Rock Hard (Rock Kiss #2)(66)

“Charlie, you two have been doing the tango for months,” her friend responded dryly. “I mean, the foreplay must be driving him nuts.”

“You have a one-track mind.”

“I see you’re following that track, so what does that say about your own mind, huh?”

Charlotte grinned, starting to see the glimmer of a path through this. “Thanks, Moll. I’m going to think about things, act rather than react.” Light sparked off her bracelet as she hung up.

Gabriel had finally shown her how to unlock the complicated clasp last night, after she agreed to keep the bracelet. She’d decided that if it didn’t work out between them, if her problems made that impossible… or if he lost his desire for her, she’d simply ensure it made its way back to him.

That it hurt to even think about no longer being with him told her exactly how badly she’d already fallen.




GABRIEL WAS IN NO mood to find Brian Bishop waiting for him at the Saxon & Archer building. He’d taken the long route back to walk off his fury, but it returned the instant he walked into the lobby and saw the man who was nominally his parent. Brian looked drawn out and pale, but Gabriel also saw the yellowed teeth, the nicotine-stained fingernails, and the crooked nose from when a creditor had beat him up.

His “father” had always chosen his own poisons.

“What do you want?” he snapped after walking Brian back out to the sidewalk.

Eyes wet, the man he’d once called Dad tried to reach out to touch his face. Gabriel backed away from it. “If it’s money,” he said, his voice cold, “give me your account number and I’ll have it transferred.” Better he pay Brian off than have the man shake down Gabriel’s mother by playing on her sympathies.

“No, son.” The quavery voice of a man much older. “I just wanted to see my boy.”

“I haven’t been a boy since I was six years old.” Since the day he’d had his illusions about Brian permanently shattered. Brian’s abandonment a year later had only put the final seal on Gabriel’s view of his father.

The other man huddled into his navy blue windbreaker. “Facing mortality makes a man look back on his life. Mine is full of mistakes—I don’t expect you to forgive me, but please don’t cut me out of your life.”

The plea hit a stone wall. “You made that choice.” Gabriel had watched his younger brother wait for their father to come home, face pressed to the window. Sailor had been adamant Brian would come back for them, his childish pain when that proved a false hope another stone in the wall. “You threw away your family—you can’t just come back and pick us up again.”

“Gabriel, son, I—”

Gabriel sliced out a hand. “Enough. Get out and don’t come back to my workplace. I’ll send you the money.”

“I don’t want your money.” Brian’s shoulders slumped. “If you ever decide you can forgive me, I’m at the Hope Hospice.”

Gabriel said nothing and the man he barely knew and no longer wanted to know finally walked away.

“Gabriel.”

He turned at the sound of Charlotte’s voice, realized she must’ve taken the shortest route back. “Your talk with Molly go well?” he asked, turning his back on Brian Bishop’s retreating figure.

“How did you—” A shake of her head, her eyes looking past him. “It did, but we can talk about it inside. Who was that man?”




CHARLOTTE WAS ALMOST EXPECTING Gabriel’s shrug. “Someone I knew in another life.” The words were cold enough to frost her glasses.

“He calls you, doesn’t he?”

“It’s nothing, Charlotte.” His tone told her to drop it.

Her eyes narrowed. “Fine.”

Glaring at her, he said, “That tone doesn’t say fine. It says you’re pissed.”

“I’ve just realized this relationship apparently only goes one way,” she said, her conversation with Molly fresh in her mind. “I’m to be the needy, broken one who takes, but I’m not allowed to give.”

“Fuck.” A growl of sound. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Fine,” Charlotte said again, fully aware it’d prick his temper.

Gabriel’s eyes flashed. “You want to know who that was? Brian Bishop. My f*cking father. The man who left when I was seven, clearing out every cent he and my mom had in the joint account. He took the rent money, the grocery money, everything.” The growl was gone, ice filming over the gray. “Now he’s sick and he thinks I should give a f*ck.”

Charlotte hadn’t been expecting this cold blast, but she’d seen Gabriel furious before. “You’re still so angry at him,” she said, hesitant but able to feel the pain he refused to acknowledge existed inside him. “Maybe you should talk to him, not for him but for yourself.”

“I don’t need or want advice on my f*ckup of a father from you.” He glanced at his watch after a statement that quickly, efficiently shut her down. The same way she’d seen him shut down business opponents in a negotiation. “We have to get back up to the office.”

Charlotte just nodded, feeling her heart crack. It wasn’t the words or the way he’d spoken them in that frigid tone. It was the fact she’d believed she was learning to deal with Gabriel on an equal basis when it came to their relationship. Clearly, that was a self-deluding lie. He’d been allowing her to handle him.