Fatal Wild Child (8 page)

But every time they had lined up on her today, Seth had stepped in front of her, or picked her up, dusted her off and pushed her back in front of the fray with her mental boxing gloves back on.

Now they were at the brandy and coffee stage, though, she was truly running out of energy. It had been a long while since she had gone head-on with the family,
mano é mano
like this. She would walk away from the table today with her dignity intact, thanks to Seth. Normally she either crept away from family dinners, a slug-like being with a destroyed ego, or she stalked away before the event was done, her fury pouring from every vent, ready to crack heads and break precious objects.

Family dinners lasted for hours and it was already getting dark when she and Seth got to their feet and walked slowly to the entryway once more.

Seth looked out through the doors. "It's snowing again," he said.

He looked so good in his suit. She wanted to open the jacket and snuggle up against him, inside the jacket and just...inhale him.

"That'll make it a slow trip home," she said stiffly.

The waiter brought his long overcoat and helped him into it.

"I know the road between here and home backward and upside-down," Seth said. "I'll be fine."

The coat made his shoulders look extra wide, extra strong. There were so many things Gabrielle wanted to say to him. He'd spent all afternoon propping up her courage...why couldn't she find the strength now to give some of that back to him? Damn it, he was about to step out the door and maybe never come back!

She reached for his sleeve. "You said you would explain, later."

He glanced around the entrance area, looking for observers. "We might be better off—" He looked over her shoulder. "Darlene," he said more loudly.

Gabrielle let go of his sleeve and turned to face her father's assistant. The blonde smiled pleasantly. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to catch you before you left. There's heavy snowfall reports for the area and Cameron would prefer that you didn't risk driving in such conditions. We've arranged a cabin for you for the night, with our compliments." She held out a keycard. "It's the MacKenzie King cabin, at the end of path. They're all marked very clearly."

Seth looked at the keycard for a moment, then slowly reached out to take it. "Tell Cameron he's a pain in the butt, but I accept the offer." He shook his head. "I can't refuse, can I?"

Darlene smiled. "You'd look foolish if you did. The snow fall warnings are quite real." As she turned away, she winked at Gabrielle.

Gabrielle cleared her throat, trying to cover her shock. Darlene was always so completely professional. It was the first time she had ever seen that professional appearance give way to anything else. But then, Darlene and she had never really got along.

Gabrielle looked up at Seth. "I was going to head for my cabin, too. Let me get my coat and I'll show you where your cabin is."

Seth nodded.

She hurried into the closet and found her coat and threw it on, aware that her heart had started to beat with a triple-time tattoo. She was grateful for this last minute reprieve, even as she was angry with her father for the bare-faced manipulation. Seth's reaction indicated that he knew he was being pushed around, too.

She felt flushed and flustered by the time she returned to where Seth stood at the doors. He had collected the bag holding her camera and laptop, and she picked up her old digital camera and slipped the carry strap over her shoulder.

"I don't know about you, Gabrielle, but I really need to be somewhere quiet and away from people," Seth said in an undertone.

She looked up at him, startled. "God, yes," she said, her breath escaping her in a rush.

He nodded. "Let's go." He pushed open the door for her.

She stepped out into the crisp, still air, pushed her hands into her pockets and drew in a deep lungful of the cold air. "It's wonderful," she sighed.

Seth stopped next to her. "Left or right?"

She turned left and they walked slowly down the wide path, enjoying the coolness. The path was well lit, with lamp posts every ten feet or so along the way. Snowflakes drifted down from a low sky. It wasn't snowing hard yet, but the clouds had a heavy, pregnant look that promised more.

"Is your family always like that, Gabrielle, or was that just for me?" Seth asked.

"That's pretty much standard for them," Gabrielle said, with a sigh. "Actually, they were a bit subdued. You had them cowed. I don't recall the last time they really listened to me talk about my friends before."

"You mean about Sofia Coppola and the new film she's directing?"

Gabrielle frowned as she watched snowflakes drift down, and tried to find the right analogy. "It was like...being able to take a full breath." She looked up at him. "I should bottle you and take you with me to every family function. I don't know how you did it, Seth. I've been living with them for twenty-eight years and I've never considered myself a coward, or short on backbone, but until you were there I've never noticed how much they had cut off my breathing. Like boa constrictors...each exhalation, they contract around you until you can't breathe anymore."

Seth's hand rested on her fingers. "I think you just answered your own question, Gabrielle. You've been living with them for twenty-eight years. I just got here. They've had time to work on you and squeeze out your breath."

She smiled. "You stayed with my analogy. That's cute."

"I aim to please."

"Do you?" she asked. "Is that why you're here, Seth?"

He glanced at her. "I know I promised an explanation, but I don't want to do it out here, where anyone can hear. Do you mind?"

She looked around. "There's no one out here."

"You'd be surprised. I'd rather wait until we're inside. Indulge me."

"Alright," she said slowly. She pointed to the cabin they were approaching. "This one is mine," she said. "I want to change my shoes for boots, and drop off the cameras. Give me a couple of minutes."

She took the heavy bag from him, leaving him standing in the lightly falling snow, a broad-shouldered man in an unexpectedly elegant European-style long dark winter coat that matched the black hair. In the low light of the late winter afternoon, his hair showed blue highlights from the lights shining from the cabins and lamps around him.

Then there were his eyes. The blue intensity of them. They saw more deeply inside her than the entire sum total of paying audience members of every movie she'd ever made.

Gabrielle hurried inside the chalet, the image of Seth lingering in her mind. She wanted to press herself against him and kiss him. No, that was too simple an explanation for what she wanted to do. Kissing was just the beginning.

She thought again of that moment in the truck, back at Seth's cabin. The almost-kiss. The tension that had screamed through her.

Seth could have taken his kiss and far, far more right then. She had been operating without a net. No safety harness and live bullets.

As Gabrielle changed her stilettos for more practical and warmer winter boots, a pair with heels that still gave her some height and protected her legs under the long coat, her body responded to the memory of the moment in the truck. She grew aroused and her heart began to beat frantically in her chest.

Then there had been the moment outside her father's study. She had been completely at Seth's mercy. If he had reached out and taken her, she would have had no defenses to raise at all. She wouldn't have even tried to struggle.

Gabrielle stared sightlessly at her boots as the truth formed in her mind.

When it came to Seth, she had no restraints. She didn't know how to stop herself. Only Seth himself had prevented them from falling instantly into bed and Gabrielle repeating history.

Again.

Gabrielle shook her head. "No," she whispered to the empty room. No, not again. This wasn't like any of the other times.

There was a huge difference.

This time, she wanted him. For the first time since she had got sober and straightened up her life, she actually
wanted
a man with something beyond an interest that lasted longer than thirty seconds.

Gabrielle swallowed. Lord, how she wanted him.

She finished slowly zipping up her boots.

And Seth wanted her. He'd admitted as much. But he'd walked away.

Why had he come back? Why wouldn't he kiss her?

Feeling better equipped to face Seth and the elements, Gabrielle hurried back out to where he waited and again felt the same little trip hammer in her heart and gut when she saw him.

She paused on the verandah step, six inches higher than Seth, looking down at him. "Remind me again, Seth, why you won't kiss me?"

His eyes seemed to darken at her question. "I won't kiss you until you know for sure I'm not just another Adrian, or one of his breed."

"God, I already know that, Seth," she said, her voice emerging husky with surprise and concern. "My father shoved your record at me and insisted I read it before I burn—what's wrong?"

Seth had winced and now rubbed his temples. "That's...great. That's...god, that's really sensitive information. It's high security stuff, for a start, Gabrielle. And second, you're not Canadian. And third..." He let out a breath. "I don't know what the third is. How about it's information that would get me court-martialed if I so much as breathed about it and you and your father are just handing it around the family like a tabloid newspaper? Read all about it."

His distress was genuine, coming off him in waves. She reached for him, soothing him. "No, no, Seth, you misunderstand. Only my father and I read that file and I destroyed it straight afterwards. Not even Darlene saw the inside of it. And it was just your records, not details—where you went and when, and honors. Lord, the decorations, Seth!" She curled her hands around the lapels of his coat and shook him. "Why are you forbidden to speak of it? It's appalling!"

His hands covered hers, warm and big. "It's the nature of what I do," he said gently. "I'm supposed to be a normal person, according to the rest of the world. I can't be awarded military honors if I'm meant to be a civilian."

"It stinks," Gabrielle said hotly.

"It's fine the way it is," Seth told her. "I don't need public acknowledgement." His gaze was steady. "But that doesn't mean I'm any happier about the fact that you've seen my records, Gabrielle."

She sighed. "My father gave me the file and I couldn't
not
read it. I wanted to know who it was I'd driven out of my life. I thought it might show me where I'd gone wrong. I thought I'd lost you, Seth." She looked him in the eye. "I'm still not sure I haven't."

Seth's hands tightened around hers and plucked them from his coat. "Let's locate my cabin," he said neutrally.

Gabrielle suppressed her sigh. "Okay," she said, trying to match his tone. She turned left again and walked, and fought for a casual tone. "You really can't get lost around here. You just keep following this path. It makes up a great big loop. Your cabin is at the end of the loop and sits out on the lake. If you're into fishing at all, you can sit on your deck and hang a line out into the water off the edge of it in the summer. I've had ice-skating friends who use it as a skating post in the winter, when the ice is thick enough. The lodge scrapes the ice right up to the deck."

"Sounds idyllic." His tone was equally as casual.

"I used to use the cabin myself, up until a few years ago," Gabrielle explained.

"What made you trade?"

She shrugged. "Oh, I felt like a change. You know." She looked up at the night sky. The snow clouds were so low and thick, they were picking up the lights from everywhere—the lights from Jasper, cars, houses—and reflecting them back, which the thick snow cover was bouncing straight back up. The dark sky was light-filled and illuminated in a ghostly, glowing way. The snowfall had retreated to a few drifting flakes, but the bulging sky spoke of much, much more to come.

"I'm sorry," Seth murmured. "I wasn't thinking. It was all part of the big change a few years ago, right?"

She nodded.

"Did it help?"

"Not according to my family."

"I was asking you."

She bit her lip. "Coming back here the first year was torture," she confessed. "Changing cabins didn't really help all that much. I still had to deal with everyone else. I'd only been...well, 'clean' for a couple of months and everyone was still treating me like the drama queen I'd been for the last twelve years or so. It was hell on wheels. I don't think I spoke more than a dozen words the entire three weeks." She smiled at him. "My family, Seth, is a unique species. I feel like I should apologize for them."

"Don't," he said softly. "Your family and you, too, are your father's off-spring. You're all leaders, directors and managers of people. You can't help it. It just comes naturally to you and the manipulation of human nature becomes a battlefield inside the family because you've got too many directorial egos in the same space."

She'd never heard it put that way before, but now that Seth had simplified it, she realized that this was her family, exactly. Seth had captured their essence in a single afternoon.