LN Cronan

You ladies are B.O.B. ing already? Tee hee hee hee

 You're right, Peachies -- Creepy did attend the advocacy center event, an event where Gideon had a very high profile role, giving the keynote dinner speech.  While Gideon was surrounded by people post-speech (including Magdalene, who swooped in) Creepy introduced himself to Eva, asked her to dance, and plied her for information on her true status with Gideon. To his delight, Creepy learned Eva wasn't Gideon's girlfriend (she wasn't at the time) -- she was just someone he knew from the Crossfire, that Eva already was supposed to attend the event anyway with her mother (true) and so it was simply a case of her and Gideon deciding to attend together (more complicated than that, but essentially true.)  I'm wondering whether Magdalene asked Creepy to attend with her because she figured out Gideon had decided to take another woman as his social date instead of his usual custom of calling on Maggie most often when he needed a plus-one.

 Cary booked the commercial flights before Gideon knew about the plans. Gideon owns five private jets and can easily spare one .... and send security with Eva. Just like he insisted on the Vegas trip.

Keep in mind that when Gideon went along with the idea of appeasing Monica -- Monica -- by giving Monica the opportunity to plan some big fairy tale wedding .... Â .... he did not know of the existence of the sex tape .... did not know that Deanna, a reporter very hostile to him and willing to make Eva collateral damage, knew about the tape .... could not have foreseen that his own ex, Corrine, was going to attempt suicide (another explosive story bound to get out - Gideon dumped Corrine and she tried to kill herself over him.) Â Gideon disappeared on Eva for two days, putting Eva's trust to the test, because he felt he was "doing the right thing" to handle the sex tape. I can see him up and deciding to go ahead and make sure the whole world knows Eva is Mrs. Gideon Cross. Monica will get over it.

 Gideon has promised wedding pictures in return for Deanna not running a story about the existence of the sex tape. Deanna knows it exists, but she's not the one who actually possesses it. That creepy Sam guy is the one who shot Eva and Brett using hidden cameras and has edited his own version of Golden, an X-rated version of the music video.  I think he's offering one or two pictures of the secret wedding. No way is Deanna going to sit on the explosive story for months and months. I think in the final chapter of Entwined, Gideon was making arrangements with Deanna to release the photo at a set time (probably overnight.)

     All of the above and is this order: Eva needs to tell her Dad face-to-face she's marrying Gideon (or perhaps to tell him the truth -- they are already married but planning a second, formal wedding for family purposes. Cary needs to see Dr. Travis -- his whole life turned upside down when Tatiana told him she's having his baby. Eva feels the need to talk to Brett face to face about the sex tape. (NO!!!! You don't need to be talking to the guy, Eva!!! And most certainly not seeing him fact to face anymore.)

 # 4 or Megumi is nursing an injury, like a swollen black eye -- that she was in an abusive relationship, the guy hit her, and she's calling in sick while waiting for the swelling to go down enough that she can cover the bruising with makeup.

Actually, Eva did not put it past Richard Stanton to hire a hitman to kill Nathan. She asked Monica the next morning whether Stanton had arranged the killing. Â It's great that Eva now feels she can ask Gideon something. In the past, she was shut out and in a position where her insecurities could run rampant.

 Gee, New Gideon actually offering important information on his own.  Not Kinda New Gideon at least sometimes willing to answer Eva's questions, but only if pressed (like when she had to keep asking him about Corrine's phone call Sunday.)  Not Old Gideon -- refusing to even talk about stuff, period.  Yes!!! Progress is being made!!!!

One additional possibility exists -- that Gideon let himself into that room while Nathan was out and was lying in wait for Nathan to be the one to walk in the door, stabbing him as soon as he entered, before Nathan even knew what happened. Then Gideon held his hand over Nathan's mouth so he couldn't make a sound as he lay dying. Â Given that Clancy was tailing Nathan, this scenario actually fits in with Clancy knowing Gideon did it -- Clancy following Nathan back to his hotel, seeing him enter, and then very, very soon afterward, spotting Gideon slipping out of the place. Â Eva was told by Detective Graves that Nathan answered the door. But we already know Graves lied about dropping the investigation, so it's possible some of the "facts" she fed Eva were half-truths or lies themselves. Graves did know that Gideon owned the hotel where Nathan died, and Graves also knew the security camera system in that hotel was offline. At best, Graves was guessing Nathan answered the door, but perhaps Graves was lying: Graves knows that Gideon managed to open that door himself, but did it in a way that cannot be directly tied to him.

 One way or another, that door opened. I'm convinced he used a master key. It would give him the element of surprise getting into the room. Plus it would guarantee entry.  What was he supposed to do if Nathan refused to open the door. Even the sound of knocking on the door could be overheard, especially if he needed to start arguing with Nathan. I can't see Gideon leaving that to chance.  Especially because he had the ability to get a keycard that would open any door in that hotel (including service entrances to use to slip in and out) and the ability to make sure no keycard could ever be traced directly to him on the computer system. Besides, Gideon already has a well-established pattern of using elevator masterkeys, so he's got plenty of practice in the use of grabbing physical control of parts of his properties (like the Crossfire elevators and the elevator at his building where Dr. Terry Lucas has his pediatrics office.)

What gave me the sad creeps was this from the top of page 208, Eva overhearing Gideon talking in his sleep/nightmare: Â He growled, a low feral sound of aggression. "Never," he bit out. "You'll never touch her again." Â Gideon's sexual nightmares come in two forms. When he's the aggressor, he's acting out striking back, acting out fighting -- acting out his anger. But when he's in one of his victim version of the nightmares, he appears to be actually reliving the physical and mental agony of being forcibly anally penetrated. He's having a flashback in other words to what actually happened as he was being raped. Â So I took this particular Nathan nightmare to be an actual flashback to the words he said as he plunged the knife straight into Nathan's heart and/or the words he said to Nathan as Nathan lay at his feet, the final seconds of Nathan's life as the light was leaving his eyes forever. Â it's awful to think Gideon is carrying around those memories in his head, and they will come back to haunt him sometimes in the night for the remainder of his own life.

I'm on Team Clancy Planted The Bracelet, but I think he had help from Angus. Gideon was quick to rule out Eva's first guess, Angus. He did so instantly. Why would that be? I think because Angus accompanied Gideon to the scene and left with him too -- drove him to and from Nathan's hotel, stood lookout while Gideon let himself into Nathan's room with a master keycard, got rid of the knife and probably gloves Gideon wore, Gideon's suit jacket and/or shirt if any of Nathan's blood got on it too. Â Perhaps Angus slipped back later to grab the bracelet and the photos, with the idea of somehow later planting that evidence elsewhere in order to throw police off Gideon's trail, if the cops started focusing on him (which they had.) Clancy was the one, with the brother in the FBI, who helped concoct the plan to plant the evidence on a Russian Mafia gang member. Clancy and Angus obviously had been working in tandem on Eva's bodyguard detail - Angus watching over her, Clancy keeping track of Nathan. I think the two of them hooked up afterward -- Clancy figured out it had to have been Gideon who killed Nathan, and went to Angus.

Someone knows what Gideon did -- if it's foe instead of friend, the biggest danger is his (or her) ability turning state's evidence as an eyewitness placing Gideon at the scene around the time of death. Utterly destroy his alibi. This person could blackmail him forever -- own the mortgage to Gideon's soul. Eva's too, because there's a danger she could be charged as an accessory too. Which she actually is now -- an accessory after the fact. Â Because if they charged Eva too, Gideon would never go to trial. He'd never run the risk she could be tried and convicted and sent to prison for a very long time. He'd plea bargain instead, go to prison himself for a long time as part of a deal that included a condition authorities won't ever charge Eva in connection with the case. Â I think it is friend, not foe, who planted the evidence. Gideon is now digging (well, has ordered Raul to dig) to solve the mystery. Â Interesting comment by Gideon on page 211, that whoever did plant the evidence is connected to "... either the mob or the authorities, or both." Â I'm ruling out Graves. It's one thing to "burn her notes" (which we now know was a lie anyway -- she and her partner never dropped the case). It's another thing to steal evidence from police storage. If that bracelet was on Nathan's corpse when police arrived, it would have appeared in the pictures the crime scene technicians took of his body exactly where it lay. It also would have appeared on an inventory of everything that was on Nathan's corpse when it arrived at the medical examiner's office, where even more photos would have been taken both before and after Nathan's body was stripped bare for his autopsy. Then there would be even more chain-of-evidence paperwork from when everything removed from the body was placed in evidence storage. Â The bracelet (plus some of Nathan's recent stalking-around-New-York photos of Eva) were removed from the scene sometime between Gideon leaving it on Thursday and the first-responding police officer securing the crime scene Friday morning.

::: takes bow ::::

 Chapter 14 today!  I remember how excited I got when this snapshot originally was posted early May -- ah hah!!! Finally, the murder case was coming to a head!!  That part I got right .... as for the rest of it, my biggest pet theory didn't work out, that crucial evidence against Gideon became unusable forever, because the detective questioned Eva without a lawyer (Graves had gotten proof Gideon loved Eva and had never dumped - she broke up with Gideon after the killing.)  The whole "lie" was to make it look like someone else with an actual motive must have done it, because Gideon didn't have a motive. Why would he kill for a woman he'd rejected, hadn't even loved? Corrine was the one he loved, had wanted to marry all those years ago but she'd broken that engagement -- now Corrine had left her husband for Gideon, and Gideon had leapt at his chance to get Corrine back. Someone else had to have done it, because other people had motive too, probably better motive than Gideon.  What I didn't see coming was someone else being set up to look like he had better motive -- some Russian Mafia guy that Nathan had crossed. Conveniently, the gangster was now dead, and on the guy's corpse was key evidence tying him to Nathan, a one-of-kind sapphire bracelet Nathan always wore. Well played, Sylvia -- well played indeed.  Gideon told Eva that Nathan's bracelet was on his (Nathan's) corpse when Gideon left the hotel room. So someone else knew what Gideon had done -- whoever took that bracelet and planted it on the gangster (as well as planting stalking photos of Eva, making it look like the gangster, a sex trafficker, had a deal with Nathan for him to turn Eva over to him -- that's the deal gone wrong, the reason Nathan got killed.)

 Something made Corrine decide to get to New York and Gideon as soon as possible, and that something wasn't Eva. Indeed, when Corrine found out about Eva, Corrine chickened out on going back to New York. It took her about a week to work up the courage to go for it anyway, and to arrive fighting dirty, starting with ambushing Gideon in front of a high society crowd.  So if it wasn't Eva that started the chain reaction ... and Corrine was in her second month of pregnancy at the time ... the pregnancy could have been why Corrine was so desperate so suddenly.  I wish Sylvia would tell us as a spoiler-question answer whether or not Corrine knew she was pregnant when she started stalking Gideon in person by suddenly moving to New York. I hope we don't have to wait for Book Four -- but I fear we might.

 Don't forget - Magdalene was at the party too. I wonder whether Lizzie was hoping that Gideon and Maggie would marry, and so Lizzie and her BFF (Maggie's mother) would become family via the marriage tie.  Perhaps Lizzie was trying to figure out whether Eva actually wasn't a girlfriend -- she actually was just another one of Gideon's sex partners who Gideon already chucked on the reject pile but who couldn't take "no" for an answer and had started chasing him socially. Like Anne Lucas, another non-brunette.

 All Corrine's crazy plot would need to accomplish is to fool Gideon that he had gotten her pregnant. He needed to believe that only a little while, only long enough for Corrine to get him to marry her as soon as he possibly could (i.e. somehow turn her already-in-progress divorce into a quickie divorce and then immediately marry her when it went through.)  Once she was Mrs. Gideon Cross, the truth coming out about the paternity wouldn't matter. Gideon wouldn't throw her out and make her raise the child as a single mother. He'd stay with her and become the baby's stepfather.  Again, I'm not saying it would ever actually work. This is purely desperate and crazy Corrine cooking up the dirtiest trick a woman can play on a man -- she was trying to guarantee Gideon would marry her as soon as it was possible. Because patiently waiting for years for things to change had not worked in the past. Desperate measures call for desperate means.

 Chapters 12, 13, 14 and 15 have always featured turning-point plot twists about people in their pasts (Nathan, Hugh, Corrine, Brett) impacting their present, so you may be on to something here.  Bared to You: Ch. 12: Eva told Gideon about Nathan Ch. 13: Eva walked out on Gideon because he refused to be honest with her in return (about his sexual nightmares) Ch. 14: Gideon sent Eva the "Dear Jane" note and she figured it was over forever, because he couldn't handle her past. Ch. 15: Gideon begged Eva for another chance, fearing it was his past that made her run. He'd arranged to enter treatment for it.  Reflected in You: Ch. 12: Gideon found out Nathan had brutally beaten Cary, and Gideon decided the only way to protect Eva was to kill Nathan. Ch. 13: Eva found out Gideon took Corrine out, and Eva instantly retaliated by taking Brett out. Ch. 14: Eva sent Gideon the anguished "I hate that I love you" email, and Gideon made love to her one last time before he knew he had to start cutting her off for the foreseeable future (because Nathan was set to die the next day.) Ch: 15: Eva found out Nathan was in New York, found out that Gideon somehow knew and had kept it secret-- and was told by detectives that Nathan had been found dead.  Entwined with You: Ch. 12: Corrine attempted her final stunt in front of Eva in the lobby of the Crossfire - and Eva finally realized Corrine no longer could make her doubt Gideon's love for her. Ch. 13: Eva caught her mother and father (Victor) having just had sex. The chapter ended with the detectives showing up. Ch. 14: Eva (and thus Gideon too) found out about the bracelet on the dead Russian gangster - Gideon's possible get-out-of-jail free card. Ch. 15: Gideon finally told Eva who abused him, and why Dr. Terry Lucas lied to his mother about it.

 I do   Not for an instant am I suggesting Corrine's dirty trick would work. It was never going to work anyway, because Gideon wasn't ever going to sleep with her ever again.  I'm just suggesting that she suddenly found herself with an unplanned pregnancy smack dab in the middle of her already having started the process of divorcing Jean-Francois and already was emotionally manipulating Gideon via guilt trips over the phone. All of a sudden, she was in a bind -- and she cooked up some crazy scheme to use the pregnancy to trap Gideon.  I don't think she planned to carry the pregnancy to term anyway -- she was going to terminate and lie to him about miscarrying. But let's say she did go through with it, and because the baby was born "too soon" Gideon would know it wasn't his, and a test would prove it ....  .... well Crazy Corrine was probably banking on the fact that by then, she already would be married to Gideon, and Gideon would stay with her, becoming the child's stepfather.  The whole goal was to get Gideon to the altar before he could find out the truth there's no way he was the one who impregnated Corrine. Kah-ray-zee lady.

 I'd love it if Angus was the one who actually arranged the bracelet, either on his own or in cooperation with Clancy. I'm certain it has to be one of them on his own or them cooperating together. There has to be a reason why Sylvia inserted into the story that Angus is former British foreign intelligence and Clancy has a brother in the FBI. Makes it possible that either one of them or both might have inside knowledge about the Russian Mafia.  I really hope T.w.a.t. is lying about being pregnant. Because she and Cary are doomed to fail, but he'll never be free of her if she has a baby and he's the baby-papa.

 That was the ob/gyn question of the day, thanks!  I'm trying to build a case for Corrine's unplanned pregnancy being the thing that made her suddenly desperate to get Gideon back, so desperate she practically decided in the middle of the night to get to New York ASAP. So a blood test would be needed in order to determine how far along she was, but the home test would be accurate that she was "in the family way."  How did she end up pregnant anyway if she and Jean-Francois were getting a divorce? My theory is: A last ditch effort on his part to try to stop the divorce from moving forward turned into Corrine gaving him a mercy f***  Maybe by doing the math of when was the last time she had sex with JFG coupled with having just missed her second menstrual period in a row might have made her count on her fingers and figure out she was in her second month?

Question, resident ob/gyn expert golfergirl: If Corrine took a home pregnancy test at around 3 a.m., would that be too early in the morning to get an accurate result? Would around 5-6 weeks be too early to get a positive result, period. Â The night Corrine called Gideon "in crisis" to suddenly announce she was moving back to New York, and had even booked a flight -- would Gideon be on hand at when she arrived to help her settle in .... Â She called him from France on a Saturday night, catching him while he was at the advocacy center fundraiser/first date with Eva. Gideon definitely picked up Eva at 7 p.m. -- earlier in the day, he told her to be ready at that time. I'm guessing the dinner itself started at 8 p.m. Gideon gave the dinner speech. I'm guessing Corrine's call came in around 9 p.m. Based on the fact Corrine was in her fourth month at the end of Entwined, I'm making a conservative guess of 5-6 weeks when she called Gideon -- right on schedule for having missed a second period in a row. 9 p.m. New York time is 3 a.m. in France. Â Something made Corrine suddenly start chasing Gideon in person, and that was not Eva -- Corrine didn't even know about Eva's existence when she booked her flight and called Gideon. It wasn't until after Gideon bailed out on Eva and left so that he could talk to Corrine at length did Corrine find out about Eva. Â Home pregnancy test positive result = get on the next plane to New York in order to get Gideon into bed ASAP so that she can pass off the baby as his long enough to ensure he would marry her the instant her already-filed divorce became final?

Question # (whatever we're up to): what are your feelings about sex swings?