Fatal Wild Child (22 page)
Authors: Tracy Cooper-Posey
They went to their favorite restaurant. She kept her chin up as they braved the cameras out the front. She discovered that her father, as always, was right. She was no longer the seventh wonder of the hour and for that, Gabrielle was sincerely grateful.
Once inside the restaurant she slipped into her seat and let her heart settle, while her father ordered a bottle of wine. She even let him pour her a glass, and enjoyed his look of surprise when she said yes.
Gabrielle sipped and the act of sipping brought tears to her eyes. She had managed to go nearly an hour without thinking about Seth. Now his absence was like an ache, pounding at her head, sawing at her heart.
"What is it, Gabrielle?" her father asked.
She shook her head and took a breath, then looked at him. "So...give me the news."
He shook his head. "I'm not here to give you the news, Ellie."
She clenched her fist in her napkin at his use of Seth's name. "Then...?"
"I'm here to tell you about your mother."
She bit her lip. "Why?"
He smoothed the already perfect tablecloth. "I loved her, Gabrielle. And there's no one left in the world who cares to know that...except maybe for you. I want you to know about her. Love should be cherished. Not left to wither and die."
Her throat hurt, so she took a sip of her wine. "All right then," she said.
Her father began to tell her about her mother, Gabriella Martinique, a photo-journalist. That made Gabrielle start, but she gripped her wine glass and listened hard, and soon found herself lost in the tale of her mother's short life, as the waiters moved around them, bringing dinner, clearing the table, pouring coffee, serving cheese.
Her father dug in his jacket and brought out a flat leather case and slid it across the table. "This is for you. I had it duplicated." He sat back.
Gabrielle put her hand on it, but suddenly didn't want to open it. She knew what would be inside. A photo of Gabriella.
"It's all right," her father said. "Go on."
She opened the case.
No wonder her father found it difficult to be around her. She and Gabriella were identical twins. The woman he had lost thirty years ago was alive today in her body. Except for the change of hairstyles, this could be a photo of her.
She shut the case and looked at him. "How do you stand it?" she asked. "How do you not hate me for looking so much like her?"
"You're not exactly alike," he assured her. "You're not as tall, I'm afraid."
"Ah..." She pressed her hand against the case. "I’ve had a week of men influencing my life via photos."
"Why do you say that?"
"Seth..." She reached for her wine, then pulled her hand back and sat on it. "Seth, before he went away, asked me if he could have some copies of some of my photos. For personal reasons, he said."
Her father tilted his head to one side, curious. "So?"
She thought back to the call she had received earlier that week. She had been working at her desk, getting used to the new software on her new desktop computer, playing around with filters and color graduations
When the phone had rung, she had answered it absently.
"Hi, this is Ellie."
"Oh...er, hi. I was looking for...Gabrielle Sherborne's assistant."
Her instincts snapped into place at once. "Who's asking?"
"This is the entertainment editor of the
Globe & Mail
in Toronto. It's not actually about Ms. Sherborne that I'm calling. It's about some photos she took of Sally-Ray Rothschild. I desperately want to buy them for an in-depth profile we're doing of Sally-Ray in two week's time. Actually, we're building the whole profile around the photos."
"That son-of-a-bitch," Gabrielle breathed.
"Excuse me?" the editor said, sounding winded.
"What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't, but it's John."
"I'm Ellie, John. I'm guessing, but by chance, are you a friend, or a friend of a friend of Seth O'Connor?"
A pause. She counted her heart beat. One. Two. Three.
"A friend," he said. "One that doesn't see enough of his friends. He dumped these on me, told me who had taken them, and I thought he was pulling my leg. They're really very good Ms...Ellie. I'm not joking when I said we ended up building the whole profile around Sally-Ray's photos. There's a quality in them that we've never seen in her before, that made Chris, the journalist, want to go write the article. It's taken me three weeks to track you down and I had to pull some real favors to do it. Does seven hundred sound reasonable to you?"
"For the photos?" she asked.
"Each," he returned.
"Canadian?"
"Are you kidding? No. American."
They talked a little more, swapping contact information, and at the end of the five minutes, Gabrielle hung up, over four thousand dollars richer.
Two days later, the editor of the
L.A. Times
had called. John, from the
Globe & Mail
, it seemed, had been talking to him, and he was looking for a photo-portrait artist, someone with a real eye...
"What did you tell the
Times
?" her father asked.
"I said I'd get back to them." Gabrielle rubbed her temples. "I didn't know what to say, to tell the truth. How dare he! If I knew where to find him, I'd strangle Seth."
"Would you?" her father asked coolly. "Really?"
She lifted her head. "No," she confessed, the heavy weight descending in a rush. "No, I'd probably make a fool of myself and cry all over him." She realized she was smoothing the tablecloth and made herself stop.
"You love him," her father said.
She nodded.
"Why didn't you ever tell him that?" he said with a sigh.
"Because of your stupid one million dollars!" she flared.
He sat for a moment, stunned. "Oh, Gabrielle," he said softly. "The man so patently loved you, couldn't you see that?"
"No, I couldn't, not after all the Adrians, and the screw ups I'd made, when I thought I'd had the real thing and it all just melted away as soon as they got sick of me, or the hangover wore off, Dad. I had to be sure, I had to really know in myself, too." She sniffed. "Well, now I know. I've had eight weeks of knowing and I guess I've got the rest of my life to figure out how to stop knowing."
Cameron sighed. "Kids these days..." He dug in his jacket again and put a folded sheet of paper on the table. "The entire time you two were snuggled up in that cabin, it never occurred to you to exchange cell phone numbers, did it?"
Her heart seemed to come to a grinding halt. She stared at the sheet of paper. "What is that?"
"Seth's orders."
"He's been on tour?"
"Afghanistan for the last six weeks."
Her heart lurched. "You've been talking to him?"
"Unlike you, dear daughter, I managed to get his cell phone number within the first twenty-four hours of meeting him." He touched the sheet. "He lands in Vancouver tomorrow, and plans to head to his cabin the day after that."
* * * * *
Gabrielle bribed Lucy with a bag of Kibble 'n Bits she had the foresight to bring with her from Jasper.
It made Lucy her new best friend. The big setter bounced around Gabrielle with the dim-witted lack of sense most of the breed seemed to show, letting Gabrielle get out of the car and move around freely.
Gabrielle parked the rented Jaguar around the back of the cabin so that Seth wouldn't see it straight away.
She and Lucy settled down on the deck to wait in the sun. She took a few photos of the place and of Lucy, who liked the noise of the shutter.
After a couple of hours, Gabrielle heard the sound of a truck coming down the highway from the west. Lucy's ears pricked. Then the setter got up eagerly, heading for the rutted track from the highway.
Her heart thudding, Gabrielle got to her feet and waited. The truck pulled into the track and bumped along, missing the worst of the ruts by practice, until it pulled up in front of the shed with a sharp stamp on the brakes.
The engine stopped and Seth got out, staring at her. He was wearing a travel rumpled tee-shirt and a pea coat over black jeans. All of them, she knew, he would have thrown on just inside the Canadian border, returning to civilian status after six weeks as a soldier.
He didn't even shut the door of the truck. Instead he moved around it, still staring at her. He stepped up onto the deck and came up behind her.
"Shhh...don't move," he said, as she made to turn around to face him.
His arms slid around her and he pressed up against her from behind. She felt his breath escape him in a rush. For a long moment he just held her. She could feel his heart beat against her back.
And she could feel him trembling.
"I know what I want to say, now," he murmured by her ear. "I figured it all out just then when I saw you standing on my deck."
"You only figured it out just now?" she asked.
"I've been thinking about nothing but you for eight weeks, Ellie. I thought I had it figured out, but now I
know
I do." His lips touched the nape of her neck where she had pulled her hair back with a green velvet ribbon. "You know that night we talked about putting careers first? How most of Hollywood does and that you and I do, too?"
She nodded.
He groaned, his arms tightening around her. "Yeah, well I was wrong. I can't do it that way. Not with you. We're going to have to figure it out somehow, but I'm telling you now, Ellie, you're my life. You're my priority and everything else is second and always will be."
"Thank god," she whispered. "I thought it was just me." She turned in his arms to look at him. "I love you, Seth O'Connor and I've had the most miserable eight weeks of my life because I thought I'd lost you. When you walked out of the cabin that night, my father had to hold me down."
He nodded. "I know, Ellie. I saw what he was doing. You think I went easy? There were too many witnesses, media, superiors...too many people for me to do anything but obey orders that night. I had no idea they were going to ship me out straight after debriefing." He rubbed his thumb over her cheekbone. "And I had to fall in love with the most difficult-to-reach woman on the planet."
"Things are going to be a challenge to arrange, Seth."
He shook his head. "With a globetrotting Sherborne? I don't think so. I'll fly to wherever you are, whenever I can, and we'll call that home, for as long as we can make it so."
"Will that be enough for you, Seth?"
He kissed her. "As long as you're in my arms, Ellie, I'll consider myself the luckiest man alive. It's more than enough."
Fatal Wild Child
Other Romantic Suspense Titles by TracyCooper-Posey
About the Author
Tracy Cooper-Posey is a national award-winning writer. An Australian, she brought her family with her to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1996 to marry. Tracy is a net citizen— she met her husband on the Internet, and has coordinated discussion groups and teaching on-line. She also built and maintains her own web site. She has taught creative writing both on-line and at university, and entertains students and the public with anecdotes and insights into the publishing industry.
By the end of 2010, Tracy had published 35 titles, under her own and other pennames. She has won the Emma Darcy Award, and the Sherlock Holmes Society of Western Australia’s Best Pastiche Award
.
She has been a Romantic Times Top Pick author.
Her short stories and articles have appeared in various Canadian and Australian magazines and periodicals, and on the Internet.
Thief In The Night
was announced as one of RRT Review’s
Best Book of the Year
, and also selected by eCataromance for their Reviewers’ Choice Awards in February 2007. Her 2004 historical romantic suspense,
Heart Of Vengeance
, was nominated for a CAPA Award for Best Historical of 2004, a
Romantic Times
Magazine Reviewer’s Choice finalist for best medieval historical romance for 2004, and was published in Germany in February 2007. On Christmas eve 2010, she was announced as a finalist for the prestigious romance world’s CAPRA awards, in the best erotic paranormal category, and as favorite author.