Australia: Wicked Mistresses. Robyn Grady
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her on the spot, throwing her out of her lodgings. He’d imagined the crocodile tears, her pleas, those attempts to use her femme fatale skills to get her way. In hindsight he believed only one thing she’d said.
She wanted to find herself—aka needed to have, to hold, real money again.
His money.
His lips stretched over his teeth.
Time for Act II.
“You might recall I said I’d known a Nina once.” He collected his cutlery again and cut into firm asparagus. “Tell me, have you ever known anyone else called Gabriel?”
His comment pulled Nina up. Her nape prickled with a different kind of awareness as she nodded. “A friend of my brother’s. Gabe Turner.”
“What else do you remember?”
“He was a stuffed-shirt geek who my brother, for some reason, adored.” That horrid gnawing in her gut deepened. She studied the man sitting opposite and instinctively sat back. “Why do you want to know?”
His ice-blue gaze held hers for an endless moment before he announced, “Because that Gabe is this Gabe. Gabriel Turner is me.”
Nina wanted to throw back her head and laugh. She’d never heard anything so ridiculous. Instead she paused to consider the statement more deeply.
“No,” she groaned, slowly shaking her head. “You said … your name is Steele.”
But from the start hadn’t there been a distant whisper of this? Seeing him standing on that cliff a second before she’d passed out … even then he’d seemed somehow familiar. This man—the man she’d shared a bed with—he couldn’t possibly be that stiff, zero taste, no personality dweeb she remembered from all those years ago.
Could he?
“Turner was my mother’s name,” he said. “My aunt’s name. When I made amends with my father in my late teens, I took his name. Steele.”
She snapped shut her hanging jaw. “But those ugly sun-sensitive glasses?”
“Laser surgery.”
“Your hair?”
“Comb-overs were never in.”
“You look … taller.”
“I grew.”
“You’re rich.”
He grinned. “Yes, I am.”
She studied his face again, and every molecule of oxygen seeped from her lungs.
Oh, God. It was true.
Her fingers started to tingle and her heart began to pound. She needed a paper bag before she hyperventilated and passed out.
“Faith, my aunt, passed away five years ago from a stroke,” he said, colouring in the rest. “My father died from a coronary not long after we met.”
Her vision clouded and tunnelled in. Aunt Faith … yes, she remembered. His story fitted, but her brain was too overloaded to offer condolences.
As a thousand memories rained down in a battering gale, she peered into Gabe’s hard gaze and somehow managed to set her priorities straight. Not having seen her for well over a decade, Gabe Turner had shown up out of the blue and saved her life?
It was magical thinking, but she wondered whether her brother had had a hand in his buddy being in the right place at the right time. Anthony had always looked out for her in a cool, big-brother kind of way. She only wished someone had been there to look out for him when he’d needed it.
Her brow tingled.
Last night Gabriel had said he’d lost someone close. Someone who’d had faith in him when he’d had little in himself. Anthony.
An image dawned—a clear snapshot of her brother’s face—and despite the situation Nina’s mouth twitched. The image zoomed in to show Anthony’s confounded expression and a smile twitched again.
Gabriel pushed his plate aside. “You think this is funny?”
“Can you imagine what Anthony would say if he knew? He’d be thinking what a huge joke this was on us both. Gabe Turner hated me, I hated Gabe Turner more, and Anthony … well, he loved us both.”
She’d hated the way Gabe Turner had ignored her. Hated those revolting glasses. Hated the fact that his clothes were dull from too many washes and yet he still filled out trousers better than any boy she’d known. Worse, while he’d struggled to afford new socks, he’d always held his head so high. As if he was better than everyone else. Certainly better than her.
Now Gabe Turner was a wealthy man of the world. A gorgeous multimillionaire with whom she’d made love until both were so spent neither could draw another breath.
Her stomach double-flipped.
Her and Geeky Gabe. How totally weird was that?
She must have been staring at him because he pulled in his chin. “What?”
“Don’t you want to know?”
“Know what?”
“Why, when my family was so wealthy, I’m waitressing now.”
His gaze skimmed her lips, his jaw flexed, then he crossed his arms over that big delectable chest. “That question had crossed my mind.”
She was happy to answer. There happened to be a question he might be able to answer for her in return.
“Anthony’s death really shook my parents up,” she told him. “Me and Jill too, but we were young enough not to understand the full weight of the situation. That Anthony really wasn’t coming home and our lives would never be the same. He’d been the jewel in the crown of our family. Everyone loved Anthony. For a long time no one could accept he was gone.”
Gabriel’s arms slowly unravelled. “It was a tragic accident.”
“He loved speed and the idea of taking chances, pushing the limits.” Anthony had skinned his elbows and knees more than once shooting the bowl on his skateboard. “He said he was either going into the air force or to work for National Security as a secret agent.”
A distant smile shone in Gabriel’s eyes. “He’d have done it too. He had the smarts as well as the guts.”
The question burned on the tip of her tongue. She’d wanted to know for such a long time, only she hadn’t thought anyone would know—not even her father, who’d loved Anthony better than anyone. But Gabe and her brother had been so close.
“Anthony must have known he couldn’t possibly do it,” she murmured. “Not in the dead of night. The fact that the place was cursed would’ve been enough to keep me away.” She cast Gabriel—Gabe—an imploring look over the candlelit table. “Did he talk to you about going there?”
Maintaining a thousand-yard stare past her shoulder, he slanted his head and finally nodded.
Nina’s attention picked up, but rather than sharing, Gabriel only thinned the line of his mouth.
“We knew it was some kind of a dare,” she prodded. “I heard my parents talking about Roger someone.”
“Roger Maxwell.”
“That’s it. He dared Anthony to scale the north face of Mount Spectre near your school. It had something to do with a girl Anthony liked.”
“Roger started ribbing Anthony in front of her,” said Gabe, in a low, gravelled tone. “Saying he was a wimp, a chicken, which was the most idiotic thing I’d ever heard. When Anthony laughed it off and went to walk away Roger challenged him. It was only because Roger liked this girl too, and Anthony knew it. Anthony laughed again—until the girl asked whether he was afraid of the curse.”
Nina