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“Well, of course he’s gonna say he’s not still angry. If he was still mad ten years later that makes him either a psycho or a big weenie.”
While Janine ranted, Debbie’s brain raced. Of course her girlfriends both knew about Gabe. They’d met him a few times back in the day, though she and Gabe had mostly preferred being alone back then. But her girlfriends had consoled her after the breakup and whenever she’d doubted the decision she’d made, they’d assured her she’d done the right thing.
“I can’t believe Gabe owns Fantasies,” Janine was saying. “And that we never saw him while we were there. Was he hiding? Is he hideously disfigured or something?”
“A million times no,” Debbie said on a groan.
“Still hot, huh?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Well…” Janine’s voice went thoughtful. “This puts a new spin on things, doesn’t it?”
“Kind of, I guess. But the point is, I don’t know what to do. Should I get a lawyer or something?”
“Beats me,” Janine admitted, then offered, “I’ll ask Max. Maybe he’ll have some clue.”
“Okay, good.” That was something concrete. And hey, got them off the subject of Gabe and her own brief incarceration. “And speaking of Max, everything okay with you guys?”
“Only slightly wonderful,” Janine said, and Debbie heard the near purr in her friend’s voice. “He’s helping me pack for the move to England—no, wait. Make that, he’s paying people to help me pack.”
“Works just as well.”
“Yeah. He’s really great, Deb. I mean, amazing and he’s gonna fly you and Cait to London for the wedding, which is turning into like a three-ring circus, by the way, because Max is this big deal in business over there and—”
“That’s great, honey,” Debbie cut her off without a qualm. After all, she was delighted her friend was so happy, but she had the little problem of oh, say, prison facing her at the moment. “But selfishly, back to me…”
“Right, right. Okay, I’ll talk to Max. Then I’ll call Cait. Maybe Lyon can do something, too.”
Her other best friend, Caitlyn, was now engaged to her boss, Jefferson Lyon, who had plenty of connections in fairly high circles, so Debbie was prepared to take all the help she could get. Even if it was so damned embarrassing to have to ask for that help.
“Great. Fabulous. Now everyone will know I’m a felon.” Debbie’s chin hit her chest as visions of herself dressed in an old movie version of a black-and-white-striped prison uniform flashed through her mind. “I don’t look good in horizontal stripes.”
Janine laughed, clearly understanding exactly what her friend had been talking about. “Horizontal stripes are nobody’s friend. Don’t worry, Deb. We’ll get this straightened out in no time. Until then, try to enjoy yourself. You’re still at Fantasies. Make the most of it. And, hey, maybe you should make the most of being close to Gabe again.”
Her body sizzled. Not a good sign. “That’s so not gonna happen.”
“Well, at least keep him happy, since he’s the guy in charge of the jail key!”
“Right.” She hung up, listened to the sigh of the waves rushing toward shore, the screech of the seabirds, and the conversations ebbing and flowing all around her. Enjoy herself. Sure.
No problem.
Gabe had plenty to keep him occupied. Even with a first-class manager and staff, there was work to be done. But doing that work while his brain kept circling around Debbie was no small task.
He knew damn well she wasn’t a jewel thief. The only reason she was still on his island was that he wasn’t finished with her. Yet. And if she thought she was trapped here, then so much the better.
Leaning back in his office chair, he swung around to look out the wide window behind him. His view of the golf course and the ocean beyond didn’t soothe him as it usually did. Normally, he reveled in the knowledge that he’d made all of his crazy-ass dreams come true. He’d built an empire out of luck, talent and sheer grit, and he enjoyed the hell out of his life. It was everything he’d always planned for it to be.
But now, with Deb here on his island, he had the chance to settle a score that had niggled at the back of his mind for far too long. Ten years ago, she’d taken his heart and crushed it. Now, she was going to see just what kind of man she’d helped to create.
Ever since he’d seen her with her girlfriend down at the pool, he’d been thinking about her. Remembering things he hadn’t allowed himself to recall in years. And if there was one thing he’d learned, it was that looking back served no purpose at all. The only thing that mattered was the present and the future you created for yourself.
Still…
There was a part of him that called for vengeance. Fate had handed him a golden opportunity and he hadn’t become the success he had by ignoring quirks of fate. Besides, in that small, dark corner of his heart, he wanted to make Debbie sorry she’d ever walked away from him. And until he’d done that, he wouldn’t let her go.
“Mr. Vaughn?”
His assistant’s voice cut through his thoughts and Gabe turned to scowl at the woman standing in the open doorway. About fifty years old, she was tall, thin and so organized, she would have made a great general. She’d been with him for the last five years and probably knew even more about his businesses than he did. “What is it, Beverly?”
“There’s a woman here to see you. A Debbie Harris?”
He smirked. Debbie never had been a patient woman. “Send her in.”
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Debbie was slipping past Beverly and striding into the office. “Thanks, Bev. That’s all.”
The woman sniffed in displeasure, but backed out and closed the door. When she was gone, Gabe fixed his gaze on Debbie and wished he didn’t care about how good she looked. She was wearing a soft, blue sundress with thin straps over her tanned shoulders. The hem of the dress hit her midthigh and her heeled sandals gave her an extra inch or two of height. Her blond hair was pulled into a silver clip at the nape of her neck and hung in loose waves down to the center of her back.
And his only thought was, he’d like to bury his hands in that hair, pull her head to his and—maybe keeping her here hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
“What is it, Deb?”
“Gabe, I need to know what you’re doing about this.” She moved around the office, trailing her fingers across glossy tables, stopping to peer at the jam-packed, rigidly aligned bookshelves and then moving eventually to the wall of windows behind him. She stared out at the opulent view and while she looked at the ocean, Gabe looked at her.
“I made a few calls,” he lied smoothly. There was no one to call. The authorities weren’t really interested in her. Her resemblance to the jewel thief supposedly running around the islands meant nothing to them. Gabe was the only thing keeping Debbie on this island. And she wasn’t going anywhere until he was good and ready to see her leave.
“And?” she asked.
“And…nothing so far.” He saw the helplessness glint in her eyes as he added, “The authorities are looking into the situation.”
She shook her head slowly, sadly. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
A quick twist of something that might have been guilt shot through him as fast as a lightning flash. He ignored it. “Don’t worry.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Easier than she knew.
She chewed at her bottom lip in a nervous gesture he recognized and Gabe knew how worried she was. Guilt threatened again and was ruthlessly squashed. Hell, he wasn’t hurting her. He was just giving her a hard time for a few days. Soon enough, she’d be back to her life and he’d have had the revenge he was due.
Watching her, as she stood so closely and yet so far from him, it finally came to Gabe just how to exact the payback his pride demanded. He was going to seduce her. Make her want him as he had once so desperately wanted her. And when she was limp with desire, ready to beg him to take her back…he’d cut her loose as surgically as she had done to him so long ago.
If that meant he would be forced to hold her captive on the island for a while longer, then that’s just what he’d do. As he’d already told her…he owned the island and everything on it. Here, he made the rules.
“I called my friend Janine,” she was saying, “and she said she’d get her fiancé to look into this for me, but I don’t know what Max can do.”
“Max?” he asked.
“Max Striver. He’s—”
“I know Max,” Gabe interrupted, and wondered if his old friend really had taken the plunge and proposed to the cute little brunette he’d spent so much time with in the last few weeks.
“You know him?”
“For a few years. And I never would have thought he’d get married again. Are you sure about this?”
“Hmm? What? Oh, yeah. Apparently he followed Janine home to Long Beach and proposed. They’re getting married in London in a few weeks.”
“Amazing,” he mused, sitting on the corner of his desk. Of course, looking back, he could see that Max had been drawn deeper and deeper into the relationship with the woman he’d been paying to pretend to be his wife. Strange that now she’d be his wife for real. “He always said he’d never marry again.”
“People change,” she said lightly.
“Apparently.” He shouldn’t have been so surprised, really. He’d known that Max’s father had been after him to marry and start building on the family dynasty.
Debbie was staring at him, a question in her eyes. “You never got married?”
“No.” He stiffened, then forced himself to release the swift punch of tension gripping him. He hadn’t thought of marriage again until recently. But that wasn’t part of this conversation.
“Gabe…”
“Forget it,” he said, not wanting to hear her explanation of why she’d turned down his marriage proposal ten years ago. It was over. And now, his life was different. He was different. He wasn’t an eager young man following his heart anymore. Now he made decisions based on logic. Cool, clear logic.
“We should talk about it,” she said. “About what happened between us.”
“No point,” he said. “It’s over and done. Let it go. I have.”
Four
Gabe insisted they have a late dinner at Fantasies’ rooftop restaurant.
Debbie wanted to be doing something about her predicament, but since Gabe said all that could be done was being done, she’d had little choice but to try to relax. She wore the strapless, short black dress she’d brought with her on vacation, because it was the only dressy thing she had. But she also loved the way it fit, smoothing over her curves and flaring into a swirling skirt three inches above her knees.
Gabe’s green eyes had fired when he first saw her in it and that little jolt of confidence had done a lot for her.
Now, they sat at a private table, on the corner of the roof, with a wide, black sky glittering with stars above them. The moon’s reflection danced on the surface of the ocean and a soft breeze twisted the candle flames into a frenzied dance. The table was spread with a pristine, white-linen tablecloth and sported a single red rosebud in a crystal vase as a centerpiece. While the other people at the restaurant chatted and laughed, Debbie watched Gabe and wondered how he’d come so far in only ten years.
Physically, he looked much the same—long, thick, dark-blond hair, streaked gold now by the sun, a tall, lanky body that belied the strength in him. His face was sharp angles, piercing green eyes and a mouth that had, long ago, been able to reduce her to whimpers in seconds.
When she had known him, he’d been mostly a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. Yet tonight, he wore a finely tailored tuxedo and looked as though he’d been born to it. In fact, with that long hair, pulled back at the nape of his neck, his high cheekbones and steady eyes, he looked both elegant and dangerous.
Enough to bring most women to their knees.
And she, Debbie thought, was no exception.
There was an air of tightly leashed power about him now that he hadn’t had ten years ago. She’d noticed how the staff at Fantasies practically came to attention when he entered a room. He seemed to know every employee by name and every one of those employees jumped into action when he quirked a finger.
And she wondered again if there were some remnants of the man she’d once known beneath the veneer of sophistication he carried now.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked, and she just barely caught the low rumble of his voice over the hum of conversations surrounding them.
Debbie smiled, reached for the glass of chilled white wine in front of her and took a sip to ease the dryness in her throat. “Just that you’ve changed a lot.”
There was no answering smile in his eyes, but he nodded his head in acknowledgment. “I had plans. I saw to it that they succeeded.”
If there was a barb in that statement, Debbie chose to ignore it. After all, ten years was a long time. Maybe he really had let the past go. Shouldn’t she do the same? “I don’t understand, though, how you did it? How’d you accomplish so much so quickly?”
He shifted his gaze to a nearby waiter, subtly signaled and had the man bustling over to top off their wineglasses. When the waiter had retreated again, Gabe said, “A combination of hard work and luck.”
“I’m guessing that’s the short version.”
Briefly, his mouth curved into a half smile. “It is.”
“How about the other version?”
He took a breath, blew it out and said, “There were a couple of lean years. Took a job in the Middle East, working security for the oil fields. Big money, not a lot of places to spend it.” One shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I banked my pay, invested most of it.”
Debbie lifted her wine again. “You can’t tell me you did all this on simple investments.”
“Hardly.” He lifted his own wineglass, studied the straw-colored wine as it was backlit by the flickering candles and continued as if he were talking to himself rather than to her. He took a sip, set the glass down and leaned back in his chair.
“Several years ago, I met a guy who had an idea for some computer thing.” He smiled ruefully and shook his head. “Didn’t understand then what it was all about, still don’t, really. But he seemed to know his stuff. He needed backing, I took a shot on him and hit the jackpot.”
He told the story so simply, but she could see him in her mind’s eye. Working in the Middle East, saving his money, investing it, taking a chance on another man with a dream. And finally, making all of his plans come true. A swell of admiration filled her as she remembered all the nights they’d spent talking about their dreams, their hopes.
He’d done everything he’d once talked about.
Accomplished so much.
“And then you bought the island?”
He let his gaze sweep the crowded rooftop restaurant before looking back at her. Pride shone in his eyes as he said, “Yes. I redid the hotel, renamed it and opened for business five years ago.”
“It’s a beautiful place,” she said, and wished she didn’t feel as though she were talking to a stranger. “You’ve really made something here, Gabe. Something people all over the world talk about.”
The waiter approached again, served their meals, then dissolved into the background as silently as he’d arrived.
“What about you?” Gabe asked as she picked up a fork and lifted a bite of her pan-seared halibut. “What’ve you been doing since I last saw you?”
She chewed, swallowed and said, “I still live in Long Beach. I own a travel agency there.”
“So you’ve done well.”
Nodding, Debbie let her pride in her business fill her. True, she hadn’t succeeded on the grand scale that Gabe had, but she’d made a good life for herself. One that was safe. Secure. And that was all that mattered to her. “Do you ever get back home?”
“No,” he said, biting off the single word. “I left Long Beach ten years ago—”
He broke off and Debbie winced. She knew when he’d left. After their last night together, when she’d turned down his proposal. She’d tried to see him a few days later. To try to explain. To make him understand that it wasn’t because she didn’t love him.
