Blaze (Blaze #1) (9 page)

“It’s what you said would happen, Gabriel.
Someone always wants more and right now that person is me, and I’m
keeping my word. I don’t want to complicate this for you, but I
also don’t want to get hurt.”

Gabriel places his hands on his hips. He’s
shirtless, wearing jeans, and I imagine this is what he looks like
when he’s on his farm. I want to say that I’ve changed my mind. I
want to take off my clothes, crawl back into the bed, and tell him
to take me any way he wishes.

“When did you decide this, Kate?” He no
longer looks confused, just angry.

I take a deep breath. “Before I came here
last night.”

He lets out a short, harsh laugh and shakes
his head.

“I didn’t tell you last night for the same
reason I’m doing this. Because I want to be with you.” I take a
tentative step towards him and when he doesn’t move away, I place
my hands on his chest. His skin is so warm, but I feel his muscles
tighten at my touch and that breaks my heart, too.

“I think about you all the time, Gabriel.
And I care for you. I want to be able to say that and not worry
that it’s going to scare you away from me.”

We stare at each other for a few moments
before I feel him relax.

“What do you mean by more?”

I blink and a tear falls, but I’m too
shocked to wipe it away. This is not at all what I expected. I
didn’t have a list of demands because I was certain Gabriel would
just let me go.

“You think about me all the time,” he
continues. “You care for me. I heard you and I’m not scared. So,
what more do you want?”

Madelyn’s words come back to me. “If you
don’t want me to be with another man while we’re together, you need
to ask me. It has to be because you care about me, too. Not because
you view me as a possession.” I slide my hands to his arms. Like
everything else, his biceps are solid. “And when you ask me,
Gabriel, and I tell you yes that I will only be with you, you need
to trust me. You can’t show up at my business meetings and do that
infuriating… but sexy, but still
really
infuriating macho
bullshit.”

“Done. I would appreciate it if you didn’t
date other men when you’re with me. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

His eyes soften.

“Do you really not know that I think about
you all the time, Kate? That I care for you, too?” He kisses me –
first the corners of my mouth then full on. I squeeze his arms and
force myself to pull back.

“Tell me,” I demand.

Gabriel twirls a lock of my hair between his
fingers.
I love when he does that.

“Kate, I think about you all the time. The
other day, I wrote in bed because I could still smell you on the
sheets.”

When he cups the side of my face, I lean
into his hand and kiss the palm.

“And I care about you. More than I wanted
to.” This time his kiss is rough like he wants to punish me for
making him care.

“Now what?” he asks, his hands roaming over
my back.

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll be done here soon. You could come back
to Montana with me, if you want. Fresh air, big sky, you’ll love
it.”

“I don’t doubt that, but I have my job. I
can’t just leave.”

This time he holds my face in both hands
before kissing the tip of my nose. “You just started, Kate.”

“But it’s still my job,” I say carefully.
“Can’t you just stay here awhile longer?”

He nods. “I can, but not for too long. I
have commitments.”

“So do I.”

“Yes, but my commitments aren’t… flexible. I
have meetings with my publisher, a bit of traveling for promotions…
you could even go with me.”

“Or you could just sign with Snow.” I say
this casually and, if I’m honest, without much thought. And just
like that, we’re no longer touching and his eyes are cold.

“You won’t travel with me for a few weeks,
but you think I should leave my publisher?”

“How is that any different than asking me to
quit my job and be your… what? Traveling companion with
benefits?”

He folds his arms across his chest.

“It’s different because I’ve had a long and
lucrative relationship with my publisher. I can’t just leave them
because some… you… ask me to.”

His eyes narrow and he fixes me with a stare
that makes my stomach drop. “Is this what you wanted from the
beginning? Did Madelyn put you on me like she did Noah Drake? I
thought you were different, Kate.”

I feel like I’ve been slapped.

“Are you serious right now? I was a
secretary when I met you. Remember? Oh, wait. You didn’t really
know anything about me except that you wanted to fuck me. Counting
the minutes until you could.”

“I don’t recall having to force you to come
back here. And why is that?” He takes a step closer and I don’t
recognize him at all. “Could it be that I’m rich? Famous? Not a bad
way to get a promotion.”

“Fuck you.”

He shrugs.

“You did. A lot. Thanks.”

I push past him and grab my purse from the
sofa.

“This was a mistake,” I call over my
shoulder. I won’t turn around. I won’t let him see me crying.

“Which part?” he calls back.

“All of it,” I yell before slamming the door
behind me.

The sky is gray, gray, gray above me and the
air is thin and cold. There are long clouds the color of slate
washing in off the bay and I hunch my shoulders as I push the doors
to the office open; across the street one of the workers at the
florist store is running all the pots of flowers inside. It’s going
to rain like hell later and I couldn’t care less. Let the foul
weather wash everything away.

The walk back to my tiny little office is
just a long, slow trudge. People give me those big smiles they’ve
been giving me all week and it’s all I can do to stretch my lips up
back at them, playing the part I know I’m supposed to.

But there’s a leaden sadness in the pit of
my stomach. All I want to do is lie down and bawl all my tears and
my sadness out.

What if there’s no end to it, though?
A tiny little voice whispers.
What if you
never
get over
this, and you can never fix the mistake you’ve made ending
things?

I slump into my seat and my shoulder sag
forward. For one terrifying instant I’m sure I’m going to burst
into tears right there. But I suck in a deep breath and let it out
again slowly. The dull ache of misery doesn’t shift an inch, but at
least I don’t feel like I’m going to start wailing anymore.

There’s a bunch of new emails that I scan
without paying any attention at all. A minute doesn’t go by without
Gabriel’s face moving back across my mind. No matter how I try to
focus on something else. He’s under my skin; he’s in every breath I
take.

But then, like some kind of unwelcome
miracle, something
does
distract me.

With a ding, a new email flares into life at
the top of my screen. It doesn’t have a title, just an exclamation
point, and it’s from Madelyn. Dreading what it’s going to say, I
open it up.

Kate!
, It begins, and I can
feel
her excitement pouring through her words,
I just
spotted you coming in. Drop into my office if you’ve got five and
let’s talk about all things Gabriel Call. I hope you’ve got good
news for me.

I sigh hugely and square my shoulders. I
already know this is going to suck.

Amy catches me as I’m heading towards
Madelyn’s office and smoothly spins into formation next to me.

“Heading to discuss your new role with
Madelyn?” she asks, and she says the words like she’s spitting out
apple seeds.

Just one slap,
I think wistfully,
surely that’s in my contract somewhere? Surely I’m allowed just
one?

Instead I give her a tight smile back.

“Sure am!” I say, and at least giving Amy a
taste of her own icy, false politeness lifts my mood a little, even
if it’s a sour kind of lift. She sniffs.

“I’ll sit in,” she says, and there’s nothing
at all I can say to that.

Madelyn is sitting behind her desk. In the
giant window behind her rain is hazing the city skyline. She smiles
deeply and sets a porcelain cup down onto a coaster her heavy wood
and glass desk.

“I should cut back,” she says, indicating
the coffee, “but I don’t want to go through the withdrawals.”

She leans forward and a predatory grin
crosses her face. Her suit, all sharp lines and expensive material,
clings to her body as she moves.

“So?” she says, looking me right in the eye
and raising one perfect eyebrow. “Will Mr. Gabriel Call be gracing
us with a manuscript any time soon?”

My throat goes tight and I have to swallow.
Even though it’s cool in the room I can feel my cheeks burning red.
I have to force myself to meet Madelyn’s gaze. I have to force the
words out, afraid I’m going to mumble like a little girl caught
with her hand in the cookie jar.

“No,” I say, and the word blurts out and
hangs awkwardly in the air. Madelyn and Amy stare at me; my voice
is too loud, too harsh on that one short syllable.

“No,” I repeat, more gently this time. “I’m
sorry, Madelyn. He decided not to take that option up.”

Madelyn’s eyes narrow, as if she’s having
trouble understanding this idea.

“Do you mean, for the time being?” she asks,
and her voice is cool. I shake my head, wishing I could stare at
the carpet, but I know that’s the chicken’s way out.

“Huh,” she says, and she drums those long
nails of hers on the desk for a moment, considering.

“OK,” she says briskly. “Well, in that case,
I’m moving you back to your original role. Amy’s been telling me
she’s swamped without you, so that will at least make her life
easier.”

Now it’s my turn to stare.

“But…” I say helplessly. “But… what about my
other clients?”

Madelyn looks at me.

“You don’t have any,” she says, like she’s
explaining it to a child.

“Noah Drake?” I offer.

“Signed and done,” she replies, “and I’ll be
supervising that relationship from now on.”

Something must cross my face.

“You look disappointed,” Madelyn says, and
if her voice was cool before, now it’s pure ice. “So am I. I really
thought you had what it took to bring a major, major author into
our fold. But now I see that you were too young, too inexperienced,
and, at the end of the day, just not dedicated enough to do
whatever it took to make him feel comfortable working with us.”

I don’t know what she’s saying… but at the
same time, I know exactly what she’s saying.

“If I should give you another chance at
doing this kind of liaison work,” Madelyn goes on, “maybe in a few
years, I hope you’ll take these lessons to heart.”

She takes a sip of her coffee and nods at
the door.

“That’ll be all,” she says.

Shell-shocked, I followed Amy out of the
office.

“Back where you belong,” Amy says to me as I
walk into my little cubicle, and the door slams shut behind me like
a prison cell.

“Whoa. Slow down.”

“They’re shots, James. They’re meant to be
fast.”

The tequila burns my throat and I shiver
even as the liquor feels like fire going down. James shakes his
head and pours another.

“Yes, but that was your fifth.” He says
this, but still slides the shot glass across the island’s granite
top.

It comes to a stop a few inches from my
hand. The golden liquid sways. A few drops make it over the lip. I
take the shot and shiver again.

“It was my sixth. This was my seventh. Catch
up.” I jut my chin towards his shot gloss.

He downs it easily and says, “Peer
pressure,” with a grimace.

I hop off my stool, and grab the bottle of
the tequila by the neck. “You get the glasses.” He follows me into
the living room even though we’re in his house.

“God, I love your place.”

“But… I feel like there’s a but coming.” He
squints his brown eyes in playful suspicion.

I look around the living room, which might
be larger that my entire apartment. The house has its original
hardwood floors, refinished in a dark wood. The décor is all shades
of brown with dashes of beige.

“It’s just very… masculine. I can’t imagine
a woman living here.”

James holds out the two shot glasses and I
carefully pour tequila in both before setting the bottle on the
coffee table. He hands me a glass.

“When I finally realized Tess wasn’t coming
back, I had every room redone. It was just easier that way.”

I nodded. Thoughts of Gabriel frequently
took hold of me, making it hard to concentrate. I couldn’t imagine
living in a house with memories we created in every room.

“To moving on,” I say, raising my shot
glass.

“Moving on.”

After he drinks, James clears his throat
loudly and asks, “Should we go back down?”

I cock my head to the side, listening for
sounds from the basement. We’d left Nat and Dave downstairs playing
a game of pool.

“They’re pretty quiet,” I say.

“I don’t even want to think about what
they’re doing on my pool table.” James falls back onto the sofa and
I join him, tucking a leg under me. The chocolate brown leather is
soft and a bit warm.

In fact, the temperature of the whole room
seems to have risen a few degrees. I hold out my glass and James
obliges. Before I can take the shot, I feel my phone vibrate in my
skirt’s back pocket.

“Oops. Forgot about this.” I hand James my
glass as I check the phone’s screen.

UNKNOWN.

My life has been a string of disappointments
lately. I have no desire to let anything or anyone ruin this
buzz.

“I’ve earned it,” I mumble.