Dungeon Master by Golden Angel

Chapter Twenty-One

Gavin

As staredowns went, Gavin didn’t think he’d ever been in one where he worried he might be in danger of losing. Then again, he’d never had a staredown with a cat before. He hadn’t spent all that much time around cats, and the cats he had known had mostly ignored him and everyone else.

Not Leah’s cat.

Nope. The little orange devil jumped up onto the kitchen table while Gavin was waiting for Leah to finish changing into her ‘gardening clothes’ and sat his fuzzy little butt down right in front of Gavin and stared. Gavin stared back. Now, here they were. Silent. Unmoving. Unyielding.

“What are you doing?”

Gavin jumped. He’d been so focused staring down a cat, he hadn’t heard Leah returning to the kitchen. Dammit. He’d also lost the stare down. The kitten gave him a smug look, then lifted its legs to start licking his arsehole. Lovely.

“Oliver and I were getting acquainted,” Gavin said, getting to his feet. Leah looked at him suspiciously. Her hair was pulled back into a heavy braid and tucked under a bandana, and she was wearing overalls and a worn-out t-shirt. He’d dressed similarly, in an old pair of paint-stained jeans he didn’t care about and a shirt that had seen better days. The overalls were a cute touch; he hadn’t seen those before. Reaching out, he tugged on one of the straps. “Cute.”

“Uh-uh,” Leah scolded, twisting away from his fingers, still smiling. “Mulch first. Then you can play with the overalls. Maybe. Depending on how sweaty and dirty we get.”

Gavin chuckled. As if a little sweat or dirt would stop him from getting what he wanted. He really did like the look of those baggy overalls. If he undid the two buttons holding the straps to the bib, they’d drop straight down, leaving her pants-less.

Why did people try to say overalls weren’t sexy? Easy access like that was not a gift to be squandered.

“Let’s go. There’s a lot to be done,” Leah said, herding him out the front door. Oliver followed them until she shooed him back. Gavin gave the cat a superior smirk before the door closed in the cat’s face.

I may have lost the staredown, but I get to go outside with Leah.

Wait… was he seriously competing with a cat?

Don’t answer that question.

“Okay, so I thought we’d start over there by the rhododendrons since they need the most mulch, then move our way around the rest of the garden,” Leah said, pointing.

“Sounds good.” It wasn’t a lie exactly. There was something nice about hard work, even if it wasn’t his preferred hard work. He could still take satisfaction in a job well done, and it made Leah happy, that was his true reward.

* * *

Leah

Truth be told, Leah had expected a lot of sighs and complaints from Gavin throughout the process, but he almost seemed to be enjoying himself. Even better, they were making their way through the garden more than twice as fast as she would have on her own. With Gavin docilely following her instructions, she couldn’t help but smile at the picture they posed. This was what she wanted—easy weekends doing regular household things and having a good time being together.

This was what she’d been missing all the years they were apart.

“We’re doing great,” she said as they came to the last flowerbed, Gavin toting the last bag of mulch. They were both sweaty, and they smelled, but she was looking forward to inviting him to shower off with her. It made her a little nervous, both the idea of putting forward the invitation and of having him in this house, which had been her sanctuary for so long, but if she wanted things to move forward, she needed to make herself vulnerable, too. “This would have taken me two days alone, but I’ll be able to rest tomorrow.”

Dropping the bag of mulch next to the flowerbed, Gavin rotated his shoulders and his neck, letting out a guttural groan. That was more like the noises she’d expected to hear from him all day, and she giggled, not feeling at all worried the noise was directed at her as she would have once done. She believed Gavin when he said he wanted to be here, even if the task might not be his favorite.

“I might have to cancel on Aiden,” he said, shaking out the muscles he’d just stretched. “This was even more of a workout than I remembered. It can be my exercise for the weekend.”

“Well, he’ll still have Jax,” Leah said, amused as she knelt down to rip open the bag and started scooping out the mulch. She’d never been much of a gym person; she’d much rather be doing something productive that also happened to give her a workout. Gardening was good exercise and made for a pretty final product. Then again, if her body built muscle and lost fat the way Gavin’s did, she might be more inclined, but her extra pounds were a lot more stubborn than his. It was so unfair how easy it was for men to lose weight or bulk up when they wanted to!

Gavin snorted, picking up his shovel. “Jax barely comes to the gym anymore. Aiden will have to go on his own, or maybe he’ll take the weekend off, too.”

Blinking, Leah stilled.

“Jax hasn’t been going to the gym?” Then why had he told Esther he was? That’s what Esther had told her and Cyana. She wasn’t misremembering that; she was sure of it. She wouldn’t forget the reason her friend had been upset, even though Esther had said it was fine at the same time she’d been complaining.

“Haven’t seen him in weeks. Why?” His tone was mild but curious, clearly not realizing something was amiss.

“Esther said he’s been going every Sunday. She was venting about it, actually, since Jax hasn’t had as much time for her lately, and going to the gym with you guys means he isn’t around for hours on Sunday either.” Worry started to rise as Leah spoke, and Gavin stared back at her with a puzzled expression. “Oh my God… has he been lying to her…?”

“Now, hold on, don’t fly off the handle,” Gavin said, which, of course, stirred her temper even more. She pressed her lips together, pushing away the emotion, telling herself he probably didn’t realize how patronizing he sounded. “Maybe he’s been going to a different gym on his own. We don’t know what he’s been doing, so we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

“I’m not jumping to conclusions,” she countered hotly, stabbing her trowel into the mulch and spreading it around the flower in front of her. “He told her he’s been at the gym with you and Aiden. Clearly, he hasn’t been. So, regardless of what he’s been doing, he’s been lying to her.”

The sigh that came from Gavin poked at her temper. She kept her head down, refusing to look up at him. His tone was already patronizing. If she looked up and he had condescension in his expression, she was going to go off on him, and she knew it.

She didn’t understand how he could be so blasé about this.

“We don’t know what he’s doing,” Gavin said firmly. Out of the corner of his eye, she could see him digging into the mulch, using the shovel to spread it around the opposite side of the flowerbed. “Maybe he had a good reason to tell Esther that.”

“Yeah, well, I guess we’ll find out soon.”

The shovel stopped.

“What does that mean?” There was an odd note in Gavin’s voice, one she didn’t recognize, but alarm bells started going off.

“What do you mean, what does that mean?” Exasperated, Leah finally looked up at him, meeting his eyes. The expression on his face was inscrutable. “It means I’m going to ask him.”

The exasperation she felt was mirrored in Gavin’s eyes.

“It’s not our business, Leah.”

“Uh, if I find out my friend is being lied to, and she’s hurting because of it, it becomes my business.” She turned away from him, feeling her temper rising.

“He’s not cheating on her.”

Even the words made her blood freeze. She didn’t want them to be true, not only because she couldn’t see Jax as a cheater, but she didn’t want that for Esther. If Jax was cheating, Leah and Cyana would work together to relieve him of his balls, but it would crush Esther. Deep down, that’s what she was thinking. What other explanation did Gavin think there could be?

And how the hell did he think she was supposed to keep this knowledge from one of her best friends? It didn’t matter that Jax was her friend, too. In this case, Esther was the injured party and deserved to know her husband was lying to her. That wasn’t a secret Leah should have to keep. Expecting her to was unreasonable.

“We don’t know that,” she said tightly. “Which is why we should ask him. I’ll ask him if you have a problem with doing so.”

Ask for things for herself? Nope. Too scary. Ask a scary question to protect her friend? Yup. She was all over that.

Gavin made another frustrated noise. The mulch was really flying now from both of them as they worked out their emotions. This flowerbed was getting done much faster than the others, albeit in a somewhat messier fashion.

“I ask about things that are important.” He gritted out the words between his teeth.

That did it. Leah stopped shoveling mulch. It was mostly done anyway.

“Jax lying to Esther isn’t important?” She glared up at him. Seriously?

“We don’t know what he said or why he said it. It’s not our relationship. There is nothing good that can come from getting involved.”

Getting to her feet, Leah gripped the trowel tightly as if holding on to it would help her keep a grip on her growing anger. Yeah, she knew their group of friends could sometimes split down the middle, the guys closer to each other than they were to the women and vice versa, but she hadn’t thought he would be so callous.

“Well, then, you don’t have to get involved,” she snapped, knocking the mulch and dirt from her overalls. Now that she was already irritated, the grit and grime seemed more annoying than when she’d been enjoying herself.

“Do not ask Jax,” Gavin ordered… and it definitely was an order. “Whatever’s going on, it’s clearly something he doesn’t want people to know about.”

“Oh, well, I’m so glad we had this discussion. Maybe if he didn’t want people to know, he shouldn’t have told such a stupid lie. It was bound to come out, eventually.”

“Leah…” The warning in Gavin’s voice made her want to snap. As if he had the right to make unilateral decisions for both of them. That was so like him. Dammit. Why had she thought this could still work out between them? When it came down to it, a tiger didn’t change its stripes.

Gavin might be willing to work in the garden with her, but he was still trying to dictate to her. He still wasn’t listening to her. He wasn’t concerned about how Esther would feel about the situation, just like he hadn’t thought about how Leah would feel.

She hadn’t been unclear about what she wanted here, but he’d dismissed her out of hand as if her opinion didn’t matter, like he had final say.

Yeah. She was done here.

His assistance had made a big difference, but this conversation had shown her things hadn’t really changed. He hadn’t really changed. Looking at the garden was going to be bittersweet this year—the memory of what could have been and how it had all fallen apart… again.

Better she knew now than later when she was even deeper into things and her hopes even further up.

“Thanks for coming over to help,” she said, biting off the words and crossing her arms over her chest in an unwelcoming posture. Maybe she was being a ‘guesser’ by not asking him to leave, but clearly, he didn’t care when she asked, anyway. “I appreciate it.”

“Leah—”

“You’d better hurry home, so you can get to the club on time.” It wasn’t the first time she’d gotten rid of him by pointing that out, effectively ending a fight, and the reminder made a lump rise in her chest. Yeah, this felt an awful lot like how some of their old fights had ended… not in a good way.

Glancing down at his watch, Gavin cursed.

“We’re not done talking about this,” he said, surprising her by taking two steps forward to plant a kiss on her before she realized what was happening. “I’ll see you later. Come to the club.”

Yeah, no. The last thing she felt like doing tonight was having sex, but there he was, barking more orders and telling her what to do, not bothering to wait for an answer before getting in his car and driving away.

Pure tiredness seeped through her as she watched him go.

Do not go asking Jax.

Fine. It wasn’t Jax she was concerned about, anyway. Turning to head into the house, she rubbed her forehead. She would take the time in the shower to think, but as soon as she was clean, she had a very uncomfortable phone call to make.

* * *

Gavin

Watching the door and the clock, Gavin sighed when he realized Leah wasn’t coming. It was too late in the evening.

Should he call her?

She was probably still pissed.

Why she was so upset, he wasn’t sure. Did she really think Jax would cheat on Esther?

There was no way. There would be another explanation. Gavin was sure of it. Hell, if Jax was cheating on Esther, he’d eat his kilt.

At first, he hadn’t realized that’s where Leah’s mind had gone because it was so unthinkable. Once he’d gotten it, he’d rejected the idea utterly. Jax was crazy about Esther. Not only that, he wasn’t a cheater.

There had to be another explanation. If it really meant a lot to Leah, he supposed he could ask, but he didn’t think Jax would take it well if Leah barged in with her accusation. Who would? It would be better if he asked Jax. Maybe he could do that tomorrow, then he could tell Leah how it went.

No, wait, he needed to include her.

He’d text her and let her know he was going to talk to Jax tomorrow, then hopefully, she wouldn’t do anything rash.

Walking through the club, barely seeing any of the scenes happening around him, nodding to the members as if nothing was wrong, Gavin made his way back to his office. Sitting down in the chair, he picked up the cell phone from where he’d left it on his desk. No missed calls or texts from Leah, explaining she wasn’t coming tonight.

She really was ticked.

While it went against the grain to insert himself into someone else’s relationship without being explicitly asked for his opinion, Leah clearly felt Jax might actually be doing something wrong. Until she knew otherwise, she’d probably lump Gavin in with whatever she assumed Jax was doing, giving him the same amount of blame.

Which he could understand if he thought Jax was actually doing something wrong, but he didn’t believe it. He also didn’t understand how Leah could have so little faith in their friend. Was he in denial? No. Jax wouldn’t. He knew Aiden and Gavin would kill him—and that was only if they got to him before Cyana. There was no way. Right?

Still, he probably should let Jax know he and Leah had figured out something was up. If only so Jax could explain himself to Esther because he deserved to be the one to do so, and Esther deserved to have him be the one to tell her what was going on. Whatever it was. Which definitely wasn’t cheating.

Because Gavin would kill him.

Shaking his head, he tapped out a text message to Leah.

I’ll talk to Jax tomorrow.

He almost added a line that he was sure there would be a reasonable explanation, but he deleted it before sending. Adding it wouldn’t be helpful since he couldn’t imagine it sounding anything other than snide, even if he meant it to be reassuring. A moment later, his phone buzzed.

Don’t bother. I already told Esther.

“What the bloody hell?!”