Page 35 of Plunge into Obsession

And any man who could elicit such a response from other men couldn’t be such a bad person… could he?

Or maybe I was reaching.

Maybe I wanted so badly for Gabriel to be this man that I would blind myself to his flaws.

I could think of none.

From his personality to his honey-brown eyes to his huge physique that always made me feel small and soft and feminine, but in the best way.

And then there was his voice.

It was deep and calming.

I could listen to him speak all day.

His voice was a sweet mixture of English and Mexican accents when he spoke. I knew he went to school in England at a young age and had gone to get his undergraduate degree in business and finance at Oxford before he came here to the States for his MBA at Stanford.

Still, he never left his Hispanic roots behind, speaking with a mixture of both Spanish and English words that just about turned me into a pile of goo. His voice had been the star of some of my dirtiest fantasies.

I didn’t speak Spanish, but Lord, if I wasn’t hot and bothered imagining Gabriel speaking sweet nothings in my ear in Spanish.

“Bianca?”

I blinked.

Fuck.

I might have gotten lost in my own head, and I tried to remember what it was we were talking about.

“Do you want to quit?” I asked her.

She looked down at her lap, shrugging a little. “I like not having to worry about money since we started working there. But I’m so tired, Bianca.”

I didn’t say anything, but I felt the same way.

I didn’t like the hours.

I was a morning person. I was usually exhausted by the time the sun set, and my sleep schedule was all messed up because of this job.

“What do you think will happen once you find out what happened to Lucinda?” Kaia asked.

I didn’t say anything for a beat.

Kaia was the only person in my life who knew about Lucinda. She had held my hand as we went to the police, and though they had taken us seriously at first, Luis Mendez had better connections than I thought, because three days after, the captain dismissed the case. They said because of Lucinda’s history of running away from home as a teen, she had probably decided to run away again, and they couldn’t waste time and resources looking for her.

I was young, and I didn’t know what I could have done to convince them otherwise.

No one had taken me seriously after that, no matter how many times I tried to get people to listen to me about my missing friend.

Eventually, the rest of the world moved on and it felt like Lucinda hadn’t even existed in the first place.

Kaia and Lucinda never got along, but Kaia had been with me through everything.

Even so, we didn’t talk about Lucinda all that often.

I thought it was because Kaia didn’t want to overstep. I knew she thought that sacrificing so much in my life, including the degree I never completed, just to look for Lucinda was a waste.

“I know you don’t want me to say this,” she said gently. “But don’t you think it’s time you let her go? Start living your life for you?”

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