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“Yes,” she says, her expression softening. “Let’s go save the animals.” She smiles a perfect smile, so bright that it’s like sunshine lighting the black soul she doesn’t know I have and I’d prefer she never finds out.
Abbie does the same but I hear, “Oh God,” a moment before she grabs my arm again. “Gabe. Stop. Stop now. We have a problem.”
I turn to look at her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“My ex. Kenneth is walking toward us.”
Chapter eighteen
Gabe
“Why would he be here?” Abbie whispers and then turns to me. “Oh God. This is a nightmare.” She sinks down low in her seat. “I cannotbelievethis is happening.” She looks at me. “Drive. There’s a side door.”
“What are you doing, Abbie?” I demand, Reid’s warning about a reconciliation grinding through me. “Get up.”
“No. Drive.”
“Abbie—”
“I’m protecting you. Don’t you dare turn this into anything else!” Her voice cracks with anger. “I wouldn’t be hiding if it were just about me. Hewillcome after you.”
I rotate and press my hand on the seat looking down at her. “Are you sure that’s all this is? You protecting me?”
“Yes. Of course, it is. Don’t do this, Gabe. We just had this conversation.”
“And we’re having it again based on the fact that you’re hiding in a car in an effort to not be seen with me.”
She rolls to her side to face me. “I swear to you, Gabe. I hate that man.” Her voice radiates on the word hate. “He’s evil. You—Me—I like this, whatever this is. I don’t want him to have the chance to destroy it. I don’t want you to become his target.”
I study her face, search her eyes, and not only do I believe her, I too like “this,” whatever this is between us, and way too much to allow it to be destroyed, because hiding destroys it and us. “There’s only one way to beat a fear,” I say. “Face it. We’re facing him, here, now. Right now. Together.” I turn away and open the door.
“Gabe!” she shouts, grabbing my arm, but I’m not about that right now.
I easily untangle myself from her grip and exit the car. I’m barely standing and she’s out of the car as well, but she doesn’t head toward her ex to stop my confrontation with him as I suspect she might. She rounds the trunk to meet me at the rear of the BMW.
“Please don’t do this,” she pleads, stopping in front of me, her hands planting on my chest, which I find encouraging. Now that we’re out here in the open, with her ex in our sights, and us in his, she’s not denying our relationship. “Let’s get back in the car and drive to another entrance,” she offers, her voice low, desperate, her red hair blowing across her face.
My gaze lifts over her shoulder to find that her ex, billionaire bastard that he is, has, in fact, spotted us and he’s striding in our direction, and even in jeans and a polo, he walks like he has a stick up his ass. “He’ll be here in about thirty seconds,” I say, stroking her red curls from her eyes, and then cupping her face and tilting it to mine. “We’re not avoiding him. He doesn’t get to control you or me.”
“Wait to do this. We’re new. This is fresh. What if—”
“I stop wanting you? I won’t. What if you stop wanting me? I’m not going to let that happen. I will wine, dine, fuck, and please you in every way possible to make sure it doesn’t. He doesn’t get to control you or us,” I repeat and then I claim her the way Iwant to claim her, and without hesitation. I lean in and slant my mouth over hers, my tongue stroking once, long and deep before our lips part and she whispers, “You don’t need to wine and dine me when you kiss me like that.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. Very right.” She’s breathless and leans into me as if she wants me to absorb her, as if she wants to forget what’s behind her, but she can’t. It’s too late.
I stroke the dampness from her lips, and warn her softly, “He’s here.”
“Abigail.”
She stiffens with the sound of her ex’s voice, but she doesn’t jerk away from me. She doesn’t turn to him. Her eyes meet mine and there is torment in hers as if she wants to say something to me but time has run out. She slowly turns to face the asshole billionaire that once was her husband. My hands settle on her shoulders, telling her and him, that I’m here. I’m with her. She’s not alone.
“Kenneth,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
He’s thirty-eight, a year older than me, but he looks younger, plastic, tall, but not as tall as my six-foot-three height. “Your mother called emergency services when the flood started. I was worried. I thought you might need help, but your mother kicked me out.”
“Perhaps because you fucked around on her daughter and now want to take the property away from her rescue,” I say dryly. “Which really does make this flood convenient for you, now doesn’t it?”
