Paul’s well-muscled body, tight with tension, was suddenly too tempting, too overpowering. Shaken, she backed away a step, the friendly kiss abandoned as a very bad idea.
“You’re running again, Gaby,” he said with heart-stopping accuracy.
“Gabrielle,” she said with a touch of her old defiance.
His lips curved into a faint smile. He ran a finger along her jaw. “Gabrielle,” he said in a whisper so soft it caressed as gently as a spring breeze. Her resistance turned to liquid fire as he moved toward her. Her whole body trembled in anticipation.
“You promised,” she said with a broken sigh as he bent closer. Still, despite the nervous plea, her lips remained parted for the kiss, waiting, longing. The mere sensation of anticipation was one she’d denied herself for too long. It sang through her veins.
At her protest, though, a shadow passed over Paul’s features and he straightened slowly, reluctance etched on his face. “So I did.”
He settled for running his fingers through her tangled, wind-tossed hair, the light touch grazing her cheeks. Her body ached from the tension of wanting more and knowing that satisfaction of that need would be wrong for both of them.
The expression in his eyes was regretful as he whispered, “Sweet dreams, Gabrielle.” Then he turned and went straight to his room without a backward glance.
* * *
Paul’s body was hard and charged with the urgency of his desire to claim the woman who slept in the next room. In just a few hours curiosity had slipped into fascination and was quickly turning into something much stronger. It wasn’t supposed to have been this way, but he should have known it would be. He’d always wanted things that weren’t his to take.
It had been hellish for a small boy to discover that the toys his friends took for granted would never be his. His mother had been a housekeeper, his father a gardener. Honest, kind, hardworking people, they had loved him all the more because he had come along late in their lives.
Because of his parents’ jobs, he had grown up on a huge estate on Long Island. His playmates had been the children of the manor, children just like Gabrielle Clayton. No matter how hard he’d tried to be one of them, though, they were always just beyond his reach. He wore their cast-off clothes and he dreamed their dreams. But for him those dreams were unattainable. At age five, the differences had been insignificant. By twenty they’d torn at his gut. That was when he’d realized with irrevocable and heartbreaking finality that Christine Bently Hanford would never really think of him as anything more than the son of the hired help.
It had taken him ten years away from there to get over the anger, to find his own niche, to become comfortable with who he was and what he wanted out of life. Envy and bitterness had faded, replaced by contentment. Or so he had thought until Gabrielle had appeared on his doorstep. Was he still trying to capture the unattainable? To prove he was good enough? If that’s what he was doing, he was being unfair to himself and to her.
Then again, maybe she was just a lady who was going through the same sort of identity crisis that had torn him apart ten years ago. He’d learned to live with reality, rather than fantasy, to find satisfaction in what was, rather than what he wished life could be. Maybe he could teach Gabrielle the same lesson.
And then what? Could they live happily ever after? Not likely. That happened only in story-books, where Cinderella was swept away by the handsome prince. No one ever wrote about what happened when the prince woke up to reality and found out Cinderella was no princess.
This story—his and Gabrielle’s—would end now, before anyone got hurt. He smiled in the darkness, his lips touched with irony and the sensible finality of the decision.
Famous last words.
CHAPTER FIVE
With a disconcerting sense of déjà vu, Paul awoke to the thumping of furniture. He smiled. Then a sudden crash from the room next door was followed by a surprisingly extensive barrage of colorful words. Paul would have sworn Gabrielle Clayton had never heard that particular vocabulary at home, except possibly during one of those infamous poker games. He leaped out of bed and ran for the door, stopping just in the nick of time to tug on a pair of gym shorts.
When he got to Gabrielle’s bedroom, he pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He panicked, pounding on the door. “Gaby, are you all right? What happened in there?”
There was no response.
“Gaby?”
“Go away,” she muttered finally, sounding thoroughly disgruntled.
“Gaby, sweetheart, open the door,” he pleaded more gently. He suspected the persuasive tone was about as wasted on Gabrielle as it would have been on a three-year-old who’d locked herself in the bathroom. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I am perfectly fine,” she growled. “Just go back to sleep.”
Paul’s panic began to recede in the face of her spirited responses. Now he was simply curious. “How can I possibly sleep when it sounds like war has erupted in the room next door? Do you need any help?”
“No. I can handle this.”
“Handle what?”
“I’m just rearranging things a little.”
“With dynamite?”
“Very funny.”
“That furniture’s too heavy for you to manage alone. Wouldn’t you like a little help? Open the door.”
He heard her mumble something and suspected it was another of those words. “What did you say?”
“I said I can’t open the damn door.”
“Why not? Is it locked? I have a spare key. I’ll slide it under the door.”
“It’s
