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She pulled the door open to hop into the passenger seat. I attempted to grab the door before she could shut it, but the car pulled away a second later. Alyssa kept her face turned away from the us as the taxi drove by and exited the parking lot.
We stood together in the icy wind of the night with Penny huddled against me. She cried softly into my shoulder.
“What are we going to do, Gabriel?” she asked, her voice thick with tears. “First, my mom. Now it’s Alyssa. I don’t think she is going to be convinced as easily.”
“No,” I replied, smoothing a hand along her shoulders. “You’re right. She won’t be easily persuaded like your mom. She’s very stubborn, like me.”
“What do we do now?”
I noted the trembling in Penny’s shoulders. Rubbing at them, I steered us back in the direction of the lobby. I didn’t know what would happen next, but I knew that Alyssa needed a bit of time to cool off. My daughter, while short and sweet, had a temper when she felt threatened.
“We’ll give her some space,” I said, even though a part of me ached to hop into a cab after her. “She just needs to cool down for a little bit, is all.”
Penny glanced up at me as we entered the warm lobby to head in the direction of the elevators. “You aren’t going to go after her?”
“No,” I said, sighing painfully. “As much as I want to chase after her, I know that it will only make her angrier. She’s an adult, Penny. I can’t run after her to explain things to her every single time something happens that she doesn’t agree with. That’s just how it is.”
“I don’t want this relationship if it is going to cause problems with Alyssa. I’m being serious when I say that, Gabriel.”
The elevator doors opened. Ushering Penny inside, I waited for the doors to slide shut before I turned to cup her face in my hands. I backed her up against the mirror hanging in the elevator to kiss her deeply, to feel a bit of something that made my heart warm over.
“I am not going to give you up,?
?? I whispered when I pulled back to look into her eyes. “The world will have to accept it, and Alyssa will, too. That’s just the way it’s going to be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO – PENNY
Despite what Gabriel believed, I knew that Alyssa wouldn’t be happy about any of this. No matter how indifferent he appeared while we walked back to the condo, I knew that a part of him hurt badly over Alyssa’s reaction.
My mother greeted us at the door the second she heard us coming down the hallway. She scanned the air behind us before pushing the door all the way open.
“No luck in talking to her?”
“No luck,” Gabriel said, stepping aside to let me in first. “I think she might need a few hours to cool down.”
“Perhaps I could talk to her,” Nikki said. “It might help hearing it from someone else.”
I glanced over at Gabriel while he closed the door. He turned to look at my mother while he weighed out the suggestion.
“You could try,” he said. “She might listen to you better than listening to Penny and me at the moment.”
“What’s her number?” she asked. “I can step in the kitchen to try and convince her to come back to talk to us.”
“Let me write it down,” Gabriel said. “I have a pen and pad in my office.”
The second that Gabriel stepped into the living room, I swept my mother up into a tight embrace. Tears filled my eyes with appreciation and relief as she hugged me back just as tightly.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For everything that you’ve done, Mom. I really appreciate at it.”
“As long as you’re happy,” she said, patting me on the back. “That’s all I care about. But for now, I need to make sure Alyssa is all right. This is going to be hard, no matter what I say to her.”
“I know. She’s pretty upset about it.”
Gabriel returned from the living room with Alyssa’s phone number scribbled on the top of the notepad. He handed it over to my mother, who took it with a small smile. She disappeared into the kitchen with her phone to talk privately without either one of us listening in on the conversation.
“Let’s sit down,” Gabriel said. “This conversation won’t happen right away. I can guarantee that.”
“All right,” I said numbly.
