Page 18 of Purchase Power
Chapter 6
Noah retreated to his room shortly after dinner. Candace had informed him that Lucy arrived over an hour ago, but he didn’t have it in him to go say hello.What am I supposed to say?He had an after dinner drink of scotch in his room, where he sat by the dark window and stared at his personal collection of first edition Victorian literature. Between the Dickens and the Hawthorne was a single photograph, encased in a silver frame that depicted a time in Noah’s life when things were so seemingly simple.
I must have been the only boy in the world who was content to have a single mother growing up.Life had been far from tough after the divorce of his parents at a young age. His father wanted nothing to do with his children, and made that damn clear when he instantly remarried the nanny and fucked off to Amsterdam to have anewfamily. His mother had plenty of alimony and her own trust funds to keep up Gabriel Manor on behalf of her ex-husband, who had made her the legal steward as long as Noah was living there.He may have fucked off, but he still acknowledged me as his oldest.How lovely. Thankfully, Noah had no half-siblings. Turned out the nanny had her tubes tied shortly after starting her career in childcare.Go figure.
The picture depicted no smiles. Yet Noah remembered the day at the country club well. He had just graduated from the private kindergarten his own father had attended decades before, and his mother Tonya threw an elaborate get-together at the country club that was more for her than any child of her loins. Turned out Noah was more like his mother than anyone anticipated, though, when he sat down to watch some older men play chess and picked up the rules of the game within an hour.
There was a board set up not far from his bed. He had another in his office. Two games, always in progress. The one in his room was a game he played against himself, always smug when he killed a Queen before turning around and chastising himself for leaving her open.Never leave the Queen open.He had done it before. He refused to do it again.
The one in his office was a game he shared with someone else. Every so often they sat down to play a whole game, contemplating in silence aside from the clacking of pieces and the ticking of the timer. Occasionally, fingers drummed on the table. Nails were bitten. Feet tapped and songs were hummed. Noah always sat still and silent. That was his way of coping with life.
He glanced at the clock. Five after eight. He supposed he should go welcome his guest, assuming she was tired after a long day of traveling.
“Good evening, Mr. Gabriel.” Candace passed him in the main upstairs hallway, her eyes downcast and her hands fidgeting with the waist of her dress. “Can I get you anything before I retire for the evening?”
“No. Everything’s fine.” He stopped her, anyway. “How is Ms. Craig? I was about to say hello.”
Candace’s snort was unnecessary, but Noah would overlook it. Like he didn’t know what this looked like to his staff, let alone the only woman not of blood who knew him better than anyone else. Obviously, she had figured out what Lucy was within five minutes of meeting her. Noah wouldn’t bring a sudden guest nobody recognized into his house unless the purpose was to fuck her as much as he wanted. Well, Candace would be very disappointed tonight. Noah had no such plans. His only plans were to take a quick shower and get to bed early as soon as he was finished speaking with Lucy about her own needs.
“Ms. Craig has been advised of the rules, so she’s taking to relaxing in the guest suite.”
“Have you arranged for a guard?”
“I don’t think she will be too much of a threat…”
“It’s not her getting out that I’m worried about.”
Candace sighed, the weight of her role in Gabriel Manor pressing heavily upon her slender shoulders. “Yes, Mr. Gabriel. You know I always have one eye on who you’re talking about. If not my own eye, then someone else’s. Everyone here is committed to looking after the members of your family.”
“Some more than others, of course.”
She almost said something, then refrained, her lips pressing into a thin line. “If all is well, Mr. Gabriel, I shall retire to my quarters. Good night. I shall see you in the morning. I already have Ms. Craig’s breakfast arranged.”
“Thank you.” Noah turned to her as she hustled down the hall. “Good night.”
His relationship to Candace conflicted his mind. He could never decide if she was the mother he always needed, or his wife from an alternate universe.She’s too young to be one, and too old to be the other.Noah wasn’t attracted to Candace. That wasn’t why he had kept her around after taking control of Gabriel Manor shortly after college, when his mother expressed a desire to move on with her life elsewhere and he was busy with his new position at the family company. It hadn’t taken long for Noah to prove himself as a competent CFO who crunched numbers better than anyone else and looked at financial forecasts like they were sun and rain. By that time, Tonya had decided it was time for her to completely sever ties with Gabriel Manor outside of the occasional visit to check on her flesh and blood.
Candace was one of the few leftovers from the darker days of Noah’s life. She had been a rock who understood the pain anyone by the last name of Gabriel had gone through and even put her life on the line at one point.Not for me. For someone else.Noah would never forget the day the prim and proper Candace threw herself in front of Noah and took a hit on his behalf.
She still had a small scar on her hairline, from where she had hit an end table on her way down to the ground. Nowhere near a mortal injury.“A small concussion. I take care of myself much better now,”she liked to remind Noah, who now slowly approached the far side of the house. One of the security guards set up his nightly post. Not so much checking the goings-on in the house, but conveniently leaving the door open to his small AV office where he watched the cameras. Nobody would walk past him without him seeing them out of the corner of his eye. Not Lucy. Not anybody else, including Noah.
The guard curtly nodded with a small smile. “Evening, Mr. Gabriel.”
Noah said nothing. Embarrassed? A little. Guilty? Always.
He knocked on Lucy’s door, the sudden urge to check his appearance hitting him. Why couldn’t this have happened when he was in his room and could access his bathroom, where he kept his cologne, comb, and a large enough mirror to see how his clothing looked? Noah always dressed in the bare minimum of slacks and a collared shirt when in the house, whether he was working or not. Yet sometimes the shirt became wrinkled, or his belt buckle a little loose. Or his shirt untucked. Or his shoes were scuffed. Usually, that late in the evening, he didn’t think twice about his appearance. How often did he entertain people at home? Not often.
Was his hair okay? Good God, was hisshirtokay?
Lucy didn’t answer. She might have been in the bedroom, where it was difficult to hear someone knocking on the suite door. Noah pulled out his skeleton key that opened every door in Gabriel Manor. It was not a privilege he often invoked, but considering the terms of his and Lucy’s relationship, he didn’t feeltoobad about creaking open the door and peering through the crack.
“Hello?” He opened the door wider, stepping into the room. “Are you here, Ms. Craig?” She better be. If she had decided to break free a mere two hours after arriving, well… there went the rest of her money. “It’s me. Gabriel.”
He didn’t see her until he closed the door and looked away from the TV above the electric fireplace. A rerun of some old sitcom played. The three men and three women in the scene were dressed in such fantastical ‘90s fashion that it took Noah, who was more often than not completely detached from popular culture, a while to realize it was an episode of “Friends.” And the only reason he recognized Chandler, Phoebe and Co. was because someone in his household was known for binging all of the old comfort shows. If it wasn’t “Friends,” it was “Will & Grace.” Or “The Steve Harvey Show.” Or “The Golden Girls.” Perhaps with a side of “Daria” and the first few seasons of the “The Simpsons.”
He pulled his hands out of his pockets and glanced toward the reading nook. There was Lucy, sitting at the small two-person table, eating her late dinner of sausage rigatoni and fennel. The exact same dinner he had an hour ago. Here was hoping her portion was properly heated.
“Mr. Gabriel.” She attempted to stand with a start, her knee hitting the bottom of the table. Lucy did an admirable job hiding the pain surely jolting through her body, but with her puffed out cheeks and hand hitting her knee, Noah knew she was already off to a great start in his house. “I… uh…” Lucy pasted on a fake smile as she took her time standing up. Her baggy navy blue T-shirt advertising an independent New York bookstore covered her whole torso, but the red and white-piped running shorts gave her legs for days. The bare feet didn’t help. Noah didn’t have a fetish, but Lucy’s feet were delicate and nimble. Like the rest of her. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t expecting you.”
