26. Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Gabe
“ W hatever you think you know, you don’t,” I say. “It’s a trick. Something they plotted to get you away from me.”
She whirls on me. “Your firm is suing me. How can they be a part of that?”
“That bastard,” I bite out. “My fucking father, who just exited the company. That’s how. He started the firm. He’s registered on hundreds of firm cases. I’ll handle it.”
“You’re too close to the man who’s coming at me.”
“No,” I say. “I’m dangerous to them, not you. They know that or they wouldn’t have pulled that stunt. And I guarantee you that wasn’t filed. Look at it closer. Let me look at it.”
“Gabe.” My name trembles from her lips.
“Don’t let them win, Abbie. That’s what you’re doing if you run right now.”
“I’m not running.”
“You run every other minute with me. And I get it. You don’t want to want me. Well, I don’t want to want you either but apparently, I don’t have a choice. This happened. We happened and it’s scaring a lot of people other than us.”
She inhales, cuts her stare, and then settles back into her seat. “You’re right. Your father is behind this. You told me he was involved with Jean Claude.” She looks at me. “I’m sorry.” She hands me the envelope.
I open it to find a lawsuit from one of the neighbors of the shelter who alleges she tried to unlawfully force him from his property to take it over. The note says the lawsuit is being filed Monday, and it’s on our letterhead with our firm on the documents. I stick it back inside the envelope. “That will never be filed. He doesn’t work for our firm any longer. This is all a game my father’s playing.” I hand her the envelope. “I’ll take care of him. That’s a promise.” I look at her. “And you don’t know me yet, but I don’t make promises I don’t keep, good or bad.” It’s out before I can stop it, that darker part of me I show only to my enemies and I don’t wallow in it. I never do. My cellphone rings as I put us in drive and set us in motion. I pull it from my pocket and find Grayson’s number, kicking myself for the fact that I didn’t actually check with him before we left, though I hadn’t seen him for a good long while either at that point. Actually, I didn’t say goodbye to my sister either. Fuck, what’s wrong with me?
“Grayson,” I greet, answering the line.
“We’re taking a chopper to the Hamptons. You two want to ride along?”
“We’re in,” I say. “When?”
“We’re there now,” he says. “We’ll wait on you.”
“We’re only about ten minutes away.” I disconnect. “We’re flying into the Hamptons with Grayson and Mia.”
“I thought they’d left? Oh God. Gabe, we didn’t tell your sister goodbye. She was so nice to help and we didn’t even say goodbye.”
We.
I like that word choice.
She twists around to face me, the tension over my father now missing between us. “Maybe we should swing back by the shelter,” she suggests. “I’ll call and find out where she is.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket. “I’ll call her.”
“Put her on speaker, will you?”
I dial Cat and she answers on the first ring. “I was about to call you,” she says as I hit the speaker button. “I got sick. We had to leave and I couldn’t find you. I’m so sorry, but we’re making a donation and will be back tomorrow if they need us.”
“Are you okay, Cat?” Abbie asks, worry in her voice.
“I am,” she says. “I’ve battled some sickness my entire pregnancy. It will pass. If you need me tomorrow, call, okay? Gabe, give her my number.”
“I will,” I confirm. “You sure you’re okay, sis?”
“Positive, brother love.”
I arch a brow. “Brother love?”
“I’m softening you up for Abbie.”
I laugh. “Abbie already thinks I’m soft.”
She gives me an incredulous look that says her mind is in places it shouldn’t be, or rather, I’d like it to be. I arch a brow at her. She blushes a pretty pink.
“Take care of the animals,” Cat says.
“Hear that, Abbie,” I tease. “Take care of the animal.”
“Not you,” Cat chides. “Your new puppy dog and don’t let him fool you into thinking that he is, Abbie.”
Cat knows me a little too well, and I make a note that I need to keep these two apart until I win some trust with Abbie. I don’t need Cat painting me into a corner that resembles Abbie’s ex, as much as I might actually resemble him.
“Call me, Abbie,” Cat orders.
“I will,” Abbie says. “Thank you, Cat.”
We disconnect and while I’d love to revel in the connection between her and my sister, my mind moves elsewhere. “Grayson’s well established in the Hamptons. He’s a force to be known there. Does your ex know him? Is this a problem we need to sidestep?”
She gives a delicate little snort. “Kenneth doesn’t align himself with people he sees as bigger or better than him and Grayson’s one of those people. That’s why you don’t see him in the Hamptons. He doesn’t want a chance to look bad and he wants people who want something from him, to have to chase him.” She glances over at me. “You said you own a place down there?”
“For a few months now,” I confirm. “I started going down there to deal with some of Grayson’s business, and it grew on me. I’m not afraid of being accessible.” My mind goes to every time I made sure a client, and a client’s enemy, knew how ready I was to take action. “In fact, I prefer people understand just how accessible I can be,” I add, “which is why my father pulling this crap makes no sense. He knows I don’t play these games.”
“My ex flies off the deep end,” she comments dryly. “He pushes and he gets angry. I’m sure he demanded you be dealt with and dealt with now.”
“Yeah, well, my father is no one’s little bitch.” I pull us into the driveway of the chopper service. “No matter who the little bitch is that pays the check.”
“You’re calling my ex a little bitch?”
“Yes. Problem?”
“No. He is a little bitch.”
I laugh with the awkward sound when she says those words.
“But what’s your point, aside from his obvious little bitch status?”
I’d laugh again if she hadn’t just sobered me so damn fast. What is my point? A problem is my point. “That he knew I’d shut this down. It doesn’t feel right. I’m missing something.” And I don’t like it , I think, parking the car and glancing back to find Dexter resting in the backseat. We need a crate to travel. We don’t have a crate.
“That document had to be served to me, not you,” Abbie says, pulling me back into the bigger problem “And had you not been with me, I’m embarrassed to admit that I wouldn’t have given you a chance to explain yourself. I wouldn’t have even told you about the document.”
“We’ll work on trust,” I say, eyeing her. “We are working on trust, but you would have figured it out when you calmed down and looked closer at the document. Even if it took you until you got an attorney, you would have figured it out. My father doesn’t do things that can be fixed.” I face forward, my hands on the steering wheel, chasing a bigger picture. What is my father really up to?
“I get it, you know,” Abbie says. “My father and I don’t get along at all. We don’t talk.”
“No,” I say, my jaw clenching. “No, you really don’t get it.” It comes out short, hard. Brutal almost.
“Sorry, Gabe. I didn’t mean to seem like I get it completely. Just that I know what it’s like to not like your father.” She reaches for the door and gets out. I don’t move for about three seconds. My father’s brutal. My father’s a killer. I don’t know how to explain that to her without her seeing a little too much of me in my answer. Fuck.
I climb out of the car and waste no time rounding the trunk to catch her before she enters the building, and I can’t talk to her. I grab her arm and pull her around to face me. “He’s—not someone I want you to understand. I’m glad you don’t. That’s what I should have said.”
“I crossed a line,” she says. “I assumed I knew more than I did and I just—”
“You didn’t cross a line. There are no lines with you, Abbie, and that’s new to me. I’m used to shutting people out.”
“Why? Why do you shut people out, Gabe?”
She hits ten nerves that collide and explode inside me. “Why do you, Abbie?”
“Life touches us and we respond to what it’s made us feel.” Her fingers touch my jaw. “Life touched you like it did me.”
But no one has touched me like she has. Her fingers fall away from my face. “Maybe one day you’ll trust me enough to show me the man beneath the smiles.”
I catch her hand. “Are you suggesting you’ll stay around to find out?”
“Maybe if I believed you’d really show me that man, I would. Right now, I don’t believe you will and I’m not willing to be as vulnerable as you make me to have this be one-sided.”
“I want to know the woman beneath all that red hair.”
“I’m not complicated. I was burned. You know how.”
“I don’t know what it did to you, though. I don’t know what he did to you.”
“But you know the root of all my evil.”
And she will never know the root of all mine. The door opens and Grayson calls out, “We’re ready to board!”
I kiss Abbie’s hand. “I want to know you, Abbie. The good, the bad, the everything.”
She pushes to her toes and kisses me. “If you did,” she says. “You'd be willing to show me the good, the bad, and the everything. But you’re not. So I'm not. I’m going to find out if they have a crate for Dexter.” And then she’s running toward the building and her ultimatum is clear. She wants the root of my evil. If I want her, I have to give her more than I want to give her. I turn back to the car and stare at Dexter, who is now at the window, another man trapped in a box. God, this dog was made for me but then, so was Abbie, and so I’ll get us beyond the man beneath the smile and keep her right here in the present.
Just me, Abbie, and a killer dog named Dexter.
Holy fuck.
I’m adopting this dog.
What is happening to my life?