Unexpected Love (Timid Souls Book 3)

by Melanie Munton

  Now, I was cursing myself for it.

  Because whatever was going on couldn’t have been good for anyone to have called me nine times. My fingers flew over the screen as I called back the number that had last dialed me. I could have called Vanessa first, but something nagged at me to call the unknown one.

  And a panic like I had never known in my life consumed every part of me the second I heard her scared little voice come over the line.

  “Daddy?” It was Penny. My Penny. And she sounded terrified.

  I shot straight out of bed, my body on instant alert.

  “Peanut? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  I heard her sniffling and I could tell she had been crying. I was out of bed and had my jeans halfway on and looking for my t-shirt before she spoke again. “Can you come get me?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Mommy left and I don’t like it here.”

  That stopped me cold.

  Vanessa left? What the fuck!

  “Where did Mommy go, sweetie?” I patiently asked. I could hear shuffling coming from the bed and figured my frantic movements around the room had woken Felicity up.

  “Sh-she said she had to go to work and that I should stay here since you didn’t answer your phone.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat, guilt and shame rising and making me sick to my stomach. Since you didn’t answer your phone.

  “Are you alone, Peanut?” Please don’t say that your mother left you there alone.

  More sniffling. “No, there’s a man here. She said he was her friend. He’s sleeping on the couch but it smells bad in there and I don’t want to go in there. I took his phone so I could call you.”

  All the blood in my body turned to ice.

  Vanessa had left her alone. With a strange man. The woman had taken off in the middle of the night, leaving her six-year-old daughter with a grown man, all by themselves.

  This is not happening.

  “Where are you, honey?” Fear was threatening to choke me, but I managed to get the words out, fought to maintain control and think clearly. My little girl needed me and I had stay focused on her.

  “I’m in the closet. In Mommy’s room.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and felt like punching something, anything. My daughter had been so scared that she felt it necessary to hide in the closet…and she’d been calling me—over and over again—because she wanted her daddy to come pick her up.

  And I hadn’t answered.

  I was grateful that I had made her memorize my cell phone number in case of emergencies. But teaching her that didn’t do a whole lot of good if I didn’t answer my fucking phone when she needed me.

  “Can you please come get me, Daddy?” she pleaded. That question—her voice—it almost killed me.

  “I’m on my way, Peanut. I’m coming right now.” I shoved my feet into my tennis shoes, not even sure if they were a matching pair or not, and flew down the stairs in search of my keys. “You just stay in the closet, okay? Don’t come out until you hear my voice outside the door.”

  She let out a soft sob that seriously made me want to unleash holy hell on my ex-wife. “Okay, Daddy. Hurry. Please.”

  “I will, honey. I’m coming.”

  I didn’t want to hang up, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to totally concentrate on driving if I heard her voice begging me to come get her in my ear. I just prayed that she would be okay in the few minutes that it took for me to drive over to Vanessa’s. Because that was all it would take, a few minutes. I would run as many red lights, break as many laws as I needed to in order to get to my girl.

  I was almost out the door when Felicity came running down behind me, her clothes thrown on, wrinkled and in disarray. Her eyes were wide and questioning. “What’s goin’ on? Is Penny okay?”

  She followed me out the front door and I didn’t even stop to question her coming with me. It might make Penny feel better to have her there. “Vanessa left Penny alone with some guy at the house. She locked herself inside the closet.”

  A few beats of silence passed while we got into the car and I sped off and then she asked, “But she’s okay…?”

  We both knew what she meant. “It sounded like it. Just scared. She said the guy was asleep on the couch.” My hand tightened on the steering wheel, my jaw so tight I could practically hear the bones creaking. “Fucking Vanessa. This is the last time something like this ever happens. Penny is never going over there again.”

  I meant it. If I had to fight the judge himself, Vanessa was never to be alone with our daughter again. She couldn’t be trusted with her safety.

  Felicity’s hand reached over and squeezed my thigh. “It’s goin’ to be okay. She’ll be fine.”

  Any other situation and her words would have comforted me, reassured me. But I wasn’t going to calm down until I had Penny safe and sound in my arms. My mind wanted to run through all the possible scenarios of what could have happened—how much worse this could have been—but I pushed those thoughts away. I couldn’t think about it.

  Ever since Penny was born, I vowed to never let any harm come to her, to always protect her. She had already been exposed to so much dysfunction, so much instability that I was worried it had affected her on a level I didn’t fully understand. Stuff like this could mess with kids’ heads for years down the road, and this was never supposed to happen to my daughter. She shouldn’t be exposed to shit like this. She shouldn’t have to know so much about the real world at such a young age.

  And no child should have to endure this. To have to hide in a closet because you’d been left alone with a stranger—by your own mother—afraid and confused about why she left you. I wanted to scream at Vanessa, cry for Penny, and beat the shit out of myself for allowing all of this to happen in the first place.

  The house was mostly dark when I pulled up, though I could see a few lights on upstairs. I sprinted to the door, had my spare key out and ready to use, but the door had been left unlocked. She hadn’t even locked the door before she left? What a bitch.

  I stomped through the front door and the first thing I saw was the loser that Penny had mentioned, passed out on the couch, the television screen lighting the darkened room. Sure enough, there were some empty beer cans on the coffee table in front of him and a bong on the floor. A fucking bong.

  Oh, fuck you, Vanessa.

  Since he hadn’t even woken up when we entered the house, I decided to just leave him there because getting to my Penny was way more important than beating the living piss out of the guy. My feet bounded up the stairs, skipping half of them, and went straight for Vanessa’s bedroom. The light was on and I could see the light from the closet peeking through the crack at the bottom. Penny didn’t like the dark. She had to have her nightlight turned on every single night before she went to sleep.

  I swallowed as I stared at the door, emotion wanting to burst from me but I held it all in. I approached slowly and spoke calmly. “Penny? It’s Daddy, Peanut. Are you in there? You can come out now.”

  The room was still and quiet for several seconds and then the door creaked open, centimeters at a time, before she poked her head through the small opening, her eyes worried and her lower lip quivering.

  “Daddy?” Her voice was still shaky, the sound cutting through me.

  I rushed forward to her—her arms outstretched, one hand gripping her stuffed horse—and lifted her, crushing her against my chest. I wasn’t sure if she started to cry again because she had been so scared or if it was because she could tell how upset I was and that scared her. The reason didn’t matter when I could feel her tears soaking my shirt.

  I pulled her back and my eyes ran over her from head to toe. “Are you okay, honey? You’re not hurt are you?”

  She shook her head as she wiped some of her tears away with the back of her hand. “No, I’m okay. I just want to go home.”

  You’ll never have to come back here again. I promise.

  I nodded and kissed her hair, pausing there for a minute to send up a prayer of
thanks that nothing worse had happened to her. I turned around to walk back out of the room as Felicity came through the doorway, a relieved expression on her face when she saw the two of us.

  “Hi, Felicity,” Penny said, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

  That smile reassured me. I think she’ll be okay.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Felicity said and came forward to kiss her on the cheek. “You okay?”

  Penny nodded and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I remembered Daddy’s phone number and I called him just like he said to,” she said proudly.

  I closed my eyes and kissed her again. “You did a good job, Peanut. A real good job.”

  We walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs, just wanting to get Penny out of the place she was now afraid of. I barely spared the idiot on the couch a parting glance because I knew it wouldn’t do any good to wake him up now and give him a piece of my mind. Plus, Penny didn’t need to be any more freaked out than she already was.

  Penny passed out in the backseat within a few minutes after I started driving. I was thankful that she’d had the frame of mind to stay awake long enough to call me and then wait until I got there. It was the middle of the night, though, and I knew that she was exhausted. Felicity and I didn’t exchange many words during the drive, a plethora of thoughts and feelings floating around in my head.

  Penny didn’t even bat an eyelash as I took her out of her booster seat, carried her upstairs, and tucked her into bed. I made sure to turn on her nightlight before I left the room, tossing one more glance back to her sleeping form, tightly clutching her stuffed horse, before I closed the door behind me. With the protective instincts consuming me right then, I was tempted to stay in there all night and watch her sleep, just to be there if she had any nightmares, ensuring that she was never afraid again.

  That she always knew she was safe with me.

  My mood was somber when I went back downstairs to find Felicity sitting on the living room couch, the tapping of her fingers on her knee ceasing as I entered the room. She stood up but didn’t approach me, probably something in my eyes warning her to keep her distance when I was this worked up.

  “I think that maybe we should take a break,” I told her.

  The words were like acid on my tongue. Every impulse within me wanted to take them back, but I didn’t know how else to handle this situation. This was the only thing I could think of that might allow me to get my thoughts in order.

  She sucked in a sharp breath and her forehead creased, as if she were in pain. I thought I saw her eyes gloss over before she turned her head, hiding her reaction from me.

  “But last night…” she trailed off, her voice trembling like Penny’s had earlier.

  Last night I told her I loved her.

  It had been the truth.

  “Last night I messed up,” I replied. When she cringed, I rushed to add, “Not with you but with Penny. She had been trying to get ahold of me and I had been too distracted to pay attention to my phone. That can’t happen again. When she needs me, I need to be there. No exceptions.”

  She nodded. “I know and I understand that. But this wasn’t your fault, Gabe. Vanessa was the one who left Penny alone—”

  “Yeah, and when she called for help, needed me to come get her, where was I?” I asked, my tone sharper than I meant for it to be. “I was in bed with you. My daughter hadn’t been at the forefront of my mind and when that happens, things like this occur.”

  She took a step forward, her voice turning pleading. “But that doesn’t mean we have to break up, though. You can be happy and still have Penny as your top priority.”

  I shook my head once. “I’ve been thinking too much about myself lately, about my own happiness. I’ve been selfish and that is my fault. My daughter is the most important thing in my life, and I can’t put my love life before her.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, sighing deeply. “It’s just a break, to get some distance,” I said. “Things have been a little hectic ever since we first moved into the house, and I think Penny and I need to establish our routine—get better acclimated to this new situation—before I consider adding someone else to our dynamic.”

  She swallowed, a tear tracking down her cheek. I wanted to pull her to me so I could kiss it away, relieve her sadness because I hated seeing that devastated look on her face. But Penny had to come first and this whole incident tonight made me feel like maybe I had slipped up somewhere along the way and had been more concerned about us as a whole rather than just her.

  If I had to sacrifice being with the love of my life in the best interests of my daughter, I would accept that. Reluctantly, but I would accept it.

  After several seconds of silence, Felicity shuddered out a breath and wiped her tears away, straightening her shoulders. She cleared her throat and said flatly, “Well, I want what’s best for Penny. You’re her father so if you say this is what you want for her then I can’t argue with it. I’ll go.”

  Dammit, I don’t want her to go.

  But she had to. Didn’t she?

  My conflicted emotions battled inside me as Felicity went upstairs to retrieve all of her things. I wanted to stop her, wanted to have something of hers to keep around, allowing her presence to linger even when she wasn’t here. But I knew that I had to let this happen, had to let her go. For now.

  She came back downstairs and it was obvious she didn’t want to meet my eyes. All I wanted to do was take her in my arms and kiss the hell out of her, tell her she was never leaving me and that I never wanted to let her go. You pretty much told her that last night. But I knew that if I kissed her, I definitely wouldn’t be able to let her walk out of my house.

  This was already hard enough without having to fall asleep with her taste all over my lips.

  “I, um,” she started to say as she swiped her fingers over her phone screen. “I took some pictures of Vanessa’s living room. The beer cans and the bong and everything. I thought that if you showed them to the judge, let him know what we walked into, it should cement your case for sole custody. I’ll send them to you.”

  I hadn’t even thought of doing that. That was what she had been doing downstairs while I’d been comforting Penny. I couldn’t believe how much I loved this woman—or the fact that I was pushing her away.

  Maybe this is a mistake.

  “If you ever need anything with Penny, you know you can call me.” She put her hand on the door handle but paused to look at me over her shoulder before she opened it. “I meant everything I said last night. I love you, Gabe. And I hope you change your mind because you and Penny have become the most important people in my life.”

  Then she was gone.

  And I was lost.

  ##

  Chapter Thirteen

  Felicity

  How had I gotten in so deep in just a short amount of time? Because one day I was crushing on Gabe, doing everything in my power to get him to notice me, and the next I was tucking his daughter into bed and telling him I loved him.

  And now I was dealing with the side effects of heartbreak: lack of motivation and interest, lack of energy, craving for every unhealthy food imaginable, and a pathetic need to hear his voice just one more time, see him one more time, smell something of his just one more time.

  I understood where Gabe had been coming from the night he said we needed a break. I knew he had been upset and scared and rightfully so. His daughter was put in a potentially dangerous situation and her own mother hadn’t even cared. I hadn’t been about to tell him his feelings were wrong or irrational. I wasn’t a parent but I could still comprehend the determination to do absolutely anything to protect your child.

  But he hadn’t even given us a chance.

  Things had gotten a little complicated and he just bailed.

  He told me he loved me just the night before and I knew that Penny meant everything to him. But for him to throw us away so quickly and thoughtlessly like that, did that mean that I meant nothing to
him? I wasn’t asking him to put me before his daughter—I would never do that—but all I wanted was for him to let me prove that I could be his partner. I could help and support him, unlike his ex-wife.

  I could love Penny just as fiercely as he did.

  I already do.

  Protecting Penny and doing what was best for her didn’t mean that the two of them had to be left alone. Besides, did he plan to be alone for the rest of his life? Did he never plan to re-marry, try to find a mother for Penny, at least a better one than she had? Was he never going to allow himself to love someone again?

  Because I understood his fears, but how was that any way to live?

  “Okay, we’re goin’ to yoga class,” Bea said authoritatively as she entered our dining room. “Let’s go.”

  I raised my head from the blueprints I was currently studying to assess her expression. I had an idea as to what the motivation was here, but I was still suspicious.

  “Yoga?” I asked. “You hate yoga.”

  She nodded, a disgusted tone in her voice when she replied, “Yeah, but you love the crap out of it. And if it will help get you back to normal, then I’ll do as many downward dogs or whatever the hell they are as it takes.”

  It had been two weeks since Gabe had shattered my heart to smithereens, and I had only recently found the will to stop moping around and instead try to take my mind off of the situation by throwing myself into work. The blueprints spread out on the table was for a new commercial development downtown and the owners had asked Paxton Designs to come up with a bid for them.

  “I don’t know, Bea. I haven’t been feelin’ so hot this mornin’…”

  She put her hand on top of the blueprints, sliding them aside and out of my reach. “And you’ll feel a whole lot better after some exercise. If you want to call yoga exercise.”

  I thought about it. Yoga did sound good.

  Ten minutes later, we were out the door in our yoga pants and tank tops, our mats tucked under our arms, and headed three blocks down to the yoga studio I frequented.