Technically Mine (Love, Emerson Book 2)

by Isabel North

  The lawyer looked up when Gabe filled his doorway. “Before you have a tantrum about me daring to talk to your interior designer’s assistant without your permission, Sterling, remember. I know Krav Maga.”

  “And I have a contract killer on retainer.”

  Bill was not impressed. “Stop saying that. He’s your brother, and he’s in the Navy.”

  “He kills for money. I can match the government’s paycheck. Enough chitchat. Bill. I’ve decided to come clean about Nebula.”

  “Come clean?” Bill’s face went a waxen green. His pupils shrank to pinpricks.

  “Shit.” Gabe rushed to pour him a glass of Scotch and pressed it into his damp hand. “Bill, don’t have a heart attack. This is good news.”

  Bill tossed back the whisky and slammed the crystal glass onto his desktop. “You little prick. What the hell is the matter with you?”

  “I’m in love.” He waited for a response, but despite opening and closing his mouth a few times, Bill didn’t say anything. “Bill?”

  “Got nothing.”

  “Okay. I’m going to give you a few minutes to get over your fit of the vapors—”

  Bill scowled. “I’m not having the vapors. Nebula. Hit me.”

  “It’s done,” Gabe said.

  “What do you mean, it’s done?”

  “It’s done. I finished it two months ago.”

  “Wha…? Two months?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’ve been sitting on it for two months, letting me think you’d lost your edge, and all along it was done?”

  Gabe lifted and lowered a shoulder. “The coding part. The system’s built. Hardware’s up to R&D. Otherwise, yep. I didn’t lose my edge. On the contrary, I leveled up. It took me a fraction of the time I’d expected.”

  “Why, Gabe? You let me spend months popping antacids like candy, preparing for the end, and it’s done? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s going to make me a billionaire.”

  Bill threw his arms wide in the most dramatic shrug Gabe had ever seen.

  “I never wanted to be a billionaire,” Gabe said.

  “You poor baby.”

  “It’s ridiculous. One man, that much money? Fucking stupid. No one needs that much. However, it is what it is. I accept the consequences of my genius.”

  He’d set up a couple more foundations. The Sunshine Bowman Foundation for Rescue Animals had a nice ring to it. The Sunshine Sterling Foundation for Rescue Animals had a better ring, but that was a whole other plan.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Bill was saying. “Because the consequences are, you’re going to be living and breathing Nebula for the next five years.”

  “Nope. You are. I’m restructuring. Congratulations, Bill. You just became the man who gets to shepherd in the next technological era. You’re promoted to CEO.”

  This was the heart of the Nebula problem that had been eating away at Gabe. The billionaire thing he could deal with. The next five years of his life spent living and breathing a project? That, he couldn’t deal with.

  When he was twenty-nine, he had hurled himself with abandon into work black holes like this one, and he’d loved it. At thirty-nine, eh. Been there, done that.

  More importantly, at thirty-nine, he’d gotten control of his ego enough to realize one crucial fact: while he was the only man who could have conceived of and initiated Nebula, there were a hundred other men and women who could take his work and make money with it.

  He was looking at one of them right now.

  “Me?” Bill’s voice was high, his face a study of confusion. “Why me?”

  “I trust you.”

  Bill’s eyes bugged. “What are you doing while I’m being you? You’re not retiring, are you?”

  Retiring? “I’m thirty-nine, the fuck am I going to do for the rest of my life, sit on a beach and stare at the ocean?”

  “At this point, I think it’s clear that I have no idea what you’re going to do.”

  “Since nature likes a balance and I have promoted you, I’m demoting myself. I want to go back to working R&D. I’m tired of the business shit, Bill. I’ve done it for all these years to get where I am, and I realized I don’t need to do it.”

  “This revelation didn’t come out of nowhere, did it?”

  He smiled. “We both know where this revelation came from.”

  Nora.

  Gabe spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about making Nora breathless. Deep down, though, he knew that all he needed to do to make Nora hold her breath was be there.

  Whenever they were together, a wide-awake, vibrating air of waiting crackled around her. Waiting to see what he was going to do, what he was going to say.

  Such an open, welcoming kind of waiting it was, too. And so intense, he swore he could feel it spark and dance over his skin.

  No matter how outrageous he was with Nora, even if he made her angry or embarrassed, she accepted him. It was the strangest thing. Being himself, being there with her…he was enough.

  You can’t be enough for someone, bind them to you, and then travel a path that you know will drag you into a black hole of work. When you know you’ll only be able to give a fraction of yourself.

  Nora would let him do it. Even if he laid it out for her, she’d let him. She’d choose to be with him anyway, and they’d share a long lifetime of him taking advantage of her.

  He didn’t want to give the next five years of his life to the business. He wanted to give it to Nora. He wanted to give the rest of his life to Nora.

  Wholeheartedly, the way she gave to him.

  She deserved it.

  She deserved everything.

  “Clear your schedule, Bill,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Bill was still shaken. “I’m fifty-six,” he said. “What if I don’t want to take this behemoth on? What if I want to retire? That whole beach thing, staring at the ocean. Sounds appealing.”

  “Then you can be interim CEO while you find someone else.”

  “Can’t you hold on a little longer? We’ll find someone else together.”

  “No,” Gabe said. “I’ve spent long enough as I am. I want to be different.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  She’d made a mistake, Nora thought. She’d made a whole chain of mistakes.

  She’d let herself get dazzled by Gabe Sterling’s larger-than-life personality, his charm, and his unreal good looks.

  Dazzled, she’d let herself get too attached.

  Attached, she’d let herself start daydreaming. Now here she was, sitting on the floor in her apartment with Sunshine snoozing beside her, while she doodled hearts and flowers in her Filofax.

  The one saving grace was, those hearts and flowers weren’t wreathing around the words Mrs. Nora Sterling, or she’d have to call Anna to come over and give her a bitch slap, get her head back in the real world.

  It was bad enough that the doodles were around the margins of her sexual odyssey list. There was plenty of room. It wasn’t as if she’d racked up any check marks.

  The list now ran to three pages, and two and a half of them had been inspired by Gabe.

  It wasn’t only the sexual odyssey list that was lacking in the check mark department. It was all of her lists.

  She flipped back and forth through the planner. She’d gotten the job, she’d gotten the dog, and then she’d gone and fallen in love with Gabe Sterling, and everything else…

  Wait.

  She was in love with him?

  Was she crazy?

  Yes. Crazy in love with him.

  Nora slammed her Filofax shut, threw it to the floor, and dropped her head into her hands. She groaned, stretched out flat, and stared up at the ceiling.

  She was in love with him.

  Now she thought of it, she’d been in love with him since he’d held her the day she cried with utter relief that she wasn’t the one bearing Vince’s multiple babies.

  She curled an arm over her eyes, cuttin
g out the sun.

  It was all right. She could fix this. She’d fallen in love. She’d fall back out. She had to. There was no point in staying in it all alone, after all.

  He’d said no to her.

  He was more interested in her dog than he was in her.

  Nora got that. Sunshine was awesome, and Nora wasn’t jealous or anything. She hadn’t been shoved sideways again while another female took her place, because she’d never had that place with Gabe. But oh, it felt like it.

  She wasn’t going to freak out. She’d bet people fell in love with Gabe all the time. Probably he knew it and had a whole lot of experience in…oh shit.

  He did know.

  He knew, and that was why he’d turned her down so gently, wasn’t it?

  Nora started to hyperventilate. Maybe she was going to freak out after all. It was healthy. It was a good idea. Yes. She should freak out all she wanted. Let it roll through her. Because she didn’t want to wake up tomorrow and have Anna fire her for getting drunk and spray-painting cocksucker on the front of Gabe’s building.

  Which she wouldn’t do. He hadn’t betrayed her. He’d been himself, and he’d never made any promises. Implicit or explicit. In fact, he’d said to her face that they had no sparks. Then he’d called her buddy and slapped her on the ass. She’d thought at the time he might have been playing a game.

  Guess not.

  Nora’s breathing returned to normal. She had a crush. Big deal. It happened, and she’d get over it. She’d get over him.

  She’d get back to the important stuff, the stuff she should have been focusing on all along.

  Even though it was the last thing she wanted to do, she dragged herself up off the floor and called Anna, finally agreeing to join her for Saturday morning spin class. There, she let the gym rep talk her into a membership, and she fully intended to use it.

  She took her book and Sunshine to the park on Sunday and spent the afternoon reading, so she’d be able to contribute at book club.

  On the Monday she went shopping during her lunch break and bought a new pair of heels that looked amazing with her skinny jeans.

  On the Tuesday, she declined to accompany Anna to Gabe’s warehouse when she went to close the project and return the key.

  And then on the Wednesday, Nora found herself back at the Tower of Doom, as she not-so-fondly thought of his office building. Was it original? No. But it was appropriate.

  Gabe had indeed hired Anna to redecorate his five other West Coast properties. He wanted her to start straight away, with his penthouse apartment.

  “For once, can’t you do the grunt work?” Nora had complained when Anna told her.

  “No,” Anna had said. “I’m the talent. You’re the grunt. This is what I pay you for. You should be thrilled, by the way. I can pay you properly now, instead of paying you that embarrassing nominal salary neither of us wanted to face.”

  “Yay.”

  “Unless you’re happy working for a teenage babysitter’s wages, in which case, why rock the boat?”

  “No, thank you. Pay me what I’m worth.”

  Anna had looked at her with sympathy. “No one could pay that much, No-No.” She’d seen Nora’s quivering lip, and rushed on, “We’ll go with the raise I had in mind. Good? Good. Now, get gone.”

  “Ugh. Do I have to?”

  “Same as last time. Measure up, take photos. You know the drill.”

  It wouldn’t be the same as last time, however. Last time, she’d walked in on him naked.

  Nora had grabbed the camera and the new laser distance measure Anna could now afford, had stuffed them in her tote and driven across town to the Tower of Doom, where she now stood.

  Before today, Nora hadn’t considered herself the sort of person who was sensitive to rejection. She had robust self-esteem. She was a grown-up. She knew life came with speed bumps, the odd ditch, a hidden patch of black ice every now and then. You had to adjust, and keep driving forward. She’d heard the word no many times.

  None of them, however, had carried the weight of the no she’d heard last time she was here. She hadn’t even known what she’d been asking him for, until he’d turned her down.

  Kindly.

  Putting a positive slant on it, this was a great opportunity. She got to grow, got to toughen up.

  Yeah, she thought, marching in with a white-knuckled grip on the strap of her tote bag. Great opportunity. Today was her lucky day.

  “Afternoon, Ms. Bowman,” the security guard at the main desk said.

  “Hello.”

  “Here to see Mr. Sterling? I’ll buzz Daniel.”

  “No!”

  He flinched.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to shout. No need to buzz Daniel, thanks. I’m not going to his office today. Apartment.”

  “Ah.” The guard grinned.

  “I’m here to measure some stuff and take photos.”

  He held up his hands, eyes wide. “Your business.”

  “I’m the interior designer’s assistant.”

  “Still your business,” he said.

  Fine. Let him think she was going to have an assignation with Gabe, to measure his nine and a half inches and take dirty pictures. Nora stalked after the guard and waited with a tight smile as he put his key into the elevator and hit the penthouse button.

  “Do I need one of those to get down?” she called through the closing doors, but he was already walking away.

  She didn’t know how these things worked. She didn’t think anywhere in Beacon Falls had a penthouse. They had top floors. She chewed her lip. What was she supposed to do when she wanted to get down? Were their stairs?

  The elevator doors opened onto a still and silent hallway. The floors and walls were veiny cream marble, and there was only one direction she could go. Toward the door at the end of the short passage.

  Nora stood at the door. She didn’t have an elevator key, and she didn’t have a key for the apartment, either.

  Shit.

  Was he here? Was that why she didn’t need a key?

  Her palms dampened, and before she allowed her nerves to make her body do anything else unwanted, like turn and run for the elevator, she banged smartly on the door.

  No response. She tried the handle. It turned.

  Relieved that she hadn’t made more of an idiot of herself by dragging the guard up to open an unlocked door for her, she eased in, and flinched when the lights automatically blazed on.

  “Oh my God.” A hand to her mouth, she turned in a full circle. “This is awful.”

  It was—she supposed—incredibly chic. For a pharaoh, or a Roman emperor. Who lived in space. As a home, a place to come back to and relax after a long day of playing with your squillions, it seemed…like it was going to suck the last dregs of your soul out through your nostrils.

  No wonder Gabe had never been bothered by the construction chaos of the warehouse. No wonder he’d been elated with Anna’s deliberately unfinished design and her fusion of organic and industrial, which spotlighted the exposed brickwork and pipes, the wood and the space.

  As in the hallway outside, the floor and the walls of this apartment were marble, pale cream and high gloss. Nora looked up, and cowered. The freaking ceiling was marble. Was that safe? If a section came loose, it could kill a person. Threat to her life aside, it made her damn claustrophobic.

  Random jagged sections of black marble were interspersed among the cream slabs. These were also high gloss, and flecked with mica that caught the light and sliced at the eyes. Nora saw herself reflected in all the surfaces, a blurred ghost. Shuddering, she turned away.

  The furniture was sparse and spindly. The chairs at the glass dining table in the sunken area by the windows—no blinds or drapery whatsoever to soften the lines—were chrome sticks with black leather straps slung between the frames.

  She hoped they were chairs, and not millionaire penthouse BDSM sex devices.

  The only piece of furniture that looked like it was, in fact, furniture a
nd not a piece of avant-garde art or a sex thing, was the couch. It was dark brown, beat-up, and she’d bet good money that whoever designed this hellish apartment had had a fit when Gabe had insisted on including it.

  Before she did a walkthrough, Nora called out, “Hello?” In case he was here, lounging around naked or anything. Give him a chance to at least put on some pants.

  Her voice fell flat. Wow. They’d even killed the acoustics.

  “Mr. Sterling, are you here?” she shouted, and then felt like an idiot. After her I love him! revelation, it seemed weird to get all formal again.

  Casual. She was going to stay cool, stay casual.

  And she was going to get this done quickly.

  Anna had kept her busy most of the day, and it was past five. While Nora was under no illusion that Gabe’s work day finished at five, every passing second brought the possibility of his return closer.

  Dumping her tote on the glass coffee table by the couch, Nora took out the measure and the camera, and got to work.

  After a while the eerie stillness got to her and she started to hum loudly. She didn’t hear the door open. He didn’t make any sound but she knew, suddenly, that Gabe was there. She swung to face him.

  He was wearing a suit.

  Oh, come on. This wasn’t painful enough to start with, he had to be wearing a suit? Even worse, he was wearing his glasses, like a sexy nerd.

  The suit was dark charcoal gray, the shirt was deep navy—she’d noticed he never wore white—and as she watched, he shrugged out of the jacket. She didn’t know what she expected next, but the lean against the doorjamb surprised her. It wasn’t a calculated hey, look at me, Mr. Sexy Man propping up the whole building with my manly shoulders lean. It was a tired slump. His ankles were crossed, one hand went into his pocket, and his eyes were steady on her.

  They stared at each other for a full, silent minute. He didn’t blink once.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He grunted a reply, and straightened.

  “Hell of a place you’ve got here. Homey.” That came out way more sarcastic than she’d intended.

  Gabe continued to stare at her, and Nora felt an odd disconnect. She was looking at a stranger.

  “Uh, I was measuring up. You know that, because I sent Daniel an email.” Not him. “But you’re not supposed to be here. So. I’ll get out of your hair, come back another time.”