“Why does he want this property, Abbie?”
“I have no idea, Gabe. None. He happily handed it over to me in the divorce. It’s all I took.”
“This makes no sense. None of this makes any sense.”
“What does that even mean?” Her tone is sharper now, her defenselessness radiating in words.
I turn to her, and fuck, why does looking at this woman punch me in the chest, and grab me by the balls? I don’t fucking like redheads and yet all those red curls have me wishing her mouth was on my stomach again, and that hair was right there with it. Who the hell am I fooling? If that was all she made me fucking feel, I’d be good. I’d fuck her the hell out of my system.
“What’s going on, Gabe?” she demands because apparently, I’m fucking staring at her and saying nothing.
My father comes to my mind, and my instinct is that he might be the attorney involved in her legal battle. My father, who we just dethroned from the company. My father, who prefers revenge to family and might just use my fuck habits to fuck us. “Are you playing me?”
“What? What does that mean?”
“What is your agenda, Abbie?”
A knife of emotion stabs through her eyes; shock, embarrassment, pain and I want to react but I have to be sure I’m not setting our company up for a fall. “Answer me, Abbie,” I demand.
“I should never have gone home with you,” she whispers, her voice cracking as she reaches for the door.
I catch her arm and pull her around to face me. “I need to know if you—”
“Fucked you to fuck you? No, I didn’t, and don’t worry. I won’t do it again so you won’t have to question me again. And I can’t believe I actually thought we—that you—” She cuts her gaze. “Let me out of the car.” Her voice trembles.
I quake inside in response. I’ve hurt her. I’ve hurt the only woman that has managed to matter to me in decades. What the hell am I doing? “Abbie,” I plead softly. “Look at me.”
“Let me out of the car, Gabe. I need to help my mother.”
“And we will. We’ll help her together.”
She whirls on me. “We are not doing anything.”
“You talked about your damn ex even when we were naked, Abbie. You—”
“I talked about him to protect you. Damn it, Gabe. To protect you. I need to be inside helping.”
“We’ll go in in a minute. I’m going to help and so is my sister and brother-in-law.”
“So you can say the animals in need are part of me playing you?”
I take those words like a punch I deserve. “I’m not trying to be a dick.”
“And yet you are.”
“You’re right. I am, but damn it, Abbie, my father, and Jean Claude have a history and we just pushed him out of our company. You showed up and—I can’t let you be a weapon used against my company.”
“I’m not. I wouldn’t. If you believe that—”
“I don’t,” I breathe out. “I don’t, but there’s more on the line than just me. This is my family, my employees—my life.”
“I’m not working for your father. I don’t even know your father.” His eyes soften. “Your father would really come at you like that?”
“Yes. Yes, he would.”
She stuns me then by pressing her hand to my face. “Then I forgive you for being a dick.”
“What?”
“How can you not doubt me with the connection we share to Jean Claude? And how can you not doubt me when your own father can’t be trusted? You just met me.”
I’m officially blown away by this woman. My hand covers hers on my face and I pull it between us. “Spoken like someone who’s been burned by family,” I say, thinking of her less than favorable reference to her father.
“I understand why you just reacted like you did,” she confirms, offering nothing more, but I want more. A whole hell of a lot more, that she won’t give me now, but I can live with waiting.
“Let’s go save those animals.”
“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 cannot believe this 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. He will come 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 I want 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.”
“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?”
His gaze lifts to meet mine, ice in his gray eyes, but they aren’t as cold as I feel. “Gabe Maxwell,” he says dryly.
That he knows me doesn’t surprise me. He likely has Abbie being followed but we both have a connection to Jean Claude and my father as well. “That’s my name,” I say flatly. “Tell my father I said fuck you. You won’t get this property, and if I find out you had anything to do with this today, I’ll bend you over in court and fuck you without Vaseline.” I wrap my arm around Abbie’s shoulders. “Abbie and I are going in to help the animals.” I turn us and set us in motion.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into, Maxwell,” Kenneth calls out. “Stop walking. Turn around and talk to me without her. You need to hear what I have to say.”
I ignore him. I keep walking. “Gabe,” Abbie whispers. “He’s going to come after you. Stop walking. I need to go talk to him.”
“He told me about KM,” Kenneth calls out.
I stop walking, anger ripping through me with the taunt that is about my past, the taunt that confirms my father’s involvement. The taunt that ties to a past I left behind long ago and says he’s prepared for me. He expected me today. “Go inside, Abbie,” I order tightly, my anger a low burn in my veins. “I’ll be right there.”
“No,” she replies stubbornly. “No, I won’t go in without you. Who or what is KM?”
“I know all about her,” Kenneth adds, saying more than I want Abbie to hear.
My jaw sets hard and I give Abbie my back, hoping she stays there as I close the small space between me and her bastard of an ex. I don’t address KM. “You do know my father, right?” I ask.
“You know I do,” Kenneth says, his gray eyes glinting with satisfaction.
“Of course you do, because he told you how to get my attention, but I know him. He didn’t tell you everything and that’s in your best interest and his.”
“Your father and I are closer than you might think,” he bluffs, and it is a bluff. My father wouldn’t give anyone else anything to hurt me. He’d do it himself.
“Close, are you?”
“Very.”
“Then you know what a brutal fucking asshole he is,” I say. “I learned well from him. I know how to play dirty. I know how to play rough. More so than he ever did on any level. And I’m younger and hungrier than him, and what I want I get, especially Abbie.”
“Abbie?” He snorts an arrogant laugh. “You don’t even know her name.”
“I know her name. I know how she tastes. I know how she feels. I know what she needs and that includes this property. Whatever your agenda, I’ll find out and I’ll make sure it burns in hell right along with you. And I won’t stop there.”
He smirks. “Is that supposed to intimidate me?”
“Ask my father what it means to become my enemy, or just wait and find out. It won’t take long. Leave her the fuck alone.” I turn and all but run into Abbie, but I don’t miss a beat.
I drag her to me and this time when I set us in motion I don’t stop walking. She’s stiff in my arms, anger crackling off of her. A gate opens and several people walk out of it. Abbie catches the gate and we enter, turning right down a narrow concrete pathway and that’s when she stops walking and whirls on me. “You know how I taste? You know how I feel? What was that?”
I pull her to me, molding her close. “A cock fight that I won.”
“I don’t want to be used like that. Do you understand?”
“He needed to know that you have my protection.”
“I didn’t ask to be protected.”
“You need my protection.”
“You didn’t think so before.”
“I never said that.”
Her eyes narrow on me. “Because he threatened you and me. Right?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t hear a threat.”
“I did,” I say.
“I need to understand what you heard that I didn’t. Who is KM, Gabe?”
KM.
Kendall Murphy.
The woman that might just make Abbie hate me and I’m not ready for her to hate me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gabe
Who is KM?
That’s not a question I intend to answer now, or probably ever, and I don’t even allow it to hang in the air between me and Abbie. “Let’s go help your mother.”
“In other words, KM is not a conversation you’re willing to have with me, despite the fact that it was used as a weapon in a conversation about me.”
“It was used as a weapon to get me to back off. It didn’t work.”
“How bad is it for you, Gabe?”
“I’m not going anywhere, Abbie,” I say, tangling her fingers with mine, “except inside.” I soften my voice. “Leave it at that.”
“For now,” she concedes, her other hand pressing to my cheek, “but I am going to be naked in your bed again tonight. Expect me to ask again when you’re feeling a little more giving.”
“If you have this on your mind when you’re naked in my bed, I’m not doing a good enough job with my tongue.”
Her cheeks flush red and someone shouts out, “Abigail!”
“That would be my mother,” she explains, twisting around as I do the same only to find a pretty redhead that could be Abbie’s sister running toward us in faded jeans and a shirt with a Golden Retriever on the front.
“Abigail,” her mother says, stopping in front of us. “Thank God you’re here. We can’t find a place to move the animals. I don’t know what to do.” Her gaze catches on me. “Hi.”
“Mom, this is Gabe,” Abbie says. “Gabe, my mom, Shannon. Mom, Gabe is going to help us out.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
“Nice to meet you, too.” She looks at me. “He’s who?” She looks at me and presses her hand to her forehead, her gaze moving back to me. “Sorry. I’m rude.” Her hands go to her hips. “It’s been a rough day.”
“I’m dating your daughter,” I say, “and helping you both any way I can.”
“Oh,” she says, glancing at Abbie. “Well, this is new. He’s new, and your ex was just here.”
“I know,” Abbie says. “He and Gabe just went to war.”
“And who won?”
“I did,” I assure her, wrapping my arm around Abbie. “And I’ll continue to do so. Now. Tell me what you need.”
“A place that can house at least fifty dogs. I can’t lose them. I can’t.”
“And you won’t,” I promise.
“Gabe!”
I rotate to find my sister and her husband Reese headed this way, both in jeans, boots, and hoodies on as coats, and even with the hoodie, I can see my sister’s growing baby belly. The very idea of my baby sister being a mother does funny things to my chest. Babies are a tough topic that hits a little too close to the KM threat as it is, but right now, I’m focusing on Cat. We did so much to protect her that actually hurt her as a family, and now, there’s a baby to protect. We can’t fuck this one up, too. I won’t fuck this one up too.
Abbie and I maneuver to allow them to join us and
I do the introductions, making Shannon the focus. “We’re eager to help,” Cat says, holding up the boots in her hand for Abbie. “Your feet are rescued and I have to say, I wish I still looked as good as you in those clothes.” She touches her belly. “I’m fat.”
“You are not fat,” Abbie exclaims. “You’re a gorgeous blonde with a baby on the way.”
Cat snorts. “You and all that red hair and tiny little body saying that is priceless, but thank you.”
“You’re pregnant,” Reese announces firmly. “Stop calling our baby fat. Understood, wife?”
“Yes, husband,” she says, smiling and it’s a smile that goes to her eyes, and spreads love over her face. The kind of smile I want Abbie to give me, and holy fuck, where did that come from?
What the hell is this woman doing to me?
“Where do you want us?” Cat asks, looking at Shannon.
“Preferably helping to get us to another location,” Shannon says. “The animals are all safe right now, but they need dry ground. We have to move them to repair the property. So far I have nowhere to send them.”
“I have an idea on that,” I say. “Give me a few minutes to make some calls. Go take care of the animals.”
Shannon lights up her green eyes so like Abbie’s they’re stunning. “You really think you can help?”
I don’t hesitate. I want to come through for her and Abbie, and I will. “I know I can.”
“Then you’re a better man than the one before you.” She eyes Abbie. “He did this. You know that, right?”
“I think that’s a safe assumption.”
Cat gives me a curious look, and I respond with a returned look that says “I’ll explain later.” She nods and holds out her hands. “Put us to work. What do we do now?”
“Follow me,” Shannon says, and she, my sister, and Reese fade away as Abbie steps in front of me.
His Demand (Dirtier Duet Book 1) Page 8
