Owning It by Leah Marie Brown

Author:Leah Marie Brown [Brown, Leah Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

Ma fleur,

In this book you will find one of Alexandre Dumas’s most famous quotes: “All human wisdom is contained in these two words—wait and hope.” I wait and hope for a day when you are as familiar to me as Edmond and Mercedes, the characters in this story.

Yours,

Gabriel Galliard

I don’t realize I am holding my breath until my lungs begin to burn and tiny black dots dance around the periphery of my vision. Gabriel’s inscription is simply the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me. It’s breathtaking. It’s the kind of thing a charming, slightly rakish hero in a rom-com says to the beautiful, slightly naïve heroine.

Am I naïve? Is Gabriel a sincere Mark Darcy or a shameless Daniel Cleaver? Will I write good or bad things about him in my diary?

“Gabriel!”

I look up from the inscription in time to see a tall, willowy woman with sleek black hair and an even sleeker black designer dress kiss Gabriel on both cheeks.

“Giselle?”

Gabriel’s tone is flat, but his expression is much, much less Sphinx-like. His cheeks are flushed red, and his aura is swirling with so many colors it looks like a muddled watercolor rainbow. I am having trouble reading him again, but I think he’s embarrassed.

Or angry.

Or aroused.

“Delaney Brooks, this is Giselle Sournois DéLoyalle. She is a . . . friend.”

“Come now,” Giselle says, laughing and pressing her hand against Gabriel’s bare, muscular forearm. “We are more than mere friends, are we not?”

Gabriel looks up at Giselle, his gaze as flat and gray as slate, his lips a grim line across his handsome face. He raises a single brow, but doesn’t speak. Giselle, I notice, has lost all color in her high, knifelike cheeks.

“It’s nice to meet you, Giselle,” I say in French, hoping to ease the awkward tension. “Are you here with a date? Would you like to join us?”

Giselle continues to stare into Gabriel’s eyes, but her full, pink bottom lip quivers a little. She finally tears her gaze from Gabriel and narrows her smoky, black-rimmed eyes on me. It’s a look that takes my breath away. Not the way Gabriel’s inscription took my breath away, but in a fierce, furious, I am going to reach into your body and rip your heart out with my pointy fingernails kind of way. I don’t need to read Giselle’s aura to know she is projecting some serious hate my way.

“Thank you, but I have a prior engagement. I should leave soon if I am to make it,” she says, her voice soft and sibilant like a snake. She looks back at Gabriel, dismissing me with a flick of her gaze. “Au revoir, mon cher.”

She turns on her slender heel, snatches a silver, fur-trimmed coat from the back of a bar stool, tosses it over her shoulders, and walks out of the bar.

“Awk-ward,” I say, emphasizing both syllables.

“Oui.”

The color has faded from Gabriel’s cheeks, but not from his aura. The wildly swirling reds, blues, and blacks tell me that Giselle stirred up a complex brew of emotions in him.

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