Beautifully Used (The Beaumont Brothers Book 2) (18 page)

Chapter 4
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I’d slept like a baby that night and most every night
since. After that night four weeks ago, Brodie and I now shared his larger room. I’d moved all my clothes and stuff into his closet. He had the master bedroom of the house, and it was twice as large as the one I’d been staying in so it had been a no-brainer. I loved sleeping in Brodie’s arms. He always made me feel sexy and special at the same time. Never once with him had I ever had thoughts of not being good enough, or that I might be tainted because of what had happened when I was a child. He loved me and everything he did showed me. Even the tiniest things like bringing me coffee in the morning or letting me pick which movie we watched. Of course, every other movie I picked would be a guy one anyway; I loved those just as much as the chick flicks.

The news about Brodie and I spread like wildfire around the bar and the town thanks to Jackson and Lena. Everyone was shocked at first
, knowing the way Brodie had been over the past couple of years. I’m sure there were a lot of unhappy women around town that I didn’t want to get anywhere near. Though, I was surprised that none ever bothered to call. I asked Brodie about that one day, and he told me that they’d probably never called him because he’d never given his number out. Smart man. I couldn’t help feel sorry for some of them, but he assured me that they had used him just as much as he’d used them. I wasn’t sure if it bothered me that my boyfriend’s body was well-known by almost every woman in the town of Turtle Lake and beyond. I decided not to think about it, since that Brodie no longer existed.

Chapter 41

“
Hey, babe, which movie do you want?” I asked over the top of a glass of cold beer.

“I don’t care. Something we
both haven’t seen before would be nice,” Gabrielle suggested and I had to agree. The last few we watched were something either she’d seen already and I hadn’t or vice versa.

I
nodded as the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I said, holding my hand up at her to stay put. I couldn’t imagine who would be knocking at eight o’clock in the evening on a week-night.

I
opened the door to find a woman, well dressed in a tailored blue sheath dress and high heels with a huge black bag hanging from her arm. Looking past her at the curb, I saw a limousine—complete with chauffeur—standing by. “Can I help you?” I asked, completely baffled as to who she was.

“Yes, I’m looking for Gabrielle
Demeres.”

Gabrielle must have heard her because she was at the door
before I could even answer, shoving me aside. “Mom!” I gave Gabrielle a bemused glance then looked back at the woman. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I’ve come to see where my daughter has run off to, leaving her
much-needed education and future behind her. May I come in?”

“Yes. Absolutely, come in,”
I said.

Gabrielle
gave me a death stare that I thought just might be capable of actually killing me, and realized she didn’t want to let her in, though relented and opened the door all the way allowing her mother to enter. Her mother stared at me and cleared her throat. “Mom, this is Brodie, my… uh … the guy I rent from.”

The guy she rents from? That’s all I was?
What the fuck?

“Nice to meet you
, Brodie.”

“Yeah. Nice to meet you too.”
I gave Gabrielle an even greater discombobulated look.

Her mother
came in, looked thoughtfully around, wrinkled her nose and coughed.

“Would you like to sit down?”

“Yes, thank you. Brodie is it?”

“Yes, ma’am. Brodie Beaumont.” I gestured to one of the nicer chairs and she sat.

The room grew silent and they both looked at me expectantly. Priding myself on being no dummy, I said. “Well, I’ll let you two chat. I’ll be back later.” I grabbed my keys and walked out of my house, leaving my girlfriend, the love of my life alone with her rich mother. A mother that Gabrielle didn’t want to know about me, or at least about our relationship for some reason. Why would she introduce me as the guy she rents from and not as her boyfriend? What was I, an embarrassment? Anger boiled in my veins as I drove to the bar. Okay, so her mom was wealthy. A little tidbit of information she’d neglected to mention. I wasn’t the richest son-of-bitch to roam this God forsaken world, but I wasn’t the poorest either. What the fuck just happened?

Chapter 4
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“I’d offer you something to drink, but I don’t think you’ll be here long enough.
Why are you here?” I demanded.

“I told you. I wanted to see where you were living. You’re my daughter.”

“Well, you made it very clear that if I left school and moved away, you would have nothing to do with me.” My mother didn’t like the idea of me leaving school, and when I did, she cut me out of her life refusing to see reason. Everything had to be her way or no way.

“Oh, Gabby,
people say things all the time.”

“No
, they don’t. Mothers don’t tell their daughters that they don’t ever want to speak to them or see them again.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry about that. I was hurt. You leaving school like that was a blow to all our dreams, Gabby. You have your whole future to think of. You have such great potential. I thought you wanted to be a journalist. You know with Kurt’s influence you could have a prime spot on NBC, but you need to have your degree. He can’t work magic.”

“How is Kurt?”

“Oh, Kurt is Kurt. He says to say hello. Anyway, when you stormed off like that with your hot
-headed temper, well, I … didn’t know what to do. Cutting you off seemed like the best idea at the time. But Gabby, I miss you.” She looked around the house. “You can’t possibly be happy here in this … place.”

My mother was a tool. A manipulative snobby tool. I knew she meant well, but damn, I didn’t want to be a newscaster on NBC. “Mom, those are your dreams. Not mine.
I don’t want a spot on TV. Not at NBC, not anywhere.”

“Well, you don’t have to be on camera. There are plenty of
wonderful positions for journalists.”

“Mom,” I placed my hand on top of hers. “I know this is going to disappoint you, but I don’t want to be a journalist.”

“Of course you do. That’s what you’ve wanted your entire life. Well, at least since I married Kurt and he, bless his heart, inspired you.”

“He did inspire me. He inspired me to pursue my dreams, but journalism isn’t my dream. It was yours. I want to write.”

“Exactly, honey.”

“No. I want to write novels, fiction. Romance to be exact.”

“Oh Gabby, be serious.”

“I am serious.”

“You can’t be. You can’t make any money writing novels. Look at the Internet. It’s full of starving authors.”

She was exasperating and had the ability to shoot my dreams down with one sentence. “Maybe it’s not all about the money.”

“Well, whatever else could it be about?”

“Maybe it’s about the story and the fact that I love to write them.”

“Well, you can do that as a hobby.”

“Mother. I already have a contract with a publisher. They’ve already sent me an advance. My book is due out
this fall.”

“Seriously?”

I nodded.

“How much of an advance?”

“Forty thousand dollars.”

“
That’s all? Honey, you can do so much better than that working for NBC.”

“That’s just the first book and doesn’t include the royalties. Really, mother, this is none of your business anyway, but I have a contract and I will be getting much more on the second book.”

She scoffed and waved her hand at me.

“They’ve promised
a hundred and eighty thousand on the second book.”

Her eyes lit up like firecrackers.
“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? That changes everything.”

I
looked at her, unable to refrain from rolling my eyes. She was a piece of work for sure. How quickly she could turn when there was money talking.

“So
, you’ll be able to move out of this …” she glanced around the living room, wrinkling her nose in disgust, “… place.”

“I don’t have an
y intention of moving.”

“You can’t be serious. What is it about this house, this tiny town that is so alluring? I hope it’s not that … that guy.”

By “that guy,” I assumed she meant Brodie. And now we were back to the very reason I hadn’t introduced Brodie as my boyfriend. My mother wanted me to marry some snobby, wealthy NBC executive who would no doubt cheat on me with every new actress in Hollywood. There were several that came to mind who’d been to the house for the specific reason of meeting me. It always infuriated my mother when I never showed interest in any of them.

I shrugged, unable to hide my feelings for Brodie. I spared him the humiliation she would ensue upon him, but since he wasn’t here now to receive any of her snide remarks, I blurted out, “Yes. ‘
that guy’ as you called him means everything to me. This is my life, not yours. It’s my choice what work I do, as well as who I make my life with.”

She stood, holding her purse in her hands in front of her, her lips pressed firmly together. “Gabby, I want you to come to dinner next week. I’ll send a car.”

“Why?”

“I have some
friends coming, I’d like you to meet them.”

I knew my mother, and when she said she had friends coming over and wanted me present, it meant a young, usually handsome, wealthy country
-club bachelor. One who spent most of his spare time on the golf course, making the next deal of the century, and who would no doubt bore me to tears about how he made his fortune or inherited it. Most of them usually turned out to be even bigger snobs than my mother.

“Did you not hear what I just said? I don’t want to meet your
friends. I am happy here. Brodie is my choice. I love him. You’re just going to have to accept that.”

“For God
’s sake, Gabby, you know very well what I had to go through after your father died and left us penniless.”

“Don’t talk about him that way.” My dad may
not have been the wealthiest man, but he loved me. I’ll never forget what he told me when I was little. He told me always to be myself and never compromise my beliefs and dreams to please someone else. I hadn’t realized until that very moment that he was probably talking about my mother.

“I know you loved him, but
I had to scrape and save every penny I made just so you could have new shoes to wear, or a new dress for school.”

I’d never considered our living situations to be as awful as she made them sound. We always had a decent place to live. True
, she had to go to work after my dad died, leaving me with the neighbors, but I didn’t think that was so unusual. Tons of kids got dropped off at day care centers and neighbors while their moms went to work. Granted, most of those places didn’t have a Thomas, but that wasn’t her fault and there was no point in telling her now.

She went on with her self-important drivel, “We were very fortunate when Kurt came into our lives. I only want what’s best for you. I don’t want you to suffer the way I did.”

At that point, I’d had enough. “I think your time is up. Please leave.”

She sighed, then shook her head. She reached out to stroke my cheek with her finger, but I flinched away before she could touch me. “Someday you’ll understand, Gabby.” She turned and walked out the door and strolled down to the car. I watched
as the driver let her in the back seat and then got back in himself before they pulled away from the curb.

Relief filled me as I shut the door, then panic set
in. “Oh my God. Brodie!” He had to be furious with me. I quickly found my cell phone and called him, hoping he would understand why I hadn’t told her who he was to me, but it went straight to voicemail.

Chapter 4
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Upon entering the bar, I was surprised to find it so crow
ded. Wednesday nights weren’t usually busy, and there was nothing special happening. It looked as if I had arrived just in time. Derrick was behind the bar by himself, juggling beers and mixing drinks while Alison, one of the week-night waitresses, called out another drink order. I wasn’t in the mood to socialize, but thought maybe the busy work would help take my mind off of Gabrielle and her mother, so I grabbed an apron and put it on. “Why all the people?” I asked Derrick.

He shrugged
, giving me a huge smile and proceeded to deliver the two drinks he carried in his hands to a couple of guys at the other end of the bar.

He came back toward me. “Why are you here? I thought you’d be home with Gabby.”

“Yeah. Me too.” He gave me a bemused glance. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Might say that.”
I didn’t want to go into detail about how awkward it had been meeting Gabrielle’s wealthy mother, or the fact that Gabrielle obviously didn’t want her to know we were in a relationship. I busied myself filling some beers and mixing drinks. I wondered how long Gabrielle’s mother would be there. I felt foolish leaving my own house and I wanted to go home. I was tired after working all day and coming back, only to work twice as hard. I’d been helping Derrick out for the past thirty minutes or so and the freaky rush was slowly dwindling down. My phone buzzed. I took it out of my pocket and glanced at the display. It was Gabrielle. I pushed the button sending it straight to voicemail. I wasn’t ready to talk to her yet. I shoved the phone back into my pocket and waited on another guy.

As I placed a fresh drink down in front of another customer, m
y heart skipped a beat when I noticed Jeff’s face back in the corner. He was sitting with a group of guys. Soccer pals, no doubt, since they were all dressed like they’d just come from practice. He may be part of that team, and this is where they always came after practices and games, but he still wasn’t welcome here and he knew it. I couldn’t let the harassing phone calls to Gabrielle go without at least calling the bastard out. I threw down my bar rag and started to come out from behind the bar. I wanted him gone. I had no sooner stepped out from behind the bar than the heavy doors opened and two cops strolled in and looked around, stopping me in my tracks. They headed to the one and only empty table and ordered coffee. So much for my wanting to pound the snot out of Jeff. It would have to wait for another time.

I wanted to let
Gabrielle know that I had seen him, but then I remembered how she considered me to be such an embarrassment that she couldn’t even introduce me to her mother properly. I wanted to puke.

I headed to
ward the bar to grab my keys I’d placed under the counter. I was done playing the dejected, run-out-of-the-house-with-my-tail-between-my-legs puppy dog. I didn’t care what her mother thought of me. I would claim my woman, and if her mother didn’t accept me then … shit. I stopped at the door. Gabrielle would support me, right? But she hadn’t. Damn it. Come to think of it, I was still pissed off and I didn’t want to talk to her. My news about Jeff no longer important, I went back to work helping Derrick. I probably stayed longer than I should have, but I wasn’t ready to go home yet.

“How about another?” I asked one of the guys sitting at the bar as he stared at his empty bottle. He glanced up at me and nodded. I pulled out a bottle of Bud Light to replace the empty one when my phone rang. I placed the bottle on the counter and pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was Gabrielle.
I debated letting it go to voicemail again, but what the hell. I wanted to hear what she had to say.  “Hello?”

“Brodie?”

“Yeah.”

“Um … are you coming home soon?”

I laughed. Not because I thought the question was funny, but because I couldn’t believe that was all she had to say to me.

“Brodie?”

“What?”

“Please come home.”

“Is your mother gone?”

“Yes.”

I hung up the phone without saying goodbye. It was childish of me, but I didn’t trust myself to talk on the phone for fear of what I might say without seeing her face when I said it.

I said goodnight to Derrick and he waved. “Good luck with paradise.”

The house was dark. Even the front porch light was off. It seemed strange to me, but I figured she’d decided to go to bed and maybe she was upset about the unannounced visit from her mom.

As I went to turn the knob, I realized someone
had left the door slightly ajar. Maybe Gabrielle had been upset about her mother’s visit and forgot to shut it all the way when she left. I pushed the door open the rest of the way and walked in. I flipped the switch on the wall since the room was pitch black and what I saw when the light came on almost had me on my knees. I was wracked with regret and guilt that I hadn’t come home when she called the first time, or fuck, even that I had left in the first place. Gabrielle sat in one of the kitchen chairs, tape over her mouth and her hands tied behind her back. The horror emanating from behind her eyes told me someone was behind me, but it was too late as something struck the back of my head. Right before everything went black I remembered noticing that Jeff had left the bar about thirty minutes before me, but at the time, I was too busy to think about it.