AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This”—I show Gabriel when he stops for gas—“is how someone playing Warwick does a public relationship.”
He leans back into the car, glances at the picture, and frowns. “They’re standing in the water.”
“Look at his arm, the way it’s turned. Her face. He’s fingering the shit out of her, right in front of the cameras.” Nic’s face is intense in all the right ways, protective, and full of absolute worship. I want it—him, looking at me like that, touching me like that. I want it so bad my bones ache.
Gabriel’s eyes narrow on the picture, and he sees it now. The tips of his ears go red and he abruptly closes the door.
Gabriel Sinclair would never.
Maybe heshould. I overheard the call between him and his agent this morning. Standing me up isn’t exactly the bad boy flavor they are trying to spice him up with. Unfortunately, I was also the recipient of a call from an annoyed agent. Mine assumed I was to blame. Naturally.
Gabriel takes forever inside. I suspect he’s autographing postcards or some ridiculous shit. He’s pulled a baseball cap low over his head, but he still stands out. That faded dark gray T-shirt and his perfectly distressed designer jeans are doing things for his body that only happen in movies. Hell, his body only happens in the movies.
He doesn’t say a word when he gets in. Soon we’re back on the road, cruising along Highway 5. I stare out the window, glimpsing Lake Erie between trees. I don’t know why we’re taking the scenic route except it seems a very Gabriel Sinclair thing to do.
His phone rings and he shoots me a glance before answering on speaker.
David’s voice replaces the generic pop music on the radio. “Okay, I have the list of questions. I’ll read them out and both of you answer.”
This is hell. I am in hell, paying for my bad deeds. That is the only explanation. “I don’t want to play twenty questions.”
David sighs like the weight of the world is pressing down on his probably generic-cotton button-up-covered shoulders. “That performance you put on yesterday was abysmal, and this has only gone downhill since.Toleratingeach other would be an improvement.”
It’s clear from the tone in his voice that he thinks his boss is perfect and I am irredeemable trash. No surprise, the world agrees.
It’s possible I hate David more than I hate Gabriel Sinclair right now. “I’m not doing this.”
“You’re stuck in a car. What else are you going to do?” David asks.
David can’t see me reach over and stroke the stick shift, but Gabriel can. He scowls and flicks my hand away.
“Do you want to make this work?” he asks me, his stern brown eyes pinning me to my seat.
Ugh. “Fine. But I don’t want David listening to my answers like a pervert.”
“I’ll put the call on mute. That okay, David?”
He huffs. “I don’t want to listen to her vapid answers. Unmute me when you’re ready for the next question.”
I guess since I’m stuck in this car for untold hours—going the speed limit down the scenic route all but guarantees it—I might as well play along. “Fine.”
David clears his throat. “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”
Goddammit.
I want Nic, obviously. And I want to be the main course. But I can’t say that to Gabriel Sinclair, even after he mutes the phone.
He’s chewing on his lip, staring out at the road.
Maybe he’s in a similar predicament, longing for someone he can’t have.
Wow. I don’t know anything real about this man I’m supposed to be fake dating. Maybe he has some deep, dark secrets. There’s more to him than his Boy Scout image suggests—the muscle car, for one. Maybe he has a lifetime membership to an exclusive sex club. I flick my phone on and send a quick text to Lea.Find out everything you can about Gabriel Sinclair, please.
Research is her superpower. I wonder what she’ll turn up.
“My dad,” he answers, jolting me out of my little daydream where I step onto Gabriel Sinclair’s bare ass in my pointiest stiletto as he lies on the secret sex club floor.
His dad? The famous director who died sometime in the last decade? Is he kidding me with this shit? Hollywood’s golden boy has the purest answers.
