cream.”
“Ice cream for dinner?” Gabe grinned at her. “Woman after my own heart.”
IT WAS A SIX COURSE MEAL, if one counted chocolate syrup, sliced bananas and ice-cream flavors as courses. Dress was informal, Arianne only in a shirt and Gabe in formfitting boxer-briefs. They each picked out two varieties from the assortment in his freezer-Arianne had been curious about one called Hawaiian Vacation that included coconut slivers and macadamia nuts-and made large, sloppy sundaes.
Gabe didn’t actually have a kitchen table, explaining that he mostly ate at the breakfast bar. But they opted not to perch on the high-backed stools and instead sat together on the navy plaid couch. Arianne, curious about everything from his choice of decorative touches to what movies he might have in his DVD collection, tried to take in her surroundings without seeming too nosy. It was a nice place, nothing fancy or fussy, but he used colors she thought worked well and he obviously wasn’t a slob. Frankly, if the tables had been turned and she’d ended up with him as unexpected company this afternoon, she wasn’t sure her place would have been as neat. It seemed like she was frequently on her way somewhere-to work, to her parents’, out with friends-and she had a tendency to dump stuff in the chair closest to the door as she passed.
A picture in a wooden frame, sitting on top of the shelves of the entertainment center, caught her eye. It looked like a personal shot rather than a professionally taken photo, and a pretty young woman on a railed front porch was smiling at the camera. Judging by her clothes and hairstyle, the picture was at least a couple of decades old.
“Your mom?” Arianne hazarded a guess.
Gabe paused with his spoon in midair. “Yeah.”
“Were you close?”
“No. She died before I was two weeks old. If it weren’t for pictures, I wouldn’t even know what she looked like.” He said the words blandly, with no emotion, and she wondered how he really felt. Did it bother him that he’d been denied the chance to bond with her, or had he made his peace with that years ago, not truly missing something he’d never known?
“What happened?” she asked, wanting to know more about this man and the upbringing that had shaped him.
“Postsurgery complications. I was a really large baby and they decided to do a C-section.” Again said eerily without inflection. Not sorrow or misplaced guilt that the C-section might have been his fault, simply a rote statement of fact. “She got an infection afterward, which is always dangerous, but she was diabetic, which made it harder to fight.”
Thinking of how important her mother, Susan, had been to her all her life, Arianne got a lump in her throat. But nothing in Gabe’s demeanor suggested he wanted to discuss his own feelings, so she found another outlet for her sympathy. “That must have been hard on your father.”
Gabe’s laugh was harsh. “And he never let me forget that. You should have seen his face when I, in the third grade, foolishly asked if there was a chance he might remarry, if I would ever have…” He trailed off, staring into space with such anger and pain that she couldn’t believe she’d thought him emotionless moments before.
Had she done it again, pushed too hard?
Relationships, familial or romantic, were messy, often painful, but extraordinarily worth the effort. Maybe Gabe just hadn’t had anyone in his life to demonstrate how rewarding they could be. Arianne had taken a front-row look at her parents’ long marriage and her brothers’ relationships. David and Rachel had struggled for several years with infertility and one miscarriage before beautiful Bailey had been born, and Arianne had watched them cope with the stress on their marriage. It took special people to weather the bad times together instead of distancing themselves from the problems and from each other.
Sometimes you just needed help bridging the distance.
Gabe stood suddenly, his unfinished ice cream melting into a tricolor mess. “If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to grab a shower.”
She tried not to feel wounded by his abruptness. The man had been working outside all morning, been at the hospital this afternoon and had given her the best sex of her life less than an hour ago. He deserved the comfort of a hot shower. But she couldn’t ignore the sense that he was once again retreating. Getting to her feet, she took the bowl from his hand.
“You go ahead,” she told him. “I’ll clean up out here.”
“Thanks.” His gaze lingered, softened for just a moment, but then he disappeared down the hall without another word. Soon she heard the pipes creak to life behind the walls as the water started. Trying not to fantasize about what it would have been like if Gabe had invited her to join him in the shower, she carried the bowls to the kitchen and rinsed them out.
She had just turned off the sink when she realized that his phone was ringing.
But it was a different female voice that came through the answering machine. “Gabriel? This is Mindy Nelson. I probably shouldn’t have called-you might be sleeping. But I was just so worried when I heard-”
Arianne decided that Gabe wouldn’t mind her fielding this one. “Hello? Mrs. Nelson? This is Arianne Waide.”
“Oh, hi, Arianne.” Mindy sounded confused but pleased that someone had answered. “Are you at Gabe’s house?”
“Yes, ma’am. I was with him this afternoon when he got hit on the head and drove him to the E.R.”
“I heard all about it. Fawne Harris makes it sound as if he appeared out of nowhere and saved her son’s life.”
“Well, he did catch Ben and keep him from injury,” Arianne admitted proudly.
Mindy clucked her tongue. “What a blessing that Gabe was there-I think Fawne’s ordering him roses. I heard about it at dinner tonight and got concerned about Gabe. I almost didn’t call, what with it being after nine by the time I got home, but…well, I was afraid he didn’t have anyone else to check in on him.”
Arianne ached, wondering how many good and bad moments he
“I’m glad. He’s such a good man. Do you know, when he was building the deck for my yard, I was trying to teach my oldest how to drive so that he could get his license? We were struggling with the parallel parking, making each other tense, and Gabe took it over for me one afternoon. My son passed his test the following week.”
“Gabe volunteered to teach your kid to parallel park? Gabriel Sloan?”
“I told you, he’s a good guy. Speaking of which, will you let him know that I spoke to my brother-in-law? I really talked up Gabe, so if he wants to call and ask about job opportunities, the way has been paved.”
Arianne scowled. Yet another woman was trying to help Gabe get out of Mistletoe. Why wasn’t anyone trying to help him
Once they hung up, Arianne realized that it had been hours since she’d looked at her phone. She probably should have checked in with Lilah and Tanner long ago. Sure enough, when she retrieved her cell from her purse, she saw that she had three voice mail messages, all from Lilah’s number.
Instead of taking the time to listen to them, she called her sister-in-law.
“There you are!” Lilah sounded equal parts exasperated and excited. “I’ve been trying to reach you. How’s Gabe?”
“Doctor said it was a concussion. He seems all right now, slept for hours. He took some more acetaminophen and is in the shower. I’m supposed to stay so that there’s someone to monitor him until tomorrow.”
Lilah was silent.
“What?” Arianne asked defensively.
