“Willa? Are you all right?”
She realized that she’d just been standing there like a zombie, staring at nothing. “Sorry. Went wool gathering for a second.”
“Good wool?”
Her throat too tight to answer, she shook her head. Gabe held out his forearm to her and waited expectantly until she looped her hand around it. Wow, he really had gone old-school in the past ten years.
He led her out to his SUV, which a valet had pulled around for them, and Gabe handed her into the vehicle. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the headrest. A United States senator. Her. The thought just wouldn’t compute. Even if the title was purely for appearances and she never did a darned thing, she would still go down in the history books as having served in the United States freaking Senate.
In a few minutes, Gabe slowed his car and turned a corner. Her eyes snapped open to see an underground parking garage. Panic tightened around her chest. “Where are we?” she forced out.
“I keep a place in Dallas for when I have business in town. Since you have to be here for a press conference tomorrow, I figured it would save you hassle to stay in town tonight. And, it has the fringe benefit of foiling those pesky reporters camped out waiting to pounce on you in Vengeance.
“But my clothes are at home—”
“You have power suits befitting a U.S. senator in your closet at home, Ms. Kindergarten Teacher?” he asked skeptically.
“Well, no.”
“Exactly. And that means you have to go shopping in the morning. Here, in Dallas. Correct?”
“I guess.”
He parked the SUV and came around to open her door. “Then you’re staying at my place tonight.”
She couldn’t argue with the logic of it. But to spend the night at a man’s apartment? Alone with him? Fear tightened her entire body.
Gabe Dawson was not James Ward. Not all men were scary monsters who leaped on unsuspecting women. Her brain could believe it, but her gut wasn’t even close to convinced. Her brain also said that if she was ever going to have any semblance of a normal life, she was going to have to face, and get over, her fear of being attacked by every man she came into contact with.
Yeah. Her gut wasn’t buying that one, either. Besides, her father would croak—
Oh, wait. She was Senator Merris now. She could do whatever she darn well pleased, scandal be damned. Scandal—She groaned aloud.
Gabe froze in the act of reaching for the elevator button. “What?”
“I filed charges against James Ward today. Now that I’m getting this stupid job, it will be splashed all over the news by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Honey, it was splashed all over the news within five minutes of you leaving the police station.”
“Yes, but that would’ve just been the Vengeance newspaper and a few local television stations. Now it’ll go national.”
“So?” Gabe commented as he ushered her into the elevator.
“So!” she exclaimed. “The media will rake me over the coals!”
“Did you lie to the police? Accuse an innocent man?”
“No.”
Gabe took a quick step across the tiny space to loom over her. Abruptly, a wave of danger rolled off him. Who was she kidding? This guy was a whole lot more man than James Ward had ever been, and she hadn’t been able to fend off Ward. She wouldn’t stand a chance against Gabe if he ever decided to have his way with her. Complete and horrifying vulnerability slammed into her. She was alone and at Gabe Dawson’s mercy. Her knees all but knocked together in fear.
His voice was a velvet knife slicing her composure to shreds. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Willa. You’re the victim. James Ward is the one who ought to be squirming.”
He obviously didn’t know a blessed thing about shame. It sunk all the way down to a person’s bones and poisoned them from the inside out. She risked meeting his dark, angry gaze for a moment but he was too intimidating… and she was too humiliated. She looked away hastily, venturing only, “But the scandal—”
He cut her off sharply. “The scandal will be on his shoulders where it belongs.”
She forced herself to shake off the sick feeling gripping her stomach. The two of them were being brutally honest with each other, right? And it wasn’t like she was ever going to spend time with Gabe Dawson again. He was years older than she. Compared to him, she was a gawky kid. He dated sexy, sophisticated socialites, and he was her father’s archenemy. She couldn’t exactly be seen running around with him if she didn’t want to be the center of all the gossip in Vengeance for months to come.
“Face facts, Gabe. The press will come after me as hard or harder than they go after James. Women in these situations always have their reputations dragged through the mud. And now, I’m going to drag my father’s Senate seat through the mud, too. I owe it to his memory not to do that.”
“You don’t owe your father a damned thing. He’s dead.” The elevator dinged and the door slid open to punctuate his forceful statement.
Stunned at the blunt honesty of Gabe’s observation, she stared at his back as he stalked off the elevator and crossed a small lobby toward the lone door opening off it. She ought to be furious with him for speaking such a travesty aloud, but a tiny part of her couldn’t deny that the man spoke the truth. Her father didn’t care anymore about his Senate seat or his precious reputation.
Gabe grasped the long, tubular, metal door handle for several seconds. A red beam of light flashed out of an aperture in the stainless-steel door, startling Willa as it swept across Gabe’s face. A click, and the door opened under his hand.
“Latest in biometric scanning,” he commented as he threw the door wide for her.
She followed cautiously. Lights went on around them automatically as Gabe moved through the foyer and several steps down into a large living room. The first features she noticed were the floor-to-ceiling glass windows lining the entire far side of the open space. Drawn to the magnificent vista outside, she strolled over to take it in.
The Dallas skyline sprawled at her feet, like a steel meadow full of twinkling white lights. The narrow, modern arch of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge glowed white, spanning the Trinity River in the distance. Cool air blew down silently on her from vents overhead, and Willa hugged herself, chilled. As beautiful as it was, the view was distant and impersonal. Cold.
Her politeness as ingrained as always, though, she commented, “Nice view. But don’t you feel a little exposed with all these windows?”
“We’re on the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in the city, and it’s one-way glass. We have complete privacy.”
The notion of having complete privacy with him unnerved her more than a little. Thankfully, he moved across the room to a white quartz bar to pour them glasses of ice water. The condo’s sleekness complemented his rugged masculinity, its smooth lines standing in stark contrast to his rough edges.
Leave it to Gabe Dawson to own a penthouse at the very pinnacle of this town, symbolically astride Dallas and everything in it. Although, with the amount of money he’d made, she supposed he had pretty literally conquered the town, too.
“Computer, warm whole house two degrees.”
“Yes, Mr. Dawson.”
Willa glanced over her shoulder at the sultry, female British-accented voice. “Your computer is a girl?”
“Of course.”
“And she controls your air conditioner?”
He laughed. “She controls just about