“Of Thom?” Rafe’s brows shot up. “Didn’t I agree earlier that I’m his number-one fan?”
“Now you’re making fun of me,” she said, eyes suddenly downcast. “I thought that was Luc’s job, not yours.”
“Touchy subject.”
“Not at all,” she defended. “Jarrod and I have one kind of relationship. And with Thom, I have another. Maybe it feels as though we’re friends more than lovers...none of that makes any difference. I’m marrying Thom because it’s the right thing to do. It’s time I settled down and acted like a grown-up. And it’s what Dad wants. I’m doing it for him.”
An odd pain pinched in Rafe’s chest. Of course, Elana was doing it to please their father. That was a no-brainer. And deep down, he agreed with her decision. He and Thom were a daydream. A fantasy, conjured up from some old infatuation.
But it hurt.
Badly.
* * *
Gabe glanced at his watch. He’d been sitting beside Harrison’s bed for half an hour without saying a word. The nurse had said it was good to talk, and that on some level, the other man could hear his words and feel his family around him. But to Gabe, speaking felt foolish. He’d never been one to waste words. But he needed to find a way to relieve the tension that had come to consume him over the past weeks. Sitting with Harrison, even staring into space, helped some.
The last time he’d been here, Mariella had been with him. They’d sat in silence on opposite sides of the bed, watching over the man who meant so much to them both. He’d wanted to tell her everything, to admit who he was and what he knew about Harrison’s accident. But he couldn’t. Not then. And not yet. Not until he found out who was responsible and why they wanted the man he had always considered to be his father dead.
He made a mental note to talk to the detective in charge of the case. Hank Burns was known for hating rich people. He had a good reputation but was a hard-ass. But Gabe figured he’d get around that. He could talk street if he needed to. He’d gain the cop’s trust by whatever means necessary. He made a mental note to find out what he could about Burns. His past, any indiscretions, wife, mistress, that kind of thing. Ammunition sometimes came in handy when trying to negotiate. Gabe wanted to know what the police knew, because he had the resources to do something about it.
He’d tried keeping watch over Harrison from afar through the hack he’d had installed in the clinic’s security cams, but so far, there had been glitches in the system. His hacker was working on it, but so far they’d had more failure than success. Another aspect of the situation to stress over.
“Everything is okay, I promise,” he suddenly found himself saying to Harrison, quickly glancing toward the closed door to ensure no one entered the room and saw him chatting to a man in a coma. “And under control.”
He took a deep breath, rounded out his shoulders and began to talk about what he’d been doing over the past few weeks, what he’d fixed. He talked about the family, the engagement party, the upcoming wedding and the business. He didn’t say anything about the fallout from the engagement party—the way the tabloids had made it seem as though the engagement was on the rocks. Thom’s botched speech had done the rounds on social media, but other than making the other man look like a first-rate idiot, it seemed no permanent harm had been done.
“And things with Thom are fine now.”
Or so he hoped. He wasn’t sure that Harrison would approve of his methods on that score. Harrison had always insisted that family came above anything else—even the business. Gabe wasn’t sure the older man would agree with his decision to pretty much blackmail Thom into staying quiet about learning he was the Fixer. But what else could he have done? No one could know the truth. Besides, Gabe was glad he was the one who had the photographs of Thom and the hairdresser. The last thing the family needed was another sex scandal. He’d already shifted that indiscreet chef Rafe had been seeing last year off to Paris when photographs of him performing fellatio on some fading rock star had started circulating on the internet. It had taken Gabe precisely forty-eight hours to get the chef on a plane to France with a wad of cash in his pocket and the knowledge he wouldn’t be back on California soil for years. It had been an easy fix and one that was necessary.
Gabe didn’t understand why the Marshall siblings couldn’t choose discretion over some kind of foolish and romantic love that inevitably landed them in the tabloids. He had doused the flames on Elana’s affair with that married movie producer a couple of times, but his cousin kept finding ways to rekindle it. Only Luc seemed to have his head fastened on right when it came to women. Until he’d starting screwing that spoiled, conniving congressman’s daughter. Gabe suspected there would be another Marshall wedding soon, if Rachel got her way. If so, he knew he’d have to keep a watchful eye over the whole situation.
The monitor beeped, and the room suddenly seemed unusually quiet. Gabe took a deep breath. And then another. It had been a long week. Work. Family. Everything was closing in. Of course, he could handle it. He always handled it. But he still felt oddly tired of it all. Maybe it was time he took a vacation.
For the third time in as many days, he wished he had someone to talk to, someone who would understand. Someone who wouldn’t judge who he was and what he did. Someone who would be the balm he needed to soothe his soul. But there was no one.
Gabe looked at Harrison. The man was like a father to him. The truth was, Gabe had always considered Mariella and Harrison to be his real parents. It was Mariella who showed him love and affection. And it was Harrison who had seen promise in him, Harrison who made him believe that he could rise above the situation of his birth and really be something in life. Harrison never treated him as less because he was the child of a drug-addicted mother and nameless father. Gabe remembered when he’d first come to live permanently with them at Casa Cat. He’d been a scared ten-year-old boy, used to being left alone in front of the television, waiting for his careless mother to come home. A mother who was in and out of rehab. A mother who cared little for her child and more about her next high.
Admittedly, she appeared to have cleaned herself up in recent years. Or so he hoped. But Gabe didn’t have the forgiveness in his heart to forget what she had put him through as a young boy. He knew Ana and Mariella had never really gotten along, knew that the younger Santiago had always been jealous of her older sister. Over the years, when she’d been clean and beating her addiction, she’d tried to develop a relationship with him. But his natural cynicism always won out. He didn’t trust Ana. He didn’t believe her motives were pure and truly about their relationship. With Ana, there was always an angle, a payoff. Not money, although he had given her that occasionally, now that she was living off the dregs of her inheritance, but time...attention. Two things that were in short supply in his life.
Growing up, he’d followed Mariella’s lead, keeping Ana at a distance. It was easy when she was using and in and out of rehab facilities. But a sober, cocaine-free Ana was harder to keep at arm’s length. So he saw her very occasionally and put up with her demands on his time and her insistence that he call her Mom when they were together. He wasn’t sure why she wanted that, or why he agreed. Deep down he hated it, and her. Maybe it was some leftover guilt from his childhood. But the truth was, he’d stopped thinking of Ana as his mother a long time ago.
Gabe sighed heavily and pressed his hands to his knees. Maybe his work as the Fixer had solidified his mistrust of everything and everyone. He knew he sometimes came across as moody and closed off. But he was proud of what he had achieved and what he did. As the Fixer, he solved problems. He made things right. Sure, sometimes he skirted the edge of the law, but in the end, he always got results. Thank God the insufferable Luc wasn’t part of MSM Event Planning and he only had to deal with Elana and Rafe on a day-to-day basis. Too many Marshalls in one place would be impossible to handle all the time. Because that’s what Gabe felt was his number-one job—handling the Marshalls, keeping the siblings out of trouble, ensuring he gave Mariella his loyalty and watching Harrison’s back.
“I didn’t do such a great job