Look at her. She does blossom under kindness. Just like a rose, opening her petals.
“Is she all right?” Rachel asked, suddenly appearing beside them.
Gabriel withdrew his hand quickly and sighed. “Yes. But apparently Julianne hates couscous.” He winked at her slyly and watched as the flush spread from her cheeks and over the surface of her porcelain skin. She truly was a brown-eyed angel.
“That’s fine. I’ll make rice pilaf instead.” Rachel disappeared, and Gabriel followed, leaving Julia to stop her heart from trying to escape out of her chest.
While Rachel packed away the disdained grains into the refrigerator, Gabriel went to his bedroom to change his soiled shirt, depositing it with more than a little regret in the garbage. Then he joined his sister in the kitchen to clean up the broken glass and wine from the floor.
“There are a couple of things I need to tell you about Julia,” she began, speaking over her shoulder.
Gabriel walked the glass shards to the garbage bin. “I’d rather not hear it.”
“What’s wrong with you? She’s my friend, for crying out loud!”
“And she’s my student. I shouldn’t know anything about her personal life. Her friendship with you already presents a conflict of interest that I was unaware of.”
Rachel squared her shoulders and shook her head stubbornly, her gray eyes darkening. “You know what? I don’t care! I love her a lot and Mom did, too. So you remember that the next time you’re tempted to shout at her.
“She’s been broken, you jackass. That’s why she hasn’t kept in touch with me this past year. And now she’s finally crawled out of her shell, a shell I might add, that I thought she would never leave, and you’re forcing her back into it with your…your arrogance and condescension! So drop the Mr. Rochester-Mr. Darcy-Heathcliff British stuck-uppity bullshit and treat her like the treasure she is! Or I’m coming back here and putting a pump in your ass!”
Gabriel straightened his spine and cast her a withering stare. “By ‘pump,’ I take it you’re referring to a lady’s shoe?”
She didn’t back down. Or flinch. In fact, she grew taller. And almost menacing.
“Fine, Rachel.”
“Good. It’s hard for me to believe that you didn’t recognize her name, after all the times I told you about how much she loved Dante. I mean, how many Dante enthusiasts from Selinsgrove do you know?”
He leaned over to her and placed a kiss across her furrowed brow. “Go easy on me, Rach. I try not to think about anything connected with Selinsgrove if I can help it.”
Her anger melted at his words, and she hugged her brother tightly. “I know.”
A few hours and another bottle of expensive Chianti later, Julia stood up to leave. “Thanks for dinner. I should be getting home.”
“We’ll drive you,” Rachel volunteered, disappearing to find her coat.
Gabriel frowned and excused himself to go after her.
“It’s all right. I can walk. It’s not far,” Julia called to the siblings.
“No way. It’s dark out, and I don’t care how safe Toronto is. Besides, it’s raining,” Rachel shouted before finding herself engaged in a heated discussion with Gabriel.
Julia walked toward the door so that she wouldn’t have to hear him say that he didn’t want to drive her home. But the siblings reappeared shortly, and the three of them walked down the hall to the elevator. Just as the elevator was arriving, Rachel’s cell phone rang.
“It’s Aaron.” She hugged Julia tightly. “I’ve been trying to get hold of him all day, and he’s been in meetings. Let’s go to lunch. No need to worry, big brother, I have your spare key!”
Rachel strolled back to the apartment, leaving a scowling Gabriel and an uncomfortable Julia to take the elevator down to the garage.
“Were you ever going to tell me who you are?” His voice was slightly accusing.
Julia shook her head and hugged her ridiculous knapsack more tightly.
He looked at her book bag and decided then and there that it had to go. If he had to see that hideous thing one more time, he was going to lose it. And Paul had touched it, which meant that it was polluted. She’d have to throw it away.
Gabriel led her to his parking space, and she immediately walked to the passenger’s side of the Jaguar.
He pressed a button and the Range Rover next to the Jaguar chirped. “Um, let’s take this one instead. The four-wheel drive is better in the rain. I don’t like taking the Jaguar out in weather like this if I don’t have to.”
Julia tried to hide her look of surprise at Gabriel’s embarrassment of riches, especially when he opened her door and helped her in. As she settled herself in her seat, she wondered if he’d felt the connection that passed between them when he touched her arm. Of course, he had.
“You let me make an ass out of myself.” He scowled as he drove out of the garage.
You did that all by yourself, thank you. Julia’s unspoken thought shimmered between them, and she briefly wondered how good The Professor was at reading non-verbal cues.
“I would have treated you differently. I would have treated you better, if I’d known.”
“Would you? Really? And found some other student to rip apart? If that’s the case, I’m glad your anger was directed at me. Then you couldn’t take it out on anyone else.”
Gabriel gave her a cold look. “This doesn’t change anything. I’m glad you’re Rachel’s friend, but you’re still my student, which means we need to be professional, Miss Mitchell. And you will be careful how you speak to me now and in the future.”
“Yes, Professor Emerson.”
He searched her face for any sign of sarcasm but saw none. Her shoulders were hunched, and her head was down. He’d made his little rose wither. Any blossoming had now been completely undone.
Your little rose? What the hell, Emerson!
“Rachel is very glad you’re here. Did you know that she was engaged?”
Julia shook her head. “Was? Not anymore?”
“Aaron Webster asked her to marry him, and she said yes, but that was before Grace…” He exhaled slowly. “Rachel doesn’t feel like planning a wedding now, so she’s called it off. That’s why she’s here.”
“Oh, no, I’m so sorry. Poor Rachel.” She exhaled slowly. “Poor Aaron! I loved him.”
Gabriel frowned. “They’re still together. Aaron loves her, obviously, and agreed she needed some time away. There was a lot of…fighting at my parents’ house when I was home. She came to see me to get away. Which is laughable, really, since I’m the black sheep of the family and she’s the favorite.”
Julia nodded as if she understood.
“I have a problem with anger, Miss Mitchell. I have a bad temper. I have trouble controlling it, and when I lose my temper I can be very destructive.”
Her eyes widened at his declaration, and her mouth opened slightly, but she did not speak.
“It would be…inadvisable for me to lose my temper around someone like you. It would be very damaging, for both of us.” His declaration was so honest and so frightening, the words burned into her like fire.
“Wrath is one of the seven deadly sins,” she remarked, turning away from him to gaze out the window, trying to alleviate the burning sensation in her middle.
He laughed bitterly. “Remarkably, I have all seven; don’t bother counting. Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lust.”
She lifted an eyebrow but did not turn around. “Somehow, I doubt that.”
“I don’t expect you to understand. You’re only a magnet for mishap, Miss Mitchell, while I am a magnet for sin.”
Now she turned to face him. He smiled at her with a look of resignation, and she offered him a sympathetic look in return.
“Sin isn’t something that is attracted to a human being, Professor. It’s the other way round.”
“Not in my experience. Sin seems to find me even when I’m not looking for it. And I’m not very good at resisting
temptation.”
He glanced at her, then returned his eyes to the road.
“Your friendship with Rachel explains why you sent gardenias. And why you signed the card the way you did.”
“I’m sorry about Grace. I loved her too.”
He looked into her eyes. They were kind and open, yet he saw traces of sadness and incalculable loss.
“I realize that now,” he admitted.
“You have satellite radio?” She gestured to the console as he switched on the radio and pressed one of the preset buttons.
“Yes. I usually listen to one of the jazz stations, but it depends on my mood.”
Julia reached out a tentative finger to the radio but withdrew her hand.
Gabriel smiled at her reticence, remembering the way she purred when he gave her permission to curl up in his favorite chair. He wanted to make her purr again.
“It’s all right. You can choose something.”
She ran through the pre-sets, smiling at his choices, which included the French CBC station and BBC News, until she came to the last one, which was labeled Nine Inch Nails.
“There’s an entire station devoted to them?” She sounded incredulous.
“Yes.” Gabriel squirmed a little, as if she had uncovered an embarrassing secret.
“And you like them?”
“When I’m in a particular mood.”
Julia pressed the button for the jazz station.
Gabriel felt rather than observed her visceral reaction. He did not understand it but decided not to probe it.
Julia hated Nine Inch Nails. She changed the station whenever they came on the radio. If a song of theirs was playing somewhere, she left the room or the building. The sounds of their music and especially Trent Reznor’s voice creeped her the hell out, although she never told anyone why.
She first heard them in a club back in Philadelphia. She was dancing with him, and he was grinding all over her. She hadn’t minded at first; that’s how he always was, but then that song came on, and as soon as the music began, Julia felt mildly ill. It was the strange sequence in the opening bars, then it was the voice, then it was the lyrics about fucking like an animal, and the look on his face as he brought his forehead to hers and whispered it to her, staring straight into her soul.
Whatever Julia’s religious beliefs and her half-hearted attempts to pray to lesser gods and deities, at that moment she’d believed that she heard the voice of the Devil. Lucifer himself held her in his arms and whispered to her. And the very idea, coupled with his words, frightened her.
Julia had wrenched herself from him and fled to the ladies’ washroom, looking at the pale and shaking girl in the mirror, wondering what the hell had just happened. She did not know why he had spoken to her like that or why he had chosen that moment to confess. Nevertheless, she knew him well enough to know that the repeated lyric was a confession of his deepest and perhaps darkest intentions and not just a mindless repetition.
But Julia didn’t want to be fucked like an animal; she wanted to be loved. She would have foresworn sex forever if she thought it would guarantee her the kind of love that was the stuff of poetry and myth. That was the kind of affection she craved desperately but didn’t actually believe that she deserved. She wanted to be someone’s muse—to be worshipped and adored, body and soul. She wanted to play Beatrice to a dashing and noble Dante and to inhabit Paradise with him forever. And to live a life that would rival the beauty of Botticelli’s illustrations.
And that is why at the age of twenty-three, Julia Mitchell was still a virgin, with the photograph of the man who ruined her for others tucked in the back of her underwear drawer. For the past six years, she’d slept with his picture under her pillow. No man had ever come close to comparing to him; no feelings of affection had ever approximated the love and devotion he inspired in her. Their entire relationship was based on a single night, a night she relived in her memories over and over again…
Chapter 7
Julia parked her bike next to the Clarks’ large, white home and walked to the front porch. She never knocked when she visited them, so she skipped up the stairs and pulled the screen door open. What she found inside shocked her.
The glass coffee table in the living room was smashed, blood spattered on the carpet. Chairs and cushions were strewn about, and Rachel and Aaron sat huddled together on the sofa in the center of the room. Rachel was sobbing.
Julia stood there, gaping in horror. “What happened?”
“Gabriel,” said Aaron.
“Gabriel? Is he hurt?”
“He’s fine!” Rachel laughed almost hysterically. “He’s been home less than twenty-four hours, and he’s already gotten into a shoving match with my dad, made my mom cry twice, and sent Scott to the hospital.”
Aaron continued rubbing his girlfriend’s back in order to comfort her, a grim expression on his face.
Julia gasped. “Why?”
“Who knows? No one ever knows what’s going on with him. He got into an argument with Dad, Mom stepped in between them, and Gabriel shoved her. Scott said he’d kill him if he ever touched her again. So Gabriel threw a punch and broke his nose.”
Julia gazed down at the pieces of glass that were now embedded with blood in the carpet. A dozen or so cookies, crumbled now, were scattered in and around the glass along with the remains of what appeared to be a couple of cups of coffee.
“And this?” She pointed at the macabre mess.
“Gabriel pushed Scott through the coffee table. Scott and Dad are at the hospital, Mom is locked in her room, and I’m spending the night at Aaron’s.”
Rachel began to drag her boyfriend to the front door.
Julia stood frozen to the spot, unable to move. “Maybe I’ll try to talk to your mom.”
“I can’t stay in this house another minute. My family has just been destroyed.” With that, Rachel fled with Aaron.
Julia intended to climb the stairs to find Grace, but she heard a noise coming from the direction of the kitchen, so she quietly padded to the back of the house. Through the open back door she could see someone sitting on the porch, swinging a beer bottle to his lips. A shock of brown hair shone in the fading sunlight. Julia recognized him from Rachel’s photographs.
Before she had time to think about it, her feet walked out the back door, and she found herself sitting some distance from him on a chaise lounge, her knees drawn up under her chin. She wrapped her arms around her legs and looked over at him.
He ignored her.
Julia traced his appearance with her eyes, hoping to burn the vision into her memory. He was far better-looking in person. She looked at his blue and bloodshot eyes, which were startling under his brown brows. She followed the angle of his high cheekbones, his straight, noble nose, and the squareness of his jaw, noting the two or three days’ growth of beard that shadowed his skin and the kiss of a dimple. Her eyes came to rest on his full lips, noticing the curve and fullness of the lower one before she was able to drag her gaze reluctantly to look at his bruises.
Gabriel had bruises and blood on his right hand and something purple on his left cheek. Scott’s fist had met its mark, but surprisingly, Gabriel was still conscious.
“You’re a bit late for the six o’clock show. It ended thirty minutes ago.” His voice was gentle and almost as pleasing as his features. Julia thought momentarily about what it would be like to hear that voice pronounce her name.
She shivered.
“There’s a blanket right here.” He gestured to a large, plaid wool blanket that was bunched up near his hip. Without looking at her, he patted it.
Julia watched him warily. Satisfied that his anger had cooled, she walked over to him and sat on a nearby stool, still keeping a healthy distance between them. She wondered how fast he could run. And how fast she could run if he was chasing her.
He handed her the blanket.
“Thank you,” she murmured, pulling it around her shoulders.
Out of the corn
er of her eye, she took in his figure and noted how he had folded his considerable height casually into an Adirondack chair. His shoulders appeared broader in his black leather jacket, the planes of his pectorals visible underneath the fabric of his tight black T-shirt. His long legs filled out his black jeans well, and Julia noticed that he seemed taller and heavier than he’d looked in his sister’s old pictures.
She wanted to say something. She wanted to ask him why he’d gone berserk on the nicest family she’d ever met. But she was too shy and too scared of him to do that. So she asked him if he had a bottle opener instead.
He frowned at her before pulling one out of his back pocket and passing it over. She thanked him and continued to sit there quietly. He turned to the half-empty case of beer behind him, chose a bottle, and held it in front of her.
“Allow me,” he said, seeing her now and smiling. He took the opener back, uncapping her beer with one swift movement and clanking their bottles together. “Cheers.”
Julia sipped her drink politely, trying not to choke as the strange, yeasty flavor entered her mouth. She hummed unconsciously and waited.
“Ever had a beer before?” Gabriel grinned.
She shook her head.
“Then I’m glad I’m your first.”
She blushed and hid her face behind her long mahogany hair.
“What are you doing here?” He wore a curious expression.
Julia paused, wondering how best to put it. “I was invited to dinner.” I was hoping to finally meet you.
Gabriel laughed. “I guess I ruined that. Well, Miss Brown Eyes, add that charge to my tab.”
“Will you tell me what happened?” She kept her voice quiet and tried not to let it shake.
“Will you tell me why you haven’t run away yet?” His blue eyes found hers, and he looked at her sharply.
She ducked her head again, hoping the act of submission would cool his sudden flare of anger. Sitting with Gabriel after what happened was a stupid thing to do. He was drunk, and there was no one to rescue her if he decided to get violent. Now was her chance to leave.