Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set (72 page)

“He does get really angry sometimes.  He tries to keep it really controlled, but you can see it’s there.  Oh Neal, what have I gotten myself into?”

“I wasn’t trying to scare you Robyn.  I just want you to be careful.”

“I wish you could come over.  I suddenly don’t want to be alone.  I just don’t want you to have to drive in this weather.”

“I wouldn’t have to drive.  We live in the same apartment building.”

“I never knew that.  How come you didn’t tell me before?”

Neal laughed, though it sounded a little strained to Robyn’s ears. “I moved in after you started at the bar.  The investigator got a really good lead on Ash, or at least he thought he had, so I got a two bedroom, thinking that I would have her living with me.  I always wait to leave work until a few minutes after you.  I never wanted you to think that I was following you home.”

“I never would have thought that Neal and I probably would have noticed your car if I wasn’t so damned distracted all of the time.  Would you mind coming over?  Do you know which apartment I’m in?”

“I wouldn’t mind at all.  I don’t think I’d mind having company myself right now.  You’re in number 3 right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.  I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for listening to me Robyn.  It feels worse sometimes, keeping everything inside.”

“I know.  I’ll see you Neal.  Goodbye.”

“Bye Robyn.”

She clicked end on her phone, and realized how nervous she was about seeing Neal.  She rushed into the bathroom and flipped the light switch, scrutinizing herself in the mirror.  She thought her lips looked puffy.  Sometimes Gabe was almost forceful with his kisses when he made love to her.  She sighed, and picked up her hairbrush, running it through her long hair, thinking that she’d definitely have to cut it before she had the baby.  She wouldn’t want to have to deal with all the hair when she had a newborn to worry about.

She splashed some water on her face and then went out to the living room.  She wondered what was taking Neal so long, and then wondered if he was feeling as nervous as she was.  She was pacing a few minutes later when there was a knock at her door.

She opened the door to see Neal standing on the other side, his cheeks already pink from the cold.  The wind was howling.  She let him in and shut the door quickly, locking it again.  She crossed to her thermostat, turning it until it clicked on, and then sat down on the couch, suddenly feeling very tired.

“Sit down,” she said, because Neal was still standing.

He sat on the other end of the couch.  They were both silent for a moment, and then she said “I’m scared Neal.”

“I’m sorry Robyn.  It was all that stuff I told you about Gabe wasn’t it?  I don’t know if any of its true.  It might just be rumors.  You know how small towns are.”

“But there are things he’s told me that don’t make any sense.  He told me that Leslie was pregnant when they met and that she refused to tell anyone who the real father of the baby was.  He said that at first she messed around with other women, but that there have been plenty of men, too.  I’m positive that he told me that his daughter wasn’t his either and then tonight he told me that his daughter is his.  I’m beginning to think that his son is his, too.  I don’t understand it.  I could understand maybe if he had told me this if he was trying to make me feel sorry him and thought that it would help him get me into bed, but I’m the one that started the whole thing.  I
seduced him.  He’d make remarks sometimes that would make me think he was flirting with me, but he never made any inappropriate moves.  So why would he lie to me?”

“I’m assuming you’d heard some rumors about him before you started working at the bar?”

“I actually went looking for a job there because someone told me he’d hire any woman that walked in there, even if they didn’t need the help.  They also said that he pays women more than men, and I really needed the money at the time.  I was only a few days away from being evicted.”

“I’ve been there.  Tress took off with our rent money when she left me.  I had to stay in a shelter for a couple weeks.  How much do you get paid Robyn, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“He told me that he’d start me out at $10 an hour when he hired me, with a raise every six months.  But most of my paychecks are at least twice what they should be.  He pays me more like $20 an hour, sometimes even $30.”

“Wow.  I make $8.50 an hour and I thought that was decent because we usually make really good tips.”

“And you’ve been there a while, too.  I’m must be the world’s biggest idiot.  I can’t believe I fell for all of his bullshit.”

“I really don’t think you’re the first one Robyn.  Did anyone tell you about Brandy?”

“He did, yeah.  The first night that we were together, he talked to me about the rumors and told me that none of them were true.  He told me that he only regretted one thing he’d done with a girl that had worked at Gabe’s Place, and that was that he’d given that girl Brandy a line of coke.  He said she was a recovering addict and that she threatened to kill herself if she didn’t do just one more line and that everybody knows about it because some guy that used to work for him walked in on it.  He said she was crazy.”

“Well, part of this may just be rumors too, but they said that he made her screw him in the back of his truck the day he hired her.  Some guy taped it.  It’s supposed to be floating around on the internet somewhere.  Eric’s supposedly seen it.  People say that Gabe drove her a little crazy.  He was supposed to be screwing Brandy and this other girl that worked there at the same time -
Cara or something.  Both of them told him that they didn’t want to see him anymore.  This other girl, I don’t think her name was Cara-but it did start with a C I think-took off with some guy she met online.  Brandy was in love with another guy and she was supposed to have ended up pregnant with Gabe’s kid.  She had an older kid that she’d put up for adoption.  Gabe was supposed to have paid the adoptive parents to give her the kid back.  But his condition was that she spent one last night with him, even though she was marrying this other guy.  That’s supposed to be why she made him give her the coke.  He was supposed to have tricked her into getting pregnant and then demanded that she sleep with him again.”

“This is all so crazy.”

“Take everything with a grain of salt Robyn.  I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.  We don’t know that half of its true.”

“Yeah.  But now that I think of it, the day I started at the bar there was this crazy girl that came up to me, or at least I thought she was crazy at the time, because she looked like a tweaker.  She told me that I needed to stay away from Gabe, that he was crazy.  That I shouldn’t believe anything he said. I didn’t believe her because he was so nice to me.  Now I’m beginning to think I should have.”

“You’re probably talking about Angel.  She worked there for a while after I started.  She was clean by that time as far as I know, but she might have started using again.  Was she skinny, with long curly hair, pretty but probably looks about ten years older than she really is?”

“Yeah.”

“Gabe charged her with trespassing because she tried to talk a few girls out of working there.”

“How many girls have worked there since you’ve been there Neal?”

“Besides you and Kasia, there was Angel, and a couple girls whose names I don’t remember because they didn’t last more than a couple days.  Then there was Teresa who was there like a month and a half, Jazzy worked there for four months I think and Lynn, she was there about six months.  She left right before you started.  I think that’s it.  No, there was Carisa.  She was only there a couple weeks, though.”

“So, since you’ve been there somewhere around nine or ten girls have worked at Gabe’s Place?”

“Yeah.”

“How many men have worked there?”

“There’s a part time daytime bartender.  You probably haven’t met him because he always leaves early.  Then there’s Eric, who started a couple of months before you did.  I think there was another guy that worked the day shift when I first started but he didn’t last long.  Gabe covers the slack from when Art works and on the days when Eric works nights most of the time himself.  Every once in a while his wife does it, but you don’t see that happen very often.  She’s supposed to be real fond of flashing customers.”

“So twice as many women have worked there as men.  His wife cheats on him.  He obviously cheats on his wife, too.  I can’t believe I actually believed him when he told me I was the only girl that had worked for him that he’d slept with.  I’m going to ask Kasia tomorrow night if she’s sleeping with him.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea Robyn.  I think that the best thing you could probably do at this point is to pretend like everything’s normal with Gabe until you can find a way to let him down easy.  Or break up with him because he won’t divorce Leslie.”

“I might have done that eventually anyway.  Or at least I hope so.  I always used to look down on women that seemed so content to be a man’s mistress.  Well, I guess it’s not just women that do it.  Men do it too, obviously.  I can’t believe that I let myself become one of them.  I’m so ashamed.”

“Don’t be.  You’re human.”

“You’re human too, Neal.  Have you forgiven yourself for what happened with Ashlyn?”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that until I get her back.”

“I told Gabe that you told me.  I begged him to hire an investigator to look for her.  I’m sorry.  I wanted to help.”

Neal sighed.  “It’s okay.  Maybe he will be able to find her.  It seemed to me that when he offered it wasn’t about being helpful, it was about boosting his ego.  I get along with Gabe okay most of the time because I try not to buy into all the shit that people say about him.  But like him or not, you’ve got to admit that the guy’s got an ego the size of Texas.  Then again, maybe it was my ego getting in the way when I told him that I didn’t want his help.  I need a break Robyn.  I feel like I need to go one night without thinking about all the crap in my life.  It’s just so hard to do.  It feels like I’m being disloyal to Ash if I even think about it.”

“I’m sure your daughter wouldn’t want you to be miserable Neal.  Even if you love someone more than anything, sometimes it’s got to be okay to know that they can be okay without you.”

“It’s not that I don’t want her to be happy.  I’m just afraid that she’s not.  I didn’t want kids, but when I had her, it was like I was suddenly on another planet.  A planet that revolved around everything that was Ashlyn.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing, or that it wasn’t the way it should be.  I wasn’t someone that did a lot of partying or stuff that you can’t do with kids around anyway, so it wasn’t some huge transition like some people have to make when they become parents.  It was like I had one plan for my life, and then this gorgeous little girl comes along and blows it all out of the water.  It was okay, because my dreams changed to include my daughter.  I always pictured being there when she went to kindergarten, when she had her first school play, when she learned how to ride a bike.  I wasn’t a perfect parent, but I’ve never met one.  I love my daughter and it feels very wrong for me not to be a part of her life.  I wonder sometimes how much her being without me has changed the person she’ll become.”

Robyn reached out and squeezed his hand.  “You are going to find her, and she is going to be fine.  People are so strong.  Sometimes they don’t know how strong they can be until they have to be, but every day is a new chance to begin again.  Ashlyn is going to come home to you.  It may not be tomorrow.  It may not even be ten years from now, but she knows who her father is.  She knows who loves her.  Even if she was confused at first because I don’t think kids ever really understand being taken away from their parents, even if she’s still confused; there is going to come a point when she is going to realize that you didn’t leave her by choice.  She is going to remember
the times that you had together and she is going to see how much you loved her.  It may not be easy.  She may be angry with you, she may be so sad and hurt that you can hardly stand it, but there will come a time Neal.  The time will come when you and your daughter will be together again.  And the last thing she’s going to want to hear is that her father stopped living because he was without her.  She’s going to want to hear about everything that you did; everything that you saw, that you experienced.  You can’t let your daughter see some empty broken down shell that couldn’t take it without her, because then she’ll know that you’d already given up.  It doesn’t make sense that someone is so important to you that you in essence give up hope that they could ever be a part of your life again.  You’re failing both of you if you do that.”

When Neal looked at her, she could see that he was fighting tears.  He blinked them back, cleared his throat and said “Thank you Robyn.  You are a very special woman.”

She smiled.  “I wish you would have told me that three months ago.”

“Me too.”

“Do you want to watch a movie?  I’m tired of being so serious.  I think I’ve got some popcorn.  Or better yet, I’ve got ice cream with hot fudge and hot cocoa.”

Neal smiled.  “I’ll help you.”

He followed her to the kitchen and they soon returned to the living room with their treats.  Robyn offered Neal the choice of the comedy movies she had on DVD and then popped it into her DVD player.