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Gabe
Aknocksoundedonthe door to the penthouse. The digital alarm read 7 a.m. Nope. I wasn’t getting out of bed before 9 a.m. on a Sunday for anyone. I rolled over and pulled the duvet over my head.
“I’m not here,” I shouted.
The door to my suite swung open and my mother stepped in. She was accompanied by a stern-faced blonde in a smart suit. The woman looked around the same age as Mother. Although Mother was hard to accurately age. She’d had so much cosmetic surgery she could have been anywhere between thirty and two hundred. You’d probably need carbon dating to be certain.
Mother’s unimpressed gaze roved over me.
“What do you want, Mother?”
A thin smile stretched her lips; her eyes narrowed. “Can’t I check on my son’s welfare?”
Of course. There’s a first time for everything.
She gestured to the woman next to her. “This is Claire Easterly.”
The blonde woman averted her gaze while I pulled on a robe. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rivers.”
I bit back a sarcastic retort. Nothing was pleasurable where my mother was concerned. Whoever Claire was, this wasn’t going to be good news.
“It’s Gabe.” I shook Claire’s hand and turned to my mother. “And today is Sunday. I don’t work on Sundays.”
Mother stiffened and pulled a magazine out of her enormous handbag. “Yes. It’s Sunday. I don’t want to work either, but like most days of the week, I’m spending it dealing with your mess.” She threw the magazine on the bed. “I take it you’ve seen this?”
An unrecognizable woman stared at me from the front page. The headline read:Exclusive—My Night in Heaven with Gabriel Rivers.
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Well, she seems to know you …intimately.”
I opened the magazine and scanned the article. A dim flare of recognition registered somewhere. The flight attendant? We’d dated a few times when I was in New York. Disappointment made my stomach sour. She hadn’t seemed the type to kiss and tell. Then again, they never did.
I threw the magazine back on the bed. “It could have been worse. It looks like a good review.”
“You’re a human being, not Trip Advisor. You shouldn’t be proud of getting five stars.” She pulled out her phone and presented the screen to me. She scrolled through a blur of news stories. “There are more. A stream of women desperate to sell their stories …”
Irritation made my lips thin. How was any of this my fault? “The tabloids won’t get off my arse.”
Mother’s brow lifted a fraction. “It needs to stop.”
A sarcastic smile pulled at my lips. As if I had any control over what the tabloids decided to write about me. “Fine. I’ll join a monastery if you like.”
Mother lowered her designer sunglasses to glare at me. Purple bruises and swelling covered the bridge of her nose and surrounded her eyes. Disapproval radiated from her imposing frame in waves. She always looked at me like I was a bird shit stain on her favorite Balenciaga bag.
“Nobody is expecting you to be a monk, darling. You just need to date women within your own tax bracket.” Her words were playful, but the meaning wasn’t. “We miss Emma. Why won’t you talk to her? Emma would never sell you out like this.”
I turned my face away. After the fall, everything had happened so quickly. Mother had been devastated. My head was a mess and I’d made a snap decision. Learning the truth about what I’d seen that night in Dad’s office would have destroyed Mother. She’d loved Emma like a daughter.
“It’s never going to happen with Emma.”
A tiny line appeared at the top of Mother’s nose. She looked disappointed or maybe hungry. It was hard to tell with the Botox. Mother sauntered to the window. Claire hovered awkwardly by the couch. She eyed me with a wary expression. Why was this woman even here?
Mother sniffed a bunch of roses in the vase by the window and frowned. “These flowers aren’t fresh.”
“If you think that’s bad, don’t try the mushroom soup. I suspect it’s from a tin. Was there anything else?”
She kept her gaze focused on the flowers. Her tone was velvet edged with steel. “I need you to keep out of the press. It’s embarrassing. I’m spinning a lot of plates here. I have donors pulling out of the foundation. I’m selling off these awful sex clubs and cleaning up the Rivers name. It doesn’t help when you’re determined to follow in your father’s footsteps. Reputation is everything, Gabe. Yours is … not good.”
