Mine to Keep (4 page)

Gabriel knew he was asking a lot of questions, but he wanted to get to know the woman inside. Amy was damaged by what her ex-husband had done to her. He knew she hadn’t talked with anyone about her life. From the moment he kicked the door down to this instant of her sitting with her legs in his lap, she’d been constantly fighting.

She probably didn’t know what a break was. She licked her lips, and he noticed she did that a lot when she wasn’t happy with her life.

“A week after Mia and Billy were born. He’d been out at work. For his dad I think. In the early days the twins wouldn’t sleep. I had to take what rest I could. My parents weren’t interested. A woman’s role was in the home, and she needed to take care of her own family. He came home. The twins were asleep, and I hadn’t done anything. There were dishes over the side. The clothes hadn’t been washed.”

She stopped in her explanation, and Gabriel knew she was gaining herself.

“His food wasn’t on the table. I hadn’t eaten. I came downstairs wrapped in a robe. I’d taken a shower, and he was looking round, inside the cupboards. I went to give him a hug, and with the back of his hand, he slapped me. I don’t want to go into more. Let’s just say after that day, I always had dinner on the table, the pots cleaned, and the washing done.”

“What about the chains on the fridge and cupboards?”

“I gained a lot of weight with the twins. He didn’t want to sleep in the bed with a fatty, and so he weighed me daily and left out rations for me to eat. If I didn’t use the required food in his dinner, he’d know.”

He wanted to go to the prison and kill the bastard. Gabriel cupped her face and forced her to look at him. “You’re a beautiful woman, and what that bastard did to you was wrong.”

“I should have got out. I should never have let it get that far. Mia and Billy deserve better than what they grew up in.”

“You’ve changed that now. You’ve got me, baby. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He promised himself that with every breath in his body, Amy Grant would never know a single moment of pain if he could help it.

“You’re the only person I can trust. Anna and Laura mean well, but they’ve got their own lives to live. Without you, I’ve got no one.”

He held her close, his feelings in turmoil inside him. The need to protect her and claim her as his own filled him to his very core.

There was no way he could love her. He’d given up on love many years ago. Staring past her head to the television, he couldn’t help but think about life with her. In his mind he saw coming home to her. The two children seated at the table, laughing over something Amy said, a pot of stew bubbling on the stove while she pulled bread out of the oven. There was once a time he craved a normal life with vanilla sex and a loving relationship. With the many years he’d spent in the big city solving murder cases, his heart had grown hard and his loving even harder. Gabriel was a dominant man. In the past he’d gotten through his life by using that control to bring women pleasure through the combination of dominance and pain. When it came to the woman in his arms, the feelings she evoked startled him. A part of him wanted to tie her up and spank her ass. The need to hear her screaming out his name in pleasure called to him more than a cold beer on a hot summer’s day, did. Another part of him wanted to lay her on his bed and make love to her for the rest of his life. The two parts of his soul were wrestling with each other. More often than not, he wanted to lay her down and love her body. He knew no other man would give her the kind of devotion that he could.

Amy deserved some gentle loving. Could he be the man for the job? He shouldn’t be thinking about her like this. He was over twenty years her senior. His best friend, William Johnson, owned an exclusive BDSM club in the city. When Gabriel found life to hard to bear, he had visited the club owned by William and had embraced being a dom. His life at the time had been so different from what it was now. Did he even need the dominant lifestyle? Closing his eyes, Gabriel forced down the need to order Amy to forget about her ex-husband. He wanted to be able to take the pain away from her. Usually with a simple instruction his requests were obeyed, but with Amy everything was different. He didn’t want to assert his control or make her do anything she didn’t want to. Gabriel wanted her to come to him and show him what she wanted. What had happened to his dominant part? When Tim had been disrespectful in the pizza place, Gabriel had wanted to make the man show his woman some respect.

Cape Falls would be horrified if they knew the real man behind their new Sheriff—but he was a man that was changing with the right woman in his life.

“Thank you for listening to me,” she said. He allowed her to move away from him because he needed to gain control of his arousal. Having her in his arms had brought his cock to full attention. He was pleased he’d picked a long shirt.

“I’m here whenever you need me. I’ll always be here.”

She nodded her head. “Thank you, Gabriel. You’ve been an angel. I’m going to head up and get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

He watched her leave the room, her generous ass swaying in the jeans she wore. Fucking hell, he wanted to tear the jeans from her body and kiss her full, rounded ass. He was going insane. Gabriel turned back to the television. He put on the football and went to grab himself another beer.

His mobile rang, and he answered it quickly, checking the stairs to make sure the noise hadn’t woken the kids up.

“Hello,” he whispered.

“You’re whispering now. Seriously, Gabriel, you’re starting to worry me,” William said on the other end.

Gabriel smiled. William was a true dominant, but he could moan like any woman. “Why are you calling me this late?”

“I’m bored, and I’m thinking of moving. You’re right. The city no longer holds any appeal to me.”

He heard some commotion, and Gabriel knew something bad had happened.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m being closed down. It would seem when politicians start visiting the local fuck scene, the need to fuck over a person’s livelihood is the ideal solution,” William said.

“So have you lost your license for owning a BDSM club and for selling alcohol?” Gabriel asked. He knew how much the club and bar meant to his friend.

“No. I was given a stern warning. I either close up the club and move, or they’ll ruin my reputation and get rid of everything.”

Gabriel had warned William that the force was hoping to close him down. It had only been a matter of time until they went through with it.

“What are you going to do?”

“That town you’ve moved to. Cape Falls. Do you think they’ll accept a club like mine?”

Gabriel burst out laughing. He could already see the outrage through the town if William brought such a club near their area. “Let me just fill you in. You know that girl Amy I was telling you about?” He waited for confirmation before continuing. “Well, she was abused by her husband, and the residents here believe she cheated on him by not standing by his side.”

“Shit. This is the girl you don’t have feelings for but talk about her every moment we talk on the phone?” Gabriel heard the teasing from his friend on the other end of the phone.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“How do the residents cope with your language?”

“They spend most of their time in shock, but I take care of them, so it all works in my favour.”

They both laughed and caught up. Gabriel had missed talking to his friend. William was the only man who understood him.

“I’m going to come and visit you in your little backwards town. Would that be all right?” William asked.

“It would certainly be entertaining. This place doesn’t own a tattoo parlour.”

“This could be fun. We could show CapeFalls what they’ve been missing.”

Gabriel chuckled. “You can stay here as long as you promise to leave Amy alone.”

“Are you claiming her?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. Claiming Amy would be a dream come true. The age gap between kept getting in the way. His passions were also extreme, and he knew she’d only experienced pain with Steven.

“She doesn’t know who I am. I don’t want to scare her off.” Gabriel didn’t want to tell his friend that his needs were slowly changing.

“Gabriel, you need to be open with her. I’ll come and visit and leave your little Amy to you.”

He shut his mobile phone and stared at the match playing on the screen. William visiting CapeFalls would be entertaining, but with him so close, it would only be a matter of time before Amy found out the truth about him. He shut off the television and made his way up the stairs. His mind was on his situation with Amy. The man he’d been for the last twenty years wouldn’t be able to change overnight. When a submissive put her whole trust in him, it helped a part of him. Through the control of her pleasure, he was able to find the man he once was. The city had done something to him. From the crime and the crap he’d witnessed, a part of him had been lost. Amy was different. After everything Amy had gone through, all the trust she put in him meant more to Gabriel than anything from some other random sub. Their trust was only limited to what he did to their bodies. Amy trusted him with so much more, and that could never be replaced in his heart.

Gabriel settled down into bed, staring at the ceiling for the longest time. He wanted Amy so badly. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten her. How could a woman who’d been physically abused be able to come to him?

Tears filled his eyes from the pain of his answer. There was no way Amy would ever be able to come to him. He would never hurt her. All he wanted to see in her eyes when he gazed at her was the beauty of her laughter.

He turned over and closed his eyes. No further answers came to him.

Amy spent the weekend trying to figure out who could look after her children before they went to school full time. They were due to start in late September. The schools ran a little differently in CapeFalls with their term times. The holiday break was during the summer instead of running through summer into autumn.

They couldn’t stay at the shop with her. She wasn’t the full time manager. On Monday morning Anna came to see her carrying a foil package. David and Paul followed behind her.

“We come bringing offerings of food and candy,” Anna said. Billy and Mia ran out from the back room and hurled themselves at David and Paul.

“Thanks for this,” Amy said. She hadn’t been able to make herself some food that day. Between the kids and the meeting she had with Debbie this afternoon, she was as tense as a tightly wrapped wire.

“We heard about the day-care problem.”

“Did you also hear about Debbie coming to talk to me?” Amy asked.

“I thought you owned this shop?” Anna said.

“No. I’ve been running it while Debbie deals with her sister’s wedding. I’ve heard she’s been getting complaints about me.” Amy hated it. She speared some chicken onto her fork and took a bite. The complaints about her were getting tiresome. She was a single mother trying to make ends meet. If she lost this job she wouldn’t be able to make the rent. The problems were piling up, not to mention the sneers had increased with the rumours of her being a slut on the rise. Spending the night with Gabriel had been a big mistake. No one would help her now.

“If she upsets you send her to me. I’ll give Debbie a bitch-slap. She needs one. How dare she judge anyone? Her husband ran off with the babysitter a few months back.”

“At least they were the clever ones. They got out of CapeFalls. I’m starting to wonder if I’m sane. I think I should take Mia and Billy and move away from here.”

Anna took her hand and gave her a squeeze. “Don’t let these people run you out of this town.”

“Why do we stay here, Anna?”

“Because leaving would be too easy. The people aside, CapeFalls is a beautiful place to live. Besides, I have a feeling this town is going to be turned upside down, and I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

Amy sat with her friend through lunch while the Steer brothers played with her kids. When it was time for them to go she saw Mia and Billy didn’t want to go back into her office. There was no room for them to play. They were nearly six years old, and they didn’t have enough time to play.

Debbie came in around two in the afternoon. From the look on the woman’s face, Amy knew she was about to be out of a job. By three she’d taken her few belongings and taken her children home. She knew Debbie hadn’t wanted to fire her, but with over two hundred complaints from the locals she’d had no choice. Over two hundred complaints. Amy didn’t serve two hundred clients in a day.

She shook her head and sat down with the paper at the table. Mia and Billy were colouring in the sitting room. She phoned through ten applications and came up with nothing. Life was about to get difficult.

****

Gabriel was filing away some paperwork when he heard the word about Amy. He couldn’t believe she’d been fired. The gossip stopped the moment he entered the main reception area. There were times he really hated living in CapeFalls. The moment his shift ended, he got in his truck and drove to her house. He knocked on her door and noticed her neighbours giving him funny looks. Amy answered, and he saw she’d been crying.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I heard.”

“From the sounds of everything the whole world knows.” She moved aside for him to enter.

“I want to help.” She put her finger to her lips and pointed in the sitting room. Mia and Billy were fast asleep on the couch.

“They haven’t been sleeping well. You can’t help. The only job I can get is over fifty miles away. I think it is time for me and my kids to move out of CapeFalls.”

“No.” He stared at the two children, hoping his raised voice hadn’t woken them. They were both fast asleep. Gabriel followed her down the short hall into her dining room. He saw the papers spread out with red circles and crosses all over.

“I’ve got no choice, Gabriel. I can’t live here with no job and a town that ridicules me. This has gone too far.”

Gabriel knew he couldn’t let her go. It was selfish of him, but he refused to live without her. CapeFalls was only his home because of Amy. She was the person who made him get up in a morning and work as hard as he did, which was ridiculous considering he’d only known her for a year and a half. His mind was working quickly, trying to find a reason for her to stay.