
by
When Seth O'Connor pulls Gabrielle Sherborne out from under her wrecked car in the middle of an icy river high in the Canadian Rockies just before Christmas, he never thought someone might actually be gunning for the infamous wild child of the famous Hollywood director, Cameron MacKenzie Sherborne III, and the family that puts up with her antics.
Told by his superiors to insert himself into the Sherborne family and protect Gabrielle, Seth learns that the former film star is anything but a brat. She's all woman, incredibly sexy and smart, with a vulnerability that eats right through the armor over his heart. That makes doing his job suddenly very tough for Captain Seth O'Connor, for the unfriendlies are closing in...
Other books by Tracy CooperPosey
Eyes of a Stranger
Chronicles of the Lost Years
Case of the Reluctant Agent
Dare to Return
Diana by the Moon
Forbidden (writing as Anastasia Black)
Red Leopard
Solstice Surrender
Heart of Vengeance
Dangerous Beauty (writing as Anastasia Black)
Silent Knight
Lucifer's Lover
Black Heart
Thief in the Night
Masquerade's Mate
Cameo Role
Ningaloo Nights
Betting With Lucifer
Dead Double
Dead Again
Blue Knight
Blood Knot
Writing as Teal Ceagh
Beth's Acceptance
Mia's Return
Sera's Gift
Eva's Last Dance
Carson's Night
Kiss Across Time
Beauty's Beasts
Destiny's Trinity
Kiss Across Swords
See http://TracyCooperPosey.com for details on each title.
by
STORIES RULE PUBLICATIONS
A sole proprietorship owned and operated
by Tracy Cooper-Posey
This is an original publication of Tracy Cooper-Posey
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2011 by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Cover design by Dar Albert
Wicked Smart Designs
http://wickedsmartdesigns.com
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
FIRST EDITION: April 2011
ISBN 978-0-9869064-5-9
Cooper-Posey, Tracy
Fatal Wild Child/Tracy Cooper-Posey -- 1st Ed.
To my Mum and Dadwho toured through these mountainsless than a year ago.
My thanks to my fabulous beta readers: Shannon, Desiree, Deb, Jennifer, Ashley, Stephanie, Fedora.
Thank you, Dar, for the wonderful cover and for your ability to mind read. Again.
Seth O'Connor never thought he'd find himself crouched in a defensive posture against unknown armed aggression in the middle of Jasper National Park at ten in the morning on a knock-out December day, surrounded by the Canadian Rockies he'd grown up amongst. These peaks were childhood friends.
Something had triggered his instincts, though. Something had made him hunch over. He straightened up, trying to laugh at himself. In Canada? In December? Even the bears were deeply asleep. He threw the cross-country skis and poles into the back of his truck and climbed in behind the wheel. He paused, listening.
There. The squeal of rubber on the Yellowhead, coming from Jasper. Moving fast.
He got the truck going. Someone was in a hurry. Maybe that was what had spooked him, but he didn't think so. He eased the truck along the rough track of rutted, compacted snow and nosed it out onto the highway, then waited for the car to appear. There was no need to get in front of it.
He rolled down the window. The sun was gently warming, today. It was one of those perfectly glorious days when the tourists thought it was cute to strip down to bikinis and ski boots and take photos because the ambient air was above zero, even though the snow was still a good foot thick on the ground. He turned his face up to the sun, letting the truck idle.
God, it was good to be back home. He could actually pretend he was something like a normal person once again. Reassure Mom he was alive. Drink beer and watch the Oilers get creamed.
Then the Mustang rounded the curve---barely. He saw the face of the driver and everything changed.
Her eyes were wide, fiercely focused on the road ahead. Her hands were gripped on the wheel, the knuckles white. Her face was completely bereft of color.
That was all Seth saw of the driver before the teal Mustang flashed past him, the rear fishtailing down the steep gradient. His chest squeezed and his heart landed somewhere inside his stomach and gave out a protest.
No brakes. The Mustang was a stream-lined bullet building up speed with every second.
"Jesus Christ," Seth whispered, throwing the truck into gear, and ramming his foot on the gas.
Did she know enough to use the gears to slow herself down? The handbrake?
He pushed the truck into top gear. It rattled after the teal-colored runaway as the little car rounded a curve, brushing up against the reinforced outer wall of the curve with a metal scream. Sparks jumped.
"Good girl," Seth whispered. She was trying to slow herself down. But it was a risky move. Too hard a hit and she'd go into an uncontrolled spin and fly out over the inner edge of the curve.
She kept control and shot out the other side of the hairpin bend, her velocity slightly slower than before, but still scary.
Seth wrenched the wheel, sending the truck around the bend, gaining on her. He tried to make some fast mental calculations on what to do next. Then he heard the nauseating sound of grinding gears. She was trying to slow herself down with the gears. There was no perceptible check in her speed, but she was on a straight stretch of road, where the river ran parallel and the decline was almost three in one.
There was a truck passing lane where trucks would slow to a painful inch-per-second as they climbed. Her speed was going to pick up.
Seth could feel sweat breaking out on his forehead. At the other end of this straight stretch was a curve to the left, hard and sharp. With a big pick up in speed, she'd never make it.
He looked at the river on the right. The drop off from the roadbed into the river here was shallow. A meter or two at most. And water was a softer landing than mountains.
With his decision made, Seth could feel calm descending. He dropped the shift down a gear. The engine roared as the truck surged forward. He just needed to get ahead enough to nudge her sideways...
As soon as the truck had the necessary speed, he pushed it back into top gear and kept the gas pedal flat on the floor, despite the screaming motor. The square nose of the truck came level with the low-slung Mustang. Judging carefully, he waited until they were at the place where the river was deep and the road was low.
Then he hauled on the steering wheel, turning the nose of the Mustang into the water. It shot off the tarmac bed of the road, floating across air for a second or two, the heavier nose end of the car dipping down.
Then the nose hit the rocky bed at the edge of the water, just as his heavier truck's wheels crunched down into the snow-covered stony ground edging the road. He braked hard and threw himself out of the truck.
The Mustang's engine was still running. The rear of the Mustang flipped up, showing the axle still turning, then the whole car toppled over into the icy water.
Seth stripped off his coat and sweater and pulled at the ties on his boots, moving fast. He tore off everything but his boxers, his heart pounding. The touch of the snow on his feet didn't even impact. He ran for the river and the now silent Mustang as it settled slowly into the raging water, sinking down.
\*
Gabrielle realized she was still gripping the steering wheel, even though her knees were dangling against it. It took an effort of will to let go of the wheel. Even then her flesh stuck to the leather and she had to peel away her hands.
Her head hurt. Her heart was thundering her ears. And she could hear water.
Water!
With a gasp, she remembered exactly where she was and tried to sit up. That was why her head hurt. She was hanging upside down in her car, in the river. If she didn't get out, the water would push through the windows in a few seconds and she'd drown. Already she could feel the deep freeze chill from the water all around her.
She was going to have to move through it to get out. No choice. If she didn't, she'd die.
Tears gathered in her eyes. Why her? Why now? She'd tried so hard...
She pummeled her thigh. "Stop it, stop it!" she muttered.
First things first. Get rid of the seat belt. She reached for her hip and pushed the button. She crumpled to the roof of the car and realized that she now had to act fast, for she landed in six inches of ice cold water that had seeped in through the windows. "Oh my god!" She tried to lift her hands and knees out of it all at once, but that was impossible. The stuff was barely above freezing. Her jeans and scoop-necked sweater, which she had worn to keep the conservative members of the family happy now seemed like bikinis in a gale. Inadequate.
Her coat was in the back seat. Unreachable. And she couldn't feel her feet at all. Despite her boots, they were already blocks of ice. So were her hands. And she still had to open one of the windows, take a breath and swim for her life.
Gabrielle realized she was terrified. If she couldn't hold her breath long enough to reach the surface, or swim strongly enough to reach the bank, or find warmth and shelter once she got out of the water, she was going to die. That was the ugly truth. She had maybe fifteen seconds to pull herself together and do this.
She looked around the car. She'd faced several crises in her life. More than most twenty-eight year olds, she guessed. Why did they always happen when she was alone?
That was when the window next to her imploded and icy river water washed over her. She just had time to draw a deep lungful of cold air, then the water pushed her back against the other side of the car. She struggled against it, knowing she had to reach the open window. The water was so cold, she had to fight not to gasp at the chill of it and let go of her breath.
A hand was around her wrist, pulling. She opened her eyes and saw a pair of very blue ones staring at her. He had one hand on the window frame and was drawing her out of the car.
Gabrielle let him, knowing he would help her to the surface, that she didn't have to do this alone after all. She kicked for the surface. The cold was immense and her jeans were weighing her down. When her head popped above the surface of the fast running water, the air actually felt warm. She gasped.
The man with the fierce blue eyes and black hair was right next to her, his hand still on her wrist. "Swim for the bank," he told her, his voice sharp and commanding. "Hurry."
There was no question this time whether she would swim, even though the cold was sapping all her energy. She pushed for the bank and the white mounds of snow there. About three feet from the edge she felt rocks beneath her hands and knees as the water grew shallower.
The man's hands were around her waist, lifting her. Then under her knees. She was scooped up, steaming water. She was already shivering.
"Wh...where?" It was all she could manage to speak. Her teeth were chattering too badly.
"My truck." He was crossing the rocks nimbly despite carrying her and she could feel his body working against her hip and thigh and shoulder. For the first time she realized that what she could see of him was naked. It didn't alarm her. She had seen plenty of naked men in her life and right now, it seemed like a lesser concern. With this man, she was sure there was a reason for it beyond the obvious.
He was putting her on the ground. On her feet. "Can you stand?"
"Yes," she said uncertainly. She kept her hands on his wide, tanned shoulders. Where had he been at this time of year to get such a tan?
She shuddered violently and he leaned her back against the side of the Chevy truck they were standing next to. There deep teal-colored scratches along the sides of it.
He was tugging at her jeans. Undoing them. "We have to get you out of your wet clothes," he said. "You'll freeze, otherwise."
She registered the fact that he was wearing boxers and nothing else. It coupled up with the scratch marks on the side of the truck. "You pushed my car into the river," she said, as he pulled her sweater up over her head and threw it into the back of the truck.
His painted blue eyes locked with hers for a moment and she saw implacable will behind them. Then it was gone, and he was bending to deal with her boots. "Better than trying to take the curve at the bottom of this stretch, believe me."
But she was caught by the broad expanse of his back as he worked at the zipper of her boot. There was an ugly red splash mark, low down where his ribs began, over his kidneys. It looked like a recent wound, still healing.
Her bare foot was placed on raw rock and her other boot worked free. Then her jeans and panties were stripped from her without ceremony or comment. She was given no chance to even be coy about it. She gasped as the sodden garments were dropped into the truck with her sweater, and looked up at him as he reached around her and unfastened her bra.
"You want to die because of false modesty?" he murmured, and pulled the lace cups away and dropped them on top of her other clothes.
Naked, her hair running rivulets down her back, she shivered and held her arms against her chest. "Now what?"
But he was already reaching past her into the truck. He withdrew a tee-shirt, slipped it over her head and pushed her arms into it and held up her hair in one hand. "Don't let your hair drip on it," he said. "Here, hold it for a moment."
She held the sopping bundle of locks he'd gathered up and away from the cotton, while he tugged the hem down over her hips. The tee-shirt had to be his. It was still warm from a recent body. Scent stole into her nostrils, something spicy and masculine.
The hem came to mid-thigh on her.
"Hold out your arm," he said.
She held out her free arm and he slid a heavy winter coat over it.
"Drop your hair over the coat," he told her, "and slide your other arm in the sleeve."
She pushed her arm into the other sleeve and was enveloped in his scent completely. The coat covered her from knees to chin. As he zipped it up, she shivered---perhaps for the last time, she thought. Warmth surrounded her. The coat was still hot from his body.
He picked her up, literally lifting her with his hands under her arms. He plopped her onto the passenger seat of the truck. He picked up her feet and chafed them with his hands, warming and drying them. "Can you feel your feet? Can you feel what I'm doing to them?"
"Yes."
He wriggled her toes with his fingers, one at a time. She could feel all of them. He was testing for frostbite, for numbness. Finally, satisfied, he slid thick socks over her feet. "I'll get the heater going. Keep your feet up against the air flow. Your hands, too." He turned her to face the windscreen.
"What's your name?" she asked.
His eyes widened, as if he were surprised. "Cap---" He grimaced, the expression pulling the corners of his mouth down. "Seth. Seth O'Connor."
"Thank you, Seth O'Connor."
He nodded. "I'm going to take you back to my cabin. It's closer than Jasper by forty minutes and you have to get warm and dry. And you probably don't want to arrive back in Jasper looking the way you do."
He shut the door, rounded the nose of the truck and leaned in to turn on the motor and get the heater running. He picked up jeans, boots and a sweater from the seat beside her and shut the door again, as warmth blasted out from the vents in the console, washing over her in welcome waves.
Gabrielle pushed her sock-covered feet up against the floor vents and watched as Seth O'Connor moved to the front of the truck again. He bent, stripping the wet boxers, she assumed, and donning the jeans and boots. She saw the ugly red scar on his back and the well-muscled, tanned shoulders and wondered again about Seth O'Connor. He wore no dog tags, but hadn't he been about to introduce himself as "Captain"?
He climbed into the truck, his long legs covered in denim and his torso covered by a green sweater that seemed to make his eyes even bluer by comparison. "Doing okay?" he asked.
"Better than," she said honestly. "You saved my life."
He shook his head. "You did a fair portion of that yourself. I followed you for about two miles before I found a way to get you off the road. You did a damned good job of staying alive." He put the truck into gear and steered it back onto the highway.
Gabrielle found her heart beating harder again. She had a feeling that Seth O'Connor knew a lot about staying alive and that his quiet "damn good job" was high praise indeed. It warmed her in a way that Hollywood's empty compliments and fulsome endearments never had.
She studied his profile as he drove with a non-flashy style, handling the old truck with a competence that was reassuring. He'd managed to overtake the Mustang on curves that scared most tourists, at a speed that had probably tested this truck to the limits. For a long while, the silence stretched between them, warm and comforting. She let it stay that way, enjoying the warmth. Then, knowing she had to deal with it, she sighed and asked the question.
"You never asked me for my name," she said.
He glanced at her, the blue eyes raking her up and down in one sizzling glance.
"No," he agreed.
"Then you recognized me," she said, feeling a bone-sapping weariness that had nothing to do with the immersion into the icy water, or the harrowing loss of brakes in mountainous terrain.
"You're a household name, Gabrielle Sherborne. You're going to get upset because people recognize you?" His tone was neutral, possible even uninterested.
She swallowed. "Not recognized, no. But boast about the fact that they got to strip me naked. That's something the tabloids would pay a lot to know about, Seth O'Connor."
"Don't read 'em," he said easily. He turned the truck off the highway onto a well-ploughed road, overhung with old trees with gnarled boughs, bare now, and holding up thick layers of snow.
Ahead, there was a clearing with a big, well-founded cabin nestled under the trees at the back of it. The cabin had a wide verandah, window boxes, a big river stone chimney and a solid lean-to that looked like it served as both a garage and wood store. A gangly Irish red setter was bouncing around at the approach of the truck, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth.
"You don't have to read them," she said. "They'll pay you anyway."
"I already have a job and they pay me more than enough to live on." He halted the truck with a sharp jab on the brakes, throwing her forward against the seatbelt. It should have been warning enough, she knew. She opened the door, unlatched the belt and climbed down and discovered her mistake. She stepped into snow and almost immediately felt the cold bite into her socked feet.
Seth rounded the truck. "Goddam, couldn't you wait?"
"You don't have to look so pleased about it," she shot back. "They're your socks."
He scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and she drew in a breath, shocked beyond words. The recent emergency aside, people didn't touch her. Not without negotiation and permission. It wasn't done. It tended to make security people unhappy, media people far too happy and speculative and rumors rife. She had put a general ban on people touching her even casually years ago. She had learned all the signals and motions that squashed even the most touch-happy people's tendencies to reach out.
She clutched at Seth's back, staring at the Irish setter trotting happily after him, as Seth marched up the steps to the cabin, and wondered if Seth was just one of those people who completely lacked any sensitivity and rode roughshod over other's feelings.
The inside of the cabin was warm and comfortable, surprisingly neat and tidy, and not nearly as rustic as she had been expecting for a cabin on the edges of the national park. She struggled to get down, but he was still moving.
"Hey, I've been using my own feet since I was three," she protested, pummeling her fist into his back.
He dumped her onto a bed and she landed with an 'oomph!' and brushed her hair out of her eyes, after sliding the oversized sleeve of the coat down her arm. She looked around. The bedroom was probably his, she reasoned. There was a door to the right that revealed an en suite.
Seth O'Connor stood at the side of the bed, his arms crossed over the thick chest. A furrow dug between his brows. "Take a shower, get warm," he said, his voice rumbling in his chest. "While you're there, think about who you want to contact first. I have a land line here, so you don't have to use a cell phone. There's towels in the cabinet next to the shower. And I'll find fresh clothes you can put on while you're in there. Something closer to your size."
He turned to go.
"Seth."
He looked over his shoulder, the single blue eye all she could see of his face.
She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I've spent three years trying to off-load some of the crap I landed myself in over the years. This...felt like I was in it all over again. I prejudged you and I was wrong."
"You did, and you were," he said evenly. "Not everyone wants to use you, Gabrielle. Some people are actually human beings."
"I'll only believe that when I see them bleed," she shot back. "Some of the people I deal with don't even have a pulse."
Seth turned to the door, gripped the handle. He didn't look at her when he said softly, "I've bled plenty." He shut it quietly.
Seth let her make the call she was dreading in complete privacy. Perhaps he sensed the fear building in her. He stepped outside to take care of something in the outbuildings, he said.
She was dressed in a pair of jeans that were only three sizes too large and had to be rolled up at the hems by four inches and belted in at the waist by six. She wore a well-washed and faded tee-shirt and fleece shirt over that, also rolled at the sleeves. She felt like a six year-old in her daddy's clothes, except she had never once dressed up in Cameron Mackenzie Sherborne III's Italian designer handmade suits. He'd have flayed her alive if she had dared.
Gabrielle dialed her father's cabin's direct line, hoping he was in it. She didn't want to use his cell phone number if she didn't have to.
Thankfully, Darlene, his executive associate, picked up. "Darlene, it's Gabrielle. I need to speak to Dad. Is he there? It's urgent. I mean urgent."
Darlene understood the family code well enough. "I'll get him," she said smoothly. There was a five second silence.
"Gabrielle?" her father said. He was the only one in the family to use her full name. "What has happened?"
She took a breath, determined not to cry. Not this time. Not anymore. She had done that too often with her father. "There was an accident on the Yellowhead, Daddy. The brakes failed on my car as I was driving to Pocahontas---"
"You're alright?" he said quickly.
"Yes, but the Mustang is a write-off, Daddy. I had to ditch it into the river to stop."
Silence. She drew a shaky breath.
"You did?" he said at last. "You pulled yourself out of the river?"
"No, there was a man, Seth O'Connor. He helped me get the car off the road and get me out of the river. I'm at his cabin now, Dad. This is his line." She looked around the room again, to make sure she was still alone. "You might want to check into his background. He's Canadian and I'm pretty sure he's military, but he doesn't wear dog tags. He saved my life, Dad. If he hadn't come along, I wouldn't have been able to control the car long enough to get it into the river."
There was a short silence. Her father would understand what she had not said as well as anyone in Hollywood, for he was a major player in that world. Depending upon which biography the tabloids used, Cameron Sherborne was either the eighth or tenth richest man in Hollywood, and certainly one of the most powerful. He was a film producer and entertainment entrepreneur and because he was independently wealthy, with vast family fortunes invested around the globe, he answered to no one. That meant he could make the films he wanted to make. And Cameron Sherborne was in the business because he liked movies, not because he liked making money. He already had enough of that. His artistic sense, though, was good enough that he continued to make money---lots of it.
Gabrielle listened to her father's short silence and knew he was thinking the same thing she was. He would look into Seth O'Connor's background because he had the unique resources to do that. It was worth finding out about the man who happened to be there just when Gabrielle's brakes failed.
"I'm going to have to sneak back into the lodge, Dad. I look like I've been pulled through a hedge backwards. Any media around?"
"Some," Cameron responded. "Can this O'Connor fellow bring you in?"
"I'll ask."
"And you're really alright?"
"I'm fine," she told him. "A mild headache." She waited.
"Make it soon, Gabrielle," her father said and hung up.
Gabrielle put the phone back in place, staring at it, feeling almost winded.
"What's wrong?" Seth asked, behind her.
She swiveled the desk chair around to face the main room again. Seth stood at the front door, easing his feet out of his boots. He was carrying a big armful of sawn logs that he stacked on the tiled fireplace and bent to push one at a time into the fire. He glanced at her. "You look like the call didn't go so well."
"That's just it. It went fine." She bit her lip.
He picked up an iron poker from a tub of fire tools and pushed at the logs, arranging them precisely. The flames leapt, illuminating the planes of his face and the strong, tanned neck inside the open collar of his workman's shirt. There was a scar on the corner of his jaw, a small one, that was white with age, just where his strong jaw line began.
He put the poker back with the rest of the tools. "If it went well, then why the frown?"
The lashes around Seth's eyes were thick and black. She hadn't noticed them before. She gripped the edges of the chair. "Conversations with my father never go well." Then she dropped her gaze and grimaced. "Sorry, that's probably too much information."
She heard his soft exhalation and looked up again. He tilted his head slightly. "You think the world doesn't know that you have a rocky relationship with your father?" He said it almost apologetically.
Gabrielle smiled. "You said you didn't read the tabloids."
"I don't. I never have. But for a while there, it seemed like you were everywhere. A person couldn't turn around and you weren't plastered on billboards, the internet, call waiting, TV, radio...everywhere. You and that scuzzball that wouldn't leave you alone and did the dirty on you in the end, and---"
"Scuzzball?" She started laughing.
"What?"
"That's a new one. Is it Canadian?"
He shrugged. "You don't like it? I got plenty more for jerks like that. Dickwad. Fu---"
"It's okay," she said quickly. "I get the general idea." She stared at him. "You sound...almost angry about it."
He frowned. "He was an asshole who treated you like dirt," he said flatly. "What ever did you see in him?"
She sighed. "And this is why I get tired of people recognizing me. That was three years ago, but the entire world seems to feel they deserve an explanation for my actions whenever they demand one. What were you doing three years ago, Seth? Any mistakes you made that you're glad you've put behind you? How would you feel if, everywhere you go, someone came up to you and told you what an idiot you were back then, just to make sure you got the point, good and proper? Think you'd get a little tired of it after the first fifty or so times?"
He sat on the edge of the fireplace. "I never said you were an idiot, Gabrielle. I was talking about him. Now I've met you, I really don't get it. I'd like to skip back three years and tear the guy a new one for treating you the way he did."
He spoke quietly, with no emphasis, his big hands hanging between his knees, but Gabrielle shivered, because she knew with sudden certainty that if he had a mind to, he could tear Adrian a new one. He could do things to another human body that would terrify most people.
She knew that she had to be honest. "I was different then, Seth. I've cleaned myself up a lot since then. Adrian was the last straw, really. My father made me promise to keep out of trouble, after that."
Seth lifted a brow. "Or what? He'd cut you out of the will or something?"
She smiled. "This isn't Peyton Place, Seth. He made me see that the path I was on was self-destructive. So I agreed to try and change. And so far, in three years, I'm doing okay."
"'Okay' doesn't sound like much fun," Seth observed.
She grimaced. "You should have seen me before. It looked like fun on the outside. It looked like a laugh a second. But if you compare my life these last years with what went before, these three years are a joy." She rubbed her temples, suddenly realizing what she was saying. "God, listen to me," she breathed. "Seth, I'm sorry. I don't normally inflict this upon a total stranger."
His gaze didn't waiver. "Who do you inflict it upon?"
No one. She carefully changed subjects. "My father was wondering if you would be kind enough to sneak me back into Jasper Park Lodge. There's media people hanging around and I really don't want them to see me like this."
"Of course," he said evenly. She mentally sighed in relief. He wasn't going to pursue the question. She had a feeling that if he persisted, he would eventually dig whatever answers he wanted out of her. That was a novelty, for she had spent years honing her verbal evasion skills with the media. Yet in three minutes she had blurted out more to Seth about her true feelings than to a single other soul on the planet.
She stood up abruptly, annoyed with herself. It was just the accident. Adrenaline aftermath. She'd get it together and be just fine, once she was back with the family at the lodge. And after Christmas, when they were back in the States and a long way from here, she'd be even better.
She looked at Seth. He was watching her again, very still, the painted blue eyes framed by the black lashes taking in every detail. She cleared her throat, suddenly feeling awkward. "Can we go now?"
He rose to his feet. "I'll need to get the truck warmed up first. I won't let you sit in a cold cab. So have a seat for a few minutes. Here." He picked up a cushion from the sofa and dropped it onto the tiles where he had been sitting. "Have a seat. I'll be right back."
She sat with her back to the fire and listened to the sounds of Seth tying his boots, pushing open the front door and striding across the verandah. The Irish setter's toenails scratched as she followed him eagerly across the verandah. He murmured reassuring words to her as he stepped down to the ground. A few seconds later, the truck started up.
Gabrielle realized with a start that she could hear all that detail because of the profound quiet around the cabin. They were utterly alone out here. There were not dozens of personnel a few hundred paces away, working to make their lives more comfortable. There were no paparazzi lingering in bushes or cars down the lane.
Gabrielle looked around the main room of the cabin. It was a house really, for it had the bedroom and en suite, central heating, a decent kitchen area...only the rustic cabin exterior and the huge stone fireplace made it cabin-like. It was comfortable. Peaceful. No people scurried here, or threatened to.
She stretched out her feet, encased in their freshly laundered borrowed socks, only five sizes too big for her, feeling tension ease from along the full length of her body. She could easily curl up and go to sleep right now. Astonishing. Had to be post-stress related. Normally, she couldn't sleep anywhere but her own bed, with all the doors and windows double-locked, the phone parked for the night and security alerted. Even then it sometimes took hours for her to fall asleep.
She wriggled her toes in the oversized socks, as the door of the truck slammed outside.
The realization dawned on her with an impact that stole her breath, although she didn't know why.
Seth was going to have to carry her back to the truck.
\*
Seth scratched Lucy's head and sent her back to the shed with a short command. He considered picking up another load of wood to bring into the house. Then he canned the idea. If they were leaving, building up the fire was the last thing he needed to do.
He glanced at the front door. What was he afraid of? A diminutive strawberry blonde with eyes the color of toffee. Even without an arsenal of makeup artists and fresh out of the shower, she looked gorgeous. He just hadn't expected her to look so small and delicate. On the movie screen, she looked bigger. And blonder. And much tougher.
But the toughness was still there despite her real size. The toughness was very real. Beneath the surface was titanium. Sheets of it. Forged, he suspected, a layer at a time, each time some jerk like that Adrian guy dumped on her, or Hollywood pushed her around.
So...she was a natural strawberry blonde. He liked that. And he liked that she had let her hair revert back to her natural color. It swung around her waist in distracting waves, now.
Seth realized where his thoughts were and stomped up the steps to the front door, gritting his jaw. There was probably some movie stud waiting for her back in L.A....he was so way out of line to even linger on what had happened today. She was right, he was a jerk and worse for trying to use it in any way, shape or fashion. He pushed open the door and shouldered his way into the cabin.
She looked up, startled, her eyes wide like a doe.
His shirt was just about sliding off her shoulder, despite the fact that she had buttoned it properly. Creamy flesh showed and her shoulder blade, then the neck of his tee-shirt, resting right on the edge of her shoulder.
"You were a while. Is the truck okay?" she asked. "You must have had to push it hard to catch up with the Mustang."
"It's fine," he said. "I was just checking on Lucy."
"Who's Lucy?"
"The dog. She was fretting because I normally let her into the house. I didn't want to confuse her, though, with you being in my clothes."
And Gabrielle blushed clear up to her hairline. Seth suppressed his grin. It was astonishingly endearing, that blush. He took a breath. Let it out. "I don't know if you've figured it out, Gabrielle, but I'm going to have to carry you out to the truck."
She nodded, her big eyes on his face. "I can't get my feet wet again," she said softly.
He cleared his throat. "Ready?"
She nodded.
He took a breath. This was harder than a night drop into hostile territory. With an almost convulsive movement, he bent and scooped her up into his arms. She weighed almost nothing, but contrariwise, he was hypersensitive to the fact that she was in his arms.
"Put your arms around my neck," he said. "It's alright. I won't bite."
She gave a laugh that sounded forced and her arms wound around his neck.
He instantly knew it was the wrong move. Now he was enveloped by her scent. Clean, feminine, light, it wreathed him. He could feel his heart starting to pound.
He moved out of the house and she shut the front door for him. In silence he carried her to the truck. She opened the door and he slid her onto the seat.
For a tiny fraction of a second her arms lingered around his neck...or did he imagine it?
He checked her face to be sure.
Their eyes met and he knew. It slammed into him and locked his chest and stole his breath.
There was knowledge there. He could read it as plainly as newsprint. Wanting. Aching desire. No, something even beyond that. It writhed between them.
His gaze fell to the pure bow of her lips. Full, ripe pillows, unmarred by lipstick right now, but tender and parted slightly. Behind them, the pure white of her teeth and the pink of her tongue. The temptation to kiss her lips was like a vice squeezing his chest. He could feel her breath fanning his cheek and it was like a super-heated butterfly touch of electricity.
Her lips moved. Formed a word. "Yes," she whispered.
Yes, kiss me.
Seth's breath stopped. His heart seemed to stop.
He looked up into her eyes. It would be so easy to lean forward the few inches that separated them and take the kiss. His whole body seemed to pulse with the drive to push his lips against hers.
What would she taste like? Ambrosial honey, for sure. His groin tightened at the prospect.
For long seconds he hung there, torn by the temptation hovering so very close. He curled his hand into a fist by her hip. Her slender hip.
He wanted that kiss with a power than coiled in his gut and squeezed his heart, and for that reason, he wouldn't take it. Not now.
He remembered something Gabrielle had said earlier. He lifted his hands to unwind her arms from around his neck and put them in her lap. "Not until you've seen me bleed, Gabrielle." He wasn't surprised to find his own hands were shaking. "Not until then."
He forced himself to close the door on her and walk around the truck to the driver's side and climb in. He felt like Tin Man. All steel limbs and joints.
They were almost to Jasper and the turn off to Jasper Park Lodge before Gabrielle spoke again. The short day was growing dark and she had pulled the shirt collar up around her face. Her voice came out of the folds. "My father will want to meet you."
"I had a feeling he would," Seth said. He was relieved to hear his voice emerge evenly once more. He took a breath. "I'm sorry. About before."
"Don't be," she said quickly. She sat up, emerging from the shirt, and gave him a quick smile. "Actually, if there's one thing I regret out of this whole day, it's the loss of my camera and laptop."
He knew she was trying to shift the subject again. She was damned good at it. But he was a stubborn S.O.B., according to his superiors. He shook his head. "I wanted to, Gabrielle. I still do. But I won't...not until you know why I want to. Not until you trust me."
"That could take a millennium or two. I don't hand out trust too easy." She tossed her head, throwing her hair forward and ran her fingers through her hair, tousling it. Change of subject again, Seth realized. "Why complicate matters?" she said, looking at him with her arms up, her hair up, with a sexy sideways slant that he thought he even recognized from some movie or another. "Why not just call it what it is? Sex, nice and easy."
Anger touched him. "Because it's not just sex and you know it."
Silence greeted his response. He glanced at her, and saw she was hunched back down into the shirt again. Retreat. Defense mode.
He gritted his jaw and reminded himself of the titanium layers. But even titanium could be handled. Manipulated. One layer at a time was the way.
For a cold, sane moment, he asked himself why he was bothering to try and handle her at all. This one was trouble. Gabrielle Sherborne was a spoilt, selfish wild child too used to getting her own way.
Besides, she was totally out of his league, in terms of money, influence and power.
But she had blushed. He focused on that. The blush had been genuine. He had touched the core of the real Gabrielle Sherborne, even just for one fleeting moment.
And then there was the kiss she had offered him.
His whole body tightened as he was immersed in that moment again. Damn.
"I don't know what that was back at the cabin, Gabrielle. I've never felt it before," he said softly. "Have you?"
Her answer took a long time. But finally, her voice emerged from inside the shirt. "No."
Victory. He took a deep breath. "Then it's not just sex and we need to figure it out." He turned the truck into the road that led to Jasper Park Lodge.
"'We?'" she responded. "Come January second, I'm flying back to New York, Seth. What makes you think I'm even interested in finding out?" She was using a disinterested drawl, one that even Seth didn't believe. "You might have served as an adequate distraction over the Christmas break, as Dad insisted on dragging us all up here. But now, with all this crap, I don't think you're worth it as a distraction, either." It was such a poor attempt at lying, Seth was almost astonished.
He braked, bringing the truck to a slewing stop, and turned to face her. "You're afraid," he said. "I understand that---"
"Damn it, Seth, will you get me out of this goddam car!" she screamed at him, her chest heaving. The shirt fell away from her face and he finally saw her eyes. Tears filled them. And fear.
He lifted his hand, a soothing motion. "Okay, okay." He got the truck in gear again, his heart thudding in his chest.
The lights of the main building of the lodge were just ahead. Lots of floodlighting, which he knew she would want to avoid. "Where do you want me to take you?"
"My father's main cabin," she said stiffly. He could hear the unshed tears in her voice. It made him feel sick with self-loathing. He'd done that.
He followed her instructions, steering the truck through well-ploughed lanes between private cabins and chalets, heading toward a sprawling cabin that was built out over the lake. It had seven bedrooms and its own dock.
"Seth, the sum total of what you don't know and don't understand about me would stagger you," she said softly, as they approached the well-lit portico of the luxury cabin.
He pulled up under the portico and turned off the engine. "You make yourself sound like an old woman."
"Sometimes I feel like I'm ninety," she confessed.
"Sometimes, so do I," he said honestly.
There were people boiling out of the double doors of the cabin. She grimaced and looked back at him. "Brace yourself," she warned.
Before he had time to ask her what she meant, the people were at the truck. He was forced to open the door and step out to meet them, for they had already opened Gabrielle's door and were pulling her out and into their arms, all speaking at once.
"My name is Darlene," the gorgeous blonde said, showing Seth into yet another room in the chalet. "I'm Mr. Sherborne's executive associate. He'll be with you in a moment. Would you have a seat?"
Seth looked around the room. It was obviously being used as an office. A desk with in-laid leather panels dominated the corner, with armchairs pulled up to it. But he didn't want to sink into one of those and lose his footing. "Thanks," he said, setting his butt onto the arm of a sofa against the wall.
Darlene smiled brightly, pushing a hand into her very short hair. A nervous mannerism. He was putting her on edge. "Well, can I get you something?" She waved towards decanters on the sideboard.
"Coffee, thanks."
Her hand dropped. "Er...espresso, macchiato...?"
"Just black."
She smiled again. "I'll be right back."
"I'm sure you will." He crossed his arms and she almost jumped. He knew then she was aware of who he was. Not just his name, but his record. That was the reason for her nervousness. Only people familiar with his history got jumpy around him like that. She almost but not quite skirted him on her way to the door and that confirmed it. Someone had checked up on him since Gabrielle had phoned Daddy. Which meant Daddy had a very long arm indeed because Seth worked for people who didn't like their names mentioned loudly.
Very interesting.
Then Cameron Sherborne himself walked into the room and Seth knew he was in the presence of a man with a very long arm indeed. Seth had met more than his share of truly powerful men---politicians, businessmen and world leaders. He knew how to measure true power. Sherborne had it in spades. There were no grandiose gestures. It radiated along with the complete assurance that enveloped him.
Sherborne didn't sit behind the desk. He didn't need the shield. Instead he walked over to Seth and held out his hand. "I owe you my thanks," he said. He spoke with an interesting preciseness. "Gabrielle made light of it, but I've seen what's left of the Mustang and the side of your truck and I've listened to enough stunt men over the years to know that what you did today was more than many men would have had the courage to try, let alone the stamina and speed of thought to pull off. For that I thank you. It's a paltry return for your services, but I have a feeling that anything more would feel like an insult to you."
"Yes, it would." Seth had been braced by Gabrielle's warning to somehow defend himself against Cameron Sherborne. Now he felt his shield slipping in surprise. "You're an insightful man."
Sherborne settled himself on the front edge of his desk. "I'm a relieved one, Mr. O'Connor. With your skills, you may already be aware that we've done a background check on you. These things are standard procedures in our family whenever a stranger appears amongst us, so you must not feel insulted about being singled out, or that we are suspicious of you in any way."
"I'd figured it out," Seth agreed. "But I doubt that you found out as much as you think."
"I know that you're part of Joint Task Force 2, Captain O'Connor," Sherborne said calmly.
Seth took a breath. Then another. "You do have reach, if you were able to dig up that fact." He could feel his heart slamming against his chest.
Sherborne held up his hand. "Oh, I won't pass it around. We also understand discreet in our family, too. I confess I find it puzzling that Canada does not make nearly as much fuss of its bona fide war heroes as America does."
Sweat broke out on his temples. "Just how much do you know?" Seth whispered, his lips dry.
Cameron Sherborne's eyes were almost identical to his daughter's, but Sherborne's gaze was hardened steel. "Afghanistan, Honduras, Haiti, the Sinai, the Persian Gulf...should I go on?"
Seth shook his head. All of it. Sherborne had all of it.
"Relax, Captain. I'm not about to trade Canadian military secrets away. I was making a point."
"You made it," Seth said and wasn't surprised to find his voice emerged hoarse. His military record was supposed to be buried so deep even his immediate commanding officer only knew his name, rank and serial number. He didn't wear dog tags so that he could maintain a civilian appearance outside of operational status.
"I haven't quite made the point I intended to make," Sherborne said in his precise manner.
Seth drew another breath, building endorphins, recovering. "And that was?" he said politely.
"If there's anyone in the world that can take care of my daughter, it's you. You've amply demonstrated that fact just today."
"Gabrielle has demonstrated for the last few years that she's doing a fine job of taking care of herself," Seth pointed out.
Sherborne smiled sourly. "Perhaps. The long term polls aren't in on that yet and I don't want to wait for the results." He stood up. "I can make arrangements tonight, Captain O'Connor, to wire one million U.S. dollars into any bank account you care to name. All you have to do is marry my daughter."
\*
Gabrielle pulled her hand back from the door as if it had suddenly turned into molten steel. Had she just heard her father say what she thought he'd just said?
She froze outside his study, her heart thundering. Please let me have misheard, she begged the heavens.
She clutched her hand to her chest and her other hand over her mouth, afraid that she might give her presence away with her breath, or her heartbeat, which was thudding in her ears, and must surely be loud enough to be heard in the next room.
"I'm sorry?" Seth said inside the study, as if he, too, had misheard. But his tone was flat. He had heard well enough. He was giving her father a chance to recant. To reconsider his offer.
So Gabrielle knew she had heard it properly, too. Her father really had offered Seth a million dollars to marry her. She closed her eyes, as humiliation and fury battled each other in her gut, and she wondered whether to bust into the study and confront them, or just slink away and hide her head in shame. Did she really want to look Seth in the eye after this?
Instead, she turned and rested her back against the wall next to the door of the study and shamelessly eavesdropped. The family room was empty because everyone was waiting in the other den for her father to finish his business so they could start the movie. She wouldn't be interrupted unless Darlene came back.
"One million dollars is not a buy off," her father explained evenly. "It's not even intended to be an inducement. Consider it an investment start up, if you like. I know what they pay captains in the Canadian army and in this family, an afternoon's shopping trip would set you back six month's salary."
"Now you really are insulting me," Seth said, his tone angry.
"I'm asking you to marry my daughter. Where is the insult?"
"You should ask Gabrielle that question."
"You find my daughter objectionable to look at?" her father pressed.
"I'm leaving now."
The door opened further. Gabrielle slid quickly along the wall, away from the door.
Seth stepped out of the door.
"My offer still stands," her father called after him.
Seth turned back to face him. Cold anger flickered in his eyes and his jaw was flexed. "It can stand until the earth stops revolving. Your million dollars is quite safe."
Then Seth's gaze shifted to the side and found her. His chest lifted, as if he drew a sharp breath. "Gabrielle," he said softly.
Darlene stepped around him. "Mr. O'Connor?" She was holding a coffee cup in one hand and had a bunch of files tucked under her other arm.
"I'm done here," Seth said, taking the coffee cup from her. "I believe Mr. Sherborne will see you now." He opened the door for Darlene, ushered her in and shut it behind her. Then he dumped the coffee cup on the side table that stood next to the study door and moved quickly to stand in front of Gabrielle.
"You heard," he said simply.
She nodded. She could see the anger in his eyes, still. "It could have been worse," she said softly. "What if he'd dangled ten or fifteen million instead of a paltry one million? How much harder would you have found it to walk away from that?"
Seth shook his head. "It wouldn't have made any difference at all. Don't try to make light of this, Gabrielle. It's your life he's trying to sell."
"It's yours he's trying to manipulate, too," she pointed out. "I've had twenty-eight years of it. You had five minutes of it. I tried to warn you, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did." He smiled and she saw the anger disappear. "Your father really is a master power player, isn't he? No wonder you've been at odds with him for so long. I'm beginning to understand some of the stories behind the headlines, now."
"This is unusual, even for him," Gabrielle hurried to add. "My father is a political player, but this is...this really takes the cake, Seth. I've never known him to do something this shameless."
"Perhaps he has no limits when it comes to his daughter?" Seth suggested.
"His other daughters, perhaps. Not me," Gabrielle said sadly. "That's part of the vast tracts you don't understand about me and my family, Seth. He just sees this as a quick way to off-load a trouble-prone daughter onto some poor schmuck with a knack for saving her ass."
He stepped closer to her and his big hand cupped her jaw. "I don't know much about your family. You're right there. But I think you're wrong about your father."
His heat and scent stole into her senses and she was glad she was already leaning against the wall, for she had to lock her knees and prop herself against the weakening wave of lust and wanting that washed through her. She lifted her head to look up at him.
"We'll see," she managed to answer.
"You changed into your own clothes," he murmured. "Is this what you normally wear around here?"
The little skirt and silk stockings and the satin camisole were a thousand miles away from the yoga pants and jeans she had been schlepping around in the cabins away from the prying eyes of the media. She had put them on because she had known she would see Seth again. He had already seen her at her dowdiest. The stilettos were high enough that she reached his shoulder, but she still had to lift her chin to look up at him.
"I...er...yes," she lied.
His smile warmed and the expression in his eyes grew hot. "I like it," he said. His hand dropped to the camisole. His fingers barely grazed her skin, but it made her gasp. With a brush of the tips of his fingers, the top button of the camisole fell open, revealing most of her cleavage.
Her heart was thundering against her ribs. "Seth," she whispered.
He leaned closer still. She could feel the heat of him radiating against her. The brush of his jeans against her ankles sent weakening waves of pleasure up her legs.
Gabrielle wanted him to press against her and pin her against the wall. She almost moaned with the need to feel his weight against her.
Seth's lips were next to hers. His gaze locked with hers. "Your father has made it impossible for me to stay here," he said softly.
She clutched at his wide shoulder, as cold fright tore through her. "No, Seth...you have to ignore him. If you let him influence your behavior in any way at all, you're letting him win."
"If I stay, Gabrielle, you're not going to know why."
She gripped his shirt, bunching it in her fist. "I'll figure it out for myself. You said it yourself, Seth. You'll bleed for me. Right?"
He detached her fist from his shirt, uncurled her fingers and kissed her palm, his blue eyes looking into hers. "For enough money, even blood can be faked, Gabrielle. As a movie star, you should know that."
"Former movie star," she said, her lips stiff, her heart squeezing to what felt like a painful, slow stop.
He let her hand drop. "I'm sure I'll be seeing more of you, Gabrielle Sherborne. Have a nice life."
He turned and walked away. Gabrielle watched his back as he went, stunned. It was the first time a man had ever walked away from her and she didn't know what to do.
In the end, she did nothing. She sank down to the carpet, her legs folding like an accordion so that she was scrunched against the wall. She wrapped her arms around her legs and could feel her heart banging against her knees.
Seth hadn't even kissed her...so why did this hurt so much?
She was still sitting there some time later when the study door opened and her father stepped out, with Darlene in tow, her Blackberry glued to her ear. Cameron Sherborne halted at Gabrielle's feet, looking down at her, frowning. He at least didn't pretend to not know why she was there.
"I can't explain to you why I did it," he said simply.
"Did the fact that it might hurt me make you hesitate even for a second, Dad?" she asked him.
"Truth? No, it didn't."
She let out a hot, hurting breath. "God, this family..."
"Where did Captain O'Connor go?"
"Captain O'Connor?"
"Your guess was right. He's military. Highly decorated. Darlene---"
Darlene, while still talking on the phone, lowered the briefcase she was carrying, deftly hooked a file from the briefcase and handed it to her father. Her father dropped it beside Gabrielle. "Don't read it before you go to bed. You won't sleep. And burn it afterwards. I promised him we'd keep it in the family."
"Polite of you," Gabrielle said sourly.
"I hope you invited him to the dinner tomorrow?" her father continued.
"He's gone, Dad. You drove him away. Congratulations."
"Gone?"
"As in, he won't be back." Finally, she felt something shift in her. The aching mass in her chest swelled, bubbling up to tighten her throat. She felt the tears falling, but made no move to wipe the scalding track marks away.
"You're a real prince, Daddy. The one guy in the world who just might have wanted me for me and you managed to drive him back into the Rockies where he came from. You've really done it this time. Bravo."
Seth found he was racing down the curves from Jasper a touch too fast even for his skills, which made it fast enough that the Mounties would probably slam him in a holding cell for the night...if they could catch him in the first place.
He eased up on the gas and consciously loosened his grip on the steering wheel. He tried to flex the tension out of his shoulders.
The mass sitting in the centre of his chest and gut he'd have to deal with when he wasn't driving. That wasn't tension. That was something else and he was afraid to probe it right now. The resulting shock would be unpredictable.
Normally he could ride out shock. He was trained for it. But all the usual techniques weren't working. Deep breathing, centering the mind. Focusing on the task at hand, gathering facts, off-loading the emotions.
Deliberately, he tried again to deal only with the facts, but this time he reached right back to this morning, when he had got out of bed. Normal routine. Normal day, he'd thought then.
Gradually, he felt his heart calm. His breathing settled down. Cross-country skiing along the foothills. Crisp air. Sun on his face. Then...something had spooked him. Fact.
Then the Mustang out of control.
River. Gabrielle. Her father. One million dollars.
No...there was something else.
The car. Something in the car.
Gabrielle's voice: "...if there's one thing I regret out of this whole day, it's the loss of my camera and laptop."
Seth brought the truck to a halt in a tourist turnout, thinking it through, coupling up facts unmarred by emotions. His conclusions chilled him in a way the river water that day had not even come close to succeeding.
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory. The response at the other end was curt and sleepy.
"You'd better be dying."
"I'm in need," Seth said briefly.
"I'm listening."
"You still got all that winter diving gear in your garage?"
"Happen to have, yeah."
"Tanks full?"
"Yep."
"Think you could load it up and head to Jasper National Park right now?"
"Are you kidding me?"
"Nope."
"The police or the RCMP can't handle it?"
Seth hesitated. "It's a family matter," he said at last, but the lie rested heavily on him. The truth was, he wasn't sure what he was getting into here. He was riding on suspicions, half-formed theories and a growing dread that Gabrielle's tumultuous years weren't as far behind her as she thought.
"You used to be a better liar, Seth."
"It's been a long day," he said truthfully.
"I'm on my way."
Seth sat back in his seat, relief trickling through him. Soon, he'd start getting some answers. Edmonton was only three hours away, if you stayed within the speed limits. Tony wouldn't.
\*
Tony Peterson was retired Canadian Navy, and a former JTF2 member. He pulled his SUV up beside Seth's truck at two-thirty-five in the morning. He was unshaved but alert. He looked at the fast flowing river. "You weren't kidding. Brief me." And he headed for the back of the SUV, swinging his keys.
Seth gave him a breakdown of the situation and his theory. He left nothing out. Tony and he went back a long way and the guy deserved to know what he was getting into.
Tony whistled a long low note as he hauled out the heavy gear. "So apart from the quixotic gesture of grabbing the lady's camera and notebook, you're really just going on instinct?"
"Something made me duck for cover this morning," Seth said calmly.
"Geese farting?" Tony said with a grin, thrusting a leg into one of the dry suits. He sighed. "Never known you to get antsy over nothing, Captain, so we'll play it your way."
"Seth," Seth corrected. "We're on civilian turf, remember?" He grabbed the other suit.
\*
Ninety minutes later, they had their answer. The gear was packed away in the back of the SUV and they sat in the front, looking down at the explosive incendiary device they'd pulled off the brake line.
"Guess your guts win again," Tony said. "You must have heard this exploding---heard it bounce off the mountain walls. That's what made you duck. Few seconds later, when her brake fluid had all drained, she lost her brakes and went flying past you."
Seth nodded. It fitted with the events has they had happened.
"Someone was trying to kill her. Or seriously hurt her," he said. "That just leaves why."
"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Tony asked, poking at the device with his forefinger. "It's the weirdest wiring I've ever seen. Slick. Damned slick. Not a centimeter too much. Very professional, man. Usually family jobs like this, they use way too much. They're full of anger, passion, some sort of emotion. Not thinking very clearly. They over-wind."
"I know someone who might be able to tell us something about it," Seth said. He took pictures of it with his phone, while Tony held it at all angles. Then he dialed the number from memory. There was no danger of waking Felix. He kept very early hours.
Felix answered with his usual clipped single word greeting and Seth identified himself swiftly.
"Felix, I'm going to send you some photos. See if you can recognize the handwork. Can you drop everything and look at them straight away?"
Felix knew he was on vacation after sick leave and hesitated for a fraction of a second. "For you, Captain, I will," he said.
"Thanks," Seth said and disconnected. He selected the photos and sent them to Felix's email address, then relaxed back against the door. "Thanks for doing this, Tony. If it helps, I hope I never have to call on you again."
Tony waved him off. "From the sound of it, I'm glad I could help." He pushed at the device. "You spoke of family, Seth. This woman. Is she important...to you?"
There was no easy answer. Seth licked his lips. "I think...yeah." The heavy mass was back in his chest.
"Then you need to be real careful, Captain. Watch your back. When it's family stuff, you don't know who you can trust. Enemies look like friends and friends stab you in the back just when you think they're reaching around for a hug. A battlefield is nice and clean. Family stuff is ugly in comparison." Tony's expression was bleak.
Seth's phone buzzed, making him jump. He fumbled for it, his heart thudding. The number in the ID display was unknown to him, but it was an Ottawa area code. He answered it cautiously.
"This is Lieutenant-Colonel Mercer, Captain. You know who I am."
"Yes, sir." Seth could feel himself sitting up straighter, even though the man was across the other side of the country.
"Where did you find this device? Use what euphemisms you feel are needed. I can fill in many blanks later."
Seth explained carefully, aware of the insecure qualities of the cell phone.
There was a fifteen second silence. Mercer's ability to come to snap decisions was legendary. "You're back on active duty as of now, Captain O'Connor. I need to you reinsert yourself inside the Sherborne family and take up active watch. Your priority will be to stay with the target and protect her."
"That...could be difficult, sir."
"Difficult, or impossible?"
Seth grimaced. "Not impossible," he admitted. Mercer wouldn't want to know about difficulties. "Do I need to know why, sir?"
Again, the minute hesitation. "The device originates from outside the country, O'Connor. We'll be moving on that end of things. That is all."
"Yes, sir." He closed his phoned and put it away, a sour taste in his mouth.
"That wasn't good news, was it?" Tony said softly.
"No, and I can't explain further, Tony. You're no longer active."
"I don't need details. Your face says it all. I can figure out the rest. Those photos goosed them in Ottawa." Tony grimaced. "Just watch your back, okay?"
Seth nodded. "Thanks."
\*
He was woken by the burr of his cell phone vibrating against the bedside cabinet, barely five hours later and slapped his hand on it. The thing continued to buzz under his palm. He rolled onto his back, bringing it with him. He knew he had to answer it, but reluctance dogged him.
Then he remembered. He was back on active duty. Damn.
He brought the phone to his ear. "O'Connor."
"I figured you for an early riser, Captain. I'm surprised to find I'm wrong." It was Cameron Sherborne's precise diction, filtering clearly into his ear.
Seth sat up. "How the hell did you get this number?"
"The same way I got your records. They've been burned, by the way. I thought I'd assure you on that point."
It was reassuring, although just the fact that Cameron had read his military record at all was uncomfortable. Seth rubbed his temple. "That was why you woke me?" he asked.
"I called to apologize, Mr. O'Connor."
Seth didn't miss the change of title. Sherborne was retreating. A little, anyway.
"Why?" Seth demanded.
"Gabrielle said something last night I've never heard her say before," Sherborne said.
Seth's grip on the cell phone tightened. He closed his eyes. Gabrielle. How on earth was he supposed to work this job with Gabrielle in the mix?
"It made me reconsider my position," Sherborne continued. "I was hasty last night, and inconsiderate of my daughter's feelings."
"You were," Seth agreed.
"Come to lunch, Mr. O'Connor. Let me make up for my lack of finesse."
Seth pulled the cell phone away from his ear for a second to look at it, his heart racing.
Just like that, he was back in. He'd spent two hours last night trying to think up ways he could reinsert himself into the family as ordered. The only methods he could come up with involved contacting Gabrielle and lying his head off. The sour taste those options had given him had sent him to the bathroom for the ancient bottle of Pepto Bismal at the back of the cabinet.
And now this.
"This is quite genuine, I assure you, Mr. O'Connor," Cameron Sherborne added. "There is no hidden agenda. The worst you will have to face is running the gauntlet of my daughters and their spouses."
"I can't honestly find a reason to say no," Seth told him, "but every bone in my body says I should. I don't trust you, Mr. Sherborne."
"You probably shouldn't, Mr. O'Connor. I didn't get where I am by being polite and honest. The number I'm using to call you now is unlisted. It's my personal cell phone and I am the only person who answers it. Only thirty people in the world have this number. Now there are thirty-one. If you ever have a need to reach me urgently and can't via normal channels, use this number. You will get my undivided attention."
There was an inflection in Sherborne's voice, a note like a soft-blown trumpet call that made the hairs on the back of Seth's neck stand on end. Sherborne had not made any declarations about iron-clad promises, but Seth knew that the statement was as good as a death-bed promise.
"Why me?" he asked.
"You saved Gabrielle's life yesterday, Seth O'Connor. I'm also aware of what you've been doing all night." Sherborne paused. "Lunch is at noon, but be here by eleven. Have you got a jacket, O'Connor?" And he was gone.
Seth pushed the red button to disconnect and called back the number. Cameron Sherborne's private cell phone number. Unasked.
An invitation to a family lunch. Just like that.
Cameron Sherborne was right. Seth didn't trust him an inch and wasn't going to start any time soon. But, damn, the man certainly had a way of getting what he wanted.
He glanced up at the wardrobe door. A jacket, hmm? To run the gauntlet of his daughters and their spouses. That would include Gabrielle, of course.
He'd been thinking of her all along---who had he been fooling?---but now an image of her as he'd last seen her leapt to the forefront of his mind. He could remember the feel of her hand clenched in his shirt, the small weight of it against his chest.
How on earth was he supposed to deal with Gabrielle now? He was on active duty, and supposed to be ready to react to anything.
But last night her eyes had followed him down into sleep, creating that heavy mass in his chest.
And now even her memory was rousing him to a state that was almost painful. He eased himself off the bed. Time for a shower.
The beaded ivory lace dress had been a last-minute packing decision. Gabrielle had literally balled it up and shoved it in the corner of the suitcase. She was glad she had packed it, now, but even so, she donned the garment with a complete lack of enthusiasm. Her taste for grunge clothing had fled, but hadn't been replaced by anything else. The big family get-together today would ensure that her sisters would have their fashionista knives out, so Gabrielle went through the motions, knowing they would pick her wardrobe apart if they could. Why give them more ammunition than necessary?
The dress stopped at mid-thigh, and she wore opaque tights to accentuate her legs, and dark stilettos. The dress was backless, scooping down to her waist, while the long sleeves flared out over her wrists and extended to her knuckles.
She remembered buying the dress and feeling sexy in it, but now it was just a shield against her sisters' spiteful comments. She straightened her hair and backcombed the crown to make it lift and applied makeup to accentuate her eyes. Lots of black, blended-in, to make them smolder, like the movie make-up artists had shown her.
Today was the nineteenth of December. In two week's time, exactly, she was flying out of here. Free to leave. She just had to survive the family hysterics until then.
Gabrielle picked up her old digital camera, wrapped herself in her coat and headed for her father's cabin. It was another beautiful day. The sun was out, sitting high overhead and spilling light on the perfectly smooth, untouched snow blanket lying between the cabins. It was so white it looked blue at the edges, where the sun didn't touch it. It seemed liked no one at Jasper Park Lodge wanted to mar the perfection of the snow between the paths. Everyone walked only on the carefully shoveled pathways, leaving a fat white pillowy field between the paths, to dazzle in the brief hours of daylight.
The cabins were located around the edges of the lake and the main building sat a good three hundred yards across from them all. The paths radiated out from the main building to all the cabins, and there was a wide path that ran from cabin to cabin, too, connecting them all. There were secondary, narrower paths that ran between the cabins that the individual cabin users could use to get to the lake itself, or around to the back of their own cabins. Every path, both primary and secondary, was well shoveled and perfectly dry and clear of snow.
The silence here always astonished her. When she stopped and listened, she could hear her own heartbeat. The snow muffled everything, and she could hear for miles.
As she passed the smaller chalets and cabins, she could hear movement and conversations inside. Her extended family tended to take over the lakeside corner of the private cabins at Jasper Park Lodge at this time of year and her father paid well to ensure they were given the privacy and defenses against the media they needed. Jasper Park Lodge had been catering to such clientele for nearly a century and was very good at fending off incursions. Christmas at Jasper was a Sherborne tradition.
Gabrielle stepped into the big chalet her parents used and slid off her coat. A waiter was already hovering. He offered to take her coat, his eyes brightening at her entrance. She had been recognized, even though he remained silent. The staff at the lodge was the most discreet and polite in the world. She smiled at him and gave him her coat, put her camera bag on the side table and peered around the big palm in the entrance toward the sitting room. "Is everyone already here?"
"I believe you are the last to arrive, Ms. Sherborne," the waiter said. He handed her coat to a more junior staffer, who hurried away with it.
She stepped into the sitting room proper, bracing herself for the fun and games ahead, and stopped dead.
Seth O'Connor stood with her father, a whiskey glass in his hand.
He wore a suit that wouldn't look out of place at a party in L.A., but what he did to it, with his shoulders and chest, and his tight hips, made her heart thud and her stomach do a little roll. It was in a dark color. Blue, of course, which made his eyes look that much bluer. But instead of the standard issue white shirt, he wore black.
The tie was the same color as his eyes, which just drew attention to them. Did he do it deliberately? It was like drawing a neon sign above his head, saying "pay attention to me, damn it!"
Without looking at them, Gabrielle knew that each of her three sisters were aware of Seth in a female come-hither way. They were sitting on the edge of their seats, their legs crossed and twined, aware of their bodies in a way they hadn't been in a long while. Seth had done that by walking into the room.
But he was watching her, his eyes narrowed, measuring her reaction to the fact that he was here. Now. And standing next to her father.
Gabrielle's heart hurt as it rammed against her chest. She didn't understand why he was here, or what her father was up to, but for the moment the overriding pleasure of seeing Seth again all but swamped her concern.
Seth moved around the facing sofas, heading her way. Every feminine head tracked him. He dropped the glass on the sideboard and stepped in front of her.
"Hello again," he said softly.
"You came back," she gasped.
His gaze slipped sideways, taking in their rabid audience, before settling back on her face. Her sisters were frankly listening. "I'll explain later," he said simply.
She took a breath. And another. There would be a later.
Seth lifted a finger. "I have something for you," he said. "Wait right there." He moved away, back into the front entrance. A few second later, he returned with a brown paper carry bag. It looked heavy and he carried it carefully and held it out to her. "Call it an early Christmas present. I didn't have time to wrap it, sorry."
She took the bag, held open the handles and looked inside curiously.
Her heart really did stop for second or two. She felt it. She sank down to the floor, the strength draining from her legs. She lowered the bag and reached inside. "My camera!" She pulled the camera out, astonishment warring with overwhelming joy and ripped open the bag to stare at the silver case of the laptop she had thought was gone forever. She looked up at Seth. "You went and got them out. My god!"
He sat on the floor next to her, one knee cocked, careless of the suit. Over his shoulder, she could see the round eyes of her family staring at the astonishing sight of people sprawling on the floor when there were perfectly good chairs right next to them.
"I don't think you can count on ever using them again, Gabrielle," he said. "But this will give you a chance to retrieve the data, with the help of a good technician."
She nodded. "That was all I had wanted. To get my pictures back." She could feel her eyes stinging with unwanted tears and blinked furiously. Not in front of her sisters. Not if she could help it. "Thank you," she said, fighting hard to keep her voice even.
"No problem," he said briskly, standing up. "I happened to be passing by." He got to his feet, and held out his hand. "Come on, up you get."
The brisk tone, the snappy command...had he guessed her reluctance not to break down in front of her sisters? She was grateful for the reprieve, anyway. She allowed him to help her to her feet, her hand sliding inside his big, warm one. She shivered inside at the touch of his hand, her body suddenly on high alert. Like a schoolgirl, she didn't want to let go. She had to consciously make herself let go of his fingers.
Gabrielle worked to look normal and unconcerned as she put the camera and laptop on the sideboard next to his whiskey glass. Then she nearly ruined her composure again by jumping when she realized Seth had followed her over to the sideboard.
"Your father wanted to introduce me around to the family," Seth said quietly, standing very close behind her shoulder. "But I wanted to give you that option, first. You don't have to, Gabrielle and I won't be offended if you don't want to. Not after yesterday."
She looked up at him. Her shoulder barely came to the middle of his chest. She couldn't help remembering seeing it bare and being held against it. Unbidden, the urge came to undo the buttons on his shirt and slide her hands inside. To reveal his chest again. Only this time, she knew his chest would be hot. She could hold herself against the heat. Rub herself against it...
Gabrielle swallowed, trying to rid herself of the images. "Are you sure you want to meet them at all, Seth? They're a bunch of barracudas."
"Your father hinted as much." He grinned. "I can hold my own."
"Then I'd better introduce you," she said. "Or my sisters will try to eat you alive. If they think you're with me, they'll give you breathing room, at least."
Seth laughed.
"You think I'm kidding?" Gabrielle said. "With you looking the way you do and knowing my sisters, I'm astonished they hadn't already made a move before I got here."
Seth's smile faded. "Your father was with me the whole time..."
Gabrielle smiled sourly. "Dad has no illusions about them, either. The Sherborne family is infamous for its sex scandals. We've all contributed one way or another." She tucked her arm under his elbow. "Come and meet the family, Seth."
\*
Seth was conscious of Gabrielle's hand on his elbow, but more aware of her slim figure walking next to him. The lace dress seemed insubstantial, a cloud floating over her figure. Every time she turned, he got a glimpse of her back...who would ever have thought a back could be sexy? Her hair was brushed in a way so that it pointed down her back and made a mockery of his pulse.
Despite her petite size, her legs seemed to go on forever, too.
Considering some of the outfits Gabrielle Sherborne had barely been wearing when the newspapers had splashed her across their front pages and the movies pushed her in front of cameras for promotion and PR, this dress was utterly conservative. But Seth's pulse and other parts of his anatomy were jack hammering like an adolescent schoolboy's, just the same. Tension was singing through his veins.
He'd thought, on the drive here yesterday, that the tension in the truck when she'd asked him to kiss her had been exquisite.
It had barely been the beginning of just how bad his need to take her could climb. Yesterday, outside Cameron Sherborne's office, he'd barely been able to walk away from her without tearing her clothes off. The single button he'd unfastened had been a slip, a betrayal of the inner turmoil.
Gabrielle was redefining his understanding of "want".
And now she was next to him again. And his body was betraying him in all sorts of ways.
He had to stay on top of this. He was on duty. She was the target. If he didn't want her dead, he had to stay alert.
Gabrielle halted in front of a woman of around thirty or so years of age. Her hair was a deep red and very long---down to her waist at least. Her skin was very fair. She had a long patrician nose and very green eyes.
"This is my eldest sister, Madison. Now Madison Breckinridge. Madison, this is Seth O'Connor, a friend of mine."
"Nice to meet you, Seth," Madison said, oozing charm. Her eyes narrowed. "You're the Canadian than hauled Gabi out of the river yesterday, aren't you?"
"That would be me," Seth said easily.
"You're not quite what I was expecting," Madison said, tilting her head to one side.
Gabrielle sighed. "She means she was expecting a Canadian redneck."
"Sorry to disappoint you," Seth told Madison, holding back a laugh. "I left the wool shirt at home. But I am partial to Canadian rye, if that helps."
Madison lifted a brow. "Rye," she said flatly. "Do we even have any of that here, Gabi?"
"We're in Canada, for heaven's sake, Maddy," Gabrielle said. "Seth, come and meet Destiny."
She steered him over to a statuesque dirty blonde standing at the bar, her hair a riotous tumble of runaway curls down to the bottom of her shoulder blades, in contradiction to every fashion calling for hair straightening these days. She was drinking a champagne cocktail with obvious relish, while watching their approach with her green eyes sweeping Seth from head to foot. A predator's measuring sweep. That and the practiced toss of the last half of the cocktail to the back of her throat told Seth more than a long conversation's worth about the woman before Gabrielle began the introduction.
"This is my second oldest sister, Destiny. Destiny Hewitt. She's married to Ronny, who I'll introduce to you in a moment. Destiny, this is Seth O'Connor."
"Seth," Destiny said shortly. Her voice was scratchy. A smoker's voice. "You saved Gabi's life yesterday."
"So I'm told."
She smiled, but the expression didn't reach her eyes. "Did you get your hero's reward?"
"Destiny..." Gabrielle said with a sigh.
Seth felt the approach of someone else and checked over his shoulder. The dark-eyed man with the miniscule bottom lip hair he'd seen earlier hovering around Destiny was approaching now. This had to be Ronny, then, alerted by Seth's location next to his wife.
"See you're settling in nicely here, sweetheart," Ronny said as he came closer.
Destiny hissed through her teeth. It was all but inaudible. Then she smiled at Ronny and let him kiss her cheek. "Wondered where you'd got to," she muttered.
"And this is Ronny," Gabrielle added. "Ronny Hewitt, this is Seth O'Connor."
"The guy who saved Gabi-hell. Heard nothing but, yesterday." Ronny thrust out his hand.
Seth accepted the hand and gave it just enough power to match Ronny. But Ronny poured everything into it. It was going to be one of those unspoken macho competitions.
Stay away from my wife.
I don't want your wife. The woman next to me is the only one I'm interested in.
Nevertheless I'm stronger than you and I'm warning you to back away.
No, I'm stronger than you. I don't want to kick your ass, but I will if you insist.
Make me.
Seth mentally sighed and stepped up the power in his grip. He kept dialing it up until Ronny's knuckles whitened and his hand shifted and gave way. Then Seth let go and nodded amiably. "Good to meet you," he lied.
Ronny grimaced and tried to turn it into a smile. "You too," he managed.
Was either woman fooled?
Gabrielle slipped her hand around Seth's elbow again. "Come and meet Sydney," she murmured.
Well, he hadn't fooled Gabrielle, anyway. He looked down at her as they walked away from the bar. "Sorry," he said.
"He asked for it," she said placidly. "Ronny's ego gets a little inflated at times. You probably did him a favor. Don't worry about it."
She was leading him into another room. The dining room itself. It would ordinarily be another formal lounge, but the lodge staff had moved out the furniture and put together a long dining table, with enough places for the entire family.
Standing at the side of the table were two people who looked like power players in the business world. One was a typical businessman, in a Brooks Brothers suit, complete with handkerchief in his pocket. Seth felt like he should know who he was. The face was vaguely familiar.
The other was a female version of the first. She had flame-colored hair, cut chic and short, and was clearly holding her own in the conversation.
This, then, must be Sydney. If Gabrielle was introducing her sisters to Seth in age order, she had to be closest to Gabrielle in age. Barely into her thirties, then, and apparently well established in the business world.
The woman looked up, sized up Seth with a single sweep of her eyes, also the same green as her sisters, and a lift of her brow. She turned back to the man she was talking to and murmured something, then turned to face Gabrielle politely. "This must be Seth O'Connor," she said, holding her hand out to Seth, pushing past Gabrielle.
Seth didn't let his expression change.
"Hi, I'm Sydney Sherborne and this is Logan Breckinridge. You've possibly already met Logan's wife, Madison?"
Logan held out his hand. Seth shook both hands. Both firm grips, not testosterone challenges. "I met Madison a few minutes ago," Seth said. He picked up Gabrielle's wrist and drew her forward again, stepping back so that Gabrielle would be between him and Sydney. "Gabrielle has been introducing me to everyone." He put his hands on Gabrielle's shoulders and held her in place. "It's quite a family you have."
Logan laughed. "You think today is fun? Try marrying into it."
"Is that why Ronny looks like he has a headache?" Seth asked, making his tone casual.
Sydney's eyes narrowed. "He and Destiny tend to...rub against each other, shall we say?" Her gaze dropped to Gabrielle. "I take my hat off to you, Gabi. I wouldn't have the guts to bring a date to one of these family feeding frenzies."
Gabrielle shifted her weight, bringing her back up against him. Seth knew it was for courage and moral support. It hadn't been her choice to bring him here, but the whole family thought it was and she wasn't going to let them know differently.
"Then I guess I've got more guts than you, huh?" Gabrielle said serenely, sounding astonishingly like her father.
Sydney's mouth actually opened a little and her eyes widened. Seth had a feeling that it wasn't often that Gabrielle hit back at the family with calm pot shots instead of temper tantrums.
Logan snorted. "Serves you right, Sydney," he said and laughed. He moved around the table. "I'm going to grab a drink before they announce lunch."
There was a murmur from the kitchen and the door opened. A red-headed woman in her fifties stepped out and Gabrielle immediately moved away from Seth. Sydney lifted a brow. "Well, I'll let you three get acquainted," she said and followed Logan into the other room.
The woman wore elegant trousers and a silk shirt, with a cardigan in some expensive material that only older women seemed to be able to wear well, with a long string of pearls that Seth knew just had to be the real thing and probably priceless. Her hair was in a French pleat. Everything about her screamed money and elegance.
She walked right up to Gabrielle. "Gabrielle, darling. I think you need to introduce your man to me."
"He isn't my man, Mom."
The woman looked him over. "Nonsense. I saw how you were standing just now." She was looking him in the eye, her faded green eyes challenging him.
This woman was smart. People smart. There wasn't going to be much room to get around her. Seth held out his hand. "Seth O'Connor, ma'am."
"Elizabeth Sherborne, Mr. O'Connor. You can call me Elizabeth. Everyone does and I actually prefer it to Mrs. Sherborne."
"Elizabeth."
"So...you're the one," she said, studying his face.
"I helped get your daughter out of the river yesterday," Seth agreed.
She smiled. "Yes, there's that, too," she responded. She glanced at her watch. "Lunch is in about three minutes, Mr. O'Connor."
"Seth."
"Seth. My husband has requested that you sit next to him for the meal, which means you will both have to sit up there at that end." She waved toward the far end of the long table, and smiled. "That will cause a fuss before the meal is served, I am sure."
Gabrielle thought the meal would never end. Seth had said he could hold his own, but she had never suspected he could prop her up at the same time. It was almost unnerving the way he could read her mind and sense when she was feeling whipped or cowed by the bloody barbs.
She had been fending for herself for decades but lately, she had been getting so tired of it all and retiring, defeated, to lick her wounds. In the last few years, it had simply become easier to submit and let the family use her as target practice. She was a world class screw up after all, so why not? Gabi-hell strikes again.
But every time they had lined up on her today, Seth had stepped in front of her, or picked her up, dusted her off and pushed her back in front of the fray with her mental boxing gloves back on.
Now they were at the brandy and coffee stage, though, she was truly running out of energy. It had been a long while since she had gone head-on with the family, mano é mano like this. She would walk away from the table today with her dignity intact, thanks to Seth. Normally she either crept away from family dinners, a slug-like being with a destroyed ego, or she stalked away before the event was done, her fury pouring from every vent, ready to crack heads and break precious objects.
Family dinners lasted for hours and it was already getting dark when she and Seth got to their feet and walked slowly to the entryway once more.
Seth looked out through the doors. "It's snowing again," he said.
He looked so good in his suit. She wanted to open the jacket and snuggle up against him, inside the jacket and just...inhale him.
"That'll make it a slow trip home," she said stiffly.
The waiter brought his long overcoat and helped him into it.
"I know the road between here and home backward and upside-down," Seth said. "I'll be fine."
The coat made his shoulders look extra wide, extra strong. There were so many things Gabrielle wanted to say to him. He'd spent all afternoon propping up her courage...why couldn't she find the strength now to give some of that back to him? Damn it, he was about to step out the door and maybe never come back!
She reached for his sleeve. "You said you would explain, later."
He glanced around the entrance area, looking for observers. "We might be better off---" He looked over her shoulder. "Darlene," he said more loudly.
Gabrielle let go of his sleeve and turned to face her father's assistant. The blonde smiled pleasantly. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to catch you before you left. There's heavy snowfall reports for the area and Cameron would prefer that you didn't risk driving in such conditions. We've arranged a cabin for you for the night, with our compliments." She held out a keycard. "It's the MacKenzie King cabin, at the end of path. They're all marked very clearly."
Seth looked at the keycard for a moment, then slowly reached out to take it. "Tell Cameron he's a pain in the butt, but I accept the offer." He shook his head. "I can't refuse, can I?"
Darlene smiled. "You'd look foolish if you did. The snow fall warnings are quite real." As she turned away, she winked at Gabrielle.
Gabrielle cleared her throat, trying to cover her shock. Darlene was always so completely professional. It was the first time she had ever seen that professional appearance give way to anything else. But then, Darlene and she had never really got along.
Gabrielle looked up at Seth. "I was going to head for my cabin, too. Let me get my coat and I'll show you where your cabin is."
Seth nodded.
She hurried into the closet and found her coat and threw it on, aware that her heart had started to beat with a triple-time tattoo. She was grateful for this last minute reprieve, even as she was angry with her father for the bare-faced manipulation. Seth's reaction indicated that he knew he was being pushed around, too.
She felt flushed and flustered by the time she returned to where Seth stood at the doors. He had collected the bag holding her camera and laptop, and she picked up her old digital camera and slipped the carry strap over her shoulder.
"I don't know about you, Gabrielle, but I really need to be somewhere quiet and away from people," Seth said in an undertone.
She looked up at him, startled. "God, yes," she said, her breath escaping her in a rush.
He nodded. "Let's go." He pushed open the door for her.
She stepped out into the crisp, still air, pushed her hands into her pockets and drew in a deep lungful of the cold air. "It's wonderful," she sighed.
Seth stopped next to her. "Left or right?"
She turned left and they walked slowly down the wide path, enjoying the coolness. The path was well lit, with lamp posts every ten feet or so along the way. Snowflakes drifted down from a low sky. It wasn't snowing hard yet, but the clouds had a heavy, pregnant look that promised more.
"Is your family always like that, Gabrielle, or was that just for me?" Seth asked.
"That's pretty much standard for them," Gabrielle said, with a sigh. "Actually, they were a bit subdued. You had them cowed. I don't recall the last time they really listened to me talk about my friends before."
"You mean about Sofia Coppola and the new film she's directing?"
Gabrielle frowned as she watched snowflakes drift down, and tried to find the right analogy. "It was like...being able to take a full breath." She looked up at him. "I should bottle you and take you with me to every family function. I don't know how you did it, Seth. I've been living with them for twenty-eight years and I've never considered myself a coward, or short on backbone, but until you were there I've never noticed how much they had cut off my breathing. Like boa constrictors...each exhalation, they contract around you until you can't breathe anymore."
Seth's hand rested on her fingers. "I think you just answered your own question, Gabrielle. You've been living with them for twenty-eight years. I just got here. They've had time to work on you and squeeze out your breath."
She smiled. "You stayed with my analogy. That's cute."
"I aim to please."
"Do you?" she asked. "Is that why you're here, Seth?"
He glanced at her. "I know I promised an explanation, but I don't want to do it out here, where anyone can hear. Do you mind?"
She looked around. "There's no one out here."
"You'd be surprised. I'd rather wait until we're inside. Indulge me."
"Alright," she said slowly. She pointed to the cabin they were approaching. "This one is mine," she said. "I want to change my shoes for boots, and drop off the cameras. Give me a couple of minutes."
She took the heavy bag from him, leaving him standing in the lightly falling snow, a broad-shouldered man in an unexpectedly elegant European-style long dark winter coat that matched the black hair. In the low light of the late winter afternoon, his hair showed blue highlights from the lights shining from the cabins and lamps around him.
Then there were his eyes. The blue intensity of them. They saw more deeply inside her than the entire sum total of paying audience members of every movie she'd ever made.
Gabrielle hurried inside the chalet, the image of Seth lingering in her mind. She wanted to press herself against him and kiss him. No, that was too simple an explanation for what she wanted to do. Kissing was just the beginning.
She thought again of that moment in the truck, back at Seth's cabin. The almost-kiss. The tension that had screamed through her.
Seth could have taken his kiss and far, far more right then. She had been operating without a net. No safety harness and live bullets.
As Gabrielle changed her stilettos for more practical and warmer winter boots, a pair with heels that still gave her some height and protected her legs under the long coat, her body responded to the memory of the moment in the truck. She grew aroused and her heart began to beat frantically in her chest.
Then there had been the moment outside her father's study. She had been completely at Seth's mercy. If he had reached out and taken her, she would have had no defenses to raise at all. She wouldn't have even tried to struggle.
Gabrielle stared sightlessly at her boots as the truth formed in her mind.
When it came to Seth, she had no restraints. She didn't know how to stop herself. Only Seth himself had prevented them from falling instantly into bed and Gabrielle repeating history.
Again.
Gabrielle shook her head. "No," she whispered to the empty room. No, not again. This wasn't like any of the other times.
There was a huge difference.
This time, she wanted him. For the first time since she had got sober and straightened up her life, she actually wanted a man with something beyond an interest that lasted longer than thirty seconds.
Gabrielle swallowed. Lord, how she wanted him.
She finished slowly zipping up her boots.
And Seth wanted her. He'd admitted as much. But he'd walked away.
Why had he come back? Why wouldn't he kiss her?
Feeling better equipped to face Seth and the elements, Gabrielle hurried back out to where he waited and again felt the same little trip hammer in her heart and gut when she saw him.
She paused on the verandah step, six inches higher than Seth, looking down at him. "Remind me again, Seth, why you won't kiss me?"
His eyes seemed to darken at her question. "I won't kiss you until you know for sure I'm not just another Adrian, or one of his breed."
"God, I already know that, Seth," she said, her voice emerging husky with surprise and concern. "My father shoved your record at me and insisted I read it before I burn---what's wrong?"
Seth had winced and now rubbed his temples. "That's...great. That's...god, that's really sensitive information. It's high security stuff, for a start, Gabrielle. And second, you're not Canadian. And third..." He let out a breath. "I don't know what the third is. How about it's information that would get me court-martialed if I so much as breathed about it and you and your father are just handing it around the family like a tabloid newspaper? Read all about it."
His distress was genuine, coming off him in waves. She reached for him, soothing him. "No, no, Seth, you misunderstand. Only my father and I read that file and I destroyed it straight afterwards. Not even Darlene saw the inside of it. And it was just your records, not details---where you went and when, and honors. Lord, the decorations, Seth!" She curled her hands around the lapels of his coat and shook him. "Why are you forbidden to speak of it? It's appalling!"
His hands covered hers, warm and big. "It's the nature of what I do," he said gently. "I'm supposed to be a normal person, according to the rest of the world. I can't be awarded military honors if I'm meant to be a civilian."
"It stinks," Gabrielle said hotly.
"It's fine the way it is," Seth told her. "I don't need public acknowledgement." His gaze was steady. "But that doesn't mean I'm any happier about the fact that you've seen my records, Gabrielle."
She sighed. "My father gave me the file and I couldn't not read it. I wanted to know who it was I'd driven out of my life. I thought it might show me where I'd gone wrong. I thought I'd lost you, Seth." She looked him in the eye. "I'm still not sure I haven't."
Seth's hands tightened around hers and plucked them from his coat. "Let's locate my cabin," he said neutrally.
Gabrielle suppressed her sigh. "Okay," she said, trying to match his tone. She turned left again and walked, and fought for a casual tone. "You really can't get lost around here. You just keep following this path. It makes up a great big loop. Your cabin is at the end of the loop and sits out on the lake. If you're into fishing at all, you can sit on your deck and hang a line out into the water off the edge of it in the summer. I've had ice-skating friends who use it as a skating post in the winter, when the ice is thick enough. The lodge scrapes the ice right up to the deck."
"Sounds idyllic." His tone was equally as casual.
"I used to use the cabin myself, up until a few years ago," Gabrielle explained.
"What made you trade?"
She shrugged. "Oh, I felt like a change. You know." She looked up at the night sky. The snow clouds were so low and thick, they were picking up the lights from everywhere---the lights from Jasper, cars, houses---and reflecting them back, which the thick snow cover was bouncing straight back up. The dark sky was light-filled and illuminated in a ghostly, glowing way. The snowfall had retreated to a few drifting flakes, but the bulging sky spoke of much, much more to come.
"I'm sorry," Seth murmured. "I wasn't thinking. It was all part of the big change a few years ago, right?"
She nodded.
"Did it help?"
"Not according to my family."
"I was asking you."
She bit her lip. "Coming back here the first year was torture," she confessed. "Changing cabins didn't really help all that much. I still had to deal with everyone else. I'd only been...well, 'clean' for a couple of months and everyone was still treating me like the drama queen I'd been for the last twelve years or so. It was hell on wheels. I don't think I spoke more than a dozen words the entire three weeks." She smiled at him. "My family, Seth, is a unique species. I feel like I should apologize for them."
"Don't," he said softly. "Your family and you, too, are your father's off-spring. You're all leaders, directors and managers of people. You can't help it. It just comes naturally to you and the manipulation of human nature becomes a battlefield inside the family because you've got too many directorial egos in the same space."
She'd never heard it put that way before, but now that Seth had simplified it, she realized that this was her family, exactly. Seth had captured their essence in a single afternoon.
"You're good," she breathed.
"I'm interested," he confessed.
"Why?"
"It's your family." He gave a small laugh. "And I've really never met a family like them before. You're right, Gabrielle. They're something else."
She found herself laughing suddenly, as she recalled Madison's lifted brow when Seth confessed to liking Canadian rye and Sydney's blank expression when Seth had given her the opening to fire a return salvo back.
She put her hand on the top of the fat post on end of the traditional railing edging the small entrance to Seth's cabin and waved him forward. "Your cabin."
He stepped up onto the verandah and pulled out the keycard. "It's bigger than I thought."
"Dad doesn't do things by halves."
"So I'm learning." He turned to look at her. "Do you want to come in?"
She looked at the familiar cabin. There was a formal sitting room, two bedrooms, each with their own en suite, a small kitchenette and the famous back deck. Stepping in would mean nothing more than coming in from the cold. But she hesitated. Memories swamped her and they weren't good ones. On top of that was the sensation that her father had planned this from the outset. The coming snowstorm was a convenient excuse, but in this family of manipulators, he was a master. For some unstated reason, he wanted Seth to marry her and was willing to pay a million dollars to ensure the nuptials took place. Stepping inside would just adhere to her father's plans, wouldn't it? What about her own?
What were her own plans?
"Seth, can I be honest?" she said.
He shut the door again and put his hands in his pockets. "I'd give anything for honesty." His voice was low, a deep rumble and it made her shiver.
"Even if you don't like the answer?"
"Even then." His eyes glittered in the low light under the verandah roof. His gaze was watchful.
"Okay." She took a breath. "You have to know, Seth O'Connor, you're the only man that's ever walked away from me. No one's ever done that before."
"Ever?"
"No. It was quite a lesson for me."
"It wasn't supposed to be a lesson."
"It was anyway, Seth. I didn't like what it told me about myself. 'Selfish' was the least of it. 'Ego' was in there, too."
Seth held up his hand. "You don't have to do this, Gabrielle."
"Yes, I do," she said quickly. "I'm trying to tell you why I'm not going to go inside."
"You're not?"
She shook her head. "I can't, Seth. It's not just the memories. They're rotten, gut-churning things that make me ashamed. But they're just memories and when I'm with you, they're nothing. That's why I needed to explain all the rest. You make me feel...god, Seth, you make me feel young again. Do you know how precious that is?" She smiled. "And you make me feel like if I stepped inside with you and took off my coat, I wouldn't be able to stop at just my coat...or yours. I know it's probably wicked, Seth, but I can't keep what I saw of your body during the accident out of my mind. I keep replaying it over and over and I want to see you naked again. Properly naked. And I want to be free this time to run my hands over you."
Her voice was shaking, but she needed to get the rest of it out, so she took another deep breath and pushed on. "I want to do all that, but I don't even know you. I know your military record, but I don't even know if you like coffee or tea, or if you prefer the left or the right side of the bed, or your favorite music, or slow dancing or if we're totally and one hundred percent incompatible."
"Gabrielle---"
"No, let me finish!" she said quickly.
He nodded.
She could feel the buildup of hot, hard tears in the back of her eyes. This was harder than she thought, this truth-telling. "On top of all of this, there's my father's one million dollars," she said bitterly. "I know he hasn't retracted it, has he?"
There was a heartbeat of silence. "No," Seth said at last.
"And finally," Gabrielle finished, feeling the first of her tears flow, "There's the still-to-be-explained reason you came back." She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. "Damn, I didn't want to do that." Her voice was hoarse.
He gave a low curse and pulled her into his arms and just like that she was where she had fantasized about being only a few minutes ago, tucked inside his coat and cuddled up against his chest, his arms around her.
"You're an impossible woman," he said.
"I've heard worse."
"Gabrielle, if you had any idea..." He sighed. "You think you've got the ultimate dilemma?" He lifted her chin so that she was forced to look into his eyes. "I have a proposal," he said. "It's five-thirty, thereabouts. Have dinner with me in the main building---you and me in one of the restaurants."
"A date?"
"Yes."
"In public?"
"You're with me. You're perfectly safe, I guarantee it."
There was something in the way he said it that made the small hairs on the back of her neck try to stand up. "Seth...do you...are you armed?" she asked softly.
"Not that you'd notice just looking at me, but yes."
Her heart thudded. "It's against the law to carry arms in Canada," she said. Her gut clenched. "Seth, are you on active duty?"
He hesitated before he answered. "Yes." His voice was low.
Her breath came faster. She stepped back from him. "Since when?"
"Since three twenty-three a.m. last night," he said softly.
Last night...when he must have retrieved her camera and her laptop.
"What else did you find in my car, Seth?"
"We should discuss this inside."
"What else did you find in my car?"
"An explosive device designed to take out your brakes."
Someone had tried to kill her. Seth had come back because someone was trying to kill her.
Gabrielle reached for the verandah rail, weak and a little dizzy with the speed of bewildering thoughts and questions slamming into her brain. "Oh my lord..." she gasped.
Seth was holding her up, picking her up. "Up you come," he murmured.
"Why me?" she whispered.
"They're not going to get you," he said. "Not while I'm here."
"But what did I do? What made them want to kill me?" she asked Seth in an undertone, clutching at his shoulder as he hurried along the path. It was snowing much harder now. Flakes clung to his black hair.
"We'll figure that out," he assured her. "Try to hold it together, Gabrielle. You're in shock. I'm going to fix that in a minute. Breathe deeply."
She could feel the tremors rippling through her and her teeth chattering. She clung to Seth and rested her head against his shoulder, listening to his heartbeat as he walked. Her body shook as she tried to encompass the awful sensation that someone in the world wanted her dead.
The worst part of it was that she had no idea why.
She heard the squeak of a hinge and the slap of a door, then indoor warmth and light fanned her face. The familiar sounds of controlled hysteria surrounded her. She recognized them as the noises of a commercial kitchen and lifted her head a little. They were in a streamlined, narrow kitchen, surrounded by sous chefs and aides, all looking harried and surprised by Seth's arrival and his burden.
One chef lifted his hand. "Seth!" And he broke into a stream of French.
Seth answered in excellent French, but Gabrielle was too overwhelmed to even begin to translate. The chef grabbed Seth's arm and hurried them through the kitchen and out through an internal door, into a passageway that led, in turn, to a small office. The chef tipped a finger to his brow. "Take your time, Captain," he said, in a heavy French accent. "The manager, 'e will not be in tonight."
"Merci, Bastien," Seth said, and shouldered his way into the office. He lowered Gabrielle into the big executive chair, just as a kitchen helper appeared in the doorway, holding out a soda can.
"Thanks," Seth said and dropped a two dollar coin into the boy's hand. He shut the office door and locked it, then popped the lid. "Drink this, as quickly as you can," he told Gabrielle.
"It's loaded with sugar," she objected, wrapping her arms around her as chills seemed to sweep through her.
"Exactly. The sugar will offset the shock. It'll help. And in a few minutes, when you feel more human, we'll go and eat a huge meal. That will make you feel even more human. Drink. I promise this will work."
She recalled that Seth, of all people, probably knew more about getting the body through shock quickly than most other people. She took the can and drank, trying to drain the cold beverage quickly despite how cold she was feeling.
Seth perched on the edge of the desk, watching her.
By the time she had finished the can, she was feeling better. Marginally. The cold still seemed to grip her, though. She put the can on the desk with a grimace. "No wonder you insisted on telling me when we were inside."
Seth crossed his arms. "I was more worried about bugs and sightlines, but yes, this, too."
"You should insist on having your way, more, Seth. Then you wouldn't have to keep making me look so foolish."
He smiled. "You're a stubborn lady."
"Who's too used to having her own way." She sighed. "I need to start listening to you properly. I mean really listening. I should have put this together sooner. There's too many things you don't say that I should be hearing."
Something touched his face and was gone, so swiftly that she thought she may have imagined it.
"What?" she said.
"Dinner," he said firmly, and picked up her hand. He threw the can in the garbage bin, and led her from the office.
\*
While the luxury chalets and cabin areas were foreign territory to Seth, he was quite familiar with the public areas and restaurants in the main building of the lodge. Once they were out in the public section of the main building, his senses went on alert, as all the subliminal feeds of information worked to keep him aware of any possible dangers or concerns, all focused on Gabrielle.
Thanks to the steadily thickening snow and heavy fall warnings, there were very few people using the public restaurants tonight. Jasper Park Lodge was outside the main town of Jasper and in heavy snows, it became a challenge to reach. Tourists tended to stay in the town itself for meals. That meant the only patrons would be residents.
Gabrielle's fame would be an issue. Seth murmured in the maitre d's ear. "A discrete table, please. Not somewhere where everyone passing will see her."
They were offered a corner table guarded by a big potted palm tree. The only way Gabrielle would be recognized was if someone walked right up to the table and leaned in to peer at her face. Gabrielle visibly relaxed when she saw the location and beamed her thanks at the maitre d', who swelled with pride at her reaction.
They ordered a small meal each, for they had just eaten a short while before. Seth ordered a bottle of wine. The waiter hurried away after the wine was opened.
"I don't usually drink, anymore," Gabrielle confessed, lifting the glass of ruby red liquid. "And I'm surprised you would, under the circumstances."
"A few mouthfuls---enough to keep up appearances," Seth told her. "If I'm eating, it's not a big deal. Don't drink if you don't want to. I thought you might like a glass to relax. You've had quite an afternoon and I just hit you with hard news."
She finally looked directly at him for the first time. There was pain in her marvelous brown eyes and his gut clenched. "Why is someone trying to kill me, Seth?" she whispered.
"I don't know. And for right now, it's not my job to find out. The only thing I have to do is stick with you and keep you alive."
"You don't care to know?" she asked. "It doesn't bother you that someone out there hates me that much?"
Seth winced. She had misunderstood, as most people did. "Other people are working on the reasons why, Gabrielle. If I run around trying to find out, I'll trip over their work and worse, I'll lose focus on my job. And as far as I'm concerned, my job is the most important work in the world right now."
She still looked miserable, so he relented a little. "They'll let me know as soon as they know anything," he said. "And I'll tell you anything I learn."
"You promise?" Gabrielle said. "None of this top secret, I'll-have-to-kill-you crap?"
Seth stared at her. It was her life the explosive had been set to take out, he reasoned. So he nodded. "I promise," he said and meant it.
She took a deep breath, her shoulders lifting. Then she settled back in her chair. And she smiled. It was the same full-wattage smile she had given the maitre d' and Seth felt just as rewarded. Abruptly, he realized that Gabrielle trusted him. Just like that. He'd promised, and she took him at his word.
Wow. Suddenly, he was the one who couldn't look her in the eye. He felt like an awkward school boy on his first date. He gripped the wine glass and fought hard not to drain the damn thing. He looked around the room, scanning it automatically, and saw a familiar face.
Tyler Winters was settling at a dining table with a companion, both in civvies. No recognition on his face, but he moved the salt shaker, then moved it back. He was on duty, then. Back-up had arrived.
Seth looked back at Gabrielle. She was sipping the wine cautiously, exactly like someone who was afraid it might bite her. "Oh, that's delicious," she said, her face lighting up.
"It's one of my favorites," he told her. "Enjoy."
She took another sip, a bigger one this time, and closed her eyes, really studying the wine in her mouth. After she swallowed, she said, "I don't think I stopped to truly enjoy wine before. I used to knock it back...a fast way to get drunk. And some of the stuff I used to drink was horrendously expensive. I would have been better off with the cheapest vino, for all the appreciation I gave it." She sighed. "You wouldn't have liked me much back then, Seth." Then her face lit up in a silent laugh. "But the media loved me."
Seth laughed. "Did you get to know their faces well? So you could spot them in crowds and avoid them if you wanted to?"
Gabrielle nodded. "But they came and went pretty quick, so it was hard to keep up with them all."
"There's a man and woman at a table behind your right shoulder. He's got short brown hair and he's wearing an awful dark brown jacket I keep telling him to get rid of and brown pants, and she's a blonde. When you go to the washroom, have a good look at them, so you remember their faces."
"Why?"
"They'll be faces you see in the crowd if you're out in public in the next two weeks. If there's trouble at all, and for any reason I can't help you, Tyler and the woman he's with will step in."
"They're...with you?"
"Yes."
Gabrielle licked her lips. "You're...you really are on duty then, aren't you?" She spoke quietly, and there was an odd note in her voice that Seth couldn't quite unravel.
"Yes. Gabrielle, what's wrong?"
She tried to smile. "Nothing." She stood up. "I'll be back in a moment. Excuse me." And she hurried to the washroom. Seth watched her go, his heart hammering, not understanding the sudden tension in her. The blonde at Tyler's table rose and hurried after Gabrielle. She disappeared into the washroom, too.
Seth strummed his fingers on the tablecloth.
After what felt like a month, but was in reality only three minutes, for he timed it on his watch, Gabrielle returned to the table, her long legs moving with dancer's grace under the lace hem of the dress. She slid back into her seat and picked up the wine glass again. This time she smiled properly.
"You have to understand, Seth. I'm the girl who's used to getting what she wants. For a moment, I felt like a three year old being told she couldn't have her candy. You said we would have a date tonight. And I suddenly realized it wasn't a date at all. It was a security set-up and I wasn't going to get my candy after all. I just had to take a moment to avoid a full-on temper tantrum. By the way, the blonde's name is Sam."
Her smile had turned brittle even as she spoke.
Seth could feel his pulse pounding in his temples, as he saw it from her side of the table, what this must look like to Gabrielle. He reached for her hand where it lay curled on the table, but aborted the movement. She would resent his touch right now.
"I'm sorry." But that sounded pathetic. He pushed his hand through his hair. "Gabrielle, I told you I had my own dilemma. Well, this is it. Do you know how much I wish this was a straight-forward date? Where we could just sit and enjoy this without me having to worry about who the hell is out there trying to take out the first woman in five years who apparently gives a damn that I walk the planet?"
Her eyes widened and Seth grimaced. "Sod it," he said. "Can I take that back?"
"Are you kidding?" she breathed. "I finally get to know something beyond military dates and times... You don't get to take that back, Seth O'Connor. Nuh-uh." Her fingers uncurled. "Five years, Seth? Why? Does the non-uniform scare them?"
He stared at her. Amazingly, she'd got it in one. He nodded slowly. "That and the constant tours with unspeakable details, the inexplicable wounds and scars, and loyalty to another master. Most women don't take kindly to the idea that they'll always be second. A hair's breadth second, but second."
Gabrielle sipped her wine. "There's a lot of that goes on in Hollywood. It's the reason most of the marriages there fail. Most of them put their careers before their marriages, but pretend otherwise. If only they could see it as clearly as you do and stopped being hypocrites about it, there'd be far fewer divorces, I suspect."
"There would probably be a lot less marriages, too."
She shrugged. "I'm not so sure about that. If you know going in where you stand in the arrangement, you can be very happy. Look at my mother. She knows exactly where she stands in my father's life, and it's certainly not first in his priorities."
"You don't believe in love, Gabrielle?" Seth asked.
"Not the all-consuming overwhelming romantic love they paint in the movies," Gabrielle said. "That's just fiction for the consumers. I thought I did, but I got burned too often looking for it. Adrian was the last straw and I finally got cured."
The meal arrived then, and the mood was broken. Seth could have killed the waiter for his poor timing, but it wasn't his fault and Seth held in his petty response.
Gabrielle was charming and witty and the waiter glowed with the attention, preening like a peacock and fussing over her. He finally floated away and Gabrielle picked up her fork.
"Perhaps you and I are alike, Seth. I used to put my career first, too. And you do, still." She dug into her salad. "This can't be a date, but it can still be a fact-finding mission and it can run both ways. I know you like red wine and this one is excellent."
Seth stared at her, his heart almost stopping. Fact finding? Mission? What was she doing? She sounded almost clinical.
"And I know you drink rye when you're serious about drinking," she said, stabbing at a cherry tomato. "What about coffee? How do you take your caffeine, Seth?"
"Black," he said flatly, staring at her, the wheels of his mind sluggishly turning.
"Tea?"
"If my mother makes it."
"Herbal tea?"
"Only if you tie me down first."
"Favorite movie?"
"Stop it, Gabrielle."
"Come on, everyone's got a favorite movie. You don't have to pick one of mine. I won't mind."
"Stop." He put his hand flat on the table. "What are you doing?"
She lowered her fork. "Making lemonade," she said gently.
"You sound like a medical technician with a clipboard," he said.
Her lips thinned as she pressed them together. "I feel like one," she confessed.
"Then stop this nonsense." He took her hand firmly in his and relief circled through him when she didn't try to tug her hand back. Her hand was tiny...and cold. "You're already dealing with a dilemma of your own, right? You don't know who I am, you haven't seen me bleed yet and therefore don't know that I'm human enough to kiss you and even then, your father's offer to pay me a million dollars to marry you makes my motives cloudy at best. That's your dilemma, isn't it?"
He could see the breath she took was shaky. She nodded and bit her lip.
"Then why do you want to dive into my dilemma and roll in it, too, Gabrielle? Don't you have enough to worry about?" he asked her.
She looked at him with hurt eyes. "It's a way to know you," she said simply.
He felt like he'd been slapped. "Damn it, Gabrielle..." He sighed. "You make me feel like the biggest heel."
"I wasn't trying to."
"I know." He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. It was like gliding over satin. "You know I actually was thankful they bounced me back on duty?"
Her eyes widened. "Why?"
"After I did that stupid macho thing about not being able to stay here yesterday and walked out of your life, I drove away thinking I'd just done the most stupid thing ever. Me and my idiot pride had put me in a place where I couldn't come back and say I'd made a dumb-ass mistake, although that's what every corpuscle in my body wanted to do. I just wanted to turn the truck around and crawl back to you, and ask you to forget that I had been such an A-grade fool. I wanted to see if we could pretend that your father hadn't opened up his mouth at all."
"But you didn't," Gabrielle pointed out.
He shook his head. "I figured if I was going to crawl back to you, I'd better come back bearing gifts."
"My camera..." Gabrielle breathed.
He nodded, pleased that she had put it together so fast. And he stayed silent, letting her pull together the rest.
"And when you went to get the camera, you must have found the explosive and reported it to your superiors and suddenly, you were put on duty again. Right?" She looked at him.
He nodded. "Right," he said softly. "I was told to stay close to your family---you, specifically---until further orders. You've no idea how much of a relief that was for me, Gabrielle. It was the perfect excuse to come back to you. A sap to my pride and dignity."
Her eyes were shining. "You were coming back any way."
"Don't confuse the issue with facts," he said softly.
She laughed. "How did you get yourself invited to the luncheon?"
"You've forgotten your father's scheming, Gabrielle. He phoned me this morning and invited me to the lunch himself. We're not the only people with plans in all this."
"Mmmm..." Her eyes narrowed. "Speaking of which, in amongst that hidden arsenal you're wearing, is there a pocket knife?"
"There might be. Why?"
"Could I borrow it for a moment?"
"There's a perfectly good steak knife by your elbow. Will that do?"
"It's been used on food and I don't know how sterile the kitchen is. I presume you know how to keep your own knife blades clean, yes?"
"Damn right."
She held out her hand. "Only for ten seconds, I promise."
Curiosity got the better of him. He reached for the hidden pocket inside his jacket and popped out the switchblade. He looked around the restaurant, then laid the knife on the table, but before he could lift his hand away, Gabrielle pressed her own hand on top of his.
"Wait." She turned his hand palm up, picked up the switchblade and triggered the blade with surprising expertise. With a quick motion, she lightly stabbed the tip of the blade into the ball of his thumb, then folded the switchblade closed again.
A tiny red pearl of blood formed on his flesh. Gabrielle picked up the blood with the fold of a napkin and held it out for him to see. Seth stared at it, fascinated.
"And now you have bled for me, Seth O'Connor," she said, her voice low and husky.
Seth's heart was a runaway train, slamming into his ribcage. He couldn't speak if his life depended upon it.
Gabrielle got to her feet and walked around the table, carrying the folded knife. She opened his jacket and dropped it into one of the inside pockets. Her scent washed over him, something light and deadly, designed to bring him to his knees if he wasn't already there.
She pushed his chair back a few inches from the table, moving it easily, for it was on wheels. She sat in his lap, her arms around his neck. It brought her face level with his. Seth found himself holding her, his hand on her hips, which were also pressed up against his belly and other parts of his anatomy, which were suddenly alert and straining for attention. He swallowed. His throat was as dry as a dessert.
"You know what comes next, Seth O'Connor," she whispered.
"God, yes," he groaned, and kissed her.
It was ambrosia. Beyond his expectations and he had been anticipating what she would taste like since that moment in his truck yesterday afternoon, despite his best intentions not to linger over it. But as his lips pressed against hers, she gave a little moan and pushed against his chest, and he was lost.
He gathered her in his arms, and devoured her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth so he could taste all of her, every inch at once. He held her head steady with his hand, and explored the soft fullness of her lips with his, probing with his tongue, before going back to simply kissing her. Kissing her was glorious. He could kiss her forever, if his body didn't wind up to a full meltdown in the meantime.
She was so small against him. Small, soft and writhing with potential passion that made him wish they were somewhere way more private.
But then even simple concerns like privacy melted away as her delicate scent wreathed around his head and enveloped him. She tasted of apricots and vanilla. Combined with the womanly, natural scent of her, it was enough for Seth to abandon coherent thought and sink into the sea of sensations Gabrielle offered.
He pulled her up hard against him and groaned at the impact. Gabrielle gasped and he drew the delightful sound into his mouth and down into his lungs.
He feasted on her lips, the soft fullness of them. Gabrielle shuddered and wriggled on his lap so he thrust his hand into her hair and held her head still so that he could explore properly. Her body continued to squirm against him, which caused her full, hard-tipped breasts to brush across his upper abdomen in a way that sent ripples and spasms straight to his groin.
Gabrielle panted and clung to him. Her hands were inside his jacket...inside his shirt. Seth blinked, lifting his lips from hers. It was suddenly bright in the restaurant, like they had hit a dimmer switch and cranked it all the way up.
How had Gabrielle got her hands inside his shirt without him noticing? He didn't even mind that she had probably had to slide her hands around his gun harness to do so. It didn't seem to bother her in the slightest. She was looking at him with sleepy eyes. "Seth," she murmured. "Oh, Seth..."
His heart leapt. He could live forever just hearing her say his name that way.
"We can't stay here," he said. He wasn't surprised to hear his voice emerge rough and strained. "And I won't insist on my cabin as it's such a memory maker for you."
She buttoned his shirt with hands that trembled. "Let's go somewhere where my family---my father---won't be able to reach us so easily, Seth."
"You have somewhere in mind?"
She smiled. It was a slow, wicked smile that made his heart stop and his pulse rise once more. "They rent rooms here, too."
Gabrielle giggled as Seth closed the door and locked it. He lifted a brow as he threw their coats on the chair next to the TV cabinet.
"I've never done this before," she confessed.
"Never?" He looked surprised.
"I know...that wicked Hollywood brat history of mine." She sat on one of the beds. "You'd be surprised how much of the tabloid stuff is pure fiction, Seth."
"I probably wouldn't be," Seth said. He sat on the bed opposite her. "The headlines are too ridiculous to be true, to my mind." He dug inside his jacket and pulled out his cell phone. "I have to make a call. Business, sorry. It'll take three minutes, then business is done for the night."
"To Tyler, downstairs?"
He looked surprised, then nodded. "Yes, to Tyler. He needs to know where we are." He punched in a number and listened. "Tyler, thanks for getting here so fast. I wasn't expecting help, but I'm damned glad to have it...We're upstairs. Room 213 and locked in. For the night." The look he sent Gabrielle was hot and thick with implied promise. She shivered.
"Get some sleep," Seth said into the phone and disconnected. He put the cell phone on the night table between the beds and stood up. "You felt my gun, earlier, when you were kissing me, didn't you?"
Gabrielle could feel herself blushing, which was utterly ridiculous. She was a grown woman and had simulated wild, frantic lovemaking on screen, buck naked, for millions of movie-goers. Why did the mention of simple kissing make her coy? She nodded.
"So if I pull out all my weapons and pile them on the bureau, you're not going to go all weak-kneed and feminine?" Seth asked.
"I could probably disassemble and reload the Glock under your armpit quicker than you can," she said, at last feeling like she was on territory she knew.
Seth's eyes got bigger. "Excuse me?"
"I thought the Browning or the SIG P220 were standard issue for Canadian infantry?"
Seth sat on the bed again. "Just what was in that file, again?" he asked.
She smiled, enjoying Seth's surprise. "Nothing about what you're carrying around inside your clothes. I figured that out for myself a few moments ago. I have pretty good touch-perception. Do you remember a movie about six years ago, called Demon Hunter?"
Seth shook his head.
"Most people don't," Gabrielle confessed, not at all upset. "It was a bad movie and it went straight to DVD a week after release. But one of the things that the director wanted in a scene was the heroine---me---to break down and reassemble a long row of guns in record time and he wanted the camera to track me as I did it. No breakaways. Which meant I couldn't get a stunt double to do it for me. So I had to learn to do it for myself. I had six weeks to learn while we were filming in the Mohave and I was bored out of my brains out there, so I dived into the lessons out of sheer gratitude at first. The guy teaching me was closed-mouthed about his military history." She smiled at Seth. "A lot like you."
Seth grinned.
"But I got the impression he was one of those black ops types. Been everywhere, knew everything. And boy, did he know guns. Respected them, handled them well. He taught me everything, once he knew I was willing to learn. And along with the lessons, he gave me all the stories. Military stuff, about what armies used what weapons and why. Each gun's weaknesses and strengths and how to exploit them. The guy was a genius."
"Barty Evans," Seth said softly. "Has a scar on his cheek here," and he touched his cheek just next to his nose.
"That's him," Gabrielle confirmed. "You know him?"
"I worked with him on a few cooperative projects before injuries forced him into early retirement. Barty is an ex Marine and very much black ops, as you thought. He was a small arms consultant for just about every army around the world. Whoever was producing your movie paid for the best."
Gabrielle smiled. "It's the best scene in the whole movie and most people probably think a stunt double was doing the work." She put her hands in her lap. "Could I see the Glock?"
Seth cleared his throat. "That's probably the strangest question I've ever had a lady ask me."
"You can clear the clip first, if it helps you feel more comfortable."
"Oh, I'll certainly do that," he said, reaching inside his jacket. He hesitated, then withdrew the gun from his shoulder harness. She recognized it even as he ejected the clip.
"The Glock 37, using the point four-five special Glock auto pistol cartridges," she said softly. She held out her hand.
"You're scaring me," Seth said. He laid the gun on her hand.
She weighed it. "I only got to play with the ten millimeter. They said it wouldn't look realistic if a hundred and ten pound woman was shooting a forty-five." She broke down the gun with easy movements. It came back to her just like riding a bicycle.
"They're right. It wouldn't." Seth was looking distinctly uncomfortable.
Gabrielle laughed and looked through the shiny clean barrel at him. "But they didn't mind me taking on a three hundred pound demon at the end of the movie. That was alright." She put the gun together again without hesitation and gave it back to him. "I would really like to try it out one day. At a range."
Seth cleared his throat as he put the clip back into the gun, put the safety back in place and put the gun on the night table. "You like to learn things, don't you?"
"I hated school," Gabrielle confessed. "I couldn't wait to get out of there. I skipped school and auditioned for movies behind Dad's back, just so I could get cast in them and have an excuse not to go to school."
Seth pulled out his switchblade and put it next to the Glock. "You didn't graduate high school?"
Gabrielle grimaced. "Dad hired a tutor that made me sweat through my courses on set. I graduated, but only just."
"But that's not what I meant by learning," Seth said. "You like to learn how to do things. Hands-on stuff. You learned about guns from Barty. And you picked up photography from Sofia Coppola."
Gabrielle stared at Seth as his words opened up a whole roomful of understanding about herself. "It wasn't just Sofia," she said softly. "I learned about photography from just about any cameraman and head of photography and director who would sit still long enough to explain light and lenses to me. I...just liked it. It was interesting and it was something they liked to talk about. It kept the conversation off me and my latest screw up and it helped keep things well-oiled on the set...at least, that's what I thought I was doing. I never thought of it as learning."
"Yet you have at least two cameras and a laptop devoted to storing your photographs," Seth said. He pulled up the leg of his trousers and withdrew a snubbed-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver from an ankle holster and added it to the parade on the night table. "I'd say that's pretty serious learning. In fact, I'd say it's moved well beyond learning. I'd say it's a well-established avocation."
Gabrielle shook her head, feeling a sense of wonder and a rush of pleasure. "You're the first person who has ever noticed that about me. Including myself."
"What else have you learned, over the years?" Seth asked, leaning back on the bed. His blue eyes were warm. "Photography and handguns are an odd mix. I'd love to know what else you've got buried in there."
She shook her head. "No, Seth. You don't get to crack me open like a coconut without some give and take, here. All I have on you so far is military record ashes, red wine, black coffee and a tiny drop of O positive."
"You know you have more than that." His voice was quiet, with a rough note she couldn't quite interpret.
"You, too?" She curled her hand into a ball and thumped her knee. "What is it with men and their belief that revealing anything deeper than a quarter inch is fatal?"
Seth leaned over, and curled his hand around her arm, and drew her to him. "Shh..." he breathed. "Come here."
"Don't 'shhsh' me!"
He grinned. "Want me to tell you to shut up, then?"
She sucked in a breath. "You dare!"
He abandoned his grip on her arm and simply grabbed her waist and pulled her against him. The move caught her by surprise, for instead of meeting the solidness of his body, she found herself falling forward as Seth rolled back. She gasped as they came to rest on the bed, her lying on top of him, Seth's hands holding her steady. His fingertips were burning against her flesh over the lowest part of the scoop back of the dress. She kept very still, trying not to let him see how much that simple touch was affecting her. But her heart was pounding and her pulse was uneven.
Seth stared into her eyes. In this light, his eyes were so very blue they looked painted. The heat coming from his body seemed to bake into her. Suddenly, all her demands about needing to know him felt utterly ridiculous. Childish.
His hand lifted from her waist and pushed her hair gently away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. The gesture was tender, but it only made her heart thunder harder. She was trembling badly now.
"Seth..." It was a plea.
"You're right. I'm afraid," he said softly. "And I'm out of practice. All of the above. Added to that, there's a lot of my life I just can't tell you about because---" He smiled a little. "Then I'd have to kill you." He stroked her cheek. "Give me time, Gabrielle. I want to show you. I do. I just have to figure out how to shrug off the rust."
She bit her lip. "I'm not very good at waiting, Seth. Don't you know that much about me by now?"
He smiled. "I know that much," he agreed. "But I'm asking, anyway. Give me time. You're used to men who spend their lives giving poetic speeches. Who can give you the right line at a second's notice and tell you exactly what you want to hear. They're used to revealing themselves in front of fifty million fans. I'm not. If you want me to say what I mean, you're going to have to wait for me to find the right words and the right time to say them."
She nodded. "For that, I can wait," she whispered, "But only if you kiss me now."
He kissed her. It was better than the first kiss. It was intoxicating. With his long, hard body beneath her, she thought she might die with the power of it coursing through her.
He shifted on the bed without breaking the kiss, lifting them both and resettling them so they were lying on the bed properly. Gabrielle clung to him, still lying on top of him. She trembled as his hands stroked her back, making her arch and her hips push into his pelvis. He groaned in reaction, and pulled his lips from hers. His eyes were hooded. "Do you know what that does to me, when you do that?"
"I have some idea," she murmured, her voice throaty.
He twisted, flipping her onto her back and straddled her hips with a satisfied smile. "Payback," he growled and leaned down to nibble, lick and stroke his way down her body, from chin to toe. As he went, he removed her clothes. His lips and fingers lingered here and there to tease as the mood struck him. Her nipples were a target for his lips and teeth and tongue. Her nether lips were toys for his fingers and tongue to play with for minutes on end, as he explored every crevice.
By the time he reached her toenails, Gabrielle was a writhing, helpless mass of jangling nerve endings. She begged for release in a hoarse voice she barely recognized as her own.
Seth took his time undressing, watching her squirm on the bed as he removed each item of clothing, his gaze predatory and hungry. By the time he was fully naked, Gabrielle was desperate for him to return to her arms and join with her. She studied his wide shoulders, gleaming satin and tanned in the low light from the bedside table. As he turned to toss his clothes over the chair next to the wardrobe, she traced the masculine line of his thighs, over his tight backside and the hard hips, swooping up to his wide back.
Then he turned again to face her. He was erect and pulsing red, thick and more than adequately endowed, nestled between the muscular thighs.
Gabrielle had a purely feminine, satisfied thought: "He's mine."
Seth came to the bed, his eyes locked on hers. He took her in his arms and his knee slipped between her thighs.
Gabrielle's heart and soul paused, waiting.
Seth slid into her. She gasped at heat and thickness of him and the delight of being possessed by him. She wrapped her legs around him as her thoughts scattered under the building pleasure. Seth's hand slid under her bottom and cupped it, pressing her to him. The possessiveness of the gesture and the added pressure caught at her. Abruptly, her pleasure leapt, sweeping her up in the rhythm of this most ancient dance. She caught at Seth, her breath hitching, almost frightened by the intense feelings. "Seth!"
He kissed her throat. "Yes, come for me," he coaxed.
Her climax shattered over her, bright lights blossoming behind her eyes, arching her spine and making her heart stand still. She heard and felt Seth come too, straining against her, then they both fell against the mattress, their bodies inert for long moments.
Gabrielle could feel moisture gathering in the corners of her eyes. She wouldn't call them tears. That would be stupid.
"Hey, you okay?" Seth asked softly, his lips sliding over her cheek bones.
She nodded, afraid to use her voice.
"What is it?" he insisted.
"I've...never done that," she said carefully.
Seth propped his head up on one elbow. "You're going to have to be a bit more specific, because I know you're not a virgin," he said gently.
"Umm...climaxed," she said, and blushed.
"During intercourse?"
Her blush deepened. "At all," she said simply.
Seth brushed her hair from her forehead. "All those romantic box office boyfriends and not one of the bastards ever made sure you were taken care of in bed, Ellie?"
Gabrielle blinked. Ellie. He was calling her Ellie. She liked it.
Then she focused on Seth's question and shook her head, her mortification complete.
"I'd like to kill 'em all," Seth muttered and gathered her up in his arms. He kissed her burning face. "Well, I have all night to make up for it."
And he did.
Gabrielle woke to daylight, which meant it was well past ten a.m. She lay on her stomach, one arm hanging over the side of the bed, the sheet somewhere south of her waist and the pillows nowhere to be found. Her hair was scattered across the mattress, it felt like. A director might well have posed her for a "morning after great sex" scene. She never thought she'd find herself naturally flung in such abandon.
She rolled over, feeling pleasantly used muscles protest.
"Good morning," Seth said.
Gabrielle cracked open one eye. "It is," she agreed. "I think."
He grinned. He was sitting on the chair next to the TV cabinet, wearing only his trousers, the button undone. The sight of his bare chest did interesting things to Gabrielle's pulse, even though she was still groggy with sleep. Scattered images of the previous night's activities popped into her mind, and memories of sensations like Seth's lips on her body, his hands stroking her back and gradually moving lower and lower until they were fluttering over her buttocks, making her wriggle and her thighs drift apart...the taste of Seth's flesh under her lips...the satiny softness and heat of the more sensitive parts of his anatomy against her tongue.
Gabrielle woke a little more.
"Hungry?" Seth asked.
"Starving!" she confessed.
"Breakfast is on its way," he told her. "I phoned down for some about forty minutes ago."
"Have you been watching me since then?"
"Not the whole forty minutes, but some," he said easily.
She could feel herself blushing again. "Lord, why?"
"You're beautiful," he said simply. "Especially when you're sleeping." He crossed over to the bed and sat next to her. "You talk in your sleep, Ms. Gabrielle Sherborne." And he kissed her.
Gabrielle wound her arms around his neck, quite willing to let the kiss proceed wherever it wanted to go, but then her cell phone started its heavy bass beat musical demand, the special heavy metal aria that was the signature call sign for one of her father's phone calls.
"My dad," she said. "Damn."
Seth picked up her bag, which she had dumped next to the chair he was sitting in, and carried it to her. "He'll want to know where you are. They'll know you're not in your cabin by now."
She sat up, pulling up the sheet and winding it around her and under her arms, and answered the phone. "Dad."
"You ran away last night, Gabrielle," her father said in his clipped speech.
"After yesterday's delightful lunch, Dad, do you blame me?"
"I thought you handled yourself rather well yesterday, for a change. Is Seth with you? Darlene says his cabin hasn't been used."
"That's none of your business, Dad," she said evenly.
"He must be, or you would have said no."
She winced. Damn.
"Well, that makes things easier," her father continued, sounding inordinately pleased. "We're all going skiing at Marmot today. I was looking for both of you to ask you if you wanted to come along."
"You know very well I hate skiing," she said evenly. "Why bother to ask me?"
"Because you'd tear strips off me if I didn't," he said.
True.
"And Seth may want to come along, which may change your mind about going," her father added deftly.
"I hate you," Gabrielle muttered. She lowered the phone, covered the pickup with her hand and looked at Seth. "My father wants to know if you'd like to go skiing with the family at Marmot Basin today."
He shook his head. "It's a security nightmare. All that open country and public spaces? No, I don't think so. And besides, you hate skiing." He shook his head with a smile. "I'll pass."
She flashed him a smile of pure gratitude and put the phone back to her ear. "He says no thanks, Dad."
"In that case," her father responded, not sounded at all put out, "You two might like to use the Jacuzzi in the main cabin here. I'll let the staff know you're expected. Have fun."
He disconnected before she could respond. She folded the phone closed with a snap and threw it back in her bag.
"His last comment annoyed you," Seth observed.
"He suggested we use the Jacuzzi in the main cabin today, while they're all out skiing. If his manipulations to get us married were any more obvious, he'd have to carry a harp and wear vine leaves in his hair like Cupid."
Seth picked up her hand and rubbed his thumb over her palm. "Have you asked yourself why he's doing it, Ellie? You know him better than I do."
His thumb was creating little circles in her palm that were sending sizzling signals back along her nerves. Gabrielle had a hard time concentrating on anything else. "Because he wants me off his hands," she murmured. "I'm Gabi-hell, remember?"
"Not to me, you're not," Seth said, his voice rumbling. His finger slid between her first and second finger, lightly tracing the flesh on the inside of her fingers. She shuddered at the delicious sensations he created.
Ellie. He'd called her Ellie through the night, his voice thick with longing.
Gabrielle hooked her fingers over the unfastened opening of his trousers and lifted the zipper tab with her other hand. The heat of his flesh against the back of her knuckles sizzled along her nerves and made her heart flutter. This close, she could smell Seth. He was clean, fresh, male and spicy.
She gave into impulse and leaned forward to lick his stomach and felt it quiver under her lips.
He hissed and his hand thrust into her hair. "What about breakfast?" he asked. His voice was thick with arousal.
Gabrielle let the sheet drop from around her and drew down the zipper on his trousers. "It can wait," she told him. "I can't."
\*
"Your suit at least looks like day wear," Gabrielle complained. "While I look like I'm still wearing last night's clothes. I'm going to have to go back to my cabin for fresh clothes."
Seth considered for a moment before nodding. "We're relatively safe inside the lodge grounds. I'll let Tyler know." He pulled his phone out of his jacket and turned away.
Gabrielle stared at Seth's broad back, as a dozen different little facts joined together: Seth's reluctance to talk about himself, to reveal anything about his career and his risky business. The conversation last night at the dinner table, and his comment, 'he's wearing an awful dark brown jacket I keep telling him to get rid of', Seth's rescue of her camera and laptop from the icy bottom of the river, and the need for technical help to save the data on both, the way she had forced an introduction with Sam in the washroom last night, and the flicker of admiration in the woman's eyes when they had parted...it all merged into a cohesive whole, startling idea that took her breath away. She considered it from every angle, her heart skittering. Did she dare?
Then she remembered who she was. Her father's daughter.
And she thought of the prize. It was worth it.
When Seth turned back around, she had control of her face once more.
Seth put the phone away. "Ready to go?"
She picked up her coat and nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."
Seth picked up his and they slipped out of the room and headed for the foyer.
"Where did Tyler and Sam spend the night?" Gabrielle asked.
"They got rooms here, too."
"They're not...together, then?"
"No. They didn't even know each other until last night."
"Your group is that big?" Gabrielle asked.
"Sam is that new."
"I see." A horrible thought occurred to her. "She isn't replacing someone who is..."
"Someone transferred out," Seth said, with a smile.
"Oh, good," Gabrielle said, with a sigh. "How long have you known Tyler then?"
"About eight years."
"That's a pretty long time, in your world, isn't it?"
"A very long time," Seth agreed.
"Is he a very good friend?"
"He wouldn't be best man at my wedding," Seth said easily, "That spot is reserved for my friend Jack. You'll get to meet him, one day, I hope. But I would trust Tyler with my life. I would trust anyone in the group with my life."
"Is Jack in the group, too?"
Seth's smile grew warmer. "Yes, which drives my CO mad."
"Jack lives here in Alberta, too?"
"When he can. He's on duty elsewhere right now."
The natural evasion seemed to come so easily to him. Elsewhere. No country was mentioned. Even American soldiers were permitted to say "Afghanistan" or "Somalia". No wonder Seth's ex-girlfriends had given up on him. She could see how such a vacuum of information could quickly grow to be a problem.
They stepped out of the elevator and turned to the lobby. There were more people milling about the lobby today, now the snowfall had ended and the sun was out again. Gabrielle could feel herself going into defensive mode and even Seth shortened his step and came alongside her. "Change sides," he murmured, putting her on his left.
Tyler and Sam were picking out postcards from the rotating racks and didn't even turn their heads, but Gabrielle saw Sam's eyes in the cheap mirror over the top of the sunglass rack next to her. She'd picked her position well.
They moved through the lobby without problem and used their keycards to open the door that let them out into the private cabin area beyond. Gabrielle could feel Seth relax.
"You relax, yet you said that even out here, there's bug and sightlines. So someone with a good rifle could still pick me off, even here."
"But out here, I've got you covered," Seth said.
"I don't---" she began, then stopped as she realized what he meant. He could use his body as a shield out here.
Suddenly, she wanted to sprint for her cabin, at mach 10.
Seth chuckled. "Tyler walked the boundary this morning with dogs. No one's been near the place on foot. If I thought for a moment that a sniper was in the area, I'd have both of us in Kevlar so fast your head would spin. There's no need to look so stricken." He stopped and kissed her forehead.
She forced her shaking legs into walking again, and slapped his shoulder. "Don't do that, Seth! Not even as a joke! It's not funny."
"Yeah, it is," he said over his shoulder. "Just a bit. Mostly watching the steam coming out your ears. And in about five seconds, the way you stomp your foot on the path."
She curled her hands into fists and gritted her jaw, because he was right. She wanted to stomp her foot. She walked stiffly after him, aware that she was stamping her feet with extra heaviness and hating that he was probably laughing silently as he heard each heavy step.
Gabrielle remembered her plan and fell into step next to him. "When you're on duty, is there anything that says that you and your back-up can't talk to each other?"
Seth glanced at her. "Why?"
"You carefully didn't speak to Tyler last night at the restaurant. Didn't even acknowledge him."
"General principle says it's better not to tip your hand early and let the bad guy know who your back-up is."
"So there's nothing says you can't talk face to face with Tyler in private."
"No." A shallow furrow appeared between his brows. "What are you digging for here?"
"It was your idea, actually," she said, trying to sound disarming. "I can't really go into town. You'd freak, I think. Right?"
"I'd be pretty unhappy about it," Seth admitted, sounding cautious.
She dug in her bag for her cabin key and stepped up onto the porch and unlocked her door. "Is your group like the American special ops groups? Each operative has a specialty or two, so when you're out in the field you have, say, a communications expert and an explosives expert, something like that?"
"That's not just American," Seth said, pushing the door open for her. "That's common sense. Task forces have been doing it that way time out of mind. Even the three Musketeers had a medical expert amongst them."
She put her bag on the chair next to the door, as he closed the door behind her. "What are your specialties, then?"
Seth looked awkward. "Strategy stuff..." He rubbed the back of his neck and looked around the cabin. "Are you the only one who uses this cabin?"
She knew he was trying to change the subject. "Computers isn't one of your specialties, then?" she asked.
"I can run a basic home network," he said. "But nothing fancy."
"What about Tyler and Sam, then?" she asked. She picked up the shopping bag holding her rescued camera and laptop and put them on the big oak table next to the borrowed laptop she was using. "I was wondering if either of them might be able to retrieve my photos." She smiled helplessly. "I'd really like to get them back."
Seth actually looked relieved. He grinned. "I don't think Tyler could manage it, but let me find out what Sam can do." He pulled out his cell phone.
Gabrielle hid her smile and went to change out of her lace dress. There wasn't much in her luggage that matched her mood, now. The sloppy yoga pants and sweaters, ski pants and parkers were nothing she wanted Seth to see her in. She settled for a pair of jeans, faded and snug, and her favorite kelly green sweater, which didn't meet the band of her jeans. If she went outside, she'd put on her boots, but for now, she stayed barefoot.
She reapplied her makeup and went back out to the sitting room. Seth was reading the titles of the books in the bookcases.
"There's editions of every Sherlock Holmes story ever printed, I think," Gabrielle told him.
"That's because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used to stay here a lot," Seth told her. His gaze swept over her. "You'd break hearts in my home town," he said.
"Where is that?"
"Hinton." He grinned. "The apple didn't roll far from the tree." Hinton was barely an hour outside the borders of Jasper's national park boundaries, to the east.
"You have family there still?"
He shook his head. "My dad died about four years ago, so my mom moved into a house next to my sister and her husband. They're on a farm up near Kinuso, which is on the edge of Lesser Slave Lake, further north." Something touched his face---a shadow---then was gone.
"You were going to go there for Christmas, weren't you?" Gabrielle said softly. "And now you're wondering if you're going to get there or not."
He smiled. "Wouldn't be the first Christmas I've missed. They know not to lay the table for me unless I'm there when they're carving the turkey."
Gabrielle drew in a breath. "Lord, how do you stand it, Seth? How do they?"
"They're proud of what I do," he said quietly. "Besides, I've eaten turkey before and personally, I could pass on the stuff. It's always too dry, it makes you sleepy afterwards, and I really don't like cranberry sauce."
She laughed.
Seth wasn't laughing, though. "If it comes to a choice between saving your life and eating turkey, Ellie, it's a no-brainer, as far as I'm concerned."
She bit her lip, her heart thudding.
Seth straightened and looked away, as if he'd said too much. "Sam thinks she can help pull the files off your camera and laptop drives. She has some equipment she says she'll bring over."
"Is Tyler coming, too?" Gabrielle asked.
"Just Sam."
"Well, that's silly," Gabrielle returned. "They were seen dining together last night. If they met us as a couple, she'd hardly turn up alone, would she? They'd naturally visit as a couple. Shouldn't Tyler come with her? And they should bring beer or wine. And we should order in a meal, Seth."
He considered for a moment. "I suppose we can do it that way," he said at last, as if he could find no holes in her argument even though he dearly wanted to.
Gabrielle put her hand on the water-damaged laptop. "I can't wait to show you some of the photos I took of the Sierra Madres last February. They actually had snowcaps on them," she said, injecting happiness into her voice.
Seth smiled. "More mountains? I can't wait."
"Awww...come on. I thought Canadians liked snow." She wrapped her arms around his waist. "I'll make it up to you," she promised. Her body began to tingle with heat and languid need, making her want to press against him even harder. Seth grew still as she slipped her hands under his jacket.
"Why do you do that?" she asked. "Stiffen up like that?"
"I'm not used to letting someone inside my guard, Ellie," he said. "Not where they can get a hand on my weapons." He dropped a kiss on her head. "It's not a trust thing. Don't read it that way."
"I don't," she told him. "But that explains something." She stepped back to look him in the eye. "You've never had a woman in your life who knew who you really were and stuck around after that, have you?"
He took a breath. "Nope," he said, letting it out. "Guess that blows my cover as man of the year, huh?" He shoved his hands in his pockets.
Gabrielle pretended to consider for a moment or two. "I don't know," she said. "I'll have to check." She slid the buttons of his shirt undone and spread the shirt open. With fingers that trembled, she laid her hands upon his chest, delighting in the sight and feel of his softly tanned flesh and the swell of the muscles beneath the flesh.
Her breath grew uneven and her heart hurried along. She dropped her hands to his belt. "I have to make sure," she said, her voice thick with wanting.
Seth caught her face in his hands, lifting it so he could look at her. He didn't say anything, but his blue eyes were wandering all over her face, as if he were seeing it for the first time. Gabrielle wondered if he was upset.
"Seth?" she whispered.
"You're inside my guard," he said. "Somehow you got in there."
"I don't understand," she said.
"I know." He kissed her and it was a relentless kiss, his hands holding her against him, his mouth hard against her lips. It was almost like he was trying to stamp himself upon her. Gabrielle needed little encouragement to respond in the first place and this was overwhelming. She clung to him, almost giddy with the sensations he was provoking in her. His hands were roaming over her body and between his hands and a shortage of oxygen, reality was dimming.
"Seth..." It was all she could manage.
He picked her up and relief flooded her. He had sensed her need. He would make it right. Gabrielle let herself fall completely into the carnal spell.
Seth's mouth returned to hers, his tongue thrust inside, provoking more silvery waves of pleasure that stole her thoughts and rippled through her body in building swells.
Gabrielle felt a wall against her back, solid and hard and opened her eyes to find Seth leaning over her, his blue eyes inches from hers. His hands were fumbling at her jeans.
"Take them off," he demanded, his voice low, hard, thick with arousal and power.
Heated arousal slammed through her. He did understand. She slid her jeans and panties from her hips as he ordered. He yanked her sweater up and unclipped her bra and pushed that roughly up, too, exposing her breasts.
Gabrielle moaned as Seth's mouth captured her breast and his teeth and lips and tongue played with it. Her eyes drifted shut. She clung to him, wanting more. Trusting Seth to give her want she wanted.
His hands gripped her thighs and lifted her, pushing her back against the wall again. He slid into her in one hard thrust, stealing her breath and her voice. Pleasure exploded inside her, making her clutch at him desperately.
Seth watched her, his eyes drilling into her mind. "I've wanted to do this, to take you like this, since I saw you in that little skirt outside your father's study. I wanted to tear that camisole from your body and do..." He thrust again. "This."
Gabrielle gave a shuddering moan. "Seth..." He was reading her mind. She had wanted him to tear her clothes off and do just exactly this, too. The overwhelming lust was rising in her.
"Harder," she begged. "Faster."
"Oh god, Ellie," he breathed and complied. His hand slapped the wall by her head. It turned into a fist as his excitement spiraled.
As her excitement peaked and her orgasm shattered through her, Seth pressed up hard against her, his own climax tearing through him. The fulfillment of her wish deepened her pleasure and Gabrielle found herself crying out his name.
Tyler and Sam arrived just after noon, both carrying two handfuls of parcels and cases. Gabrielle opened the door and greeted Sam first. "You came. I'm so glad you did."
Sam smiled stiffly at first. "Well, the ski lifts were all booked, so..."
"Really? You should have said something. I'll get you on the private lift." Gabrielle looked expectedly at Tyler, who stood waiting on the porch next to the blonde woman.
Sam cleared her throat. "I'm sorry. Er... Gabrielle, um, this is my, um, boyfriend Tyler. Tyler, this is Gabrielle." Sam blushed deeply.
Tyler grinned and held out his hand. "Gabrielle. It's nice to meet you." He made it sound casual, like she was normal person.
"You'd better come in," Gabrielle said, rubbing her upper arm. "It feels like the temperature has dropped again."
"Thirty below," Tyler confirmed. "Celsius," he added. "That's why it's so sunny."
They both moved into the cabin and stepped out of their boots and removed their coats. Both wore jackets beneath, that each kept buttoned.
Seth was waiting in the main room for them and came forward as they entered. He took Tyler's hand and slapped his shoulder.
Tyler grinned. "Got most of what you asked for, sir."
"Seth, here."
"If I can remember that, sir---I mean, Seth." Tyler picked up two of the bags he had been carrying. "Your size doesn't come too easy up here."
Seth nodded his thanks. "I'll be back in a minute." He took the bags and disappeared into the bedroom.
Sam moved to the table. "Are these the camera and laptop that were submerged, Gabrielle?"
"Do you think you can help?"
Sam picked up the digital camera and considered it. "Once I get a look at what's inside, I'll know," she decided. "I brought some tools with me. Can I spread out on the table?"
"Sure. We can eat on the coffee table."
Tyler pointed to the tiny bar area. "I brought beer. Want one?"
"I have a glass of wine going already," Gabrielle told him truthfully, avoiding mentioning that the wine had been poured two hours before and would stand for another three hours or more as she sipped it. Seth's cover strategy was one she had shamelessly stolen. "But I know Seth will want one, and you two should have one, too. We have pizzas coming from the kitchen in twenty minutes. Seth knows the chef."
Tyler grinned as he pulled a six-pack of beer from one of the bags and put it on the bar. "He would. Seth knows everyone around here." He pulled three bottles from the pack and put it in the fridge.
Gabrielle's heart leapt. Yes. The exact opening she had been hoping for. "Because he grew up around here, in Hinton." She made it sound casual, like she knew all about it.
"And he just knows how to talk to people." Tyler carried one of the bottles over to the table, where Sam had spread a roll of tools, and put it by her elbow.
"Thanks," Sam murmured. She was already absorbed in her work.
"You're really going to pull my computer apart?" Gabrielle asked.
"No," Sam said. "I'm going to do the equivalent of popping the hood on your car, and check for water in there. Then dry everything off with a hair dryer if anything is still wet. You don't want a lick of moisture in there when you run current through it, which I'm going to have to do long enough to get the photos off the hard drive. I don't have enough equipment here to take out the hard drive and mount it in anything else, which is the way I'd rather do it. So, a quick and dirty in, grab, and out. Then you can shut down the computer and use it as an anchor after that, for that's all it'll be good for."
Gabrielle looked at Tyler, startled.
He shrugged. "Makes sense to me," he said.
"And the camera?" Gabrielle asked.
"Well, you're lucky it's digital. If it was film, you'd have lost the lot. Same deal. Open it up, dry it off, whack some new batteries in it, get the photos off the hard drive, and use it for landfill." Sam took a swig of beer and grimaced. "It's a pity you weren't using a cheaper camera, one with a removable memory card. Then you could just pull it out of the camera, and toss the camera. Problem solved. But then I'd be missing out on gourmet pizza, so I guess there's an upside." She grinned.
Gabrielle couldn't help it. She started laughing.
Tyler lifted a brow. "What?" he asked.
"Are you all so...competent?"
"They are," Seth said from behind her. "Each and every one of them."
Gabrielle turned, startled. Seth had changed into jeans and a sweater. The sweater was one of the cheap cotton types the tourists bought for thirty dollars, but it at least fit him.
Tyler handed him a bottle of beer and he nodded his thanks and twisted off the lid, then moved to the table to look at what Sam was doing. He shook his head. "Whatever cranks your dial," he murmured.
"Circuits at least don't stand me up on a Saturday night," Sam said.
"They don't keep you warm in bed, either," Tyler observed, leaning back against the kitchenette counter, his arms crossed.
Gabrielle pulled out the dining chair between Tyler and Seth and sat down. "I wouldn't have thought any of you would have much time for socializing. Do you get that many Saturday nights?"
Sam just shook her head, her gaze on what her hands were doing. Seth grimaced and Tyler snorted, a grin forming, looking at Seth.
Gabrielle sensed the opening she was looking for. "Why do you laugh, Tyler?"
He pointed at Seth. "The housewarming party."
"We don't need to---" Seth began.
"Sure, it was a Saturday," Tyler said. "Was it two barrels or three?"
"No, Tyler," Seth said flatly.
Tyler straightened up. "Yes sir."
Gabrielle's heart thudded as she watched the pair.
"It was two barrels," Sam said from the table.
Seth turned to face her, his eyes narrowing, looking more than a little pissed. Gabrielle saw his gaze flick to her.
Gabrielle looked at Sam, who picked up her bottle of beer and sat up. "You can bust me...sir. But Gabrielle's just asking and the tale's all over the Sinai, and even I got the outhouse version when I reported for duty last week." She looked at Gabrielle. "When Seth was running an outfit on the Sinai, he arranged for two barrels of a load of C4 being shipped out to his unit to be swapped out for two barrels of Kokanee instead." She grinned. "Beer for the lads, for Canada Day. His outfit thought he was a hero."
Seth cleared his throat and moved over to one of the lounge chairs and sat on the edge of it. He looked very uncomfortable.
Tyler was grinning and Gabrielle knew he was one of the "lads" that had been there.
Gabrielle tried hard not to smile. "Did you get your butt handed to you?" she asked Seth.
"Yes," he growled.
Sam was watching her and when she saw Gabrielle's gaze swing toward her, she winked and went back to work on the computer.
Tyler touched her arm to get her attention. "You want me to set up the coffee table for the pizzas, Gabrielle?"
She looked up at him. "Call me Ellie. And sure, that would be great. The pizzas will be here in a few minutes."
He nodded. "Okay, Ellie." He moved back to the kitchenette and started digging through the drawers for plates and napkins.
Gabrielle glanced at Seth. What did he think of her adopting his name for her?
He was watching her, as she had known he would be. His eyes were dark with an emotion she not name, but it curled through her and made her stomach clench and her heart squeeze.
Then he smiled. It was a slow, hot sensual expression that stopped her heart and made her tremble. She knew he approved.
Tyler dropped plates on the coffee table next to him, drawing his attention away from her. Seth was forced to speak to him. The heat and promise emanating from him was withdrawn as he turned away. Gabrielle drew a breath that seemed cooler in comparison.
She sat at the table, feeling an odd sense of warmth that she'd never felt before and tried to analyze it.
Sam was muttering to herself as she worked, but Gabrielle had the sensation that even though she had no idea what Sam was doing, her presence wasn't resented. And Tyler's gentle touch on her shoulder still tingled.
Acceptance. Just like that. They had both watched her kiss Seth last night in the restaurant. And Seth had let Tyler know they were staying in a single room for the night. The fact that they were together was accepted and they were dealing with her at face value. As, well, Ellie.
Seth's Ellie.
She shivered. This was something she had never had. Not even with her family, she realized sadly.
Sam sat up and stretched her neck muscles. "I'm going to need that hair dryer soon. Do you have your own, Ellie? Those stuck-to-the-wall ones aren't going to be much help here."
"I've got one you can use," Gabrielle told her.
"'kay. Good." Sam dropped her head from side to side, working out kinks. "By the way. Demon Hunter...that sequence where you rebuild all the handguns. I know that was you, because the camera never cuts away. That was pretty damn impressive for a civilian, Ellie. You must have worked your butt off to learn how to disassemble all those guns and put them all back together again inside...what was it? Two minutes?"
"Two minutes and fifteen seconds," Gabrielle said, staring at her. "You're...I think you're possibly the first person on the planet that ever noticed it was me and not a stunt double."
Sam looked over at Tyler and lifted a brow. "Told you," she said shortly. She looked back at Gabrielle. "It was pretty slick," she said. She picked up the jeweler's screwdriver she was using. "And I wasn't the only one who noticed."
Gabrielle looked at Seth. He was smiling.
She couldn't help grinning back.
Conversation drifted after that, for Sam was concentrating and the pizzas arrived a few minutes later. Gabrielle was content with the progress she had made so far.
Sam stopped what she was doing for a few minutes to eat, and they all sat around the coffee table.
It took Gabrielle a while to realize that the room was missing any of the tensions that usually filled the meals she shared with her family. The only other meals she shared were business meals with industry colleagues, or with the long string of useless lovers that had ended with Adrian. All of them had been agenda-filled.
But not this meal. The only person with an agenda here was her, the daughter of Cameron Sherborne.
Gabrielle deliberately let her agenda go, allowing the conversation to flow where it wanted, with no attempt to steer it. She could always learn about Seth another day...or find out about him naturally and over the course of time like normal people. Why rush it?
So Gabrielle sipped her glass of wine and contributed just enough to the conversation to keep it moving along, but mostly, she watched Seth as he slowly relaxed in the company of his peers. This was more of the real Seth sitting on the chair before her than she would ever see surrounded by civilians.
They kept the conversation on general subjects because of her---the dismal Oilers hockey season was analyzed, and Seth's insistence that they'd return to once again win the Stanley Cup was dismissed out of hand. Once they'd dissected hockey, they turned to football and there, Gabrielle was on firmer footing. She was a New York Giants fan. Sam, surprisingly, preferred American football over Canadian, and was a Seattle Seahawks fan.
That put Seth and Tyler on the defense and started a serious debate over the pros and cons of the two national leagues, which Sam was more than capable of defending on behalf of the NFL, while Gabrielle sat back and observed.
Seth laughed at something Tyler said and threw a comment back, his smile lighting up his face, his blue eyes dancing.
Gabrielle caught her breath, holding in her surprise, struggling not to show it on her face.
She loved him.
No, no. After two days? Gabi, this is just an obsession, the Hollywood romance you've always desperately sought for. Don't ruin this, whatever this is, by slapping "love" on it.
She swallowed hard, studying Seth, trying to sort out the overwhelming feelings, for they hurt as they tore through her. She rubbed at her temple, trying to pretend she was still having a wonderful time.
She looked at Seth again. She pushed all the inner voices aside and just looked at him.
She loved him.
Did it matter that they had only met three days before, or that she didn't know everything about him? She knew enough to know that she would always be safe with him, that he would never deliberately hurt her. That was more than some women could say about husbands they'd been married to for years. The rest would come later.
She hoped. Seth still had to decide what he was going to do about her father's offer. She would not influence him in that. She couldn't. He would see it as more manipulation and resent it. At all costs, she had to hide the fact that she loved him so that he could decide freely for himself if he would stay with her.
Sam rose, stretched, and moved back to the table to keep working on Gabrielle's camera. Gabrielle went back into her bedroom to collect the hairdryer.
Seth followed her back. "Are you alright, Ellie?" he asked, cupping her face.
"I'm fine. Why?" She struggled to put a smile on her face as she looked up at him. The knowledge that she loved him seemed to burn in her chest. His hand was warm on her flesh and his scent was spicy and male.
"You were mentally absent for a while back there. Where did you go?" He was gazing into her eyes, like he might be able to see for himself.
She kept her smile in place. "I was thinking about last night."
His eyes narrowed. "No, you weren't." His voice was low. "I was there last night, too, Ellie, and I know when your thoughts turn to sex." His thumb brushed her lips. "Your mind wasn't on that subject out there just now, or I definitely would have noticed. So where were you?"
She opened her lips slightly, letting his thumb slide inside. Her heart pattered faster. That slightest touch seemed to be all it took for her to respond.
He pulled his hand away quickly. "Ah...that would be the look," he said and cleared his throat. He looked over his shoulder, toward the door. "Sam will need the dryer, won't she?" He stood aside.
Gabrielle took the dryer through to Sam, her heart thudding along unhappily. Suddenly, she wanted Sam and Tyler gone.
She placed the dryer on the table. Sam nodded her thanks and plugged it into the wall socket next to her and started it up.
Outside, distantly, Gabrielle could hear the murmur of voices. It had to be her family, heading home from their day of skiing at Marmot. That meant they had come home early, for it was still light out.
Sam frowned. Something must have happened to drag her mother off the slopes this early.
Seth emerged from the bedroom, his head cocked.
Sam turned off the dryer, also listening.
"Someone's angry," Tyler said, his tone light.
It was a mild understatement. Even through the insulated walls of the cabin, Gabrielle could hear Ronny's fury, radiating from every word he spoke, even though the words themselves were indistinct.
Gabrielle moved to the front windows to look out. Ronny's and Destiny's cabin was the one next to hers and they would have to pass by her window.
They were walking along the wide path toward her cabin, making slow time of it, because Destiny was on crutches, her right foot bandaged.
"Oh, dear sweet lord," Gabrielle murmured.
Seth ducked to look through the window. "That's why they're back early. Ronny doesn't seem very happy about it."
Ronny was walking beside her, carrying her ski boot under his arm and giving vent to his general unhappiness. With the crisp, cold air and general stillness of the day, his voice was carrying very well. Cameron Sherborne walked stoically right behind the pair, watching Ronny with a measuring gaze. The rest of the family were following behind, carrying their ski gear.
Gabrielle caught the flicker of light over Ronny's shoulder and refocused her gaze on the main lodge building and the porticoed public entrance. Several men stood or crouched there, cameras in hand.
"Damn. Paparazzi. They're going to eat this up."
Seth moved to the front door. "Stay here, Ellie." He threw on his coat and shoes.
"What are you going to do?"
"Stay here!" Seth told her, and was gone.
Seth kept himself down to a swift walk, meeting up with Ronny and Destiny just as they reached the section of the path where it turned to run in front of Gabrielle's cabin, which would give the paparazzi a nice clear shot of everyone. He shoved his hands into his coat, suddenly aware of exactly how cold it was outside.
Ronny scowled at him. "What the hell do you want?" he said.
Destiny looked up from the tedious task of carefully placing the tip of her crutches where they wouldn't slip each step she took, as Ronny clearly wasn't interested in assisting her. She smiled in relief at Seth. She looked weary, with dark circles under her eyes. Pain etched a furrow across her brow.
Cameron pushed up behind them. "Seth," he acknowledged shortly. "Thought you'd be soaking in the hot tub."
Gabrielle stepped up beside Seth, her overcoat collar turned up around her neck, her hands thrust in her pockets, and her boots unlaced. Tyler was right behind her, shadowing her, his eyes on her back. She didn't speak, but her glance at Seth said volumes. She wasn't going to be left out, or ordered around. Even as Seth wanted to shake her for her stubbornness, he admired her for it.
"Change of plan," Seth told Cameron smoothly. "Just in case you had missed it, there's about half-a-dozen paparazzi behind you, taking in every move you're making right now."
Cameron swore under his breath. "Thought we'd lost them at Jasper after we left the hospital."
Ronny turned to Destiny. "You stupid bitch. This is all your fault. If you hadn't insisted on making a bloody statement, we'd have ditched---"
Seth shifted his shoulders to hide his actions, then reached inside Ronny's coat, grabbed the base of his throat with his forefinger and thumb and squeezed gently.
"That's about enough of your crap," he told him as Ronny tried to suck in a breath and wheezed.
Cameron took a careful sideways step that gave Seth more shielding from the cameras. He watched silently.
Ronny's face was turning red. Seth eased off on the hold.
Ronny gasped, sucking in a breath. "You ass---"
Seth tightened his grip again. "I can stand here and do this all day long, if need be. As long as it takes until you get it through your head that none of us have to listen to you dish out that verbal abuse. Especially not your wife. Comprende?"
Destiny was silent, her mouth held in a tight, thin line. She was as sensitive to the need to avoid drama in front of the paparazzi as any of them, but Seth could see she had reached some sort of emotional low point. She was ready to break. Why couldn't Ronny see it?
Because he was the one close to breaking her.
Seth loosened his hold on Ronny's throat.
Ronny drew in a gurgling breath. And another. He glared at Seth. "You have no idea who you're messing with." His voice was hoarse from the pressure Seth had been applying.
Seth had heard threats from enemies that actually meant something, before. He smiled. "I'm not messing with you, Ronny. I'm telling you. You'd better listen. What you do with your wife in private is your business. But don't do it out here where the world can see."
Ronny's eyes slid sideways. For the first time he seemed to really process the fact that the paparazzi were there and recording everything they were doing.
"If you've got issues, be an adult and deal with them behind closed doors," Seth finished. "You just look stupid hanging out the family linen this way."
Ronny took a breath. Swallowed.
Seth let the man go, knowing the red edge of his temper had cooled. Cameron relaxed, too. He was a judge of men and would see for himself that Ronny had let go of the throttle.
Seth stepped back.
Destiny propped her crutch under her arm and caught at Ronny's forearm. "Let's go and get a late lunch in the cabin, huh?" Her tone was soothing, placating.
Ronny yanked his arm out of her grip, like her touch was that of a leper's. He looked back at her with a furious expression on his face.
But Destiny, already off balance, pin wheeled with her arm, trying to get the second crutch back under her arm. It fell away, cluttering onto the paving with a hollow clatter.
Seth was too far back to catch her. He lunged forward, but Destiny was falling backwards. She plopped into three feet of fresh, powdery snow with a breathless shriek. Seth heard the rapid click of auto-shutters on the paparazzi cameras and winced.
"Oy vey," Cameron muttered.
"Right," Seth said. He grabbed Ronny by the scruff of the neck. "Screw being nice." He glanced at Gabrielle. "Can you and your father help Destiny back to her cabin?"
"I'm coming with you," Cameron said shortly.
"I'll be fine," Gabrielle told him. "Go. The hounds have smelled blood."
Tyler nodded slightly. I've got her.
Sidney and Madison and Gabrielle's mother were already gathering around, helping Destiny back on her feet, masking her from the paparazzi. They would make sure she got back to the cabin.
Ronny was scrabbling and scraping at Seth's fist, trying to get him to let go of his coat. He was making coughing and gurgling noises, which probably meant Seth had too tight a grip on his clothes and was cutting off some of his breath. But for right now, Seth didn't care a whole hell of a lot.
He looked at Gabrielle. "Sorry, Ellie. Get Destiny inside. I'll deal with Ronny."
"It's fine," she told him with a quick, reassuring smile. "So far you haven't shown them your face. Keep your back to them and it'll be a non-starter because Ronny isn't going to talk to them once you get through explaining to him why that isn't a good idea."
Admiration stirred beneath Seth's anger. Gabrielle had pinpointed the one weak link in the family's protection against the paparazzi, even in the middle of the current crisis. That required an amount of clear-headed thinking that even some soldiers under fire couldn't come up with.
"Come, Ronny," Cameron said, grabbing his son-in-law's other elbow. "You have a date with a dark alley."
Between the two of them, they dragged Ronny toward the back of the cabin, pushing through fresh snow that was almost knee-deep. It was powdery and light and coated the bottom of Seth's new jeans with sparkling snowflakes.
The back of the cabin was hardly a dark alley, but it was away from the prying lenses of the paparazzi and any lodge staff. The lakeshore started a dozen yards away and there were a few stunted furs there, but between the evergreens and the cabin lay untouched snow. They were completely alone.
Seth and Cameron let Ronny go and stepped back. Seth was ready for Ronny's natural reaction. Ronny curled his hand into a fist and swung.
Seth let Ronny's fist smack into his open hand and gripped it. Hard. "You want to make it about muscle, we can do that," he said quietly. "But I've got three inches on you and about twenty pounds, all of it muscle. Go right ahead, Ronny. Start swinging. Whenever your ego is ready."
Ronny reconsidered. He stepped back and swore at him instead. Seth had heard far worse and waited it out. Even Cameron was unmoved.
Finally, Ronny seemed to realize that neither of them was going to go away. He pulled at his ski jacket, straightening it. "Nice guys, two on one," he muttered.
"While you just pick on women on crutches," Seth shot back. "You're a real prince, Ronny."
"And I'm just here enjoying the view," Cameron pointed out. "You deserve everything Seth's dishing out, Ronny. And it appalls me to say that, when you are married to my daughter. What you did to her was disgusting. I wish I'd had the guts to step up before Seth had. My only excuse is that I've grown too used to your ways. Well, no longer. I'm not putting up with your crap any more. I suspect, after what you just did out there, Destiny won't either. You shamed us all and you embarrassed Destiny in front of the whole world. If you don't go back to Destiny and say you're sorry, using the most abject and profound language you can invent, you'll have lost my respect and your wife. And if you've got any sense at all, Ronny, I really hope you count the later as the more crucial of the two."
Ronny flushed. "The great Cameron Sherborne. Why the hell should I listen to you? You've done nothing but run me down since I met Destiny. I tried so hard to impress you, but you never gave me the time of day...until now when there's a chance I might stain the family name. Now you have time. Ironic, huh? Don't you think it's a little late to be giving lectures? They might have come in a little more useful a few years ago when I could have done with the help."
Cameron's lips thinned. "Are you drunk, Ronny?"
Seth wondered the same thing. There was sweat on the younger man's temples and exactness to his speech that may mean he was trying very hard to pronounce words correctly. Seth remembered the way Destiny had thrown back an entire half of a champagne cocktail at the family lunch two days before. Co-dependencies?
"Was Destiny drinking out on the slope, Ronny?" Seth asked.
Cameron glanced at him.
Ronny blinked. "How the hell would I know?"
Cameron narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. "She had several drinks at lunch," he said slowly. "So did Ronnie."
"Carry a hip flask, Ronny?" Seth asked.
Ronnie told him what to do with himself, an anatomically impossible command.
"What do you have in it, I wonder?" Cameron mused.
Ronnie curled his lip and gave vent to some more language.
Seth sighed. "I've heard enough of this," he told Cameron. "Let's find out."
"Yes," Cameron said. "I agree it's worth knowing."
Seth grabbed Ronny by the scruff again without telegraphing what he intended.
Ronny squawked, but the sound was cut off by the grip Seth got on Ronny's collar. The down-filled vest squeaked awkwardly in his grip, but the parker was designed to withstand the stresses of Olympic level sports and would hold Ronny's weight without problems. Seth started patting down the breast pockets first and found the flask quickly.
"He wasn't even hiding it," Seth said, fishing the flask out. He dropped Ronny back on his feet, unscrewed the silver container and sniffed it. The licorice smell made him wrinkle his nose. "That's odd. Not your everyday tipple. I was expecting something that wouldn't show up on your breath. What is it, Ronny?"
Ronny just swore again. His face had lost any color.
Seth handed the flask over to Cameron, who sniffed it, then dipped his little finger into the rim and licked it. Cameron gave a short laugh. "Unbelievable." He laughed again, the sound completely without mirth. "It's Absinthe. My son-in-law is hooked on Absinthe." He screwed the lid back on with violent turns of his wrist and thrust the flask back at Ronny. "The Green Muse of the poets. I'd been more amused if you had a poetic bone in your body, Ronny, but you run a clothing business and from what my reports tell me, not a booming one at that. So what the hell are you doing sucking Absinthe? Is my daughter an alcoholic, too, Ronny? Did you drag her down with you?"
Seth put his hand on Cameron's shoulder, holding the man back. "Wait," he said softly. "Now is not the time for this, Cameron. He needs to be sober. He needs to dry out."
"Hello! You know I'm right here, right?" Ronny said dryly. "I'm still listening."
"You've demonstrated you can barely function properly. You're lucky we're treating you like a human being," Cameron snapped.
Ronny licked his lips.
Cameron seemed to relent a little. He pushed his hands through his still thick hair. "Perhaps you should just fly home to New York, you and Destiny. Use the jet. We can take commercial flights home after the break. I can file a plan and you can be home in time for dinner tonight."
Ronny had already lost all his color. Now his face seemed to turn grey and sickly. Seth honestly wondered if he was about to have a heart attack. Had long term abuse of Absinthe had stressed him in ways that his body couldn't withstand?
"No," Ronny said, his voice bodiless. "I'm staying here."
"Be reasonable," Cameron said gently. "Your wife is injured. You both need downtime. This family doesn't bring the best out in people when it's together. I know that. If you go back to New York and have Christmas alone, it'll be quiet."
"I said 'no!'" Ronny screamed.
The sound of his voice echoed off the icy lake and the trees.
Seth was startled by Ronny's vehemence.
Cameron lifted a hand, like he was soothing a child or a fretting horse. "Ronny," he began.
Ronny reached under his parker.
Seth was triggered into action. He couldn't have said exactly what it was that set off his instincts. Something in Ronny's expression. The angle of his hand as he reached. The accumulation of details and Seth's sum total of experience with people reaching beneath their coats for weapons.
He didn't think about what to do. He didn't have time, because he was suddenly in the situation and caught flat-footed. He put his hand on Cameron's chest and shoved hard, pushing Cameron through four feet of air, to land on his butt in more fresh snow, just like his daughter had a few minutes before. Cameron landed harder, but there were no cameras to see this time. And he landed well out of range of Ronny's reach, if what he was pulling out was anything other than a gun.
Seth stepped in between Cameron and Ronny and faced Ronny, reaching for his wrist where it was emerging from the parker. At the same time, he reached under his own coat, and under the sweater, for the gun tucked into the waistband at the back of his jeans as a temporary holster. He didn't draw it and wouldn't until he knew what was going on. But he curled his hand over the grip, as he grasped Ronny's wrist and slowed the draw.
The knife cleared Ronny's parker, nicked the zipper teeth with a little "krrrick" sound that made him think of summer crickets. The blade kept coming around in a wide flat arc. Too wide. Seth kept his elbow locked to hold Ronny's arm, but the knife blade was heading for his throat. He threw his head back and felt the knife graze past his windpipe before he could slow it down and finally bring it to a halt, quivering, the blade glinting in mid-air.
Ronny stood panting. Then he swore again, calling Seth names he'd heard more than once.
"That the best you can do?" Seth asked. He could feel blood trickling down his neck into the new sweater. Not much, not fast. Not a vital hit, then.
Cameron was back on his feet. "Ronny, you need to think this through," he said carefully, shuffling forward in the snow. "Put that damned thing down. This hasn't gone too far yet. We can still salvage this."
"Salvage what?" Ronny said viciously. "My place in your family? Yeah, like that's ever going to happen!" He looked at Seth. "Let go of my wrist, man. You're breaking it."
The direct appeal and the glimpse of long-term tiredness and defeat in Ronny's eyes allowed Seth to let go of the man's wrist and pluck the knife from it. He let his gun go and his coat dropped back into place.
Ronny rubbed his wrist, looking at Seth. "Two damned days," he said bitterly.
"What?"
"You've been here two days and you're already more of a real family member than I've ever been. Welcome to the club, Seth. I hope you rot in it." He turned and shuffled away through the virgin snow, holding his wrist in his other hand.
They watched him go. Seth took a deep breath, expelling sick tension.
"I guess every family has its less than charming aspects." Cameron was rubbing his chest.
"Did I hurt you?" Seth asked.
"My dignity, more than anything else." Cameron's eyes narrowed. "I'm not even going to ask you if that was a gun you were going for under your coat. You have astonishing reflexes." He shook his head. "Absurd thing to say, given your profession, but until one actually gets to see it at work, it's hard to appreciate true expertise. The results alone never reveal the true effort."
Seth could actually feel himself blushing and cleared his throat. "What do you want to do about Ronny?" he asked.
"For now, nothing, if you don't mind?"
"Why would I mind?" Seth asked.
"You're the one bleeding, Mr. O'Connor."
Seth touched his neck. "Damn. Does it look bad? I don't want to scare Ellie."
"'Ellie'?" Cameron repeated.
"Gabrielle," Seth amended, mentally wincing, but looking Cameron straight in the eye.
Cameron considered for a minute. "It looks like a shaving scratch," he said, his voice remote. "But she'll scream at you anyway. Gabrielle's movies were all action adventures. She knows a knife wound when she sees one."
Seth glanced along the messy trail Ronny had taken. "Will Ronny keep it away from the media?" He lifted the hem of his sweater and dabbed at his neck and felt the cold tendrils curl around his stomach. Now that his adrenaline was settling, the chill of the day was getting to him.
"If he knows what is good for him," Cameron said. He laid a hand on Seth's arm. "Go back, Seth. Reassure Gabrielle. She'll be worried by now."
Gabrielle was too short to physically help Destiny back to her cabin so Madison and Sidney put an arm each around their sister and almost carried her back to her cabin. That left Gabrielle with the crutches and the boot her father had dropped.
Gabrielle looked at her mother, who was staring at Tyler.
"Oh, this is a friend, mother. Tyler, this is my mother, Elizabeth."
Her mother nodded at Tyler. "Hello."
Gabrielle bit her lip. How to explain Tyler?
Tyler said, "I'm a friend of Seth's. We were just having lunch when you guys all came along the path. I'd introduce Sam, my girlfriend, but she's inside, staying warm." He smiled at her mother, warm and friendly, and her mother unbent a little.
"I'm sorry we spoiled your lunch," she said. "Heaven knows, the day has been spoiled for enough people already."
"Mother," Gabrielle said chidingly.
Elizabeth smiled tiredly. "Gabrielle, why don't you stay with your guests? I'm sure Seth will be back in a few minutes."
Tyler nodded. "Sounds like a good idea," he murmured, looking at her. Gabrielle understood that Tyler wanted her to stay here and not wander off with her mother, where he would not be able to go.
She shrugged. "Okay," she said and shivered. The light coat she wore didn't offer much protection against the deep chill, not when she was standing still. That decided her. The cabin door was five feet away. "My cabin it is."
She gave her mother the boot and crutches and her mother hurried after the cluster of women shepherding Destiny to her cabin. Gabrielle hurried into the warmth of her own, Tyler right at her shoulder.
She breathed in the warmth, feeling it expand in her lungs.
"Your family is inclined to drama, aren't they?" Tyler said.
"That's what happens when you have too many super egos and leaders in close proximity for too long," Gabrielle told him. She hung up her coat and slipped off her boots and turned around to find Tyler looking at her. He was smiling a little.
"What?" she said.
"That's a...very clear-headed analysis," he said slowly.
She smiled. "I didn't say it first," she admitted. "That was Seth."
Tyler's smile broadened. "Now that sounds like something he would say."
She bit her lip. "What would he be doing with Ronny, do you think?"
Tyler shrugged. "Talking, probably." He seemed very disinterested.
Sam looked up from the table where she was still working over the camera and computer. "All settled?" she asked.
"Seth took Ronny for a talk."
"Ah." She dropped her gaze back to the borrowed laptop, moving the mouse gently. Neither seemed interested in following up on that, but Gabrielle dropped onto the sofa, her hands between her knees, wondering what that meant. Ronny had been pretty upset. What if he hit out? Wanted to fight Seth?
But Seth was a big guy, and more than capable of looking after himself, so why was she sitting here worrying about him? Neither Tyler nor Sam was sparing a second thought about Seth.
Gabrielle chewed at her lip. Tyler was munching on a cold piece of pizza and thumbing through the TV stations with the remote, looking for sports results, as far as she could tell, for he halted at each sports station, waiting for results summaries to be announced.
"Relax, Ellie," Sam said.
Gabrielle jumped, and looked over at Sam at the table. The blonde woman smiled a little. "If I snapped my fingers next to your ear, you'd go through the roof. Seth will be fine. Ronny will barely make him break sweat."
"I've known Ronny longer than you. You can't afford to underestimate him."
"I don't know Ronny at all," Sam pointed out. "My statement still stands." She went back to work.
Gabrielle plucked a book from the shelf and tried to read, but the words skittered about on the page. She put the book down, and watched the television screen, but couldn't concentrate on what the commentators were saying, and lost track of the score.
"Tyler," she said at last.
He glanced at her.
"How good is Seth? Really."
He muted the television. "Best I've ever seen, ma'am," he said softly. "It's a privilege serving under him."
"And as a person? You trust him as a person?"
Tyler's gaze raked over her face. He put the remote down. "You've seen the new scar on his back, Ellie. I know you have."
She nodded.
"We were in Afghanistan ten weeks ago," Tyler said, his voice soft.
"Tyler," Sam said warningly. Tyler held up his hand, waving her off. He didn't even look at her. "We were in Afghanistan. We got there because of bad orders that Seth argued against from the get-go, but he got told to suck up and march on. So he did, because that's what you do because of the chain of command. So we're in the mountains with no food, almost out of water and the bad guys are on our tails. We knew it was only a matter of hours before they'd catch up with us because we were too weak to go any faster because we hadn't eaten for three days and we didn't know the terrain. We'd all given up, except Seth made us keep going through sheer bloody will power. He'd just look at us and we'd find the strength to keep walking until we could maybe find a sweet spot where the radio would work and we could get out."
Sam had stopped working. Gabrielle saw her hand move away from the mouse from the corner of her eye. But she couldn't look away from Tyler, whose gaze had turned inwards.
"What happened?" Gabrielle asked softly.
"We got cornered in the maze of canyons," Tyler said. "And pretty much gave up. All except Seth, who literally grabbed us and shook us. I think he might have knocked our heads together if he'd had the physical strength left to do it, but he'd been going without food longer than any of us...but I only found out about that later. He made us climb. Out of the shaft. Up higher. Stroke of brilliance. It gave us the elevation we needed to get the radio working, and it let the helicopter reach us. It also landed us at the feet of a sacred temple that the bastards wouldn't sully with their own boots, so we got the breathing space we needed to haul ourselves into the chopper." Tyler smiled grimly. "But that didn't stop them from shooting at us as we shimmied up the rope. Seth covered us as we climbed, of course."
"Why 'of course'?" Gabrielle demanded, feeling sick as she mentally painted the scene in her head.
"The commanding officer of a troop or a platoon is the first one on the scene and the last one to leave," Sam explained. "It's kind of a stiff upper lip tradition."
"But Seth follows it," Gabrielle breathed.
Tyler's eyes grew somber. "He threw himself over me as I was getting into the helicopter," he said softly. "I was too damned weak to haul ass fast enough. So he did it for me. He took the bullet, Gabrielle. That's the sort of commanding officer, the sort of man he is. And I would die for him, plain and simple." He picked up the remote and turned on the television again. "Yeah, I trust him as a person," he added casually, answering her original question, lifting his voice above the sports scores.
About five minutes later, she heard Seth's heavy steps on the verandah. He stepped inside and leaned over, shedding snow from the knees down, brushing it off his coat and stamping his feet.
Then he straightened up and she clapped a hand over her mouth to hold in her cry. Blood smeared his neck from a cut that ran from his Adam's apple almost horizontally, two inches across his neck. It had run down into his sweater and soaked into the neck. The hem of his sweater was also blotched in red, where he had tried to wipe the stuff with his fingers.
"It's superficial," he said, looking straight at her. "A surface wound, Ellie. That's all. I've had deeper shaving cuts."
"Self-inflicted ones," Tyler said evenly. "Your razor turn on you in the last fifteen minutes?"
Gabrielle could feel hysteria beating at her chest, wanting to escape and explode all over the room. She wanted to give vent to her relief, her joy that Seth was all right, alive and standing there in one piece. She wanted to beat on his chest with her fists and flay him with her retrospective panic. It would express in a few heaven-sent selfish minutes all of the worry of the last fifteen.
But it wouldn't serve anyone except herself. It was what the old Gabrielle would have done.
She got to her feet and found her legs were trembling. But they held her up. She moved over to Seth and rested her hands on his shoulders. She wasn't surprised to find her hands were trembling. "Let me take your coat off. No point in getting blood on it and you've got blood on your fingers."
Seth let her take his coat off.
"Tyler," she said, as she hung it up. She fought hard for an even tone and calm expression. "In the bathroom, there's a small first aid kit. Swabs and disinfectant. Could you get that, please?"
"Yes, ma'am," he murmured.
"Anything I can do, Ellie?" Sam asked.
"No, I have it under control, thank you," Gabrielle told her. She tugged on Seth's arm. "Come and sit over here at the table. Let's clear the blood and see what you've got under there."
Now she was moving and speaking, the panic pushed back and she could hide it better. She led Seth to a chair and pushed on his shoulder. "Rest back so I can get at the wound."
He was watching her warily. Waiting for her to crumble.
She held her jaws together tightly, but she couldn't quite look him in the eye.
Tyler brought the kit and filled the lid with warm water and diluted disinfectant. Gabrielle used the solution to mop up the blood from Seth's neck, discarding cotton balls as they grew too bloody, until she drew nearer to the wound itself.
"Wipe over it," Seth said. "I can stand it and I don't know how clean Ronny's knife was. The wound has to be cleaned."
"It was a knife then," Gabrielle said. She had suspected it from the shape of the long, thin wound. Her gut clenched. "I'm going to kill him."
"Later, Ellie. For now, just clean," Seth said softly.
She wiped over the wound itself and Seth hissed. The thin wound showed shallow and clean for a moment, then thin dots of blood oozed.
"Barely a cat scratch," Tyler declared. "Couple of veins. I wouldn't even put a plaster on it."
"Wipe again, Ellie," Seth said. "Just to be sure."
She wiped and winced as Seth hissed in another breath. But no more blood ran.
She dried the rest of his neck with the towel Tyler offered her.
Seth sat up, touching his neck just below the wound. "All in all, I was lucky," he said. "He caught me by surprise. Last thing I was expecting from him."
Gabrielle grimaced. "Ronny has a dangerous streak when he's cornered. Always has."
"That's the thing. He wasn't cornered," Seth said. "Your fathered offered to fly him and Destiny back to New York in the family jet. Just the two of them, to get away from the family pressures." Seth caught her around the waist, looking up at her. "It's alright, Ellie," he said softly. "Everything's fine now." And he kissed her lips softly, right there in front of Tyler and Sam, before getting off the chair, moving to the bar and cracking the seal on the bottle of Canadian rye there.
Gabrielle touched her lips, shocked.
"Hey," Sam said softly.
Gabrielle looked at her. Sam pushed a box of tissues across the table toward her and touched her own cheek.
It was then Gabrielle grew conscious of the fact that she was crying, the tears artlessly rolling down her cheeks. She pulled one of the tissues out of the box and blotted her cheeks. Then a second tissue.
Tyler's hand squeezed her shoulder and it felt warmer and truer than many hugs she'd had in her life.
Seth poured two stiff fingers of the rye and took a deep swallow.
"We're going to have to get you another shirt," Gabrielle told him. "You've ruined that one."
He grinned. "We can send Ronny the bill." He took another mouthful of rye, then lowered the glass, looking at the laptop Sam was working on. "They're your photos, Ellie?"
Gabrielle turned to check. Sam was busy transferring photos from the camera to the borrowed laptop, and Gabrielle caught her breath. "Yes!" she breathed, thrilled. "That's them!" She moved around the table. "You did it, Sam!"
"Yes, ma'am," Sam said quietly.
Seth and Tyler came and stood behind her, watching as the photos flipped one after another on the screen, holding for perhaps ten seconds as the software transferred the image to the laptop's hard drive.
"You know some very interesting people, Ellie," Tyler murmured.
"Comes from being part of my family," Gabrielle replied.
Seth's hand settled on her shoulder. "These are very good," he said, his voice warm. "At least, I think they are. I'm not an expert. Has an expert ever seen your work, Ellie?"
"God, no!" she said quickly. Fervently. "I live and work in Hollywood, Seth. I'm surrounded by the best of the best photographers and cinematographers in the world. I'm not about to expose my little efforts to any of them. Gabi-Hell dabbles at photo-portraiture? You know what the media would make of that?" She shuddered.
The individual photo displays ceased and the software assembled all the photos on the screen in long strips of thumbnail images, one above the other.
Seth studied them. He circled a group of them with his finger. "Could I see those, Sam?"
Sam enlarged them on the screen and arranged them in date and time order. The images were of Destiny and Ronny, which Gabrielle had taken at Thanksgiving at her father's house in New York. Gabrielle had spent most of the day behind her camera, she remembered. The five shots that Sam expanded on the screen were taken over the day, some of them within minutes of each other, and they almost told a story. The first was of Ronny and Destiny clutching a crystal glass each, their shoulders nearly touching. A less than happy couple, as they stared off in opposite directions.
Seth tapped the image and looked down at her. "Ronny is an alcoholic, Ellie. His favorite drink is Absinthe."
Gabrielle nodded. The news was not the shock it should have been. Over the years she had absorbed enough signs and signals that now Seth's pronouncement merely confirmed what she had already subconsciously known.
Tyler gave a low whistle. "Absinthe is still manufactured with the thujone in it, even here in Canada. Depending on where he gets the Absinthe, he could be dealing with more than just getting falling down drunk."
"And Destiny?" Gabrielle asked, looking at her sister's sad eyes in the photo. "Her, too?"
Seth took a breath. "We don't know yet," he said gently. "But maybe, Ellie."
She nodded. It would be just like Ronny to bring her sister down with him. Destiny was.... The only word Gabrielle could think of was 'weak'. Destiny was weak in that way. She would join Ronny in this form of hell because he was her husband. For love.
Gabrielle sighed.
Seth touched the next image, and Sam scaled it up to fill the screen.
Gabrielle had caught the pair of them arguing. Ronny's fury was almost frightening even in retrospect. His tendons strained at his neck, and his lips were white. His eyes bulged, and his chin jutted forward as he spoke to Destiny. He had a hand flung out, gesturing to something, and Gabrielle was quite sure he was comparing Destiny to someone else, and finding her lacking in some way. It occurred to her that she'd heard him do that a lot, over the years. There was a void in Destiny's face, a stoical acceptance. Waiting it out.
But there was hurt in her eyes. And a nearly empty glass in her hand.
"He doesn't look very happy, does he?"
"Nor does Destiny," Gabrielle murmured.
"Next one," Seth murmured.
Sam flipped the next image up to full screen size immediately. Everyone either gasped, or drew in a breath.
"I can't believe it," Tyler said after a moment. "Are they the same people?"
"Amazing, isn't it?" Gabrielle said, a touch bitterly. "Welcome to Hollywood."
The image staring at them was one she had taken of the family dinner itself. A long elegant table, white cloth, candles, flowers from Saks, Italian crystal, her mother's Bohemian china, and the black teak chairs, and her overpowering family having a wonderful time in their usual push-and-shove way. The photo focused on Destiny and Ronny. Ronny had his arm around Destiny and both of them were laughing right along with the rest of the family, their eyes sparkling. Destiny was reaching out with her hand to help pass a plate. Their faces were glowing.
"Night and day," Sam murmured. "How do they fake that?"
"They're not, exactly," Gabrielle said. "At that moment, they probably were that happy. Just for that moment."
"And the next photo?" Seth asked.
The next one was also greeted with silence. It showed Destiny in the foreground, her back slumped against a wall, a drink in her hand again, lifted to her lips. All signs of happiness had gone. In the background, outlined by the last of the afternoon sun filtering through a window and slightly out of focus by the long lens Gabrielle had used, Ronny was talking on his cell phone. By the tension in his body, the hand clutched to his temple, it was not a pleasant call.
"Next," Seth said.
The next image was taken only a few moments later, after Ronny's call was finished. Destiny and Ronny were arguing again, both standing in the pool of light. Gabrielle had refocused, and now the tension was sharp and delineated in both bodies. Destiny's glass was empty once more.
Gabrielle turned away from the laptop, sadness gripping her. She sat on the sofa, her hands between her knees.
Seth sat on the coffee table in front of her. "I'm sorry, Ellie."
"There's nothing to be sorry for. My family has some issues. I'll get over it."
He nodded. "But you have to know you have an astounding talent with the camera. You must know that. You've been around the best and you know what good means."
"It's a subjective thing, Seth." She tried to smile at him. "The camera was only ever meant to be something fun to pass the time and give me something to talk about with the crew. If I start measuring how good I am, then it's not going to be fun anymore."
His eyes wouldn't let her look away from him. "I think it stopped being fun for you a long time ago," he said, his voice low. "I think it turned into something else. Something that you won't admit to yourself." Then he shrugged, a small movement of his shoulders. "Sometimes, I think you like being lost, Ellie."
She gasped, stung. But before she could respond, he stood up. "Would you mind if I took copies of some of your photos?"
"No, of course not," she said. "But why?"
"Personal use," he said, with a small smile. He moved back to the table, where Sam was packing away her tools and equipment.
Tyler was shrugging into his coat, sliding on his boots.
Gabrielle registered the movements. They were going. Leaving her alone with Seth.
She looked at Seth. He was watching her, the blue of his eyes dark with unspoken emotion. She didn't need words to know what he was feeling. It seemed to fill the room suddenly. To heat her from top to toe.
She cleared her throat. "Sam...thank you. What can I say? You're a marvel. How can I thank you?"
Sam smiled. "No need. I liked the challenge. Thanks for the pizza." She nodded at Seth. "Sir."
Tyler picked up Sam's bags and carried them to the door while she put on her coat and shoes. Seth opened the door for them and stepped out, talking quietly. Orders, Gabrielle assumed. They were all on duty, after all.
She shivered.
Seth stepped back inside, bringing with him a swirl of cold air. He paused in the middle of the floor, studying her.
"Did you learn enough about me, Gabrielle?" His voice was low.
"You knew!" she gasped.
His smile was slow and easy. "Not at first. You're almost as devious as your father, I give you that. Your motives are purer, that's what let me figure it out." He pushed his hands into his pockets. "Although, you realize that it has been a two-way street, Ellie? I have learned---and so have Sam and Tyler---far more about you and your family than you are aware of, than you may even be comfortable with us knowing."
She took a breath, reaching for calm, as she considered that idea. "Tyler and Sam are your people. I don't mind."
Seth blinked. "That's twice you've surprised me, Ellie. You have a way of doing that, just when I think I've got you figured out." His voice was husky, thick with some emotion she couldn't name, but the sound of it made her heart thump and her knees weaken. Her flesh seemed to zap with nerve endings suddenly alive and sensitive.
Seth moved closer. "I have a question." His breath fanned her cheek.
"What is it?" It was much too hot in here.
"Could I take you out to dinner again tonight?"
"No."
"No?" His brow lifted.
She reached for his belt buckle and slid the belt undone. His heavy indrawn breath delighted her. She gripped both ends of the belt and looked up at him. "I want you for dinner," she said. "And I want you to stay here tonight. We'll fit food in around the edges somewhere."
Seth's hand curled around her neck. "Who needs food?" he muttered, as his lips came down on hers.
\*
She stripped him bare right there in the living room and when she was done, Seth was ready for her. But Gabrielle couldn't stop running her hands all over his body. She couldn't stop pressing her lips against his flesh.
She reached for his lips and Seth lifted her up, his hands around her waist. Gabrielle wrapped her legs around him and kissed him hard. "Make love to me, Seth," she whispered. "In my bed."
He didn't object to her phrasing. Instead he pulled her tighter against him. He strode through to the bedroom and climbed onto the bed while still holding her. He knelt on the bed and brushed her hair from her face. His blue eyes gazed into hers, probably seeing everything there was to see of her soul.
Gabrielle let him look. She had nothing more to hide, anyway, except her love for him.
"Your lips are so perfect," he said. His voice was rough, thick with the growing passion that would end with him crying her name as he thrust into her. Just the sound of it now made her shudder with the promise of it.
Seth held her face still with his big hand as he kissed her, his mouth moving over her lips.
He made love to her with a tenderness that was completely at odds with the hard, quick taking of that afternoon, up against the wall. It was utterly selfless, completely focused upon her. Gabrielle found herself thrashing on the bed beneath Seth, straining for release, crying for mercy with a voice so utterly unlike her own, or anything like the studied, sexy, used voices she projected in movies. This was a husky, tormented woman driven by extremes of passion. This was a Gabrielle she didn't know.
This was the Ellie that Seth was forming.
After Seth had at last spared her, by driving into her and giving her the climax she craved as he reached for his own, back-arching one, Gabrielle fell back upon the sheets, completely limp, weak and voiceless.
Seth drew her up against him, curling her into his body like a big 'C' wrapped around a small 'c'. She felt his lips against her neck, just under her ear.
"You could be fatal to me, Ellie," he murmured.
Her heart tried to startle. Alarm tried to filter through her. But her biorhythms were too powerful.
She slept.
The fourth time Seth's cell phone rang with her father's private phone number inside five minutes, Gabrielle sighed and picked up the phone and answered it. "It's me, Dad. And if you say a word I'll hang up. Why didn't you just leave a message like normal people do?"
"Why didn't Seth just answer the phone like normal people do?"
Gabrielle felt Seth's hand on her ankle and caught her breath. "He was in the shower." His hand slid up her leg, pushing the sheet aside, caressing her skin, turning her limbs to liquid.
Her father hesitated. "From the emphasis in your words, I gather he's no longer in the shower?"
She smiled happily, unable to do anything else, and held out the phone. "My father," she told Seth.
"I heard," he said, taking the phone and sitting on the bed. He wore a towel around his hips and nothing else. His hair was wet. It reminded her a little of the day they had met, when he had fished her from the river.
"Cameron, you're either up early or you had a restless night," Seth said into the phone.
Gabrielle tuned out the electronic gabble of her father's voice and watched the play of muscles under Seth's flesh and simply enjoyed the morning light. She wished vaguely she had her camera here but was too contented to move and get it.
Seth was frowning as he listened. "I could, yes," he said at last. He sounded wildly reluctant.
Gabrielle stirred herself and sat up, shamelessly trying to hear what her father was saying, now. Seth had his head turned away from her, so all she could see was his back and the red scar.
"Twenty minutes," Seth finally said and disconnected. He dropped the phoned onto the mattress and looked at it.
"My father just talked you into doing something in twenty minutes time that you don't want to do," Gabrielle guessed.
"Breakfast with him." Seth looked at her. "Alone."
She wrapped the sheet around herself, considering. "He has a proposal. He wants to talk business and he doesn't want me there, spoiling things, because he knows I know how his mind works."
Seth nodded. "That much, I figured," he said grimly. "Your father is a hard man to say 'no' to in the short term."
"It's just breakfast."
Seth grinned. "I wanted you for breakfast."
She could feel her cheeks heating. "I'll just have to be brunch and your post-mortem meeting."
Seth pushed the phone around the bed with his finger. "I'll have to leave Tyler or Sam here," he said softly. "Do you have a preference, Gabrielle?" He lifted his head to look at her.
The reminder of her status as a target made her stomach clench, but she drew in a breath and let it pass. "Either, Seth. Whatever works."
He nodded and leaned over to brush his lips against her cheek. "Thank you."
\*
While Ellie cleaned and played with her cameras and waited for breakfast to arrive from the main building, Sam settled at the table with the latest Cosmopolitan and her Mauser at her hip. Seth was relatively happy. Sam was a crack shot---rumor had it she was better than Seth with small arms, and he held the troop record.
Seth, meantime, reported to Cameron Sherborne's big chalet for breakfast. He was a touch uneasy. Cameron had been more insistent than persuasive, which seemed out of character.
Was this going to come down to a "what are your intentions" interview? Did fathers still do that these days? Even multi-billionaire movie-empire fathers of fabulous successful, famous movie star daughters?
Besides, Cameron Sherborne had made moves to find about him twelve hours after Seth had come within ten meters of his daughter, so the whole point was moot. If Cameron didn't know by now every inch of Seth's life then he was slipping.
Still, the urge to go back to Gabrielle was strong. Seth grimaced at his own cowardice and hastened his stride. He'd faced Al-Qaeda guerrillas with more calm than a single man over a breakfast table.
Cameron Sherborne was emerging from his office just as Seth stepped into the chalet. Cameron took his coat. "Breakfast was just laid out for us. I hope you like it hearty, Seth. Although I suspect you need the calories this morning. This way." Cameron took him into the small sitting room, which was set up with a table and laid with covered plates.
Seth was still scrambling to deal with Cameron's oblique reference to his relationship with Gabrielle, but the aroma of the dishes immediately set his stomach rumbling and he sat at Cameron's urging.
For a few minutes, both of them ate in silence, appreciating the food. The Jasper Park Lodge had a well earned reputation for its fine dining. Even breakfast was a treat.
Cameron paused to pour coffee for them both. "There are two people, apparently friends of yours, a man and a woman. Do I need to be concerned about their presence here?"
Straight to the point. Seth shook his head. "No. I can vouch for them both."
"Are they friends of yours?" Cameron asked.
"In a manner of speaking."
Cameron's eyes narrowed, but he let the point drop. Seth had the feeling it was a temporary reprieve only. Cameron stirred his coffee and drank. Put the cup down.
"It's Christmas day in four day's time," Cameron said. "Will you be joining your family in Kinuso?"
He mispronounced it, as most non-locals did. But still, hearing Cameron Sherborne calmly state it was unnerving. It confirmed that he had done more research beyond Seth's service record. Seth picked up his coffee cup and gripped it. "It's Kin-oo-so," he amended.
"My apologies," Cameron said easily, and waited.
"No, I probably won't be going home for Christmas, this year," Seth replied, and made himself stop speaking. Two could play the waiting game. He picked up his coffee cup again and drank and let the silence grow.
Cameron smiled. He'd recognized what Seth was doing. He gave a casual shrug with his shoulders. "As Ronny has declined the family jet and as you're qualified for jets, why don't you use it? Take Gabrielle and your friends home for the holidays. I had Darlene look up the runway at Kinuso." This time he pronounced it correctly. "It's short by fifteen feet for our plane, but I have a feeling you can handle that."
Seth put down his cup. Slowly. There was a wealth of unspoken assumptions in Cameron's statement. He stared at the man as Cameron picked up his knife and fork and began to eat again, with an unconcerned expression. Cameron Sherborne knew damned well what sort of a bomb he'd just dropped on the table.
Seth laughed. "Now I know why you didn't want Gabrielle sitting here. She'd have buried a fork in your chest about now."
Cameron grinned. "Most likely," he agreed. "I'm actually surprised she didn't add to the scratch on your neck after seeing it yesterday."
Seth reflected on the moment he'd finally had the guts to straighten up and let her see his neck. He'd seen the flat-out panic in her eyes. The sick fear. But somehow, she'd thrown a switch and...ridden it out.
"Your daughter is one classy lady, Cameron," Seth told him.
"I know that," Cameron said easily. "And perhaps one day the rest of the world may get to appreciate that fact, when they aren't being entertained by her endless..." He pursed his lips. "I'm speaking out of turn," he said softly. "Especially to you." He rubbed his temple. "You distracted me. Don't think I didn't notice." With a small smile he tented his fingertips together over his plate. "It's a serious offer, Seth."
"The family jet?" Seth sat back, his appetite gone. "You're suggesting I fly into my brother's ranch, with two friends and a lady friend I met two days before, who just happens to be a film star, and have them stay with my family for Christmas."
"I know Gabrielle means a little more to you than that, Seth, so don't minimize it to score points," Cameron said flatly. "You don't have to pretend you're in love, but don't trivialize it either. I'm not a poet, but I'm not a fool about the human capacity for emotion." His eyes drilled into Seth from across the table.
Seth curled his hand into a fist under the table, as his heart thudded. "You're right," he agreed evenly. "It's more than just a nodding friendship. But my family has never met anyone in my life before. I've always kept things separate, especially the military stuff, and I won't mix them now."
"Why?" Cameron asked simply.
Seth stared at him. "You're really going to insist on an answer?"
"Yes."
Seth expelled an unsteady breath and was startled to realize how tense he was. "Because..." He took a breath. "Because the people they meet may not come back," he said. "I don't want them becoming attached to my friends. Liking them. Then me having to tell them...you know."
"Ahhh...." Cameron breathed. He studied Seth for a moment. "You must be a rather lonely man, Seth O'Connor."
The observation hurt more than Seth thought it would. It didn't just sting. It wounded.
Because it was true.
Cameron put his plate aside and dropped his napkin on the table. "Very well, I won't insist on Kinuso. But there are other places just as enticing. Romantic places that are fabulous at Christmas time. Florence, for instance. It would take several stages in the jet, but no matter. On the other hand, there are commercial flights and if you fly first class and use the Emirate airlines, you can use the private cabins and really understand what pampering means. Or Toronto. The Great Lakes are beautiful this time of year. Anywhere you like, Seth. Shove a pin in the map. Your call."
Seth picked up the glass of orange juice and drank deeply, giving himself time to think. His mind was buzzing. His heart was racing.
What was this all about, really? What was driving Cameron?
He put the glass down, glad to see his hand was steady, and looked at Cameron. "Anywhere, as long as I take Gabrielle with me?" he hazarded.
"Yes," Cameron agreed.
"Sorry, no. I like it right here," Seth said. He wasn't about to tell Cameron his orders were to stay put, because he had older, more permanent orders that insisted on secrecy wherever possible about his role and his status.
A small tick twitched under Cameron's eye. "I will give you five hundred thousand in American dollars in cash, Seth. I have it in a briefcase in my study. Right now. This instance. It's yours. All you have to do is get on that plane with Gabrielle and take her somewhere for a romantic getaway for Christmas. But you have to do it today." Cameron looked him in the eye. "What is so hard about that?" he asked with a reasonably tone.
Seth's whole body tightened up. "You can't buy me, Cameron. We established that two days ago."
"That's just for expenses," Cameron said. He smiled. "And every man has a price, Seth. Every man. Yours is higher than most. But you have a price, too."
"What is so damn critical about..." Seth stopped, staring at Cameron. "You know." He took a breath, easing his heart with fresh oxygen. "You know Gabrielle is..." He looked around the room and leaned closer, to speak more softly and to catch Cameron's reaction. "You know Gabrielle is in danger."
Cameron's eyes narrowed just a little. It was enough.
Cameron knew.
Seth drew in another unsteady breath. "Goddam it, how long have you known?" he demanded.
"Your two friends," Cameron said. "They're not exactly friends, are they?"
Seth shook his head, his mouth twisting. "I've been on active duty since the night I hauled Gabrielle out of the river and I have a feeling you know why. Are you going to tell me?"
Cameron stroked the tablecloth with his forefinger. "No."
"Because you can't, or because you won't?"
Cameron remained silent.
Seth studied him. "Is someone listening to us now, Cameron?" he asked.
"It's hard to know for certain," Cameron said with a sigh.
Sick dread settled in Seth's stomach. The urge to rush back to Ellie and hold her was overwhelming, but he needed to suck whatever information he could from Cameron first. "Do you know who it is?" he whispered.
Cameron shook his head, his eyes infinity bitter. "You think I haven't tried to find that out? Just get Gabrielle out of town, Seth."
"Why not ask her to leave yourself?"
Cameron gave a laugh, a hollow one. "I learned years ago that Gabrielle is far stronger than me. If I asked her to leave, she'd refuse, and I have no real power to make her leave. None."
"That's where you're wrong," Seth told him. "If you asked, if you really asked, she would do it. For you. Ellie has changed her life around in the last three years and she did it for you. To please you."
Cameron stared at him for a moment. Then he smiled. "I take it back, Seth O'Connor. You don't have to fake anything. You love my daughter. I can hear it in your voice when you say her name---especially that variation you have endowed her with."
Seth closed his eyes. Damn.
When he opened them again, Cameron's smile had faded. The older man was simply looking at him. "My daughter really is stronger than you think, Seth. After growing up in this family she is uniquely fitted to deal with the independence needed and the high risks associated with a soldier's life. You might want to think about that before you throw away happiness because of a fear of hurting people you care about."
Seth pushed to his feet, propelled there by an urgent need for fresh air. "Thanks for breakfast," he said stiffly.
"Seth."
Seth looked back reluctantly.
"Tell me you'll protect her," Cameron pressed.
"With my life," Seth said instantly. Truthfully.
Cameron closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath. "Then it's done," he said cryptically. "I can finish it now."
Seth had no idea what Cameron meant and right at that moment he didn't care. The need to hold Ellie was overwhelming all other concerns.
Sam pushed her fingers through the top of her hair and let it rain around her face. "Like this?"
Gabrielle pursed her lips. "Close. It helps if you've got three tons of gel in it and two hair dressers have been working over it for an hour, but for now we'll go with it." She held up her clasped hands and pointed her joined forefingers like a fake gun. "Then you have to do the smoky bar room voice. And don't forget the hips."
Sam giggled.
"God, don't giggle!" Gabrielle said and giggled.
Sam clasped her hands together the same way as Gabrielle had, for a fake gun. She spread her legs, cocked one hip and sighted along her fingers. "Give it up, McHenry. You've got nowhere left to run."
Her voice was at least an octave lower than natural and raspier than usual. She sounded sexy and sultry and with her hair tousled, she looked very beddable.
Then she straightened. "I feel totally stupid. That's ridiculous!" she said in her normal voice, pulling the top of her half-opened shirt together.
"No, you were great!" Gabrielle said. "That was perfect!"
"Really?" Sam said doubtfully.
"It's a pity we don't have a video camera here so you could see the difference for yourself," Gabrielle said.
The front door of the cabin opened and in that instant, Sam shifted. Magically, there was a gun in her hands. A real gun, lined up on the front door. Gabrielle shivered. She didn't even see Sam reach for it, she was that quick. Gabrielle stared at the Mauser, her heart fluttering.
Seth moved into the room, his hands held out. "It's me," he said simply. He hadn't removed his coat or boots.
"You're moving fast," Sam said. It was a statement, but seemed like a question. She straightened up.
"I think the quarry is in the compound and was all along," Seth said. "I called Tyler on my way back. Head over to the main chalet. Get yourself introduced to Cameron Sherborne. He's not expecting you, but I've vouched for you as a friend of mine, so there won't be any problems. Tell him I've told you to move no further than three meters beyond his elbow for the next little while. No matter where he goes, Sam, even the men's washroom, so don't let him try to embarrass you out of the radius, okay?"
"I've seen the inside of the men's room before," Sam said evenly.
"Good. I want you there because you're the small arms crack shot."
"Sherborne is a target now?" Sam asked, tucking her gun away behind her back.
"He was the primary target all along," Seth told her. He reached for Gabrielle, his hand soothing her, stroking her back. "I'm sorry, Gabrielle. You were---are---just leverage. This is all about your father, it appears."
She shivered. "I don't know if I'm pleased or not. This is falling back into the same old pattern where everything revolves around my father once more. But I'm happy to know that it isn't because of something I did that someone is trying to kill me." She frowned. "I can't believe I just put those words into a sentence and said them out loud, in the real world."
Seth was smiling and she felt his chest wheeze.
"Are you laughing?" she asked.
He shook his head, but his eyes were sparkling.
"You are!" she said.
He sighed. "Your sense of humor slays me, it's so dry." he said and kissed her. It was a hard, firm but brief touch of his lips and she blinked, her breath snatched.
Both Seth and Sam turned, tensing, as footsteps sounded on the verandah outside.
"It's me!" Tyler called, before he even opened the front door. He pushed inside, scraped his feet, but didn't take off his shoes. He took a few steps inside, enough to sight Seth. "It's been taken," he said simply.
Sam threw on her coat. "I'm gone, sir," she told Seth.
"Hourly reports," Seth said.
"Yes, sir," she murmured and left.
Seth let Gabrielle go and moved closer to Tyler. "Signs of forced entry?"
"Not that I could see. I looked around in case you hid it somewhere else and forgot."
Seth rolled his eyes.
"Well, it possible, sir," Tyler pointed out. "But the cabin is empty and very clean. Nothing. It's gone."
He held out a keycard, which Seth took and pushed into an inner pocket of his coat. He sank onto one of the dining chairs.
"God, what a mess." He sounded almost ill.
Tyler looked at Gabrielle and she caught what looked like pity in his expression.
"What am I missing?" she asked.
Tyler glanced at Seth and lifted his brow. Seth nodded. "Call it in. Deep background on Ronny Hewitt. And we need help here. The fox has jumped the fence and is in the yard now."
Gabrielle felt her heart lurch as the questions slammed into her, but Seth was still speaking, still saying terrible things.
"We're down to a three meter radius. Sam is on Cameron Sherborne, I'm on Ellie. Until we get more help, we survive on coffee and stay-awakes, and you shuttle between us as relief and errand boy." Seth's expression was grim. "Cameron can't talk. They've got a hold on him, so we have to find out some other way. Call the information in and let's start from there, and in the meantime, we hunker down and wait."
"Yes sir," Tyler said. He backed out of the cabin, pulling out his phone. Gabrielle heard him dialing and then talking into the phone, as he walked up and down the small verandah outside.
Seth pulled her gently to him and sat her on his knee. His blue eyes were dark. She knew already that the change in color meant that just like the ocean, stormy weather was ahead. Seth had bad news to impart.
"Tell me," she said, her heart hurting.
"How much did you understand from what I just told Sam and Tyler?" Seth asked her. "You've done enough action movies, Ellie. You know the language and you're a smart woman."
She swallowed. He was making her deal with it. Making her put it together for herself. "My father is in trouble. You sent Sam to cover him. They took the brakes out on my car to either kill me, or harm me as a way to...threaten him? Hurt him?"
"Make him cooperate, probably," Seth murmured. He kissed her temple. "That's why he offered me a million dollars to marry you and get you out of the picture. I imagine that if I'd agreed, the wedding would have proceeded on the spot and we would already be on our honeymoon in some distant land a long, long way from here. Go on."
"Then killing me was just a warm-up for them?" Gabrielle felt horror wash through her. "Who are these people?"
"We're working on that," Seth told her. "I can tell you that they're foreign and use terror as their preferred method of persuasion. They're known to my people, Gabrielle. The explosive device on your car sent up alarm signals in Ottawa. When I sent photos of the device back to my superiors I was put on immediate duty and told not to move away from your side. They recognized the handiwork."
Gabrielle closed her eyes. "My family is involved with these people? Ronny is involved with them?"
Seth's arms came around her. "I thought you'd figure that out," he murmured. "I'm sorry, Ellie. He's the weak link in this. We have to look at him. Someone stole the device from my cabin. Only the family knew I was staying here and only the family knew I'd retrieved your camera and laptop from the car and might have also seen the device."
She rested her cheek against his shoulder and sighed. "I'd look at him, too, Seth." And she wept a few hard, stinging tears, mostly for Destiny. "I can't stop thinking of that photo of them at Thanksgiving...at the table, when they actually looked happy."
"Sir?" Tyler pushed open the screen door and leaned inside. "They want you."
Seth held out his hand and Tyler tossed the cell phone to him.
"This is Captain O'Connor," he said into the phone, but his hand continued to stroke the back of her shoulder in gentle, soothing motions. She knew the moment his mind switched completely to military matters, though, for his fingers stilled and his gaze became unfocused.
He listened for a full minute without saying a word, while Gabrielle's heart just went crazy.
"Yes, sir," he said at last.
He disconnected the phone and put it on the table behind her. For a moment he said nothing.
"What is it, Seth?" she whispered. "Are the orders secret or something?"
"Or something," he murmured. He took a breath, making his chest lift and looked at her. His expression was bleak. "But there is worse news." He put his hand on her thigh. "Tyler!" he yelled.
Tyler stepped into the cabin fast enough that Gabrielle knew he was expecting this call. "Sir?"
"They tell you about the Scorpion?"
"Yes, sir."
Seth put Gabrielle on her feet and stood up, reaching under his coat. He pulled out his Glock, checked the load and put it back. "Let Sam know. We're going to have get the family together in one room until reinforcements arrive. This is too big now for just us. And we can't wait for the background on Ronny. I'm going to have to go get him myself. We'll keep him separate until it's confirmed."
He turned to Gabrielle, his mouth a straight, grim line, his eyes stormy blue again.
"Ronny has someone else here, helping him," Gabrielle guessed. "An expert. This Scorpion."
Admiration flickered across Seth's face. "Yes. You're not going to like this, Gabrielle..."
She sighed. "The name is bad enough, Seth. Is it the Triads? Ronny was doing business with Hong Kong, importing clothes for his fashion company. If the business was ailing, he might have fallen in with the wrong sort of business people." She thought of the photos she'd taken when Ronny had been on the phone, highly stressed and arguing, even on Thanksgiving Day.
Seth pressed his temples. Hard. "There's the connection. Damn!"
Tyler dug out his cell phone. "Already dialing," he said.
Seth kissed her briefly on the mouth, but thoroughly. "You're brilliant," he said. "Ottawa couldn't figure out from over there why a Sherborne would be in bed with the Triads."
"Ronny isn't a Sherborne," Gabrielle said. "Not anymore." She swallowed hard. "I don't think he ever really was."
Seth held her, wordlessly telling her he understood her distress. "I have to leave you for a bit," he murmured, his voice echoing in his chest against her. "I want you to do what Tyler says and do not under any circumstances move away from his side. Okay?"
Gabrielle nodded. "Okay."
His hands were stroking her arms, the thumbs moving in restless circles, Gabrielle knew with sudden clarity that he didn't want to let her go. Seth was afraid that if he did, he would lose her, because that happened sometimes in his line of work.
She rested her hands on his chest. "I'll be fine, Seth," she told him softly. "You need to go and do your job."
His hand slid into her hair and he kissed her, his tongue caressing her mouth, his arms crushing her to him. He was telling her what he would not say in words---all the things he didn't know how to say. He was still looking to find the right words and the right time to say them and she was still willing to wait, because moments like these spoke for themselves.
"Go," she whispered, when he released her. Her vision was blurring, but she didn't dare blink to clear it case that made the tears fall and she wouldn't cry in front of him. There was little else she could do, but she could do that.
Seth ran to the main cabin, adrenaline spiking in his system. Action usually calmed him, but not this time. The stakes were too high, the odds too weighted.
He pushed into the main cabin and didn't bother knocking the snow off his boots. Cameron was in his office. Predictable. Sam's gun was already out when Seth opened the door. Good.
"Trouble," Seth said shortly. "Ronny has help. The Scorpion. And he's here. Possibly in the compound."
Sam got to her feet. "Sweet lord," she said slowly. "There's only the three of us."
Seth nodded. "We're centralizing. I'm going to get Ronny. I want you with me." He switched his attention to Cameron.
The man's eyes had narrowed as he took off his reading glasses. Now Cameron speared Seth with a penetrating look. "Is this Scorpion some sort of hit man?"
Smart, Seth thought. "Triad assassin," he confirmed. "One of their best."
Cameron sighed. "Ah, Ronny..." He tossed his glasses on the desk.
"I need you to come with us," Seth said. "We have to bring Ronny to the chalet."
Cameron got to his feet. "You know for sure it's Ronny?"
"Not one hundred percent," Seth confessed freely, picking up Cameron's coat off the hook behind the door and handing it to him. "But that's why I'm bringing him to the chalet, and not Tyler and why Sam's coming with me. We're out of time. I was told that Triad forces are in the area and the Scorpion himself is probably in the lodge area. My people are on their way, but they couldn't tell me how long they'd take to get here, which means I have to operate on the assumption that we're on our own for now."
Cameron shoved his arms into the coat and his feet into the boots next to the door. "You're hoping to provoke him into revealing something?"
"I have enough information now that he may feel he has nothing left to lose." Seth shrugged. "And this time, I won't be caught flat-footed."
Cameron glanced at him sideways. "You think, hmmm?"
Seth hurried the man out of the chalet. "You still can't talk, Cameron?"
"I don't know yet," Cameron said. "Honestly, Seth, Ronny doesn't seem like the sort of man to have the backbone to try and kill my daughter. I know that's a terrible thing to say of any man, but there you have it."
Seth considered the assessment with military coldness and agreed. "There's something missing from the picture yet," he said.
They drew closer to the cabin Destiny and Ronny used and could hear thudding sounds from twenty meters away. Not rhythmic, but from inside the cabin, they must be loud. No one said anything, but all three of them broke into a run.
Seth was the first to reach the cabin, but the door was electronically sealed against him. Cameron pushed his own keycard into the slot. His was a master key and the door unlocked with a solid 'thunk'. Seth shouldered his way inside, his gun already out. He quartered the big sitting room with his gaze, taking it in.
Destiny, at the bar, drinking.
Ronny, an open briefcase on the desk, tossing papers into it from across the room. They were arguing. Around the desk and the bar and on the floor about both, were paperback and hardcover books, lying open and scattered at all angles and positions, with pages up, ripped, fanned open. The library case was behind Ronny. He had been throwing them at Destiny, then.
As soon as Seth entered the room, Ronny took off running, heading for the passage that gave access to the bedrooms.
Seth vaulted the sofa, chasing him.
Destiny, standing forgotten behind the bar, lifted her crutch as Ronny streaked past. His ankles tangled around the aluminum pole and he went down with a yell, his face scraping along the hessian floor tiles.
"I'm so sorry, darling, how clumsy of me," Destiny drawled and drank the rest of her gin.
Seth landed on Ronny's back, driving the wind out of him.
Destiny smiled.
Seth threw Ronny on the sofa and Sam locked him in a sleeper hold, half an inch shy of knocking him out altogether. She rested her Mauser at his temple and that alone was enough to keep Ronny sweating nicely.
Cameron came back from the bedrooms. "Destiny's resting. I gave her a sleeping tablet. She'll be out for a while."
Seth nodded. It was probably better that way. He looked down at Ronny. "Why is the Scorpion here, Ronny?" he demanded.
Ronny's eyes got bigger.
"You think I'm stupid. Of course I know," Seth told him. "Why do you think I'm here?"
Ronny swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his extended neck. His gaze swiveled to Cameron.
"Yes, I know too, Ronny." Cameron's expression was one of bitter disgust.
"You don't know it all," Ronny whispered. "You can't."
Seth slapped Ronny across the face. "Focus Ronny! Why is the Scorpion here?"
Ronny blinked, his eye watering, as his gaze snapped back to Seth.
"Tell us why you bought him here," Seth demanded.
Ronny laughed. It was a low sound, but developed into an insane-sounding full-throated roar. This time, Cameron stepped forward and slapped him. He didn't hold back. Ronny stopped laughing, but tears were in his eyes as he looked at them.
"You have no idea at all," he said, looking at them with pity in his eyes. "None. I didn't bring anyone. It's the Triads. You don't tell the Triads what to do. They told me what to do. Don't you get it?"
Seth let out his breath. "They've got a hold on you, too."
Ronny laughed again. A bitter sound. "It's going around man."
"Money," Cameron concluded. "How much are you into them for, Ronny?"
Ronny closed his eyes. "The business was going to fold," he said. "Everyone else in the family is a millionaire at least. And I couldn't run a simple business."
"How much?" Cameron demanded.
"Eighteen million," Ronny said.
Seth felt sick.
"Whose idea was it to put the bite on me?" Cameron demanded.
Ronny swallowed. "They insisted. All of it. The whole plan. It was all their idea, to get their money back, or payback for the debts. Even...even Gabrielle."
"I believe you," Cameron said, his tone one of infinite bitterness.
"I'm sorry about that," Ronny said. "She was such a nice person."
Seth felt a chill settle in the bottom of his heart. "What does that mean?" he demanded.
Ronny opened his eyes. "You said you knew. Everything." Suddenly the panic was back in his eyes.
"Sam, hold him," Seth said quickly, seeing the flight instinct in Ronny's face. He brought his gun to line up on Ronny's chest. "What do you mean about Gabrielle, Ronny? Why are you talking about her in the past tense?"
"The deadline, man! The deadline! It's after ten a.m. and Cameron didn't pay the five million!" Ronny was squirming on the sofa despite Sam's lock on his throat and the pistol at his temple.
Cameron crossed his arms. "I don't pay blackmailers and Gabrielle was safe. I made sure of it this morning." He glanced at Seth.
Seth took a breath. It seared on the way down to his lungs. He replayed again the last seconds of his breakfast conversation with Cameron.
"Tell me you'll protect her."
"With my life."
"Then it's done. I can finish it now."
"Sweet Jesus," Seth breathed. "That's why the Scorpion is here. He's here for Gabrielle if you don't pay up." He looked at the clock over the bar. Ten twenty-five.
He turned and ran.
\*
Gabrielle stirred under the thick eiderdown quilt when she heard the doorbell chime. Tyler must have ordered food. She wasn't hungry, but she wasn't sleepy, either. Nothing was going to make this time go any faster, so she might as well get up and go see who was at the door and maybe try and eat. It would at least make a few more minutes pass by.
She moved out into the main room as Tyler opened the door. He saw her and put out his hand. "Don't step into sight of the door," he told her. He looked out through the screen door, but didn't open it. "Hi."
"Morning tea, sir." It was a female voice, with oriental tones.
Tyler looked at Gabrielle. "Did you order coffee and..." He tilted his head to look at the tray through the screen door. "Muffins and doughnuts?"
She shook her head.
Tyler's hand eased to his hip. "Must be a mistake, miss," he called through the door. "We didn't order it."
"Compliments of chef," she called. "He is friend of Mr. O'Connor."
Tyler grinned. "Well, that makes sense," he said to Gabrielle. "Seth knows everyone." He reached for the latch on the door.
Alarmed poured through Gabrielle. "No, wait, Tyler! How did she know Seth was staying here in my cabin?"
He glanced at her at the same moment the quiet "whomp" sounded and glass tinkled. Tyler grabbed at his shoulder as he staggered back.
He's been shot. Tyler's been shot, Gabrielle thought, stunned.
A second shot sounded. Tyler fell, sprawling, up against the closet and lay very still.
Get down. She'll look for you in the windows.
Panic was pushing at her chest and her mind again, but Gabrielle knew she had to keep it contained so that she could continue to think straight. If she let herself panic now, it was going to be all over.
She moved as quietly as she could closer to the sofa that sat beneath the windows, so that when the woman looked in, she wouldn't see her crouched on the floor. She looked despairing at Tyler.
He was watching her.
Her breath left her in an unsteady rush. Tyler was alive.
She clapped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from making any noise. Blood was trickling from Tyler's mouth, but he was alive for now. His hand was moving slowly to his hip. He was reaching for his gun.
Tyler had a gun.
The knowledge filtered slowly through Gabrielle's scared and sluggish mind.
She knew how to use guns.
The board under the second window creaked as the woman---the Scorpion---stepped on it. She was at the far end of the verandah.
Gabrielle considered the matter, trying to get her mind to crank up and move faster. To clear itself. She just couldn't seem to get it to work very fast.
She realized she was breathing heavily. Loudly. She slapped a hand over her mouth and forced herself to slow down her breathing. Slow deep breathes in and out.
In and out.
And she tried to think.
All she seemed to be able to focus on was the creak of the verandah outside. Each shift of the boards was terrifying. She was straining to hear for the next one and the next. The silence between them lengthened until it seemed like minutes passed between each.
Think, Gabrielle! she yelled at herself. Then she thought of Seth's eyes, saw him looking at her as he might have if his face were only a few inches from hers. Heard his voice in her mind. Think, Ellie. You have a few seconds only. Forget everything and think.
Her mind calmed.
She could lunge for Tyler's gun, grab it and roll toward the front door. That way, she would be blocked from the woman's immediate line of fire by the front entrance wall.
Tyler was looking at her. He shook his head a little. A small movement from one side to the other. He knew what she was thinking.
She stuck her tongue out at him. It was the only expression she knew that was silent and said what she meant apart from using her finger, which had the wrong emphasis. She looked up at the windows over her head. There were no shadows to tell her where the woman was on the verandah, for the sun was almost overhead at this time of day. Besides, it was a cloudy day.
Her heart was thundering in her ears. Did she dare do this? It wasn't the movies. Stage fright was one thing, but if she flubbed her lines this time around she'd end up dead.
She ran through the routine in her head. She'd done action sequences like this in the past. The gun would be tight in the holster because Tyler was lying on it, so she'd have to tug hard. She could lift his shoulder with her left hand as she leaned in to get it, too.
Tyler used a Glock like Seth---hero-worship? Finally, she'd get her hands on a forty-five. It would be heavier in her hand, so she had to make sure to keep her wrist very strong and really squeeze on the trigger...all Barty Evan's instructions came flooding back to her as she thought it through.
As soon as she moved, the Scorpion was going to hear her footsteps on the floorboards, so she couldn't hesitate once she had started. Across the floor, grab the gun, roll, face the front door, and wait for the woman to expose herself in the doorway, which she would have to do in order to shoot at Gabrielle.
Gabrielle hunched up in a ball, getting her feet under her, ready to explode into action. Her heart was thundering now, hurting her chest.
"Just don't flub your lines, Ellie," she whispered.
She powered into action, driving herself across the living room floor. She heard the woman immediately sprint across the verandah, alerted by the sound of Gabrielle's feet pounding on the floor.
Fast, she was so fast! Gabrielle thought, alarmed.
She slid into Tyler, her knee ramming into his shoulder, pushing it up. That helped more to lift him than her left hand on his shoulder. She thrust under his back for the butt of the gun and closed her hand over the familiar square grip. She pulled. The gun snagged. She pulled again with a grunt and it came free.
She was already rolling sideways, letting her left shoulder take the weight, keeping her eyes on the gun, sliding the safety off as she rolled along the entry passageway. She tucked her knees to her chest as she rolled so that her feet would be the first to touch the ground as she came over.
All the stunt work she had done, all the trainers explanations whispered to her now as she flipped herself along the passageway.
Her feet slapped the sisal mat and she thrust with her thighs, straightening her legs. She brought the gun up, already cocked and out in front of her. The safety was off.
The woman that stepped into view was tiny. Not even five foot. Gabrielle fired immediately, aiming for the chest, dead centre. She was barely three feet from the door by the time she came to her feet, and with the glass already shattered there was nothing between her and the Scorpion. The impact of the forty-five caliber bullet sent the tiny Asian woman in kitchen whites staggering backwards until she came up against the balcony railing.
Then she slowly stood up, lifted up her finger, waggled it at Gabrielle and shook her head.
Kevlar vest. And Gabrielle had gone for the sure shot.
The woman was bringing up her own gun.
"On the other hand," Seth said. "I'm aiming for your temple."
The woman glanced to her left.
Gabrielle couldn't see past the door, but the woman lifted her hands into the air in the classic surrender position. Seth had to be standing on the ground, three steps down. But the Scorpion was watching Gabrielle.
Something Barty Evans had told her echoed in Gabrielle's mind. "Don't ever put your gun down, lassy. Not until the bad guy has had his taken away, been put in a cell and a straight jacket and been knocked out with a chemical restraint, if he's a real bad guy. Even then, sleep with one eye open. Because the bad guys, the real bad guys, they never give up. They keep coming at you with teeth, nails and bad breath. Giving up isn't part of their vocabulary."
Gabrielle kept her gun up, watching the Scorpion now, because there was a look in the woman's eye that made her uneasy. Yes, the woman had put her hands in the air, but it was too easy.
Seth stepped forward, just coming into Gabrielle's view. The Scorpion reacted. Her gun dropped down, swinging toward Seth.
"Seth, watch out!" Gabrielle cried. She lifted her own, aiming through the closed door, firing over Seth's shoulder at the single eye of the Scorpion that she could see.
Then Gabrielle got to see what happened to people in the real world when a forty-five caliber bullet hit them in the head from a very close range.
She clutched at her stomach and disobeyed Barty Evan's golden rule. She dropped her gun.
Seth threw open the shattered door. "Ellie!"
She slithered against the wall, her legs useless, unable to speak and unable to look away from what was once the Scorpion.
"Ellie," Seth said again, trying to pick her up.
"I think I'm going to be sick," she moaned. And was.
Seth stripped her and cleaned her, wrapped her in her robe and propped her on the bed. He opened a can of soda and gave it to her.
"For the shock, right?" she said, her voice hoarse.
"Right." He opened another can and handed it to her father, who sat in the chair at the end of the bed. Then Seth sat on the other side of the bed next to Gabrielle.
"I figure we've got about ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the Mounties land on us. Then perhaps another forty or so minutes before my own people get here. After that, who knows how long before the rest of the world is going to want its own pound of flesh over this," he told them. "Cameron, there's something you need to tell Gabrielle. Now is your chance, before it all comes out in public."
Cameron flinched. "How did you know?"
Gabrielle shuddered, staring at her father. He looked suddenly old, like he had been given too many blows tonight. "Daddy, what is he talking about?"
Seth was smoothing the bed cover. "You said 'blackmail' when you were talking to Ronny earlier. The Triad had leverage and it was to do with Gabrielle, or they would not have tried to kill her as a way to get you to pay up."
Cameron gripped the can of soda tightly. "I...don't know if I can do this." He sighed.
"I don't think you have a choice," Seth said softly. "Ellie nearly died over it. The information will come out in the investigation anyway." He got to his feet. "I'll wait outside."
"No, Seth. I think you should stay," Cameron said quickly. "You deserve that much, for what I've put you through." He put the can down with a grimace and took a breath.
Gabrielle put hers aside too, and wrapped her arms around her, suddenly afraid. Her father was looking at her with an odd expression. With...guilt.
"Please, Daddy," she whispered.
He closed his eyes. "Oh god," he sighed. "Gabrielle, I love you so much. Know that, honey, okay?"
She sat, stunned. Her father had never told her he loved her. Never. Tears filled her eyes. Now her fear flooded her. She reached for Seth's hand and he folded her hand in his big, warm one.
"A long time ago, Gabrielle...thirty years ago...I met a woman. A beautiful woman." He took another breath, struggling to speak. "We fell in love," he said, his voice hoarse. "Desperately, madly, deeply in love. I would have died for her, Gabrielle. I think for a while, I went a little mad with my need for her. The French call love the troubadour's madness. I understand that now."
Gabrielle stared at her father, the father she had thought she knew so well.
Her father looked at her. "You look so much like her, Gabrielle, that sometimes it breaks my heart."
Gabrielle moaned. "No, Daddy..."
"She was your mother, Gabrielle."
Gabrielle closed her eyes, brought her knees up against her chest and tried to block out the truth. But her father kept speaking in his steady, precise voice and she kept listening to him, as she had been listening all her life.
"Her name was Gabriella."
Gabrielle jerked, like she had been touched by a live wire, at her father's mention of the name. It was not the first time she had heard it. But her father kept speaking, giving her no chance to reaction.
"She was half Spanish, half French," he told her. "I know you have always despaired of your temper and your wild ways, Gabrielle, but you are just like your mother. When Gabriella found out she was pregnant, I was overjoyed, but she refused to break up the family. My family. Gabriella was, I learned, more stubborn than me. Just as you are, Gabrielle."
Gabrielle held her knees more tightly, biting her lip. She pushed her face into the dark space against her knees. This could not be happening. Her entire life could not be a lie! Tears stung her eyes.
"It might have remained an unsolvable dilemma, but Gabriella died in a traffic accident when she was thirty-five weeks pregnant. You were born by emergency caesarean section."
Gabrielle looked up then, horrified. "Oh, Daddy..."
Her father's eyes had tears in them, even though his voice had remained even. He pushed the heel of his hand into his eyes, clearing them.
"Your mother---I mean, Elizabeth...well, she became your mother than night. She took one look at you and declared that we were taking you home. There was no argument. And there has never been any discussion or dissension since. You have been our daughter since that night." He swallowed and took a deep breath. "Elizabeth has always known about Gabriella. And she has never spoken a word about her. And not once have I ever detected a difference in the way she raised you from the way she raised any of your sisters, Gabrielle."
Gabrielle stared at her father. "You always scoffed at love, Daddy."
He grimaced. "I didn't want you to see through me."
"So my birth certificate, with Gabriella listed as my mother, and all that stuff you and Mom said about Mom's real name and stage name...that was to avoid the truth?"
"Yes."
She hung her head. "Is there anything else I need to know before we go out there?"
"No. But I need to know something," her father said.
She looked up.
"Can you forgive me?" His voice was hoarse.
Gabrielle tried. She wanted to. But the words wouldn't emerge. She wiped her eyes. "Maybe later, Dad," she said stiffly. "When we've got this behind us. But I just shot a woman's brains out a few moments ago, thanks to your secrets, and now I have to face the Royal Canadian Mounted Police because of it and live down the paparazzi for yet another day."
Cameron Sherborne tented his fingers. "Well, aren't you pleased that for once you can point at me and say it's my fault?"
The laugh caught her by surprise, given that it came right in the middle of her tears. She put her hand over her mouth, unable to believe the sound had emerged from her mouth. Then she leaned against Seth's shoulder and closed her eyes. "Just shoot him for me and I'll pay you the million dollars."
Seth chuckled. "I think you've proved you can do that yourself. Come on, Lady Croft, time to face the music."
\*
The ambulance crew was loading Tyler onto the cart as they stepped out into the sitting room and two RCMP officers turned to face them. Sam lifted her brow. "I was just explaining you'd be about now," she said to Seth.
"Thanks," he murmured. "How's Tyler?"
"He'll live," Sam said. "Shoulder and graze over the hip. He was mostly faking it to draw her in, until Ellie went Rambo on him." Sam rolled her eyes at Gabrielle.
"If he's so lively, why are there three med-techs working on him?" Gabrielle asked. "He was bleeding from the mouth, Sam. That was no hip-graze he had."
Sam licked her lips and looked at Seth, who shrugged.
"Collapsed lung. They re-inflated," Sam said softly. "The first is just a shoulder." She glared at Gabrielle.
The RCMP officers cleared their throats and Sam stepped aside. "This is Staff Sergeant Edwards and Inspector Green. They would like a word with you about today's events."
Gabrielle glanced at her father and could almost hear his thoughts. And so it begins.
Four hours later, Gabrielle's voice was hoarse from talking. She had repeated her story to at least a dozen different people and gradually saw a pattern emerging. The authority of the people she was speaking to was getting heavier as time went on. As the gravity of the events she was describing was understood, the buck was shoved upwards. Finally, a man in a somber black suit settled on the coffee table in front of her and studied her. He smiled, the smile not reaching his eyes.
"You look tired, Ms. Sherborne."
"I haven't eaten in twelve hours, and going to the bathroom requires international diplomacy skills," she said. "But thank you for noticing. And you are?" She smiled brilliantly at him, while her father squeezed her hand between the cushions warningly.
Seth, who seemed to be able to move freely around the cabin, came into the room. He saw the man and came over.
"Sir, you made good time."
The man got to his feet and shook Seth's hand. "You'll be reporting in as soon as possible, I understand."
Seth hesitated. "Sir?"
"There's a plane waiting for you right now. I've arranged for you to navigate around the local authorities on the understanding that you be debriefed in Ottawa. The Mounties will have full access to your debriefing notes and they're happy with that."
"Yes sir." Seth glanced at her and away.
Gabrielle drew in a breath to speak, but her father's hand squeezed her elbow. "Just shut up, Ellie," he said softly.
She shut up.
The man in the black suit patted Seth's shoulder. "Well, plane's waiting, Captain."
"Yes sir," Seth said again. He moved away, slowly.
Gabrielle realized she was trying to get up and go after him when she felt her father's hand holding her down. The man in the black suit was watching her with his sharp eyes and she sat heavily.
Seth moved out of the room. She heard the front door shut.
That was the last time she saw him that year.
Gabrielle came down the stairs, eight weeks later, with some trepidation. Her father stood on the Spanish tiles of her L.A. home, watching her descend, his hands pushed deep into his pockets.
He's nervous, she realized. "Is this the mountain coming to Mohammed?" she asked. "It's February. I thought nothing short of C4 would blast you out of Miami at this time of year."
"Then you underestimate your own worth, Gabrielle." He ran his eye over her critically. "You've lost weight."
"And you look wonderful, too," she said dryly. She looked up at him. "Why are you here?"
He smiled a little. "It's time. The media roar has died down to occasional squibs. Invite me to dinner, Ellie. We have some talking to do."
She shook her head. "I can't, Dad. I don't have the energy for this now. I know you mean well, and I appreciate it, but---"
He held up his hand. "Fine, I'll cook."
"You flambé toast," she pointed out.
He won, of course. He coaxed her into sliding on a dress and high heels and just a little make-up, not much. But of course, as soon as she saw her face in the mirror, a little makeup wasn't nearly enough, so by the time she was done, she was ready to face the paparazzi at full strength and he knew it.
They went to their favorite restaurant. She kept her chin up as they braved the cameras out the front. She discovered that her father, as always, was right. She was no longer the seventh wonder of the hour and for that, Gabrielle was sincerely grateful.
Once inside the restaurant she slipped into her seat and let her heart settle, while her father ordered a bottle of wine. She even let him pour her a glass, and enjoyed his look of surprise when she said yes.
Gabrielle sipped and the act of sipping brought tears to her eyes. She had managed to go nearly an hour without thinking about Seth. Now his absence was like an ache, pounding at her head, sawing at her heart.
"What is it, Gabrielle?" her father asked.
She shook her head and took a breath, then looked at him. "So...give me the news."
He shook his head. "I'm not here to give you the news, Ellie."
She clenched her fist in her napkin at his use of Seth's name. "Then...?"
"I'm here to tell you about your mother."
She bit her lip. "Why?"
He smoothed the already perfect tablecloth. "I loved her, Gabrielle. And there's no one left in the world who cares to know that...except maybe for you. I want you to know about her. Love should be cherished. Not left to wither and die."
Her throat hurt, so she took a sip of her wine. "All right then," she said.
Her father began to tell her about her mother, Gabriella Martinique, a photo-journalist. That made Gabrielle start, but she gripped her wine glass and listened hard, and soon found herself lost in the tale of her mother's short life, as the waiters moved around them, bringing dinner, clearing the table, pouring coffee, serving cheese.
Her father dug in his jacket and brought out a flat leather case and slid it across the table. "This is for you. I had it duplicated." He sat back.
Gabrielle put her hand on it, but suddenly didn't want to open it. She knew what would be inside. A photo of Gabriella.
"It's all right," her father said. "Go on."
She opened the case.
No wonder her father found it difficult to be around her. She and Gabriella were identical twins. The woman he had lost thirty years ago was alive today in her body. Except for the change of hairstyles, this could be a photo of her.
She shut the case and looked at him. "How do you stand it?" she asked. "How do you not hate me for looking so much like her?"
"You're not exactly alike," he assured her. "You're not as tall, I'm afraid."
"Ah..." She pressed her hand against the case. "I've had a week of men influencing my life via photos."
"Why do you say that?"
"Seth..." She reached for her wine, then pulled her hand back and sat on it. "Seth, before he went away, asked me if he could have some copies of some of my photos. For personal reasons, he said."
Her father tilted his head to one side, curious. "So?"
She thought back to the call she had received earlier that week. She had been working at her desk, getting used to the new software on her new desktop computer, playing around with filters and color graduations
When the phone had rung, she had answered it absently.
"Hi, this is Ellie."
"Oh...er, hi. I was looking for...Gabrielle Sherborne's assistant."
Her instincts snapped into place at once. "Who's asking?"
"This is the entertainment editor of the Globe & Mail in Toronto. It's not actually about Ms. Sherborne that I'm calling. It's about some photos she took of Sally-Ray Rothschild. I desperately want to buy them for an in-depth profile we're doing of Sally-Ray in two week's time. Actually, we're building the whole profile around the photos."
"That son-of-a-bitch," Gabrielle breathed.
"Excuse me?" the editor said, sounding winded.
"What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't, but it's John."
"I'm Ellie, John. I'm guessing, but by chance, are you a friend, or a friend of a friend of Seth O'Connor?"
A pause. She counted her heart beat. One. Two. Three.
"A friend," he said. "One that doesn't see enough of his friends. He dumped these on me, told me who had taken them, and I thought he was pulling my leg. They're really very good Ms...Ellie. I'm not joking when I said we ended up building the whole profile around Sally-Ray's photos. There's a quality in them that we've never seen in her before, that made Chris, the journalist, want to go write the article. It's taken me three weeks to track you down and I had to pull some real favors to do it. Does seven hundred sound reasonable to you?"
"For the photos?" she asked.
"Each," he returned.
"Canadian?"
"Are you kidding? No. American."
They talked a little more, swapping contact information, and at the end of the five minutes, Gabrielle hung up, over four thousand dollars richer.
Two days later, the editor of the L.A. Times had called. John, from the Globe & Mail, it seemed, had been talking to him, and he was looking for a photo-portrait artist, someone with a real eye...
"What did you tell the Times?" her father asked.
"I said I'd get back to them." Gabrielle rubbed her temples. "I didn't know what to say, to tell the truth. How dare he! If I knew where to find him, I'd strangle Seth."
"Would you?" her father asked coolly. "Really?"
She lifted her head. "No," she confessed, the heavy weight descending in a rush. "No, I'd probably make a fool of myself and cry all over him." She realized she was smoothing the tablecloth and made herself stop.
"You love him," her father said.
She nodded.
"Why didn't you ever tell him that?" he said with a sigh.
"Because of your stupid one million dollars!" she flared.
He sat for a moment, stunned. "Oh, Gabrielle," he said softly. "The man so patently loved you, couldn't you see that?"
"No, I couldn't, not after all the Adrians, and the screw ups I'd made, when I thought I'd had the real thing and it all just melted away as soon as they got sick of me, or the hangover wore off, Dad. I had to be sure, I had to really know in myself, too." She sniffed. "Well, now I know. I've had eight weeks of knowing and I guess I've got the rest of my life to figure out how to stop knowing."
Cameron sighed. "Kids these days..." He dug in his jacket again and put a folded sheet of paper on the table. "The entire time you two were snuggled up in that cabin, it never occurred to you to exchange cell phone numbers, did it?"
Her heart seemed to come to a grinding halt. She stared at the sheet of paper. "What is that?"
"Seth's orders."
"He's been on tour?"
"Afghanistan for the last six weeks."
Her heart lurched. "You've been talking to him?"
"Unlike you, dear daughter, I managed to get his cell phone number within the first twenty-four hours of meeting him." He touched the sheet. "He lands in Vancouver tomorrow, and plans to head to his cabin the day after that."
\*
Gabrielle bribed Lucy with a bag of Kibble 'n Bits she had the foresight to bring with her from Jasper.
It made Lucy her new best friend. The big setter bounced around Gabrielle with the dim-witted lack of sense most of the breed seemed to show, letting Gabrielle get out of the car and move around freely.
Gabrielle parked the rented Jaguar around the back of the cabin so that Seth wouldn't see it straight away.
She and Lucy settled down on the deck to wait in the sun. She took a few photos of the place and of Lucy, who liked the noise of the shutter.
After a couple of hours, Gabrielle heard the sound of a truck coming down the highway from the west. Lucy's ears pricked. Then the setter got up eagerly, heading for the rutted track from the highway.
Her heart thudding, Gabrielle got to her feet and waited. The truck pulled into the track and bumped along, missing the worst of the ruts by practice, until it pulled up in front of the shed with a sharp stamp on the brakes.
The engine stopped and Seth got out, staring at her. He was wearing a travel rumpled tee-shirt and a pea coat over black jeans. All of them, she knew, he would have thrown on just inside the Canadian border, returning to civilian status after six weeks as a soldier.
He didn't even shut the door of the truck. Instead he moved around it, still staring at her. He stepped up onto the deck and came up behind her.
"Shhh...don't move," he said, as she made to turn around to face him.
His arms slid around her and he pressed up against her from behind. She felt his breath escape him in a rush. For a long moment he just held her. She could feel his heart beat against her back.
And she could feel him trembling.
"I know what I want to say, now," he murmured by her ear. "I figured it all out just then when I saw you standing on my deck."
"You only figured it out just now?" she asked.
"I've been thinking about nothing but you for eight weeks, Ellie. I thought I had it figured out, but now I know I do." His lips touched the nape of her neck where she had pulled her hair back with a green velvet ribbon. "You know that night we talked about putting careers first? How most of Hollywood does and that you and I do, too?"
She nodded.
He groaned, his arms tightening around her. "Yeah, well I was wrong. I can't do it that way. Not with you. We're going to have to figure it out somehow, but I'm telling you now, Ellie, you're my life. You're my priority and everything else is second and always will be."
"Thank god," she whispered. "I thought it was just me." She turned in his arms to look at him. "I love you, Seth O'Connor and I've had the most miserable eight weeks of my life because I thought I'd lost you. When you walked out of the cabin that night, my father had to hold me down."
He nodded. "I know, Ellie. I saw what he was doing. You think I went easy? There were too many witnesses, media, superiors...too many people for me to do anything but obey orders that night. I had no idea they were going to ship me out straight after debriefing." He rubbed his thumb over her cheekbone. "And I had to fall in love with the most difficult-to-reach woman on the planet."
"Things are going to be a challenge to arrange, Seth."
He shook his head. "With a globetrotting Sherborne? I don't think so. I'll fly to wherever you are, whenever I can, and we'll call that home, for as long as we can make it so."
"Will that be enough for you, Seth?"
He kissed her. "As long as you're in my arms, Ellie, I'll consider myself the luckiest man alive. It's more than enough."
Other Romantic Suspense Titles by TracyCooperPosey
About the Author
Tracy CooperPosey is a national award-winning writer. An Australian, she brought her family with her to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1996 to marry. Tracy is a net citizen--- she met her husband on the Internet, and has coordinated discussion groups and teaching on-line. She also built and maintains her own web site. She has taught creative writing both on-line and at university, and entertains students and the public with anecdotes and insights into the publishing industry.
By the end of 2010, Tracy had published 35 titles, under her own and other pennames. She has won the Emma Darcy Award, and the Sherlock Holmes Society of Western Australia's Best Pastiche Award. She has been a Romantic Times Top Pick author. Her short stories and articles have appeared in various Canadian and Australian magazines and periodicals, and on the Internet. Thief In The Night was announced as one of RRT Review's Best Book of the Year, and also selected by eCataromance for their Reviewers' Choice Awards in February 2007. Her 2004 historical romantic suspense, Heart Of Vengeance, was nominated for a CAPA Award for Best Historical of 2004, a Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer's Choice finalist for best medieval historical romance for 2004, and was published in Germany in February 2007. On Christmas eve 2010, she was announced as a finalist for the prestigious romance world's CAPRA awards, in the best erotic paranormal category, and as favorite author.
So far her life has encompassed an eighteen month stint on war-ravaged Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea, and at various times she has been a secretary, office clerk, single mother, freelance writer, public speaker, columnist, law student, international traveler, writing teacher, advertising production coordinator (for a national newsmagazine), web-press production coordinator, and the first female cinematograph operator in Western Australia. She has been the editor of WHERE Edmonton magazine, and managing editor of the national magazine, Canadian Cowboy Country Magazine, and for a decade, she taught creative writing at Grant MacEwan University. She currently lives in Edmonton with her husband, a professional wrestler.
You can find her web site at http://www.tracycooperposey.com.

