she felt a chill race over her form.
Monica closed her eyes and released short gasps as her hand tightly gripped the phone.
“Ms. Darby? Are you still there?” Bobbie said.
Monica nodded, but then remembered the woman could not see her. “Yes,” she said, her voice sounding hollow to her own ears.
“I just emailed my report to you, and please let me know if there’s anything I can help you with in the future.”
Anger rose quickly. Irrationally. She knew it and clung to it because anything was better than yet another disappointment. “Crappy time to strike up new business, isn’t it?” she asked, her tone clipped and rigid.
“Ms. Darby, I meant no harm and I am so sorry for your loss,” she said, her voice soft.
Loss? Losses was more like it.
Monica ended the call and let the phone carelessly drop to the floor as she allowed the full weight and meaning of her mother’s death just a year ago settle around her. Engulf her. Take her back to a time when loss was common. It all just seemed cruel. And when tears dared to well up and pain radiated across her chest, Monica used a trick from childhood to go numb. Not feel. Not let her emotions weaken her.
“Damn,” she swore again, feeling her childhood trick fail.
She wrapped her arms around herself as she leaned her head against the window.
My mother and father are dead.
The hope of her inner child—the one she fought so hard to ignore—faded like a candle. For years she’d hoped they would return and reclaim her. They never had.
They never will now.
That stung.
I will never know them.
She winced and closed her eyes.
Just as I opened up to every hope of having her in my life...
One tear fell. Loss after loss after loss after loss. Like dominoes.
Father God.
“Monica? What’s wrong?”
She opened her eyes and looked over at him standing across the room. Gabriel Cress. Handsome. Talented. Wealthy. Sexy. Wanted.
She cringed and closed her eyes as she held herself tighter. In that moment all she saw was someone else she would lose. “My mother died last year,” she said, fighting the urge to release a long wail and give voice to the varied emotions swirling inside her.
Drowning her.
The abandonment and now the loss. Again.
And the cry came. Like a roar. Seeming to be torn from her. Echoing up to the high ceilings and bouncing off the walls. Gabe rushed to her side and turned her to pull her body close to his as he wrapped his strong arms around her. One hand massaged her neck beneath the layers of her hair and the other pressed against her back.
“Let it out. I got you. I’m here,” he said into her ear. “I got you.”
But for how long?
Monica buried her face against his neck and allowed herself for a moment to imagine it was forever. That he could want her in his life and not just in his bed. That she could live without fear of being hurt.
She pressed a kiss to his neck and closed her eyes to inhale deeply of his warm and familiar scent as she accepted what she had been ignoring all along. She had come to rely on him. Expect him. Miss him.
And if things did not end, she would come to love him. And then lose him.
Fear made her freeze in his arms.
She couldn’t take one more loss.
“You are the last thing I need and everything I need at this moment,” Monica admitted in a soft voice as she forced her body to relax as she clung to him and freed herself of him all at once.
When she felt Gabe step back from her, she took a steadying breath and looked up into his handsome face, forcing herself to do what needed to be done. “Gabe, it’s over. This thing between us. It’s time. It’s over. It’s done,” she said, moving away from him.
He frowned. “What? Why?” he asked, stepping toward her.
She shook her head and held up her hands. “I’m ending it before you do,” she said. “Before I get hurt. Before I lean on you and depend on you and get used to you any more than I already have.”
Gabe slid his hands into his slacks and stood rigid as he eyed her for the longest time. “So, I’m the bad guy?” he asked.
“Am I wrong?” she countered.
He looked down at his feet as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. The moments seemed to tick by ever so slowly. “We both agreed that whenever