Baby Love Lite

by ANDREA SMITH

  “Trey, just please humor me on this one?”

  “Hey, you’ve got it, babe. Just be prepared to be bored and perhaps disappointed. I think you’re putting too much stock on the fact that some judge has a name similar to yours only backwards.”

  “I’ll take the risk,” I assured him.

  “What about Preston? We’ll be there overnight.”

  “I’ll have Gina come stay here with her and then Jean can watch her while Gina works.”

  “Well, you better get that lined up because we leave Tuesday on an afternoon flight. I’ll have to make your reservation tonight.”

  “Thank you," I smiled up at him. “I love you.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Gina and I were chatting while we stocked the upstairs bar and hung the clean glassware. I'd shared with her Trey’s revelation as to what Libby had done Friday night. I also let her know how I got him to spill the beans.

  “No shit? He probably hates me more than ever now.”

  “No, I cleared that little detail up with him and in fact told him that you hadn't seen her do that but had merely commented that she seemed very flirtatious with him but that he didn’t reciprocate.”

  “Is he going to tell Tristan?”

  “I don’t think so. He feels it might cause a major rift between him and Tristan.”

  “I can’t believe how many skanks there are out there can you?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Most of them don’t give it a second thought about wanting to take your man, either.”

  “You’re starting to think a lot like me, girlfriend.”

  We went back downstairs and finished up at the main bar when we heard someone knocking on the front entrance doors. It was Tristan.

  Shit! He has the skank with him.

  Gina let them in and they walked across the dance floor to come and sit where I was on a chair dusting off one of the hanging light fixtures. Libby had tight black leather jeans on with a short cropped, black leather jacket and black leather boots. All she needed was a black leather riding crop to accent her outfit to perfection I thought. Tristan introduced Libby to Gina.

  “We met Friday night, Tristan, remember?” she said. “I swear, girls, since he's turned forty his memory seems to be slipping. Thank God nothing else has or I just might have to trade him in for a younger model.”

  She was perched on a bar stool and playfully pulled him toward her for a kiss. Gina and I could read each other’s minds. Right now we both wanted to puke.

  Tristan asked me to give him the grand tour. Libby said she'd stay at the bar and chit-chat with Gina. I saw Gina roll her eyes as she turned back to the bar to answer her phone.

  I showed Tristan around the building. He'd no idea that the place had such a well-equipped working kitchen for not having a dinner menu. I explained the kind of crowd the Sanctuary got were more of the after 10:00 p.m. type that weren’t interested in eating dinner.

  He checked out the wine lists, drink menus and the Happy Hour menu that was in place on Monday through Friday which did discount beer, mixed drinks, and appetizers. He asked me if Gina would have any issue with his meeting with the accountant to go over the books. It sounded like he was serious about buying in.

  “Tristan,” I asked, “are you interested in a partial share of this place or controlling interest?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Trey seemed to think that you wanted to buy me out, which in all honesty, I'd have no problem with. It's already taking me away from Trey and the baby too much. Gina on the other hand has pretty strong convictions about how she wants to run this place. She’s already talked about changing the name of it.”

  “Really? What does she want to call it?”

  “The Shady Lady,” I replied, smiling.

  Tristan laughed appreciatively displaying his dimple. "I can see the appeal of that. She’s a pretty feisty little thing, isn’t she?”

  “You've no idea,” I said.

  God, he'd be so perfect for Gina!

  “How about this, I'll talk one-on-one with Gina and let her know my interest in buying your share out to see if she’s even amenable in partnering up with me. If so, I'll request her permission to look at the books in advance. I'll make suggestions to Gina. We'll see fairly quickly if we butt heads or not.”

  “I can guarantee that you and Gina will butt heads. You'll never be bored, so enjoy it.”

  We returned downstairs where Tristan talked briefly to Gina. They arranged to meet at her accountant’s office the following day. Tristan delayed his return for another day in order to do this. I figured he was as good as her partner now, which would free me back up and make Trey happy as well. Libby was extremely quiet upon our return. She was sipping water and filing her nails, pretty much ignoring the rest of us. Gina called her accountant and a meeting was set for 10:00 a.m. the following morning. She gave Tristan the name and address of her accountant and they left. Gina locked the doors behind them. When she returned to the bar she had a shit-eating grin going big time.

  “What did you do?” I asked her.

  “A video's worth ten thousand words. Why don’t I show you?”

  She grabbed her iPhone off of the register and pressed some buttons to bring up the video. She placed it on the bar for me to watch. The video showed Libby sitting on the bar stool she'd just vacated. I could hear Gina’s voice behind the bar.

  “You know, Libby, I was working this end of the bar last Friday night when you, Tristan and Trey were sitting right over at that booth there.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Libby answered.

  “Take a look over there at the booth you were sitting at and look up at the ceiling. What do you see?”

  “Looks like track lighting to me,” she said.

  “You’re only partially correct on that,” Gina said.

  “I don’t understand-”

  “Some of its lighting for spotlighting the dance floor, but there are also closed-circuit cameras camouflaged in with the lighting as well. We have to do that to minimize theft and for crowd control on busy nights here. The video is streamed in so that it can be watched live from my office in the back and it's also backed up on my computer.”

  I could see Libby get nervous as Gina continued.

  “I saw what you did to Trey that night when Tristan went to the restroom. I saw it on the playback video that's backed up on my PC. With some technical enhancement, I was even able to pick up the audio portion where you said you wanted to do both him and Tristan. That's what you said after you tried to massage his Johnson and he pushed your hand away.”

  “What's it to you, Gina?” she asked haughtily.

  “Well, first of all, Tylar is my best friend; you hit on her husband.”

  “So, what? He didn’t take the bait, did he? That was his loss.”

  “Secondly, hitting on your fiancé’s brother is usually not a very smart thing to do. It causes a family rift.”

  “What do I care about a family rift? There's no way I’m marrying dude, anyhow. He's turning out to be way too white-bread for me. I need more spice in my life; mix it up a little, you know?”

  Gina told her she was pathetic.

  “How so? Because I want to fuck Trey? Hey, I was fully prepared to let Tristan watch while his younger brother fucked me.”

  Libby continued on as if she'd choreographed the scenario in her mind.

  “Tristan would've been given the opportunity of punishing me for it later. Then we would've had some good make-up sex as a threesome so there would've been no hard feelings amongst the brothers. We all would've been satisfied.”

  “You’re kind of a twisted bitch, aren’t you?” Gina asked.

  “Hey, don’t judge me, honey. I just happen to know what I like and I go for it. Maybe your friend's happy in her little married world with a snotty-nosed kid clinging to her tits all day; maybe she enjoys wiping up her baby’s shitty little ass, but that's not the life I want.”

  “What about what Tristan wan
ts?”

  “Like I said, there won’t be a marriage. Do you know how many of these things I’ve collected over the years?” Libby held her hand up and splayed her fingers for the video displaying the beautiful diamond engagement ring Tristan had given her.

  “No,” Gina answered, the disgust apparent in her voice, “How many?”

  “Six,” she said proudly. “I’ve kept them all.”

  The video stopped at that point as it had reached capacity. It was more than enough to show Tristan what she was about.

  “Gina, you're brilliant. Let’s go to your office I want to watch that downloaded clip of her trying to grope Trey’s crotch last Friday.”

  “There isn’t any video. I lied about all of that just to make her think I could present it to Tristan if I so desired. You can tell by my phone video she doesn’t give a shit whether I do or not.”

  “You need to send that video to my phone so I can show it to Trey when he gets home. I’ll let him decide how he wants to handle it with Tristan.”

  “Sure enough; it’s on its way now.”

  We finished up at the bar and then locked up. Gina said she'd be at the apartment the following day by one o’clock to stay with Preston. Our flight left at 3:30 p.m. She didn’t work again until Wednesday afternoon so Jean would be coming over to stay with Preston until Trey and I got home Wednesday night.

  I told Gina about Maggie being transferred to the jail in Atlanta sometime today.

  “I know what you’re going to say before you say it, Ty. Preston will be fine. I won’t take her outside. I won’t open the door for anyone except Jean. Don’t worry, okay?”

  “I trust you with her completely; but you know that I still worry after what I’ve been through.”

  “I know; but I don't see her getting bonded out.”

  “Trey doesn’t think so, either,” I replied. We said our good-byes and I headed home.

  Jean had cleaned the apartment while she was there today. She told me Preston had been napping and should be up before too long. I let Jean know that Maggie was returning to Atlanta where she faced multiple criminal charges. She assured me that she'd stay on high alert, but like Gina, she didn’t think a bond would be set for her.

  I'd put some chicken in the refrigerator to thaw for dinner so I went ahead and preheated the oven and washed my hands to start the preparations. I'd just put the chicken in a baking dish in the oven when I heard Preston crying.

  She'd pulled herself into a standing position against the crib rails and quieted down when I went into her room. She raised her arms up for me to take her.

  “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

  We hadn’t had any of our girl time lately. I missed it and guessed that she had too. I got her situated and then rocked her slowly back and forth enjoying our closeness again. Once finished, I took her out to the living room and put her in the playpen with her new activity center. She was content to entertain herself which made life a lot easier for us.

  I went back to the kitchen to check on dinner. I glanced at the calendar. Next week was Thanksgiving. I couldn’t believe how quickly the year had passed. Trey and I'd decided to stay in Atlanta for Thanksgiving.

  Trey got in a little after 5:30 p.m. which was unusually early for him. “Something smells good,” he said coming into the kitchen to give me a kiss.

  “You’re home early.”

  “Yep, I couldn’t wait to see you, baby.”

  “Liar,” I laughed.

  “No, really. I wanted to spend time with my two best girls since I didn’t get to see one of them very much over the weekend. I brought some work home with me but that will be for later after you fall into an exhausted sleep.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to be exhausted when I go to bed?”

  “Cause I plan to wear you out, baby.”

  Trey could still make my stomach do flip-flops. He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and went out to play with Preston while I finished making dinner.

  After dinner, Trey offered to clean up the kitchen while I bathed Preston. He came into the bathroom as I was lifting her out of the tub. He wrapped a towel around her and said he would get her dressed for bed if I wanted to shower.

  Afterwards, dressed in my pajamas I went to check on Trey and Preston. Trey was in the rocker in Preston’s room reading her a storybook. She was totally mesmerized by the story or maybe just by him. He finished the story and gave her a kiss handing her off to me. I got her tucked into bed, kissing her good-night.

  Trey was in the living room preparing for Monday Night Football. It was the pre-game show. I needed to tell him about Tristan.

  “Trey, I need to talk to you about Tristan.”

  He muted the television and I took a place next to him on the couch.

  “Oh yeah, baby, I’m sorry. I meant to ask you at dinner how it went with him at the club today.”

  “That part went fine. I’m pretty certain he's going to buy my share of the club. He and Gina are meeting with the accountant tomorrow morning to review the books.”

  “If anyone has a great sense of business it’s Tristan,” Trey replied. “I’m glad that it's going well, but like I said this is your decision. I’m not pressuring you one way or another.”

  “Trey, this is something else altogether. I want you to watch something that happened today okay?”

  I pulled up the video that Gina had sent to my iPhone of the conversation she'd had with Libby. I'd saved it to my videos. I hit the play button and handed it to Trey to watch. I watched as Trey’s expression went from impassive to disgust and then thoroughly pissed when Libby made the comments about me and the baby.

  “That fucking bitch,” he hissed, raking his hand through his hair. “Did Gina show you the video from the closed circuit camera so you could see that I pushed her hand away?”

  “No. You see, there's no closed circuit camera. Gina made that up to draw the truth out of Libby for this video.”

  “Pretty clever of Gina,” he replied.

  “So, what now?” I asked him.

  “Now it’s time to let Tristan in on the charade. If he gets mad at me for being the messenger, then so be it. I can’t know what I know right now, and do nothing.”

  “I agree but how are you going to get to talk to him without Libby being around?”

  “A video's worth a thousand words.”

  Trey took my IPhone and texted Tristan letting him know that it was him and not me and that a video was coming over that was for his eyes and ears only. Tristan texted back to let it roll.

  "Here goes.” Trey forwarded the video to his brother. I scooted over to be closer to Trey on the couch.

  “Will Tristan be alright?”

  “He'll be hurt; he’ll get over it.”

  “What kind of a person is Libby?”

  “I think she’s a very kinky girl, Tylar. The kind you don’t take home to Mama.”

  “Trey, that’s not funny. She's likely broken your brother’s heart!”

  “I really don’t think so.”

  “How can you say that? He got engaged to her.”

  “Yeah, after knowing her for what? Two minutes? That’s just not like him at all. I think Tristan had a little bit of a mid-life crisis going on and did one of those stupid things guys do when that happens. Luckily, it's easily remedied and put behind him. He'll be fine. “

  "You better not do anything like that when yours hits,” I warned him.

  “Not a chance, baby. Come on, let’s go play.”

  CHAPTER 26

  I was packed and ready to go waiting on Gina and Trey to arrive at the apartment. Trey had some things to finish up at his office and planned to be home around noon. Gina said she'd be over right after she and Tristan had finished up at the accountant’s this morning. It was 1:30 p.m. and neither one of them had crossed the threshold yet.

  Preston was in her playpen looking adorable in her red bib overalls and her red and white striped long sleeved polo shirt. I'd put her
hair into two tiny pigtails with little red bows. Her other bottom central incisor was breaking through. She was chewing anything rubbery like crazy. At the moment she was slobbering on her rubber ducky bathtub toy. She'd refused to part with after her bath this morning. It was squeaking like crazy as she ravaged it with her emerging teeth.

  Finally, I heard commotion at the front door. Trey was first in with Gina tagging closely behind. They appeared to be arguing.

  Imagine that. . .

  “All I’m saying is you might've wanted to pick a better time and more compassionate method of dropping that little bomb on Tristan other than forwarding that video, which by the way, he clearly knew I'd produced.”

  “Gina, I'm not justifying my actions to you. He needed to know and now he does. Why are you upset?”

  “Jesus Christ, Trey, why the hell do you think? Your brother and I may end up as business partners. The night before we meet with the club’s accountant, you drop that video bombshell on him; the same video that I was responsible for recording. Talk about wanting to kill the messenger!”

  “He needed to know. You must agree or you wouldn’t have concocted that little entrapment scheme of yours to get Libby on video admitting that she’s a fucking freak!”

  “Whoa, okay you two,” I interrupted, “first of all, keep it down. You’re upsetting Preston.” They both glanced over at Preston in her playpen chewing away on her rubber ducky as if she was oblivious to the whole thing. She must get upset only if it's Trey and me arguing.

  “Okay,” I continued, “then you're upsetting me. What's going on? Is Tristan backing out of the deal?”

  “Well, no, he didn’t say that,” Gina replied. “He just showed up thirty minutes late at the accountants looking all bleary-eyed and unkempt. He snarled at me about my prowess at shadiness and referred to me as “the Shady Lady,’ how coincidental is that?”

  Oh shit!

  “Oh, Gina, I’m sorry. I told him you were considering changing the name of the club to The Shady Lady.”

  “That’s certainly fitting,” Trey chimed in. “I’m going in to pack. This conversation's over.”