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* * *
PJ knew Gabe wanted to take care of everything for her. He’d try to fix everything and make sure she never had to worry about anyone coming after her again. He’d find a way to get her journal back, to stop the person who was doing this to her. To take care of it all. And a big part of her really wanted to let him do that. Wanted it in a way she never had before, not even with Jimmy way back when.
But, the thing was, she was twenty-nine years old and so far, she hadn’t had a whole lot of luck with men. At each and every turn, men had stabbed her in the back and walked away when she needed them. Jimmy hadn’t batted an eye before telling her to get rid of ‘the problem,’ as he’d referred to the baby growing in her stomach when she was just fifteen.
And Kurt? Well, Kurt had walked away without a backward glance. She’d been with other men here or there, but never risked her heart after that.
The only times she’d risked her heart, it had been trampled on.
And with Gabe, PJ was no idiot. She knew her heart was on the line in a way it had never been before. All of those foolish entries in her journal about her feelings for those other men…. They were nothing compared to what she already felt for Gabe.
And, that scared the crap out of her. She might want Gabe more than she’d ever wanted any other man, but she wasn’t willing to take a chance on seeing where things might go with him.
What would happen when he got tired of her and walked away? That would do her in. It would finish her. So she did the only thing she could to protect her heart.
“I don't think you should come back with me, Gabe,” PJ said, standing taller and looking him in the eye. She saw the pain in his eyes, his confusion.
“What? Why, Pru?” His voice was quiet and low, sending an unwanted chill up her spine. He stepped in even closer to her and she had to put a hand out to his chest to steady herself.
Contact. Big mistake. She drew her hand back quickly.
“I think I need to do this on my own for now. I need to deal with this myself.”
His eyes went wide, and she could feel the intensity of his stare as she glanced away. “Look, Gabe, I...I haven’t really done very well in the relationship department. It.... They don’t tend to end very well for me. And, it’s just.... It’s not something I want to go through right now. I just need to deal with this – to focus on this stalker or blackmailer or whatever this person is. I just need to face this and stop running and deal with this…this—”
“Try ‘killer.’ Killer is the word you’re looking for. This person killed Jimmy, and now he’s flat out told you he’s coming after you, and you’re planning to run into his arms completely unprotected,” Gabe said, anger rolling off him, palpable and more than a little intense.
She raised her chin. “Fine.Killer.But I’m not going back completely unprotected. I’ll have Chad and Zach and their whole team with me. And, my own security guys,” she finished.
“Who haven’t actually been cleared by Chad and who’ve done a piss-poor job of protecting you so far. For all we know, it could be one of them,” Gabe all but growled.
PJ nodded slowly. She knew he wanted to protect her, but she couldn’t bring herself to allow it. She couldn’t rely on him. No.
Any time she’d tried to depend on a man sticking around, it had gone horribly wrong. She’d fix this herself and then decide where her career would go from here. Maybe it was time to think about retiring. Or, at least slowing down a bit.
“I’ll have Chad and Zach,” she said quietly and slipped out from between Gabe and the counter, taking the first deep breath since she’d decided to tell him she needed to stand on her own two feet.
She ducked into the guest room and shut the door, leaning her head back against it as she let a few tears fall. She swiped at them and squeezed her eyes shut. She was doing the right thing—she was sure of it.
It might feel like she’d just been run over by a Mack truck, both emotionally and physically, but pulling away before he hurt her was the smart decision. And, PJ was all about trying to be smarter nowadays. She’d made enough stupid mistakes to last a lifetime.
* * *
Gabe didn’t care what PJ said. He wouldn’t be leaving her alone anytime soon. His car left his Connecticut home just moments after hers. They’d drive to the airport in separate cars, and he’d be flying a separate plane to Denver, but he’d be there as soon as she arrived. With any luck, he might get in ahead of her.
Shit.He knew he was beginning to look a bit like a stalker himself. In fact, if PJ knew how much he’d tried to match his own work schedule to her tour dates in the past; how much he’d kept an eye on her when she was staying at his hotels; how many extra little services he’d arranged for that had nothing to do with her VIP status and everything to do with his feelings for her, well shit. She probably would have run from him a lot faster than she had.
He wasn’t sure when he’d started to fall for Pru. It hadn’t been when they first met. He knew that. At the time, she’d been nineteen and he was twenty-nine. He was still heavily entrenched in building his chain of hotels, in beating back the memories of a ruined family he would never be able to recover, and she’d been just a sweet teenage pop star who stayed at his hotels. And then, one day, he’d looked up while attending a fundraiser, and she wasn’t a teenager anymore. And, she no longer instilled sweet thoughts in him.
He had been about to approach her to say hello when one of his ex-girlfriends had swooped in and cut him off, hanging on his arm and draping herself over him in a drunken effort to hold his attention. But, what he’d noticed was Pru’s look. She had looked at him...in a critical way. Like she knew the kind of man he was—a man who went through women faster than clean shirts—and her expression told him she wasn’t interested in having anything to do with a man like that. He can’t say he really blamed her. At the time, it was true—he dated a lot. A whole lot.
So he’d kept his distance. But, over time, they had talked when they found themselves at events together. He was drawn to her. Then, they started meeting on the rooftop gardens of the Towers where they talked a lot more. Got to know more about each other.
He had told her she could come up to his rooftop garden anytime he was in the hotel at the same time she was if she needed to escape the madness of her world, if she needed peace and privacy.
But now? Well, now he wanted more than occasional chats on rooftop gardens. He wanted to see where this would go with her. Good time or not, he wanted to pursue this relationship. And he sure as hell wouldn’t walk away while she was in danger. He’d be there with her through this whether she wanted him there or not. And, in the end, he’d find a way to convince her he wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t going to move on to the next model or actress or whatever. He wanted Pru.
Chad and Zach knew Gabe planned to follow her back to the hotel. They couldn’t do much to stop him, and it didn’t appear as if she had asked them to do anything about it, so they let him do his thing.
