Romance: Gibson's Legacy ( New Adult Contemporary Erotic Romance) (Last Score Book 1) (26 page)

“Meeting my mom put paid to him playing in a band. And he wasn’t good enough to make any money at it. Anyway, they fell pregnant with me when my mom was nineteen, so my dad had to sell the Gibson to help pay for the deposit on the rental they secured.

“When I was born, my dad figured as he had to sell his prized possession to pay for the house for me, I should be named after the guitar he lost.” Gibson huffed heavily, and leaned into the backpack, then I heard what sounded like a water bottle cap snap.

Hearing him suck on the water and swallow it down in the dark was incredible. He never seemed to do anything half measure. I could just make out that he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and a cool plastic bottle hit my leg. Taking it, I started to drink from the bottle where his mouth had just been as he began to talk again.

“Paul Lesley is the name I use when I need privacy. I fly under that name, book hotels, cars and stuff. What I’m saying—I have a lot of explaining to do, Chloe. Please don’t be mad at me but I had to meet you after fate or whatever shit threw us together again.”

Conscious Gibson’s mouth had been on the bottle again, I sipped the water, still confused saying, “I’m really not following any of this.” Feeling embarrassed as well because if he really was Paul then he knew me intimately already, and I knew him. I should have been wild with anger, but I was too stunned to think. The old Chloe would have smacked him around the head and been out of there in a shot.

“Towels. The rain, Beltz Bar, you, me, that moment. And then you were gone. Chloe, the look in your eyes that day…I’ve never been able to forget you. We connected and you ran scared. I had made up my mind that night in the bar to go after you, but I knew you would never get with someone like me. I know what I was then and I can’t undo those things you saw, but fuck, since the moment I saw you, you’ve been in here ever since.” His elbow was at ninety degrees again and I think he was pointing at his head.

Everything he was saying began to overwhelm me. I had thought I was safe from being manipulated and controlled and Gibson had been doing the same with those phone calls. Tears began to roll down my face. I was stuck on a beach with a guy who I had thought was one thing, but by then I knew the whole situation, and had turned out to be someone else who had taken advantage of me in my vulnerable state.

Rising to my feet, I stepped past him and began walking, needing to make some space between us. Gibson was on his feet and caught my hand before I’d gone ten yards.

“Stop. It isn’t what you think. I wanted to tell you, not at the beginning, but I did want to tell you. Please, Chloe. Please let me finish explaining.”

Something in his voice screamed to me that no one seemed to allow Gibson to be heard. It was a desperation that made me stop. Sure everyone listened to Gibson the showman, but who were his confidants?

Standing still, I closed my eyes, and he surprised me by pulling me into another hug. His strong arms around me should have made me panic, but they didn’t. Once again, I felt safe… a feeling in contradiction to the situation before me and in my personal experience.

“When I called you, I was calling Toby Francis from Gamete. You had no idea who I was and I never knew it was you and Chloe, you have no clue what that did for me. Someone talking to me, wh…who treated me like a normal person, instead of a piece of meat or a cash cow. With you I got to be
me
. For that few minutes a day. I got to be myself. You know you are the only person ever to hang up on me?”

Listening to him explain how he felt was really an eye opener. Leaning against his chest, his voice was rumbling in his throat, right before the words impacted on me, and it was awesome. His voice was even and soothing, even though he was telling me things that I should have been so freaked out about. I wanted to feel angry and for the warning bells to sound but they just wouldn’t come with him holding me like that.

“Chloe, when I heard our music play and you said all that stuff about me, I was ashamed. I could have stayed on the line with you that day, but I ran away because you were the one person that affected my conscience about how I had been living my life back when you were at college. No one gave a shit about me, least of all me, but I’ve never forgotten the girl with no name and the eyes that could see into my soul. There has not been a day that has passed that I haven’t had two images of the way you looked at me in my head. One, the night I was getting laid in the staff room at Beltz and the other in Matt’s office.”

Snickering softly, Gibson squeezed me a little tighter then let go. “I’m sorry that I was drunk, and called you in the middle of the night, Chloe, but I’m not sorry we had the conversation we had. Five years is a long time to fantasize and dream about a girl, and then by some freak of fate or whatever, I find her at the other end of my cell phone. Come on, what are the odds on that? Chloe, you and I may never have met again, if it weren’t for me being famous. And it was only because I am that I could orchestrate meeting you.”

Stepping back away from me, he still held me by my upper arms. “Chloe, the competition you won had one entrant. You. I have to put my hands up to that, because I really couldn’t wait any more to see how this panned out between us. I’m petulant and impulsive and I had to know if what I had been harboring for the past five years had some substance to it, and I wasn’t driving myself crazy over some fantasy. In actual fact Chloe, when I kissed you tonight, all my suspicions were confirmed. I am absolutely smitten by you.”

Twenty one hours of insanity had started at nine in the morning at JFK airport, and had continued to unfold in an unbelievable turn of events. Events that hurt my head to think about. It was all too incredible to be real.

There was only one thing I knew for sure—I needed space and time to think. But there was no way I could have a coherent thought while Gibson was setting my senses alight with his touch.

I felt like I was playing with a grenade with no pin and I was scared. These past six weeks I had been fighting my inner demons, trying to shake off all the negative experiences I had at the hands of Kace. No matter how scared I was feeling, I had to be strong and face my past and live my future or else I was merely existing.

CHAPTER 25 – CONFESSIONS

Gibson

Ludicrous arguments were keeping me from getting to know Chloe. So little time together and I was fucking everything up right, left, and center. Thinking initially that I was the damaged one, I had been trying to do everything my way instead of doing things properly and confessing from the beginning that I knew who she was.

Chloe’s comments on the phone about me stung. Apart from that, face to face she was so sensitive and defensive to any comment I made. Plus she was judging me all the fucking time and second guessing what I was about. Strange, I never got that vibe about her at Beltz. She seemed like a girl with her head screwed on the right way.

Sure, I’d noticed her before, who the hell wouldn’t have? She was sweet as fuck and dressed so understated that she was sinfully appealing, wearing little cute tank tops that would have looked great hanging on my bedroom chair and jeans that were cut like they were made for her ass alone.

One thing that struck me about her was that she was oblivious to my charms. Not once did I ever get eye contact with her on an even footing. Every time I’d seen her previously, I was kinda busy with other girls.

Charlotte had pissed me off as well. I thought about what she knew about the situation? She knew it all. Bad enough that I had to confide in her about Chloe to get her help, she threw a spanner into the works by picking a restaurant with a name that suggests the kind of lifestyle I was trying to detach myself from.

The feelings Chloe gave me made me want to do things properly with her. Five years since I’d seen her, yet her face had never left me. Five fucking years. Either I was mentally deficient or that meant something significant. I was banking on the significant part because she was the only person who ever managed to impact me in any shape or form.

Having her with me was more difficult than I thought. Surprising really, how right she felt in my arms and how hard our communication was.
What does that say? I’m attracted to her but she pisses me off? No that’s wrong, she doesn’t do that. It’s that she doesn’t trust me and I know why. And she’s so damned defensive.
I get that, really I do.

Chloe unnerves me because she’s not that responsive to me. I’ve never known anyone like that before. Of all the girls I’ve ever met, she seemed to be the one I couldn’t fully figure out. That made me wonder why and then I decided it would be better not to try.

Seeing her cry the way she did on the plane broke my heart, especially because she was crying over something that I had said. Well, she’d said it first, but it was the way I had said it and that it seemed insensitive, like I was humiliating her. When really it came out like that because there was nothing I would have loved to do more.

She had consumed most of my waking thoughts after that phone sex session. I knew it would probably hurt her that I hadn’t rung back, but I couldn’t risk that with it being so near to her coming face to face with me for the show. I wasn’t sure I was going to tell her. Maybe that’s why I wanted her to forget what I sounded like.

Being honest with her hadn’t worked much in my favor so far, but tonight there were times when she looked at me and I thought yeah …there is definitely something between us, and then her suspicious mind took over again. She was always s assuming the worst about me and never considered that there may have been a logical explanation for how things were being done in a certain way.

Instinct kept telling me she was different. Chloe didn’t react to me like everyone else and she just got me. Yet when it came down to it… since we’d been face to face, she was making the same assumptions about me that everyone else did.

Normally, if someone had treated me the way she did; when she ranted she knew me and what I was, I would have quietly walked away and that person would never have got to interact with me ever again, but I couldn’t do it with her. Chloe was under my skin and had been for five years.

I’d been semi -hard all night just watching her. The delicate way she picked at her food, the way her eyes rolled with pleasure when she found a taste that she connected with. She was unaware that when she moaned in response to the taste, the sounds she made had made me want to sink myself balls deep in her just to hear it again.

Oh! But when she kissed me, FUCK! That little peck on my lips was worth all the rides any girl had ever had on me and it sent a message straight to my dick. That tiny little signal from her made me feel like I’d struck gold. If I hadn’t been lying down, she’d have knocked me off my feet. Not with the kiss itself, just that she wanted me for that one moment. And, jeez I wanted her back—badly.

From that point I almost lost control. I was used to taking charge, taking what I wanted, but I never did anything that a girl hadn’t wanted me to do. With the wine and all the emotional shit that she was showing me, I knew I couldn’t just steam ahead and get all hot and horny with her.

With that first roll, when I felt her weight on top of me, I’m telling you, there has been no better feeling inside of me–ever. I’ll admit I cupped her ass in my palms, then slid them to her hips, and pressed her closer, my hips rocking up to meet her sweet spot. What I was doing was teenage boy’s stuff, but sweet Jesus I almost creamed my pants at the sensation of her heat right on top of mine when I dry humped her.

I’d taken advantage of her on the phone and that was a bad call, because I knew who she was, and she had no idea that I knew. Since all of that was still hanging between us, and with my blunt oral sex suggestion, all I was achieving was to push her further away from me.

Chloe had layers going on with her feelings, and I had the feeling she liked me, but there were parts of her that seemed closed off. Hearing what she thought of me on the phone those times, made me feel that she’d never believe what I had to say about her, and I doubted whether I was someone she’d ever want to get close to her.

Chloe reacting like that on the plane was awkward, because I’d never had someone I cared about have a meltdown to the point where I felt so fucking helpless that I couldn’t speak. All I could do was hold her tightly and try to remember not to get hard doing it.

Being there with her on the beach, I had to reach out to her and tell her the truth about me being the one who had been calling her. She needed my honesty if she was going to learn to trust me.

Strange, but she had nothing much to say about what happened on the phone at that point, but I was learning that still waters ran deep and she seemed to mull things over before she was ready to speak her mind about anything. With that in my own mind, I knew there was a powder keg with a fuse waiting to be lit sometime soon.

Staring at her silhouette in the dark and wondering when that particular minefield would come up, the beach no longer seemed a good idea. “Come on, we’re getting out of here. I could easily have called and got someone out of bed. Gibson Barclay the rock star can make people do whatever the fuck he wants, Chloe. The reason I didn’t was because I wanted to spend some time with you.”

Taking her by the hand I strode back to the sun shelter and closed the hamper. Picking it up, I slipped into my shoes and began walking back to the car with her.

“Aren’ t you going to get the blanket and stuff?” she asked surprised that I wasn’t packing everything up.

“Nah, someone will be glad of that when the sun comes up. This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go, Chloe. I didn’t mean to drink all that wine. I guess I just felt relaxed enough to do what came naturally.”

Stepping onto the long boardwalk from the beach, Chloe’s face became visible with the walkway lighting. “And I know what comes naturally to you, Gibson, that’s the part that worries me about you.”