COUNTERPOINT
An original romantic serialFrom Alina Adams the author of "When a Man Loves a Woman" (DELL 4/00), "Annie's Wild Ride" (AVON 8/98), "Inside Figure Skating" (METROBOOKS 11/00 & 9/99), "Thieves at Heart" (AVON 12/95) and "The Fictitious Marquis" (AVON 6/95)
Available weekly by e-mail from http://www.AlinaAdams.com
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CHAPTER 19
Gabriel Scott rapped his knuckles sharply against the door to Room #921 of the Fairmont Hotel. When his first knock received no reply, he tried again, continuing to pound his fist in steady yet annoying rhythm, until he heard shuffling, the swish of a blanket hitting the floor, followed by a lock clicking open.
Robin Cooper stood before him, dressed in black satin pajamas, hair matted from sleep, eyes at half-mast. Robin blearily looked Gabriel up and down, covered his mouth, and yawned, "I don't recall requesting a sanctimonious wake-up call."
"Consider it a complimentary service." Gabriel brushed past him, entering Robin's hotel-room as if he'd been invited.
Robin shrugged. He closed the door, then padded back over to the bed, flopping on his back, and cranking his head slightly to sneak a peek at the clock. "Good God, it's seven a.m. Shouldn't you be out chasing ambulances or something?"
Robin's clothes lay scattered about the room, smelling vaguely of expensive cigar smoke and a high-priced assortment of liqueurs. Gabriel asked, "Late night?"
Robin propped a pillow under his head, closing his eyes and resting his hands across his chest, fingers linked. "Hm," was his noncommittal reply.
"Was Victoria with you?"
"Victoria, despite my best efforts, remains obsessed with the rather outmoded concept of early to bed, early to rise, something, something, something...." He peeled open one eye. "With you for a role model, I can see where she picked up her bad habits."
"That's very insightful." Gabriel leaned against the dresser, elbows bent to prop him up. "Tell me this, in all these weeks that you've been harassing my sister, have you even bothered to find out a single thing about her, outside of her measurements?"
Robin murmured, "Do erogenous zones count?"
Gabriel shook his head in disgust, kicking the dresser with the back of his heel. He said, "I know all about you, Mr. Cooper. I know who you really are behind that damn, devil-may-care facade. I know what you're trying to hide."
His last charge, at least, seemed to arrest Robin's attention. He opened both eyes, rolling over on his side, propping his head up with one hand and, voice ferocious, demanded, "What precisely is it that you think you know about me, Dr. Scott?"
"That you're a first class bastard."
"Oh, please, you could have read that in Who's Who."
"That you've got serious psychological problems bordering on psychosis. You do everything you can to draw people close to you, then, without warning, you turn and drive them out of your life."
"You sound like you've been talking to my wife," Robin joked. "Or my father."
"I won't let you abuse Victoria that way. She's not something for you to toy with then toss aside. She's too special." Gabriel asked, "Has Victoria told you anything about her background?"
"You mean amongst the Salty Dogs and Moscow Mules?"
Gabriel sighed, understanding that this was his last chance to terminate the conversation before things started getting ugly, but resolved that he was doing it for Victoria's own good. Even if he did doubt she'd ever thank him fo
r it. Gabriel said, "Vicky's birth parents were second-rate singers. They drove a trailer from small town to small town, appearing in rundown bars, seedy saloons, dreadful places. But, Vicky, being Vicky, never complained. One day, when she was five and they were driving to Phoenix, Vicky got a sore throat. It hurt, but she knew how angry her mom would be if they had to stop to see a doctor and miss their gig. So Vicky said nothing. Her throat got worse. She said nothing. Finally, as they passed through Texas, the pain got so bad, Vicky passed out. Turns out, that sore throat of hers was rheumatic fever. By the time they got her to a hospital, her heart had been so damaged, doctors didn't think she was going to make it. Which was darn unfair, because, as Mrs. Morgan saw it, not only was the hospital charging them an obscene amount for doing nothing -- after all, everybody agreed Vicky was going to die -- but, adding insult to injury, them staying to settle the bill with their last few dollars also meant skipping a perfectly good paying job."
No longer faking nonchalance, Robin couldn't keep the horror from his voice. "So they, what? left her there to die?"
"Worse. They asked Victoria what they should do." Gabriel's hands clenched into fists. "A five year old kid, in horrible pain, and her parents ask her, "What do you think we should do? Waste our time and money here, or go on to Phoenix?"
Robin covered his mouth with one hand. "She told them to go?"
"Of course, she told them to go. That's who she is. She is always taking responsibility for everyone else's happiness. She always thinks everything is her fault. Our first foster parents, Terrence and Maggie, they were decent enough people. Except that Terrence drank. And he was a mean drunk. Never to Vicky, though. Vicky, he liked. She was a good little girl, she tiptoed around him, she never did anything to set him off. Me, on the other hand, he liked to bounce off the walls. Not that I didn't deserve a swat now and again. I did have quite a mouth on me, can you imagine?" Gabriel didn't let Robin answer the rhetorical. "The irony is, no matter what I did to make Terrence blow a gasket, Victoria always thought it was her fault. She thought, if she had been better, if she had thought of some way to placate him, Terrence wouldn't have gotten drunk, and I wouldn't have gotten my shoulder fractured. No matter how I tried to convince her that it wasn't her fault, that she was not accountable for keeping peace in the world, she never believed me. You saw how nervous she got trying to prevent us from coming to blows at the clinic, or how she plays go-between for you and Douglas. It's her nature. Victoria takes everything way, way too close to heart. That's why, Mr. Cooper -- Robin -- if you care about her in the slightest, please, please, stay away from her."
Their conversation had actually been going rather well up to that point. While Gabriel talked, Robin went as far as to sit up in bed, listening intently. However, as soon as Gabriel got to the final, most important part of his presentation, Robin's expression changed. He rolled his eyes, favoring Gabriel with a look otherwise reserved for vermin, and stood up, dismissing the request with a wave of one hand.
"That was a lovely story, Dr. Scott, you really have a knack for this sort of thing, perhaps you should look into some sort of employment on the radio. Only, here's a tip: let someone else do the writing for you, your gift is not in tying everything together at the end." Robin moved over to the mini-bar, rifling around for a bottle of spring-water and gulping it down. Finished, he asked, "What the hell does telling me about little orphan Vicky have to do with asking me to stay away from the woman called Victoria Morgan?"
"Don't you understand, as soon as you revert to form and start acting like the son-of-a-bitch we both know you are, she's going to assume it's her fault. She's going to think she's responsible for your unhappiness -- not knowing, of course, that men like you can never be happy, that you thrive on your unhappiness, you wallow in it and use it to punish anyone foolish enough to care about you."
Robin's neck flushed crimson, the color deepening until, like an ocean wave, it swept over his face, sucking up his features and drowning them in a scarlet rage.
"You," his voice hissed from the depths of the Earth. "Are a pharisaical, sanctimonious, supercilious bastard."
"Yes, yes, we all know you went to college."
"Where do you get off talking to me like that? Who the hell do you think you are? You're nothing. Nothing!" Robin aimed his final arrow to where he hoped it would wreak the most damage. "No wonder your parents left you in a trash-dump to die."
It wasn't till later that Gabriel stopped to wonder how in the world Robin Cooper had gotten access to that information. All he knew the moment Robin whipped his crowning insult though, was that Mr. Cooper was obviously more threatened by Gabriel than he let on.
And so, rather than smashing his teeth in like he might have years earlier, when Gabriel's temper and gift for throwing a punch earned the sixteen year old four months in Juvenile Hall, Gabriel only smirked, and headed for the door, shaking his head, chuckling.