Gabriel was just about certain it meant Rafe Marino was a killer.
Sara was trying to hang tough and not put in a panicked call to Gabriel as she got out of the cab, walked the two steps across the sidewalk, and unlocked the gate to the courtyard. It wasn’t a big deal. It was no big deal. No one was in the courtyard, no one was in the apartment.
Only there was someone sitting on the steps. It was a young woman in her early twenties, her hair dyed dark black, her bare shoulders and arms tattooed with a swarm of butterflies. She was sitting with her satchel purse in her lap, biting her black fingernails.
Sara smiled at her, prepared to walk right past her, assuming she was waiting for the guy who lived on the second floor, who Sara had yet to encounter.
But the girl jumped up when Sara started walking up the stairs. “Hey, wait, is that your apartment?” She pointed up to Gabriel’s front door.
“Yes.” No point in getting into lengthy descriptions of the truth.
“What happened to Gabriel? Did he move?” She was nibbling her nails again, even as she spoke, her eyes anxious.
“No, he still lives here,” Sara said cautiously, not sure where this was headed.
“You live with him?” The nail-bitten finger came out and pointed at Sara.
The rudeness irritated Sara. “Yes. Can I help you?”
“I’m Rochelle,” the girl said.
Okay. That told her a whole lot of nothing. “Would you like me to tell Gabriel you stopped by?”
Rochelle seemed to think about that for a second. “When will he be home?”
“Later.”
“And you really live with him?”
Sara could have told the truth, that she was just staying with him temporarily, but she didn’t feel inclined to point that out. She just held up her apartment key. “Yes.”
To which Rochelle burst into tears. “How could he do this to me? I’m . . . I’m in love with him . . . and he stopped coming in to the shop, and now you’re here, and I . . . God, I just want to die!”
Rochelle turned and ran down the stairs, her sandals pounding on the courtyard bricks.
“Wait!” Sara called, running down the stairs after her. She needed to be honest and tell Rochelle that she wasn’t really living with Gabriel, not in the truest sense. What if Rochelle really was his girlfriend and she’d just screwed up their relationship? Part of her couldn’t help but think, Oh, well, but the better part of her knew it was wrong to mislead Rochelle.
But the girl was gone, almost to Royal Street already, running faster than Sara was capable of. Great. Wonderful. How the hell was she supposed to explain to Gabriel that she had potentially ruined his love life? Not that she’d known he had a love life. He had never indicated to her in any way that he was involved with anyone. There had been no phone calls when she’d been around, and he spent the majority of his time with her, so how was she supposed to know he had a Rochelle on the side?
And why was he inviting her to sleep in his bed if he had a girlfriend? That was just wrong on so many levels.
Irritated, jealous, and yet somehow fairly certain he didn’t have a girlfriend, Sara was still standing in the doorway five minutes later when she saw Gabriel come around the corner carrying a brown bag.
“Hey,” he said as he approached her. “What are you doing?”
“Your girlfriend stopped by,” she said, trying desperately not to grimace at the words.
“My girlfriend?” He looked legitimately puzzled. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Rochelle.”
His face was still blank. “Who’s Rochelle?”
That was interesting. “About five foot three, long, black hair—bad dye job, by the way—fair skin, wearing an ankle-length burgundy skirt and an olive green tank top.” Gabriel still didn’t look like he was making a connection, so she added, “Tattoos of butterflies all over her arms. She said you stopped coming into the shop, but she never said what the shop was. Just that she was your girlfriend.”
Which she obviously wasn’t, which gave Sara no small amount of satisfaction.
The butterfly tattoos appeared to have jogged his memory. “Oh. I know who you’re talking about. She’s not my girlfriend, she never was. We never even went out. I’m not even sure I knew her name was Rochelle.” Gabriel looked totally perplexed. “She works in the sandwich shop on Decatur. For awhile I was going there a couple of times a week. But I got burned out on po’boys.”
That almost made Sara laugh. “You just got burned out on po’boys? She acted like you were seriously hot and heavy. Wow. That’s weird.”
“How did she know where I live? Or hell, my name, for that matter.” Gabriel held out his arm for her to move into the courtyard ahead of him.
Sara turned back to look at him as she walked. “Do they ask for your name when you order your food?”
“Yeah.” He made a face. “But just my first name. I wonder if she followed me home or something.”
“She looked like the stalker type. Though now that I think about it, she didn’t actually say she was your girlfriend, just that she was in love with you.”
“In love with me?” Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up. “I just ordered a few shrimp po’boys from her.”
“She said ‘in love with’ you, I swear. And she was really upset when I told her that we live together.” In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that Sara hadn’t caught up to Rochelle on the street. It was better for the girl to think Gabriel had a girlfriend so she could move on past her oddly delusional crush.
Gabriel was fighting a grin as he stopped in front of the stairs. “You told her we live together?”
Sara wrinkled her nose. “Yes. It’s true. I am staying here, for now.”
“Were you jealous?” he asked in a low, teasing voice.
She scoffed. “Of course not.”
“You shouldn’t be, since I obviously don’t have any sort of relationship with her. But I’d like it if you were.”
God, he was flirting with her. There was no denying the tone of his voice, the way he was leaning toward her. “Oh, yeah? Why?”
He was so close to her, the only thing that separated them was the bag of take-out food in his hand. She smelled spicy oriental chicken as he touched the end of her hair with his free hand, twirling a strand around his finger. “Because that would mean you’re okay with me doing this.”