His Unlikely Lover

by Natasha Anders

  “You nearly died, Runt,” Billy said somberly, and then stunned her by bursting into tears. It was that macho crying of a strong man, where every sob capitulated looked like an epic internal struggle of good versus evil and every tear shed was very reluctantly surrendered. It was all the more powerful because of how short-lived it was—the macho always won out in the end.

  “I don’t understand,” she confessed. “What do you mean I nearly died?”

  “The damned chisel thing nicked a vein and nearly sliced your femoral artery. If that had happened you would have bled out on your shop floor. As it was you merely bled like a stuck pig on your shop floor,” he elaborated.

  Bobbi was stunned. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Gabe?” He hated it so much when she got minor scrapes and bruises that he must have lost it completely to have her nearly die right in front of him.

  “He was a wreck.” Billy confirmed her worst fears. “Fast thinking enough to tie a tourniquet around your leg though. He and Craig probably saved, if not your life, then a large quantity of your blood for sure.”

  “How long have I been here?” she asked.

  “About eight hours. Now I can’t hog all your time. Dad will want to see you, and Ed and Clyde have been waiting their turns as well.”

  What about Gabe? Surely he wanted to see her too?

  In the end just about everybody she knew had come to visit her, but by the time she was released the following day, Gabe still hadn’t been to see her. Chase had told her to give his brother some time to get over the horrifying experience, but that had pissed her off, since she had been the victim of the so-called “horrifying experience.”

  She was none the worse for wear after her short stint in the hospital, and Clyde, who was really her nicest brother, carried her up to her room. Edward was so self-righteous sometimes and Billy could often be intolerable, but Clyde, despite the terrible things often said about lawyers, was sweet and rarely got on her nerves. He stayed with her for a while after depositing her on her bed and then left her to her moody thoughts.

  Why hadn’t Gabe come to see her? Was he angry with her after what had happened? He could be so weird about stuff like this sometimes, like when he’d been furious with her for being injured during that football game.

  She sighed and picked up her cell phone to check for messages. Nothing.

  She missed him, the idiot. She just hoped that he didn’t let this incident scare him off again.

  She was staring broodingly at her wall a couple of hours later. She was sick of TV, which had nothing much to offer in the form of entertainment and had already called the shop a half dozen times to make sure the guys weren’t slacking off. Of course they weren’t. She trusted her guys to do their jobs and knew that Craig would keep an eye on things. So that left her with nothing to do but brood about Gabe and all the possible reasons he could have not to call.

  She couldn’t come up with a single plausible one and she thought about calling him herself to give him what for. She was about to do that when her door creaked open and he stepped into her room.

  She folded her arms over her chest and glared at him, not willing to reveal how happy and relieved she was to see him. Not until she had given him a piece of her mind first.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said softly, stepping farther into her room and approaching her bed cautiously. She noticed for the first time that he was clutching a large bouquet of flowers in his hands, and pursed her lips. If he thought his flowers were going to cut it this time, he had another think coming.

  “Where have you been?” she asked bad-temperedly, and he flinched before sitting down on the chair beside her bed. His eyes drifted down to her elevated leg and the clean dressing wrapped around her thigh.

  “How do you feel?” He answered her question with a question, and that just pissed her off even more.

  “How do you think I feel?” she snapped. “I was careless at work. I’m never careless at work. I feel like an idiot. I also feel bored and my leg hurts and I wish I could walk around but everybody keeps telling me I should take it easy. And I feel angry. With you.”

  “I understand,” he said, leaning forward, the flowers still clasped in his hands.

  “Do you? Because I don’t understand. Chase told me to give you time to get over the horrific experience, but you’re not the moron who stabbed herself in the leg with a chisel!”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, still without heat. “I am the one who had to stand there and watch you bleed half to death. I’m the one who was terrified you would die right there in front of me while I was helpless to do anything and afterward . . . I was absolutely covered in your blood, so I had a few things to work out, okay?”

  She hadn’t considered how extremely traumatic the experience must have been for him or the guys in the shop and felt immediately contrite.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he sighed.

  “I am too. I should have come sooner, but . . . it was hard.” He looked down at the flowers in his hands and held them up for her to see. “I also had to find these. It took a bit of research finding the perfect ones.”

  “Oh? Is there some flower out there that says, ‘sorry you sliced yourself open with a drifting chisel. Hope you feel better soon’?” His lips twitched and he shook his head.

  “Not that I’ve found. I’ll keep searching for that one.”

  “So what do these mean then?” She nodded toward the exquisitely wrapped bouquet in his hands. He swallowed audibly and pointed each flower out to her.

  “These are tulips,” he said, and she rolled her eyes. He had started with one even she recognized, but she nodded and smiled at the friendly red color of the blooms. “These blue ones are forget-me-nots. These are azaleas; over here we have ambrosia—that was hard to find—and of course, these are daffodils.”

  “They’re very pretty,” she said, and he cleared his throat nervously. “Are you going to tell me what they mean?”

  He tugged a card out of his jacket breast pocket and handed it over to her with a trembling hand. She gave him a searching look, wondering about this extreme display of nervousness and pulled the card from its envelope.

  This time there was writing on only one side. Another poem. She read the words and looked up at him with a confused look on her face before reading them again:

  Roses are red

  Tulips are too

  Every flower in this bouquet

  Means, “I love you”

  “Gabe?” She asked uncertainly, her own hand starting to shake.

  “The red tulips are a declaration of love,” he said, his trembling voice gaining strength with every word. “Ambrosia means that I love only you. The forget-me-nots are absolutely screaming that you’re my true love. The daffodils are saying ‘I love you too’ in reply to all the times you’ve said those words to me . . . and just in case you have any doubts about what kind of love we’re talking about here, the azaleas are telling you that it’s romantic love.”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, her hands coming up to cover her mouth as she tried to hold back her sobs.

  “I’m the only idiot in this room, Bobbi,” he told her. “It took the sight of you bleeding and unconscious to make me realize what I’d be missing if I lost you. All I could think of was that we would never get married and have babies and that my life would be utterly miserable without you.”

  “Married? Babies?” she asked in disbelief, not quite sure if she was awake or not, and he grinned before pointing to a perfect red rose nestled amongst the tulips—she hadn’t even noticed it.

  “You probably know what a red rose means, right?”

  She nodded. True love, of course.

  He tugged the rose from the bouquet and she noticed that the long stem was wrapped in cellophane to protect the leaves from breakage. He unwrapped the cellophane and handed the rose to her.

  “Watch out for the thorns,” he warned. She glanced down instinctively and that’s when she saw the ring—dangl
ing prettily from one of the leaves. She looked back at him, her eyes huge in her face, and he smiled lovingly at her before reaching over to tug the ring from the leaf.

  He held the ring, an exquisite square-cut canary diamond surrounded by small white diamonds, up in front of her before unexpectedly going down onto one knee beside her bed. It was such a romantic, if somewhat clichéd, gesture that Bobbi was absolutely staggered by it.

  “Roberta Rebecca Richmond, I am so utterly in love with you, I worship you, and I cherish you. You’ve always been the finest thing in my life, and I would consider myself the luckiest man in the world if you would consent to be my wife.”

  “Oh Gabe . . .” She was complete a mess. For someone who never cried, Bobbi had been doing a lot of if over the last few weeks, and she no longer cared who saw her.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked, and she grabbed his hand and tried to tug him up onto the bed with her. He got up and sat down next to her.

  “Of course I’ll marry you, and I’ll try to be a good wife, even if I don’t conform to some people’s idea of the perfect corporate wife,” she said, and a growl worked its way up from his chest.

  “Who the hell told you that?” he asked with a glower, and she grinned wetly.

  “Gabe, I’m a mechanic, remember? More at home in overalls than ball gowns.”

  “You know what?” he asked thoughtfully. “I once thought I wanted some perfectly bland blonde on my arm for all eternity. But I would have been bored out of my mind in no time flat. I’m so damned happy you kissed me that night at Sandro’s party—my life has been a crazy roller coaster ride since then, but with you the chaos always makes sense. I don’t want you to be a ‘good’ wife . . . I want you to be my Bobbi, exciting, fun, and adorable. Just be the woman I fell in love with. That’s who I want to marry.”

  He kissed the circlet of gold and diamonds he still held in his hand before lifting her left hand and lovingly sliding the ring onto her finger. Still choked up from his last words, Bobbi couldn’t speak, but the kiss she gave him said so much more than words ever could.

  Bobbi experimentally tested her weight on her leg and barely felt a twinge. It had been nearly a week since her accident and she was recovering quite nicely. She and Gabe had argued about when she could go back to work, and in the end she had taken a full week off. Her guys had been managing admirably in her absence.

  Bobbi had been bound and determined to be on her feet for this stupid Valentine’s Day event. She would be unveiling her new look to Gabe tonight, and while she was no longer anxious about whether he would like it or not—he liked her in everything—she was excited about dressing up for him. Which was something she had never expected to feel in a million years.

  She checked her appearance in the mirror for the hundredth time and waited for the doorbell to ring. When it finally did, she had to prevent herself from running down the stairs to let him in.

  Billy, in a repeat of the first time Gabe had come calling on her, came up to get her and he stopped dead in the doorway when he first caught sight of her. She could see the surprise and pride in his eyes, but he merely lifted an eyebrow at her.

  “Skirt’s a bit short, isn’t it?” He was teasing, but Bobbi immediately gasped and checked herself in the mirror again.

  “Oh my God, is it?”

  He chuckled and came over to give her a one-armed hug. “You look gorgeous. If Gabe wasn’t already completely smitten with you, he’d be a goner tonight.”

  “Oh . . . well, that’s okay then,” she said with a blush.

  “Come on, let’s not keep your fiancé waiting.”

  Her fiancé! She couldn’t get used to the sound of that.

  Gabe was pouring Mike another drink to settle the older man’s nerves when he heard Bobbi’s voice just beyond the door. He couldn’t keep the smile off his face at the thought of seeing her. The changeover at work had kept both Gabe and Mike busy over the past week, and he had barely seen her over the last couple of days. He had called often but calls didn’t cut it.

  He turned expectantly to face the door. He couldn’t wait for this stupid ball to end so that he could take her home with him and drag that ugly navy dress off until he had her splendidly naked and pinned beneath him. Because of her injury and her resulting weakness due to the amount of blood she had lost, they’d had to forego sex completely, but Bobbi had called him that afternoon to tell him she’d gotten the “all-clear” from her doctor, and Gabe had been a walking hard-on practically from that moment on.

  The door swung open and Billy stood aside to let Bobbi precede him into the room and . . .

  Wow.

  That was the only word that came to mind when he saw her. There were glorious amounts of golden skin on display everywhere he looked—her shoulders, her arms, and her legs. She was wearing one of those bustier-type dresses; it was pale pink, of all colors. The pretty pink was covered in a dark, gothic print that suited her to a tee. The bell-shaped mini skirt had the silhouette of a chapel printed on it, while the sweetheart bodice had bare black branches crisscrossing dramatically across the front. The short skirt ended at mid-thigh, just below the medical dressing that he knew was still there and revealed a shapely length of leg that made him want to just cover her up before other men saw her.

  She wore short biker boots, and Gabe could just see the frilly top of her ankle socks above the boot. The only jewelry she wore were the pair of gold hoop earrings that he had given her for Valentine’s Day and her engagement ring. Her eyes were dark and smoky and her lips just tinted with a sexy red shade that made him ache to kiss it off.

  She was an enchanting combination of hard and soft and was absolutely perfect.

  “Well?” she asked impatiently. “What do you think?”

  “You look quite . . . lovely.” Her father sounded a bit taken aback. “Quite the transformation.”

  “She always looks lovely, Mike,” Gabe corrected. “And I don’t see a transformation, I see my Bobbi, and she looks—if you’ll excuse the phrase—absolutely smoking hot.”

  Her smile was glorious, and after Gabe had her safely buckled into his car and they were headed for the expensive venue that Richcorp had hired for the event, she turned to him.

  “I know it’s not super elegant or fancy like the dresses other women will be wearing tonight,” she said, smoothing her hand nervously over the satin twill skirt.

  “Bobbi, I told you before, those other women are boring. I don’t need super elegant or fancy. I just need you, and tonight you look like a badass little fairy and I love it!”

  She laughed at that.

  “A ‘badass fairy’?” she repeated softly. “I like that.”

  “Hmm,” he threw her a sideways glance. “You know, as hot as you look in that dress, all I can think of is getting you out of it.”

  “Behave!”

  “Yes, boss,” he said in such a perfect imitation of Sean that it startled a snort of laughter from her. He didn’t know how he was going to get through the evening without dragging her into a closet somewhere and having his wicked way with her.

  After they had reached their destination, he halted at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the hotel’s ballroom.

  “Right now, while it’s just us,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her slender waist and dragging her to his chest. “I wanted to give you your Valentine’s Day present.”

  “You already gave me these.” She shook her head to set the earrings dancing, and he smiled.

  “Hmm, they make you look like a gypsy, especially with your hair.” She had finally had it styled. Nothing too drastic, just a few layers to give it more body. “No, my gift is a promise.”

  She tilted her head questioningly.

  “A vow to forever love you just the way you are. You don’t need to change for me, Bobbi mine. You’re perfect and I love you so damned much. Never, ever doubt that.”

  As Bobbi looked into his eyes, she saw nothing but love and sincerity shining in them a
nd had no doubt that he meant every word. He was her best friend, her lover, and her heart’s desire.

  EPILOGUE

  Gabe came jogging over to Bobbi after the game, a triumphant grin on his face as he swooped her into his arms and planted a kiss on her lips.

  “Ugh, you’re all sweaty, get off me.” She pushed at his chest and his grin widened.

  “To the victor goes the spoils,” he proclaimed, wrapping his arms even tighter around her when she tried to wriggle away. “You’re my spoils.”

  “God, you’re insufferable when you win. I don’t know how the other guys can stand you.”

  “We can’t,” Sandro called from close by. He took a thirsty drink from the water bottle Theresa had handed to him.

  “I personally only come here for the braai,” Rick added, already making his way to the grill.

  “Well since you can’t play, it’s probably time better spent,” Sandro retorted, clearly still annoyed with his teammate for missing a last-minute penalty that would have evened the scores.

  “Oooh,” the other guys jeered, and Rick merely waved the comment aside.

  “It’s all good,” he said with a sanguine grin. “My man San is clearly jealous of my skills with a ball.”

  “What skills?” Sandro growled. “You look like a headless chicken flapping about whenever you take to the field.”

  “He’s a passable rugby player,” Bryce said in defense of his brother.

  “And that would be wonderful if we were actually playing rugby,” Pierre said irritably.

  “Sandro, you don’t have to be so rude,” Theresa’s voice piped up. “Rick was trying his best, you know.”

  “You always take his side,” Sandro complained, looking and sounding like a recalcitrant little boy in that moment. Theresa grinned and stepped up to hug him, before whispering something in his ear. The glower faded from Sandro’s face and his head snapped back as he laughed at whatever it was his wife had whispered in his ear.