Chapter 18
The seven-day stretch took its toll on both Robin and Shaw. He’d managed to stay true to his word and stayed away from Robin and hadn’t tried to contact her. Not even once, which Robin found a bit disappointing.
After all that talk he did about loving her and how there’d never be another for him, she assumed he’d be unable to not, at the very minimum, make a phone call to see if she was okay.
Robin wasn’t okay. Not in the least. She’d canceled all her dog training sessions as she could hardly stand to leave the apartment. Depression took her over, and that had never happened to her before.
She called her mother and her sisters often, but even they couldn’t pull her out of her funk. She admitted she’d found a man who she couldn’t stop thinking about, no matter how hard she tried. When they’d asked her what had her wanting to stop seeing this man who sounded absolutely wonderful, she could only make up a lie. She’d told them he was out of her league, being rich and powerful and all that.
Of course, none of them understood that and told her she was being crazy. They each told her the same thing: call the guy and tell him she had a bout of insecurity is all and get back to where they’d been headed before she lost her mind.
Robin needed a night out to get her head cleared and move on with her life. If that would even be possible. But she had to try. She called another young woman who lived in her apartment building and asked her if she wanted to get out and have a few drinks. Luckily, Grace was up for it and out they went a few short hours later.
Saturday nights always had lots of people going out, and the girls found a club that was hopping already, even at the early hour of nine o’clock.
Grace and Robin sat a small table, drinking fruity cocktails and eyeing the selection of men who eyed them back. “He’s cute,” Grace said as she jerked her head to the left. “The guy with the patch covering one eye. You could always use that as a way to start a conversation with him. ‘Hey, what the heck happened to you?’ Or, ‘Are you a pirate who’s very lost?’” They laughed at her joke and clanked their glasses together.
Robin couldn’t believe she was finally laughing. After seven days, her mouth had finally formed a smile and laughter came out of it. It felt good. It felt amazing.
And she even thought about going to talk to the pirate guy, but then a group entered the bar, and five hulking men made their way to a table across the dance floor from where the girls sat. She stopped breathing as she watched them all take seats.
Every one of them wore casual attire, instead of their motorcycle clothes. Every one of them smiled and laughed as they took their seats at a large table. And Shaw never looked her way.
She knew he could smell her. They all could.
So why wasn’t he looking?
“Why are you staring, Robin?” Grace asked her. “You know them or something?”
Robin shook her head. “No.” She put her glass down and got quiet as she looked at the glass and nothing else.
Had Shaw lied to her about how he felt?
It seemed that way. He didn’t even glance her way.
Grace wasn’t sure what had gotten into Robin, and she tried to pull her out of the little funk she’d fallen into. “I heard the couple upstairs from me last night. Boy, they were going at it so hard, I think I climaxed!” She laughed, but Robin didn’t.
“Is that right?” Robin asked, obviously not listening to Grace at all.
But Grace went on anyway, “Yeah. At one point I moaned louder than the woman did.”
“That right?” Robin asked again. Her eyes moved off the glass, and she stared right at Shaw.
Sitting with his left side to her, she knew he could see her if he only turned his head the slightest bit, a thing he didn’t do. The man infuriated her. Everything he’d said had to have been lies.
He didn’t love her. He could live just fine without her. That was completely obvious.
Robin had hardly been able to eat a thing. She’d lost five pounds in the seven days they’d been apart. He looked healthy as a horse.
She shook her head as she thought that he would look healthy, he was immortal after all. But he could look sad. She’d seen that desperate look on his handsome face before.
The wolf-shifter had to have been full of crap when he told her the things he had. She supposed he just wanted to change her to be like him so he could screw her whenever he wanted to. Not make her his forever mate the way he claimed.
And to think she’d thought about doing it. It made her sick to her stomach to know the thought of letting him bite her and living some amazing life with him had crossed her mind, and more than one time at that!
Oh, she’d never let the man or the thought of giving herself to him come anywhere near her mind again. Not after witnessing him being happy as a clam without her.
A waitress brought Shaw and his pack beers and they all toasted to something. Probably to Shaw forgetting about her, Robin thought. She downed her drink and only then did she notice Grace had left her alone at the table.
Looking around, she found Grace talking to the eye-patch guy, and the two were laughing it up. Robin looked at each person she could see, and everyone was lit up, animated, having fun. Everyone but her.
“Can I get you another drink?” a waitress asked as she came up behind her.
Robin didn’t want another drink. She only wanted to leave. But she’d rode with Grace and had no ride home. “Might as well.”
“One more of the same?” the waitress asked.
“I guess,” came her non-enthusiastic reply. “It doesn’t really matter.”
Robin didn’t catch the movements of one of the guys at the table next to hers, as she couldn’t pull her eyes off Shaw. But a man waved at the waitress and mouthed to put Robin’s drink on his tab. The waitress nodded and headed off to fetch the drink.
As hard as Robin eyed Shaw, the man at the next table eyed her, thinking she looked pretty sexy and wondering how he’d sweep her off her feet and into his bed a little later that night.
When the waitress came back with the drink, Robin picked up her purse to pay for it. But the waitress quickly said, “No, it’s paid for already.”
Robin looked at her and asked, “By who?”
The waitress nodded toward the man at the next table. “By him.”
Robin lifted the glass and nodded then took a drink. She might just have something she could make Shaw jealous with.
This should be fun.