Red Hot Christmas (15 page)

“Of course.” She waved him off, intrigued by the smell of herbs mixed through the eggs. Since when did Nicolas Morganti cook his own eggs?

He answered his phone and forked a mouthful of hot egg into his mouth at the same time. His eyes widened and he dropped his eyes before turning his back to her.
 

Hmm. Interesting. Her ears pricked up, trouble at Morganti Enterprises?

Listening for a few seconds more he nodded, his shoulders hunched. “Hang on a minute Malcom.” He turned back to her but didn’t look her in the eye. “Sorry, I have to take this in my office.”

There was an office somewhere in this place too? He must have the whole top floor.

Nicolas kept talking as he walked and Gabby strained to pick out the context of the call but it seemed very one sided, Nicolas mostly grunting affirmations in between long pauses.

She toyed with her eggs a minute, hoping that the call would be short and they could still have breakfast together.
Like they used to.
The minute stretched. No point them both having cold eggs. She wolfed her plate down, her taste buds approving of Nicolas’s dexterity in the kitchen—although eggs weren’t exactly cordon bleu. When Nicolas still didn’t reappear, she looked for the means to make coffee, he used to like his with a shot of hot milk, when you drank as much of it as he did you needed something to dilute the caffeine. Setting up the machine, heating the milk, finding a cup she thought might fit his mood, Gabby couldn’t keep the smile off her face. Was this what it was going to be like from now on? Domestic bliss?
Really? He’s over his gift-wrapped good bye stage already?
She scolded herself. Of course he wasn’t. And anyway, she didn’t want a happy ever after life with Nicolas Morganti. Did she?

Gabby let the thought of waking up in his bed each morning wrap around her. She’d float down to the kitchen to find him, apron clad, making her eggs and coffee, the papers spread out, a smile ready to great her. Then they’d chat about the meetings she had that day before Fraser bounced into the room, ready to have his hair ruffled and be sent off to school with a packed lunch.
 

Letting the smile linger, Gabby poured coffee into a deep blue stoneware cup and padded over to the door she’d seen Nicolas disappear into.

He was silent and she was about to enter when he began talking again—his back to her. “Well it’s good that we’re getting closer. I still don’t want news of this getting out. I know it could help flush out the thief, but I suspect it’ll just send them running for the trees. You don’t get to be this good at fraud and not know how to hide your tracks.”

Gabby froze.

“Leave her to me Malcolm. I can keep an eye on her.”

Was he talking about her?

“I always thought she was just like her father…”

Oh. My. God. Gabby turned and retreated. Fast. As if the dream of domestic bliss she’d let wrap itself around her imagination only moments ago was an actual bubble, Gabby felt like she was falling back to earth, the world bursting around her.

She sped to her room. Her mind span with that single sentence—
I always thought she was like her father.
There was some sort of theft going on at Able’s and she was the prime suspect. God damn her father for tainting her with his fraudulent brush. And god damn Nicolas Morganti for believing she had anything to do with it. When things seem too good to be true, they probably were. She beat a hasty retreat to the guest bedroom.

Setting the coffee she was still carrying on the dresser she pulled her bag from the cupboard and grabbed at her clothes, stuffing them in haphazardly.

“I thought I smelt coffee…”
 

Gabby turned to see the smile drop from Nicolas’s face when he saw what she was doing.

“Don’t try and stop me. I know what you think.” She put up her hand to stop him talking. “I’m never going to be able to prove that I’m not my father am I?” She turned back to her frantic packing.

“I won’t lie to you. It looks bad.”

“That I’m the daughter of a fraudster? Of course it looks bad. But that doesn’t mean I have anything to do with whatever is happening at Able’s.”

“So you admit there’s something going on?” His voice deepened, anger and distrust close to the surface.

“That’s not what I said. I don’t know anything about the finances at Able’s, only what’s covered by my budget. Why on earth would I steal from the only company that has given me a real break in all this time?”

He paused and she fancied she could see his mind whirring. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said belligerently. “You believe it was me. Inviting me here to stay was just a ploy to keep watch, wasn’t it?”

He shrugged, clearly she’d hit the nail on the head.

“Well you can forget it. I can’t believe I ever trusted you. That I…” she bit her lip to hold back the words.
That I thought I was falling in love with you. Again.
 

He changed his posture, only slightly, but the subtle shift altered his whole energy. “You have nowhere else to go. You said so yourself.”

“That’s no concern of yours.”

“Oh, I think it’s very much my concern. If you’re not the thief, as you so vehemently keep saying, you have nothing to worry about. And if you are, I’d prefer you where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Huh.
That’s
supposed to make me change my mind?”

His voice dropped even lower, the cold increasing with each word. “I think you misunderstand. You have nowhere to go. Or perhaps I should say, nowhere any respectable mother would go.”

Gabby blanched. He’d never mentioned social services, but that’s clearly what he meant, wasn’t it? It was not something she was prepared to find out. The strength left her and she slumped onto the chair next to the dresser, bag still in her hands.

He walked over and pried the bag from her fingers. “You need to get ready for work. And for Fraser.” Setting the bag on the bed he walked out of the room.

Suck it up Philips.
Gabby let the shower do it’s best to wash away her despondency. She had fought off the allegations that could have seen her in prison with her father, was working off her father’s debt, and raising Fraser by herself. She should be proud, not downtrodden. Exiting the shower and wrapping herself in a towel shrugged and scraped back her hair into a ponytail. What a mess. It was too bad. Let Nicolas see what he was doing to her. Perhaps that way he’d relent and let them get on with their own lives.
 

Getting Fraser up and dressed in record time, Gabby hoped to escape as quickly as possible but her son dragged her into the kitchen, demanding breakfast and to talk to Nicolas and Tessa who had just arrived. He seemed oblivious to the tension and chattered away as he practically inhaled his cereal.
 

Nicolas stood, ready to leave. “You can take Fraser from here, can’t you?” he said to his housekeeper.

Tessa nodded and gave Fraser a big wink. “We’re good to go, ain’t we kiddo.”

Nicolas turned to Gabby. “Do you want a ride? My driver is ready.”

She gave him what she hoped was a detached stare. “I’ll walk thanks. Gather my thoughts for the day.”

He shrugged. “See you tonight.” The three words should have been a pleasant promise of an evening together after work. Instead they were laden with ice, and Gabby knew if she tried to run tonight, Nicolas could destroy the one thing that she could always come home to: her life with Fraser.

She nodded. He might be able to toy with her, but she wouldn’t let him do it to Fraser. When she had a plan, they were out of there. She was right never to trust Nicolas Morganti.

Chapter Nine

Nicolas put his hands in his lap, finally admitting his fingers weren’t typing squat. His coffee was growing cold in front of him and twenty emails demanded his attention, but he ignored them all. Instead, Gabrielle’s face flashed over and over in his mind’s eye. Without meaning to he crushed the fabric of his pants. Stood, then sat again, unable to settle to anything. He pushed away from his desk and looked out over the city he loved.

Man, that woman was stubborn. Stubborn and—what exactly? And why did it matter so much to him? When she’d looked up at him as she frantically threw socks and underwear into a bag that had clearly seen better days, his heart had frozen. She was leaving? He’d spotted the coffee on the dresser and the light bulb had come on. Coffee with milk? She always took hers black. Then she’d thrown that line at him.
I’m never going to be able to prove that I’m not my father am I?

She must have heard almost everything.

Her face was drawn, but rather than making her seem weak, the set of her chin against her paled skin made him almost proud. This was a woman who could take care of herself. Who had been taking care of herself and her son for years. With her hair scraped back so viciously, every inch of her emotional landscape was visible. Yet she was still beautiful. It took a woman of real strength to stand up to him when she had to be feeling enormously fragile.
 

      He’d seen all that, and still he’d said
You have to admit it looks bad.
 

Absentmindedly he took a sip of his coffee and almost gagged. Cold. “Well it did look bad.”

Sure, it
did
look bad.
Did
, being the operative word. Did, until that very call from Malcolm that had caused her to look at him as if he’d put snakes in her bed. Or worse. As if he’d put snakes in Fraser’s bed.

It wasn’t that Malcolm had found the thief, but, what was it he’d said? There was a relatively new paper trail that didn’t add up. A paper trail that seemed to loop around Gabrielle’s office as if trying to ensnare her in a noose.
 

Nicolas stood and paced his office. The sensation that had been nagging at him for the past few days reached up and yanked on his heart a little harder.
 
Maybe it wasn’t Gabrielle. Maybe she was caught up in something bigger than she could handle. Maybe he’d been wrong all this time and she
had
been the innocent collateral damage to her father’s dealings.
But what about her setting up the meetings? Her making sure your money went to her dad. Her disappearance? Innocent people don’t run.
Well she wasn’t running now was she?

Gabrielle, Gabby. Why hadn’t she ever invited him to use the nickname? It suited her. It was playful. Light. His pacing sped up. Ever since that night in the grotto he’d doubted his initial suspicion, he knew it now. She had such an open face, such clear eyes, any deception should have shown there straight away. His thoughts of the grotto strayed to the kiss, then flicked without pause to their evening together last night. The way she placed her hands so gently on his skin, the way her head arched back for him to kiss her neck, the dark glimmer in those indigo eyes of hers, none of that held the malice and calculation needed to mastermind a fraud like the one being perpetrated on Able’s. It didn’t add up. None of this did.

Moreover, now that he’d spent some time with her, Nicolas was remembering plenty more things about Gabrielle. She was smart, and always had been. She was good at her job, good with people.
You’ve allowed your bitterness to cloud your judgment.
His grandmother schooled him to not let emotion get in the way of business, but she didn’t approve of vendettas either. His ego’s demand for revenge shouldn’t have been relevant to his business dealings with her.

When he’d made love with her last night she’d abandoned herself in his arms, writhing beneath him, drawing him deep inside her and calling out his name as he drove her to climax. He’d always loved the way she was so uninhibited during their love making. And that’s what it was, wasn’t it—her letting go, rather than trying to ensnare him? Just thinking about it stirred his feelings like stirring cream into rich dark coffee. Desire, resentment, hostility, infatuation, everything was churning through him and his mind was a mess. He stopped pacing as one emotion began to surface. Loss. When she’d looked at him with loathing this morning, it was a sense of loss he’d felt. Something he’d guarded himself against since she left last time. Was he starting to have feelings for Gabby Philips? Again?

“Damn it.” If he told her he might have feelings for her she’d run for sure now. Maybe accuse him of getting her to come and stay at his apartment under false pretenses, that he’d lured her into his bed out of malice. She might even quit Able’s so he wouldn’t be able to find her a second time.
 

      She’d be right to. He’d been holding onto his need for revenge so tight that even now he could feel the ache it had made in his gut, a fist of frustration that he hadn’t got everything he wanted.

      His phone buzzed on his desk. Life went on. His feelings for Gabby might be a revelation to him, but they wouldn’t be worth much to his investors, or his board. And she was still far from proven innocent.
That’s
what he could work on. Looking for proof of her innocence rather than guilt. He didn’t have to let her off the hook, not until he was sure, but he could be more gentle till them. Hurling himself into his tasks Nicolas toiled away the day until it was time to go home and see how his new approach worked with Gabby.

      At his apartment however, she barely spared him a glance as he walked in the door.

      Fraser waved happily and Tessa stood from where the three of them had been playing with toy cars on the carpet. “Good day?”