A tear slid down her cheek. “Now I don’t deserve something better.”
Gabe gripped her arm and turned her to him. “No! That’s not what I meant. Not what I meant at all.”
She searched his face; there was no disgust or judgment there. There was anger, but she already knew that wasn’t directed at her.
He pressed his thumbs against her cheeks and brushed the tears away. “Your mascara is running. You can’t go in like that. They’ll think I’m beating you.”
She flinched, still worried that option was on the menu. “I-I’ll fix it.” Julie walked a few feet to a nearby car and bent so she could see the side mirror and fixed her makeup. Then they continued on.
The food court was just inside the main doors. It was only about an hour until closing and much of the crowd had thinned. Still, Julie felt beset on all sides by possible danger. Gabe moved in closer to her, his large body shielding her, at least from behind. She turned to find him scanning the area as if checking to make sure things were safe. They drew a few stares from straggling diners. They must make some pair: her dressed so casually and him in a fancy dark suit. They probably thought he was her bodyguard.
“What do you want to eat?”
She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, suddenly self-conscious. “Anything’s fine. Whatever you want to get me.”
His hands closed around her shoulders and he leaned in close to her ear and whispered. “I paid half a million dollars for you tonight. Believe me when I tell you there is no quantity or type of food you could order that would in any way ruffle me.”
Julie felt herself stiffen at that. It was twenty times higher than her highest estimate. How could he have all that money to throw away on her? What could he make her do that could possibly pay off that much debt? But he was right—she could order everything off every menu and it wasn’t going to make her situation with him any worse.
She turned to face him. “C-can we go upstairs? To the buffet restaurant?”
A flutter of emotions spread across his face in quick succession: distress, anger, pity as if just remembering they’d been starving her. She was embarrassed asking for a buffet—some never ending supply of food as if she were afraid she might never see food again after this. She knew the full horrible truth was laid bare in her expression and the few words of her request.
“Of course we can. You can have whatever you want.”
They walked quietly together to the escalator. He stayed right behind her, his body shielding her, his arm coming around to settle on her waist right where her jeans buttoned as they rode the escalator up to the second floor. From any other man, a hand so casually resting against her pelvic bone would have sent her into a spinning internal hysteria, but somehow, when Gabe did it, she felt inexplicably protected.
She couldn’t see his face, but from the expressions of the people going down on the other side, he must look fierce.
She wasn’t sure what awfulness was coming when he got her to wherever he was taking her, but for this one moment, she felt safe. And maybe it was that sense of safety that kept her from shouting for help at the first sign of a mall cop. Somehow she knew Gabe could easily take a mall cop, and while the real cops might get called, she wasn’t confident anyone could catch him before he could mete out some sort of punishment for the crime of not trusting a criminal. Because she was sure, at the very least, Gabe was that.
At the restaurant, Julie piled her plates high with foods she hadn’t seen in months. Gabe helped her carry them back to their booth.
“I have no idea where you plan to put all this,” he said. He sat across from her and watched as she dug in.
She was too hungry to be self-conscious. But she stopped eating when the waitress arrived with her soda.
The woman gave Gabe a cool assessing glare, as if she thought he planned to try to cheat the rules of the buffet and eat off Julie’s plate.
“You aren’t eating?” she asked.
“No. I’ve eaten already.”
The waitress’s shrewd eyes took in the two of them like she knew something wasn’t right.
For a moment Julie feared something dramatically bad was about to happen, but Gabe had clearly already run through several potential back stories.
“Do you know your senator, Senator Todd?” he asked, calmly.
“No, I don’t keep up with politics.”
Gabe gestured to Julie. “This is Senator Todd’s daughter, Susan. I’m charged with watching and protecting her. She’s been on the campaign trail with her father and has been so busy all day she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. The poor thing is starving. And between you and me, I don’t think she eats enough anyway. Always on a diet, this one.”
“Oh.” The waitress shifted her focus to Julie. “I’m terribly sorry, miss. Good luck to your father. I’ll be sure to go out and vote for him.”
“Thank you,” Julie said.
The waitress turned to leave, but Gabe gripped her wrist, stopping the woman’s retreat. “It is a matter of state security that Susan not have too much attention drawn to her. I trust that you will do your civic duty and not breathe a word about this to your fellow workers.”
As if Gabe’s very presence, hard stare, and fancy suit weren’t drawing attention.
“Oh, no sir, of course not. Poor dear. I wouldn’t dream of destroying her privacy. I’m sorry to have disturbed you both. Enjoy your meal, Miss.”
Gabe watched her for a while when she went back, but it was clear she brushed off the nosy questions of any co-workers who might have noticed them. Julie went back to eating.
Besides that interruption, nobody bothered them again. The waitress came back one other time to take away some plates and to put another soda on the table.
Finally, she’d eaten all she could manage, but there was still almost a full plate of food. “I’m sorry, I can’t eat any more.”
“It’s a buffet, Julie. It makes no difference if you ate one plate or a hundred. Let’s go.”
He escorted her out and back down the escalator, through the bottom level of the mall and the food court and out to the swiftly emptying parking lot. He helped her into the car and they got back on the road.
“Do you think that waitress will say anything?”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Gabe said. “There were no cameras anywhere, I checked. People have really bad memories for details. There is no way they could ever find us.”
And Julie was back to fear.
“T-thank you for the food,” she said.
“You will never be hungry again. I don’t use food restriction as a punishment. It’s cruel. I may be demanding, but I’m not cruel.”
Did that mean he was going to punish her if she displeased him?
33
Gabe thought she’d been in the bathroom far too long. He knocked again. “Julie? Come out and talk to me. I’m not going to hurt you, whatever you’ve heard about me.” But there was no answer. He pressed his ear to the door but didn’t hear anything. “If you’re in there, you better move away from the door right now.”
Gabe kicked the door in, but the room was empty. The window stood open, a gentle spring breeze blowing in. He leaned out the window, but he couldn’t see where she’d gone.