Reflected in You: A Crossfire Novel (33 page)

“Gideon Cross was a patient of yours, wasn’t he?”

His face closed instantly and he straightened. “I’m not at liberty to discuss my patients.”

“When you gave me that ‘not at liberty to discuss’ line at the hospital, I didn’t put it together, and I should have.” My fingertips drummed into the armrest. “You lied to his mother. Why?”

He returned to the other side of his desk, putting the furniture between us. “Did he tell you that?”

“No. I’m figuring this out as I go. Hypothetically speaking, why would you lie about the results of an exam?”

“I wouldn’t. You need to leave.”

“Oh, come on.” I sat back and crossed my legs. “I expect more from you. Where are the assertions that Gideon is a soulless monster bent on corrupting the women of the world?”

“I’ve done my due diligence and warned you.” His gaze was hard, his lip curled in a sneer. He wasn’t quite so handsome anymore. “If you continue to throw your life away, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I’m going to figure it out. I just needed to see your face. I had to know if I was right.”

“You’re not. Cross was never a patient of mine.”

“Semantics—his mother consulted you. And while you go about your days seething over the fact that your wife fell in love with him, think about what you did to a small child who needed help.” My voice took on an edge as anger surged. I couldn’t think about what had happened to Gideon without wanting to do serious violence to anyone who contributed to his pain.

I uncrossed my legs and stood. “What happened between him and your wife happened between two consenting adults. What happened to him as a child was a crime and how you contributed to that is a travesty.”

“Get out.”

“My pleasure.” I yanked the door open and nearly ran into Gideon, who’d been leaning against the wall just outside the office. His hand encircled my upper arm, but his gaze was on Dr. Lucas, icy with fury and hatred.

“Stay away from her,” he said harshly.

Lucas’s smile was filled with malice. “She came to me.”

Gideon’s returning smile made me shiver. “You see her coming, I suggest you run in the opposite direction.”

“Funny. That’s the advice I gave her in regard to you.”

I flipped the good doctor the bird.

Snorting, Gideon caught my hand and pulled me back down the hall. “What is it with you and giving people the finger?”

“What? It’s a classic.”

“You can’t just barge in here!” the receptionist snapped as we passed the counter.

He glanced at her. “You can cancel that call to security, we’re leaving.”

We exited out to the corridor. “Did Angus tattle on me?” I muttered, trying to pry my arm free.

“No. Stop wriggling. All the cars have GPS tracking.”

“You’re a nut job. You know that?”

He stabbed the elevator button and glared at me. “I am? What about you? You’re all over the place. My mother. Corinne. Goddamned Lucas. What the fuck are you doing, Eva?”

“It’s none of your business.” I lifted my chin. “We broke up, remember?”

His jaw tightened. He stood there in his suit, looking so polished and urbane, while radiating a wild, feverish energy. The contrast between what I saw when I looked at him and what I felt goaded my hunger. I loved that I got to have the man inside the suit. Every delicious, untameable inch of him.

The car arrived and we stepped inside. Excitement sizzled through me. He’d come after me. That made me so hot. He shoved an elevator key into the control panel and I groaned.

“Is there anything you don’t own in New York?”

He was on me in an instant, one hand in my hair and the other on my ass, his mouth on mine in a violent kiss. He wasted no time, his tongue thrusting between my lips, plunging deep and hard.

I moaned and gripped his waist, pushing onto my tiptoes to deepen the contact.

His teeth sank into my lower lip with enough force to hurt. “You think you can say a few words and end us? There is no end, Eva.”

He flattened me into the side of the car. I was pinned by six feet, two inches of violently aroused male.

“I miss you,” I whispered, grabbing his ass and urging him harder against me.

Gideon groaned. “Angel.”

He was kissing me: deep, shamelessly desperate kisses that made my toes curl in my pumps.

“What are you doing?” he breathed. “You’re going around, stirring up everything.”

“I’ve got time on my hands,” I shot back, just as breathless, “since I dumped my asshat boyfriend.”

He growled, fiercely passionate, his hand in my hair pulling so tightly it pained me.

“You can’t make this up with a kiss or a fuck, Gideon. Not this time.” It was so hard to let him go; nearly impossible after the weeks I’d been denied the right and opportunity to touch him. I needed him.

His forehead pressed to mine. “You have to trust me.”

I put my hands on his chest and shoved him back. He let me, his gaze searching my face.

“Not when you don’t talk to me.” I reached over, pulled the key from the control panel, and held it out to him. The car began its descent. “You put me through hell. On purpose. Made me suffer. And there’s no end in sight. I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, ace, but this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde shit ain’t cutting it with me.”

His hand went into his pocket, his movements leisurely and controlled, which was when he was at his most dangerous. “You’re completely unmanageable.”

“When I’ve got clothes on. Get used to it.” The car doors opened and I stepped out. His hand went to the small of my back, and a shiver moved through me. That innocuous touch, through layers of material, had been inciting lust in me from the very first. “You put your hand on Corinne’s back like this again, and I’m breaking your fingers.”

“You know I don’t want anyone else,” he murmured. “I can’t. I’m consumed with wanting you.”

Both the Bentley and the Mercedes were waiting at the curb. The sky had darkened while I’d been inside, as if it were brooding along with the man beside me. There was a weighted expectation in the air, an early sign of a gathering summer storm.

I stopped beneath the entrance overhang and looked at Gideon. “Make them ride together. You and I need to talk.”

“That was the plan.”

Angus touched the brim of his hat and slid behind the wheel. The other driver walked up to Gideon and handed him a set of keys.

“Miss Tramell,” he said, by way of greeting.

“Eva, this is Raúl.”

“We meet again,” I said. “Did you pass on my message last time?”

Gideon’s fingers flexed against my back. “He did.”

I beamed. “Thank you, Raúl.”

Raúl went around to the front passenger side of the Bentley, while Gideon escorted me to the Mercedes and opened the door for me. I felt a little thrill as he got behind the wheel and adjusted the seat to accommodate his long legs. He started the engine and merged into traffic, expertly and confidently navigating the powerful car through the craziness of New York city streets.

“Watching you drive makes me want you,” I told him, noting how his easy grip on the wheel tightened.

“Christ.” He glanced at me. “You have a transportation fetish.”

“I have a Gideon fetish.” My voice lowered. “It’s been weeks.”

“And I hate every second of it. This is torment for me, Eva. I can’t focus. I can’t sleep. I lose my temper at the slightest irritants. I’m in hell without you.”

I never wanted him to suffer, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make my own misery better knowing he was missing me as much as I was missing him.

I twisted in my seat to face him. “Why are you doing this to us?”

“I had an opportunity and I took it.” His jaw firmed. “This separation is the price. It won’t last forever. I need you to be patient.”

I shook my head. “No, Gideon. I can’t. Not anymore.”

“You’re
not
leaving me. I won’t let you.”

“I’ve already left. Don’t you see that? I’m living my life and you’re not in it.”

“I’m in it every way I can be right now.”

“By having Angus following me around? Come on. That’s not a relationship.” I leaned my cheek against the seat. “Not one I want anyway.”

“Eva.” He exhaled harshly. “My silence is the lesser of two evils. I feel like whether I explain or not, I’ll drive you away, but explaining carries the greatest risk. You think you want to know, but if I tell you, you’ll regret it. Trust me when I say there are some aspects of me you don’t want to see.”

“You have to give me something to work with.” I set my hand on his thigh and felt the muscle bunch, then twitch in response to my touch. “I’ve got nothing right now. I’m empty.”

He set his hand over mine. “You trust me. Despite what you see to the contrary, you’ve come to trust in what you know. That’s huge, Eva. For both of us. For us, period.”

“There is no us.”

“Stop saying that.”

“You wanted my blind trust and you have it, but that’s all I can give you. You’ve shared so little of yourself and I’ve lived with it because I had you. And now I don’t—”

“You have me,” he protested.

“Not the way I need you.” I lifted one shoulder in an awkward shrug. “You’ve given me your body and I’ve been greedy with it, because that’s the only way you’re really open to me. And now I don’t have that, and when I look at what I do have, it’s just promises. It’s not enough for me. In the absence of you, all I have are a pile of things you won’t tell me.”

He stared straight ahead, his profile rigid. I pulled my hand out from under his and twisted the other way, giving him my back while I looked out the window at the teeming city.

“If I lose you, Eva,” he said hoarsely, “I have nothing. Everything I’ve done is so I don’t lose you.”

“I need more.” I rested my forehead against the glass. “If I can’t have you on the outside, I need to have you on the inside, but you’ve never let me in.”

We drove in silence, crawling along through the morning traffic. A fat drop of rain hit the windshield, followed by another.

“After my dad died,” he said softly, “I had a hard time dealing with the changes. I remember that people liked him, liked being around him. He was making everyone rich, right? And then suddenly the world flipped on its head and everyone hated him. My mother, who’d been so happy all the time, was crying nonstop. And she and my dad were fighting every day. That’s what I remember most—the constant yelling and screaming.”

I looked at him, studying his stony profile, but I didn’t say anything, afraid to lose the moment.

“She remarried right away. We moved out of the city. She got pregnant. I never knew when I’d run across someone my dad had fucked over, and I took a lot of shit for it from other kids. From their parents. Teachers. It was big news. To this day, people still talk about my dad and what he did. I was so angry. At everyone. I had tantrums all the time. I broke things.”

He stopped at a light, breathing heavily. “After Christopher came along, I got worse, and when he was five, he imitated me, pitching a fit at dinner and shoving his plate across the table and onto the floor. My mom was pregnant with Ireland then, and she and Vidal decided it was time to put me into therapy.”

Tears slid down my face at the picture he painted of the child he’d once been—scared and hurting and feeling like an outsider in his mom’s new life.

“They came out to the house—the shrink and a doctoral candidate she was supervising. It started out all right. They both were nice, attractive, patient. But soon the shrink was spending most of the time counseling my mother, who was having a difficult pregnancy in addition to two young boys who were out of control. I was left alone with him more and more frequently.”

Gideon pulled over and put the car into park. His hands gripped the wheel with white-knuckled force, his throat working. The steady patter of rain softened, leaving us alone with our painful truths.

“You don’t have to tell me any more,” I whispered, unbuckling my seat belt and reaching out to him. I touched his face with fingertips damp with my tears.

His nostrils flared on a sharply indrawn breath. “He made me come. Every goddamned time, he wouldn’t stop until I came, so he could say I liked it.”

I kicked off my shoes and pulled his hand away from the wheel so I could straddle his lap and hold him. His grip on me was excruciatingly tight, but I didn’t complain. We were on an insanely busy street, with endless cars rumbling past on one side and a crush of pedestrians on the other, but neither of us cared. He was shaking violently, as if he were sobbing uncontrollably, but he made no sound and shed no tears.

The sky cried for him, the rain coming down hard and angry, steaming off the ground.

Holding his head in my hands, I pressed my wet face to his. “Hush, baby. I understand. I know how that feels, the way they gloat afterward. And the shame and confusion and guilt you felt. It’s not your fault. You didn’t want it. You didn’t enjoy it.”

“I let him touch me at first,” he whispered. “He said it was my age . . . hormones . . . I needed to masturbate and I’d be calmer. Less angry all the time. He touched me, said he’d show me how to do it right. That I was doing it wrong—”