by Jane Keeler
The Long Ride
Jane Keeler
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Author
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Chapter 1
The 120-foot megayacht Sea Queen was guaranteed to draw attention and envy even in the high-class yachting clubs and marinas where she was normally seen. Her sleek white lines made her look like she was cruising along at 70 knots even when she was lying at anchor.
Unfortunately, Sea Queen wasn’t at her best at the moment. She wasn’t just at anchor—she was, in fact, stuck. Run aground in the Florida Keys.
“Damn. Damn. Dammit all to hell.” Gabe cursed his luck. It had seemed like a great idea several bottles ago, but now they were in serious trouble. Thank all the gods of the sea and protectors of drunken idiots they weren’t taking on water. There was still hope. If he could get the boat off this sandbar, into open water, and back to the dock before his father found out, they might yet be saved.
“Hey, Tony. Tony. Wake up.” He nudged his friend with his foot. “You need to get in the dinghy and see if you can pull the anchor into deep water.”
Tony groaned. It had been a bibulous three days.
Gabe nudged him with his foot again, a little harder this time. “C’mon. Unless you want to try making sense of the charts and figuring out where we are.”
“Mmgrphmm mmp.”
Gabe kicked him again.
“I’m up! I’m up. Jeez.” Tony pulled himself into a standing position and gave the nearest champagne bottle a hopeful swirl. Empty. At Gabe’s glare, he made an effort to orient himself towards the rear of the boat, where the dinghy was tied up.
“You know what, don’t take the dinghy,” said Gave. “I’ll take the dinghy. You go below and see how the girls are doing. I didn’t hear them when we ran aground, so they must be passed out too.”
“Gabe.”
“What?”
“Is that the… Coast Guard?”
“Damn. Damn. Dammit. They’re coming alongside.”
“Ahoy Sea Queen!”
“Hi Dad,” Gabe said. “I can explain…”
Westley Braxton was a broader, older, harder version of his son. While Gabriel’s lips could still curl into a wry grin, Westley’s mouth looked like it had forgotten how to smile back in the early years of the Clinton administration. The corners might pull upward into a coldly amused smirk when he felt superior to everyone present (which was often), but most of the time his lips were pressed into a firm, straight line. Like they were now.
He had come aboard with a group of competent-looking people in white uniforms—Sea Queen’s regular crew. They immediately set about loosening the yacht from the rocky sandbar on which she was stranded.
Westley’s immaculate boat shoes walked across the teak decking, fastidiously avoiding empty bottles and items of discarded clothing. He looked Gabriel up and down, noting the three-day stubble, the bags under his eyes, and the rumpled polo shirt and chinos.
Gabe smiled weakly. His father could always make him feel like a five-year old who had just wet the bed. Tony had disappeared below deck when he saw who it was, and Gabe wished he could do the same.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Gabriel?”
“Well, uh… We just closed the Johnson deal, as you know. Everyone’s been working sixty-hour weeks and I thought it would be nice to give them a bit of a break and take them out on the yacht. Tony was an instrumental part of the negotiations, and he’s been working himself to the bone to get Johnson to agree to our terms.”
Gabe thought he could detect a slight softening around the edges. He was about to continue when an exquisitely golden twenty-something woman came up from the living quarters below deck. She squeaked when she saw Westley and scampered back downstairs, hands covering her bare breasts.
“Is she an employee of ours? I feel certain I would remember her, but, somehow, I do not.” Iceberg Westley was coming up on the starboard bow.
“Um… We started out at Club Temptation. We picked up some girls and they wanted to see the boat, so we—”
“I have heard enough. Your sainted mother, God rest her soul, would be so disappointed to see what has become of her baby boy. She had such high hopes for you. She even cherished dreams that you might someday run for political office.”
“Dad, it’s not that bad. Sea Queen’s fine. All we need to do is wait for high tide and we’ll be on our way.”
“I am not talking about this incident, as disgraceful as it may be. I am talking about this.” Westley shoved a rolled-up magazine at Gabe.
Gabe unrolled it. “Braxton Playboy’s Main Squeeze Tells All—With Pictures!!!” the headline screamed. With a sinking heart, he scanned the rest of the story.
He’d met Angelica Trelegan a year ago at a film festival. She was tall, slender, elegant, beautiful, and determined to make it as an actress. She certainly had the looks, although so far her best credit had been ‘Sorority Girl #3’ in Pied Piper of Death, a straight-to-video horror fest that did not, in her opinion, showcase her acting talents the way they deserved to be shown. Angelica had hoped that Gabe would be able to introduce her to some Hollywood bigwigs and advance her career. It looked like she’d found a way to get some publicity out of him, at any rate.
“I haven’t talked to Angelica in months. It’s not my fault she decided to go to the tabloids.”
“Your grandmother first became aware of the scandal when she saw the magazine at her hair salon. She cancelled her appointment and retired to bed with heart palpitations.”
“Uh… How is Nana doing now?”
“She refuses to leave the house, but, other than that, as well as can be expected. No thanks to you.”
“We broke up! We’ve been broken up for a long time. It’s not my fault!”
“I don’t care that it’s not your fault! You are twenty-five years old, more than old enough to take responsibility for your actions. I cannot have you exposing yourself and dishonoring the family name like this.”
“What do you mean, exposing myself?! I never-”
“Look at page twelve.”
Gabe felt fai
nt. His stomach was sour from his three-day binge and this was more than he could deal with. He missed his mother; she had been the center of their family. When she was alive, Westley had smiled a lot - laughed even. She had died at the age of thirty-five, and Westley had turned to work as his savior. He had multiplied his net worth many times over, at the cost of any human warmth that might have remained in him.
The young Gabriel had been left to be raised by housekeepers and nannies. He lacked for nothing in the world, but there was an empty gaping hole at the center of his emotions—a hole he tried to fill with alcohol and beautiful women. He was beginning to realize this was a loser’s game. The women always left him, even when they didn’t secretly photograph intimate moments between them and sell the images to the highest bidder.
As for alcohol, well, his stomach had enough. He spent several minutes emptying its contents to the waves while desperately gripping the railings. At least his father was kind enough to wait for him to finish before continuing the lecture. He probably wanted Gabe’s full attention while raking him over the coals.
Gabe was coming to the end of his purge when he felt the deck move under his feet. The ship was underway again. That was something, at least. He really wanted to sleep in his bed tonight.
“Gabriel, I have given this a lot of thought, and I believe I have found a solution. Why don’t you sit down so we can discuss matters like mature adults?” Westley pulled three photographs from the breast pocket of his designer yacht jacket and spread them out on the table.
Gabe looked blearily at the pictures. They were portraits of three attractive young women. There was no particular physical resemblance between them, but a common uprightness of posture and firmness of jaw gave them a superficial similarity.
“What’s this?”
“These are pictures of three young women of good families who might be persuaded to take you on.” Westley slid one of the pictures towards Gabe. “This is Eloise Walsh. Her father’s a senator.”
“Dad!”
“If you don’t like any of them I might be able to ask around the club and learn of others. The young lady must have a strong character to overcome your lack of judgment and discipline. Married life will force you to settle down and apply yourself. You need to put away childish things—”
“I don’t want to get married!”
“You will not interrupt me when I am speaking to you. As I was saying, there is no need to make a choice now. I’m giving you three months to become acquainted with a suitable candidate, and then you will ask for her hand in marriage. You may set the date for any time within the next year.”
“Dad, I don’t understand why you’re doing this. I want to marry for love—I want a marriage like you and mom had. You know, eventually, when I’m ready and I meet someone I love who really loves me.”
Westley put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes briefly. Even now, years after her death, mention of his beloved Sophia still hurt. He was worried about his son, and, truth be told, felt a little guilty about the way he’d left Gabriel to be raised by employees.
After Sophia’s drawn-out death from brain cancer, Westley had been so devastated he could barely manage to get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other. His business had suffered, so he put all of his limited energy into keeping it afloat. He found the work a welcome distraction from his pain, and continued to maintain a demanding schedule even though the business was now prospering—more than prospering.
Braxton Industries had made the Fortune 500 list of companies for the past eight years straight; and with their purchase of the patent to Dr. Johnson’s graphitic carbon nitride photo-catalytic process, they were set to branch out into clean energy in a big way.
Westley admitted, if only to himself, that Gabriel had been a big help with the entire operation. The motivation to expand into green tech had, in fact, come mostly from Gabriel. He and Tony had contacted Dr. Johnson and done most of the work involved in getting him on board to head Braxton Industries’ new Solar and Clean Energy Division. Westley saw a lot of potential in his son, even though he knew Gabriel liked to moan about his lack of appreciation.
That was why Westley saw it as his duty to make sure Gabriel fulfilled his capacity for achievement. His son needed a good woman to encourage him and stand by his side, as Sophia had stood by Westley’s.
“Son, you haven’t even met any of these young ladies yet. We’ll be docking soon, so why don’t you go get cleaned up and tell your friends they need to get ready to disembark. We can talk about this again once you’ve had the chance to sleep on it.”
Gabe was ecstatic to get back to his room in the Braxton Miami mansion. He took a long shower, turning the temperature up to scalding in hopes of boiling the last twenty-four hours from his memory. Marriage?! What was his father thinking?
After the debacle with Angelica, the last thing Gabe was interested in was a serious relationship with a woman, and running for political office didn’t bear thinking about. He got out of the shower, his skin a bright lobster pink, toweled off, and crawled into bed, hoping things would look brighter in the morning.
Unfortunately for Gabe, the morning dawned dark and oppressive. The clouds were thick and low to the ground. The day seemed airless, except for a little breeze that tugged at the tips of the branches on the jacaranda tree outside his window. He got dressed and went downstairs with a feeling of dread weighing down his steps.
“Good morning, Senor Gabriel, what would you like for breakfast?”
“Good morning, Marcia. Just coffee and toast for now, thanks.” Marcia, the housekeeper, was an excellent cook, but Gabe was in no mood to enjoy her expertise today.
He felt a little better after a cup of Marcia’s Cubano coffee. It perfectly fit the old Turkish saying, “Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.” Well, coffee was life as far as Gabe was concerned, especially this morning. He looked at his phone’s weather app—yep, there was a storm coming.
Tropical storm Valerie was still east of the Windward Islands, but looked to be heading straight for Miami and was predicted to intensify as it came. Landfall was expected within the next two or three days. Gabe sighed—that was all he needed. He hoped his father had forgotten his weird kick of finding a wife for him.
Speak of the devil…
“Good morning, Gabriel.” Westley was wearing a flawlessly tailored business suit, ready to go in to the office.
“Morning, Dad. Coffee?”
“Thank you, Marcia,” Westley took a sip of his coffee and turned to Gabriel.
“I hope you’ve given some thought to the matter we discussed yesterday. I’m arranging a gathering where you can meet some of the young ladies we talked about—this weekend, perhaps.”
“Dad, I am not getting married!” Gabe was beginning to feel hurt and angry at his father’s refusal to pay attention to him. Sure, that magazine article was embarrassing (and he’d have to apologize to Nana when he got the chance), but if they kept their heads down and didn’t give the media anything to fixate on, it would soon blow over.
Gabe was always going to be a media magnet. He was tall, ridiculously good-looking, and—let’s not forget—very, very rich. The heir to the Braxton billions was always going to be on the media radar, no matter how quietly and virtuously he lived. If they couldn’t find any dirt on him, they’d just invent some.
“I’ll tell Jeannette to see if we can get the ballroom at the Ivory Sierra…” Westley didn’t seem to have heard him.
“You know what, Dad? Just do what you want. It’s not like you’re going to listen to me anyway.” Gabe got up from the table and headed for his room, slamming the door behind him once he got inside.
Whoa, way to look mature, Gabe, he said to himself. He just couldn’t take it anymore. He felt smothered. He’d been giving his all to Braxton Industries since he graduated from college, hoping his father would notice him. Hoping his father would spend more time with him and they coul
d form a real family bond. Maybe they could be a normal family. That was looking more and more like a hopeless pipe dream, though.
Now his father wanted him to give up the last little bit of freedom he had. Well, he wasn’t going to put up with it. This was the final straw. He packed a bag and waited quietly until he heard his father leave, then slipped out the front door, making sure none of the servants saw him.
Gabriel knew the city well, and was able to find hiding places where his father would never think of looking. He knew this wasn’t really the end of it all. He knew he couldn’t just escape who he was, and what family he was from, but he was proud of himself for finally taking a stand. Blood rushed to his face and his heart beat loudly in his ears. Adrenaline filled him and he resisted the urge to scream in delight. He’d never felt more excited and more alive than he did in that moment.
Chapter 2
Gabriel chuckled to himself as he bought a bus ticket to New York. There was no way his father would even entertain the idea of him catching a bus to get somewhere. If anything, his father would be checking airlines, or checking to see which one of their cars was missing.
Gabriel was no fool—he was going to find a way to outwit his father if it was the last thing he ever did. There was something liberating about buying a bus ticket. It made him feel…
“Normal,” he muttered to himself and smiled. It made him feel normal. That was not a word he had ever used to describe himself, and he quite liked it.
As Gabriel sat waiting for the bus, he watched people pass by. It was interesting. So many different people walked past him. People in love, people pretending to be in love, businessmen, businesswomen, families, old couples, friends.
There were two guys in suits who looked like they never missed a workout a few feet away from him. Gabe amused himself by making up a little story about them. One of them looked like that actor with the craggy face—he couldn’t think of the name. Not that it mattered, anyway.
