CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gabe watched Nora leave his office. Any faster, and it would have been a dead sprint. As it was, Sunshine had trouble keeping up on her stiff legs.
Did he want to go out to dinner? No. He’d had a big lunch, but it wasn’t the reason he’d said no. Did he want to go over to her apartment?
He let out a shuddering breath.
He wanted to go over to her apartment, throw her on her bed, and finally know how it felt to make love to Nora Bowman.
The problem was, he knew she’d change his world. She’d been changing it from the moment he’d seen her on the street as he left the gym. He’d moved her out of his way and felt an electric snap of connection that sizzled along every nerve ending in his body and drove deep, all the way down to his bones. If he let himself have her, he’d lose control. Of everything.
And Gabe liked control.
He’d said no, seen the hurt in her eyes, and had to sit there and watch her damn near run away from him.
He snatched his cell phone from where it was acting as a paperweight on a stack of quarterly projections, and dialed.
“Hi, Gabe,” Elle Finley said at the other end, sounding harried. “This isn’t a good time. I’m at work.”
“Won’t take long. I don’t want to talk to you, anyway.”
“Then why did you call me? Hold on.”
He listened as she had a soothing conversation with a shrill-voiced woman in the background. Elle was a nurse at a doctor’s clinic in Emerson, and she was used to dealing with fractious and demanding people on a daily basis.
It was why they got on so well.
“I’m back,” she said. “I can give you two minutes.”
“Tell Alex to get on his computer. I want to Skype.”
Elle laughed. “He’s working.”
In other words Alex was in his barn, bending metal and waving his welding equipment around. He wouldn’t be best pleased to be interrupted. In fact, anyone interrupting him while he was in the throes of creation would get the nearest tool thrown at them. Anyone except Elle, which was why Gabe was calling her.
“I need to talk to him,” he said.
“Can’t it wait? I’m at the clinic until six.”
Gabe rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Fuck it. I’m coming there. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Wait! Is this an emergency?”
Yes! “No,” he growled. “I just want to see his pretty face.”
“Uh-huh. Tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to call Jenny and ask her to run over. She’ll get Alex on the computer.”
“Works for me.”
“Unless I can help?”
“Thought you were too busy?”
“Mrs. Bressler can finish throwing up without me if you’re having a real emergency. Can I help?”
“Thanks, but no. It’s guy stuff.”
Jenny called Gabe minutes later. “Crazypants 911, what is your emergency?” she said as soon as he picked up.
“Are you driving?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you hands-free?”
“Of course I’m hands-free. I am not a moron. Spill. What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
Jenny snorted. “Then why am I about to face the beast in his lair?”
“Don’t even try to pretend you aren’t relishing the opportunity to piss him off.”
“I relish every opportunity to piss him off. I enjoy it. He stole my sister. Why do you need to talk to him so badly?”
“Why do I need to tell you?”
“Why won’t you tell me?” she countered.
“I don’t want to.”
“Is it personal?”
“It’s guy stuff!”
“I am gender-free. Neutral. Like Switzerland. Or a priest. You can tell me.”
“You are not gender-free, Jenny,” he said. “You’re not that cool. You’re a coward, and you’re scared of Derek Tate.” Before she could get stuck in to the blustering denial this comment set off, he powered on, “And there comes a time in a man’s life when he wants to talk to his buddy! About guy stuff.”
Since Jenny lived a ten-minute drive from Alex and was undaunted by his towering build and artistic temper, in next to no time she’d dragged him from his barn and sat him in front of his laptop. She blew Gabe a kiss through the webcam, ruffled Alex’s crazy hair in a move that looked awfully like smacking him upside the head, and left.
Alex scowled at him. “What? What is so important that you had to pull me away from my sculpture? It was the best I’ve ever done—”
His latest was always his best.
“—and you’ve ruined it. What could possibly be worth such a loss?”
“I’m in love,” Gabe said.
Alex blinked.
The tension that had locked Gabe’s shoulders into knots since he’d come to the staggering realization that he was, in fact, wildly and uncontrollably in love with Nora Bowman, started to ease. Bracing his arms behind his head, he said two words he couldn’t ever remember saying in his adult life, and he said it with a grin. “Help me.”
“Fuck.” Alex looked stunned.
“What’s freaking you out more right now? The fact that I’m in love, or the fact I’m asking you for help?”
“I don’t know. Both, I think. Who are you in love with?”
“Nora.”
“Who’s Nora?”
“My interior designer’s assistant. My sun. My moon. My everything.”
“I didn’t even know you were dating anyone.”
“Oh, we’re not dating. I don’t think dating is Nora’s thing.” She hadn’t enjoyed the restaurant. Which made her earlier offer of going out to dinner again all the more meaningful.
“If you’re not dating, what are you doing with her?”
“We hang out. I can’t stop thinking about her. I can’t keep away from her. She lets me borrow her dog.”
Alex held his gaze. “I want to help you. You helped me with Elle. Okay, you interfered, and it happened to work out. Still, I’m here for you, buddy. What do you need from me?”
“I don’t know what to do,” Gabe confessed.
“Don’t fuck it up.”
“Yeah, I know that. And I know myself. I’m going to fuck it up.”
“If you don’t know what to do, what do you want to do?”
What did he want to do? “That one’s easy.” Gabe said, and told him. In extreme and filthy detail.
By the time he’d finished, Alex’s scowl was carved as deep as Gabe had ever seen it. “I’m not going to be able to look your Nora in the eye when I meet her now.”
Your Nora. He liked the way it sounded.
Alex was typing something.
“Are you taking notes on what I want to do to Nora?” Gabe asked. “Should I warn Elle?”
He stiffened. “No.”
“You want me to email you a bullet-pointed list?”
“Like I need ideas from you.” Alex paused. “Yes. Email me.”
“Consider it done.”
“Back to you, Gabe. What’s holding you back from engaging in any of that depravity with which you just assaulted my ears? Why haven’t you done it already?”
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
“That’s stupid,” Alex said. “If everyone stretches beforehand, it shouldn’t hurt. Oh. Remember to stay hydrated, or you’ll cramp.”
“Very funny. I won’t hurt her physically. I know what I’m doing in bed. And on the floor. And in the shower. The car. Kitchen table. Back yard.” He waited while Alex made another note. “Emotionally, though? It’s inevitable. Sooner or later, I’ll hurt her.”
“’Course you will. And she’ll hurt you right back. And then you both get over it. It’s called a relationship.”
“Until someone walks away. Then it’s called heartbreak.” No. “I refuse to break Nora’s heart. I refuse.”
Alex clasped his hands on top of his head and pressed as if he’d been hit by a sudden headache. “For fuck’s sake. Is this about your inability to commit again?”
Gabe glared at him. “You don’t have to say it like it isn’t a big thing. It’s a big thing.”
“You don’t have a problem with commitment!” Alex bellowed.
“Yes, I do!”
“No, you don’t! You let your parents and your therapists and everyone else who ever got a chance to chime in on your stupid giant brain convince you that you can’t be trusted with normal people and normal things. With all the many, many, many women you’ve dated, it was a convenient excuse to break things off when you got bored. It’s not real. You don’t have a commitment issue. It’s a boredom issue.”
“I—”
“You don’t end relationships because you love the woman but can’t commit. You end them because you never loved them in the first place. You get bored. You end everything when you get bored of it. Newsflash: so does the rest of the world. God. You just have a really, really low threshold.”
“I’m more complicated than that.”
“Gabe. We’ve been friends for fifteen years. I’m not the easiest guy to be friends with. You have hunted me down on five separate occasions to straighten me out. Once, you even had to come get me from Canada. You have an army of employees, who are the most loyal, rude, but loyal bunch, most of whom have also stuck with you for multiple years. You’ve had Bill even longer than you’ve had me.”
“I pay Bill an obscene salary.”
“Yeah, he’s practically a second father to you. No salary is big enough for that job. Finally, may I remind you, moron, that you’ve built a multi-million dollar empire? Takes a bit of commitment to do that.” He held up a thumb and forefinger a fraction apart. “Just a pinch.”
“It was a challenge. I like a challenge.”
“Exactly. You like challenges. Building a future with Nora is a challenge. You can overcome it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Nora isn’t a challenge. She’s the easiest thing in the world. I could take everything I want from her, and she’d give it. I could take, and take, and take. She’d keep giving.” Damn it. He was turning himself on again. “When I’m with her, that’s all there is. Me and her, nothing else. She is…” He struggled with the effort to put it into words. “She’s…infinite.”
“I was talking about you. You’re the challenge. Take a chance with Nora, and it’ll be like building your empire from scratch. You built that despite your problems, because you fight every day. Build a future with Nora. Fight every day. Overcome your problems every day. Trust me, you’re not going to come up against a bigger challenge than yourself.”
Gabe finished the call and sat at his desk, staring blankly ahead. He was aware of his employees passing the glass-walled office, aware of time passing, and none of it mattered.
He sat there and began to rearrange all the pieces on his personal chessboard, pieces that had been set up for years, poised to play out the perfect endgame.
An endgame he no longer wanted.
You’re not going to come up against a bigger challenge than yourself.
It was time to tell Bill about Nebula.
The lawyer looked up when Gabe filled his doorway. “Before you have a tantrum about me daring to talk to your interior designer’s assistant without your permission, Sterling, remember. I know Krav Maga.”
“And I have a contract killer on retainer.”
Bill was not impressed. “Stop saying that. He’s your brother, and he’s in the Navy.”
“He kills for money. I can match the government’s paycheck. Enough chitchat. Bill. I’ve decided to come clean about Nebula.”
“Come clean?” Bill’s face went a waxen green. His pupils shrank to pinpricks.
“Shit.” Gabe rushed to pour him a glass of Scotch and pressed it into his damp hand. “Bill, don’t have a heart attack. This is good news.”
Bill tossed back the whisky and slammed the crystal glass onto his desktop. “You little prick. What the hell is the matter with you?”
“I’m in love.” He waited for a response, but despite opening and closing his mouth a few times, Bill didn’t say anything. “Bill?”
“Got nothing.”
“Okay. I’m going to give you a few minutes to get over your fit of the vapors—”
Bill scowled. “I’m not having the vapors. Nebula. Hit me.”
“It’s done,” Gabe said.
“What do you mean, it’s done?”
“It’s done. I finished it two months ago.”
“Wha…? Two months?”
“Yep.”
“You’ve been sitting on it for two months, letting me think you’d lost your edge, and all along it was done?”
Gabe lifted and lowered a shoulder. “The coding part. The system’s built. Hardware’s up to R&D. Otherwise, yep. I didn’t lose my edge. On the contrary, I leveled up. It took me a fraction of the time I’d expected.”
“Why, Gabe? You let me spend months popping antacids like candy, preparing for the end, and it’s done? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s going to make me a billionaire.”
Bill threw his arms wide in the most dramatic shrug Gabe had ever seen.
“I never wanted to be a billionaire,” Gabe said.
“You poor baby.”
“It’s ridiculous. One man, that much money? Fucking stupid. No one needs that much. However, it is what it is. I accept the consequences of my genius.”
He’d set up a couple more foundations. The Sunshine Bowman Foundation for Rescue Animals had a nice ring to it. The Sunshine Sterling Foundation for Rescue Animals had a better ring, but that was a whole other plan.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Bill was saying. “Because the consequences are, you’re going to be living and breathing Nebula for the next five years.”
“Nope. You are. I’m restructuring. Congratulations, Bill. You just became the man who gets to shepherd in the next technological era. You’re promoted to CEO.”
This was the heart of the Nebula problem that had been eating away at Gabe. The billionaire thing he could deal with. The next five years of his life spent living and breathing a project? That, he couldn’t deal with.
When he was twenty-nine, he had hurled himself with abandon into work black holes like this one, and he’d loved it. At thirty-nine, eh. Been there, done that.
More importantly, at thirty-nine, he’d gotten control of his ego enough to realize one crucial fact: while he was the only man who could have conceived of and initiated Nebula, there were a hundred other men and women who could take his work and make money with it.
He was looking at one of them right now.
“Me?” Bill’s voice was high, his face a study of confusion. “Why me?”
“I trust you.”
Bill’s eyes bugged. “What are you doing while I’m being you? You’re not retiring, are you?”
Retiring? “I’m thirty-nine, the fuck am I going to do for the rest of my life, sit on a beach and stare at the ocean?”
“At this point, I think it’s clear that I have no idea what you’re going to do.”
“Since nature likes a balance and I have promoted you, I’m demoting myself. I want to go back to working R&D. I’m tired of the business shit, Bill. I’ve done it for all these years to get where I am, and I realized I don’t need to do it.”
“This revelation didn’t come out of nowhere, did it?”
He smiled. “We both know where this revelation came from.”
Nora.
Gabe spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about making Nora breathless. Deep down, though, he knew that all he needed to do to make Nora hold her breath was be there.
Whenever they were together, a wide-awake, vibrating air of waiting crackled around her. Waiting to see what he was going to do, what he was going to say.
Such an open, welcoming kind of waiting it was, too. And so intense, he swore he could feel it spark and dance over his skin.
No matter how outrageous he was with Nora, even if he made her angry or embarrassed, she accepted him. It was the strangest thing. Being himself, being there with her…he was enough.
You can’t be enough for someone, bind them to you, and then travel a path that you know will drag you into a black hole of work. When you know you’ll only be able to give a fraction of yourself.
Nora would let him do it. Even if he laid it out for her, she’d let him. She’d choose to be with him anyway, and they’d share a long lifetime of him taking advantage of her.
He didn’t want to give the next five years of his life to the business. He wanted to give it to Nora. He wanted to give the rest of his life to Nora.
Wholeheartedly, the way she gave to him.
She deserved it.
She deserved everything.
“Clear your schedule, Bill,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”
Bill was still shaken. “I’m fifty-six,” he said. “What if I don’t want to take this behemoth on? What if I want to retire? That whole beach thing, staring at the ocean. Sounds appealing.”
“Then you can be interim CEO while you find someone else.”
“Can’t you hold on a little longer? We’ll find someone else together.”
“No,” Gabe said. “I’ve spent long enough as I am. I want to be different.”