hill. The Sweet Hill Recorder. It wasn’t exactly the big times. And she had always vowed to leave this place and never look back. If she stayed here it would be like nothing had ever changed. Wouldn’t it?
No, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be that girl again . . . that girl still, that girl forever. Her life would consist of running into people like Natalie who would gush over the past like those were magical times and not the darkest days of her existence.
“That’s very kind of him, Nana . . .”
“But?” Nana supplied accusingly.
“But my home is in Austin.”
Nana shook her head in disgust. “You’re going to regret it.”
Well, that was a little dramatic. “Regret not taking Mr. Brown up on his offer? I think—”
“No. Regret running from yourself. You been doing that ever since you graduated high school.”
She flinched. That’s not what she was doing this time. She needed to live elsewhere in order to find herself and shed the trappings of the past. At least that’s what she always told herself.
Except you haven’t done that yet in the years you’ve been gone. If you were truly different would you be so bothered when you ran into the Natalies of the world?
Deciding a change of subject was in order, she asked, “Nana, I’m running to the dry cleaners and to pick up my last paycheck. You want me to take anything for you?”
“Nah. I’m fine.” Nana stood and, ignoring her walker, headed into the living room to continue work on the puzzle of Big Ben they’d started. It was a sign. Nana didn’t even need the walker anymore. Gabriella really did need to start making arrangements to go back to Austin.
Even if she did feel a little pang around her heart because that meant leaving Sweet Hill. No, not Sweet Hill. The pang was for leaving Cruz.
When she was eighteen she had been in a rush to get out of this town. Up until recently, she’d still been in a rush.
That had changed though . . . because Cruz had happened. Because she’d met him again. Because he set her on fire. Because
he had actually remembered their kiss in the boathouse. It had meant something to him, too. Unbelievable as that seemed.
She still burned for him. That fire had never gone out. Not since she was fifteen years old. It never would go out. She knew that now. Her desire for him would always smolder within her.
Maybe if she had him just once . . . the fire could be banked. She would feel closure. Yes. Clearly she couldn’t go until that happened.
Now that she had made up her mind that she wasn’t leaving Sweet Hill without first sleeping with Cruz Walsh, she was at a loss. How did she find him?
She conveniently pushed aside the whole prospect of seduction. Seducing a man wasn’t something she had ever done before, but she would just trust that she would know what to do in that moment, when the time came. The real question was how would she even find him?
He didn’t have a cell phone. She already knew that. She knew he bought a house outside of town and she knew he had opened a gym across town.
She could find the gym easily enough. She didn’t have the address to his house, however.
The man had been pursuing her. Who knew getting him into bed would be so difficult to orchestrate? She supposed it was easy to get a man into bed when it was just any man. When she added a specific man to the criterion it complicated things. She didn’t want just any man. She wanted Cruz Walsh in her bed. Or she in his. She wasn’t picky.
She said good night and left her grandmother and dove straight into the shower where she lathered, buffed and loofahed every part of her body, followed by a very thorough shaving of her legs and bikini area. After her shower she lotioned herself until her skin felt new. Dressed in a simple T-shirt dress, she pronounced herself showroom ready for sex.
She made a brief drop-off at the twenty-four-hour dry cleaners, and even though she didn’t feel in the mood to face Bianca, she stopped at The Daily Grind to pick up her last paycheck. It turned out she didn’t have to worry because Bianca wasn’t working. It was a different manager, and this one looked vaguely embarrassed about the whole situation. When he started to offer an apology and suggest that maybe she wanted to appeal her termination to the owners, Gabriella cut him off. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be moving back to Austin soon. I’m fine with it.”
Beautiful Sinner Page 18
