Free Getting Gabriel by Cathy Quinn Page A

Which is?"
    "Dress Skimpy."
    "Oh."
    "Another one thrown in for free: Act Seductively."
    "How exactly do I do that?"
    Susan shrugged. "Sashay and coo?"
    ***
    When Gabriel strode into the restaurant, just a few minutes after Alice had sat down at a table with her blind date, the first thing she noticed was that for once he wasn’t wearing jeans. And he was definitely not wearing a garish t-shirt.
    He wasn’t dressed formally either. Instead he was wearing black, all black, and he looked so good she forgot to breathe for so long that she felt faint by the time she finally gasped for oxygen again.
    And he wasn’t her date, she remembered with a sigh. He was her bodyguard. Damn.
    Gabriel sauntered between the tables in the wake of a waiter, and was seated at the next table. As he lowered himself to the chair he gave her a look that told her again just how he felt about her blind date plan.
    She held back her smile, but a giggle got loose when she noticed him pull a notebook out of his pocket and plop it down on the table with a thud, tapping it with two fingers to draw her attention to it. He pulled a pen out of his inner jacket pocket and yanked the cap off with his teeth, glaring at her date before proceeding to write something down.
    Alice’s grin widened. What was he going to do? Write down the guy’s description in case they needed police intervention?
    She tried to stop grinning, and instead scowl inconspicuously at him, but her scowl melted into a badly concealed giggle when he pulled a tiny digital camera out of his pocket and placed it on top of the notebook.
    Poor Alex. Gabriel would have him on a Wanted poster in a split second if he so much as breathed wrong.
    "Did I say something funny?" Alex was looking bewildered.
    "I’m sorry, no, just a stray thought. You were saying...?"
    She noticed that Gabriel’s notepad and camera was producing interesting side effects. The waiter who served both their tables had hurried towards the kitchen, and now the maitre d’ was heading towards Gabriel. She pressed the napkin to her mouth to stifle another chuckle. They must assume he was a restaurant critic. Terrific.
    Would be even more terrific if the waiters got a glimpse of what he was writing down.
    Just what was he writing down?
    Alice got sidetracked again trying to decude what Gabriel was writing by the movements of his pen, and awoke to reality to find her date staring at her expectantly. "Uh... I’m sorry..." she stammered. Why didn’t her brain have a rewind button? She’d obviously missed a question. What had he said? "I’m sorry," she ended up repeating with an apologetic look. "I spaced out there for a minute. You were saying?"
    She managed to keep her mind on small-talk for only five minutes.
    "Gabriel!" The loud voice turned her attention again away from Alex. Someone was standing between her and Gabriel. Someone blonde, beautiful and worst of all: tall. Alice scowled at the silk-clad back, and wished she could take her jealousy demon and have it sink its teeth into the woman’s behind to make her run screaming away from Gabriel.
    "Isabella. Hi." Gabriel stood up and Alice craned her neck trying to see just where that kiss landed. She didn’t succeed, but the way Gabriel wiped off his lips with his napkin was a dead giveaway. She frowned and the jealousy demon clawed itself out of her subconscious and broke the surface, snarling with rage.
    "It’s Bella, darling," the woman purred. "I was supposed to meet a friend here, but guess what, his wife went into labor thirty minutes ago." She paused. "Are you meeting someone?"
    Alice almost growled. Why didn’t she just sit in his lap? And meeting someone whose wife was in labor? What kind of a woman was this? And how did she know Gabriel? How well did she know Gabriel?
    "Well... no. I’m by myself too," Gabriel said. He hesitated. "You’re welcome to join me, of course."
    The evening seemed endless and it hadn’t even started yet.
    Alice sighed as she