There was a tap on the door an instant before it was flung open.
“You up?” Samantha asked, though she was already in the room and settled on the other twin bed without waiting for an answer. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a rock,” Gabi admitted. “Best sleep I’ve had in ages.”
“Even with that noise outside?” Samantha grumbled.
Gabi grinned. “You always hated Grandmother’s wind chimes.”
“Because they make an unholy racket. I’m looking for earplugs first thing today.”
“Don’t they remind you of summer at the beach?” Gabi enthused. “They say smell stirs memories—the salt air by the ocean, cookies baking, the scent of a Christmas tree—but for me it’s those wind chimes. I feel just like a kid again.”
“Yeah, they take me back, too,” Samantha admitted. “I never slept a wink then, either.”
“How can a woman who lives in Manhattan with garbage trucks, taxis and car alarms going off in the middle of the night be bothered by little pieces of glass making music in a breeze?”
Samantha shrugged. “All in what you’re used to, I guess.” A grin spread across her face. “So, tell me about this date you have with Wade tonight.”
Gabi regarded her incredulously. “How on earth... Never mind. I know Grandmother overheard us. It’s not a date. We’re going out to grab dinner and see a movie. No big deal.”
“Sounds like a date to me, and I speak from some experience. Unlike you, I have those kind of dates on a regular basis.”
“Wade just took pity on me, that’s all. He thought I needed a distraction.”
“How thoughtful!” Samantha said, her expression amused. “You just keep telling yourself it’s as innocent as all that. I’m so mad I wasn’t there to see the two of you for myself. I would have known right off if sparks were flying. Grandmother said they were, but she’s unreliable. She sees what she wants to see. Emily doesn’t see anything except Boone these days. She didn’t even know you spent close to a half hour huddled with Wade. Her powers of observation are pitiful.”
Gabi sighed. “Is this why you wanted me to drive over here, so you could try to set me up with Wade? I thought you wanted to be supportive.”
“Nudging you in Wade’s direction is being supportive. He’s a great guy.”
“Who’s probably not one bit interested in being saddled with a woman carrying another man’s baby,” Gabi said. “What sensible man would want to sign on for that?”
“If you ask me, sensible can be highly overrated. Wasn’t Paul sensible?”
“Point taken,” Gabi conceded. “But please, please, leave this alone. I can’t take one more complication in my life right now.”
“Which is why you need someone like Wade to help you shoulder the burden,” Samantha insisted. “He’ll make you laugh. Even when you were pretending to be oblivious to him this summer, he could still make you laugh.”
“I doubt there are enough comedians in the country right now to make me laugh,” Gabi said.
“I think Wade’s up to the task,” Samantha contradicted. “Grandmother says he had you smiling yesterday. And given that he asked you out after seeing that you’re pregnant, obviously your situation hasn’t scared him off. He gets points for that, too.”
“Cora Jane needs to mind her own business,” Gabi said with frustration, unwilling to admit that it had been surprising to find that Wade wasn’t put off by her pregnancy. She wasn’t entirely sure if that made him extraordinarily rare, or perhaps just a little bit odd.
Samantha laughed at the reference to Cora Jane’s penchant for meddling. “Let me know if you find a way to make Grandmother stay out of our lives.”
Yeah, Gabi was pretty sure it was mission impossible, too.
3
The custom cabinetry Wade had built for a kitchen in an oceanside condo was giving him fits. Though his measurements had been checked and rechecked, once he started the installation, it was clear something was off. Tommy Cahill, the contractor who’d hired him for the renovation, was as bewildered as he was.
“I can’t deal with this now,” Wade said, glancing at his watch. “I have to be somewhere at six.”
Tommy nodded. “I’ll give it some thought. There has to be something obvious we missed. The top cabinets fit perfectly. These bottom cabinets...” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I have an idea,” one of Tommy’s helpers chimed in, clearly eager to impress his boss.
“Oh?” Tommy said, his skepticism plain.
The young man, barely eighteen and wearing jeans that looked destined to fall to his ankles at any second, took a marble from his pocket and set it on the floor at one end of the room. As Wade and Tommy stared, it took off rolling toward the other end of the room. The two men exchanged an incredulous look.
“The blasted floor’s not level,” Tommy muttered. “Not even close. How the devil did I miss that?”
“We both did,” Wade said, shaking his head. “Jimmy, you win the prize for figuring this out. What made you think of it?”
The kid shrugged, his cheeks pink. “No big deal. I helped my dad fix up our place. There wasn’t a level floor in it. We had to compensate for that in every room.”
“Well, it’s going to make my life a whole lot easier tomorrow when I get back here.” Wade met Tommy’s gaze. “I assume you don’t want to fix the floor.”
“No way. Not in the budget.”
“You need to double-check with the owner? Maybe they’d like to get it resolved now.”
“They balk if I buy an extra box of screws,” Tommy said with disgust. “Cheapest sons of a gun I’ve ever worked for. Let’s just get this over with.”
Wade nodded. “I’ll do some fiddling with the base of the cabinets to level things out,” he said, considering the problem and potential solutions. “I have more of the cherrywood in my shop. I’ll bring it along in the morning. Thank goodness the guys measuring for
