Chapter 1
Her alarm squawks inelegantly, giving a warning that wallowing in self-pity gets a woman nowhere fast. Sighing, Minnie rises and goes about her usual routine, preparing for work. As she’s walking into the kitchen, she finds herself stopped dead by the fact that she’s not alone.
Minnie blinks at her guest in shock, a hint of flight in her breast, worrying about an unlocked front door. While she was expecting this guest, she wasn’t expecting this guest to arrive so soon today. “How did you get in here?”
“Pfft.” Ariel flaps her hand, overdone scarlet nails flashing in the morning light. She’s back to red hair again, it appears. Her lip filler is also back to looking shy of perfect. “Your hardass man let me in as he was dipping out on you. What a guy. You gave him a key?!”
Indignation makes Minnie’s tone sharp. “He wasn’t dipping out on me; he has to be at the worksite early most mornings. What was he thinking, letting you in?” Especially knowing how anxious Minnie is about doors and exits.
Shrugging, Ariel clicks her long nails on the coffee mug she has helped herself to.
The aroma of rich coffee fills the air, a welcome scent for Minnie.
As Minnie’s helping herself to what her sister made, Ariel says, “I drove into town early and was just pulling up as he was stepping out. When I told him I was your sister, he said, ‘ah, the little mermaid, I see it’ and he let me in.” Ariel frowns for a moment, twirling her dyed hair. “What do you think he meant by that?”
Making some oatmeal with honey and her ‘bougie’ oatmilk as Gage calls it, Minnie shrugs with a hint of sarcasm. “Could be the hair, but I’m just guessing. And the fact that he knows Mom named us both after Disney characters.”
“False. I’m named after a Disney character; you’re named after a little old lady who probably drinks tea all day and comments on the weather while knitting scarves. You’re named after an oldie who probably says oh, you’re giving me the vapors, whenever she gets excited. That’s you.”
Snorting, Minnie sits down and starts to eat. “I resent that.” The vapors? Hah. “Mom has always called me Minnie Mouse.”
“Okay, Minerrrva,” Ariel cackles teasingly.
Her gaze floats around the room as she cups her coffee mug elegantly.
It feels like an inspection, the way she seems to stare at a few things.
Minnie doesn’t like it in the slightest. What does she have to look at so skeptically? It’s not like much is different…
“So, you’re keeping him?” Ariel asks suddenly, staring at something across the room.
What, like Gage is some sort of object instead of a man?
“I’m not keeping anyone,” Minnie replies, embarrassed.
She doesn’t even know what they are, she and Gage.
It’s been a few months since they started this…
between them. All she knows is, he keeps coming back, and she wants him to.
She likes him and his brash attitude; his tough demeanor has grown on her.
His sense of humor and the way he smiles, how her stomach flutters when he looks at her with those intense hazel eyes.
The way he holds her hand makes her heart flip. “We just…have this thing. Going on.”
“Sure, sure.” Ariel is sniffing the bouquet of flowers that Gage brought two nights ago. Her next question makes worms wiggle into Minnie’s stomach. “What will Daddy think?”
Time comes to a screeching halt after those simple words are uttered.
Minnie looks up, vaguely horrified. The idea of her parents meeting Gage fills her with a cold dread that she can’t shake.
Somehow, she never imagined having to worry about him meeting them.
That never fit into the equation. They aren’t from the same…
backgrounds…and Minnie is well aware that her father is…
well, very protective of her. “I hadn’t thought that far.
I’ve just been…trying to live in the moment. For once.”
I don’t need the added stress of wondering what our Uptown Gold neighborhood parents are going to think. Their standards are beyond unreasonable.
“I mean, I’m proud of you for doing that.
For spreading your wings, not letting your anxiety rule you.
He’s a big step for you. But come on. Look around this place!
” Snorting in disbelief, Ariel gestures about the tasteful townhome, the one that Minnie realizes now shows signs of Gage in the smallest of ways.
His extra pair of work boots sit idle by the front door on the mat, and one of his rugged jackets is haphazardly thrown over the side of her pale couch.
There’s an extra toothbrush in her bathroom and a bar of that smells of wintergreen in her shower.
“Mouse. You’re boning this guy on the reg-”
Minnie flushes, hissing, “You don’t have to say it like that!” She’s a grown woman; she doesn’t need to be guilt-tripped about the one man she’s decided she really wants around and doesn’t mind having in her bed!
He’s sarcastic. He’s got dry humor. He makes her feel sexy, safe, and wanted-
Rolling her eyes, Ariel replies, “Dress it however you want, but we both know it’s true. He has his things-” she wiggles her scarlet fingernails at the empty beer bottles by the sink. “Popping up all over your place. If our parents visit, they’re going to notice.”
The answer seems simple. “I’ll just clean the house if they visit. They don’t drop by unannounced. You know how mother feels about polite manners.”
Shaking her head in disbelief, Ariel says, “So, you’re hiding him. That’s your answer? You’ll just pretend you don’t have someone important in your life, because you’re afraid of what our uptight parents are going to think of him. Mouse, that’s shitty of you. Real shitty.”
Guilt worms into her guts. Softly, she says, “I don’t want them to look down on him. You know how they are.”
Nodding solemnly, Ariel replies, “I know. But you might run into them in town. How are you going to explain your tattooed scoundrel?”
That’s a nightmare that better not happen. Swirling her spoon in her oatmeal, Minnie says, “He’s not a bad guy. I know he looks…rough around the edges. He was in prison-”
Ariel blanches a bit, eyelashes fluttering. “Prison?! Like, prison prison? For what?!”
That’s the thing. Minnie used to wonder about why he spent nearly a decade in the slammer, but ever since getting to know him, she hasn’t cared about prying into his past. She doesn’t want it to cloud what they have.
He’s not that man anymore. “I haven’t asked.
He offered to tell me, once. I told him I didn’t need to know. It wasn’t important to me.”
Groaning in dismay, Ariel pours herself another cup of coffee, dumping some oatmilk in it. “You’re unbelievable. You don’t need to know?! Well, I need to know. What if he’s a rapist? What if he killed someone?”
The idea of it makes her stomach curdle, but Minnie adamantly shakes her head. “I would know if he were something like that.”
Ariel mutters something to the note of, you’ve lost your marbles, Mouse under her breath. After pulling herself together, her sister asks sternly, “Does he treat you right?”
Minnie wouldn’t be with him if he didn’t. He’d be out the door in a breath if he dared bring toxicity to her life.
It’s the little things that warm her heart, like when Gage brings her a fresh tea from the local coffee shop during lunch hour, just for her.
He thinks tea is rather posh, but he knows she enjoys it, especially in her chilly library.
Or how he always asks to make sure what he’s doing isn’t making her nervous.
He wants her to be comfortable, and he understands her past. She’s not just The Abducted Girl with him.
She’s herself. Minnie nods solemnly. “Always.”
Frowning, Ariel says, “You better not be lying to me about that. Not that you’re much of a liar, Mouse. In fact, you are a terrible liar, so I suppose I have to take this all at face value.”
“You won’t tell Mom and Dad?”
“I won’t tell,” Ariel says after a moment of reluctance. “But they are going to find out. And you better not let them find out in a way that gives them an aneurysm. They are not going to like him on sight alone.”
Oh, Minnie is well aware. She’s guilty of being a judgmental sow herself, picked it up from growing up on Gold Street on the North side of town, where her parents still live.
When she first saw Gage in her library, she had looked at him as if he were in the wrong place.
She had thought the worst of him immediately.
But then, she met him.
Minnie frowns as she glances at her gothic romance guest bedroom. “Where are your things? I thought you were staying here?”
“Oh, girl. I’m not staying here if he is,” Ariel drawls knowingly, wiggling her finely done eyebrows. “No offense, but I do not want to be in a townhome with two horny lovebirds.”
Red suffuses Minnie’s face and she brushes her blonde hair behind her ear. “We are not-”
“Don’t deny it. I don’t even care, I just don’t need to listen to it.
I’ll head over to the ‘rents place. And that, sis, is going to make them wonder why I’m not staying with you.
But, lips zipped. I’ll say you had a cold.
The rest is on you to wordsmith away.” Those scarlet nails dance against the countertop.
Anxiety flutters about in her veins. All this time, Minnie never considered what might happen if her parents found out about her and Gage.
The darker truth is, a part of Minnie is convinced he won’t stay long enough for it to even matter.
She’s The Abducted Girl, after all. She’s a mess in her own mind. What man wants to stay with a broken woman who is still haunted by her past?
And worse, what man wants to be with a woman whose parents will look down on him?
Minnie rubs her eyes, pushing her glasses up briefly. What a mess this is.