Page 79 of Purchase Power
Lucy read over her words, searching for a hidden meaning that might bring to light what she was thinking in her heart of hearts. For although she spilled her guts now, she knew that she was withholding the truth. Everyone lied to themselves. Lucy was one of the worst of all.
So was Noah, probably.
Reading her own words almost made her cry. When she wasn’t chastising herself for being such a foolish git, she was remembering how far she and Noah had come in such little time.He kissed me. I cannot forget it. He opened himself up to me and kissed me in ways he probably rarely kissed other women.Even Lucy couldn’t say she kissed her exes the same way she kissed Noah Saturday night. She felt every part of him inside of her that night. The rest of his body may have borne the brunt of the physical work, but it was his tender, heavy lips that remained imprinted upon her mind.
She loved him. Lucy didn’t know if that frightened her, or consoled her.
I should tell him. Before I never see him again, I should tell him…
“I love you.” She tested those words now. Saying it was to give truth to it, after all. “I love you, Noah Gabriel.” What was so painful about it? The fact that he may not reciprocate?
That heprobablydidn’t reciprocate?
Lucy did what she always turned to when she faced that blank page. Ever since going to Gabriel Manor, she had made it a habit to Google the shit out of the bastard and his family. Naturally, nothing turned up. Now that she was back in New York, however, she trawled through the online library resources. Something she could have still done in another state, but not until she saw the library in her neighborhood did she remember that the Gabriel family had dealings with the city going back as far as Noah’s great-grandfather.
She ran her searches while imagining a world where Noah loved her. A world where she might consider herself the future Mrs. Gabriel.Lucy Gabriel…it still had such a lovely ring to it. She already liked his best friend andhisgirlfriend.I hope they’re doing well. I should text Kelsey and see how it’s going…Lucy leaned her elbow against her desk. What would it have been like ifshewere a virgin the Noah bent her over the arm of a couch and claimed her maidenhead?
I’m not like Jane at all. She’s like… some impossible standard. Maybe even during Victorian times.Lucy drummed her fingers against her cheek. She fantasized about a wedding night with Noah. After a big, gorgeous ceremony and a feast to stuff her for years, she was ready for him to pull up the skirt of her wedding dress and give it to her good. That was his style, after all. As it turned out, it was hers, too!
I’m going to die thinking about this man…
Lucy was prepared to shut off her laptop, text Noah, and go to bed touching herself. Instead, she turned back to her monitor and saw the search results from the library’s archives.
There were far more hits than Google ever gave her. The power of a library card had been in her hands, after all.
“Shit…” Lucy leaned forward, pushing her bottle blond hair behind her ears and staring at the headlines of magazines and old newspapers. Two names turned up more than any other in the Gabriel family.
Ronald Gray.
Stacey Gabriel.
Lucy sat back again. Stacey… Noah’s mother had mentioned that name Sunday morning, although Lucy had no time to ask who that was, and why they should care about Noah setting a decent example for someone she had never heard of before. Her searches since then turned up nothing. As far as public interest was concerned, Stacey Gabriel did not exist. Which made Lucy think she either had the wrong name, or Stacey was someone so secretive that the whole Gabriel family ensured she never, ever turned up anywhere.
She had her answer now.
The page loaded. The only picture of Stacey Gabriel was of a six-year-old at a private kindergarten’s stage play. She was a fairy princess prancing across the stage, her wings slipping down her baggy dress and her wand flying above her head. Only instead of calling her Gabriel, the paper called herStacey Gray.
Another page loaded. There was Ronald, holding Stacey with a giant smile on his face and the little girl in Mary-Jane’s pulling on his bowler hat. They were at the racetrack, where Ronald said he wished to instill the same love of horses into his little girl as his stepson.
The only other time Stacey came up on that page of results was in a lifestyle interview with Tonya and Ronald Gray. The picture depicted them sitting on a chaise lounge together. It suspiciously looked like the one from Noah’s room.
“…What is the secret to your great parenting skills?”the interviewer asked.“Blending families cannot be easy.”
“That’s easy, actually,”Ronald said.“Believe it or not, simply treating your children as people and not robots makes them much easier to handle. They respect you. They trust you. The bond I have with my daughter touches me in my soul. I look into Stacey’s eyes and I see a whole person inside of her. She’s very mature for such a little girl, you know. She takes after my wife. I feel like I could very easily soon have deep and meaningful conversations with the world about her. I tell her that every day, you know. I say, ‘Stacey, you’re a very smart little girl. I can’t wait to bring you to the country club to meet my friends from school and give them what for!’”
Apparently, Tonya found that hilarious. When the interviewer then asked about his bond with Noah, Ronald said,“It’s a challenge with a young boy, of course. He’s still attached to this father, and here I am, this guy who married his mom and moved into his house. It’s a lot of change for a kid his age, but we’re getting along okay. He really likes Stacey. I always see him taking care of her. He acts like a tough kid to his friends, but he’s got a big, soft heart, so that’s what I’m focused on. I like that my daughter has a protector. I often laugh that they would make a cute couple one day, but their mother thinks that’s inappropriate to say, even in jest.”
“Itisinappropriate,”Tonya said.“Let their sibling bond remain. We don’t need to worry about their marital futures quite yet.”
Lucy rubbed her eyes. Was this what she was really reading? Not only did Noah have a younger stepsister, but his stepfather once implied that they should get married one day?
“Rich people are fucking weird…” That’s what Lucy muttered as she went to the next page of results. Some of them were the same as the others she had found two weeks ago. Now, however, she spotted one last article that she hadn’t seen before.
It was innocuous enough.“Young Gabriel Girl Looks Radiant for a Wedding Day.”Lucy’s cursor hovered over it. Was she afraid of what she might see? A truth most inconvenient? Something that had always nagged at her, and now threatened to tear away the moment she clicked?
Yes. That.
She clicked anyway.
