Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(4)
Author: Erin McCarthy

She wanted that fresh start. Now.

Heading toward the front door, Sara reached back and grabbed the newspaper off the sofa, folding it up into thirds. Better not leave that lying around for Jocelyn or anyone else to see. That article sitting in this house revealed too much about her and her fragile state of mind.

And the one big lie she told everyone else, but didn’t actually believe herself, was that she was okay.

That she would ever be okay again.

He wasn’t expecting her. It was obvious by the look of appalled impatience on his face as he stood in the doorway of the gated courtyard. And then there was the fact that he said flatly, “You’re not supposed to be here today.”

Sara shifted, her eyes gritty, hands damp. She’d spent two days driving, and a sleepless night in her new temporary apartment, afraid to close her eyes. It had been a hot and humid walk from where she had parked her car to Gabriel St. John’s apartment in the French Quarter. She was exhausted, and she had a manila envelope full of e-mail correspondence in her handbag that reassured her she absolutely one hundred percent was supposed to be there at one o’clock on Thursday, which it was, and she refused to leave. Would not apologize or stammer or take responsibility for his error.

“This was the time we arranged to meet,” she said, straining for politeness. She would not point out that he had contacted her initially. That he had suggested their collaboration on this project, at no expense or inconvenience to him. That she was the one who had traveled a thousand miles to assist him on his true crime investigation book.

No, she wouldn’t point any of that out, even if she had to bite her lip until it bled.

The sun streamed into the lush courtyard behind him, but he was in the shadow of the building in a bricked passageway, and it was difficult to see his face clearly from behind her sunglasses. But what she could see surprised her. She had assumed Gabriel was older, though she couldn’t pinpoint why she had come to that conclusion when they’d only been in contact through e-mail. Yet there had been something of his words that hinted at experience, a weariness.

It was startling to see in person that he wasn’t much more than thirty. At first glance, he looked even younger than that, his face elegant and youthful, a rare true pretty man, with long cheekbones, rich brown eyes, and lustrous hair, streaked with multiple shades of color ranging from dirty blond to mahogany on the undersides, falling carelessly past his chin in baby-fine strands.

“We’re supposed to meet tomorrow,” he said, his deep voice shattering the illusion that he was innocent and young. There was an edge there that spoke of hard times, disappointment. Stubbornness.

Which almost made her laugh. God, it was like looking in a mirror. This was probably exactly what she looked like to most people right now. Haunted, remote, hovering toward bitter. She didn’t want that label, to descend into a perpetual discontent, not even as she felt herself clinging to the edge of control. So she forced a smile and said lightly, “I guess we have a misunderstanding then.”

Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the e-mail from him that she had printed out before leaving Florida. “August 15, one p.m. That’s today.” She handed it to him so he could confirm with his own eyes what he’d written. “I guess it crept up on us.”

Not really. Every day had been a gaping, long, endless fight for her sanity. But it was the socially correct response. Defuse the situation. She certainly knew how to do that. She’d spent her entire life walking on proverbial eggshells with her mother, tamping down the explosions before they could start.

Gabriel didn’t seem to like what he was reading. His jaw clenched and he didn’t look up from the paper. “I’m not ready for you today.”

Sara stifled a sigh, pulling off her sunglasses. She hadn’t expected a diva. From his e-mails Gabriel St. John had seemed like an efficient, clinical crime writer. Exactly what she wanted. Zero emotion. Yet he was scowling at her for no apparent reason whatsoever other than that he couldn’t look at the calendar or enter appointments into his computer correctly.

“Since I drove in from Kenner, got lost downtown after getting off on the wrong exit, and circled the block six times for a parking spot, could we just have a brief preliminary meeting to discuss the project? I can come back tomorrow, but I’d really like to talk today.” Outline and clearly communicate your needs. That’s what they had told her in rehab. She had to stop expecting people to satisfy her wants without ever cluing anyone in to what they were.

“Are you staying in Kenner?” He frowned. “That’s going to be inconvenient. I’d thought you’d stay in the Quarter or downtown. Why Kenner?”

Because it was an innocuous suburb where the airport was, and it made her feel safer. She had been raised in Florida, in the land of the new and tidy, where the chain restaurant ruled. New Orleans scared her. Her mother had despised this city, had never returned once she’d left, and Sara herself was a little intimidated, unnerved by the shabby buildings of the Quarter, the disintegrating sidewalks, and the barrage of odors. Kenner was definitely safer to her mental health.

Gabriel watched the emotions play over Sara Michaels’s face with curiosity. She was not at all what he had expected. Her contact with him had been efficient, brisk, and unemotional, like the scientist that she was. Yet the woman in front of him was a riot of emotions—they played over her face, haunted her eyes, settled into the rigidity of her shoulders. Petite and blond, wearing a billowing pale blue sundress that stopped above her knees, she looked fragile, beaten, like the only thing keeping her from collapsing on the sidewalk was the pure strength of her will.

“The rent was cheaper,” she said.

And he knew she was lying. Which intrigued him. She had intrigued him from the minute he opened the gate, and that was dangerous. He showed interest, any interest, and women responded, with enthusiasm that degenerated into obsessive pitiful devotion that left him feeling guilty and horrified, them heartbroken and ashamed. It was his punishment for falling— inadvertently arousing obsession in women—and he would not, could not, show anything other than a casual business interest in Sara and subject her to that torture.

If he had known what she looked like, if he had seen the pain floating in her eyes, he would never have requested her assistance on this project, but it was too late now. She was here, and he was stuck with her. He was also being rude, which was unnecessary. Nothing was her fault, and she didn’t deserve his animosity.