Trusting Gibson (Last Score Book 2) (9 page)

“Not true, darlin’, it’s been every day this week–well all the days with a ‘Y’ in it anyway, I believe.”

Licking his lips, Gibson’s heated gaze dropped to my mouth and he gently pressed a kiss against my closed lips. “Damn girl, you can’t look at me like that and not make me want to bury my dick deep and fuck your insides senseless.”

If Gibson Barclay had said that to me five years ago, I’d have had a comeback to cut that particular train of thought dead, but the guy I was curled up with was a different animal altogether. Hot, sensual, charismatic: and dare I say—romantic…but in an alpha-male kinda way.

“You’re warming to me, huh?”

Gibson had a glint of mischief in his wanton eyes and the hint of a smile at the edge of his mouth, biting back the amusement of his playful little tease.

“What the hell gave you that idea?” Wagging his finger around my face he said, “Maybe that just-fucked-glow thing you’ve got going on here–or it’s the fact that your pussy just clenched tightly when I said that to you.”

How he anticipated the effect his words would have on me I would never know, but he was exactly right and I was trying to think of a cool comeback when he spoke again.

“Don’t. I know what you’re thinking. You’re trying to outsmart me with a bitchy comment. Save your thoughts. Whatever you come up with, I’ll only counter with something equally as smart and that’ll set your brain going again, but you’ll never outsmart my mind darlin’. ADHD. My brain is already two paces ahead,

“Really? ADHD?”

“Yeah, multiple fucked up thoughts of irrelevant shit coming at me all the time while I try to focus on what I have to do. Speaking of which, we need to be shaking our asses, darlin’. It’s a quarter to four and I need to get to the stadium by six.”

I began to move away and Gibson pulled me back into him, wrapped his arm around my waist, then rolled me over to face the other direction in the bed with him, spooning close to me.

Hugging me and giving little squeezes as he spoke, Gibson’s voice sounded husky. “Jesus, Chloe. I just want to lie here with you forever. Stupid of me to bring you into my bed and think I could just get up after a couple of hours and leave.”

“Wait. You’re leaving me here?”

Gibson exhaled heavily, and kissed the back of my head. “Yeah, just for the gig. I’ll be home by one, darlin’.

“You don’t want me to come with you?” Panicked that he’d brought me somewhere I didn’t know and was leaving me, gave me a horrible needy feeling.

“Chloe, it chews me up when I’m on stage and I know I can’t watch over you or protect you. I’d feel happier if you were here and I could just go do my job and get back to you as soon as possible. It’ll be different when we know where Kace is, and the fans get used to you.”

Rolling over to face him again, I could see a grave look on his face and I knew that he was being sincere. “Please darlin’, I promise I’ll work something out, but just for tonight, can you just do as I ask?”

Deciding he was probably right, I nodded and reluctantly agreed that I would stay at the cabin. But I wondered how I’d feel when he actually left me alone for the first time since he’d flown me to Rio at the height of the press scandal about our less-than-private sexual activity on the yacht.

Showering felt weird. Once again, Gibson left me to get clean and sat talking on the phone to a guy called Morgan and he sounded like they went way back.  Hearing Gibson speak more openly than I’d heard him with anyone else, I felt jealous that he had such a strong connection to him, which was obvious from how familiar his conversation was.

I realized that all of our conversations had been about me and his band and I knew very little else about him, but he knew tons about me already. There hadn’t really been much shared about his past or general chat about his thoughts. So he seemed a bit closed off from me in that sense. Maybe as time went on, we’d get to those things and I’d feel less on the side lines.

Given what I knew about Gibson’s past, I could be forgiven for worrying about the way he seemed to latch onto a female post-gig, because his hormones dictated that’s what he should do. And if I am honest, it was in the back of my mind, because if I wasn’t with him tonight then it may happen and really, how would I know whether it did or not?

I was wondering if, by not being there, he would have the space he needed to realize that I wasn’t really all that when there were much freakier girls out there willing to do whatever he wanted. Then I thought maybe that’s exactly why I was being left behind tonight.

Insecurities began to gnaw at me again but there wasn’t much time for me to protest about it because as soon as I finished my hygiene routine, Gibson was out of the bed and in the shower, changed, and ready to leave.  One minute he was here, the next he was gone and there was silence. Johnny had left with him and I suddenly felt vulnerable again.

My mind went into overdrive. I’d been taken to a cabin in the woods, who knew I was here?  I had my phone but I was cut off from civilization until Gibson came back. His home was really warm and comfortable, but I still felt a chill and wondered if it was the loss of the guy who had been like an extension of me for the past week.

Dark thoughts started to scare me. What if the plane crashed? Who would know I was here? What if I lost Gibson. I was driving myself mad with worry and he’d only been gone for twenty-five minutes.

Pulling out my cell to check the time, I saw the emergency calls only sign. So I took on the challenge of finding a signal, so I could at least call Gibson if I needed to. After checking for a signal in various parts of the house, I finally found one out on the wraparound elevated decking at the back. It was a relief because there was no land line in the cabin.

Scrolling down the scant list of contacts, I found Ruby’s and sat down on one of the fabulous redwood patio chairs, as I waited for it to connect. Ruby recognized how vulnerable I must have felt to be left there alone like that with the trust issues I had, but knew exactly what to say to support me.

“Chloe, look at it this way— if you have no clue where you are and you saw where Gibson was taking you, then Kace has no chance of finding you there.”

Ruby was right. At least I wasn’t going to be looking over my shoulder to see if he was around. She was my voice of reason and once our call had ended, I was feeling much more relaxed about being on my own again. When I asked how things were with the apartment, I never got an answer to that because she moved quickly on as she was being nosy, asking me about the progress Gibson and I were making together.

The following five hours weren’t bad, and I actually felt quite mellow after watching a James Bond movie from the extensive range of DVD’s on the huge hundred and ten inch TV screwed to his bedroom wall. Strange thing was there was no satellite dish, cable or signal on the TV itself with the cabin being so remote.

I must have fallen asleep and stirred and when I’d begun drifting off I heard someone in the kitchen and thinking that Gibson was back already, I headed down to be with him, but I stopped in my tracks when I saw a tall leggy model-like girl with dark brown hair and glamour model breasts pulling stuff out of the fridge and placing it on the counter-top.

“Do you mind telling me what you are doing? How did you get in here? Who are you?”

As I fired one question after another, I wasn’t sure what the deal was with her, but she was starting to prepare what looked like an omelet from how she was cracking all the eggs into the bowl and adding bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes.

“Oh, I know who I am, how I got in…the question is—who are you?

Staring at me with her perfectly plucked eyebrow, raised in question, placing her hands on the granite counter top, she leaned her perfect cleavage over it in my direction and the way she responded got my back up. I’m sure I wouldn’t have answered quite how I did, if it hadn’t been for how familiar she seemed, making me feel more out of place.

Biting my lip and dragging my confidence from my boots to my mouth, I flicked my hair back and crossed my arms across my chest defensively. “I’m Gibson’s girlfriend, Chloe. Now if you don’t mind–I’d like to know what you’re doing here.”

Smoothing her hands back and forth on the counter she threw her head back and let out a loud harsh laugh.

“Ha! Very funny. I love your sense of humor honey, but Gibson doesn’t do the whole girlfriend thing.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I already didn’t like her, and from the way she was looking at me I knew she’d made her mind up about me too. Dropping my elbow onto the countertop, I sat on one of the stools that were placed around it and tried to look casual.

“So, what
is
the deal? Since you know so much about Gibson.”

Taking a stainless steel hand whisk out of the drawer, she began to whip at the eggs in the bowl and her beady eyes flicked up then she trained them on me. I was aware of how familiar she was with where everything was kept in the kitchen.

“Gibson and me…” Taking her hand off of the bowl on the countertop, she crossed her index and middle fingers and nodded at them.  “We’re like
that
.”  I took the entwining of her fingers as she meant that they were close.

“Yeah?” I needed to know what kind of close and exactly what that entailed, but to know more I had to resist questioning her or she would just close down and I wouldn’t find out what ‘that’ meant. My heart was banging in my chest because what she said could bring my world crashing down around me.

“Best buds, Gib and me. Gibson tells me
everything
about
everything
. We’re kinda…close, he just needs to grow up and I figure there may be a bit more to us…” She looked wistful for a second then started to speak again, “Who knows? But I know I’m very important to him.”

Giving me a pointed look, she began whipping the contents in the bowl again and without looking up she commented, “Chloe, you said…so you’re the prize winner that’s tickling Gibson’s dick? I read he had taken you with him to Rio to stop the vultures from swooping. I just didn’t figure on your still hanging around. So, when do you think he’ll send you back?”  I was devastated by her remark. She looked at me again, and my face must have conveyed the dismay I was feeling at her words, because her sarcastic smile dropped a little and she stopped whipping again.

“Aww hon, has that fucker made you think you’re more to him? I keep telling him he can’t play with girls forever. He needs to grow the fuck up.” Shaking her head, she bent down and got an omelet pan from the low level cupboard and placed it on the stove. There was no genuine sympathy, just words.

A week. Was that my sell-by date? Why had he brought me somewhere so isolated, then just left me here? Somewhere that someone like her could just come in and trample all over my feelings. I didn’t want to be around her for another minute, so I said I had just been about to take a bath when she arrived.

Eyeing me up and down again, she nodded. “Yep, he’ll be coming home soon, so you should work on that hygiene hon, my experience with Gibson is all that pent up energy goes straight to his dick. Shaking her head slowly she smirked, “Actually, maybe you shouldn’t bank on him being back tonight. If someone crosses his path that he thinks will take better care of him, he may just take them up on it.”

Choking on the tears that were causing the lump in my throat to burn, I said nothing else, just turned and walked slowly away, trying to emanate a couldn’t-care-less attitude in my stride, and questioned myself as to why I had allowed Gibson to lull me into a false sense of…not security, but a sense of him wanting to protect me, if what she was saying was true?

As soon as I was alone in the bedroom, I dissolved into a flood of tears and I just wanted to go home. But I couldn’t do that either, so after feeling helpless for several minutes while the bath was running, I began snooping around in the bedroom. I knew it was wrong, but I had to see if I could shed any more light on Gibson.

CHAPTER 8 - SELF-DOUBT

Chloe

Pulling the heavy antique pine dresser drawer open, I was surprised to see it crammed full of children’s drawings and brightly colored pictures. Looking at the carefully detailed drawings I saw a theme developing, but it struck me as strange that someone like Gibson would have kids’ artwork in his possession.

While I perused them something else hit me. Each one of them had one of three chosen scenes depicted in them; a well, a school and what I realized were mosquito nets. On the back of one was a message from a young girl to Gibson, which had neat pencil handwriting and a delicately colored African pattern around the border framing it.

Mr. Gibson, thank you for our school and our water. They are wonderful gifts you have given to our people in our village. You inspire me to work hard to learn so that I can be a doctor and help people in my village who get sick.  I have to thank you for that as well, because there is much less sleeping-sickness since you have given us supplies of mosquito nets and the magic tablets that make the water from the well clean for us to drink. If my mother was still alive I think she would want to kiss you for all the help. We were all excited for your visit and we hope you come back next year. You are a beautiful man.

Jamilia.

There had to be a few hundred drawings, mainly in primary colors and all calling him Mr. Gibson. Thinking back, it had been mentioned that there was more to Gibson than his rock star hell-raising antics. Eddie, Gavin’s housemate and avid fan of M3rCy, had said that Gibson gave a quarter of his salary to projects every year, and Johnny alluded to the fact that Gibson was deeper than I realized.

Who would have thought that Gibson, with his reputation, would keep things like these? And here? Was this Gibson’s main home?
If it was, it wasn’t very luxurious or full of frivolous boy-toys like other rock stars on a par with him. Toby Francis, Gibson’s best buddy, whose house I’d seen on an episode of Cribs was full of material spoils from his excessive wealth.