Drawing my knees to my chest, I rested my brow there and listened as Kendra started on a rant. At least she hadn't come out and said 'I told you so' which she would've had every right to do. She'd told me it wasn't a good idea to agree to model for Flynn, but I'd only seen a way out of my shitty job and the money we needed for little things like rent and food.
Finally, she spun to face me. “What did Edward say?”
“I…” Swallowing, I shrugged. “I haven’t told him and I’m not going to. Flynn won’t do it again, but I don’t want Edward getting angry.”
“Edward should be angry!” she shouted. “His asshole brother has kissed you twice since he found out about the engagement.”
Getting aggravated now, I stood up. I was starting to remember why I'd been pissed at her. “He’ll show Edward the pictures, Kendra.”
“I…” She stopped, snapping her jaw shut as she processed that. “Aw, shit, Gabs. What kind of mess did you get yourself into? He’s going to start blackmailing you into all sorts of bad shit.”
“He won’t.” I wished I was as confident as I sounded.
“You don’t know that.” She tried to sound comforting, supporting and the worse part was that I knew she was trying.
But I just felt like she was beating me down too. Just like she had from the beginning of all this. Not trusting Edward. Criticizing how fast we'd gotten engaged. Criticizing every choice I'd made.
My phone buzzed, the message notification coming from my pocket. I grabbed it, hoping it was Edward. But when I turned my back to Kendra, I had to swallow a groan. It wasn’t Edward.
It was his toad of a brother.
Gabriella, I want to apologize to you for my behavior. There’s no excuse for it and while I don’t expect your forgiveness, I am sorry.
“Are you listening?” Kendra demanded.
“No,” I answered honestly as I looked up at her over the phone. “I’m reading my messages.”
She threw up her hands and spun around, stomping into the bathroom. As the door closed tight behind her, I settled back against the window seat.
I’m tired of feeling like I'm some sort of nuisance to you, Flynn. If you can’t deal with this, then I can’t keep on working for you.
I hated to say it, but the stress was just too much.
It will get better. I promise.
A split second later, another message followed.
Cody and I have a special project going on tomorrow. It’s something we try to do once a month. I’d like you to join us, if you can.
I knew I should say no. Long and loud and make sure everybody under the sun heard it.
Something slammed inside the bathroom and I looked up just in time to see Kendra storming out, wearing a long t-shirt over pink leggings. She didn't even look at me as she marched out of the apartment.
Fuck it.
What time and where?
Chapter 3
“Where are we going?”
Flynn just shook his head and pushed a case into my arms.
I looked over at Cody and he gave me an easy grin, dropping a kiss onto my forehead. “Morning, sugar.”
I rolled my eyes and turned to trail along behind them. “What’s the special project?” I asked.
“It’s—”
“We’ll go into more detail about it once we’re there,” Flynn said, cutting Cody off. “We’re running late already.”
There was a taxi waiting for us at the curb and I looked from one man to the other before moving up to put the bag Flynn had given me into the back of the car.
Huffing and out a breath, I climbed into the taxi and wondered if it would do any good to ask why they weren’t taking one of the drivers I knew they all had access to. Flynn might've been a McCreary instead of a Bouvier and Cody wasn't the golden child Edward was, but I seriously doubted Claire would've wanted her sons using common transportation. I decided it wouldn’t do any good to ask though. Flynn was strangely subdued and when he'd looked at me earlier, it had been with a polite nod, but that had been it. I didn’t want to get the tension back up to where it had been, so I just let the car thing go and asked Cody about the assignment he’d been on.
He had me giggling to the point of tears as he described the prima donna fit one of the models had thrown over the lack of peeled grapes available as a snack for her. Who would've known of the extra calories that came in grape skins?
“I’ll have to demand peeled grapes sometime soon.” I grinned at him and glanced over at Flynn. My heart slammed heart against my ribs when I caught him staring at me.
Just staring, watching me with an odd look in his eyes. The second he saw that I’d noticed, he averted his head and focused his attention outside.
“Peeled grapes, champagne…you should demand the floor be covered in rose petals while you’re at it.” Cody nudged me with his elbow. “I hear you want something terribly garish and tawdry for your wedding, Gabs. What was it, plum, orange and gold? It sounds so…fall-like. And with you getting married in October...”
I made a face at him. “I’m so common, aren’t I?”
“Extremely.” He closed his eyes and gave a very Claire-like sniff, stiffening his shoulders. “We will do our best to tolerate your low-class ways.”
In that moment, I saw some of his mother in his masculine features. For the first time, I wondered what Pierre Bouvier had looked like.
“Would you two—” Flynn started to snap, and then he stopped. “Sorry.” Without an explanation, he went back to staring outside. A few minutes passed and then he spoke again. “We’re here. Hope you ate a decent breakfast, Tennessee. It’s going to be awhile before we have a chance to eat. Pizza’s being delivered, but it gets crazy.”
Pizza…?
I looked outside, trying to figure out just what I was supposed to be doing and I found myself staring at a dusty old building. My gaze had skipped past the sign out front the first time and now I zoomed back in on the part of it I could see. Something home?
“What are we doing?” I asked.
Flynn was already grabbing his stuff from the trunk. “Cody, pay the driver, okay?”
Flynn totally ignored me so I looked over at Cody. “What’s going on?”
“Gimme a minute.”
Rolling my eyes, I turned back and watched Flynn making his way up the sidewalk. A couple of kids had come rushing out to meet him and it was bizarre to see him crouching down to accept their enthusiastic hugs. One tall, skinny kid with beautiful mahogany skin held up his fist and Flynn bumped knuckles with him. It was pretty clear that Flynn had been here before. But where was here?
Cody finally joined me, passing over the bag I’d been given. “Spill,” I told him as I took it, appreciating that he didn't automatically assume I couldn't carry anything.
He shrugged. “Not that big of a deal. The past few years, Flynn’s been offering his services as a photographer for some foster kids. He does professional shots and social services uses the images to try to help kids get adopted.”
“Come on, guys,” Flynn shouted at us from the door.
I tried not to look completely shocked as we started up the walk.
Once we were inside, I found myself the target of a lot of stares, most of them borderline hostile. There was one little girl, her hair in plaits and she stood leaning against the leg of an older girl, blinking big blue eyes at me. My heart wrenched when she ducked her head as I looked at her.
“Who’s this, rich boy?”
The question came from the tall boy who’d fist-bumped Flynn earlier, the tone belligerent, lacking none of the laid back friendliness I’d heard him using just moments ago.
“A friend,” Flynn said with an easy smile. “She’s here to help me keep you hooligans under control.”
“I ain’t no hoogan.” That came from a small boy with freckled cheeks and a chipped front tooth. He shoved his chin up in the air and when I looked at him, I saw eyes that were far too old for him. There was an ugly scar that ran down the left side of his face and when my gaze felt on it, he just glared at me that much harder.
“Hooligan, Bry,” Cody said with his own grin. “And yeah, you are a hooligan. But chill…one of these days, you’ll be a master hooligan, like me.”
Bry—short for Bryan, I assumed—glanced away from me and I thought I saw a smile on his face for a split second. And hero worship in his eyes when he looked at Cody.
Something touched my leg.
I looked down to see the pretty little girl with plaits patting my skirt.
Slowly, I knelt down, hunkering in front of her and staring into her solemn eyes. “Hi,” I said quietly.
She just gave me another owlish blink, reminding me of my oldest niece when she'd been younger.
I reached up and touched one of the barrettes on her hair. “I like your hair.”
She reached up and touched mine.
“My name’s Gabriella.”
She just nodded.
“You showing off for your rich girlfriend?” That came from the girl who’d been standing next to the small child in front of me now.
I looked up at her, a laugh bubbling out of me before I realized how it might come off. “Me? Rich? Not even close.”
The response had her jerking her head to look at me instead of sneering at Flynn.
I shrugged. “Grew up in a big family down in Tennessee. Mom stayed home to raise us. Dad did landscaping. We never went hungry, but…” I trailed off, looking at the faces around me. I had the feeling a lot of them had gone hungry, and worse. A lot of them couldn’t claim to come from a family with two parents who loved them, much less some of the other advantages I had. Money wasn’t everything. “I was happy, yeah. But not rich.”
The awkward silence that fell was broken when a woman came bustling in, a flurry of bright colors and long braids. She all but sailed up to Flynn and grabbed his face, hauled him down for a loud, smacking kiss that resulted in a series of catcalls and
eeeewwww
’s from the children. Then she moved on to Cody and did the same thing, making me wonder just what her relationship was with Flynn.
“Beautiful boys…look at you.”
When her gaze zeroed in on me, I felt like I’d been shoved under a microscope. Her eyes were the color of amber, a few shades lighter than her smooth, warm brown skin. There were no lines anywhere on her face, but I had the feeling she was more than a few years older than me. It had something to do with the way she watched me, with that quiet serenity to her gaze.
“Well, what have we here?” She shot a sideways glance at Flynn. “Flynn, did you finally bring me some special girl?”
“No!”
We both rushed to answer and I shoved my hand out, the rock on it seeming to weigh a ton. “I’m engaged,” I said, my voice high, almost too happy. I sounded false, even to my own ears.
What’s wrong with me…?
“I’m engaged to his oldest brother. I just…we’re friends, Cody, Flynn and I.”
As always, Cody knew just what to do because he chose that moment to sling an arm around my neck, hugging me in close. “She’s a doll. I couldn’t have picked a better sister-in-law if I’d tried. Danique, this is Gabriella. Gabs, this is Danique—or Dani. She doesn’t care. Take your pick.” He gave me a smacking kiss on the lips and then moved off into the throng of kids. “So…who’s first? Do I get to play makeover king on any of you or are you all just stunningly perfect as always?”
A group of kids rushed him and he laughed, a genuine, heartfelt laugh that I'd never heard him make around his family, at least not his mother and step-father.
“You look kind of lost,” Danique said as she stepped up next to me.
“I…um…well, I feel lost.”
Flynn moved between us, pausing just long enough to grab the bag I was still holding. “Just keep the kids occupied and moving. When I call for somebody, make sure they get to me. If the girls need help with hair or picking out clothes, knock yourself out.”
He was gone in the next moment and I flung up my hands in frustration. “Occupied and moving? Get them to him? I don’t even know what I’m doing!”
Danique laughed and moved over, hooking her arm through mine. “Come on. The older kids always go first and they help with the younger kids, so we’ve got a bit before the uphill portion of the event begins. Let me show you around and I’ll give you the short version of what we're doing here.”
***
We ended up on the second floor, outside what was probably the biggest room in the two-story remodeled house. We were somewhere in Brooklyn, that much I could tell, but exactly where, I wasn’t sure. I'd never spent much time in Brooklyn before.
The house was older and had received a lot of TLC, but it needed a lot more. It was clean, though, and well-loved. The kids in it were also clean, and if they’d let her, I could tell Danique would give them all the love they could handle.
But too many of them didn’t trust anybody. I could see it in their eyes.
“So, Flynn comes in, does shots of these kids once a year and you all get them to their social workers.” Cody had summed it all up for me outside, but I still wasn’t sure I understood. “And he does this for three or four other places?”
“He’s at a different facility, either a group home or down at social services, once a month.”