Page 75 of Mine

“I love you back.”

And he was humming when he hung up.

Chapter 8

I CALLED Gabriel as I was getting coffee in the morning.

“I said days, kid.” He drew out the word. “Not a day.”

“I know, but with everything… I figured it was okay.”

He sighed deeply. “It is. Where are you?”

“At your favorite coffee place,” I said with a chuckle. “And I got yours already.”

“I’ll be right there to get you.”

“I’ll be waiting,” I said, hanging up. I was sitting on the bench outside the coffee shop we both loved. The coffee was so strong my friend Stacy said just smelling it gave her a bladder infection. She was funny.

When Gabriel rolled up to the curb, I was surprised to see that Adrian’s driver was now his. I couldn’t have kept my eyebrow from arching if I tried.

“Don’t say a word,” he said as the door was closed behind me.

“Why would I?”

He cleared his throat. “So, we have to talk.”

“I agree. Nice suit,” I added; the Hugo Boss looked good on him.

“Fuck you.”

“Hostile.”

As the car pulled away from the curb, he sighed deeply. The rain, which had been a steady drizzle all night and into the early morning, decided to become a monsoon.

“So Adrian’s dead,” he said, turning to me.

“Yeah, I got that.”

“I have a new boss, Rigel. Seems okay.”

I nodded.

“I told him what I wanted for you, that I wanted you out, and he asked me a lot of questions that I didn’t understand.”

“Like what?”

He turned from looking at the rain to looking at me, and I was struck, as I always was, by how handsome, and not, the man was.

Gabriel had light-brown hair, pale-blue eyes, blunt features, a long straight nose, and thin lips. His hair fell forward across his forehead and slipped down the back of his nape in thick waves. He looked like everybody; there was nothing about him that made the face memorable—until he smiled. And then you saw the glint in his eyes, the curl of his lip, and saw that he was handsome. Still not traffic-stopping, still not able to inspire lust, but his height, six two, and his build, lean and muscular, made him above average. Because he was the guy who had made it rain for me, had given me a hand up when there was no one else, I had always seen him with my rose-colored glasses on.

“Rigel asked a lot of questions about the kind of man you were, what your temper was like, how long it took you to get mad and how many people you’d killed.”

“And?” I asked him.

“I told him the truth, and he was thrilled. Seems a guy with no sins and no skeletons in the closet is just what he’s looking for. I told him you wanted your own restaurant, and he said that Kady’s is yours to do with as you see fit; make it whatever the hell kind of restaurant you want.”

I couldn’t breathe. “And the catch?”