One Chapter A Day - Re-Read Of Bared and Entwined

[LN Cronan]

Chapter Three of Bared -- The Reader's Guide

 

This chapter opens on day four of the story, Thursday evening, briefly in Brooklyn at the Krav Maga studio. But almost the entire chapter covers early Friday afternoon, day five, in two places: Gideon's office and in the office of Eva's stepfather.

 

Key plot developments:

• For the first time, Gideon and Eva engage in serious sexual contact, kissing that quickly leads to fully-clothed petting. This happens in his office (pages 43-45). He'd dragged her into his office to talk after running into her yet again in the Crossfire. 
• Eva has lunch with her stepfather, Richard Stanton (pages 35-37). Their conversation gives us clues that Eva's mother, Monica, is obsessed with Eva's safety because of something from Eva's childhood.

 

New characters:

• Richard Stanton, a billionaire financier who is Eva's stepfather. We heard about him in passing in Chapter One, but in Chapter Three he appears for the first time. Note: Eva calls him Richard when she speaks to him, not "Dad." In her head and when talking about him to others, she calls him Stanton, so that's how he's mentioned most of the time.
• Scott, Gideon's administrative assistant
• Clancy, Richard and Monica Stanton's driver/bodyguard.
• Dr. Petersen (in passing) Monica's therapist
• Minor - unnamed main receptionist in Gideon's office

 

Gideon's office scene:

Things he explains as he tries (unsuccessfully) to get her to agree to go to bed with him:

He has neither the time nor the inclination to date, and he doesn't do romance.

All he's interested in here is sex. She's in his office so they can be both be clear about it.

He explains his own position: "Establishing parameters in the beginning makes it less likely that there'll be exaggerated expectations and disappointments at the conclusion ..... There are no mixed signals in my private affairs ...." 

 

Things she explains as she refuses to go to bed with him, despite the fact she's attracted to him too:

She doesn't want to date either -- that's the one thing they both agree on.

His trying to negotiate sex like a business transaction appalls her.

Her own position: with sex, the partners have to respect one another and be on friendly terms. " .... I have to actually like someone before I get naked and sweaty with him."

 

 

Throughout this "meeting" Gideon stayed cool and Eva got snarky. Ultimately, she tried to walk out on him, but Gideon had the door locked and told her to kiss him goodbye. Thier kiss quickly escalated to them both going wild, ending up on one of the couches. He had her skirt hiked up to her waist and she was so aroused she'd let him to what he wanted -- then his assistant interrupted them over the intercom. (The chapter ends right there.) 

 

Stanton's office scene: Note: in lower Manhattan (the Crossfire is in midtown.) This meeting happens before the Gideon office scene:

The evening before (start of Chapter Three) Eva had gone to Brooklyn with Cary so she could sign up for Krav Maga classes. Next day, Stanton ordered Eva to have lunch with him in his office. When she gets there, Stanton tells Eva her found Eva had gone to Brooklyn - and why. Monica had freaked out. This is why Stanton asked Eva to see him. 

 

In this scene, we learn Monica is obsessed with Eva's safety -- obsessed so badly she's in therapy for it. The root of the obsession is extreme guilt about somehow having failed to have protected Eva as a child -- something bad happened to Eva. What that was (getting raped), we readers learn later in the novel.  

 

Things we readers do learn in this chapter:

1. Eva planned to keep the Krav Maga lessons a secret from her mother, lest her mother read into it Eva felt she had to protect herself "because of what happened."
2. When Eva moved to New York, Stanton gave Eva a business phone for personal use. Monica used that phone to track Eva's movements -- that's how Monica found out about the trip to Brooklyn, a neighborhood Monica felt was unsafe.
3. Eva got furious when Richard told her about the cell phone. She told Stanton she feels her mother is stalking her. She accused Stanton of making matters worse by enabling Monica.
4. Stanton defended himself by claiming he's just looking out for both Monica and Eva.
5. The argument ended with Stanton informing Eva he'd already decided how to resolve the situation: he'd ordered his driver, Clancy, to drive Eva to and from her Krav Maga lessons.
6. Angry though she is, Eva conceded to Stanton's solution. 

[LN Cronan]

Day Four of the Read A Chapter A Day project. Chapter Four of Bared is today's goal.

 

This chapter covers day five of the story, Friday, from early afternoon through Friday night. It picks up immediately where chapter four left off, in Gideon's office, covers the rest of the day in Eva's office, early evening in her apartment, and ends late Friday night in a nightclub.

 

Key plot developments:

1. Gideon and Eva settle on mutual terms for her accepting his sexual proposition. He agrees to her condition they become friendly by spending some time together outside the bedroom, and she agrees that friendly time does not count as dating.
2. Eva meets Cary's new boyfriend, Trey, for the first time.
3. Eva asks her mother for a joint session with her (Monica's) therapist to talk about the fact Monica had been using a cell phone to secretly track Eva's movements.

[LN Cronan]

After re-reading chapters one through three, something fell into place for me that makes sense to me that Eva herself is partly to blame for everyone (Stanton, Monica and even Gideon) having kept her in the dark about Nathan.

 

Eva has a bad habit of simply caving into the wishes of others when it comes to her personal safety. Other people unilaterally decide how to handle a situation, and Eva let them, consciously or unconsciously. She started out this story too passive too often. Fortunately, by the end of Reflected, she grew a pair and began practicing assertiveness.

 

1. Bared to You Chapter One revealed why Eva lives in such an opulent apartment in Manhattan, even though the job she's about to start is just entry-level professional. Her rich mother and stepfather, Monica and Stanton, have insisted on it (and are paying for it) because it's safe environment (i.e. doorman guarding the entrance, etc.)
2. Then in Chapter Three, Stanton had decided how to balance Eva's desire to take Krav Maga classes in Brooklyn and Monica's distress about it. He has ordered his bodyguard-driver to drive Eva to and from her classes. Eva gave in.

So is it any wonder then, when Nathan tried blackmailing them, that Stanton and Monica decided on their own what to do -- including not even telling Eva about the situation (and thus warning her Nathan was in town).

 

As far as Gideon goes, Eva also established a pattern of often bending to his wishes. He's a control freak, and Eva unconsciously enabled him -- so she enabled his treating her badly in Reflected.

 

Gideon also had decided (just like Stanton and Monica) how he handled the Nathan situation, which also included keeping Eva ignorant of everything. Gideon took his solution to the extreme, killing Nathan, and as part of that, he took to the extreme keeping Eva in the dark the entire time. He distanced himself from her, because he decided this would protect her from the police, if he got caught. But he created the distance by being cruel to her. 

 

When Gideon first radically changed how he was treating Eva (i.e. began hurting her) she knew something was seriously wrong. She tried to demand explanations when it first started happening. But he wouldn't talk -- and so she backed off on pressing him for answers. That's Old Eva. New Eva would have refused to accept the brush-off, telling him "that won't cut it, Ace."

 

Near the very end of Reflected, Eva herself, by digging in deep and facing her insecurities, changed herself by dropping the passivity and becoming more assertive. She doesn't go so far yet as demanding answers out of Gideon, but she made progress by starting to demand explanations from other people: his mother (about the abuse) Dr. Lucas (about his probable role in the abuse cover-up) and Corrine (the truth that Gideon didn't f*** Corrine in his office that day and isn't sleeping with her, period.)

[LN Cronan]

And actually, she did start practicing flashes of assertiveness toward Gideon during the whole crisis, even before she morphed into New Eva.

 

A major step forward was her dumping Gideon-- her refusing to tolerate what amounted to emotional abuse. Don't howl fellow posters -- Gideon's motives were "pure" not abusive. However, he was manipulating Eva into the role he felt she had to play, and the cumulative effect of his actions were seriously damaging to her psyche. He knew he was hurting her, badly. He knew she was suffering deeply. He still kept it up anyway.

 

So just like she had all those years ago with Brett, Eva reached a low point where even she decided enough was enough and she would no longer willingly tolerate an intolerable situation. With Brett, the issue had been the flash of insight she was acting like a s*** simply to try to land him, and she walked away (well, pulled one of her runners and disappeared without explanation, but at least she grew a pair.)

 

With Gideon, she had every reason to believe (wrong though she was) he had gone on the ultimate head trip when it came to sex. And she'd enough.

• The same dynamic as the post-limo-sex headtrip: his knee-jerk reaction was to pull away because he couldn't handle giving up sexual control. She did take him back though, against her better judgment at the time.
• The same dynamic as his post-first-nightmare-she-witnessed headtrip: His knee-jerk reaction was to end things because he couldn't handle her knowing the truth. She did take him back though, because by then she had fallen in love.
• It was reasonable for her assume the Nathan pictures were the same deal: his knee-jerk reaction was he was no longer able to look at her body. However, he crossed a line by getting involved with Corrine again (by then, Eva had excellent reasons to believe he was f****** Corrine.) So this time, it was Eva who pulled away.

She pulled away, I feel, because she had finally developed some degree of sexual self-respect. She knew what she didn't want to be anymore -- the former very broken young woman who felt the only way she could get love was through sex. Who slept around in a bid to fill the void Nathan had brutally installed. Who degraded herself with Brett. But who had entered her relationship with Gideon fully aware of her insecurities and so had set a non-negotiable condition: sexual exclusivity with one another. As soon as he violated that (so she believed) she stood at the crossroad: would she settle for scraps, or would she hold true to her new personal standard of self respect. She picked self respect.

[jls1216]

Hi Kirsten,

I am glad you got a good laugh out of it.  I am sure that all the downtown business executives got a great laugh out of it too!   Picture me having one stocking completely rolling down my leg and me looking like a zeebra, one white leg, one black leg, it being the dead of winter and me having to take my shoe off in the middle of the street so I could yank that stocking off...sigh!  I then had to yank the other one off because I would have looked even stranger walking around the downtown core with only one stocking on.  Sigh!

 

I console myself by thinking that I am not the only woman in the world that this happened to.  Surely this thing couldn't have only happened to me.

You're not the only one that has happened to. I have had similar issues:)

[Donnad]

I agree===

At first when I read the description of Corinne and Elizabeth--I thought

"Are they related?"

I know they are related.   Gideon and Eva right now believe it's Corinne but once therapy starts for Gideon that's when he will realize

[Donnad]

The last time I wore garters was my wedding.  I had issues with them too and I barely wore them,

[golfergirl]

where did you get the idea that Elizabeth and Corinne were related?  I thought he met her at college.

[LN Cronan]

I think what AMC and Donnad both didn't mean Elizabeth and Corrine are literally related -- that is, they're blood kin. I think they meant the fact that Corrine physically resembles Elizabeth in some important ways is a clear sign Gideon's attraction to Corrine was symbolically related to his Mommy issues.

 

Eva raging insecurities convinced her that Gideon had been unconsciously seeking out brunette women all these years because Corrine, his first lover, was brunette. Eva fears that Corrine always has had some sort of unshakable sexual hold over Gideon, that Gideon never got over his desire for Corrine. All those brunettes since Corrine are proof, Eva believes. This is Eva's raging insecurities speaking -- it'll never last between her and Gideon, because of Corrine. In fact, it's likely Gideon will quit physically desiring Eva soon, because Eva isn't even his "type."

 

I believe it is true that Gideon (prior to Eva) had been unconsciously seeking out brunettes, but it was because it relates to his Mommy issues. I think that's what Donnad and AMC meant too -- the relationship between Elizabeth and Corrine is symbolic. Corrine is an upper-class beautiful blue-eyed brunette just like Gideon's mother.

[golfergirl]

Got it, yes I agree with your assessment, but by now I think he's over his typical: Eva's broken so many rules and experiences that he previously had

[LN Cronan]

He was walking around in an unconscious fog until one day he saw the light - Golden. 

[Kirsten]

Did I miss your favorite quote LN from chapter 3 or was it what you posted yesterday?

[golfergirl]

I said about the you and chocolate delicious in the elevator...he can wipe my chocolate away any day

[Kirsten]

I said about the you and chocolate delicious in the elevator...he can wipe my chocolate away any day

I remember yours golfer because it was one of mine too, and I agree he can wipe chocolate from my mouth anyday...I'd prefer he'd use his tongue to get it off though.

[sscrph]

Got it, yes I agree with your assessment, but by now I think he's over his typical: Eva's broken so many rules and experiences that he previously had

Yes I agree Eva has definitely laid them to rest after all she says"rules are made to be broken..." LOL

[julie54]

Oh there are so many favourite quotes, where does one start.

1. His smile was like lightning in the darkness, blinding and beautiful and mysterious, and I wanted him so badly it was physically painful.

2.you look beautiful and f**kable. I want you so badly it hurts. I'm dangerously close to taking you back to the couch, and making you come 'til you beg me to stop. Can't accuse you of being silver tongued.

I could go on, but shall leave some for you ladies.

[LN Cronan]

Did I miss your favorite quote LN from chapter 3 or was it what you posted yesterday?

 

I did post it yesterday, but rather than having you go back a few pages, I'll repost here. I did something a little different than a favorite quote (because the preapproved orifice is just too easy to love, and I think Eva snarks even better in Chapter Four.) So what I picked instead were two Gideon quotes I think are wicked important: 

 

 

"Establishing parameters in the beginning makes it less likely that there'll be exaggerated expectations and disappointments at the conclusion ..... There are no mixed signals in my private affairs. You want me to blur that line. I can't think of a good reason to."

 

I find the quotes really important for two reasons:

1. In a nutshell, this defines Gideon's entire approach to women when Eva first met him.

2. Within hours, he's going to blur the line anyway, because he wants her sooooooo much.

[LN Cronan]

My all-time favorite Eva sassy snarkiness is in today's chapter, Four, on page 51. Gideon called her just after 5 p.m., still so hot and bothered he's still pestering her. This is what she tells him:

 

" .... I have some friendly advice. Go spend time with a woman who salivates at your feet and makes you feel like a god. F*** her until neither one of you can walk. When you see me on Monday you'll be totally over it and your life will return to its usual obsessive-compulsive order." (Bared page 51)

 

And I love that less than a minute later, she hung up on him by saying, " ... I've got to go. I have a date with my vibrator." 

[julie54]

Oh our hero is getting very frustrated in this chapter. Willing to compromise and bend to have Eva, probably never having to negotiate with a woman, just to have sex. "I'm guessing the "I want to f**k you"approach has a high success rate for you", is probably Gideons chat up line, which no one has turned down. Can't accuse him of beating about the bush.

[Donnad]

My all-time favorite Eva sassy snarkiness is in today's chapter, Four, on page 51. Gideon called her just after 5 p.m., still so hot and bothered he's still pestering her. This is what she tells him:

" .... I have some friendly advice. Go spend time with a woman who salivates at your feet and makes you feel like a god. F*** her until neither one of you can walk. When you see me on Monday you'll be totally over it and your life will return to its usual obsessive-compulsive order." (Bared page 51)

And I love that less than a minute later, she hung up on him by saying, " ... I've got to go. I have a date with my vibrator."

I love this one too. Also. I'm in heaven with my angel. When they were in NC

[julie54]

My all-time favorite Eva sassy snarkiness is in today's chapter, Four, on page 51. Gideon called her just after 5 p.m., still so hot and bothered he's still pestering her. This is what she tells him:

 

" .... I have some friendly advice. Go spend time with a woman who salivates at your feet and makes you feel like a god. F*** her until neither one of you can walk. When you see me on Monday you'll be totally over it and your life will return to its usual obsessive-compulsive order." (Bared page 51)

 

And I love that less than a minute later, she hung up on him by saying, " ... I've got to go. I have a date with my vibrator." 

Loving this part too. Poor Gideon. Bet he was wondering what he had to do, to get this feisty little minx into bed. Probably rubbing his chin thinking, this is not what normally happens, I must be losing my touch!

[Ript]

My all-time favorite Eva sassy snarkiness is in today's chapter, Four, on page 51. Gideon called her just after 5 p.m., still so hot and bothered he's still pestering her. This is what she tells him:

 

" .... I have some friendly advice. Go spend time with a woman who salivates at your feet and makes you feel like a god. F*** her until neither one of you can walk. When you see me on Monday you'll be totally over it and your life will return to its usual obsessive-compulsive order." (Bared page 51)

 

And I love that less than a minute later, she hung up on him by saying, " ... I've got to go. I have a date with my vibrator." 

This is probably one of my favorite comments to come from Eva also. Love it!

[julie54]

It's in this chapter that we start to hear about Gideons information gathering. This crops up time and time again in both books. Freaking out at first, when Eva realises that Gideon owns her apartment block, her cell, her credit card, she feels smothered, violating her privacy. But as the books progress and she is learning to trust him, she starts to regard the info gathering as him being attentive and caring. At this point, how much does he know about Eva?

[LN Cronan]

What I especially like about the flippant remark Eva makes over the phone in Chapter Four is how she unwittingly hit the nail right on the head. Gideon was suffering a bad case of what Cary would call blue balls. Eva suggested he deal with it by f****** some woman who worships him. Problem solved and he can go right back to his obsessive-compulsive life.

 

Ouch. On the surface, it's the first time Gideon acted a little insulted. But underneath, he must have squirmed when he realized Eva had pretty much described to a T his automatic remedy for whenever he was feeling h*****. And on another level, his admiration for Eva must have risen. Here was some amazing woman who most certainly was not " ....salivating at his feet."

[julie54]

What I especially like about the flippant remark Eva makes over the phone in Chapter Four is how she unwittingly hit the nail right on the head. Gideon was suffering a bad case of what Cary would call blue balls. Eva suggested he deal with it by f****** some woman who worships him. Problem solved and he can go right back to his obsessive-compulsive life.

 

Ouch. On the surface, it's the first time Gideon acted a little insulted. But underneath, he must have squirmed when he realized Eva had pretty much described to a T his automatic remedy for whenever he was feeling h*****. And on another level, his admiration for Eva must have risen. Here was some amazing woman who most certainly was not " ....salivating at his feet."

Well she was, but she wasn't going to let him know that.