Page 80 of Rome
“An anonymous tip?” Jagger sounded surprised, and then his eyes narrowed on me. I shot him a wink, and he ducked his head to hide a grin of his own. I’d been fucking pissed off that she’d harassed him at the bar, making a huge scene that embarrassed the shit out of him. So, I’d placed a call.
I’d warned her that I’d do it if she contacted me again. She’d contacted Jag instead. If she knew us better, she’d have known that we are one and the fucking same. What you do to one of us, you do to both of us.
King eyed us for a few seconds, then nodded knowingly. “Yep, that’s what he said. She must have pissed off the wrong person one too many times.”
Jagger and I flashed identical smirks, and King snorted a laugh before looking right at me. “Well, whoever it was did a good thing, getting her off the streets. If she was driving around high, she would have eventually hurt somebody.”
I just smiled as I bit into a piece of sausage and pepperoni pizza.
My mood, which had perked up just a little during lunch, took a nosedive when Bull approached me with a file folder as I was getting ready to leave.
“Here’s everything I could find on that Mowery guy for now. He’s clean, Rome. Financials look good. He makes good money, has been at his job for six years, no major debt aside from the house he bought last year. The worst thing I could find was a couple of old speeding tickets. Oh, and he flunked a Spanish class in college.”
Grant-Motherfucker-Mowery was a good man.Shit.Part of me had hoped that I’d find something I could use to convince Abby to dump his ass. Fuck it,everypart of me had hoped for that.
I heaved a sigh as Bull handed over the file. “Thanks, man. I appreciate you putting a rush on this for me.”
He just nodded but didn’t offer any platitudes for which I was fucking grateful. I didn’t need to hear “it will all work out”, or “it will be all right”. It wasn’t all right, and it wouldn’t be unless – by some damned miracle – Abby and I could work it all out.
Chapter 26
Abby
I spent the week trying not to second-guess my decision to go away with Grant. I liked spending time with Grant, and I was attracted to him. No, it wasn’t the same overwhelming feeling that Caleb had always inspired in me since the day I met him, but in the end, that hadn’t been enough to keep us together.
Besides, as Grant had pointed out, I had a right to move on.
I just couldn’t stop remembering the look on Caleb’s face when I told him I’d met someone, and that it might be getting serious. I couldn’t stop wondering why – if it bothered him that much – he didn’t try to stop me. Then I wondered what I would have said if he tried. It still didn’t change things. We just had too much baggage, and I didn’t think we could find a way to work around that.
Grant wanted to get an early start Saturday morning, and Amelia had offered to feed the kids breakfast and get them ready for Caleb to pick up at ten o’clock. I was cowardly enough to take her up on her offer. I didn’t want to see Caleb right before I left town with another man. I pumped my breastmilk again before I left and took the pump with me. I would need to pump and dump at least a few times while I was gone, otherwise my boobs would be ready to burst, and I’d fuck up my milk production.
There was a family cookout at the MC compound, and Caleb had planned for a couple of weeks to take the kids. He’d invited me, too, but I’d declined – even before Grant asked me to go away with him. I hadn’t set foot in the clubhouse since the day Paisley ran me out of there and I fucked up royally.
I still felt dirty and ashamed when I thought of that bartender. Yes, I was single, but that didn’t make it right. Anonymous back-room hookups…that’s just not who I am. Other people can do it, and more power to them, but I can’t.
I let Grant pick me up. He waited in the car for me, because I wasn’t anywhere near ready for him to meet the kids, especially in the house I’d shared with Caleb. I didn’t look too closely at the reason that the last part bothered me.
The conversation was stilted for the first hour or so of the drive, but gradually, I relaxed enough that it no longer felt awkward. He shared stories about his friend, and their escapades in college. By the time we pulled up to the hotel an hour later, I was laughing about some of the shit they’d done.
“I swear, I couldn’t get the green dye off my face for a week. I looked like Shrek.”
I chuckled at the indignation in his tone. “I think you may have deserved it. I mean, you did cut the threads in the seat of his pants, so they’d split when he was on a date. He’s lucky she agreed to a second date, let alone marrying him.”
“True,” he admitted ruefully.
The rest of the day went by quickly. We met up with some of his other college friends for lunch, then spent some time wandering through a popular indoor botanical garden. We headed to the hotel a little after four o’clock so we could get ready for the evening wedding.
As soon as the hotel room door closed behind us, all of my nervousness returned, along with the awkwardness between us. Grant did his best to put me at ease.
“We go at your pace, Abby,” he reminded me when he caught me eyeing the king-size bed that dominated the room. I gave him a small, relieved smile. He hugged me, then motioned me toward the bathroom to get ready.
I’d borrowed a dress from Amelia for the occasion since nothing I owned fit me properly anymore. Amelia was curvy, like me, and now that I’d toned up and lost some of my poochy belly, we wore the same size again. Luckily, the dress had a scooped neckline that draped in such a way that it hid the fact that my milk-filled boobs were all but spilling out of it.
The wedding ceremony was fascinating to me. Both the bride and the groom were first-generation Americans, of Indian descent. Grant had told me that in order to pacify both sets of parents, Sandeep and his bride had agreed to incorporate many aspects of traditional Hindu wedding rituals into the more modern Western ceremony they originally wanted. The result was beautiful, and part of me was grateful that it was so very different than my own wedding had been. It had been hard to sit through Jagger’s wedding to Molly, being bombarded with memories of mine and Caleb’s. I was glad I didn’t have to repeat the experience today.
The reception – held in the same hotel we were staying in – lasted until almost midnight. By the time we got upstairs to our room, my nerves spiked again. Grant flipped the security lock into place on the door as I slipped off my heels. His arms wrapped around my waist from behind and he pulled me back to rest against him. He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to my neck.
“Mmm, you always smell so good. What perfume are you wearing?”
