dropped his head, looking down as he realized how that had looked to her when he ran out that morning. "Not at you, Pru. Never at you."
PJ tilted her face up to meet his eyes. "So it's okay if I stay?"
"Of course. How else are we going to solve this problem if you don't stay and help me?" he asked.
“This isn't your problem to fix.” PJ shook her head at him.
He ignored her objection. "The first step is tracking down your ex-manager. We need to see if there's any way to bring charges against him now—and if there isn't, I'll take care of him myself.”
“No, Gabe!” PJ said, a lot more sharply this time, and he could hear the desperation in her voice. What the hell was she trying to hide, and why?
It was stupid, but Gabe actually felt hurt that she wouldn’t open up to him, or trust him, with whatever she was hiding. But really, why should she? They didn’t know each other all that well.
“You can’t do that, Gabe. You need to leave this alone––”
“Are you crazy, Pru? Your parents should have pressed charges against him a long time ago! They should never have let him walk away like they did,” Gabe spit out, and he knew he was doing a piss-poor job of hiding his frustration.
PJ took a deep breath. “Look, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but you have to trust me on this. The time for going after Jimmy is long past. I'm over what happened and I don't want to bring it up again. Well….” She blew out a rough breath—half laugh, half groan. “Not any more than it's already been dredged up for the world to see."
Gabe opened his mouth to object but she cut him off.
“No. Listen, please.” She softened her tone. “I need you to leave this alone for me. Please?” Her phone beeped again and PJ glanced at the screen. She went stark white, and Gabe didn’t miss the little intake of breath.
“What is it?” he asked.
PJ stammered her response. “N-nothing. Just my manager arranging more interviews for me when I get back. PR, damage control, that kind of thing,” she said weakly and shoved her phone in her back pocket.
She was lying. There was no way texts from her manager would bring that reaction—at least they shouldn’t— not even if they were texts about scheduling interviews PJ didn’t want to do. He crossed his arms and eyed her, but she remained committed to the lie.
“Will you at least let me help you figure out who’s got your journal so we can stop them from releasing anything else?”
Her teeth sank into her lower lip as she thought about it. “I don’t really see what you can do to help with that. I mean, there’s not really any way to figure that out, is there?”
“Well, you could start by telling me the truth about who just texted you and why they’re texting,” he said, trying one more time to get her to open up to him.
Nope. He watched her face shut down and go completely blank.
“I told you. It was Debra.”
Gabe ground his teeth together again. He’d been doing a lot of that the last few days. He purposefully loosened his jaw and shrugged a shoulder.
“Fine. Why don’t I make us a little something more substantial for breakfast and you can throw your stuff back in your room. We’ll be heading over to Jack’s for the party at three, if that’s okay with you,” he said.
The look of relief on PJ’s face when he dropped the subject had him worried. What the hell is she hiding?
He watched as she went to her room and shut the door, then stepped down the hall to his own room to change clothes. Once locked away in his room, he dialed Chad.
Chad Thompson was the head of Security and Investigations for Sutton Capital. If anyone could find the origin of the content of those texts coming to PJ’s phone, Chad would be the one to do it.
“Hey, Gabe!” came Chad’s voice on the other end of the phone. “You in town for the party?”
“Yeah, I am. I’ll see you guys later today. I assume you and Jennie and the baby will be there?”
Chad laughed. “Kelly and Jennie would both string me up if I missed it. I think they’re having pony rides for the kids.”
Gabe shook his head. Leave it to Jack to have pony rides for a two-year-old’s birthday party.
“Listen,” Gabe said