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“Yeah. You kind of do, but still.”
“Just update Connie on everything,” I say. “Then go eat pasta and have some wild fling with a hot Italian man. Just don’t fall in love and stay there.”
She laughs. “No problem there. I’m immune to love, just like you, which makes me work well as your assistant. I can’t fall for your Ken Doll good looks and you hate redheads.”
A muscle in my jaw ticks at her Ken Doll comment, not to mention the reference to redheads. “You know too much about me.”
“Ah, the real reason you sent me to Italy,” she teases. “I’m going to see Connie now.” She stops at the door. “Let me know if you want me to file a reply to that bullshit claim from yourfather’s mistress.” She disappears and I read the claim, which is absolutely insane. The woman wants three million dollars.
I dial my father. “How big of a problem is this woman?” I ask, without any preamble. He called. He knows what’s going on.
“If she was a problem, I’d have paid her off. She has no proof of anything, but she has a loud mouth. That makes her a problem for your firm.”
For my firm. The one he keeps trying to destroy even now, after we got rid of him. I hang up. That bastard just won’t stop being a problem. I text my brother:There are problems related to dad and a mistress. I got this. Pretend it doesn’t exist. You have honeymoon fucking to do.
Reid’s reply is simply:And I don’t plan to stop for that asshole.
I glance at my watch and I have fifteen minutes until I meet with one of the partners on a problem case. I decide I need some fucking air, compliments of my fucking father. I round my desk, exit my office, and waste no time exiting to the office lobby. I’m walking toward the double glass doors that lead to the elevator bank when I do a double take. Abigail is walking onto the elevator. How is this even possible? But even as I ask the question, there is no “good thing she’s gone” in my head right now. I’m not letting her get away.
I rush forward and through the doors. “Abigail!” I call out, but she’s already in the car. “Abigail!” I shout again, my legs eating away at the space between us and I reach the car, right as the doors shut.
I punch the call button and another car opens almost immediately. I’m inside and the doors are about to close when one of the partners catches them and enters.
“Gabe,” Carl, a fifty-something attorney with a top-notch record greets me. “I need to talk to you about a deal I’m negotiating for the Michael Devers financial firm.”
“Why?” I ask, willing the damn doors to shut even as they shut. “You suddenly need hand-holding when you usually break any hand that comes your direction?”
“I need money to invest.”
The car is moving, thank God. I arch a brow at Carl. “Money to invest. Sounds like a talk that needs to happen when I have whiskey in my hand. Expensive whiskey.”
“How about the restaurant bar next door at seven tonight?”
“That works,” I say, and thank God again, the elevator doors open and I don’t say another word. I leave him in the car, exiting to the building lobby to scan for Abigail, to no avail.
I start walking, crossing the space between me and the main doors to exit the building, looking left and right, only to curse, my hands settling on my hips under my jacket. Once again, I’ve lost the redheaded siren of a woman that haunted my dreams last night.
But she was here, in my building, in my law firm. I’m going to find her. I head for my office again, aware that her presence in my office could represent a conflict of interest and I really don’t give a damn. That woman will be mine. There is no other option.
Chapter three
Gabe
It’s only minutes after I’ve lost Abigail again in my own damn building that I walk into the lobby of our offices and stop at the receptionist’s desk. “Who was Abigail here to see?”
Brooke, who is young and thankfully brunette, not redheaded, blinks up at me. “Abigail?”
“The redhead.”
A light goes off in her eyes. “Oh. Yes. The woman who walked in and wanted to see Reid? I told her he was on his honeymoon and honestly, she looked devastated. I think she was one of his exes or something like that.”
I take this in like a full-blown punch to the gut by a three-hundred-pound man. One of Reid’s exes. My mind goes back to her Ken Doll comment and all the times Reid and I have been called Twinkies. We look alike and yet I didn’t sense recognition in her, I didn’t sense a history with my brother in her. Not at all. “Did she leave a number?”
“Nothing. She just turned and left.”
I nod and walk away, heading toward my office, and when Connie and Lulu try to flag me down, I wave them off. I keepwalking and enter my office where I shut the door, walk to my desk, and have my phone out of my pocket by the time I’m standing at the window, overlooking New York City. I punch in Reid’s number and he answers on the first ring. “Let me guess. This thing with dad is going to fuck up my honeymoon.”
“What?” I ask, my mind on Abigail. “What the hell are you talking about? Are you doing crack in Paris?”
