When Rachel returned, collapsing in exhaustion on the banquette, Julia stood up and excused herself. She entered the back hallway in search of the ladies’ room. Gabriel’s arrogance and condescension truly infuriated her. He didn’t want her, but now he didn’t want anyone else to have her either. What was his problem?
She was so fixated on Gabriel that she didn’t see a man standing in the hallway. She ran right into him, springing backward and careening dangerously toward the floor. Luckily, the man caught her.
“Thank you,” she murmured, looking up into the amused face of Ethan, the bouncer.
“No problem.” He released her immediately.
“I was looking for the ladies’ room.”
He pointed with his cell phone. “Other direction.” Returning to the text he’d been composing before she ran into him, he cursed. “Damn it.”
“Did I break something?”
Ethan shook his head. “No. I’m just having…text trouble.”
Julia smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” He eyed her appraisingly. “I’m impressed. Emerson doesn’t usually arrive with a lady.”
“Why not?”
Ethan snorted. “Are you serious? Look around you. How many couples do you think arrived together?”
“Oh,” she said. “Is he here a lot?”
Ethan looked at her carefully, wondering how much he should reveal.
“You should probably ask him that.”
She looked ill.
When he saw her expression, he tried to comfort her. “Hey, he’s here with you tonight. That says something, doesn’t it?”
She looked down at her hands and fidgeted with her fingernails. “Um, he isn’t really with me. I’m just an old friend of his sister.”
She looked so sad, with those big brown eyes and that trembling lower lip, Ethan tried to think of something to distract her.
“Julianne, you don’t happen to speak Italian do you?”
She smiled. “Um, it’s Julia, actually. And yes, I do. I’m studying Italian at university.”
Ethan’s expression instantly brightened. “Could you help me text something to my girlfriend? She’s Italian. I’d like to impress her.”
“Gabriel’s Italian is better than mine. You should ask him.”
Ethan shot her a look. “Are you kidding? I don’t want him anywhere near my woman. I see how women react to him here. They’re all over him.”
Julia felt ill once again, but she pushed her revulsion aside. “Sure, I’ll translate whatever you want.”
Ethan handed her his phone, and she began entering his words in Italian. She giggled slightly at some of the more intimate sounding phrases, but on the whole Julia was impressed that Ethan, for all his toughness and rough edges, cared enough about his girlfriend to tell her how much he loved her and to reassure her that he was keeping the women of Lobby at bay. She was just finishing the text when someone came up behind them.
“Ahem.”
Julia looked up into a familiar pair of angry blue eyes.
“Mr. Emerson,” said Ethan.
“Ethan,” Gabriel growled.
Julia wasn’t sure her ears were working. It sounded like Gabriel had rumbled low in his chest like an animal, but that was impossible.
She pressed send on the phone and handed it back to Ethan. “There you are. Now we’re all set.”
“Thanks, Julia. I’ll send a drink over to you.” Ethan nodded at Gabriel and disappeared around a corner.
Julia began to walk toward the restroom.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Gabriel followed her.
“To the ladies’ room. What’s it to you?”
He shot out his hand and grasped her wrist, grazing the pad of his thumb across the veins that were pulsating underneath her pale skin. She gasped.
He moved her until they were hidden in a long, dark corridor, pushing her against a wall. He continued to hold her wrist, drinking in the feel of her quickening pulse beneath his fingers and placing his other hand on the wall next to her shoulder. She was trapped.
Gabriel took a moment to inhale her vanilla scent and licked his lips, but his eyes were far from happy. “Why did you give him your number?
He lives with a woman, you know. Now he’s buying you drinks and calling you Julia?”
“That’s my name, Professor! You’re the only one who doesn’t use it.
And at this point, even if you wanted to use it, I wouldn’t let you. I think you should have to call me Miss Mitchell forever. And I didn’t give him my number.”
“You entered your number into his phone. Do you really put yourself out there with multiple men at the same time?”
Julia shook her head, too angry to respond, and tried to duck under his elbow, but he caught her around the waist.
“Dance with me.”
She snickered. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Don’t be so difficult.”
“I’m just getting started being difficult with you, Professor.”
“Watch it.” He sounded ominous.
Julia waited a moment for the chill his tone gave her to travel up and down her spine. “Why don’t you just stick a knife into my heart and get it over with?” she whispered, looking him straight in the eye. “Haven’t you hurt me enough?”
Gabriel released her immediately and reeled back. “Julianne.” Her name rolled off his tongue as something between a reproach and a question.
His eyebrows furrowed, and he looked very upset. Not angry, but upset.
Wounded, perhaps.
“Am I so evil?” His voice was low, just above a whisper.
Julia shook her head no, and her shoulders sagged.
“I have no wish to hurt you. Far from it.” He looked down at her intentionally submissive posture, and his eyes quickly sought her mouth.
He watched her lower lip push out slightly and tremble. Her eyes darted around anxiously.
She’s frightened, you ass**le. Ease up!
“You mentioned before that I hadn’t asked you to dance. Well, now I’m asking.” He softened his voice considerably. “Julianne, will you do me the honor of dancing with me? Please?”
He flashed a winning smile and tilted his head a little…a signature seductive move. But it didn’t have the effect he desired, for Julia would not lift her head. He reached out to smooth his fingers gently across her wrist, as if he was trying to apologize to her skin. (Not that her skin would have accepted his apology.)
Julia clutched at her neck instinctively, suddenly feeling as if she was experiencing physical whiplash from his emotional caprice. Gabriel gazed at the hand that fluttered against her milk-white throat, and once again he saw her blue veins quiver with every heartbeat.
Like a hummingbird, he thought. So tiny. So fragile. Be careful…
She swallowed noisily and eagerly searched out an exit.
“Please,” he repeated, his eyes shining in the darkness.
“I can’t dance.”
“You were just dancing.”
“Not slow dancing. I’ll step on your toes and injure you with these heels. Or I’ll trip and end up on the floor, and you’ll be humiliated. You’re already angry with me…” Her lower lip began to tremble more noticeably.
He took a step closer, and she pressed herself more tightly against the wall, almost as if she was trying to disappear through it in order to escape him. He took her hand and regally lifted it to his lips. Then with a smile firmly on his face, he inched forward, leaning down and bringing his mouth to her ear. Julia’s skin vibrated with his nearness and the feel of his breath across her skin.
“Julianne, how could I stay angry with someone so sweet? I promise I won’t become cross or humiliated. You’ll be able to dance with me.” His whisper was bracing and soft, sexual and seductive, Scotch and peppermint.
“Come.”
He took her hand in his, and the same familiar spark coursed across her skin. As he waited for her to respond, he felt her still beneath his touch, and he wondered at the strange reaction she was having to him. It seemed as if his charm was actually working, even though she’d been shaking a moment before.
“Please, Professor,” she breathed, fixating on his shirt front, unwilling to meet his gaze.
“I thought we were supposed to be Gabriel and Julianne tonight.”
“You don’t really want to dance with me. It’s just the Scotch talking.”
His eyebrows shot up, and he had to bite back a harsh retort. She was pushing his buttons, almost as if she knew exactly which buttons to push and when.
“One slow dance. That’s all I ask.”
“Why would you want to dance with a virgin?” she whispered, suddenly fascinated by the bows on her shoes.
His spine stiffened. “Not just any virgin, but you, Julianne. I thought you might want to dance with someone who wasn’t about to molest you on the dance floor and take liberties with you in front of a club full of sexually-aggressive men.”
She appeared skeptical but said nothing.
“I’m trying to keep the wolves at bay,” he said, his voice low.
A lion in charge of wolves, she thought. How convenient.
He hadn’t made a joke; he was looking at her seriously, his intense blue eyes boring into hers.