The Heart Of It by M. O'Keefe

Author:M. O'Keefe [O'Keefe, M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Molly O'Keefe
Published: 2016-02-29T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

She came out of the bathroom wearing her dress, which seemed like she might be leaving. But she didn’t put on her shoes, which kind of seemed like she might stay. And Gabe was back to not knowing what to do with his hands.

“I don’t know how this works,” he blurted.

She lifted an eyebrow.

“I’d like you to stay.”

“You paid—”

He lifted his hand. “You can go if you’d like. Keep the money. But tonight was kind of a big deal for me. With you. I mean. The sex. And I ah . . . I ordered some room service, like a ton of it.” At this point, his hand gestures were so over the top a plane might land in the hotel room. “A little bit of everything.”

Her glance at her watch was brief, painfully casual, and he felt the time and money exchange like a monster in the room trying to twist all the goodwill and camaraderie into something uncomfortable and deviant.

It was hard work trying to stay loose on his best days. After sloppy, wonderful sex with an escort he was impossibly infatuated with, it was a lost cause.

“A little bit of everything sounds good.” Her smile tipped the scales back towards camaraderie, made him settle back into his body with a thump. She sat down at the chair behind the small desk.

“You want a bottle of water?” He didn’t walk so much as stumble and fall across the room to the mini fridge. He felt . . . hollowed out. But in a good way.

“Sure.”

Delighted by this, by her having a drink, by the way she had her feet up on the foot of the bed, he grabbed the small bottle of water from the lower shelf, twisted off the lid, and handed her that and a glass. She ignored the glass and drank from the bottle.

He got himself a bottle, too, and lifted it in a toast. She smiled and did the same.

“So.” There was no place else to sit except on the still-perfectly-made bed, so he sat with his back against the headboard and his legs stretched out in front of him. “What made you move to Toronto?”

She laughed. “I’m Canadian. At some point plenty of us come to Toronto. Why did you come here?”

“It rains too much in Vancouver, and it was as far away from that arena as I could get.”

He dared her with his honesty, with the way he wouldn’t break eye contact, to let go of some of her secrets. To trust him like he’d trusted her.

She spun her bottle slowly in her hand.

“My son’s father’s business was in Toronto.” She spun her bottle slowly in her hand. “I came here with him.”

“What was his business?”

“Diamond importing.”

Gabe chocked on his water which Elena seemed to enjoy.

“I was with him for threeyears. Until just after Simon was born.”

“Why did you break up?”

Elena’s shrug, that half turn away—he had no idea what it meant.

“Is that an answer?”

“You are pesky.”

“You are secretive.”

She lifted one shoulder in a delicate, mysterious shrug.

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