My Gigolo (20 page)

“I know, I know. But I’m stupid when it comes to her. Now, if any of that is true, what would she be thinking?”

Sighing, she turned to lean back and replaced her sunglasses. “I think we’ll have to assume Phil told her something, whether he did your full disclosure bit or not. Agreed?”

“Probably.”

“Let me tell you a little bit about Gabe—stuff she’ll never tell you herself and that I think you have a right to know at this late date. Has she told you anything about her childhood?”

“Just that your parents abandoned you guys to be missionaries or some such and your aunt raised you.”

A tiny smile touched her lips. “I’m surprised she told you that much. She’s never been forthcoming about the past. We never talk about it.”

“I gathered.”

“It’s a little more complicated than just being left behind. See, Gabe has always been too smart for her own good. No one ever told her we were abandoned. She just…understood it. She connected the dots. That look you say she’s wearing right now? She wore it until she was eight years old.”

“Damn.”

Despite the uncomfortable conversation, she grinned. “You know, it was football that brought her out of it. Aunt Tab was a faithful watcher every Sunday during the regular season, and Gabe just soaked it up. Then one year, the Chiefs made it into the playoffs, and she jumped up and down on the couch, cheering and whooping. Aunt Tab cried.” Her grin widened to a smile. “Maybe I did, too.”

“Football.” Amusement tinged his still-worried tone. “I should’ve known.”

Her own smile faded. Now came the tough part, the one she rarely talked about, even with Darren. “At any rate, just as she started to really shine, maybe the worst thing possible happened. She found Aunt Tab dead in bed one morning, and all of that excitement died, too.”

“Oh, God.”

“Yeah. It took her a good three years to loosen up again. It’s like she didn’t want to be a bother, didn’t want to be noticed, didn’t want to connect to anyone or anything. She ate and slept and did well in school, but she never smiled, never yelled, never cried. She just…existed.”

Clearing her throat, she shifted against the lounger and closed her eyes. She hated talking about the past almost as much as Gabe did. It was too hard, even now.

“And just when she came out of
that
shell, I met Darren. I’m pretty sure she didn’t want to stand in my way, so she suddenly became very interested in the undergraduate school in Joplin. It was too far to commute, so she’d have to move there right after high school. I tried to talk her out of it, but she’d decided.” She winced, remembering Gabe’s false smile and forced hopefulness. “So you see, you’re not just fighting
your
past. You’re up against hers, too.”

“Damn. Is that what she’s trying to decide now? About me? What am I supposed to do? I don’t want her to have to choose like that. I don’t want to drag her through yet another painful stage in her life by alienating her from everything she knows because I used to be a whore.”

She winced again. Somehow, she guessed that was the first time he’d ever used that particular term against himself. It obviously hurt him, and she’d never wanted that. On the other hand, she’d never expected him to make this much progress with Gabe. She hadn’t thought out the consequences of her own complicity in his plan.

She’d just wanted her little sister to be happy, to find someone to love. Why, oh why did it have to be a former gigolo?

“Look, Jack. I like you. I think there’s a real chance that you and Gabe could make it work once the whole truth comes out and she accepts what you gave up for her. But until then…I guess you’re gonna need some help.”

“Mike—”

“I was going to call you this weekend, but I didn’t want to maybe catch you with her, so I’d planned to put it off until Monday. I want you to come to my daughter’s birthday party next weekend. Gabe will be there, and I think it’d be good for both of you to see that I’m behind you on this.”

He sighed. “I don’t know. It’s bad enough to be recognized by one person in Joplin, but there are literally hundreds of women who might recognize me there. What if one of your housewives is a former client?”

She snorted. “She’d be too well-bred to just blurt it out like that. I wouldn’t worry about it. I
would
suggest, though, that you come back to the city early this weekend so you don’t accidentally ruin the surprise.”

“But Gabe—”

“Jack, she’s pulled in like this because she’s trying to decide something hard, and I’d bet dollars to pesos it’s something about you. I can’t imagine that anything else would get this kind of consideration. She won’t tell you to leave or intentionally make you uncomfortable, but she won’t interact, either. It’s better to let her stew a while. When you see her next weekend, maybe she’ll have come to some sort of decision.”

He groaned. “I dunno. I appreciate the offer, but…”

“It’s your choice, of course. If you wouldn’t feel comfortable with the possibility of being outed in public again, I completely understand. But you’re welcome in my home, and I assure you that anyone who makes you feel otherwise will be asked to leave.” She smiled. “And it’s about time we met, anyway.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment—long enough that she began tapping her fingers on the lounger’s arm and hoping Darren didn’t bring the girls home until the conversation was over. Telling her husband about the former male prostitute she planned to invite to her two-year-old’s birthday party was going to be hard enough without him walking into a clandestine phone call from said former gigolo.

Finally: “Thank you. I’ll be there. And I can’t wait to meet you, either.”

Her smile twisted into a smirk, an evil impulse overcoming her good intentions. “One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“You may not recognize her. She’ll be the one in the clown suit making balloon animals.”

Silence for a long moment, then: “She
what
?”

Apparently, Gabe couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.

Cheryl noticed something wrong right away. So did Phil. Doug was too busy talking over lunch Tuesday to notice at first, but even he eventually spotted the change in demeanor.

She simply couldn’t help it. She knew it was stupid to brood so deeply over something as dumb as whether or not to continue a sex-only relationship with a male prostitute. But—and she admitted this to only herself at night as she tossed and turned—that relationship was no longer sex-only. Not to her.

By Wednesday, she felt ill with all of the attention. Everyone in the office asked if she’d caught some bug or another, and she finally called in sick Thursday for the first time in two years. She couldn’t stand two more days of sympathy and could only hope that she got her head back into the right place in time for work on Monday.

But even with three days of uninterrupted dwelling on the problem of Jack, she couldn’t come up with an answer. Her mind told her to cut all ties. Her heart told her she was too stupid to live for even considering such a thing. Her stomach told her to stop eating comfort food because it couldn’t hold anymore.

She liked him. She liked his willingness to mow her lawn in full view of the old hens on her block. His spontaneity cracked her up. His love of old horror movies—second only to her love of the same—astonished her. She admired his ability to speak intelligently about both football and computers, though the computer talk was usually over her head. She wanted to say crazy things just to make him laugh. He had a really good laugh.

So she liked him. Loved him? No, that was too frightening a thought. She may have completely lost her mind, but surely her heart was only slightly touched. If she never saw him again, would a piece of her go missing? Surely not.

However, if she were brutally honest with herself, she’d miss him. She already missed him. Even sitting in the comfortable old swing she’d pirated from Aunt Tab’s porch didn’t feel right without him. It felt too big, the boards too hard, the screech of the chains too loud.

So she’d see him again. If he called, she would greet him with a smile. And maybe, just maybe, she’d let herself pretend for just one weekend that he was really hers. See what it felt like. Test the waters, so to speak.

Maybe then she could finally decide if him giving up everything he knew for her would be a good trade-off for them both, though she knew in her heart that it couldn’t possibly be. Maybe she could just learn to live with his profession.

Thus decided—or at least deluded—she stared at herself in her sister’s bathroom mirror on a sunny Sunday afternoon and tried to will some color back into her face. Had she looked like this all week? No wonder everyone had made such a fuss. Sighing, she dug into her clown kit and pulled out the grease paint.

The big red smile made her feel a little better about her appearance. It hid the lack of a real smile fairly well, and the gleaming white clown face was much easier to bear than the nearly translucent paleness of before. High, thin black eyebrows, a yellow star on the right cheek, a blue flower on the left, and her face was done.

She pulled her hair back into as tight a bun as her curls and the short length would allow, then snugged the garishly red wig over her head. Giving the ringlets a little toss to make sure the wig would stay put, she tried a grin. It didn’t work. Thank God for that big red smile.

On went the silks, oversized bowtie, floppy clown shoes, and finally the dreaded foam nose. She hated it. It smelled like a Nerf ball. It chafed her skin.

Ivy would love it.

After a final glance in the mirror, she snuck out the basement door to the backyard, skirted the terracing up the inclined side yard, and came around to the front to ring the bell. Show time.

“Who could that be?” Mike’s over-loud and over-astonished voice drifted through the door. “Should we check?

A chorus of yeses greeted this sally, and she forced a big smile. The door opened, Mike grinning all the way to her eyes.

“Why, it’s a clown! Come in, Miss Clown!”

But Ivy wasn’t fooled. The little girl toddler-waddled over and glomped onto her legs.

“Nant Gabidell!”

She reached down and hefted her niece into her arms, her first real smile of the week taking over when Ivy honked the stupid foam nose. She adored her nieces. They always made her smile.

“This must be the birthday girl. How old are you, birthday girl?”

Ivy held up three fingers. “I two!”

Laughing, she turned her attention to the other toddlers underfoot and the mothers lolling around the living room. Then she spied a familiar, smiling, and oh, so masculine face, and her laughter died, her own smile falling like a wet pair of pants.

“Jack?”

While she was fairly certain that her choked whisper couldn’t possibly travel across a largish room full of jabbering kiddies and gossiping mothers, his smile trembled with suppressed laughter and he stood, obviously intent on joining her at the door.

Mike leaned close and plucked Ivy from her arms. “I invited him. His birthday’s in a couple of weeks, so why shouldn’t he party, too?”

Absolutely stymied, she could only stare as he sidestepped kids and avoided groups of chattering ladies. What on earth was he doing here? Why hadn’t Mike warned her? Invited? Who invited a male prostitute to a two-year-old’s birthday party?

And why did he have to look so damn amazing in a plain green T-shirt?

“You know, when I insisted on a mini golf course with no clowns, I didn’t realize it might be taken as a personal insult.”

She stared.

“Mini golf? Did I miss something?” Her sister's voice seemed to come from a distance.

“Oh, you should have seen it, Mike. The best golf course ever. Pirate themed.” Jack's did, too.

“But Gabe is terrible at mini golf. How’d you talk her into going?”

“She said she loves mini golf.”

The inane blather went on and on, and she stared. She had grease paint all over her face, clown shoes on her feet and a cherry-red, ringleted wig on her head. And Jack was here. And Ivy was reaching for him with her pudgy little arms, showing her tiny, white baby teeth in a wide grin when he complied.

Finally, she blinked. “Gemini or Cancer?”

Mike broke off and shot her an inscrutable glance. Jack raised an eyebrow.

“Come again?”

“Gemini or Cancer? You said your birthday’s in a couple of weeks.”

“A few, actually. I’m a Cancer.”

The lights came on. “Well, that’s all right, then.”

Raising his eyebrows, he glanced at Mike. “Did I miss something?”

“Heck if I know.”

“Cancer and Aquarius are completely incompatible. If you’d been a Gemini, we might have been in serious trouble. Gemini and Aquarius might actually hit it off.”

Feeling a little better with that reasoning, she turned on her heel and headed for the gaggle of children congregating by her helium tank. Duty called. Introspection could wait.

“Gabe, what—?”

“Where does she get this stuff?”

Determinedly ignoring both her gigolo and her sister, she opened the first package of balloons and worked her magic.

She continually surprised him. He’d somehow gathered the impression that she didn’t like kids much—except for her nieces, of course—but he, again, couldn’t have been more wrong. She seemed eternally patient as she did magic tricks and juggled fruit and created a veritable Noah’s ark of balloon animals. She may not absolutely love kids, but damn if the kids didn’t love her.

He was not-dating a clown. And a damn good one, if the smiling children were any indication. Admittedly, the balloon kitties looked an awful lot like the balloon horsies, but the little ones didn’t seem to mind.

When parents started thinning the herd and the ridiculously chocolate cake was down to its last crumbs, Mike came over and sat beside him.

“You’ll stay for supper?”

He shrugged, his gaze still following Gabe around the room. He hadn’t really thought about supper yet. It wasn’t as if he’d be driving to Joplin tonight. He had to work in the morning.