by Isabel North
Nora nodded, feeling his steady heartbeat against her cheek. She sucked in a wobbly breath.
He was quiet for a thoughtful moment as his long fingers sifted up into her hair, stroking. “Want me to say something insensitive? Will that help? Let’s try.” He squeezed her. “Pull it together, bitch.”
Nora gave a startled giggle.
She heard the grin in his voice as he continued, “Or—and this is my personal preference—I could take advantage of your emotional state. Shame to waste the sobbing and shaking. We could turn it in a different and much more enjoyable direction.”
“That’s sweet, but no.” She struggled to sit up, and blew her nose again. Mopping her eyes, she looked around for the wastepaper basket, clenching the soggy mess in her hand. Gabe extracted it and tossed it over his shoulder.
“Worry about that later,” he told her, and drew her back against him.
“Why aren’t you running in fear?” Nora asked. She should get up and start acting like a professional assistant instead of sitting there on his lap but, man, was she tired all of a sudden. She yawned.
“Why would I run?” he said.
“You’re a guy, aren’t you?”
“Now that’s just sexist.”
“It’s also based on scientific observation. In my experience, one hundred percent of guys and sixty-eight percent of women avoid engaging with someone who’s crying. And I’m talking about people I know, not complete strangers.” She patted his chest.
“We’re not complete strangers.”
“I met you three days ago.”
“You’ve seen me half-naked, had coffee with me, and covered me in snot and tears,” Gabe said. “I don’t feel like a stranger.”
She brushed at the front of his shirt. It was a charcoal gray. Except for where she’d leaked all over it. “Sorry.”
He flattened her hand on his chest and held it there. “I never understood why guys are scared of emotional women. I love emotional women.”
It would seem that he did. Nora gave a little shimmy and his arms tightened. The message was clear: he wasn’t letting her go.
“It’s like standing at the center of a mega-storm,” Gabe continued. “Of course, I’d rather these were tears of joy.” He smudged the tears drying on her hot cheeks. “Or ecstasy. Lady’s choice. I don’t like to see you sad. What did I say to set you off, Nora? The way I remember it, I offered you my special beans.”
“It’s not you. It’s me.”
He shook with laughter beneath her. “Usually that line doesn’t make an appearance until at least a week into my relationships.”
He had a nice chest, Nora thought. Broad. She rubbed her palm over it in a small circle. Packed with dense muscle. She could lean against him and his ribcage didn’t compress under her weight, like Vince’s had.
Vince.
Vince and Melissa.
Her eyes welled.
“Round two?” Gabe said. “Bring it. I’m ready.”
“Will you stop being nice? I already told you that makes it worse. Keep it up, and you’ll unleash the beast.”
“Mmm. I have no idea what you mean, but I find myself very interested.”
“Sympathy makes it worse,” Nora said. “Always has. Can’t help it. Please…please don’t look at me for a minute, okay? Let me get it together.”
“I don’t know. I’m enjoying myself. Got me a nice armful of quivering, emotional woman. It’s a better start to my morning than coffee. And I love coffee.”
Nora pushed until, sighing, he allowed her to sit up. He wrapped a hand around her knee and held her in place.
“Any more tissues?” she asked.
Gabe handed her the box he’d had the presence of mind to grab from her desk and bring over to the couch with them.
She blotted the last of the tears from her cheeks, and glanced at him. He was resting his head on the back of the couch, watching her. “Is my mascara everywhere?” she said.
He nodded. “You are a beautiful and disturbing Goth clown.”
“Awesome.”
“Want me to fix it for you?” He pulled a couple of tissues out of the box.
Nora took them off him, shaking her head. “I’ll fix it when I go to the bathroom. Which I will do now.”
“I’m not done with you yet. Stop squirming, woman.”
“I’m not squirming. I’m trying to get up.”
“I’ll let you up in a minute. First you’re going to tell me why you were crying.”
“It’s not important. It’s personal.” He loosened his grip and she moved to get off his lap, but froze when he slid his hand higher up her thigh. She looked down at it, warm and firm and four inches from ground zero. Her breath stuttered again, but for a whole different reason.
“Now,” Gabe said, “you’re going to tell me, because I’m curious, I want to know, and I get what I want, or—”
She glared at him.
“—I’ll be so sympathetic you’ll be sobbing for a week, and I get to see this beast of which you speak. Going to tell me? No? Here we go. Oh, honey. There, there. Everything will work out for the best, I promise.” He dragged her against him dramatically, and rocked her. “You go ahead and cry all you need. It’s good for you. Let it out. That’s it, baby.”
Laughing, Nora fought her way upright. He kept his arms loose around her. “All right,” she said, “I give up! I’ll tell you. Even though I shouldn’t. This is all very unprofessional.”
“I am very unprofessional all the time.”
“It’s inappropriate.”
“Also that. All the time.”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“Ah. I don’t know what that’s like. Can’t embarrass me.”
“Must be nice,” Nora said. “I embarrassed myself so much, I had to leave town.”
“Now I’m really interested. What could you possibly have done that you had to leave town?”
“You know what? That part’s not relevant. All I’m going to say is, I had a difficult phone call with my mother, who gave me some news that came out of nowhere, and it…destabilized me.”
Gabe shook his head. “I want details.”
“I don’t want to give you details. I’ve exposed myself enough, thank you.”
His arms tightened. “Not even close.”
Nora sighed. “My mother called to break the happy news that my ex-fiancé, the man who cheated on me and married another woman while still engaged to me, informed them over dinner—at my parents’ house, because apparently Vince and Melissa go over there once a week for dinner like Vince and I did—that Melissa is now pregnant with twins.”
“What a douche,” Gabe said after a surprised silence. “And I should know. I’ve been called that myself often enough.”
“No. Who would call you a douche?” Nora said, indignant. “You’re lovely.” They stared at each other for a long moment, and she realized she’d called him lovely, to his face.
Twice.
That was it. Enough embarrassing herself for one day. “Let me go.” She squirmed.
“I want to know more about this ex-fiancé. What’s his full name? Where does he live? Where does he work?”
“No. We’re done chatting. Let me up. Gabe!”
He released her with obvious reluctance and Nora scrambled to her feet, clearing her throat and tucking her blouse into her jeans.
“I don’t think that’s supposed to be tucked in,” Gabe said.
Good point. Looked weird. She knew that. She untucked it, and settled for doing up the top buttons until she was covered to the collarbone.
Amused, he ambled over to the coffee he’d brought. “Shall we try again? Can I interest you in my special beans?”
“I would kill for your special beans at this point.”
Even more amused, he handed her one of the travel mugs and grinned as she took a great gulp.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome, baby.”
Ignoring the spr
eading warmth his endearment caused, Nora said, “I don’t think you should call me baby.”
“Pumpkin?”
“Nope.”
“Sweetheart it is.”
“Nora is fine.”
“Mm-hmm.”
He was going to call her whatever he wanted, wasn’t he? It was annoying, but the man was wearing a shirt that was wet in patches with her tears, and he’d come all the way across town to bring her coffee. She’d save the argument for another day. “You didn’t come just to bring me coffee, did you?” she asked.
“I came to train you.” Gabe reached out and flicked her Filofax, which lay open on the desk. “Bring you up to speed and into the twenty-first century. Technologically speaking.”
She snatched up the Filofax and clutched it to her chest.
His eyes tracked it. “Initially, I was intrigued by what you have in there. Now, I’m beyond intrigued. I’m enthralled. I want to read it.”
“You can’t.”
“Thousand bucks.”
“What?”
“I’ll give you a thousand bucks if you let me read your Filofax.”
“It’s personal.” A thousand…? “No.”
“Two thousand.”
“No! It’s to-do lists. And…plans. Goals. But mostly, you know, pick up milk. Not worth two thousand dollars.”
“It is to me. Do we have a deal?” He took his phone out, swiped at it, and glanced up. “What’s your PayPal email? You do have PayPal, right?”
“Yeah.” Nora made a show of flipping through the pages of her Filofax. “There’s a special section at the back here where I keep it with my Twitter and my Snapchat.”
Gabe stepped in without warning, bringing them toe-to-toe. “Sarcasm,” he said. “I love it. Will you take a personal check?”
Nora’s pulse sped up. Why did he want to read her to-do lists? “No deal.”
Never. Not for ten thousand dollars. He’d know everything there was to know about Nora Bowman if he got his hands on the Filofax.
Her grocery list. Her TBR list.
Her sexual odyssey list.
No.
He studied her. “Training, then?”
“Yes.” She didn’t bother protesting. She’d already come to the conclusion that Gabe would bulldoze through all objections until he did indeed get what he wanted. As she was going to be working with him for the foreseeable future, she’d have to pick her fights or break against the impenetrable wall of his will.
For the next couple of hours Nora sat beside Gabe as he walked her through the various programs on Gretchen’s old computer, updated the virus protection software, and installed a whole load of who-knows-what that he assured her was necessary for optimal performance.
They were in the middle of a heated discussion over whether or not she needed a digital version of the whiteboard she used as an office calendar when Anna showed up and took his side. He supervised Nora as she purchased and set up more software she had no intention of ever using, but it seemed to make him happy. He’d have been happier if she’d let him pay for it. Even Anna was appalled at his suggestion, so that time, at least, he had to yield.
“And if either of you were wondering how Ms. Sharpe knew about our meeting at the warehouse, you should know that her passwords were all still active. She’s been logging in remotely whenever she wants, accessing everything on the system. From your diary to your latest designs.”
He’d saved this particular bomb to drop until he’d cancelled eight calls on his cell phone and, after the ninth call, was preparing to leave.
“That fuc… That bi…” Anna gathered her calm. “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll change all the passwords right away.”
Gabe looked at her as if she was crazy. “I already did it.”
“Yeah, but she used my Mac, too, not just Nora’s—”
He smiled. “Been on there already.”
“No, you haven’t. You can’t have been. The screen is locked.”
“It’s funny that you think a password-protected screensaver can stop me. Don’t worry. It’s all taken care of.”
Anna’s face turned red. “I should sue her.”
“Last time I’m gonna say it, taken care of. She tries it again, she’ll get a nasty surprise. I booby-trapped it.”
“Isn’t that a bit evil?” Nora asked.
“No!” Anna said.
Gabe chucked Nora under the chin. “We’re not talking the Indiana-Jones-crushing-boulder kind of booby trap here, cookie. It’ll tangle her own system up a bit, is all. You start playing around with this kind of thing, you take the consequences.”
“No to cookie. And by ‘this sort of thing’, you mean corporate espionage?”
“I mean hacking.”
Nora felt her eyes get wide. “Are you a hacker?”
“That would be illegal. I’m…curious.” His gaze moved over her face, and he gave an entertained huff. “You disapprove of me?”
“I disapprove of people invading other people’s privacy.”
Gabe threw his head back and laughed. “You step online, you give up all your privacy. People go through their day posting to social media, listening to online streaming services, uploading photos of their food and their pets, emailing everyone they’ve ever met. All of this with their devices tracking where they are, what they’re doing, and how long they’ve been doing it. Want to know someone’s deepest darkest secrets? Forget torture or blackmail. All you gotta do is check their search history.”
Nora held up her flip phone in one hand, her Filofax in the other, and made a triumphant face.
“I feel like you’re trying to tell me something,” he said.
“I’m telling you, hah! Not me. No GPS or internet on my phone, ergo no tracking. All my important personal stuff is on paper, not online, ergo no hacking. Hah. I am safe from you and your dastardly technological fiddlings.”
“She really thinks that, doesn’t she?” Gabe said to Anna. To Nora, he said, “You are so damn cute,” dropped a kiss on the top of her head, and left.
“Well, cookie?” Anna’s eyebrows were as high as they could go. “You really think you’re safe from him?”
Nora pointed at Anna’s forehead. “Nice wrinkles.”
Anna lowered her brows with a scowl. “Watch him. He’s oh-my-God hot, and he can break you.”
“Think I don’t know that?”
“He’ll use you up and spit you out, and not give it a second thought.”
Anna was wrong. He’d give it a second thought. He’d care. A man who held her while she cried, a man who gave her tissues and didn’t mind if she ruined his shirt, that man would care if he hurt her.
Nora just didn’t know if he’d notice himself doing it.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem,” she said. “I’m not the sort of woman men like him want to use up and spit out.” More’s the pity.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. But you can be sure about this, Nora. He’s our most important client.”
“I know what’s at stake, and I’m not going to do anything to mess up the Sterling account. I’m going to keep things between us strictly professional.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
It took Nora a while to work out what had caused the storm of emotion that had ended with her in Gabe Sterling’s lap, and it wasn’t what she’d first thought.
It wasn’t envy.
It wasn’t self-pity, even though Melissa was pregnant with children that “should” have been hers. Children who would grow up to play in that yard and climb in that tree Nora had been staring at months ago.
It wasn’t even indignation that Vince still went to Thursday night dinners with her parents.
She’d been blindsided by relief.
If Vince hadn’t met Melissa and fallen ruthlessly, recklessly in love with her, he’d have married Nora, and Nora would have gone along with it because she’d thought she loved Vince. She’d always known it was a mild form of love. Now, she was faced w
ith the revelation that it hadn’t been love at all. It had been nothing more than friendship, strong affection and habit.
Let it all out, Gabe had said. He’d been poking fun at her at the time, but in the middle of the emotional hurricane in his arms, she really had let it all out. Since that morning, she’d felt light.
She’d gained clarity.
She had a Filofax full of plans, and now was the time for action. Deliberate choices, all the way.
Which was why she was standing in front of a squat building in a neighborhood so far out on the edges of the city that it barely counted as still being San Francisco, telling herself that she was ready for this.
It was time for the all-important number two task on her list: get a dog.
The reception area of Riverbend Rescue was bright and welcoming. A row of molded plastic chairs ran along one wall. A long counter divided the room from the rest of the building where, from the sound of things, they kept the animals.
“Hi!” a peppy young woman with astonishing curly red hair and a pink polo shirt with Riverbend Rescue straining over her chest said when Nora walked in.
“Hi.” Nora’s voice came out thin and uncertain. She coughed and tried again. “Hi.” Great. That time she’d yelled it.
The woman’s pep dimmed somewhat as she scanned Nora from head to toe. “Here for a cat?”
What did that mean? “No, I—”
“Maggie!” The woman turned and bellowed into the shadows behind her, “Got another walk-in. Mind the desk, will ya?” She grabbed a clipboard and a pen from the pen pot, and came out from behind the counter. “Right this way, ma’am.”
Nora followed the woman through the swinging door, down a short corridor, and into a room filled with large cages.
The woman stopped and threw her arms wide. “What do you think? I’m Kim by the way.”
“Nora.”
“Any of these sweeties catch your eye, Nora?”
She looked at the furry occupants of the cages—they were indeed sweeties—but, “No. I’m still not here for a cat. I’m looking for a dog.”
“You are?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” Kim didn’t blink. “Cats are great companions, you know.”
“Do you not have any dogs left?”
Kim straightened. “Of course we do,” she said. “Ma’am. I take pride in placing my charges with the right match, that’s all. And you strike me as a cat la…person. A cat person.”
