She stared at him a moment, trying to process all that. How could it be his fault? And... kidnap? Who the hell was this guy? She really wanted to trust him—trust in anything—but he had to stop using words like kidnap so casually. It wasn’t a word she could understand in a casual way. And unless he’d directly had her taken by Dmitri’s guys, it wasn’t as if there was any real way this could be his fault. She didn’t understand how his brain had made that leap.
“C-can I talk now?” she asked.
Gabe pulled out onto the main road and sighed. “Go ahead.”
“How is it your fault? Did you set me up?”
“Of course not! If I’d had any idea where you were I would have come after you then.”
“But don’t you do what they do?”
“Not exactly. Though I’m not sure you would appreciate the distinctions at this point. Are you hungry?”
Julie looked out the window and wiped another tear off her cheek. “Yes.”
“They didn’t feed you?”
She turned back to him when she’d managed to compose herself. “They don’t feed us until after we service the clients. If they are pleased, they feed us. If they aren’t...”
Gabe gripped the steering wheel so hard she was sure his knuckles had started to turn white, despite that golden tan of his.
“You’re thinner than you were the last time I saw you.”
“Like Dmitri said, I’m not his best.”
And Gabe was going to be very upset when he found out how poor of a whore she really was. She didn’t know how much he’d paid to get her out of there, but any amount high enough to have tempted Dmitri was way too much. Still she wondered. Ten thousand? Twenty? Certainly not more than twenty-five. And yet she knew Gabe would never get his money’s worth and was afraid of what would happen when he finally realized it. Experience had taught her, nothing good.
A streetlight shone into the car, and he used the opportunity to glance at an expensive gold watch on his wrist. “It’s closing in on eight, so the kitchen will be closed by the time we get there. I can get in, of course, but I’m not much of a cook.”
None of this made any sense to Julie so she remained quiet.
“The mall closes at ten on the weekends right?”
“I-I think so.”
“Okay, we’ll make a pit stop.”
“You’re wrong. This is my fault,” she said. “I should have gone to seminary like my parents wanted and married a nice preacher. None of this would have happened.”
Gabe’s hand closed over hers as he drove with the other. He didn’t take his eyes from the road. “Would you have been happy with a nice preacher?”
“Happier than this. I would have had to bury myself underneath his calling and never speak another honest word in my life, but I would have been safe at least and provided for.”
“You’re safe, now. I promise you are safe. And you will be provided for.”
They drove in silence for a while. Julie didn’t ask him anything else because she was still trying to puzzle out exactly what he did, why his kitchen was “closed”, and what it meant when he said she was his now. She thought she knew in a vague sort of way what it meant. And over the past months she’d been trained to see everything through the lens of her body being prostituted to wealthy men. So it wasn’t as if she were some naïve flower. Even so, there was a lot implied in that phrase that she didn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to. She was really afraid it had to do with his unconventional desires despite any earlier bravado about being able to handle it if he would only set her free afterward.
About fifteen minutes later, they were at the mall. Gabe parked at the very back of the lot.
“I-I can’t go in here.”
“Not yet you can’t. I’m going to get you some clothes. You’re about a six, right?”
“More like a four now.”
She flinched when he reached out and cupped her breast. Despite the intrusion, it didn’t seem like it was meant to violate. Though he could have asked her.
“36B” Gabe said. He seemed to abruptly realize what he’d done, a comical sort of horror lighting his face. “I’m very sorry. It’s a long story why that seemed normal and appropriate to me. Shoe size?”
He wasn’t going to grab and paw at her foot for that?
“Six.”
He filed all those numbers away. He took off his jacket and covered her with it. “I’m locking you in the car. I’ll be back as soon as I can. If you open the door, the alarm will go off, and I don’t imagine you want to call attention to yourself dressed like that. Don’t run from me again, Julie. I will protect you. Whatever you think of me, give me a chance to explain things.”
She nodded. He was right, running would call the wrong kind of attention. Whoever noticed her next was likely to be worse than Gabe. At least he was a somewhat known quantity. Even if she didn’t know everything about him, or all about his darker side, she had seen the parts of him he’d let her see. Given the choice between him and some random unknown predator, she’d take him. And if she ran and came upon a cop? He’d probably arrest her for prostitution rather than help her right now.
Gabe was gone maybe forty-five minutes. When he returned he had bags from a few different nice stores, including a lingerie shop. She was half afraid of what she’d find in the bags, but it was all normal stuff. A pair of jeans, a normal, lightweight long-sleeved shirt, sandals, and some underwear and a bra. Nothing slutty or attention-grabbing.
“I would have gotten you shorts and a T-shirt but I can’t take you in there looking all scratched up. I’ll stand outside while you change, then we’ll go inside to the food court and get something to eat.”
“Okay.”
He turned his back on the car to give her privacy. He looked like a bodyguard with his arms crossed over his chest, staring out into the distance. When she was dressed, Gabe came around to her side to help her out.
“Ow, ow, ow.”
“What is it?”
Was that real concern in his eyes? She barely remembered what concern looked like on a male face.
“When I fell, I hurt my knee.”
“Sit back down.”
She sat in the passenger side, and he knelt beside her, his strong hands pressing in at different places around and behind her knee. A breath hitched in her throat at the gentle, sure way he touched her. Then there was a sharp pressure, a tiny pain, and then it was gone.
“Try to stand now.”
She stood. “Wow, what the hell did you do?”
“You didn’t injure it, something shifted out of alignment and you had a compressed nerve. I guided things back where they needed to be. My friend’s a massage therapist. He talks a lot of shop.”
Gabe helped her out of the car and they walked the long distance to the doors of the mall.
“When we go inside are you going to scream or run or make a scene?” he asked, his voice low.
Julie looked up at him. “Is there a reason I should?”
“None that I can think of.”
“B-but you told me that time that you were a bad guy.”
“Well, I’m not a good guy. But I would never harm you. I need you to trust that. I was warning you away from me because you deserved something better. But now things have sharply shifted.”