Rachel crossed her arms in annoyance and glared at him. “Don’t bark at me. I’m not one of your students, and I’m not going to put up with your shit.”
He sighed and began to rub his eyes again, minutely adjusting his glasses to do so.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, returning the magazine, but not before he gave the model one more serious look, purely for research purposes, bien sûr.
“Why are you wound up so tight? Are you having girl troubles? Do you even have a girl right now? When was the last time you had one? And by the way, what’s with those photos in your…”
He interrupted her quickly. “I’m not having this conversation with you. I don’t ask who you’re f**king.”
Rachel bit back an angry response and took a very deep breath. “I’m going to forgive you for that remark, even though it was insensitive and crass. When you’re down on your knees making your penance, include the sin of envy, will you?
“You know I’ve only ever been with Aaron. And I think you know that what we do together goes way beyond what you said. What’s wrong with you?”
Gabriel muttered an apology and refused to make eye contact. But his warning shot across the bow had accomplished what he wished it to, and that was to divert her attention from one of her questions. So he felt no remorse. Not really.
Rachel toyed with her brother’s business card for a moment as she tried to calm down.
“If you don’t like Julia, then you must feel sorry for her. Why? Is it just because she’s poor?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed and shook his head.
“Julia brings out the protective side in people. She was always a little sad and a little lost. Although make no mistake, she has steel in her bones.
She survived an alcoholic mother and a boyfriend who…”
Gabriel’s blue eyes shifted to hers with interest. “Who?” he prompted.
“You said you didn’t want to know about her personal life. It’s too bad, really. If you and she weren’t in a professional relationship, you might have liked her. You might have been friends.”
She smiled at him, testing the waters, but Gabriel kept his eyes on the breakfast bar and began rubbing his chin absently.
Rachel drummed her fingers on the countertop. “Do you want me to tell her the briefcase and the shoes are from you?”
“Of course not! I could get fired for that. Someone will jump to the wrong conclusion, and I’ll be hauled in before the judicial committee.”
“I thought you were tenured.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered.
“So you want to spend all of this money on Julia, and you don’t care if she knows that they gifts are from you? It’s a bit like Cyrano de Bergerac, don’t you think? I guess your French is better than I thought.”
He stood up, effectively ignoring her, and walked over to the large espresso machine on one of the counters. He began the somewhat laborious process of making the perfect espresso, keeping his back to his annoying sister.
She sighed. “All right. You want to do something nice for Julia. You can call it penance, if you like, but maybe it’s just kindness. And it’s doubly kind, because you want to do it in secret and not embarrass her or make her feel like she owes you something. I’m impressed. Sort of.”
“I want her petals to open,” Gabriel breathed softly.
Rachel dismissed his admission as incoherent mumbling, because she couldn’t believe that he’d said what she in fact heard. It was too bizarre.
“Don’t you think you should treat Julia as an adult and tell her the gifts are from you? Let her make her own decision about whether she should accept them or not?
“She wouldn’t accept them if she knew they were from me. She hates me.”
Rachel laughed. “Julia is not the type of girl to hate people. She’s far too forgiving for that. Although if she hates you, you probably deserve it.
But you’re right — she doesn’t accept charity. She would never let me buy things for her except on very special occasions.”
“Then tell her it’s for a backlog of Christmas presents from you. Or tell her it’s from Grace.” A meaningful look passed between the siblings.
Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. “Mom was the only person Julia would accept charity from, because she thought of Mom as her mother.”
Gabriel was at her side in an instant and wrapped her in his arms, trying to comfort her as best he could.
In his heart, he knew exactly what he was doing by persuading his sister to buy some pretty, girlish things for Miss Mitchell. He was paving hell with energy — buying an indulgence, forgiveness for sin. He’d never reacted this way to a woman before. But no, Gabriel wouldn’t indulge himself with that line of thought. That would serve no purpose, no purpose at all.
He knew he lived in hell. He accepted it. He rarely complained. But truth be told, he desperately wished he could make his escape. Unfortunately, he had no Virgil and no Beatrice to come to his aid. His prayers went unanswered, and his plans for reform were almost always thwarted by something or other. Usually a woman wearing four-inch heels and long blond hair, who would scratch long fingernails down his back while screaming his name, over and over and over again…
Given his current state of affairs, the best that he could do to reform himself would be to take the old man’s blood money and lavish it on a brown-eyed angel. An angel who couldn’t afford an apartment with a kitchen, and who would blossom a little when her best friend gave her a pretty dress and a new pair of shoes.