“I don’t want your money.” Brian’s shoulders slumped. “If you ever decide you can forgive me, I’m at the Hope Hospice.”
Gabriel said nothing and the man he barely knew and no longer wanted to know finally walked away.
“Gabriel.”
He turned at the sound of Charlotte’s voice, realized she must’ve taken the shortest route back. “Your talk with Molly go well?” he asked, turning his back on Brian Bishop’s retreating figure.
“How did you—” A shake of her head, her eyes looking past him. “It did, but we can talk about it inside. Who was that man?”
CHARLOTTE WAS ALMOST EXPECTING Gabriel’s shrug. “Someone I knew in another life.” The words were cold enough to frost her glasses.
“He calls you, doesn’t he?”
“It’s nothing, Charlotte.” His tone told her to drop it.
Her eyes narrowed. “Fine.”
Glaring at her, he said, “That tone doesn’t say fine. It says you’re pissed.”
“I’ve just realized this relationship apparently only goes one way,” she said, her conversation with Molly fresh in her mind. “I’m to be the needy, broken one who takes, but I’m not allowed to give.”
“Fuck.” A growl of sound. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Fine,” Charlotte said again, fully aware it’d prick his temper.
Gabriel’s eyes flashed. “You want to know who that was? Brian Bishop. My fucking father. The man who left when I was seven, clearing out every cent he and my mom had in the joint account. He took the rent money, the grocery money, everything.” The growl was gone, ice filming over the gray. “Now he’s sick and he thinks I should give a fuck.”
Charlotte hadn’t been expecting this cold blast, but she’d seen Gabriel furious before. “You’re still so angry at him,” she said, hesitant but able to feel the pain he refused to acknowledge existed inside him. “Maybe you should talk to him, not for him but for yourself.”
“I don’t need or want advice on my fuckup of a father from you.” He glanced at his watch after a statement that quickly, efficiently shut her down. The same way she’d seen him shut down business opponents in a negotiation. “We have to get back up to the office.”
Charlotte just nodded, feeling her heart crack. It wasn’t the words or the way he’d spoken them in that frigid tone. It was the fact she’d believed she was learning to deal with Gabriel on an equal basis when it came to their relationship. Clearly, that was a self-deluding lie. He’d been allowing her to handle him.
Now he’d drawn a line in the sand beyond which she was not permitted to step.
26
CUPCAKES AND KISSES
AN HOUR LATER AND Gabriel was calm enough to know he’d fucked up. Badly. He’d been so angry at Brian that he’d allowed it to spill over onto Charlotte. The fact he’d done it today of all days, when she needed him to be her rock, it made him an asshole of epic proportions.
“Goddammit.” Throwing down his pen, he got up and went to find her. She wasn’t at her desk or in the break room, but since her computer screen was on and showing a partial itinerary for a business trip he was taking later this month, she had to be nearby.
“Gabriel.” His chief operations officer waved him into his office when Gabriel went back out into the corridor to hunt Charlotte down. “You have ten minutes to talk over something?”
“Yeah.” He saw Charlotte the second he left the COO’s office. She was standing farther down the corridor with another personal assistant, the two of them concentrating on a tablet. From the frowns on their faces, he thought they were trying to figure something out.
Charlotte looked okay, but when she glanced toward him, that spark he loved was missing from her eyes. Turning toward her fellow PA as the other woman made a comment, she smiled… and it wasn’t his Ms. Baird’s smile, rather a ghost of it.
He’d done that.
CHARLOTTE RETURNED TO HER desk after helping the CFO’s personal assistant with an online meeting application, and found a fancy vanilla cupcake on her desk, complete with raspberry frosting and silver sprinkles. She stared at it. Gabriel had done this before, apologized to her with decadent treats, but it had always just been when he’d infuriated her. He’d never before hurt her.
“Charlotte.”
Swiveling in her chair, she found him in the doorway to his office. He looked so ragged that her heart hurt. “Yes?” she said; she cared too much for him to push him away when he was in pain.
“I’m sorry.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he blew out a breath. “I am angry at Brian and it pisses me off that I can’t let it go.”
Charlotte rose from her desk to go to him and they both stepped into his office, shutting the door behind them. “For better or worse,” she said gently, “he’s your blood. It’s an indelible connection.”
Gabriel walked to the windows behind his desk, his gaze on the city and on the water beyond. “I don’t want it to be—he has no claim on me.” Shaking his head, he folded his arms. “I can’t talk about this anymore, especially when I’m worried about you.”
It wasn’t the cold shutdown of before, simply a request for space. Charlotte had no problem with giving him that—emotional wounds this deep and complex didn’t get solved in a single conversation. What continued to worry her was what would’ve happened if he hadn’t made the first move? Would she have had the courage to push, to demand he trust her with his secrets?