Baby Love Lite (30 page)

“
What did you do?” I asked
her.

“
A video's worth ten
thousand words. Why don’t I show you?”

She grabbed her iPhone off of the register
and pressed some buttons to bring up the video. She placed it on
the bar for me to watch. The video showed Libby sitting on the bar
stool she'd just vacated. I could hear Gina’s voice behind the
bar.

“
You know, Libby, I was
working this end of the bar last Friday night when you, Tristan and
Trey were sitting right over at that booth there.”

“
Yeah, I remember,” Libby
answered.

“
Take a look over there at
the booth you were sitting at and look up at the ceiling. What do
you see?”

“
Looks like track lighting
to me,” she said.

“
You’re only partially
correct on that,” Gina said.

“
I don’t
understand-”

“
Some of its lighting for
spotlighting the dance floor, but there are also closed-circuit
cameras camouflaged in with the lighting as well. We have to do
that to minimize theft and for crowd control on busy nights here.
The video is streamed in so that it can be watched live from my
office in the back and it's also backed up on my
computer.”

I could see Libby get nervous as Gina
continued.

“
I saw what you did to Trey
that night when Tristan went to the restroom. I saw it on the
playback video that's backed up on my PC. With some technical
enhancement, I was even able to pick up the audio portion where you
said you wanted to do both him and Tristan. That's what you said
after you tried to massage his Johnson and he pushed your hand
away.”

“
What's it to you, Gina?”
she asked haughtily.

“
Well, first of all, Tylar
is my best friend; you hit on her husband.”

“
So, what? He didn’t take
the bait, did he? That was his loss.”

“
Secondly, hitting on your
fiancé’s brother is usually not a very smart thing to do. It causes
a family rift.”

“
What do I care about a
family rift? There's no way I’m marrying dude, anyhow. He's turning
out to be way too white-bread for me. I need more spice in my life;
mix it up a little, you know?”

Gina told her she was pathetic.

“
How so? Because I want to
fuck Trey? Hey, I was fully prepared to let Tristan watch while his
younger brother fucked me.”

Libby continued on as if she'd choreographed
the scenario in her mind.

“
Tristan would've been given
the opportunity of punishing me for it later. Then we would've had
some good make-up sex as a threesome so there would've been
no
hard
feelings
amongst the brothers. We all would've been satisfied.”

“
You’re kind of a twisted
bitch, aren’t you?” Gina asked.

“
Hey, don’t judge me, honey.
I just happen to know what I like and I go for it. Maybe your
friend's happy in her little married world with a snotty-nosed kid
clinging to her tits all day; maybe she enjoys wiping up her baby’s
shitty little ass, but that's not the life I want.”

“
What about what Tristan
wants?”

“
Like I said, there won’t be
a marriage. Do you know how many of these things I’ve collected
over the years?” Libby held her hand up and splayed her fingers for
the video displaying the beautiful diamond engagement ring Tristan
had given her.

“
No,” Gina answered, the
disgust apparent in her voice, “How many?”

“
Six,” she said proudly.
“I’ve kept them all.”

The video stopped at that point as it had
reached capacity. It was more than enough to show Tristan what she
was about.

“
Gina, you're brilliant.
Let’s go to your office I want to watch that downloaded clip of her
trying to grope Trey’s crotch last Friday.”

“
There isn’t any video. I
lied about all of that just to make her think I could present it to
Tristan if I so desired. You can tell by my phone video she doesn’t
give a shit whether I do or not.”

“
You need to send that video
to my phone so I can show it to Trey when he gets home. I’ll let
him decide how he wants to handle it with Tristan.”

“
Sure enough; it’s on its
way now.”

We finished up at the bar and then locked up.
Gina said she'd be at the apartment the following day by one
o’clock to stay with Preston. Our flight left at 3:30 p.m. She
didn’t work again until Wednesday afternoon so Jean would be coming
over to stay with Preston until Trey and I got home Wednesday
night.

I told Gina about Maggie being transferred to
the jail in Atlanta sometime today.

“
I know what you’re going to
say before you say it, Ty. Preston will be fine. I won’t take her
outside. I won’t open the door for anyone except Jean. Don’t worry,
okay?”

“
I trust you with her
completely; but you know that I still worry after what I’ve been
through.”

“
I know; but I don't see her
getting bonded out.”

“
Trey doesn’t think so,
either,” I replied. We said our good-byes and I headed
home.

Jean had cleaned the apartment while she was
there today. She told me Preston had been napping and should be up
before too long. I let Jean know that Maggie was returning to
Atlanta where she faced multiple criminal charges. She assured me
that she'd stay on high alert, but like Gina, she didn’t think a
bond would be set for her.

I'd put some chicken in the refrigerator to
thaw for dinner so I went ahead and preheated the oven and washed
my hands to start the preparations. I'd just put the chicken in a
baking dish in the oven when I heard Preston crying.

She'd pulled herself into a standing position
against the crib rails and quieted down when I went into her room.
She raised her arms up for me to take her.

“
What’s the matter,
sweetie?”

We hadn’t had any of our girl time lately. I
missed it and guessed that she had too. I got her situated and then
rocked her slowly back and forth enjoying our closeness again. Once
finished, I took her out to the living room and put her in the
playpen with her new activity center. She was content to entertain
herself which made life a lot easier for us.

I went back to the kitchen to check on
dinner. I glanced at the calendar. Next week was Thanksgiving. I
couldn’t believe how quickly the year had passed. Trey and I'd
decided to stay in Atlanta for Thanksgiving.

Trey got in a little after 5:30 p.m. which
was unusually early for him. “Something smells good,” he said
coming into the kitchen to give me a kiss.

“
You’re home
early.”

“
Yep, I couldn’t wait to see
you, baby.”

“
Liar,” I
laughed.

“
No, really. I wanted to
spend time with my two best girls since I didn’t get to see one of
them very much over the weekend. I brought some work home with me
but that will be for later after you fall into an exhausted
sleep.”

“
What makes you think I’m
going to be exhausted when I go to bed?”

“
Cause I plan to wear you
out, baby.”

Trey could still make my stomach do
flip-flops. He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and went out to
play with Preston while I finished making dinner.

After dinner, Trey offered to clean up the
kitchen while I bathed Preston. He came into the bathroom as I was
lifting her out of the tub. He wrapped a towel around her and said
he would get her dressed for bed if I wanted to shower.

Afterwards, dressed in my pajamas
I went to check on Trey and Preston.
Trey
was in the rocker in Preston’s room reading her a storybook. She
was totally mesmerized by the story or maybe just by him. He
finished the story and gave her a kiss handing her off to me. I got
her tucked into bed, kissing her good-night.

Trey was in the living room preparing for
Monday Night Football. It was the pre-game show. I needed to tell
him about Tristan.

“
Trey, I need to talk to you
about Tristan.”

He muted the television and I took a place
next to him on the couch.

“
Oh yeah, baby, I’m sorry. I
meant to ask you at dinner how it went with him at the club
today.”

“
That part went fine. I’m
pretty certain he's going to buy my share of the club. He and Gina
are meeting with the accountant tomorrow morning to review the
books.”

“
If anyone has a great sense
of business it’s Tristan,” Trey replied. “I’m glad that it's going
well, but like I said this is your decision. I’m not pressuring you
one way or another.”

“
Trey, this is something
else altogether. I want you to watch something that happened today
okay?”

I pulled up the video that Gina had sent to
my iPhone of the conversation she'd had with Libby. I'd saved it to
my videos. I hit the play button and handed it to Trey to watch. I
watched as Trey’s expression went from impassive to disgust and
then thoroughly pissed when Libby made the comments about me and
the baby.

“
That fucking bitch,” he
hissed, raking his hand through his hair. “Did Gina show you the
video from the closed circuit camera so you could see that I pushed
her hand away?”

“
No. You see, there's no
closed circuit camera. Gina made that up to draw the truth out of
Libby for this video.”

“
Pretty clever of Gina,” he
replied.

“
So, what now?” I asked
him.

“
Now it’s time to let
Tristan in on the charade. If he gets mad at me for being the
messenger, then so be it. I can’t know what I know right now, and
do nothing.”

“
I agree but how are you
going to get to talk to him without Libby being around?”

“
A video's worth a thousand
words.”

Trey took my IPhone and texted Tristan
letting him know that it was him and not me and that a video was
coming over that was for his eyes and ears only. Tristan texted
back to let it roll.

"Here goes.” Trey forwarded the video to his
brother. I scooted over to be closer to Trey on the couch.

“
Will Tristan be
alright?”

“
He'll be hurt; he’ll get
over it.”

“
What kind of a person is
Libby?”

“
I think she’s a very kinky
girl, Tylar. The kind you don’t take home to Mama.”

“
Trey, that’s not funny.
She's likely broken your brother’s heart!”

“
I really don’t think
so.”

“
How can you say that? He
got engaged to her.”

“
Yeah, after knowing her for
what? Two minutes? That’s just not like him at all. I think Tristan
had a little bit of a mid-life crisis going on and did one of those
stupid things guys do when that happens. Luckily, it's easily
remedied and put behind him. He'll be fine. “

"You better not do anything like that when
yours hits,” I warned him.

“
Not a chance, baby. Come
on, let’s go play.”

I was packed and ready to go waiting on Gina
and Trey to arrive at the apartment. Trey had some things to finish
up at his office and planned to be home around noon. Gina said
she'd be over right after she and Tristan had finished up at the
accountant’s this morning. It was 1:30 p.m. and neither one of them
had crossed the threshold yet.

Preston was in her playpen looking adorable
in her red bib overalls and her red and white striped long sleeved
polo shirt. I'd put her hair into two tiny pigtails with little red
bows. Her other bottom central incisor was breaking through. She
was chewing anything rubbery like crazy. At the moment she was
slobbering on her rubber ducky bathtub toy. She'd refused to part
with after her bath this morning. It was squeaking like crazy as
she ravaged it with her emerging teeth.

Finally, I heard commotion at the front door.
Trey was first in with Gina tagging closely behind. They appeared
to be arguing.

Imagine that. . .

“
All I’m saying is you
might've wanted to pick a better time and more compassionate method
of dropping that little bomb on Tristan other than forwarding that
video, which by the way, he clearly knew I'd produced.”

“
Gina, I'm not justifying my
actions to you. He needed to know and now he does. Why are you
upset?”

“
Jesus Christ, Trey, why the
hell do you think? Your brother and I may end up as business
partners. The night before we meet with the club’s accountant, you
drop that video bombshell on him; the same video that I was
responsible for recording. Talk about wanting to kill the
messenger!”

“
He needed to know. You must
agree or you wouldn’t have concocted that little entrapment scheme
of yours to get Libby on video admitting that she’s a fucking
freak!”

“
Whoa, okay you two,” I
interrupted, “first of all, keep it down. You’re upsetting
Preston.” They both glanced over at Preston in her playpen chewing
away on her rubber ducky as if she was oblivious to the whole
thing. She must get upset only if it's Trey and me
arguing.

“
Okay,” I continued, “then
you're upsetting me. What's going on? Is Tristan backing out of the
deal?”