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Chapter Fifteen
- Gabriel -
Iput her bag intothe back of the SUV, then opened the car door for Suzanne, placing my hand on the small of her back to help her in. “Do you trust me?”
“As in, do I think you’re using the lure of a weekend with you as a trap to kidnap me or something? Yes, I trust you, Gabriel.”
I shouldn’t have asked. Her words burned through me with white hot regret. The feel of her warmth beneath the palm of my hand was my reminder that she was worth the discomfort. I was getting close to my goal, wasn’t I? She trusted me. Soon, I could ask her about her family, about her brother. By the time the weekend was over, I’d have everything I wanted from her - her trust, possibly a bit of her affection, and definitely her body. Once I fucked her...Why did that sound so wrong?Suzanne was absolutely one hundred percent fuckable. I could barely restrain myself when I was round her and would have given in to those urges without a second thought if I hadn’t valued her for more than her body. Sexual attraction is one thing, but the sexiest thing about her was...her.
But no matter how dishonorable my intentions were, I couldn’t think of her in that way, in those terms, withthatword. If I thought about fucking Suzanne, it was because the truth was that I was fucking her over, making her believe we had the potential to be more, when I knew that could never happen.
I closed the door and waited for traffic to pass before I opened the driver’s side and climbed in. “I thought we’d spend some time at Rockefeller Center,” I said. “I made a reservation at a hotel nearby.”
“It sounds like fun. Is there a lot to do there?”
I stared at her. “Are you saying you live in New York and haven’t been to Rockefeller Center yet?”
She shrugged. “Yes. There’s a lot of things I haven’t done here yet.”
I shook my head. “I’m going to drive and you’re going to explain this strange phenomenon to me.”
I wove my way through some of the city’s busiest streets as I tried to find an iconic New York landmark that Suzanne had already visited.
So far, she had saidnoto The Guggenheim, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the Bronx Zoo.
“The Met?”
Finally, Suzanne nodded her head. “Yes. Although not all of it. There was a Dutch painters exhibit I wanted to see.”
“So, the Statue of Liberty...”
She shook her head.
“The Empire State Building?”
“Well, I took a taxi by it, but I never went in. I mean, is there a point?”
“Central Park?”
“When the weather’s warmer.”
"What made you decide to move here again?”
Suzanne laughed. She was always able to find a reason to laugh just like my dick was always looking for a reason to respond to her.
“Truthfully, I came here because I wanted out of the country. I grew up in Western New York. Farm country. It was beautiful, but as wide open as it was, it was claustrophobic in so many other ways, you know. I wanted to live. I wanted excitement.”
When Andre made our reservations, he’d had the forethought to reserve a parking space as well. I helped Suzanne out of the car. I had planned for us to spend a few hours strolling the shops and restaurants in the Center before we checked into our hotel room. It was a strategic move as I tried once again to focus on the reason I was there. I was information gathering. Compartmentalizing again. As we walked, I’d pump her for information. Later, in the privacy of our hotel room, I could focus on Suzanne, the woman. But first, I had to know more about Suzanne, Sebastian St. Valentine’s sister.
I helped her from the car, then I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing a very irritated older man to circle around us.
“So, you came to New York and hid in your apartment for five years?”
“Noooo. I’m not hiding. I go places all the time, just not those touristy things. I like to people watch, you know. I go to Central Park and watch the joggers and the nannies with strollers. I get a hotdog and feed the pigeons. I go to museums to watch other people walk around and look at art. I work a lot and despite what some people might think, to those of us who aren’t from here, it’s really not that easy to navigate the New York streets. I don’t have a ton of money for cab fare, and I don’t own a car.”
“There’s this thing called the subway,” I chided her.
She playfully slapped my arm. “I know! I use it frequently, thank you very much. Ginger and I used it last night. There’s no better place to watch people than the subway. Besides, doing the tourist thing has always seemed like sad to do alone. I just never got around to some of those places.”
