by Kris Bryant
Serena nodded. “I’ll be fine.” She placed her hand on Gabrielle’s and squeezed. Gabrielle squeezed back.
“See you in a bit, then.”
Gabrielle weaved her way through several small groups of people, stopping only long enough to say hello. She found the restroom, then worked her way over to the kitchen to find something non-alcoholic and very cold to drink. When she walked in, she nearly ran into Lawrence Anderson.
“Mr. Anderson, great party as always.” Gabrielle held her breath for a moment.
“Gabrielle. So glad you could make it. This is always my favorite party of the year.”
She smiled, knowing it was because he was celebrating making even more money. Their office was killing it, but the Kansas City office was experiencing growing pains. The kind all businesses wanted. “It’s been a very good year for the firm.”
“You’ve done some outstanding work. Your last project was quite impressive. I heard the client was a bit difficult, though.”
Gabrielle stifled the urge to wipe the rich, smug look off his face. She blinked several times before answering him. “Thank you, and she wasn’t too bad. She’s actually here today.”
“That’s great. Maybe we can do more projects for her. She’s the big lottery winner, isn’t she? That means she has money to spend.”
“Oh, I don’t know. This project is probably a one and done.” For the first time, Gabrielle was offended by what he said. Before she’d have joined in and even thought the same way, but meeting Serena had changed so much inside her. She refrained from standing up to him, though. She still needed her job, needed the money, and was desperate to make partner.
“Well, it will be good to see her again. Have a good time.”
He took his tumbler of scotch and left the kitchen. Gabrielle found a bottle of water and took a long pull followed by a deep breath. The last twenty-four hours had been pretty emotional. She had a few of her walls knocked down and wasn’t sure how to process. She wasn’t a crier. Hell, she wasn’t even an emotional person, something her mother often pointed out.
“Well, I’m sure happy to see a familiar face.”
Gabrielle turned to find Dani standing behind her, her hip pressed against the countertop, a glass of wine that had maybe one more sip left dangling from her hand.
“Dani. Hi. What are you doing here?”
She shrugged and took a few steps toward her. “Apparently our firm now represents yours. That means I’m going to see a lot of you.”
“Now we know a little bit more about each other.” Gabrielle watched as Dani moved closer. She looked around the room and found they were the only ones there. When Dani put her hands on the counter on either side of Gabrielle’s hips, she grew uncomfortable. “This shouldn’t happen here.” Gabrielle inwardly groaned when she said the word “here.” It was a hopeful word that didn’t need to be said. That shouldn’t have been said.
Dani quirked her eyebrow. “Well, this is a mansion and I’m pretty sure there are rooms galore. We can just find an empty one. From what I remember, it doesn’t take either of us long.” She ran her fingertip along Gabrielle’s jawbone and tapped her lips. “Oh, yes. I remember these sexy lips. All over my body.”
“What’s going on?”
Gabrielle didn’t have to look to know Serena had entered the kitchen.
Dani slowly turned. “Serena Evans. How delightful to see you,” she said.
“Ms. Grant?” Serena asked. Gabrielle sneaked a peek over Dani’s shoulder. Serena looked very upset. How did she know Dani?
“What brings you to the party?” Dani asked.
“Gabrielle is my—” She paused when Gabrielle didn’t answer. “She’s my architect. How do you know Gabrielle?”
Dani turned to face Gabrielle. “Oh, we’re old friends.” She didn’t look back at Serena but kept her focus on Gabrielle’s face. Gabrielle refused to give any kind of reaction. She was too stunned.
“You look like more than friends right now.”
“Sometimes we like to play at the gym. You know, work off steam and tension from our jobs.” Dani ran her fingertip along Gabrielle’s neck.
Gabrielle leaned back to let her know she wasn’t interested. She was in a sticky predicament. She didn’t want to be rude to Dani since she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but she didn’t want to upset Serena either. “A few things have changed.”
“Since last month?” Dani asked.
Serena gasped and Gabrielle shook her head. “I’m with Serena now.”
Dani turned to Serena. “I had no idea. Well, congratulations, then. You have yourself quite the woman.” She casually poured herself another glass of wine, smiled at both of them, and walked out of the room.
“What the hell, Gabrielle?”
Gabrielle walked to Serena and put her hands on Serena’s upper arms. “Look, she meant nothing to me at all. What happened was just two consenting adults blowing off steam.” The crushed look on Serena’s face made Gabrielle’s guilt pound inside her. The foreign ache in her heart migrated up to her head. This was not going to end well.
“When was the last time you blew off steam with her?” Serena used air quote marks to emphasize Gabrielle’s words.
“I don’t remember exactly.” That was true. She could have tried harder to remember, but deep down she knew their relationship lines crossed.
“Was it when we were seeing one another?”
Gabrielle could barely look Serena in the eye, but knew she had to come clean. “Sort of, but I stopped her. I told her I was seeing someone.”
“Was this before or after she fucked you?” Serena asked.
Gabrielle knew Serena was trying very hard to keep it together. “She didn’t fuck me. She sneaked into my shower at the gym, but I asked her to leave. Nothing really happened.”
Serena swallowed several times, blinked back tears, and balled her hands into fists. “Oh, nothing really happened, huh? Why did she feel really comfortable touching you at your boss’s house when anyone could see? You know, like your girlfriend?”
“Please keep your voice down.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“Let’s talk about this somewhere more private.”
Serena broke free from Gabrielle’s grasp. “Find your own way home.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
How Serena made it home was a mystery to her. She remembered getting into the Jeep and driving away, Gabrielle fading into a dot in her rearview mirror. But the drive from Denver to Vail was a blur. When she pulled into her driveway, she remembered that L.B. was with Chloe and Jackie. The one thing who loved her unconditionally, who would have made her feel better and curled up with her as she cried out her sorrows, wasn’t even there. She smacked the steering wheel in anger but decided she wasn’t in the best frame of mind to drive to pick him up.
Can you bring L.B. over? I’m home but I don’t think I should be driving.
She shot the text off to Chloe and slowly slipped out of the Jeep. Every step felt heavy, every breath she took seemed labored. It didn’t feel like this when Amber cheated on her. She’d felt betrayed before, but the pain wasn’t soul crushing. She answered her phone when it became obvious Chloe wasn’t going to stop calling. “Hi.”
“I’ll load up L.B. and we’ll be right over.”
“Thanks.”
She turned off her phone and sat numbly on the couch. She knew it was too good to be true. Or maybe she was just the kind of person that people cheated on. Like her mother. Fuck. When did she turn into her mother? That made her cry harder. She wiped her tears away when she heard a car door shut and the beep of the alarm turning off. She didn’t even remember setting the alarm. L.B. raced to her. He jumped on the couch and kissed her all over her face. It was hard not to smile at his happiness at seeing her and being home.
Chloe sat next to her. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
Serena took a deep breath. Her voice was shaky. “I’ve turned into
my mother.”
“First of all, no, that’s impossible. And secondly, what the hell happened?” She held Serena’s hand, giving it a supportive squeeze.
“So, we had this work party to go to, right?”
“Right.”
“And Gabrielle excused herself to go to the bathroom and get something else to drink. Well, she was gone forever, so I decided to find her. I felt weird just standing there by myself.”
“Okay.” Chloe nodded.
“I go into the kitchen and guess who’s there and is all over Gabrielle?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Amber?”
“No, but there’s a story there, too. Remind me to tell you about that.”
“Christ. Okay. Back to the kitchen. Who was all over Gabrielle?”
“My lawyer.”
Chloe blinked. “Which one?”
“Ms. Grant. The hot one. Apparently, they had a thing.”
“So?”
“While we were dating.” Serena’s voice caught in the stage right before breaking into sobs and getting louder out of anger. She felt the gentle squeeze of Chloe anchoring her.
“Like when you first started dating or like after you slept together or when?”
“I don’t know for sure, but Dani said something about last month.” Serena blew her nose.
“Let’s do the math. You kissed when? Or had sex when? Did you talk about being exclusive at all?”
“No, but if I have sex with someone, I sure as hell don’t want her to sleep with other people.”
“Take a deep breath,” Chloe said. She rubbed Serena’s back until her breathing returned to normal. “Chances are, it happened before you slept together. I just don’t see Gabrielle as the kind of woman who would do something so callous.”
“She admitted it, though. She said Dani joined her in the shower at the gym, but she kicked her out. She said nothing really happened. Not ‘nothing happened,’ but ‘nothing really happened.’ That plus two naked people in a shower equals cheating.”
“You owe it to yourself to hear her side of the story. And you owe it to you as well. A relationship isn’t easy. It takes a lot of effort. Not to change the subject, but why is her car here?”
“We took my Jeep to Denver because it’s supposed to rain later tonight and she knows I don’t like to ride in her matchbox death trap of a car when it rains.” Serena stroked L.B.’s ears and ran her hand over his wiry hair. He really relaxed her. “Thank you for bringing him home. I need him so much.” Serena hugged him until he grunted. They sat there in silence. She was happy it was just Chloe. She loved Jackie, but she had the kind of relationship with Chloe where silence spoke volumes. It was comforting. Neither one needed to talk. Chloe never pressed her beyond speaking her mind. She always gave her time to mull over whatever they talked about.
“Do you want me to fix dinner?”
The thought of food made Serena’s stomach lurch. She shook her head.
“How about some soup?”
Knowing that Chloe was probably hungry, Serena agreed to something simple. “Okay.”
Chloe got off the couch and dug around in the kitchen, yelling out possibilities.
“Just fix whatever you want. I’ll eat whatever.”
When lights turned into the driveway, Serena sat up. Very few people knew the code to her new gate. Faith, Chloe, Jackie, and Gabrielle. Faith was working, Chloe was in the kitchen, Jackie didn’t drive a minivan, so it had to be Gabrielle. L.B. raced to the door and happily barked. Serena looked at Chloe, who stood frozen in the kitchen doorway.
“I can leave if you want me to,” she said.
“No, Gabrielle won’t be here long.”
She waited for Gabrielle to get out of the car and approach the door. Their eyes met through the side window that was as tall as the door, but only a foot wide.
Gabrielle looked determined. “Let me in, Serena. We need to talk about this.”
Serena shook her head. “No.”
Gabrielle crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her weight shifted to one hip. “If you don’t want to talk about it right now, I can come back tomorrow when things cool down, but we are going to talk about it.”
“I don’t know that I want to talk about it then either.”
“I made a mistake, but it’s not what you think. I really wish you would listen to my side of the story,” Gabrielle said.
“There is nothing you can say that’s going to make me be okay with what you did.” Serena’s heart twitched in her chest. She was so used to just shutting down and walking away, but that way of life was getting old. She recognized that she was angry, but deep down she didn’t want to lose Gabrielle. Her ego was taking a stance and wouldn’t allow her to accept things so easily like her mother did, but her heart pulled her toward Gabrielle.
“I need my keys. Can I at least get them? They’re on the island in the kitchen.”
Chloe greeted Serena halfway through the living room with a key fob. “Is this it? I can give it to her if you want.”
Right now she wanted to be mad. “If you don’t mind.” She headed into the kitchen, not wanting to see the exchange between Chloe and Gabrielle. The three minutes she waited for Chloe to return felt like a lifetime. She stirred the soup that Chloe had put on the stove, opened and closed the refrigerator a dozen times, and gave L.B. more dog biscuits than she ever did in a single day. She opened the door to let him out into the backyard.
“She’s gone.”
Serena’s heart crashed inside her chest. She swallowed hard to extinguish the angry flames of betrayal. “Good. I’m glad.”
Chloe remained quiet and resumed her duty as chef. She placed two bowls of steaming potato soup on the table, and a plate of crackers and cheese that she quickly cut while the soup cooled. “If you can’t eat the soup, at least eat a few crackers. That’ll help your stomach.”
“So, did she say anything?”
“Yes, she did.”
Serena waited for Chloe to elaborate. “And? What did she say?” She pressed after it was apparent that Chloe wasn’t going to divulge the conversation.
“I really think you need to talk to her. I think you’re making a mistake.” She held her hands up when Serena started getting worked up again. “We know she made a mistake and she acknowledged it right away. She said it took place after the first date you had. She stopped it because she wanted something real with you.”
“She’s had several hours to come up with a lie.”
“I don’t think she was lying. She’s not that good a liar. She knows it wasn’t the ideal situation to be in, but she made a choice. She committed herself to you in that moment. I want you to listen to me closely right now. You know I love you, right?”
Serena put her spoon down and looked at Chloe. She knew something heavy was coming. Chloe didn’t bring up the word “love” lightly. Not with her. Not with the way she was raised. “I know you do.”
“How many relationships have you had in your life? Adult relationships? I’ve known you ten years. In that time, you dated two women more than a handful of times. I’m not being mean, but your experiences haven’t been the best.”
“I don’t think my history has anything to do with this.”
“See? Now that’s where you’re wrong. You have to communicate. I know you think Jackie and I are perfect, which we are, but we talk about everything. You had one date. She kissed your cheek. It didn’t solidify a relationship. It just meant you both were interested.”
“But why did she even try to hook up with her? That’s what I don’t understand.”
Chloe reached out and held Serena’s hand. “She didn’t. You would know that if you talked to her, but you ran away. And she tried again here.”
“I just can’t deal with my girlfriend and my lawyer hooking up.”
Chloe threw up her hands. “Then pick one and get rid of the other, but make damn sure you make the right choice.”
* * *
The framework was
done and Jake Trust’s workers were working on finishing the first floor. The second-story skeleton frame was too open for Serena to visualize it. She didn’t understand how Gabrielle could see past the Tinker Toy outline. She sighed. Gabrielle. It had been a month since she talked to her. Gabrielle had called and texted several times, but Serena ignored her every time. She kept her texts to Piper vague even though Piper tried hard to open up a line of communication. She avoided their fall party because she knew Gabrielle would be there. Not only had she lost Gabrielle, she’d lost all of the wonderful people she met through her.
“I love how fast this is moving.” Faith ran her hand along one of the large wooden pillars on the inside of the Pet Posh Inn.
“Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.” Serena snapped back to reality and looked at the progress.
“Poor L.B. Stuck in the Jeep. He wants to be a part of this so bad,” Faith said.
Serena dug her hands deeper into her pockets and looked back at the Jeep. L.B. was staring at them, his nose pressed flat against the window. She loved him so much.
Fall was here and even though they were wearing thick jackets, the morning air whipped around the mountain, taking her breath away. She turned her head from the wind.
“I want to wait until they’re done with construction before I let him loose. Too many nails, and I don’t want him to step on anything that will hurt him.”
“He’ll know this place as home away from home soon. When is opening day again?”
Serena shrugged. “May first, but Gabrielle warned me that it could be pushed out because of weather.”
“It looks like they could get everything done before Christmas.”
“Jake Trust told me they would wait to put the fencing up last, and they can’t do that until the ground thaws.”
“That sucks. I was hoping to decorate for the holidays,” Faith said. She walked to one of the window frames and looked out. “And why don’t they have the windows in? It would be a lot warmer for the workers.”
“That’s the last thing they’ll do in case they break them. I’m sure they also do it so people don’t come up here to vandalize the building.” Even though there was a chain link fence and plenty of cameras around the construction, Serena had been warned that people still did dumb things.