Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set (75 page)

“You’re a good man Neal.  I would call Gabe now, but it’s late and if he’s at home with his kids, I don’t want him to come over here and try to talk me out of it.  I felt bad enough taking him away from his kids as it was.”

“I know that you would not have started an affair with him if you weren’t serious about him.  You’re not the kind of woman that gets a kick out of sleeping with married men, even if they are in a bad marriage.”

“I still feel like I lowered myself though.  I was disappointed when you never asked me out, but I should have asked you out instead of telling myself that you didn’t feel the same way and going after Gabe.”

“It’s okay Robyn.  We both messed up, but we’re gonna make it better.  One day at a time.”

Robyn smiled.  “Sounds good to me. I don’t mean to sound like a horny pregnant woman, but I am a horny pregnant woman.  Would you make love to me and stay with me tonight?”

Neal smiled.  “I would love to.”

He took her hand and led her to the bedroom.  They made passionate love, showered together and then took their time and enjoyed each other’s bodies before they made love again.  Robyn’s hormones did feel like they were on overdrive, but she thought she was going to like being involved with a man that was not only all hers, but that also had raging hormones.

Chapter 11

The next morning when Robyn woke up Neal wasn’t in bed.  She sighed, thinking that he had left, but then she heard noise from the kitchen.  She smiled as she stretched.  She got out of bed and used the restroom.

When she had finished in the bathroom, she wandered out to the kitchen.  Neal looked up and smiled.  “I was going to surprise you with breakfast in bed.”

“You’re so sweet.  I want this to be a nice day and I’d love to spend it with you, but I know that I need to call Gabe.”

“It can wait.  Don’t stress yourself out unnecessarily.”

“Thank you for being concerned, but I need to do this.  I wish I would never have gotten mixed up with Gabe in the first place, but now I have to face it and get myself out of it.”

“Okay.  Are you going to call him now?”

“Yeah, might as well get it over with.  I guess I’ll go back in the bedroom.  Breakfast in bed sounds wonderful.”  She moved to his side and kissed him, slow and easy.

He grinned.  “I never thought that I could feel this way Robyn.  I knew that I liked you, but I didn’t realize how deep it ran.  I feel like I have real hope for the first time in a long time.  Maybe Gabe’s expensive investigator will even find Ashlyn.”

Robyn bit her lip.  “You don’t think he’ll go back on his promise when I break up with him do you?  I didn’t think about that before.  I can wait.”

Neal squeezed her hand.  “Gabe probably already put the wheels in motion and paid a ridiculous amount to get my daughter back.  With the way Gabe’s brain works and how he likes to feel like a puppet master, he might already know where Tress and Ashlyn are and was just waiting for me to come crawling back to him and beg him to find my daughter.”

“I don’t know.  I know that he lied to me and probably never would have divorced Leslie and married me.  But he does help a lot of people.”

“It’s just the way he goes about it.  With women, there usually seem to be all kinds of strings attached.  He likes women feeling like they owe him something.  He’s given Eric extra money I’m sure, but I think they have some twisted sex thing going on.  Not the two of them, but I get the feeling that they’ve had a lot of threesomes together.”

“Oh.  I guess I’ll go make my phone call.”

Robyn’s heart was beating fast as she returned to the bedroom and picked up her cell phone.  She dialed Gabe’s number.  He answered on the second ring and gave her a bright “Hello darling.”

“Hi Gabe.  We need to talk.”

“About what my love?”

“Our relationship.”

Gabe sighed.  “Honey, I’m still working on getting everything squared away with my divorce.  I know that you’re afraid that we won’t be married by the time your baby is born, but even if worse comes to worst and we’re not, my divorce will be under way long before then.  We’ll be living together and I will take care of you.”

“I can’t do this anymore Gabe.  I can’t take the guilt and the worry.  I need to be with a man that’s mine and mine only.”

Gabe snorted.  “Men cheat and lie Robyn.  Don’t you think that Fuller was messing around the whole time that you were together?  You’re a beautiful woman, but men are tempted even if the women by their side look like they belong on the cover of a magazine.  Don’t try to fool yourself into thinking that you will find another man like me.”

“I know that you’ve been good to me.  I appreciate everything you’ve done, and I will try to pay you back.”

“That’s not necessary.  The money that I’ve provided you has not put a dent in my money.  Robyn, what we have together is real.  We are in love.  You are the first woman that has loved me and not just enjoyed what I can give you.”

“Gabe, correct me if I’m wrong, but you told me you hadn’t been with other women before me, or at least hadn’t cheated on your wife.”

Gabe sighed.  “Darling, none of those stupid women mattered.  They wanted my pocketbook, they wanted my love while they were waiting for another man to come along, but they never returned my love.  You can’t do this Robyn.  How can you stare destiny in the face and say that you’re going to walk away?”

“What we had was special Gabe, but it was wrong.  You’re married and I went against my morals to be with you.  You also lied to me.  You admitted it just now.”

“What do you want from me Robyn?  Do you want to enjoy another man’s company until my divorce?  Have you taken up with Neal?  I’ve seen the way you look at him, but I thought that you would never be so stupid as to fall for a pathetic loser like him.”

“I don’t want to be with another man until you get divorced, because I don’t think you’re ever going to get divorced.  I think that you love Leslie and that maybe there’s a part of you that doesn’t think that you deserve to be loved.  Or maybe there’s another woman that you really want but you can’t have so you try to fool yourself into thinking that you can be happy without her.”

“Robyn we are tied.  I will give you anything you want, you only have to ask.  Do you think a pathetic bartender who let his daughter disappear with his bitch of a girlfriend and her child molesting lover can ever give you anything?  You have a child on the way.  You need stability.  You deserve to be able to stay home and take care of your child.  I can give you that.  You can live wherever you want and I will set up an account for you that is more than generous so that you will never be without anything.”

“I can’t live as your mistress forever.  If I’m going to be with a man, I need to know that he can lie beside me at night, and that I can wake up with him in the morning.  If I have to continue to work, I will.  My mom worked and my brothers and sisters and I all turned out okay.”

“You won’t be my mistress forever.  Within a few months you can be my wife.  My kids deserve a woman like you to at least be their stepmother since my wife does not have a motherly bone in her body.”

“Your kids do deserve better.  But it’s over Gabe.  I’m sorry.”

“Why must women lie?  Oh, what am I saying, most of you are so damned cold that you don’t bother to pretend that you love me.  My wife tells me she loves me once a year if that and she has never meant it.  Why did you pretend to love me Robyn?  I had such hope for our future.”

“I didn’t pretend to love you Gabe.”  Robyn wondered if she’d been fooling herself all along though.  But he already sounded angry and she didn’t want to make it worse.

“I’m coming over to your apartment.  Give me half an hour.  We need to discuss this in person.”

“No Gabe.  Nothing you can say or do is going to change my mind.  I’m really sorry, but we both know it’s for the best.  I’ll look for another job.”

“Nonsense.  And you’re six months pregnant, who do you think is going to hire you anyway?  You can go on maternity leave now.  We’ll go away together for a whole week.  It will give you a real taste of what having me as your husband will feel like.”

“You can’t leave your kids for that long.  Your wife doesn’t seem to take very good care of them as it is.”

“We’ll bring them with us.  They’ll love their future stepmother.  Please Robyn, I will do anything.”

“I’m not going to get to know your kids and then walk away.  We would both be better off if we had never started sleeping together.”

“Ridiculous.  History tends to repeat itself.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my quest for my true love, it’s that a woman only breaks it off with me when she’s fooled herself into thinking that she’s in love with another man.  You have another man is your bed right now don’t you?  He can never please you the way I can.  I’ve been told that my love making is so powerful that even when it’s down and dirty screwing it’s like making love.”

“I don’t want to hear about the other women that you’ve been with, especially since you chose to lie to me about them.  I wouldn’t have made a move on you if I’d known that the rumors were true.  You deserve someone that loves you Gabe, but I can’t do it.  And if you don’t divorce your wife, chances are that you’re never going to find a woman that will.”

“If it’s that loser Neal that is in your bed, you can tell him that my investigator already has a lead on Tress and Ashlyn.  The way they’re living is revolting.  Hand to mouth, food stamps and welfare, lying about who the father of her child is so that they won’t try to collect child support from Neal and lead him to them.  Do you know that Neal is not named as the father on Ashlyn’s birth certificate?  That fool probably isn’t Ashlyn’s biological father.”

“Gabe, I’m going to go now.  I’ll work out the rest of my shifts until I go on maternity leave.  But after the baby is born I’ll look for work elsewhere and we can’t see each other again.”

“Robyn, you’re acting like a fool.  You need to be sensible.  Think about the child you’re carrying.”

“I am Gabe.  I can’t be your mistress and have you walk in and out of my child’s life like Fuller probably will.  My child deserves better, I deserve better.”

“You know better Robyn.  Take some time to think about this, tell me your demands and we’ll work this out.”

Robyn wanted to laugh.  “My love is not up for ransom.  I have to go.  Goodbye Gabe.”

Robyn hung up her phone.  It rang almost immediately, but she tossed it onto her night stand and put her head in her hands.  She felt like such an idiot.  She knew that she should have stuck to her morals and stayed away from Gabe.

Neal came into the room a few minutes later.  She looked up at him and gave him a weak smile.  “Robyn are you okay?”

“No.  He admitted that he’d been with a bunch of other women, but he told me they didn’t matter because none of them bothered to pretend that they loved him like I did.  He made a bunch
of promises to me, went back and forth from sounding really pissed to being his regular charming self.”

“We’re gonna get through this Robyn.  This might sound presumptuous, but if his investigator finds Ashlyn, what do you think about us leaving together after your baby is born?”

“I think that would be a great idea.  Out of sight out of mind.  I’m sure he’ll move on, but Kasia’s leaving too.  So I’m thinking that there will be a new girl working at the bar soon.”

“Maybe, maybe not.  I don’t think anybody really knows what to expect from Gabe anymore.”

“That’s a comforting thought.  He said that his investigator has a lead on where Tress and Ashlyn are.  But he said that you might not be her father and that you’re not on her birth certificate.”

“I am.  I made her put me on it because there was always a part of me that was afraid that she’d tried to take Ash away from me.  Ash looks more like me than she does like Tress.  She has my eyes.  But I’ve always been her father, so I would have taken care of her if Tress had left me anyway, even if she wasn’t mine by blood.  It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a fake birth certificate made though.  Tress is selfish and will do anything to get what she wants.  It’s good that he might have found them.  It feels so strange to think that my baby might actually be coming home after all of this time.”

Robyn squeezed his hand.  “It’s wonderful.  Do you have clothes and things for her?  I have quite a bit of money saved up since at least every other paycheck I’ve had since I’ve worked at Gabe’s Place has been two or three times more than it should be.”

“Thank you Robyn.  I do have a bed and clothes and a few toys and things for her.  I have some money saved too, so that if she doesn’t like what I have for her, she can pick out things on her own.”

“Do you have someone that can watch her for you?  How many nights a week do you work?”

“Three.  I think pretty much everyone works three or four days a week at Gabe’s Place.  The daycare only stays open until 9 so that definitely won’t work.  I have a neighbor that has a little
girl about Ashlyn’s age that said she’d be happy to watch her, but I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of her.  Ash would be in school of course but our shifts are long.”

“Yeah.  If it would help I can watch Ashlyn on the two nights that you work that we don’t work together.  I have younger siblings and nieces and nephews.”

“That would be great Robyn, thank you.  You two should get to know each other anyway since I want you to be a part of my life.”

Robyn smiled.  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

Neal smiled.  “Good.  Breakfast is ready.  Do you want me to bring it in here or do you want to go out to the kitchen?”

“The kitchen is fine.  If we’re in bed, I don’t think we’ll be able to concentrate on eating.  You don’t think Gabe will show up here do you?”

“I hope not.  He might start watching you though, so we’re going to have to be careful.  After Ash is here it won’t look strange for me to be in your apartment since you’ll be watching her, but until then we should be extra careful.”

“Yeah.”  Robyn sighed. 

“We’ll get through this Robyn.  With you and my daughter by my side, I could conquer the world.”

“I hope she’s where she belongs soon.”

“Me too.”  Neal gave her his hand and they went back to the kitchen.

Halfway through their meal, there was a knock at the door.  Robyn looked at Neal, hoping that her sudden panic didn’t show in her eyes.  She put a finger to her lips and called out “Who is it?”

“Delivery ma’am.”

Robyn breathed a sigh of relief.  She went to the door and met a man that was holding a huge bouquet of roses and two jewelry boxes.  One was the size of a ring.