Page 7 of The Price of Power
So why wasn’t I intimidated?
“That’s a shame,” I said honestly. “Maybe you need to find better friends. Everyone should have someone who they can trust to tell them the truth no matter what.”
For a second, the flames flickered even deeper in his dark eyes. He nodded. It looked like this was the first time he’d ever thought about it. “You’re right. They should.”
Just then, our drinks arrived. Gabriel waited until the waiter had left before he spoke again. All the while, his assessing gaze moved over me.
“So, what brings you to Manhattan?”
“Is it that obvious I’m not a local?” I joked as I took the first sip of my drink.
“You were the one just making the case for honesty,” he countered.
“Right,” I said with a laugh. I couldn’t tell if it was the gin or the man sitting across from me that had me in such an unusually playful mood. “I’m just here for the night on business.”
“What kind of business?”
“The worst kind.” I rolled my eyes. “Family business.”
He leaned back in his chair, drink in hand, forearms leisurely stretched out on the armrests. “You have my sympathy,” he said. “I had to deal with a family situation myself recently. They can be…difficult.”
Difficult? That was the understatement of the year. “Unfortunately, this one is a total pain in the ass.”
“That bad?”
I shook my head. “You aren’t here to listen to me complain.”
He cocked his chin to the side, a move that made him appear even more dangerously handsome. “You don’t know why I came here,” he said. “Tell me.”
Even though I wasn’t in the habit of airing my family’s dirty laundry with total strangers, something about that commanding tone in his voice made it hard to refuse. Even more than that, I found that I actually wanted to talk to him. Something about the anonymity of the situation was freeing.
The fact that I was now halfway through my first drink didn’t hurt either.
“The details don’t matter,” I said, shaking my head. “Someone in my family is always getting themselves into trouble. The part that upsets me is that they only seem to care about me when they need my help getting them out of it. They can go months without talking to me, then throw a fit when I don’t come running the second they snap their fingers.”
“So why do you come when they call?”
That was the question I’d been asking myself all day. I wished I had a better answer.
“Because even though they are a pain in the ass, they’re still my family,” I said. “They may drive me up the walls, but I don’t want anything bad to happen to them. Especially not if I can help it.”
“Loyalty,” he mused, looking at his glass and the way the candlelight played off it as he twisted it back and forth between his fingers. “That’s a noble trait. But loyalty is only worth a damn if it flows both ways. It sounds like, in your case, it’s a one-way street.”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh, feeling myself relax even more in this stranger’s presence. “Just once, I wish I didn’t have to be the reliable one. I wish I could just live and not worry about the consequences of my actions.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Another simple question, and another one I found myself struggling to answer.
“Honestly, I’ve been the responsible one for so long, I’m not sure I even know how to let go.”
“Not even for one night?”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
He leaned forward in his seat just a touch. “What if there was someone there to guide you? To teach you how to be just a little selfish?”
Why did I get the sense we were no longer talking in the abstract? I took another sip of my gin and tonic to cover my sudden nervousness.
