Chapter 4. His Name

“Before Saturday?” Diana repeated.

“Yes.”

She could still remember his hand moving over her shoulder in the dark. Remembered how easily she had fallen asleep against him. The memory made her want to step back from the car.

“You waited outside my office.”

“I did.”

“And then you followed me.”

His eyes went briefly to the traffic. “Yes.”

“Get out of the car,” she said. “We’re not doing this through a window.”

He got out. Up close, on an ordinary sidewalk, beside a man selling phone chargers, he still looked like trouble in a good suit.

Diana pulled out her phone. “Here’s what happens. I text my friend your full name. You tell me what it is.”

Something flickered across his face. It might have been respect. “Of course.”

“Name.”

“Gabriel Valenti.”

She typed it, with Main and 4th, black car, I’m okay, and hit send. “And I’m not getting in your car. There’s a diner on the corner. You can walk me there.” She paused. “Beside me. Not behind this time.”

His mouth twitched. He locked the car and walked beside her with his hands in his pockets.

***

Sal’s Diner was bright and cheap and smelled of coffee and fryer oil. Gabriel Valenti looked as out of place in a vinyl booth as a panther in a petting zoo. The waitress poured his coffee with an unsteady hand. He thanked her by name.

A dish broke somewhere behind the kitchen door. Gabriel had turned toward the sound before Diana heard it.

Her phone buzzed against the table. Then again. And again.

Eva: Wait. VALENTI?? Eva: Diana do NOT get in a car with him Eva: Pick up. I’m calling.

“Your friend has heard of me,” Gabriel said.

“Don’t move.” Diana took the call by the restroom door, where she could still see the booth.

“Tell me you’re not alone with him,” Eva said over the rattle of a train.

“Sal’s Diner. Eleven people and a waitress named Bev. Eva, who is he?”

Eva’s voice dropped. “He runs Valenti Development. Half the skyline.” She paused. “Remember when Danny went missing?”

Diana’s grip tightened. Eva’s brother had disappeared for nine days two years ago and came back with two broken fingers and a story he wouldn’t tell.

“It was a debt crew,” Eva said. “Collecting for some outfit that worked under the Valenti name. The cops wouldn’t touch it once they heard that name. I’m not telling you what to do. You just need to know.”

“I know now,” Diana said quietly. “Thank you.”

“Share your location. Text me every twenty minutes, or I’m getting off this train.”

Diana shared it. Then she walked back and sat down across from him.

“My friend’s brother,” she said. “Two years ago. He had a gambling debt and somebody collecting under your name broke his fingers.”

Gabriel didn’t look away. “What was his name?”

“Danny.”

He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know the name, and I don’t know the crew. If someone did that while using my company’s name, I want to know who, and how they got that work.” He met her eyes. “I’ll have it looked into properly. You’ll hear what I find, and so will Danny if he wants to.”

“I didn’t tell you so you could hurt somebody.”

“Hurt? People might get fired.” He turned his cup a slow quarter-turn. “You told me to see what I’d do with it.”

She hated that he was right.

He sounded certain he could find out. Diana had heard the same certainty from men who never had to wait for an answer. She looked at the waitress moving carefully around his booth and wondered how much of Danny’s story would reach her once Gabriel started asking.

“How did you know my name?” she asked. “I made a rule. You agreed to it. Then you said my name like you’d been saying it for months.”

“The winter gala at the Ashford. You were working at the Hans sponsor table.” He hesitated. “A drunk investor grabbed your wrist. You got loose, smiled at him, and sold him a lobby in about ninety seconds. You were wearing a name badge, and you gave me your card. You won’t remember. You gave everyone a card.”

She didn’t remember. That was somehow worse and better at once.

“So you’ve been thinking about me since winter.”

“Yes.”

“How many times did you just happen to see me?”

Gabriel was quiet.

Diana’s stomach tightened. “How many?”

“Enough to know you take the earlier bus when you’re nervous about work.”

She stared at him.

“And that you stop at the bookstore on Fulton when you’ve had a bad day, even though you almost never buy anything.”

The noise of the diner seemed to recede.

“Did you personally follow me?”

“Sometimes.”

The answer came too easily.

“And sometimes?”

“I had someone tell me where you were.”

Diana sat back.

“Jesus Christ.”

“I tried not to approach you.”

“You want credit for outsourcing the stalking?”

“No.”

Something almost angry crossed his face, but it seemed directed at himself.

“Then why?”

Gabriel looked down at his coffee.

“When I saw you at the Ashford, something in me reacted before I had any reason to care who you were.”

Diana frowned. “What does that mean?”

“I know what that pull feels like.” He stopped, choosing the next words. “I didn’t expect it to be this strong. I didn’t expect you to feel anything back.”

“That’s convenient.”

“You asked why. That’s the answer I have.”

His gaze returned to hers.

“I knew when you walked into a room before I saw you. I could pick you out of a crowd without looking for your face. I told myself if I stayed away long enough, it would burn out.”

“And did it?”

“No.”

There was something almost hostile in the way he said it.

Diana folded her arms.

“So your defense is supernatural stalking?”

“I’m not defending it.”

“Good.”

“I’m telling you that whatever this is, it started before I chose it.”

“That doesn’t make what you did okay.”

“No.”

For once, he didn’t try to make the answer prettier.

Diana unfolded her arms. There was one question she hadn’t wanted to ask anyone, and he was making it impossible to keep pretending she didn’t have it.

“Did you speak to me on Saturday when your mouth wasn’t moving?”

Gabriel went still.

“At the wedding,” she said. “And later, at your apartment.”

“What did you hear?”

“Breathe. Easy.” Her face warmed. “You asked me that same question on Saturday. I’d like an answer this time.”

He looked toward the kitchen. A waitress called an order, a chair scraped back, and Diana waited for him to decide whether the whole diner was suddenly more interesting than she was.

“I felt something from you at the wedding,” he said at last. “When you left the room.”

“You heard my thoughts?”

“No. I can’t hear your private thoughts.”

“Then what?”

“Fear.”

She stared at him. “Anyone could have seen that I was upset.”

“You were on the other side of a closed door.”

The coffee between them had gone cold. Diana pressed one hand flat against the seat beside her.

“Are you saying that voice was you?”

“I’m saying something happened to both of us. I don’t understand why it happened like that.”

“That’s half an answer.”

His mouth tightened. “Yes.”

“And when I felt ill? Did you know what that was?”

“I knew you’d gone pale. I thought the room had been too much.” He looked at her properly. “I should have asked you more.”

Diana let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Breathe,” he said quietly.

She jerked her head up. It was his voice, unmistakably aloud this time. Similar enough to make her want to hear it again, different enough that she couldn’t trust the comparison.

“Don’t,” she said.

He stopped. The hand beside his cup had closed into a fist.

“You look frightened,” she said.

“I don’t like feeling out of control.”

“Imagine how I feel.”

His gaze dropped to her hand against the seat. He didn’t reach for it. Diana was angry with herself for noticing that she had wanted him to.

“You have more to explain than the bus route,” she said.

“I have.”

“If there’s a next time,” she said, “you don’t follow me. You don’t have anyone else follow me. And you don’t appear somewhere because you found out I’d be there.”

“And whatever happened on Saturday, you don’t use it to get around what I’m telling you.”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened.

“I can stop doing those things.”

“That sounded suspiciously specific.”

“It was.”

“And?”

His fingers closed around the coffee cup.

“I can’t promise I’ll stop wanting to know where you are.”

Diana stared at him.

“That part stays inside your head.”

A beat.

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“I said I can control what I do, Diana. I didn’t say I could control what I want.”

That was considerably less comforting, but oddly sincere.

He hesitated. “I’ll need your number. Your work number’s on the card. I’ve never used it.”

Diana laughed, a little hysterically. “That’s the most disturbing romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

She wrote her personal number on a napkin and slid it across the table. If she let this man into her life, he would come through the door she chose.

“I’ll call,” he said.

“And if I don’t answer, you wait. You don’t come looking.”

He picked up the napkin. “Understood.”

Then the work waiting on her laptop came back to her. “Thursday’s pitch,” Diana said slowly. “It’s your company.”

“Yes.”

He went very still.

“Your flagship tower. I’ve spent three weeks on that presentation.”

Something unreadable moved across his face. “I know the project.”

“Of course you do.”

“You built the pitch?”

“Most of it.”

His gaze sharpened with something that looked suspiciously like interest.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“You’re not getting a preview.”

“I didn’t ask for one.”

“Good.”

He walked her to the bus shelter and stood a careful two feet away. When the bus pulled up, she rose onto her toes and kissed him, once, because she wanted to and because she could. His hand came to her waist, and the kiss deepened until her knees went soft.

“Stop,” she breathed.

He stopped instantly and stepped back. His chest was rising hard, but he didn’t come closer.

“Goodnight, Miss Bennett. Good luck Thursday.”

There was something about the way he said it that bothered her. She just couldn’t work out why.

On the bus, she texted Eva that she was alive. Her phone buzzed again before she reached home. It wasn’t Eva.

Trevor: Saw you outside Sal’s with Gabriel Valenti.

Diana read the message with the taste of Gabriel’s kiss still on her mouth. She looked through the window, although Trevor could hardly be standing beside a moving bus.

Another message arrived.

Trevor: I think you should let me handle Thursday’s presentation.

Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. Three weeks of work, and he wanted her to hand it over because he had seen her having coffee.

Before she could answer, the next message appeared.

Trevor: Unless you’d rather explain to Helena why you’re dating the client.