thunder sounded, jolting him out of his reverie. What was wrong with him? That evening had been more than five years ago and the memory of it still haunted him?
I must be tired.
Lightning flashed and the rain upped its assault on his windows. It had been the same that night. A Christmas storm.
My god, yes .
It had been this time of year. He’d had her Christmas present with him. A flimsy scrap of lace, Christmas scarlet with holly leaves and berries embroidered across the bust. Handling it before the shop assistant had boxed it up he’d imagined Gabrielle’s petite breasts underneath it and the pleasure he anticipated watching her try it on for him. Sliding the lace up her slender legs, smoothing the transparent fabric over her flat stomach, turning so he could see how it molded to her perfect butt. The warmth of her smile whenever he brought her a gift was almost as pleasurable as the warmth of her body as she wrapped it around him. Almost. Pah, that had been the first and last time he’d bothered to do any Christmas shopping himself.
Another crack of lightning and a boom of thunder sounded right behind. The storm was on top of him. No wonder he was feeling out of sorts. Believe that if you want.
Christmas was hard. His parents had died in a storm just like this one, leaving him to grow up with his grandmother. Gabrielle had been the only woman who had made him look forward to Christmas, who had made him think he could relish the sentimentality retailers traded off. A woman who he’d thought he could trust, one who shared the common pain of growing up without a mother. The woman who had squirmed underneath him in bed and driven him crazy as she raked his back with her nails and linked her legs around his waist as she cried yes, oh yes. And who had disappeared over five years ago.
“Damn you Gabrielle Phillips,” Nicolas snarled at the storm. And now she was here. In his store. Stealing from him all over again. He shook his head to get her out of it, but it didn’t work.
No. It wasn’t Gabrielle in his head. It was ego. If she’d stuck round a few days longer he would have known her for what she really was: a thief and a liar. When the news of her father’s arrest broke it become clear why she’d run. The hedge fund she had signed him up to had burnt his investment cash as neatly as if Gabrielle had put a match to a towering stack of bills. No one made a fool of Nicolas Morganti and got away with it.
He’d tried to find her at first of course. To get his money, and to let her feel the pain of being dumped by him properly. But by the time he learnt she wasn’t going to join her father in jail, it was too late, she’d disappeared into the side streets of NYC.
Now he realized that ignoring her had not made her go away nearly as neatly as it should have. He caught himself staring at petite raven haired women without even realizing it. Then the woman would turn, and he’d wonder what it was about her that had made him look so intently. Gabrielle . Every woman he’d made love to since, he’d compared to her. There had always been something lacking. Something in the way they called out or touched him or kissed that hadn’t quite got under his skin the way it had in the past. Gabrielle . Conversations he should have had with her played out in his head without him realizing she was the intended recipient of his insight and speculation. Gabrielle.
It might have taken five years, but now he had his chance.
There was a lull in the rain and the silence seemed magnified, as if it were morning; that quiet time where traffic has almost stilled and even New York City’s streets were mostly empty.
Nicolas picked up a picture of his grandmother and ran a finger down the side of her face. “No one plays the Morganti’s do they?” The thought blazed in his mind, the words in his grandmother’s gravelly voice. The old woman had schooled him well on living on his instincts and every day