The Gigolo's Bride (The Necklace Chronicles) (2 page)

“You have a new boyfriend I don’t know
about?” Gwen stowed her bag in the bottom drawer and sat down in
her chair.

“Nope. Maybe it’s Tate, wanting to get back
together.” Tate was Ashleigh’s ex-boyfriend. They had split two
months earlier when she had found him in bed with her cousin.

There was no card inside the envelope.
Instead, she pulled out a delicate white-gold chain with a sapphire
gem the size of her thumb hanging from it.

“Oh, wow,” Ashleigh said under her breath as
she lifted the necklace up so the overhead lights glinted off the
stone. Sapphire was her birthstone, and she’d always been partial
to the color blue. Her first thought had been that it was a gift
from Tate, but she couldn’t remember ever telling him what her
favorite color was. Would he know that sapphire was her
birthstone?

The necklace was pulled from her fingers.
“Holy crap, this thing is gorgeous! What’s the card say?” Gwen
gushed.

Possessiveness flitted through Ashleigh
briefly as she gently retrieved the necklace from her friend.
“There wasn’t a card, so I don’t know who it’s from. Maybe
Tate.”

“You don’t sound so sure,” Gwen pointed
out.

“Well, he did give me earrings for
Valentine’s Day, but that was before we broke up. He hasn’t called
me in a few weeks. The last time he did, I shot him down pretty
good, so...” She didn’t finish her sentence. She decided to call
him when she got home and find out if he had sent her the flowers
and necklace.

She picked up the envelope to put the
necklace back inside, but then thought better of it. It was so
beautiful and perfect, and she wanted to wear it no matter who it
came from.

Gwen put the necklace on Ashleigh, and she
left the brightly colored reception area to look in the mirror in
the staff bathroom. The dark blue stone complimented her
peaches-and-cream skin, and she lifted her long auburn hair up and
piled it on her head so she could admire it.

Adrianna Lyttle, the owner of the daycare,
came out of one of the stalls and washed her hands. “Oh, that’s
lovely, Ashleigh. Where did you get it?”

“It was a gift from a...secret admirer,” she
said, enjoying the idea of a secret admirer more than her cheating
ex trying to get back in her good graces again.

“Ooh, mysterious! Any idea who it is?”
Adrianna tossed the paper towels in the bin and held open the
bathroom door.

“Nope. But he’s got great taste.” She smiled
at her boss and walked through the door. She left the flowers at
the front desk and went back to the three year-olds’ room where she
worked as a teacher. Even though she didn’t want to, she took off
the necklace and placed it in her purse in the cabinet. She didn’t
want to risk it getting broken by curious little hands. She had
received her associate’s degree in early childhood development the
year before, and after completing her certification work, she got a
full-time job at Lyttle Tots. During her summers in high school,
she nannied for a couple in her neighborhood with young children,
and that was when she knew she wanted to work with kids.

There were twelve three year-olds in the
class, and she and the other teacher, Hannah, had their hands full.
It was stressful at times, but Ashleigh had always been able to
handle stress and difficult situations with ease. Her mother said
she had been “born calm” and never freaked out no matter what.

When she was ten, she was in the front seat
of her grandfather’s town car, and they were driving home from the
grocery when he had a stroke and lost control of the car. Without a
thought, she grabbed the wheel and pushed his foot off the gas
pedal, steering the decelerating car over to the side of the street
where it ran up on a curb and knocked over a mailbox. The
homeowners rushed out and called the emergency squad, and her
grandfather recovered. She remembered someone telling her mother
that she wouldn’t have been able to react so fast and be so calm as
Ashleigh had been, but Ashleigh hadn't understood how freaking out
would have helped anything.

“Oh, no!” Hannah groaned, surveying the kids
as they woke up from their after-lunch naps. Already they were
active, several of the young boys deciding to try out some
wrestling moves and knocking over a small table. As the table
tipped, it jostled a shelf with paint jars that tipped
precariously. Ashleigh closed the distance quickly, stopping the
jars from tumbling to the ground and righting the table.

Turning her attention to the boys, who were
rolling together in a tangle of arms and legs, she separated them
and directed their attention to another, less hazardous
activity.

She caught herself thinking about the
necklace throughout the afternoon, even looking in her purse a few
times just to assure herself it was still there. Everyone wanted to
know who the jewelry and flowers had come from, and she found
herself the topic of idle gossip for most of the day.

It was the night of her book club, so she
grabbed a sandwich from the deli at the grocery and ate it on the
way. She had belonged to the book club for over a year and loved
the opportunity to talk to other women who loved to read. Growing
up, reading had been an important pastime for her. Her mother
hadn’t liked her watching television very much, so she’d happily
buried herself in books from the library. That love of reading had
stayed with her into adulthood.

The book club was held at the home of one of
the founding members, who owned a bookstore with her husband. The
monthly fee of twenty dollars for club membership provided the book
for the month and a few dollars towards the snacks and drinks.

“Ashleigh!” Kelly cried as she opened the
door to her home. After a quick hug, Ashleigh put her jacket on a
hook in the hall along with her purse and pulled out her copy of
this month’s read, “
A Time to Weep
”.

She was greeted warmly by the other seven
women in the group, who ranged from as young as Kelly’s niece, who
was nineteen, to as old as Mona, who was fifty-one. They were all
very different women, but their love of reading brought them
together.

Filling a small plate with a few pieces of
cubed cheese and some crackers, Ashleigh sat down on one of the
overstuffed sofas and put the plate in her lap. Taking a glass of
white wine from Kelly, she took a sip and waited for someone to
start things off.

The first hour of the get-together, the women
discussed the book at length, asking questions of each other and
exploring the serious nature of this particular story about child
abuse. Because she took care of children for a living, the thought
of someone hurting a child for any reason made her blood boil.

Ashleigh put her now-empty plate on the
coffee table and sat back, taking another sip of her wine. “This
book was so sad. To think that those parents profited off selling
their children like that, it’s just so sickening.”

Mona nodded, “Makes me wonder what this world
is coming to. Parents selling their sons and daughters for drug
money, caring only about themselves.” She shuddered, and Ashleigh
felt that same revulsion fill her. Her childhood hadn’t been
perfect, but it was leaps and bounds over what the children in the
story had suffered. She wanted to find those parents and wring
their necks. Putting themselves above their kids like that; putting
their own hopes and dreams over the welfare of their own flesh and
blood.

“Can we not read something so depressing this
next time around?” Colleen, a mother of two, said, putting the book
down and settling back in one of the wing chairs surrounding the
coffee table.

“I second that,” Ashleigh quipped.

Kelly stood up and brought a box of books
out. “I knew you’d want to go lighter this month, but before I show
you the new book, I wanted to tell you that Bob and I are going to
donate money to the abused children’s charity set up by the author.
If you want to give some money tonight, we’ll match it dollar for
dollar.”

“I’m in,” Ashleigh said quickly, and the
other women around her answered the same. Kelly smiled and opened
the box.

She passed out a thick paperback titled
“
The Rake and the Rose
.”

“An historical novel set in 1800s London,
about a duke who falls in love with a woman betrothed to another
man. It’s supposed to be lightly humorous and just a bit sexy.”
Kelly winked and the women laughed. Ashleigh liked historical
novels, and the premise sounded really cool.

They put the books aside and spent the next
hour chatting about what was going on in their lives. Although the
women kept in touch via email and phone calls during the month,
getting together in person was sweet and fun. She shared her news
about the necklace and flowers, and when asked, she extracted it
from her purse for everyone to see. Met with jealous grins and
threats to steal it away from her, she tucked it inside her new
book as she walked out the door, saying goodnight to her friends
until the next month.

When she walked through the front door of her
two-bedroom apartment, she kicked off her sensible heels and
wiggled her toes in the thick white carpeting, glad to be home.
Book club night was always a late one, but she loved it.

She pulled the necklace from the book and
laid it on the top of her cherry-wood dresser. She immediately
wanted to put it on, to feel the slight weight of it against her
skin, but she ignored the desire and left it alone. She loved the
necklace, but she didn’t want to risk forgetting about it and
accidentally falling asleep with it on.

She changed into a pair of lilac lounge pants
and a brushed cotton short-sleeved shirt, walked into the kitchen
and reached for her cell. Even though Tate’s number had long since
been erased from her contact list, she thumbed through the recent
calls until she found where he’d called her last and dialed his
number.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“Hi, Tate, it’s Ashleigh.”

There was a pause, and then he said brightly,
“Ashleigh! How are you?”

“Fine. I wanted to ask you if you sent me
something at work today?”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“I asked if you sent me something at work
today, Tate.”

Tate sounded suspicious. “No, I didn’t. Must
have been some other guy.”

“I guess so.” She felt stupid for calling
him. She hadn’t really thought he was sweet enough to send her
flowers and an expensive necklace, had she? He hadn’t been that
attentive when they’d been together.

“Sorry to bother you.”

“No, wait, Ashleigh, it’s not a problem.
Look, if you’re not busy, maybe I can come over and we can chat. I
miss you.”

She felt a bubble of anger well inside her.
“You didn’t miss me when you were having sex with my cousin behind
my back. Forget I called.” She hung up and dropped her phone on the
counter with a clatter. He called back immediately, but she sent
the call to voicemail and then turned the phone off.

She felt like a first-class idiot for
calling. Now he would call her constantly and beg her for just a
few minutes to talk, which she wouldn’t give. She’d met Tate at her
friend Suzanna’s birthday party in January. Tate and Suzanna’s
husband were close friends, and both worked for the same mortgage
company. They’d hopped into bed immediately - something that
Ashleigh had never done before - and the relationship had moved
fast and fizzled equally as fast. He was charming and a shameless
flirt. It hadn’t really been much of a surprise when she had taken
Tate to a family reunion and then found Tate and her cousin Brit in
bed together a few weeks later. She'd ended what little remained of
the relationship in April, and he’d been calling her off and on for
the last two months, asking her to give him another chance.

She poured a bowl of cereal for herself and
sat down at her laptop to check her email. Her mother had sent her
several messages over the last few weeks, asking Ashleigh to call
her, but she hadn’t. She’d sent standard “I’m busy” emails, but she
knew that eventually she would have to speak to her mom.

It had been bad enough when Brit and Tate had
betrayed her. But then her mother had sided with Tate and suggested
that Ashleigh should forgive him and take him back. She said that
everyone made mistakes, and it wasn’t very kind of Ashleigh to hold
his one indiscretion against him. Ashleigh and her mother had not
always seen eye to eye on things, and Ashleigh’s insistence that
she couldn’t just “get over” Tate’s cheating had been a thorn in
their relationship ever since.

Ashleigh knew that her mother’s concern came
from a loving place, even though it hadn’t felt like it at first.
When Ashleigh’s father had died of a heart attack when she was
seventeen, leaving her mother with a mountain of bills and not
enough insurance, she’d had to return to work after being a
stay-at-home mom for all of Ashleigh’s life. It had been hard for
her mother, and she’d worried ever since, insisting that Ashleigh
find a man who could provide for her. Her mother wanted to know
that Ashleigh was taken care of, and Tate, who came from money and
had a steady job, represented the fulfillment of that goal.
Unfortunately, Ashleigh didn’t trust him, and if she couldn’t trust
him, she couldn’t love him.

She glanced at the clock on the TV and saw
that it was too late to call her mother.
I’ll call her tomorrow,
after work
, she decided with a yawn, closing her laptop and
heading to bed.

As she passed by the necklace, she touched
it, the blue stone winking at her as if lit from within. It was an
oval cabochon, in the deepest, truest blue color she’d ever seen.
She slipped into bed and turned off the small lamp on her side
table as she settled under the covers. The light from the
streetlamp outside her window cast an amber glow over the bedroom.
Ashleigh couldn’t take her eyes off the necklace until exhaustion
tugged at them. She drifted off to sleep, the gorgeous necklace the
last thing on her mind.