He was drunk when our kiss started. I was drunk when it ended.
“Come with me,” he’d said.
“Yes,” I’d answered.
We spent the rest of the night together. Alone in his parent’s mansion, tucked away in his enormous curtained bed, I lost my virginity and heart to Gabriel. It was as perfect as anything I could’ve ever tried to wish for. Gabriel had been tender with me, taking things as slow as I needed. Filled with him, I girlishly imagined he had flown me to a heaven where our many, many differences didn’t matter and where I could be his forever.
Afterwards, his beautiful eyes had welled with tears as he looked down at me. “Thank you, Emma, for making my dreams come true.”
I was smitten.
We made love over and over again. I couldn’t get enough of Gabriel and I didn’t want the night to ever end. We laughed together, finding each other’s tickle spots with ease. He fed me strawberries and cream. I let him lick champagne off my back. When we weren’t physically filled with each other, we whispered some of our secrets.
I didn’t want to be stuck broke and powerless forever. He didn’t want to be alone.
Eventually he fell asleep, holding me tight as if he never wanted to let me go. Lying there in Gabriel’s arms, I suffered a love so exquisite in its pain I knew that would be the moment to define me forever after.
I’d never, ever be the same.
Staring at the canopied ceiling, I let the tears roll unchecked. They dripped onto the pillow while the beautiful holder of my heart slept undisturbed. I became convinced it was symbolic of how things were fated to be. I then thought of the exquisite pleasure he’d given me and the box of condoms we’d run through. Considering he’d kept them in his nightstand, apparently I had lots of girls to thank for his practice. I wondered who would thank me in the future as she lay in the spot I vacated.
Eventually I slipped out of his bed, got dressed, and walked the four miles back home. My mother took one look at me and knew. She didn’t yell or lecture me as I’d expected. She simply opened her arms and let me fall into them. I had no tears left, only a soul-wounding scar of regret that things couldn’t be different.
“It’ll be okay, baby. I promise.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her she couldn’t make this okay. Everything in the world but this.
Gabriel came over to my house that afternoon, shocking me with his smiling presence on my well-worn porch. With a lovely bouquet of roses in hand, he asked me out.
I turned him down.
In just a few short hours, I’d patched myself together, refocusing my attention back on my goals—college, dream job, financial independence. I couldn’t be his girlfriend the way either of us wanted. I wasn't self-destructive enough to try to heal or tame him. And I knew that was exactly what I would try to do. Eventually Gabriel would’ve tired of me and then where would that leave me?
Left behind just like the score of other girls who had loved and lost Gabriel Gordon.
We didn’t speak another word to each other for the rest of the year. I’d catch his gaze across campus, brooding and wounded until he hid it away with a lazy-eyed stare and miniature smile dripping with contempt.
For him or me remained a mystery. I could only guess it was a bit of both.
Gabriel didn’t pursue anyone else that year. I wish I could say I wasn’t arrogant enough to think it had anything to do with me. He withdrew from his brilliant circle and unleashed his acerbic tongue on anyone who dared ask him why. His temperament became volcanic, something he no longer tried to rein back.
Once Gabriel came to class with a scabbed lip and blackened eye. Rumors flew that he’d been seen fighting outside club. He no longer slept, just sat there with arms crossed and stared at the board with blind intensity. My heart ached but I refused to look at him any closer than I would anyone else.
Graduation came and our class went our separate ways. Still, Gabriel was never too far from my thoughts. I wondered if he’d be lonely forever and suffered when I thought of the woman who’d clear him of that pain.
Still I got my wish— I received a full scholarship to a small but respected university. I was leaving town, off to fulfill my dreams. I had no business crying about it.
Never mind that I actually did that nightly for three months.
Gabriel went to Yale for one year before dropping out when his father died of a heart attack. Change swept through Gordon Industries like an inferno.
Fast-forward seven years.
He became Gabriel Gordon, the man plastered on every finance magazine, newscast, and blog. The years hadn't changed him, despite taking over his father's company and expanding it into a multinational corporation with offices on nearly every continent. Sparkling smile, lazy-lidded gaze, Gabriel redefined the definition of sexy.
And infuriating.
Gabriel may have been a captain of industry, but a chance encounter in the elevator showed me he was still an ill-tempered, arrogant man who showed far too much interest in the shape of my mouth and nape of my neck. The month before our encounter I wished my company could just move right back into our old building, but the likelihood of that happening was on par with the familiar phrase involving pigs and their aerodynamic abilities.
Every day afterwards brought Gabriel further into my life, making a mess of the orderly world I had created as Emma Adams, Junior Financial Analyst. Lunches became dinners, and dinners quickly became much more. Gabriel bedeviled me, teased me, and more often than not, made me want to throw things at his head. Still, just as in high school, I couldn't help but see the pain behind his lazy grin and the shadows in his crystalline gaze.
When Gabriel told me he loved me for the first time, I should have been the happiest woman in the world. Instead, I saw it as proof that some men can't be saved. They'd lie to get out of anything, including being caught having lunch with an ex. They’d lie to hide who they really were.
They’d lie just to lie.
I was wrong about him...about what I thought this relationship had really been about. I’d been a naïve fool, someone who thought she knew it all, knew her life, and thought she knew the man she loved.
Lunch with an ex…I wished it was just about that.
I needed to be wrong about Gabriel. God, I hoped I was wrong.
Why did I let it get this far? Especially when I knew that loving him would be as dangerous as cutting out my heart and letting him keep it in his pocket?
Because Gabriel was my biggest regret and my greatest love.
I could no sooner stop loving him than I could stop breathing.
Damnit! I’m so freakin’ insane to be here, to still want him.
“Emma…baby…are you still there?”
I sighed and answered, “Yeah.”
“Let me in…please.”
There was no hope for it. I stood up and unlocked the door.
CHAPTER TWO
Friday, Five Days Earlier
Obelisk Pointe Building
“Hold the elevator please!”
Oh damn it. My luck wasn’t really going to be this bad, was it? No, no, no…yes, it was. The petite woman in front of me reached out and kept the doors from closing. Two men entered, both tall, but only one of them known to me.
“I’ve rescheduled your interview with the Times to this afternoon at three.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“You have a charity dinner tonight starting at 8:30.”
“Which one is this again? The Senior Center or the Humane Society?”
“Senior Center.”
I took a small step back, doing my best to remain unnoticed as I slid closer to the corner. Gabriel Gordon overpowered the small space, making it impossible to ignore him. Dressed in a tailored grey suit, he looked entirely too beautiful to be real. I only caught a glimpse of his tie, but it was as pale a blue as the color surrounding his pupils. The strip of white at his neck brought out the myriad shades of gold in his beautiful hair. If I leaned a bit closer, I’d be able to indulge my nose’s desire to take another whiff of his deliciously scented cologne.
Damn, but he was still a gorgeous man who wrecked havoc on any female within eyesight—including me.
Oh, not fair. Not fair.
Gabriel’s voice was just as deep and husky as it’d been in high school. Hearing it brought back to life countless memories I’d rather not have relived at the moment. I noticed the woman who’d kept the doors from closing surreptitiously peeking up at him from beneath her lashes.
I’d seen that look often enough to know Gabriel had just scored another infatuated heart to add to his collection. And I still had twenty-eight floors left to go. Gabriel had fifty-four which meant I’d have to pass him to leave.
Shit.
Come on, Emma! Stop being a little chicken. He’s so deep in conversation with his assistant he probably won’t even recognize you!
True. I had lightened my dark hair with generous blond highlights and had switched from glasses to contacts. I’d also grown a few inches too, vertically and horizontally, no longer possessing the willowy frame of my youth. I was the last person in the world he’d be looking for and our accidental proximity wouldn’t do anything to change that. So basically I needed to calm down.
Right. Calm down when Gabriel Gordon, the only man I regretted loving and leaving, stood only a few feet away.
Good luck with that.
The elevator soon rolled to an elegant stop. “Excuse me,” came out of Samaritan Girl’s mouth. She sounded breathy and excited.
Gabriel instantly stepped aside. His smile lit the dim elevator like a thousand watt bulb. “Of course. Thank you again for holding the doors.”
“Anytime!”
“What’s your name, dear?” he asked gently when she remained by his arm.
“Samantha.”
Samantha the Samaritan’s lingering seemed to irritate his assistant. I wondered how much of his precious time was wasted watching his employer flirt with anything in a skirt. How I pitied him!
This was exactly why I wanted to pitch a fit when I learned my company was moving into Obelisk Point. Everyone else was excited by the glass curtain walls, observation decks, plazas, lightening-fast elevators, multi-level gym, helipad, and swimming pools.
Yes, swimming pools.
Not me. I wanted to stay where I was and not have to do a daily commute to Gabriel Gordon’s magnificent building. Never mind that it actually shaved about 15 minutes off my drive. Nope, that wasn’t enough inducement for me. I simply didn’t want to relive my high school years again, but here I was doing just that.
Lovely. Really. It’s not like I have to get back to work. No, I can stand here all day long while you two chat each other up.
Irritated, I looked at my watch. I wished they’d hurry it along and not because I was feeling uncomfortable. And I definitely was not feeling the pinpricks of jealousy. No way.
Really.
Okay. It was obvious I lied. I did feel jealous. I felt more than jealous. I felt dangerously possessive, an emotion I had no right to feel, especially considering how things ended between us. So I stewed in my corner, recognizing my pettiness and yet unable to do anything but grit my teeth.
My pride won’t let me run so hurry and go. Please. Just do this somewhere else where I can pretend it isn’t still affecting me.