His Unlikely Lover

by Natasha Anders

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Bobbi turned on Gabe, who was watching her with a moody expression on his face. His brow lowered at the sight of the blood on her forehead and the rapidly forming bruise on the left side of her face. Bobbi knew she looked awful but wished that fact wasn’t so clearly reflected in his disgusted expression.

  “Look at you,” he muttered. “Just look at the state of you! How am I supposed to even consider having a real relationship with a woman who wears overalls to work, hasn’t styled her hair in years, never wears makeup, and has grease under her fingernails? And then there’s this tendency of yours to get into the weirdest bloody situations. You get hurt and bruised and scuffed up. How am I supposed to deal with that, for God’s sake? I can’t keep you insulated against the entire world. I just can’t. How would you fit into my life? Where would I even put you?” The words were despairing and made no sense to Bobbi. She was just so astonished by this meltdown from a man who was used to keeping his cool. “I need someone else, someone who knows how to dress and handle herself in public, someone who won’t show up at events with questionable bruises . . .”

  “Stop,” she whispered. “Please just stop, Gabe. Before you say something that we can’t come back from.”

  “Don’t you understand?” His voice was edged with panic. “We’re already done . . . When we were just friends, your rough and tumble ways didn’t bother me half as much. The way things stand between us now? I just can’t watch you get hurt anymore.”

  “Then stop hurting me.” Her quietly wailed plea seemed to register and the panicked glaze left his eyes to be replaced by a different kind of alarm. She shoved against his chest with both hands with enough strength to send him staggering back a step. The rest of the group was trying to maintain a discreet distance but she could see that they were all hovering close by, probably not sure if they should intervene or not. “Just stop hurting me! Because that’s all you’ve been doing. You don’t think I’m good enough for you. Did you think I was ever unaware of that fact? But, I swallowed my pride and allowed you to hatch this insane arrangement—God I hate that word so much—between us. Any romantic notions I had about you died that night in my father’s den. Because I was imagining a real relationship with you, while you were trying to fix it so that we could shag regularly without anybody ever finding out.

  “I felt small and cheap and stupid but I allowed it because I knew that it was the only way I could have you. I knew it was my one chance to be with you.” Her eyes were burning with the tears she refused to shed. Gabe looked completely shell-shocked and his own eyes were suspiciously bright. “And that’s on me. I should have refused but I was in love with you. I had been for years and I knew that it was the best damned offer I would ever get from you. I told myself if that was all I could get of you then I’d take it, but you know what? I deserve more than that. More than you and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure that out.

  “I deserve a real relationship with a man who loves me for who I am. Grease, calluses, unstyled hair and all. I’ll never be good enough for you and I refuse to twist myself up in knots over that anymore—because you know what? You’re not good enough for me either. If our so-called friendship has to be sacrificed as a result of all this, then so be it because right now I don’t know why the hell I ever considered you such a good friend in the first place.”

  She ignored the look of slack-jawed distress on his handsome face and turned on her heel to stalk off the field. She brushed past the men who still stood around in stunned silence, then toward the women—her friends—none of whom she dared look at for fear of bursting into tears. Billy and Chase both looked like they wanted to say something, but she held them off with a shake of her head. They retreated tactfully and she was grateful for that.

  She was so distraught that she was halfway home before she noticed the tall man silently shadowing her.

  “I’m not great company at the moment, Kyle,” she whispered, trying very hard to keep herself together.

  “I’m aware of that,” the man said calmly. “I just figured that if you wanted to talk it would be best to do so with someone who won’t feel obligated to see ‘both sides of the story’ so to speak. Someone who’s one hundred percent in your corner and has no loyalty whatsoever to the other guy.”

  “And you’re that guy, are you?” she asked softly. If she didn’t feel so completely gutted, she would have been charmed by him.

  “I’m that guy,” he affirmed. “You don’t have to talk though. I’m just walking you home.” They were at the gate and out of sight of the football pitch when she turned to the tall stoic man with a wobbly smile.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re quite welcome.” The three words were delivered so gently that Bobbi couldn’t hold back anymore. This man didn’t know her; he didn’t know that she never cried . . . so it was perfectly okay to cry all over him. When her tears came, he made a deep, comforting sound in the back of his throat, folded her in his arms, and simply let her weep.

  Gabe watched her walk away . . . and felt a staggering sense of loss that nearly sent him to his knees. There had been a chilling finality to her words that terrified him.

  She was in love with him? How could she be in love with him? They were friends. They had always been friends. Even after this physical thing between them had popped up out of nowhere, Gabe had never doubted that one truth. So how the hell could she have been in love with him? For years? How could his friend have hidden something like that from him for so long? Did he even know her at all?

  If he had had access to that one important piece of information, he would never have suggested a no-strings sexual arrangement between them. He would have known that it would hurt her too much. He would have backed the hell off . . .

  He would have run scared.

  And that was why she had kept it from him. She knew him better than he knew her. She knew that he wouldn’t have handled the whole love thing well at all. Why would she tell him when it would probably have destroyed their friendship? He sighed heavily—the deep inhalation of breath intensifying the ache in his chest—and acknowledged that the friendship was pretty much destroyed now anyway. Neither of them had handled the situation particularly well and Gabe knew that he bore the brunt of responsibility for it. He had just lost it when he’d seen her take that body blow from Max and then the blood. He felt vaguely nauseated just recalling it. He had absolutely hated the sight of her blood. It had brought out a primal protective instinct that had made him want to pummel Max into the ground. He didn’t understand it, but it had made him irrationally angry with both Max and with Bobbi for constantly putting herself in harm’s way. How the hell was he supposed to take care of her when she was always doing things that could get her hurt?

  He didn’t know what was going on with him. He had never felt more lost and confused than he did at this moment. He was still standing in the middle of the football field and staring off in the direction Bobbi had taken. Kyle Foster had gone with her. He felt irrationally angry about that. Who did that guy think he was? He blindly moved to follow them, but Chase moved into his path. His brother’s stance was nonconfrontational but immovable, nonetheless, with arms crossed over his chest and legs braced shoulder length apart.

  “No.”

  “I have to . . .”

  “No, Gabe. You’re not thinking rationally and whatever it is you’re planning to do right now will most likely be ill-advised. Let her go for now.”

  “I hurt her,” Gabe confessed helplessly. “I tried so hard not to hurt her but I did anyway.”

  “I know,” Chase said, and his body language changed, softened. His hands dropped to his sides and his chest heaved.

  “What the hell do I do now?” Gabe asked, and Chase hooked a hand around the back of Gabe’s neck and tugged him closer until his mouth was next to his brother’s ear.

  “You leave her alone until you figure that out,” Chase advised—his voice a low growl. “And if
you can’t figure it out, then you let her go.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Corvette looked amazing and she handled like a dream. Bobbi stood back and examined the grand old dame with misty eyes. Jason would be picking her up in half an hour, and Bobbi felt like a parent sending her child off to school for the first time. Her proud sense of accomplishment was accompanied by a bittersweet pang of loss. She had put so much into this project, both financially and emotionally.

  It had helped keep her mind off Gabe, who hadn’t called, e-mailed, or SMS’d since that awful night nearly two weeks before. Bobbi couldn’t believe that she hadn’t seen or spoken to him in so long. She felt so empty, like she was missing a piece of her soul. The longest they had gone without speaking before had been a week and that had been because Gabe had been in a part of Africa that had little to no cell-phone reception and dodgy Internet connections.

  She saw Chase quite often, but even that was starting to get painful because he was looking healthier by the day, which meant that he and Gabe were starting to look identical again. Even though Bobbi hadn’t ever confused one for the other, the physical resemblance was still hard to deal with. She tried her best not to let Chase see how much it hurt her sometimes to look at him.

  She wiped away a smudge on the car’s gleaming red bonnet, talking to it all the while.

  “He has promised to take really good care of you this time. He’ll take you out on lovely scenic drives, and he’ll have you washed and serviced regularly. I know you’re scared that he’ll just leave you to gather more rust and dust, but when he sees you he’s going to fall in love with you. I promise.”

  “Boss?” She turned around to see Pieter, fully recovered from his unfortunate case of measles. He was slouching as usual with his hands shoved into his overall pockets.

  “Yes?”

  “You have a phone call.” He jerked his head toward her office, and Bobbi gave the Corvette one last polish before retreating to her office. She had managed to clear some of the paperwork off her desk over the past few weeks—one of the very few perks of having a broken heart.

  “Bobbi Richmond,” she greeted absently, preoccupied as she remembered that she had wanted to check the radiator hose on the Corvette one final time. She was sure that it was fine but even new hoses could be flawed and Bobbi was a perfectionist when it came to her work.

  “Hello, Bobbi.” She was so busy hunting for a pen to write down a reminder to check the hose that the voice didn’t register at first. When it did, she forgot all else and sank down into her ancient office chair, her legs suddenly losing their ability to support her.

  “Gabe,” she murmured. She wasn’t sure how else to respond.

  “How are you?” he asked, his voice revealing absolutely nothing of what he was feeling.

  “I’m good. Busy.” There was a long pause.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” he said, only after the silence had stretched past the point of painfully awkward. There was more excruciating silence as he waited for a response from her. She swallowed and refused to make this any easier for him than it had to be.

  “Uh . . . anyway. I was wondering if you would do me the honor . . . I mean, if you would grace me . . .” His voice faded away and her eyebrows leapt up into her hairline, she was so stunned by his uncharacteristic lack of eloquence. He cleared his throat. “I was hoping you’d go to the Valentine’s Day event . . . with me.” The words emerged on one breath and practically merged together he said them so swiftly.

  Bobbi’s jaw had dropped and she wasn’t quite sure she had heard him correctly.

  “What?” she asked unsteadily.

  “Will you go the Valentine’s Day Ball with me?” he repeated, his voice more measured now but still with a slight wobble. Bobbi’s fingers tightened around the receiver uncertainly.

  “Why are you doing this?” she whispered, her throat tight with tears.

  “I . . . miss you. I want you back in my life. I want us to, you know, do it right this time and . . .”

  “No.” She interrupted whatever he’d been about to say, her voice vehement. “I don’t want to hear any more about what you want, Gabe. I can’t go to the ball with you. I have a date. And even if I didn’t have a date . . . I wouldn’t have gone with you.” She paused for a moment to allow that to sink in. “I have to go. I’m busy right now.”

  She replaced the receiver back in its cradle with the utmost care and blindly turned away from her desk. She wouldn’t allow him to creep into her life only to make her feel inadequate again. She was determined to be stronger than that.

  A date? The knowledge filled Gabe with panic. Was he too late? Had somebody else snatched her up while Gabe had sat around feeling sorry for himself? The thought was unbearable.

  He studied the surface of his meticulously arranged desk. Just the way he liked it—everything neatly stowed away. Not a paperclip out of place. Bobbi had been the only bit of chaos in his life, but he now found that without her, his well-ordered life was . . . bland. He missed his lover and he missed his friend. He had foolishly tried to keep those two facets of her in separate boxes and it had naturally backfired on him. He was damned well going to do this thing right from now onward. Amateur hour was coming to an end.

  Bobbi started monitoring her calls after that. After that football night, she hadn’t expected him to hear from again for a long time and that phone call to the shop had rattled her immensely. She had Craig on phone duties, knowing that he would be vigilant about not letting any calls from Gabe slip through the cracks. She ignored any calls to her cell phone from him and simply came home too late for him to call the house.

  His messages started to pile up over the next few days. Voice mails clogged up her cell-phone inbox and handwritten notes from her father were left outside her bedroom door.

  “Please call me.”

  “I’m sorry I missed you. Please call.”

  “I missed you again. Please call.”

  “Call me.”

  And on and on it went. The voice mails he left on her cell phone were more detailed:

  “I know I hurt you. I just want a chance to make it right. I miss you. Please call me.”

  “Bobbi, I miss you. Call me.”

  “I wish you’d answer my calls.”

  “I can’t do this (he never elaborated on what “this” meant) in a message. I need to speak with you. Let me know when it’ll be convenient for me to call you or see you.”

  It was driving her crazy. At her previous girls’ night a few days before, each woman said she’d had at least one message from Gabe. They never urged her to call him though. They merely relayed the messages and then carried on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Nobody had forced her to talk about it. They respected her silence on the matter. And she was eternally grateful for that.

  “Good. You’re home.” Her father met Bobbi at the door when she let herself in that evening. He looked flustered and annoyed.

  “Dad? What’s wrong?” She stepped past her agitated father and tried to drop her messenger bag carelessly onto a side table in the foyer, as she usually did. A huge bouquet of white roses resting on the tiny table thwarted the automatic gesture. She frowned and glanced around, looking for a different table, but they were all covered in gorgeous bouquets of white roses.

  “Oh,” she said blankly.

  “Yes, oh,” her father groused. “They’re everywhere.”

  “Where did they come from?” she asked, wondering if there had been some kind of planning mishap with the Valentine’s Day thing. She knew that their theme was red and white—so original—maybe they had miscalculated the number of white roses they needed?

  “They’re for you,” he said pointedly, and her eyes widened.

  “But . . .”

  “Look, I know you and Gabe have had some kind of tiff and if this is any indication, he feels terrible about it.” Her father knew nothing about what had happened between Gabe and Bobbi. Thankfully Billy had ke
pt his mouth shut about the incident at the football match, even though her brother had futilely tried—on numerous occasions—to open up a dialogue with Bobbi about it.

  “They’re from Gabe?” She knew her voice sounded flat and if her father’s frown was any indication, he didn’t understand why she wasn’t more enthusiastic about the floral “apology.”

  “They are . . .” He nodded. “Gabe called after the first delivery and asked me to grab the card out of one of the bouquets and to be sure that you received and read it.”

  That sneaky rat! He knew that if it had been up to her the card would have been tossed into the bin unread, but by involving her father, Gabe had made it impossible for her not to read it. She took the pretty cream card from her father and glanced down at it. Gabe’s bold handwriting slashed across the surface of the small square of paper, and it took her a second to decipher the elegant cursive script.

  Did you know that white roses signify new beginnings? I was hoping you’d appreciate that sentiment. Please turn over for more . . .

  She refused to smile at the polite instruction on the bottom of the tiny card. Anybody else would have been satisfied with an abbreviated PTO, but Gabe, of course, had to write a properly structured and well-mannered sentence. She turned over.

  These roses are white

  Most violets are blue (well they’re actually violet but for the purposes of this poem we’ll say blue)

  Bobbi, my sweet

  I really miss you

  (I’m sorry. I’m really bad at poetry—G)

  She covered her mouth with a hand as she tried to stifle the half laugh, half sob that threatened to bubble up from her throat. This was . . . what was this? She didn’t even know what he meant to achieve with this.