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  “Take your time on that apartment. I’m in no hurry for you to move out.”

  “That’s considerate.”

  “No, it’s selfish. It’s a lot easier to try to seduce you when you’re sleeping in my house than it is if you’re living four blocks away. Not that it’s far, but it’s still slightly less convenient.”

  “Half the time I think we should just do it and get it over with, so you’ll stop harassing me.”

  Brandon looked appalled. “Just doing it and getting it over with is not in my repertoire, Sweet Pea. And when you succumb, you’ll understand.”

  Gabriella snorted.

  “I’ve got it bad, because even when you make obnoxious sounds, I still think you’re hot.”

  They fell into a companionable silence as they shared the platter of lasagna. When it was half gone, Gabriella declared herself full and Brandon admitted he was too.

  He stood up and said, “Bring your laundry down and I’ll show you how to use my washing machine.”

  ***

  When she stepped into the laundry room, she carried a small armload of dirty laundry and wore a pair of pajama bottoms and a basic, fitted t-shirt. Brandon stood there waiting for her. As soon as she walked in, she flushed as she remembered the first kiss they’d shared, and the fact that she’d wanted to do more, much more. The look in his eye told her he remembered as well, and vividly.

  She dumped the clothes into the washer. Brandon added detergent, turned it on and closed the lid. Then he turned and leaned against the washer, observing her through half closed eyes.

  “I’d really like to know what’s keeping you from what I think we both want to do.”

  Gabriella fidgeted and averted her eyes. “It’s complicated, Brandon. A lot of things happened in Dallas, and I am just not in the right place right now.”

  Brandon reached out and grabbed a fistful of her t-shirt. He tugged gently, and she took a step closer to him. “If you were in the right place, would you sleep with me?”

  Gabriella swallowed. “Probably. You’re pretty hard to resist.”

  He tugged again and she took another step closer. She now stood one large step away from him.

  “Any chance you will, eventually, be in the right place?” He stood up straighter. He stared at her face, unflinching.

  “I’m sure of it,” she whispered as her eyes moved down to stare at his lips.

  They stood like that for several heartbeats, and then Gabriella licked her lips and stepped forward without any encouragement. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into a kiss. He wrapped his arms around her waist and deepened the kiss. Gabriella twined her hands in Brandon’s hair as his hands began roaming up and down her back, slipping lower and lower until he grabbed her backside and pulled her against his erection. She wiggled her hips and he groaned. His hands slipped under her shirt and deftly unclasped her bra. When he cupped a hand over her left breast, she let out a gasp.

  Brandon trailed kisses across her cheek to her ear and after he nibbled on her earlobe, he whispered, “Please tell me you are in the right place right now.”

  Gabriella actually chuckled. “I’m starting to think we are destined to have sex in this laundry room.”

  “Sweet Pea, I’ll do it anywhere you want, as long as you say yes.” He nibbled on her neck.

  She canted her head to the side to give him better access and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to decide if she really, truly would go through with this. God knows she wanted to, but her mind was still questioning whether it was a good or safe or smart idea. She just needed a yes to at least one of those options, and she would be good to go.

  Gabriella’s cell phone rang.

  “Damn it,” Brandon muttered, and Gabriella stepped away from him to go find her purse and dig out her cell phone. She answered it just before it dropped into voice mail.

  “Hello?”

  “Gabby, it’s Emmett.” Gabriella sank onto the couch and closed her eyes, savoring the warm feeling at hearing her brother’s voice. Brandon walked into the room and frowned.

  “Emmett. It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “So how are you adjusting? Are you okay?”

  “I’m adjusting well, thank you. The store was a complete mess when I got here, but I’ve made real progress in the last two days. Some of the local folks are going to help me on Saturday. I’m hoping to be open before Halloween.”

  “Good. Any word from Miguel?” Gabriella heard the edge in his voice when he said Miguel’s name. Even her brother didn’t know the full extent of what happened with Miguel, although he knew enough to be concerned for her safety.

  “None. He won’t find me here.” I hope.

  “If he does, call the police. Let them deal with it. Hey, what are you going to do for Christmas? Should I start working on mom and dad to come down here to New Orleans?”

  Gabriella shook her head, even though Emmett couldn’t see her. “I can’t, Emmett. It’s just me right now, running this store on my own. There’s no way I can take time off around Christmas. Maybe next year.” Gabriella felt tears prick her eyes. It would be the first Christmas ever that she didn’t spend with her family.

  “We could come to you.”

  “No,” Gabriella said more sharply than she meant. “Mom and dad do not know where I am and I can’t tell them. I’m not taking the chance that Miguel might be watching them, trying to get information about me.”

  “Okay, okay, relax. It was just a thought. So do you think you’ll be happy up there?”

  Gabriella instinctively turned around and was surprised to see Brandon lounging against the wall behind her. His eyes were half closed and he watched her with what she determined was feigned detachment. Regardless of the look on his face, she knew he was listening to every word she spoke.

  She turned back around and said, “I certainly hope so. Listen, Emmett, I have to go. I will keep in touch, I promise. I love you.”

  “I love you too, sis. Don’t let anyone up there mess with you. Bye.”

  Brandon walked over and sat down next to her. “So who’s my competition?”

  “My brother.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Brandon tried not to be obvious about the deep breath he expelled, nor the distinct relief he felt. Her brother, he could handle that. The affection in her voice made sense now. It wasn’t some other guy, after all. At least, not one he had to consider as competition.

  “So your parents have no idea where you live now, and you’re going to miss Christmas, which I’m guessing hasn’t happened very often before, if ever.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Gabriella nodded.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Gabriella.”

  Gabriella turned away from him and stared at the glass of wine that was still sitting on the coffee table. Brandon inched closer and began massaging her shoulders. She tensed, but he persisted and after a few minutes, she relaxed under his ministrations. When she half turned and lifted her arms as if she meant to embrace him, he tightened his grip on her shoulders and forced her to turn away.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Brandon said, as if he could read her mind. “Something tells me I can’t have you completely and wholly until you tell me what the hell you are running away from.”

  “How is it you can practically read my mind after we’ve only known each other for two days?”

  “You’re pretty easy to read, Sweet Pea.”

  “Thank God that’s not true, otherwise I wouldn’t even be here.” She shuddered.

  Brandon hadn’t done more than share a few kisses with her and he felt like his life would not have ever been complete if she had not walked into it. The thought made him frown, but Gabriella was still facing away from him, so she did not see it.

  Gabriella picked up the glass of wine and took a sip. She didn’t speak for so long that Brandon began to wonder if she would avoid the subject again after all. And then the floodgates finally opened.

  “Migu
el and I dated for almost two years. We met through his brother, who was in charge of landscaping for the company where I worked. It was nice in the beginning. He showered me with attention and loved to take me places. Now I realize he just enjoyed the attention he got by having a good-looking blond on his arm. He is a very self-centered man.”

  She paused, sorting out the memories in her head.

  “After about a year, I started working for him. He ran a pretty large empire. Landscaping businesses, property development, all sorts of different businesses. I was his office manager. Another thing I realized in retrospect was that he wanted to have total control over me. I moved into his home, I worked for him. I was always very close to my family, and by that point I hardly ever saw them. Miguel didn’t like me to be away from him or his life. If I went shopping, it was with one of his sisters. Even when I did get to visit my family, Miguel insisted on going with me. The first time my brother came into town – he lives in New Orleans – and met Miguel, Emmett managed to pull me aside and tell me the guy was bad news.

  “But I was so infatuated, with both Miguel and my new life, that I ignored him and all the signs. Miguel is a very good looking man – kind of looks like you, but with dark eyes.”

  She half turned and glanced at Brandon. He forced his face to remain impassive as he continued to systematically massage her shoulders.

  “He also gave me anything I wanted, and I admit to enjoying shopping more than the average girl. Even though my life with him sometimes felt oppressive, on the surface, it seemed perfect, and I felt stupid questioning my good fortune just because I sometimes felt like a prisoner in my own life.

  “Anyway, as his office manager, my responsibilities were really little more than being a secretary. I wasn’t supposed to have access to anything financial or, I realize now, anything incriminating. It was just his way of keeping me under his thumb. Part of it was just his personality, but probably part of it was he didn’t trust me, either. He liked to have total control over everything in his life. But the problem was, I’m a lot smarter than he gave me credit for, and I started noticing stuff. I didn’t like what I found out. His empire was a lot more extensive than it appeared on the surface. There was lots of illegal stuff buried in there.

  “Definitely gun running, definitely illegally importing immigrants, probably drugs. Stuff that I had no interest in being involved in. I couldn’t let him know I knew, and I couldn’t just walk away. I had to convince him that he didn’t want me anymore, without making him too angry, so that he would just discard me, basically, instead of take more drastic measures.”

  She shuddered again and Brandon stopped massaging and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She leaned back and rested her back against his chest.

  “I can’t believe I’m telling you all of this.”

  “It’s okay. I’m a good listener.”

  She hesitated for a few moments before she resumed speaking again.

  “I tried all sorts of stupid things to make him not like me anymore. I started acting kind of bitchy all the time, like I wasn’t really grateful for everything he’d done for me. I got sloppy at work. I was in charge of keeping up his house and yard – I think he liked the idea of pretending to play house with me – so I did things like cancel the cleaning service, and then complain about how dirty the house was. I switched the weed killer and fertilizer so half the flowers in his yard died. Just annoying little things. I think he really was starting to get frustrated with me, and I’m pretty sure he was just about ready to cut me loose.”

  She paused again, and her eyes were unfocused, as she relived that period of her life in her head. Brandon began stroking her hair.

  “About two months ago, Miguel called me into his office. It was just the two of us, which only really happened when we were, uh…” She trailed off and a blush crept up her cheeks.

  “I get it, Gabriella,” Brandon said softly, and there was just a trace of amusement in his voice, as if her embarrassment over the fact that she had been having sex with her ex-boyfriend was funny.

  She cleared her throat and continued her story. “I thought this was it. He was finally through with me. I was so happy, because I couldn’t wait to go home to my parents. I was planning to move back in with them, until I figured out where to live and find a new job. I had it all planned out in my head. I was even toying with the idea of going to New Orleans for a week or two, just to get away and hang out with Emmett. And then he burst my bubble,” she said bitterly.

  “He always called me queirda which means darling in Spanish. He said, ‘Mi queirda, I have some excellent news. We’re going to be married.’ I was, as you can imagine, not nearly as excited as he expected me to be. I told him I wasn’t marrying him and he said, ‘Oh yes you are. You don’t have a choice in this matter.’ It was the first time Miguel had ever used what I thought of as his scary voice on me. I’d witnessed him use it before, but he’d never directed it at me, even when I was trying to annoy him enough to let me go. So I was pretty scared at that point.

  “I suggested we just continue living together, and I’d try to be a better girlfriend and he said, ‘well, there’s a slight problem with that. You see, the government has become aware of the fact that I did not move to this country using legal means, and I am not in a position to go back to Mexico at this moment. So you are going to become my wife, so I can stay in Texas.’ And you know what I was feeling at that time? I was angry because he wanted to marry me for a stupid Visa, not because he loved me. Isn’t that the end all, be all? Here this man was telling me I was about to be trapped, legally, for the rest of my life, and all I could think was, ‘he doesn’t even love me.’ I’m such a sap.” She sounded disgusted with herself.

  “You’re not a sap,” Brandon said quietly. “You’re human. Everybody wants to be loved, Gabriella. It’s human nature.” This coming from a guy who, according to his sister-in-law, had shown the first signs of emotion toward a woman the day before, when he’d been furious with Gabriella for flirting with Jared.

  “So you obviously gathered your wits about you and decided to escape,” Brandon prompted.

  Gabriella nodded. “Yes. Maybe that was the final straw, but I was determined not to marry him. Maybe if he’d said, ‘I love you, Gabriella, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you,’ I might have felt differently, even though I didn’t want to marry him regardless. But it would have been harder to leave if I knew he loved me. Stupid, but in the end, it didn’t matter, because he didn’t.

  “So Miguel announced the engagement, and set his sisters to planning the wedding. Probably he suspected I would drag my feet and not do anything about it. The good thing was, the wedding planning made planning my escape easier. I managed to get away from Miguel or any of his family a little easier on a regular basis, because there was always something to do: dress fittings, cake tastings, registering, shower planning. Miguel insisted on a big wedding, even though he didn’t want anything to do with the wedding details. And his sisters couldn’t watch me twenty-four-seven, especially when they didn’t realize they were supposed to be babysitting me.

  “I bought a new cell phone with a new, unlisted number. I kept my laptop and a bag of clothes in my car at all times, in case I needed to leave quickly. I started hoarding cash and keeping it in my car, too. God knows, if someone had stolen my car back then, they would have hit the jackpot. When I moved in with Miguel, I put most of my stuff in a storage unit. I began selling it, piece by piece, on eBay, and in the meantime, I was surfing the Internet, trying to decide what to do with my life. I knew I couldn’t stay in Dallas. Miguel is a very powerful man there, and he would have found me. I figure my family is safe as long as they have no idea where I am. My brother is far enough away that it would be hard for Miguel to get to him, especially given his current status with the government. He’s the only person who knows where I am.

  “I managed to sell most of my stuff, and I was just waiting for an opportunity to get away. I still hadn’t
figured out where I was going yet. And then the stars aligned and I had the perfect opportunity to escape. Miguel’s grandmother had a stroke and everyone jumped up and rushed to the hospital. I couldn’t believe my luck. Miguel was so upset that he completely forgot about me. I was literally left all alone in his house, which had never, ever happened before.

  “I put all of my personal belongings and Butter in my car and I drove away. I stopped at my storage unit, rented a u-haul from them, loaded everything I had left into it – that was the scariest part, because I was still so close that I felt like Miguel would drive up at any moment. Then I drove to Little Rock and checked into a hotel using cash. I holed up for a few days, playing on the computer, trying to decide where to go. The ad for the candy store popped up one day, and it seemed perfect: small town, other end of the country, instant form of revenue. The perfect place to start over. And here I am.”

  ***

  She relaxed against Brandon and closed her eyes. She felt waves of relief wash over her. She had never told anyone else the entire story before, and somehow, she felt better having shared it with Brandon. It felt good to not have to be vague with him anymore.

  Now, the only problem she had was, deciding the next step in their relationship. Keeping it platonic seemed logical, because there was no risk of emotions getting involved. Now that he knew all about her past, she didn’t particularly want him to walk out of her life. And with his track record, if they slept together, he’d certainly walk out of her life at some point shortly thereafter.

  Brandon continued to stroke her hair and commented, “You’re thinking again.”

  Gabriella straightened up and turned to face him. “Yes, I am. I’m thinking that sleeping with you is a bad idea.”

  Brandon groaned. “How is it that you manage to constantly come to that same conclusion?”

  “Think about it, Brandon” –

  “I do. Constantly. I can hardly think of anything else.”