Chapter 65

Chapter 65

The rest of the night, I contemplated the fight with Andrew and the conversation with Lily. By the time I finished getting ready for work the next morning, I knew exactly what I wanted to say to Andrew.

Just as I reached for my phone to call Andrew, it buzzed. My caller ID showed Andrew’s name.

I took a deep breath before answering.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Crystal,” Andrew said, his voice quieter than normal but still firm. “Is now a good time to talk?”

“I was just finishing getting ready for work, but I have a few minutes to spare. Why? What’s on your mind?”

“I wanted to apologize for how I reacted yesterday. You were only telling me your opinion based on your experience with Lisa, and I had no right to get mad at you over that.”

“Thank you, Andrew. I really appreciate that.”

I chewed my bottom l*p.

“You know, I didn’t mean to imply that she–or anyone–would try and make you choose between the two of us. I especially would not do that to you.”

“No, I know that you wouldn’t.”

“I know how much your daughter means to you, and it must be very stressful to you, having to give her away to her future husband in a few months. I wouldn’t want you to think that I would make you choose between the two of us and lose her further.”

Andrew didn’t answer for a couple minutes. I worried that maybe I had crossed another line and angered him again.

“Andrew, are you still there?” I asked gently.

“Yes, I’m here. You just…I wasn’t expecting that, is all.”

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

I would say it’s a good thing,” he said, his voice now its normal volume and a little softer than before.

“I mean it. You won’t have to worry about that with me.”

“I know that, now.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

“If that’s all that you wanted to talk about, I better head to work now.”

“Of course. I have a meeting that I need to get to.”

“Maybe we’ll talk later?”

“Yeah, we’ll talk later.”

I wanted to tell him that I loved him because I knew now, without a doubt, that that was what I was; I was in love with Andrew Dubois. I also thought, maybe, he was in love with me, too. But I didn’t tell him that.

All I said was, “Bye.”

I rode out the morning at Ever After Weddings thinking about everything that had transpired over the past several days. I still could not stop looking over my shoulder, expecting someone to attack me at any moment, but having Jeffrey around helped to ease those fears. My sleep was plagued by nightmares of my captors and the vampires, and during the day, I could not escape the news that the Hannigan Brothers and Ciaran Murphy had finally been nailed for kidnapping.

At least the media was not mentioning that I was the one they had kidnapped. They were including the information that the drug dealers were also being charged with vampiric endangerment and using it as a segway for PSAs on avoiding vampire territory and the dangers of the increasing vampiric intrusions. Too bad those PSAS could not fully prepare their viewers for real vampiric

encounters.

Yet this trauma not what occupied my mind that morning. I kept thinking about everything that Andrew had done for me, how he and Jeffrey had tracked me down, how they had ripped those vampires apart for touching me, how Andrew had opened his home to me yet again and hadn’t wanted me to leave. Then to call me his happiness…

Those thoughts were shattered when lunchtime came and an all–too–familiar figure stalked through the door.

Hello, Crystal,” Bob said with his usual smirk.

My skin crawled. My heart raced. I trembled merely at the sight of him, but I stood my ground.

“Hello, Bob,” I said, keeping my voice even and polite.

“Good afternoon, Bob,” Terri said, stepping in so that I wouldn’t be alone. By now, almost everyone at the bridal shop knew how I felt about him and backed me up in any way they could. “How can we help you?”

“I wanted to see how the wedding plans were coming” Bob said as he stared at me, “considering that our last session was a bit compromised.”

Terri glanced at me, her eyebrow cocked. I hadn’t told her that I was drugged while talking to Bob and Lisa about their wedding.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said, although I wasn’t sure that I would. It was still too raw a subject to expand on fully.

Terri nodded and turned to Bob.

“Well, Bob, we were just about to go to lunch,” she said. “Any chance you could come back another time?”

Bob shook his head.

“I’m afraid that it has to be now. It will only take a few minutes.”

Deep inside, I knew that Bob was only using this as an excuse to get me alone. It was obvious. At the same time, I didn’t want him to bother Terri solely because she was trying to stand up for me.

“Terri, why don’t you go to lunch while I take care of Bob? I’m sure that it’ll be some basic business.”

Terri looked from me to Bob and back again.

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure. I’ll be fine.”

Terri shrugged, grabbed her jacket, and left the shop with one last look back at Bob.

I waited until Terri was securely out of the shop before I spoke again.

Wed, 3 Jan

Chapter 13

“Okay, Bob, what do you really want? I haven’t changed my mind about being your

mistress.

Bob chuckled dryly.

Trust me, I have learned my lesson about that. You are much more trouble than you’re worth in that regard.”

“I suppose that I should have figured that when you had me thrown to a nest of bloodthirsty vampires.”

Bob’s smirk grew.

“Yes, it’s too bad that you’ll never be able to trace that back to me.”

“What did you do to those men to make them stay quiet?”

“Everyone has their price.”

Hearing him say that caused me to shiver. I wasn’t sure who this man was, but he was not the man I had dated. At least, he was not the man he had pretended to be while we were dating.

“If you don’t want me to be your mistress anymore, then what do you want?”

“First, I want you to show me your cell phone. No more of that recording shit.”

I cringed and held out my phone. I had started to record the conversation, and he could clearly see it on the screen.

Bob snatched the phone from me and deleted the partial recording.

“You’ll get this back after we’re done talking,” he chastised me like a schoolteacher chiding a student. He sl*pped it into his front pocket, as though taunting me into retrieving it. “Now, where were we?”

He leaned in close, close enough that I could feel his breath on my face.

“I want you to leave this city and never return. Furthermore, you are to never contact me or the Duboises ever again. Otherwise, I will finish the job that the vampires started.”