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)
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CHAPTER 60
As soon as Gabriel's shift was finished, they picked up Eve from school and flew to Lake Tahoe. There, Gabriel and Nicole got married in a fifteen minute ceremony at a chapel with a name so generic it slipped both their minds as soon as they crossed the threshold. It wasn't until they got home and Gabriel tucked Eve into bed, that he turned to his new wife and asked, "So, do you intend to prove your point to Robin by sleeping with me, as well?"
Nicole's mouth dropped open. All during their flight up to Tahoe, during their ceremony, during the flight back, Gabriel hadn't given so much as a hint that...
"How did you know?"
"My God, you must really think I'm an idiot."
"Then why - why did you go along with me?"
"Well, first, I wanted to see how far you intended to take your little vendetta. Even as the Justice of the Peace was talking, I kept wondering how far you would go. Then, when you said, "I do," I figured it was only polite of me to do the same. After all, when in Nevada, do like the Nevadans do, right?"
"Gabriel, I - I never meant to hurt you."
"I know, as with so many things in my life, this wasn't about me at all."
"You don't understand. Robin told me - "
"I don't care, Nicole. I really, really don't care what kind bitch-slapping you and Robin engaged in. The whole thing makes me sick."
"I make you sick, Gabriel?" Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Yes. The person that you become when you're around Robin, makes me sick. That's not the Nicole I'm in love with."
"Oh," Nicole said, afraid to say anything more, unsure even of what she wanted to say. Why did her conversations with Gabriel never go the way she assumed they would? "So, is that why you married me? Because you love me?"
"No."
Of course not. Why should anything be that easy, Nicole thought.
Gabriel observed, "You know, you keep talking about this marriage idea like it mattered, like it meant something."
"Well, I - I thought, a person like you, you're such a good person. Don't you think marriage is like holy or something?"
"Was that farce you had with Robin holy, Nicole? Are the women I see in my clinic every day, their faces bashed in by people they're legally wed to, are those women living in some sort of holy union?"
"Well, I don't know if - "
"You want to know what marriage means to me, sweetheart?"
"Yes, I do, Gabriel, I really do."
"Nothing. That's why I went along with your little scheme, because all those vows, and the pieces of paper and the "I pronounce you husband and wife" nonsense, it means nothing to me. You know when people get married, Nicole? They get married the instant their hearts make a commitment to one another. And you know when they stop being married? The instant that commitment goes away. Everything else is just paperwork."
"So I - it - we, we're just paperwork?"
"Can you think of a more apt way to describe it?"
She didn't know why his words were hurting her so much. After all, hadn't Nicole embarked on her objective just as dispassionately, just as opportunistically. And yet, she couldn't fight her wish that at least one of them had taken it seriously.
"What about God?"
"What about Him, Her, It?"
"You, you're so good, Gabriel. So good and so moral, isn't not taking marriage seriously something that God wouldn't - "
"What does God have to do with being good?"
Well, he certainly had Nicole there. It wasn't as if she had any personal experience with God, or with goodness for that matter. Still, she'd heard tell.
"Isn't that why you, and, I mean, all good people, isn't that why you're all good? Because you're afraid of God?"
Gabriel laughed. He, honest to goodness, laughed. "Sweetheart, I've met a lot scarier people than God in my day. Try a drunk lunatic with a temper and a handgun. Now, that, as they say, is entertainment."
"So, then, why - why do you try so hard? Why do you do all the things that you do? Why are you so nice to people?"
He sighed, after a lifetime of answering the question it still bugged him to have to keep doing it. "I'm nice, Nicole, or good, or caring, or moral, or whatever you want to call it, I'm all those things because I choose to be. Because it's the right thing to do. Not because I'm scared of being punished."
How had they gotten so far off-track, Nicole wondered. They'd started with her asking why Gabriel had married her if he knew Nicole's motives all along, and ended with a philosophical discussion she found both baffling and, even to her atheist self, somewhat sacrilegious.
"And, to answer your original question," Gabriel began, and Nicole jumped, wondering if he'd somehow read her mind, "I married you because I didn't really marry you. We said a few words, we signed a few documents that you can now go "I told you so" in Robin's face with, but that's pretty much where it ended for me. We aren't married, Nicole. Because believe me, when we are, you'll know it."
She still didn't know what to say. And so Nicole did the one thing she did know how to do, and do well, at that, she reached out to Gabriel, she brushed her hand against the side of his face and she pressed her body against his, her message as clear as she knew how to make, her peace-offering obvious and utterly in character.
But, Gabriel just shook his head. He smiled and he disentangled himself, politely bur firmly, from her embrace.
"No, thank you," Gabriel said. "Not until we're married."
This time, Robin was the one who went to see Victoria in her office. He was tired of serving as the unofficial poster-child for some kind of odd open door policy when, in point of fact, what he wanted most of all was to slam it shut.
He told her, "Tell me you didn't mean it."
"But, I did." Victoria didn't need to ask what he was talking about. She'd always been able to practically read Robin's mind.
"You don't want to be my friend."
"Yes, I do."
"Well, what if I don't want to be yours?"
"Two," she said. "Tango. Takes."
"Damn it, Victoria, this isn't about how clever you can be. I know you're clever. Believe me, I know every positive attribute you're got, and clever doesn't even make the top ten."
"Should I be insulted?"
"This isn't a game. This is serious. Stop this before you get hurt. What do I have to do to convince you?"
"Well," a voice from the doorway offered, "You could start by showing her my picture as Exhibit A in the What Robin Cooper Does to Women Sweepstakes." Nicole raised her hand and, smiling, wiggled her fingers in Robin and Victoria's direction.
"Go away," Robin said, without so much as turning his head. "I have paperwork saying I don't have to listen to you, anymore."
"Is that how you talk to your newest relative? Shame on you. I would have expected the saintly Elizabeth Cooper to have taught you better."
"First of all," Robin whipped around, "Stay away from the subject of my mother. Trust me, you do not want to go there. And secondly, darling," he made the word sound like an epithet, "Must I remind you that we are no longer related?"
"Nicole," Victoria figured she didn't need to hang around for this lunchtime production of "Who's Afraid of ex-Virgina Woolfe," but, it was her office, and she suspected the only way she would get them to stop, is if she stopped them. "Do you want something from me?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"I wanted to give you the news in person. It seems that you and I are now related as well." Nicole stretched her hand forward to display the wedding ring she'd bought for herself only that morning, and told Victoria, "Your brother and I got married yesterday afternoon."