She settled against him, cuddling his right side. She was a perfect armful. “I’ve always loved this movie.”
Casablanca was playing on the television, but he’d mostly been watching Eve. She fit perfectly against his side. In the last two days, he’d had her often and well, but he’d found the one thing he liked even more than making love was talking to her. He’d avoided talking about his sister, his friends, or the parts of his past that would enable her to identify him. She didn’t seem to have any idea who he was, and he liked it that way. She seemed to think he was just another guy, not a man who had reporters hounding his every move, who regularly showed up in gossip rags. He kind of liked being a regular Joe and not Manhattan’s most eligible bachelor. Eve had agreed to stay with him with no strings, no promises of presents or favors or hopes of being seen with him.
Eve liked him. Just him as he was.
“Did you used to watch this with your dad?”
She nodded against his chest. “Oh, yes. He would play it at least once a year. We would eat Chinese food and watch this along with North by Northwest. He said it was the perfect double feature. Romance and adventure. The Chinese food was made by refugees from Jersey. The Pollizzi family. It was awful. They liked to say it was fusion. Chinese and bad Italian should never go together. Although the Kung Pao lasagna was legendary.”
She made him laugh. Being with Eve showed Gabe how grim he’d become.
The offer to fly her to Beijing so she could experience true Chinese food sat right on the tip of his tongue. He could show her the city’s most impressive restaurant. He could fly her there himself or take the private jet with a pilot so he could make love to her for the whole fourteen-hour flight.
Instead, he simply squeezed her tight. “I hope you’ve found some good spots here.”
Her face lit up. “I love the city. So much good food. I think I’ve gained twenty pounds from trying everything.”
Most of his previous female companions didn’t eat a lot, much less show such enthusiasm. Eve was unabashed in her joy. She’d eaten every bite of her Belgian waffle that morning and relished in the fries served with their steaks this evening.
All he had to do was feed the girl and she was putty in his hands.
“Does your father miss you?”
She went still, and he knew he’d stepped into something.
“I’m sorry, Eve. He’s gone, isn’t he?”
The question seemed to rattle her, and she sighed. “I lost him not too long ago. I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like yesterday. Sometimes it feels like forever ago.”
“How about your mom?” He asked the question cautiously. He was so curious about her background, but she’d been serious about the no-last-names thing. He didn’t want to scare her off.
She remained quiet for a moment, then turned her face his way. “She left when I was young. It was just me and my dad. How about you?”
He was more than willing to discuss his background if it kept her talking. “Well, you know I grew up wealthy.”
Her nose wrinkled in that cute way that let him know she wasn’t impressed. “Yes, I think being able to afford this super expensive suite for three nights is proof that you’ve got some bank, Gabriel.”
He went still. “Wait. Um, I thought you were paying for this. I told them it was all you.”
Her mouth fell open, her eyes widening in shock.
Gabe let her off the hook with a laugh. “I was joking, baby.”
“Jerk,” she huffed, but settled back in.
He loved teasing her, too. “So like I was saying, grew up rich, but that is not a guarantee of happiness.”
“Why did they send you to boarding school?” she asked.
He was sure the concept was foreign to her. Eve’s father probably had been very protective. He couldn’t see her dad letting her reside in a different state nine months out of the year. “Because every male in my family for the last hundred years has attended Creighton Academy, and I wasn’t going to be any different, according to my father. My family came over on the Mayflower. My many-times-great grandfather was one of the first official US prisoners of war. Him dying in a Redcoat jail was a serious point of pride to my father.”
She frowned, her brow creasing sweetly. It made her look like a grumpy kitten, though a sexy one. “I’m pretty sure I’m related to John Wilkes Booth.”
“That is unfortunate. My mother would surely have forbidden me to see you.” He kissed her forehead. “Again, I’m joking. I’m merely pointing out that I had a reputation to live up to.”
“That must have been rough. You weren’t allowed to be a kid, were you?”
“No. I had to represent my family. My father was raised a certain way and he passed that on to me. He was distant, though I believe he loved me deep down. It’s funny how our perspectives can change as we age. Now I see he tried to connect the only way he knew how.” He hadn’t discussed this in years, and never with the honest insight he was sharing now. He and Sara spoke about their parents, but he never wanted to criticize them to her, so he hadn’t been completely open about his feelings. Maybe because he’d spent so much time naked with Eve, it felt so natural to open himself up. It seemed right to talk to her.
“And how was that?”
He smiled with the memory. “We flew. He started taking me up in puddle jumpers when I was six. Scared the hell out of my mother, but I loved it. I got my pilot’s license at seventeen but I was flying long before that. I was lucky I never got caught.”
Eve caressed his chest, her touch soothing. “Wow, the biggest concession I got from my dad was when he let me ride in the back of his patrol car and I let everyone think I’d been arrested. I was eight. I thought it made me look tough. Then I actually got arrested because of the Peter Jackson incident and it really ruined me forever.”
“I can imagine.” He wished he’d been there for that lecture. He was sure it had been a doozy. He wondered what she would say if he told her he’d recently been at a party with the famous director.
“So your dad taught you how to fly,” she said with a little bit of wonder in her voice.
He would love to take her up. Climb about twenty thousand feet where the world receded and a man could see forever. “Yeah. He was a cold man, but he gave me that. I think of him when I fly. He died a few years back. Heart attack. I think it started earlier though. The FAA took away his license because he failed the medical exam. Once he was grounded, he wasn’t the same. My mother went a year later from cancer. I miss them. I w
ouldn’t have thought I would, but I do.”
She sat up and looked down at him, her eyes solemn. “That’s something we have in common. We’re orphans. I know it sounds silly since we’re adults, but after Dad died, I couldn’t get that word out of my head. I guess it doesn’t matter how old we are. We still need our parents. I only had one, but he was enough.”
“He did a good job.” Tenderness welled inside him.
“Yours did, too, Gabriel.”
He couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Oh, I wish I could agree. You don’t know me outside of this room. You don’t know the things I’m capable of. I am everything my father wanted me to be. Ruthless. Successful. Unrelenting. Stubborn. Arrogant.”
He was the man whose hands had twitched at the thought of Mad screwing around on Sara. He was the man who was still going to find the woman who’d fucked his sister over and ensure she did not benefit in any way from Mad’s death.
Eve straddled him, cupping his face in her hands. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re more yourself in here than you are out there. I know I feel that way. I haven’t felt as safe in months as I have the last two days. I really don’t want it to end.”
Gabe curled his hands around her hips, reveling in her curves. His cock was at full staff again. “I don’t, either. Come here, baby. Let’s make tonight count and we’ll talk in the morning. Maybe things will look different to you then.”