by Cindy Dees
“Are you done with your dessert?” Gabe asked, startling her out of her grim recollections.
“As delicious as this crème brûlée is, that phone call killed my appetite.”
“Let’s get out of here, then.” Gabe came around the table to pull back her chair. The old-fashioned gesture surprised her. The young man she’d known had been brash and unpolished, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who certainly hadn’t held chairs for ladies.
Since when had she become such a snob? So, somewhere along the way, he’d picked up a few points of etiquette. Probably his wife had taught him. Polite behavior did not make the man.
Lord knew James Ward had been plenty polite up until the part where he tried to kiss her and then went crazy on her. She would never forget that strange and violent look that had come into his eyes. He’d tried to kiss her neck and she’d stepped back from him, and he’d done a no-kidding Jekyll and Hyde before her very eyes. It had been, bar none, the scariest thing she’d ever seen.
“Willa? Are you all right?”
She realized that she’d just been standing there like a zombie, staring at nothing. “Sorry. Went wool gathering for a second.”
“Good wool?”
Her throat too tight to answer, she shook her head. Gabe held out his forearm to her and waited expectantly until she looped her hand around it. Wow, he really had gone old-school in the past ten years.
He led her out to his SUV, which a valet had pulled around for them, and Gabe handed her into the vehicle. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the headrest. A United States senator. Her. The thought just wouldn’t compute. Even if the title was purely for appearances and she never did a darned thing, she would still go down in the history books as having served in the United States freaking Senate.
In a few minutes, Gabe slowed his car and turned a corner. Her eyes snapped open to see an underground parking garage. Panic tightened around her chest. “Where are we?” she forced out.
“I keep a place in Dallas for when I have business in town. Since you have to be here for a press conference tomorrow, I figured it would save you hassle to stay in town tonight. And, it has the fringe benefit of foiling those pesky reporters camped out waiting to pounce on you in Vengeance.
“But my clothes are at home—”
“You have power suits befitting a U.S. senator in your closet at home, Ms. Kindergarten Teacher?” he asked skeptically.
“Well, no.”
“Exactly. And that means you have to go shopping in the morning. Here, in Dallas. Correct?”
“I guess.”
He parked the SUV and came around to open her door. “Then you’re staying at my place tonight.”
She couldn’t argue with the logic of it. But to spend the night at a man’s apartment? Alone with him? Fear tightened her entire body.
Gabe Dawson was not James Ward. Not all men were scary monsters who leaped on unsuspecting women. Her brain could believe it, but her gut wasn’t even close to convinced. Her brain also said that if she was ever going to have any semblance of a normal life, she was going to have to face, and get over, her fear of being attacked by every man she came into contact with.
Yeah. Her gut wasn’t buying that one, either. Besides, her father would croak—
Oh, wait. She was Senator Merris now. She could do whatever she darn well pleased, scandal be damned. Scandal— She groaned aloud.
Gabe froze in the act of reaching for the elevator button. “What?”
“I filed charges against James Ward today. Now that I’m getting this stupid job, it will be splashed all over the news by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Honey, it was splashed all over the news within five minutes of you leaving the police station.”
“Yes, but that would’ve just been the Vengeance newspaper and a few local television stations. Now it’ll go national.”
“So?” Gabe commented as he ushered her into the elevator.
“So!” she exclaimed. “The media will rake me over the coals!”
“Did you lie to the police? Accuse an innocent man?”
“No.”
Gabe took a quick step across the tiny space to loom over her. Abruptly, a wave of danger rolled off him. Who was she kidding? This guy was a whole lot more man than James Ward had ever been, and she hadn’t been able to fend off Ward. She wouldn’t stand a chance against Gabe if he ever decided to have his way with her. Complete and horrifying vulnerability slammed into her. She was alone and at Gabe Dawson’s mercy. Her knees all but knocked together in fear.
His voice was a velvet knife slicing her composure to shreds. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Willa. You’re the victim. James Ward is the one who ought to be squirming.”
He obviously didn’t know a blessed thing about shame. It sunk all the way down to a person’s bones and poisoned them from the inside out. She risked meeting his dark, angry gaze for a moment but he was too intimidating...and she was too humiliated. She looked away hastily, venturing only, “But the scandal—”
He cut her off sharply. “The scandal will be on his shoulders where it belongs.”
She forced herself to shake off the sick feeling gripping her stomach. The two of them were being brutally honest with each other, right? And it wasn’t like she was ever going to spend time with Gabe Dawson again. He was years older than she. Compared to him, she was a gawky kid. He dated sexy, sophisticated socialites, and he was her father’s archenemy. She couldn’t exactly be seen running around with him if she didn’t want to be the center of all the gossip in Vengeance for months to come.
“Face facts, Gabe. The press will come after me as hard or harder than they go after James. Women in these situations always have their reputations dragged through the mud. And now, I’m going to drag my father’s Senate seat through the mud, too. I owe it to his memory not to do that.”
“You don’t owe your father a damned thing. He’s dead.” The elevator dinged and the door slid open to punctuate his forceful statement.
Stunned at the blunt honesty of Gabe’s observation, she stared at his back as he stalked off the elevator and crossed a small lobby toward the lone door opening off it. She ought to be furious with him for speaking such a travesty aloud, but a tiny part of her couldn’t deny that the man spoke the truth. Her father didn’t care anymore about his Senate seat or his precious reputation.
Gabe grasped the long, tubular, metal door handle for several seconds. A red beam of light flashed out of an aperture in the stainless-steel door, startling Willa as it swept across Gabe’s face. A click, and the door opened under his hand.
“Latest in biometric scanning,” he commented as he threw the door wide for her.
She followed cautiously. Lights went on around them automatically as Gabe moved through the foyer and several steps down into a large living room. The first features she noticed were the floor-to-ceiling glass windows lining the entire far side of the open space. Drawn to the magnificent vista outside, she strolled over to take it in.
The Dallas skyline sprawled at her feet, like a steel meadow full of twinkling white lights. The narrow, modern arch of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge glowed white, spanning the Trinity River in the distance. Cool air blew down silently on her from vents overhead, and Willa hugged herself, chilled. As beautiful as it was, the view was distant and impersonal. Cold.
Her politeness as ingrained as always, though, she commented, “Nice view. But don’t you feel a little exposed with all these windows?”
“We’re on the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in the city, and it’s one-way glass. We have complete privacy.”
The notion of having complete privacy with him unnerved her more than a little. Thankfully, he moved across the room to a white quartz bar to pour them glasses of ice water. The condo’s sleekness complemented his rugged masculinity, its smooth lines standing in stark contrast to his rough edges.
Leave it to Gabe Dawson to own a penthouse at the very p
innacle of this town, symbolically astride Dallas and everything in it. Although, with the amount of money he’d made, she supposed he had pretty literally conquered the town, too.
“Computer, warm whole house two degrees.”
“Yes, Mr. Dawson.”
Willa glanced over her shoulder at the sultry, female British-accented voice. “Your computer is a girl?”
“Of course.”
“And she controls your air conditioner?”
He laughed. “She controls just about everything. Never argues back, either. She’s better than any wife.”
Willa snorted and refrained from asking the obviously crass question about just what other wifely duties the computer performed for him.
“Computer, lower living-room ambient light to fifty percent. And how about a little Chopin? Piano nocturnes, I think.”
On cue, the lights dimmed to a sexy glow and the haunting strains of a concert piano came out of the walls in perfect surround sound. She whirled in alarm to face Gabe. He’d better not be trying to seduce her! Her fists fell back to her sides when she spotted him sitting on one of the sofas watching her.
“What?” she demanded, to cover her embarrassment at how her fists had flown up like that.
“You’re quite a beautiful woman, Willa.”
She shrugged, desperately wishing in that moment that she was as ugly as some warty old toad. “Don’t compliment me. My parents’ genes get all the credit.”
He stretched a disconcertingly powerful arm out along the top of the sofa. “It’s more than that. Beauty starts inside a woman. It breathes through her skin and shows in her eyes and the way she moves. It surrounds everything she does and everything she is.
“Are you sure it’s just not my overpowering perfume you’re describing?”
He laughed quietly. “What is that scent, anyway? I know it’s floral, but I don’t recognize it.”
“Gardenia.”
“It fits you. It’s old-fashioned. Soft. But with a note of mystery.”
“It’s all of that?” she asked skeptically.
“Definitely.”
Dammit, did he have to keep saying things that chipped away at her defenses like that? He was supposed to be a bad guy. Self-serving. Dishonest. Untrustworthy. But the man seated before her was nothing like the villain her father had painted.
She turned back to the window. Gabe let the silence lie between them and seemed content not to disturb it. As much as she tried to focus on the events of the day, and to gather her thoughts for tomorrow, she couldn’t get past her blazing awareness of the man behind her.
This room fit him. It was modern and sophisticated, and frankly, intimidating. She tilted her head and realized she could see his reflection in the dark surface of the glass. He was studying her with shocking intensity.
She spun quickly to face him, but his expression was bland, his eyes masked, by the time she got turned around. A shiver of apprehension chattered up her spine, rattling her bones. Who was this man whose home she was effectively trapped in? Which face that he showed her was the real one? What did she really know about him?
“You know, Gabe, I think I’d be better off just getting a hotel room tonight. If you’ll call me a cab, I’ll get out of your hair.”
He gazed at her for a long time and then finally broke the silence. “That bastard really did a number on you, didn’t he? How come your daddy didn’t kill him?”
Chapter 4
Gabe hung on to his temper by a thread. Only the undisguised terror on Willa’s face had him fighting to rein it in. But still, a need to do violence on her behalf roiled hotly in his gut.
“Kill him?” Willa whispered.
He couldn’t tell if it was dismay or hope vibrating painfully in her voice.
He answered roughly, “If someone hurt my little girl, they’d damn well be eating the business end of my shotgun.”
She shook her head, and he couldn’t contain the beast any longer. He surged to his feet. “Hell, Will. I’ll go kill him for you right now if you want.”
“No, no. The scandal.” Her hands fluttered in the air like the broken wings of a bird.
“When did Ward attack you?” he demanded.
“A month ago.”
“A month? Why in hell didn’t you go to the police before now?” Fury ranged freely through him, heating his extremities until they burned to damage someone. James Ward, specifically.
“The campaign...” she murmured in distress.
Of course. John Merris’s precious political campaign. The bastard had failed to protect his baby girl because his damned Senate seat was more important to him than his own family. Hot coals commenced burning their way out of Gabe’s gut by slow inches.
“That goddamned sonofabitch,” he snarled. “I’ll bet he made you stay home until the bruises faded, didn’t he?”
Her nod was so small, so stiff and unwilling, that he barely saw it. But it was enough. Gabe strode over to her and swept her into his arms, holding her tight against him. “I take back everything I said. I don’t care if he was your father or not, John Merris didn’t deserve to live. If he weren’t already dead, I’d start by shooting him first.”
“Gabe,” Willa mumbled from the folds of his dress shirt, “you can’t just run around shooting people.”
“Why the hell not? This is Texas. I wouldn’t be convicted in any court in the state for taking out either man after what they did to you. Juries in this state don’t take kindly to people who harm women, children or cops.”
Muffled words floated up to him. “You still could go to jail.”
“It would be worth it.”
“Don’t do it on my account. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re not okay,” he answered forcefully. “You flinch whenever I touch you, and that haunted look keeps creeping into your eyes. You’re scared. Admit it.”
She struggled weakly against his arms and he loosened his grip enough for her to lean back and stare up at him. Her blue eyes were huge in her face. Too big. Too scared. Too damned vulnerable. A surge of protectiveness swept over him so hard it almost knocked him off his feet.
“Okay, fine. I’m scared. Is that a crime?”
“Hell, no. So let me get this straight. Ward attacked you. You told your father about it, and he told you to suck it up. To pretend it never happened. Not to cause trouble with his business partner, to save the Merris family reputation and not make waves right before a tight election. Am I right?”
She nodded. Her gaze fell miserably.
“What happened to your clothes? Did your old man take some pictures of your scrapes and bruises or gather some evidence to corroborate your claim later? Or at least to blackmail the bastard with?”
Her lips quirked. “Blackmail, huh? You have a vicious mind, Mr. Dawson.”
“You have no idea. At this very moment, I’m trying to choose between several horrible and painful forms of death by slow torture for young James.”
A flicker of humor passed through her gaze for just an instant. It was gone almost before he saw it, but it was enough. A spark of the old Willa Merris, the one who’d dared him to a horse race, was still in there. Now all he had to do was find that spark again and nurture it into a flame.
“There’s no evidence,” she said, disrupting his train of thought. “My father destroyed everything. He took all of my clothes and burned them himself. And I wasn’t allowed out of the house until every last scratch and bruise was totally gone.”
“Willa, Willa.” He sighed. “You’re what, twenty-eight-years old? Why did you let your father bully you like that?”
“Because he was John Merris. When did he ever not get his way?”
Gabe pursed his lips. “I told him to go to hell, and I’m still standing. In fact, I’ve done moderately well in spite of John’s best efforts to wreck me.”
That glint of humor flashed again in her eyes. But he understood her response. John Merris had been known for his frightening temper and razor-sha
rp tongue that flayed anyone who dared to gainsay him. Even as a teen, he remembered Willa having a talent for fading out of sight and out of mind almost at will. A useful skill for a person who had lived with her father.
“Would you like to see some of the cool tricks my house can do?” he asked her abruptly.
“Uhh, sure.”
He gave her a tour of his high-tech apartment ending with the high-definition media wall that took up one entire side of his home theater, projecting everything at life size.
“Wow!” Willa exclaimed. “I’d love to see a Longhorn football game on this monster.”
He laughed. She was a sports fan, huh? “You feel like you’re on the field with the players. Texas plays Oklahoma State next weekend. You’re officially invited to watch it here with me.”
“Deal.” Her expression was young and happy and warmed his soul. It made him want to pick her up and swing her around, and then make love to her all night long.
Startled, he examined the urge more closely. He had no trouble getting all the sex he wanted; a continuous stream of beautiful women hoping to snare him and his bank account threw themselves at him. But this feeling wasn’t just about sex with Willa. He actually liked her. He hadn’t liked a woman in longer than he cared to think about. In point of fact, he mostly felt contempt for the women who threw themselves into his path.
“You’ve got a big day tomorrow, Willa. I should let you get some rest.”
He showed her to the guest suite and made sure she knew how to operate its various gadgets, including the door locks, before he beat a hasty retreat away from the temptation she represented.
Gabe had seen John Merris’s campaign ads on TV where his wife and daughter stood in the background like smiling robots. They’d looked like scary freaks, actually. Gabe had always assumed that the overbearing bastard had stripped their souls clean away. But in spite of her father, Willa Merris wasn’t entirely broken.
And in spite of James Ward, too. Gabe’s gaze narrowed as he stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom. That boy was going to pay for what he’d done to Willa. It was the least he could do for her. Gabe lay awake long into the night, plotting the destruction of one James Ward.
