Gabriel's Rapture (Gabriel's Inferno #2)(107)

The neighborhood was almost silent. Despite the gentle drizzle and mist of warm vespertine rain, a small group of what looked like frat boys were about a half a block away, talking and laughing. Julia stepped from the curb and began to cross the street, her flip-flops squishing against the wet asphalt. She ignored the droplets that fell from the sky, soaking through her T-shirt. She ignored the thunder that began to roll and the flash of lightning that illuminated the eastern sky.

In the very center of the road, she stopped because straight ahead of her, she glimpsed a shadowy figure lurking in the darkness behind the oak tree in front of Peet’s. Another flash of lightning revealed that the figure was a man.

He was half-hidden by the tree and in the absence of light, she couldn’t make out his features. She knew better than to approach a stranger in the shadows, so she stayed where she was, craning her neck to see him.

As if in response to her movements, he came around the edge of the tree and slowly walked into the pool of light that cascaded onto the sidewalk from the street lamp. Another bolt of lightning shimmered overhead, and for one brief instant Julia thought he looked like an angel.

Gabriel.

Chapter 43

Gabriel saw the pain in her eyes. That was the first thing he noticed. Somehow, she looked older. But her beauty, her goodness made visible, was even more breathtaking than it had been before.

Standing in front of her, he was overwhelmed by how much he loved her. All his trials fell away. He’d been working up the nerve to go to her, to ring the doorbell and beg entrance. When he thought he couldn’t wait a minute more, the door to her apartment building opened and she scampered like a deer into the road.

He’d fantasized about their reunion. On some days, it was the only thought that sustained him. But the longer she stood, statue still, making no move to come to him, the more a feeling of despair grew. Several different scenarios coursed through his consciousness, few of them ending happily.

Don’t send me away, he begged her silently. Running an uneasy hand through his hair, he tried to smooth the rain dampened strands.

“Julianne.” He couldn’t disguise the tremor in his voice. She was staring through him as if he were a ghost.

Before Gabriel could give voice to that idea, he heard something approach. He turned in the direction of an approaching vehicle. Julia was still standing in the road.

He shouted to her wildly, “Julia, move!”

Frozen, she ignored his warning, and the car whipped past, narrowly missing her. Gabriel began walking toward her, arms and hands waving.

“Julia, get out of the road. Now!”

Chapter 44

Julia’s eyes were shut tightly. She could hear noises and the distant hum of his voice, but she couldn’t make out any words. Droplets of rain fell on her bare arms and legs, and a solid chest pressed against her face as a warm, masculine body wrapped around her like a blanket.

She opened her eyes.

Gabriel’s handsome face was lined with worry, his eyes shimmering with hope. He placed a hesitant hand against the curve of her cheek, brushing under her eye with the pad of his thumb.

For a few moments, at least, they said nothing.

“Are you all right?” he breathed.

She stared up at him, speechless.

“I didn’t mean to shock you. I came as soon as I could.”

His words broke through the haze that froze her. Julia wriggled out of his grasp. “What are you doing here?”

He frowned. “I would have thought it was obvious.”

“Not to me.”

Gabriel huffed in frustration. “It’s July first. I came as soon as I could.”

Julia shook her head, taking a cautious step back. “What?”

His voice took on a conciliatory tone. “I wish I could have returned earlier.”

Her expression said it all—the narrowed, suspicious eyes, the ruby lips pressed tightly together, the clenched jaw.

“You knew I resigned. Surely you must have known I’d come back.”

Julia clutched her laptop to her chest. “Why would I think that?”

His eyes widened. For a moment, he was too stunned to speak.

“Did you think that I wouldn’t come back, even after I’d resigned?”

“That’s what a person tends to think when her lover flees the city without so much as a phone call. And sends her an impersonal email saying that it’s over.”

Gabriel’s expression hardened. “Sarcasm does not become you, Julianne.”

“Lying does not become you, Professor.” Her eyes flashed.

He took a step toward her, then stopped. “So we’re back to that, are we? Julianne and the Professor?”

“According to what you told the hearing officers, we never got past it. You’re the professor, I’m the student. You seduced and dumped me. The hearing officers didn’t tell me if you said that you enjoyed it.”

He swore under his breath. “I sent you messages. You simply chose not to believe them.”

“What messages? The telephone calls you never made? The letters you never wrote? Apart from that email, I’ve heard nothing from you since you called me Héloise. Absolutely nothing.

“And what about the messages I left you? Maybe you deleted them without bothering to listen—just like you left without bothering to tell me. Do you know how humiliating that was? That the man who was supposed to love me fled the city in order to break up with me?”