Blackstone Ranger Charmer - Alicia Montgomery Page 0,26
it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be the same Fred who drove with her for three days, guarding her belongings at every rest stop and crappy motel along the way, and kept her company through long stretches of highway, and listened to her cry and moan whenever she remembered all the awful things she had endured.
Temperance stewed for most of the morning, burning a batch of pies because she kept thinking of ways to somehow get Fred back without having to see Gabriel. Rosie hadn’t been too pissed, but she did have to stay an extra hour to make up for that mistake, and by that time, she only had an hour to get to the park, and she hadn’t even had time to eat lunch.
At five minutes before three, she found herself walking up the path toward the pond. It was located in the middle of Lennox park, and a gazebo sat in the middle connected to land via a wooden bridge. Her heart skipped a beat when she recognized Gabriel’s tall frame halfway across the bridge. Stop it, she admonished herself. You’re here to get Fred back.
As she approached him, his eyes went wide. “Temperance—”
“Where’s Fred?” she said, cutting him off. “I can’t believe you kidnapped him.”
“Technically, it’s stealing, since he’s not a kid,” he corrected.
“Whatever,” she fumed. “Well, I’m here. Where is he? I want him back.”
“I’ll give him back,” he began. “If we can talk.”
“Talk? About what?”
Gabriel paused. “Last night.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You walked out on our date without an explanation.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I know I don’t deserve anything from you, but at least tell me what I did wrong so I can apologize properly.”
Her chest seized up. She was expecting a fight, a sense of entitlement because he was paying for the date, or even some kind of gaslighting tactic to make it seem like she was imagining things, but not this. Gabriel seemed to surprise her at every turn, and she didn’t know what to do. “You didn’t do anything,” she conceded.
“Then why run away? Because of Vicky? What did she say to you?”
The other woman’s name on his lips made jealousy flare up in her. “Nothing. She didn’t have to say anything.” Taking a deep breath, she decided that Gabriel at the very least deserved honesty. “We’re a terrible match, don’t you see? You deserve to be with someone like her. S-someone beautiful and perfect. The way you’re beautiful and perfect.”
“Temperance.” His voice darkened as he took another step toward her, crowding her against the railing. “First of all, Vicky may look beautiful on the outside, but she’s rotten to the core.” He swallowed audibly. “And yes, we were in a relationship, but mostly because our families were, uh, close. Her father and my sister encouraged it, but they only saw one side of her. I, on the other hand, got to see how truly toxic she is. We’d only been dating a few weeks, but she would go on these jealous rages if I even looked at another girl, then make me go through hell to earn her forgiveness.
“Things would be fine after that, and then something would set her off again. It would be some cashier at the supermarket flirting with me or a bartender at a club handing me her number without me asking for it. She would see this and the cycle would begin again—her flying off the handle, me getting down on my knees pleading with her to forgive me. Then one day, I found out the truth—from one of my coworkers actually. Vicky had come to her, and offered her money to come onto me.”
“Wait—what?” she asked. “She was paying those women?”
His head hung down, then he looked up at her sheepishly. “Yeah. I don’t understand it either—I think she got off on seeing me begging for her forgiveness and looking like she was the ‘good girl’, and I was the playboy she was going to eventually reform. I broke it off with her right then and there.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not proud of what I did after—basically slept with a bunch of women, even tracked down those other girls she paid off and slept with them to get back at her. She’d already accused me of having sex with them, so why not? I was spiraling out of control, drinking and sleeping my way through town, mostly to piss off Vicky.”
His knuckles turned white as he