Page 25 of This Thing of Ours

She’d been alone when she’d awakened that morning, the bed beside her empty. Not that Gabby had expected anything different. She was just surprised she hadn’t felt Marco slip away. She didn’t remember falling asleep, either. One minute, he’d been telling her a story about Fred and the next, nothing. She didn’t even remember whether she dreamed. She supposed she should be grateful for that.

She pulled her hand from under the blanket and grabbed the coffee Olivia held out to her. “Thanks.”

Olivia wrinkled her cute, pert nose. “We need to get you in the shower and out of this house.”

“I’m not going anywhere with my face looking like this.”

“It’s not that bad. I bet I can hide most of it with some makeup.”

Gabby looked down at herself. She was still in the same clothes from two days ago, and she supposed she could use a shower. But leaving the house? She wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

As if sensing her struggle Olivia said, “Come on. A little fresh air will do you good.”

Gabby stared atherself in the mirror. Olivia had been right. With a heavy enough hand, she’d been able to hide all but a shadow of Gabby’s bruises with makeup. The long-sleeved sweater took care of the scabbed over scrapes and bruises on her arms.

She still didn’t feel like leaving the house. In fact, after putting so much energy into getting ready, what she really felt like doing was crawling back into bed and taking a nap. She looked at it forlornly as she stepped from the bathroom.

“Don’t even think about it,” Olivia said, materializing at her bedroom door.

“Where are we going anyway?”

“To the one place that makes all troubles go away. The mall.”

Gabby loved shopping as much as the next girl, but for once, the allure of sales and shoes did not appeal. One look at Olivia’s smiling, excited face, though, had her keeping her mouth shut.

With a defeated sigh, she made her way through the house then stopped, looking at the empty rack by the front door. “I lost my purse.” She wasn’t exactly sure when, but at some point, it had disappeared.

“That’s easy enough to fix,” Olivia said, coming up behind her.

Canceling the credit cards, sure, but the thought of going to the DMV to get a new license, yeah, not so much.

“Besides, you don’t need a purse. I’ve got Nico’s black card.”

The twinkle in Olivia’s eyes had Gabby smiling for the first time in what felt like forever. Maybe getting out wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Leaving the househad been the worst idea ever.

She’d like to say everything had been entirely Olivia’s fault, but in the end, she knew most of the blame landed solely on her shoulders for not having a backbone and telling Olivia no.

It had started with the beauty salon. Olivia had thought it would cheer her up to have her hair done. Gabby hadn’t disagreed. It had been a while since she’d had her hair trimmed and being pampered for an hour had sounded nice. It had gone downhill when Olivia had persuaded her to change her look. Sure, Gabby had argued, putting up a feeble attempt at standing her ground, but in the end, to make Olivia happy, she’d given in, thinking it was only hair and it would grow back.

Big mistake. When she’d finally been allowed to look at herself in the mirror, she’d almost cried. Gone where her long locks, sheared to the tops of her shoulders. Her once dark, nearly black, hair had been transformed to a medium brown with blonder streaks that Gabby thought made her look like a zebra. Olivia had called them highlights. Yeah, not. More like neon lights with the way people had gawked at her.

But, looking on the bright side, she did feel like a whole new woman, and maybe that’s what she really needed. Besides, she could always dye it back.

The second mistake came when Gabby, still reeling from the hair fiasco, was talked into buying a puppy. A yellow Lab, to be exact, so definitely not a small dog and probably not the best choice when becoming a first-time doggy momma.

It wasn’t that Gabby was anti dogs, but more like, with her uncertain lifestyle, she’d never wanted the responsibility for one. She could barely take care of herself. A fact that had become painfully obvious five days before.

Olivia hadn’t listened to her excuses, though. Instead, she’d loaded Leo and Stan—their respective bodyguards—with enough doggy paraphernalia to last five doggy lifetimes.

And it had been at that point, Gabby had declared Olivia crazy.

But sitting in the car on the way home, a squirming puppy in her lap, panted puppy breath hitting her face, and a wet little tongue attacking her chin, Gabby had to reluctantly admit that maybe, just maybe, not all of Olivia’s ideas had been bad.

Chapter Ten

Marco wasn’t surewhy he was there—again—other than he’d felt compelled to make sure Gabriella was okay before he went home for the night. So, there he sat, in his car, outside her house, hoping for a glimpse of her so he couldn’t useneeding to see her with his own eyesas a pathetic excuse to get out of his car and walk up to her door.

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