very pinnacle of this town, symbolically astride Dallas and everything in it. Although, with the amount of money he’d made, she supposed he had pretty literally conquered the town, too.
“Computer, warm whole house two degrees.”
“Yes, Mr. Dawson.”
Willa glanced over her shoulder at the sultry, female British-accented voice. “Your computer is a girl?”
“Of course.”
“And she controls your air conditioner?”
He laughed. “She controls just about everything. Never argues back, either. She’s better than any wife.”
Willa snorted and refrained from asking the obviously crass question about just what other wifely duties the computer performed for him.
“Computer, lower living-room ambient light to fifty percent. And how about a little Chopin? Piano nocturnes, I think.”
On cue, the lights dimmed to a sexy glow and the haunting strains of a concert piano came out of the walls in perfect surround sound. She whirled in alarm to face Gabe. He’d better not be trying to seduce her! Her fists fell back to her sides when she spotted him sitting on one of the sofas watching her.
“What?” she demanded, to cover her embarrassment at how her fists had flown up like that.
“You’re quite a beautiful woman, Willa.”
She shrugged, desperately wishing in that moment that she was as ugly as some warty old toad. “Don’t compliment me. My parents’ genes get all the credit.”
He stretched a disconcertingly powerful arm out along the top of the sofa. “It’s more than that. Beauty starts inside a woman. It breathes through her skin and shows in her eyes and the way she moves. It surrounds everything she does and everything she is.
“Are you sure it’s just not my overpowering perfume you’re describing?”
He laughed quietly. “What is that scent, anyway? I know it’s floral, but I don’t recognize it.”
“Gardenia.”
“It fits you. It’s old-fashioned. Soft. But with a note of mystery.”
“It’s all of that?” she asked skeptically.
“Definitely.”
Dammit, did he have to keep saying things that chipped away at her defenses like that? He was supposed to be a bad guy. Self-serving. Dishonest. Untrustworthy. But the man seated before her was nothing like the villain her father had painted.
She turned back to the window. Gabe let the silence lie between them and seemed content not to disturb it. As much as she tried to focus on the events of the day, and to gather her thoughts for tomorrow, she couldn’t get past her blazing awareness of the man behind her.
This room fit him. It was modern and sophisticated, and frankly, intimidating. She tilted her head and realized she could see his reflection in the dark surface of the glass. He was studying her with shocking intensity.
She spun quickly to face him, but his expression was bland, his eyes masked, by the time she got turned around. A shiver of apprehension chattered up her spine, rattling her bones. Who was this man whose home she was effectively trapped in? Which face that he showed her was the real one? What did she really know about him?
“You know, Gabe, I think I’d be better off just getting a hotel room tonight. If you’ll call me a cab, I’ll get out of your hair.”
He gazed at her for a long time and then finally broke the silence. “That bastard really did a number on you, didn’t he? How come your daddy didn’t kill him?”
Chapter 4
Gabe hung on to his temper by a thread. Only the undisguised terror on Willa’s face had him fighting to rein it in. But still, a need to do violence on her behalf roiled hotly in his gut.
“Kill him?” Willa whispered.
He couldn’t tell if it was dismay or hope vibrating painfully in her voice.
He answered roughly, “If someone hurt my little girl, they’d damn well be eating the business end of my shotgun.”
She shook her head, and he couldn’t contain the beast any longer. He surged to his feet. “Hell, Will. I’ll go kill him for you right now if you want.”
“No, no. The scandal.” Her hands fluttered in the air like the broken wings of a bird.
“When did Ward attack you?” he demanded.
“A month ago.”
“A month? Why in hell didn’t you go to the police before now?” Fury ranged freely through him, heating his extremities until they burned to damage someone. James Ward, specifically.
“The campaign...” she murmured in distress.
Of course. John Merris’s precious political campaign. The bastard had failed to protect his baby girl because his damned Senate seat was more important to him than his own family. Hot coals commenced burning their way out of Gabe’s gut by slow inches.
“That