Page 90 of Vegas Heat: The Expansion Team Complete Series

Troy asked me to stop by to review some more film with him, and I decide to run over since it’s only a mile away. By the time I get to his house, I’m sweating and panting as I spot a little red Toyota in the circular drive and a woman standing by the front door.

I run up toward the door. Troy probably gets random fans stopping by all the time, but the gate at the front of the community seems to help with the majority of onlookers.

Somehow this one got through, I guess. “Can I help you?”

“Hello, yes,” the woman says, turning around to look at me. “I’m looking for Gabby Grant.”

“May I ask who you are?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Who are you ?”

“I’m Cooper,” I say, leaving it at that. She doesn’t need to know more, but the fact that she doesn’t know me tells me a lot about who she is. She must be a Troy fan, not a baseball fan. “Your turn to tell me who you are now.”

She clears her throat and lifts her chin, and it’s in that moment I know exactly who she is. The dark hair, the dark eyes, the mannerism she just exhibited…it’s all so clear before she even speaks the words.

“I’m Gabriella’s mother.”

My hackles rise as I want to do everything I can to protect Gabby from this woman.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see my daughter.” She folds her arms across her chest, and I get the impression she’s not budging.

I glance out at the driveway and find her car isn’t here. “She’s not home, and she doesn’t want to see you. You can go now.”

Her brows shoot up in surprise at the venom in my voice. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

The man who’s going to marry her someday.

I don’t say that. I can’t. I wish I could, but we’re still fucking hiding it and I hate it more and more.

Telling her mom and not her dad would be absolutely toxic, though.

“I’m a good friend of hers.”

She rolls her eyes. “Right. And you’re at least a decade older than her, so her being here with her father is even worse than I imagined.”

“Oh, she’s told me all about you, Christine. And so has Troy.” I raise my brows pointedly, and she practically snarls at me.

“I’m here to save that girl from her father. He’s a terrible, terrible man.”

I can’t help my laugh. “You don’t even know him, and you better watch what you say about my best friend.”

A silver truck comes pulling up, and my one regret is that I didn’t get rid of this woman before Gabby arrived home.

She steps down from her truck and approaches the front door, where she sees me talking to her mom.

“Mom?” she asks tentatively.

Christine rushes toward her daughter. “Oh Gabby, I can’t believe you left me! I’ve missed you so much!” She wraps her arms around her.

“I didn’t leave you, Mother. I went off to college and I chose UNLV, remember?”

“You left to meet your father, something I never agreed with.” She pulls back and looks at her daughter, and I can’t help but study every single move she makes. “You’re too skinny. Are you eating enough?”

Jesus. This woman is the classic definition of a narcissist, and her poor daughter still emerged as a ray of sunshine despite her.

“I’m eating plenty. What are you doing here?” Gabby asks, rolling her eyes at me over her mother’s shoulder.

I stifle a laugh.

“Well first I was just fending off this beast who claims he’s your friend,” she says, looking at me as if I am the problem.

“He’s not a beast,” Gabby says, and then she raises her brow at me as if to say well, except in the bedroom . “He’s a great man with a wonderful heart and he’s become very important to me in the last few months, so please stop insulting him right now.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” She pulls at Gabby’s arm, and Gabby looks incredibly uncomfortable. “I came to finally tell you all about your father.”

Gabby’s brows dip. “I’ve been living here for three years. Why are you doing this now?”

It clicks in my head before Christine says a word. She’s here because the expansion draft is one week away. She’s here to fuck with Troy because she thinks he stole her daughter away when the reality is that Gabby left because her mother was so goddamn awful to her.

“I felt it was time for you to know,” she says.

I let out a snort I meant to keep quiet, and her mom raises a brow at me as if to ask what that’s all about.

I decide to go for honesty. I’m not a fan of this woman after everything Gabby has told me. “You’re here to fuck with Troy. You don’t give a shit about your daughter.”

Her hand flies to her chest in total defensiveness. “Excuse me, sir, but I’ll have you know Troy is a very bad man. He tried to do dirty things to me on more than one occasion!”

I blow out a breath as I scramble to come up with how to protect Gabby from all this. She’s already semi-aware of the club her father owns, and while I’ve never witnessed anything firsthand, I had my suspicions he and Joanie might be into the BDSM lifestyle.

I don’t know Troy’s exact sexual proclivities, but I do know he’d never beat a woman. But if this was over twenty years ago and he was exploring the idea of a dominant-submissive relationship, he very well may have been experimenting. Still, he’s not the kind of guy who would have done any of that without total consent.

“Maybe we ought to let Troy give his side of the story,” I suggest dryly.

Gabby’s eyes are hooded out here on the dark porch as she studies her mother. “Go ahead, Mom. Tell us your side of the story.”

“It’s…it’s so embarrassing,” she says, shielding her eyes a little. “He was young, playing in the minors and thought he was hot stuff. We met at a bar, and we had one night together. And then another and another. Eventually we sort of became an item, or at least I thought we were an item, and one night he asked if he could… spank me. It felt wrong but I agreed to do it since he was who he was. The next night he wanted to use a whip.” She closes her eyes as if the memory is too painful to bring up. “I found out I was pregnant, and the night I was going to tell him, I learned he was cheating on me. I knew I couldn’t allow someone like him—a lying, cheating, violent man—around a baby. I ran off, wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t see him. He saw a photograph of me when I was around six months pregnant, and I lied and said it wasn’t his.”

She agreed to it. That’s consent. Just because she didn’t like it doesn’t mean Troy is violent. It means he likes certain things in the bedroom, and that’s his business. And beyond that, if what she’s implying is true…why would she show up at his house over twenty years later?

A narcissist will twist and turn things to make anyone believe her narrative. I can’t let her turn Gabby against her father, not when I know how close they’ve become.

Gabby looks like she’s going to be sick. She doesn’t say anything, so I jump in.

“I gotta tell you, it sounds consensual to me.” I lift a shoulder. “And he doesn’t strike me as a cheater.”

Christine turns a glare on me. “You obviously misheard what I said.”

“In what way? You said you agreed to the spanking.” I shrug. “That’s consent.”

“But it felt wrong to me,” she insists. “I agreed to it because I thought I was in love.”

“Should we let him tell his side of the story?” I ask, setting a hand on the door handle to let myself in.

“No—uh, just wait a second,” Christine says.

I turn around to face her. “For what?”

“Can I just have a moment with my daughter?” she asks.

I glance at Gabby first, and she’s got a look of determination on her face. It’s in that moment I know she isn’t going to let Christine get to her. I sigh. “Go for it. I’m heading in.”

I’m curious what she wants to say to her daughter, but it’s between them. “Troy?” I yell, and he walks into the kitchen a beat later.

“Hey, man. I’ve got some film loaded up on the big screen in the game room if you want to join me in there.” He turns to head back that way.

“Hang on a second,” I say, and he freezes as he turns back around. “You have an unexpected visitor.”

“I do?”

I nod toward the front door. “Gabby’s mother was out there when I ran up.”

His face blanches a little. “Gabby’s…mother?”

“Christine,” I confirm.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “What does she want?”

“She claims she wants to see her daughter, and she just unloaded the entire story of why she never told you she was pregnant on both Gabby and myself.”

“I’m certain it was her version of events,” he says dryly.

“She basically claims you’re a violent man who tried to beat her into submission.” I lay out the facts of what she just said so he knows what he’s dealing with before she even steps foot into his house.

“That same fucking story?” he practically roars, and he storms over toward the front door.

“Uh, Troy?” I say quietly, and he freezes. “Might want to tone down the anger given her accusations even if they are twenty years old.”

“Shit,” he mutters, and he draws in a deep breath because he knows I’m right. He moves toward the door and opens it, and both women whirl around to see him standing there. “Christine, hello,” he says with the fakest hospitability I’ve ever heard. “Heard you’re still spouting the same old lies but this time to our daughter. Come on in.”

Well, this should be…interesting.