“It was a long time ago. I should be over it by now.”
“But are you?”
He paused a moment. “I guess I’m not. I still remember how helpless I felt and how angry I was at the whole world. I don’t want to be the guy who brings that kind of unwanted attention to you. I’d hate to have to start punching people out again.”
“And you think you’d be tempted to do that?”
“If I thought what they were saying might be hurtful to you? I’d like to think I’d find a more mature way to handle it, but I can’t swear to that. Old habits die hard.”
“How about this? We can keep things strictly professional, if that’s what you want,” she suggested. “No more impulsive kisses.”
He gave her a disbelieving look. “You and me under the same roof for days on end,” he said. “There are going to be more kisses, Adelia. Right this second it’s taking every ounce of willpower I possess to keep from dragging you into my arms and we’re smack in the middle of a conversation about what a bad idea that would be. Just imagine what might happen if we stop telling ourselves it’s a bad idea.”
She felt a little frisson of relief just knowing that he was struggling with the same impulse that she was. The fact that he was trying so darned hard to do the right thing for her made him even more appealing. Frustrating but appealing.
She met his gaze. “What did Mitch say when you told him you wanted someone else to take over the renovations?”
“That he disapproved of the idea and expected me to do the work. He reminded me that he was my boss.”
She laughed, though it was evident he found no humor in the situation. “Maybe we should trust his judgment. He’s lived here his whole life, too. He knows a thing or two about the Serenity grapevine and how to live with it.”
“You honestly think I’m making a big deal out of nothing?”
“Not out of nothing,” she corrected. “I’m just saying I think we can handle it. Most of the time the talk isn’t meant maliciously. It’s just curiosity and some crazy need to be the first to know what’s going on around town.”
He didn’t look as if he was entirely pleased by her conviction. “Okay, then,” he said, relenting. “I’ll be by tonight with the cost estimates and a timetable.”
“Come for dinner,” she said on impulse. “It won’t be anything like my mom’s cooking, just burgers on the grill.”
For a minute it looked as if he might refuse. Instead, though, he shook his head as if unsure what to make of her. “I’m told I can grill a pretty mean burger myself,” he said at last. “If you’ll let me cook and bring dessert, it’s a date.”
“A date? Really?”
He frowned at her teasing. “Not that kind of a date. Not the boy–girl kind. Just a professional appointment at a specified time that happens to include food.”
She bit back a grin. “Duly noted.”
But no matter what he insisted on calling it, she found that her pulse was skipping merrily in anticipation.
* * *
Tomas was like a little shadow from the instant that Gabe arrived at Adelia’s. Natalia and Juanita were a bit more reserved, and Selena was downright hostile. Gabe realized he was going to have his work cut out for him trying to win her over, not because he needed her approval, but because it was going to be awkward doing the work for Adelia if Selena set out to make the situation intolerable.
“Is it just me she doesn’t like?” he asked Adelia when he’d slipped into the kitchen and caught her alone.
“She wouldn’t approve of any man hanging around right now,” Adelia reassured him. “As I mentioned this morning, she got word of the kiss, though, and that definitely didn’t help. She may not want me back with her dad, but she doesn’t want me with anyone else, either.”
“I guess the divorce was hard on her,” he said.
“Not the divorce so much as the reason for it. She knew all about her dad’s infidelity. Not only didn’t he work very hard to hide it, he actually flaunted it toward the end.”
Gabe frowned. “What kind of a man does that to his kid?” he said, then winced. His mom had been no better. He’d been well aware of all her affairs. She hadn’t cared enough to keep them secret. And she’d made him her shoulder to cry on when things had gone south, as they had each and every time. He doubted she’d had any idea of the damage she’d done to him.
“Never mind,” he said. “I think I know just how she must have felt. Discovering that your parents have feet of clay is never easy.”
Adelia studied him intently. “Did you swear off of love because of what your mom did?”
“Pretty much. I’ve dated over the years, but not once have I allowed things to get too serious. Anytime I sensed they might, I broke things off and moved on. I didn’t want to be responsible for hurting anyone the way my mom’s lovers hurt her.”
“So no string of brokenhearted girlfriends for you,” Adelia said lightly.
“Nope.”
“But what about you? Were there any of them you were sorry to leave?”
Gabe frowned at the question. “What are you asking?”
She looked directly into his eyes. “I’m asking if it was always so easy to keep things light and casual or if you ever fell in love along the way, but then broke things off because that was the pattern you were determined to follow?”
“I never let myself get that serious,” he insisted.
“I find that a little sad,” Adelia told him.
Gabe shrugged. “It was for the best. I’m not the kind of man who puts down roots.”
She held his gaze. “So, fair warning? Now that you’ve made yourself clear, you’re off the hook if I get any crazy ideas?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, not liking the implication that he was looking for a cop-out. “You asked a question. I tried to answer it honestly.”
She gave him a bright smile that seemed a little forced. “No need to get defensive. Message received.” She turned to stir the mayonnaise into the big bowl of potato salad on the counter.
“I wasn’t sending a message,” he said impatiently. “Adelia, look at me.”
She turned slowly, the spoon still in her hand.
“I was not sending a message.”
She smiled slightly, though her eyes looked a little sad. “Sure you were. Now, maybe you’d better get those burgers going. Everything else is just about ready.”
Gabe wanted to stay right there and argue, tell her she’d misunderstood, but the truth was, she probably hadn’t. He just didn’t happen to like the conclusion she’d reached. It didn’t say anything good about him, and, for reasons he didn’t care to examine too closely, he wanted her to think well of him.
* * *
Dinner had been a little tense, at least between her and Gabe, but the chatter of Tomas and the younger girls had overshadowed their awkward silence. Adelia was furious with herself for pressing him earlier, for getting a little too deeply into his personal business. He was here to do a job. One kiss didn’t give her the right to start questioning his behavior and his motives with women.
After she’d sent the younger children off to their rooms to settle down for the night and managed to discourage Selena from standing guard over her and Gabe, Adelia sat across from him at the dining room table. Her lists were spread between them, along with his notations and cost estimates.
“Gabe, I owe you an apology,” she said.
His head snapped up. “For what?”
“I had no right cross-examining you earlier. If I made you uncomfortable, I’m sorry. I know how much I hate it when people start asking me about stuff I don’t want to discuss.”
He met her gaze. “I only hated it because you might have hit a little too close to the truth. I do keep women at a careful distance t
o protect myself, as much as I do to be fair to them. It’s an ingrained habit.” He paused. “But I don’t regret it. I figure it’s saved me a lot of pain.”
“It’s also kept you from loving deeply,” she suggested.
He looked startled by her words. “Are you such a big proponent of love after everything Ernesto put you through?”
“Right this second, not so much,” she told him candidly. “Elliott’s been on my case about that. So has Mama. I even told Selena she shouldn’t let what happened between her dad and me discourage her from giving her heart to someone someday.”
“But you’re not ready to take that chance?”
“Not today,” she said. “Maybe not even tomorrow or the next day. But I hope someday I’ll change my mind and open my heart again. I don’t want to give Ernesto the power to rob me of a full and rich life. That’s what I’d be doing if I never took another chance on love.”
“And you think I let my mother’s bad experiences cost me this full and rich life you’re talking about,” he said, looking skeptical.
“Did you?”
“Maybe I just think my life is full and rich as it is,” he replied.
She smiled. “You only say that because you’ve never experienced what it could be. It’s like saying you love mashed potatoes and could live on a steady diet of them your whole life, but never having discovered a great enchilada or a pizza with everything, the claim wouldn’t mean all that much.”
Gabe laughed. “You’re comparing love to food?”
“In a way. Think about it. Bland food may sustain you, but life is better with lots of spices. You can survive without love, but you’ll miss all that heat and excitement.”
Even as she spoke, she realized that she herself had come up with the most convincing reason of all to let love back into her life. She’d had heat and excitement once. Sure, it had died a long time ago, but deep down she knew that she’d only be living a half life if she didn’t reach for that again. Someday. That kiss she’d shared with Gabe had reminded her of that.
She looked into Gabe’s eyes and saw the spark of amusement there. “Heat and excitement, huh?”
“Definitely,” she said, daring to hold his gaze.
“I could get behind that,” he said softly.
Adelia felt her cheeks burn. “I wasn’t... I’m not...”
“What?” he asked, his grin spreading. “You’re not talking about sex?”
“No. Well, yes. I mean that’s a part of it, of course,” she said, rattled.
“I happen to like sex,” he said.
“What’s not to like?” she said impatiently, then blushed even more furiously. “We need to change the subject. Show me those cost estimates.”
He held her gaze for another beat, then dutifully pushed the papers across the table. His hand deliberately grazed hers, sending heat rushing through her veins. Blast the man. He was heat and excitement all wrapped up in one sexy, contradictory, infuriating bundle. But she knew without a doubt that he possessed the power to drag her back into the world of the living. She just wasn’t sure she was entirely ready for it.
CHAPTER NINE
Adelia came home from work two days after her touchy conversation with Gabe and found a half-dozen men swarming all over her roof. A Dumpster was overflowing with the old roofing materials and it looked as if more than half the roof had already been replaced with new shingles. Tomas was standing wide-eyed at the bottom of a ladder, practically dancing with excitement.
“Mom! Mom!” he shouted when he saw her. “Gabe’s fixing the roof and I’m helping.”
“Are you really?” she said, tousling his black hair, loving the way it curled around her fingers. If he had his way, he’d have a crew cut, but Adelia couldn’t bring herself to have those beautiful curls shorn. Someday soon, though, she wouldn’t be able to fight him.
“What’s your assignment?” she asked. Thankfully it didn’t appear to include scampering around two stories aboveground.
“First, I was supposed to pick up stuff if it didn’t go into the trash when it got tossed off the roof. Now I have to wait right by the ladder to make sure it’s there when they need it to get down. Gabe says that’s really important because otherwise the guys could get stuck up on the roof and have to jump and maybe even break a leg.”
“Then it’s definitely an important job,” she acknowledged, appreciating Gabe’s cleverness in making the menial task sound so critical while keeping Tomas on solid ground.
“Gabe says if I do it really well, he’ll take me up on the roof later so I can see what they’ve done up close,” Tomas told her excitedly. “He promised to explain how they put on the new shingles and maybe even to let me do one myself.”
She frowned at that, glanced up and caught the eye of the man who’d told her son he could climb onto the roof. “Did he now?”
Tomas must have heard the dismay in her voice and seen the direction of her gaze, because he patted her arm. “It’s okay, Mom. Really. Gabe will be with me.”
Just then the man in question climbed down the ladder and put a hand on Tomas’s shoulder. “Good job today, buddy. How about you scout around the yard and make sure everything’s picked up while I speak to your mom? Take the big magnet and use it like I showed you in case there are any nails around.”
The second they were alone, Adelia looked Gabe in the eye. “You promised him he could go on the roof? Are you nuts?”
He laughed. “It’s not as if I’m giving him a hammer and nails and putting him to work up there unsupervised. I gave him an incentive to stay safely on the ground while we worked. And now, with me hanging on to him for dear life, he can go up for a couple of minutes and check things out. It’s a fitting reward for a job well done.”
“He said you were going to let him put on a shingle, so he could learn how to do it himself. Doesn’t that involve a hammer and nails?”
“And very, very close supervision,” Gabe reminded her.
She sighed. “You think I’m overreacting.”
“Maybe just a little.”
“But, Gabe, what if he decides he likes it up there and goes up on his own later?” she said, knowing how her son’s mind worked.
“There won’t be a ladder in sight that he can get to,” Gabe promised. “I bought a big combination lock for the shed and the ladders and tools will all be stored in there when we’re not here working.”
Even as he spoke, the crew was scrambling down the ladder and taking their tools to the shed. Adelia finally released the breath she felt as if she’d been holding ever since her child had made his big announcement. “I guess that’s okay then.”
“Adelia,” Gabe said softly, tucking a finger under her chin and forcing her to meet his gaze. “I’m not going to endanger your son. Not ever. That’s a promise.”
“I know that,” she said, relenting. “And I keep forgetting that he’s growing up and has an inquisitive mind that should be encouraged, not stomped on by an overly protective mother. In some ways, I felt better that he had a dad like Ernesto. Ernesto wasn’t the sort of man who’d put himself into dangerous situations, much less Tomas.”
“Roofing isn’t dangerous if you know what you’re doing,” Gabe reminded her.
She smiled. “And you do.”
“And I do,” he confirmed. “Okay? You can stand right here at the bottom of the ladder and hold on tight every second we’re up there if it’ll make you feel better.” A grin lit his eyes. “Or you could come up there with us.”
The dare in his voice actually had her glancing up and considering the idea, but only for a second. “I think I’ll wait right here and be prepared to catch him if he slips.”
“And me?” he asked, amusement sparkling in his eyes. “Will you catch me if I fall?”
“I’ve seen you o
n the roof. You’re as agile as a mountain goat, but, yes, if you slipped, I’d try to catch you, too.”
“The view’s pretty amazing from up there,” Gabe said, deliberately continuing to tease her. “I can see all the way to the park. I’ll bet it’s beautiful when there’s a full moon. Maybe you’ll sneak up there with me then.”
Adelia got lost in his eyes for just a heartbeat and temptation licked through her. “Maybe I will,” she said softly.
Gabe winked at her. “I’ll hold you to that.” He raised his voice then. “Tomas, you ready to hit the roof?”
Tomas came around the house at a run, his eyes bright with excitement. “You bet. Mom, are you gonna watch?”
“I am,” she said, smiling at him. She’d be watching both of them like a hawk until they were safely on the ground again.
* * *
“I’m not sure I’m going to survive this renovation,” Adelia told Lynn when she stopped by the bakery for coffee a couple of days later. For once neither Gabe nor Mitch were there. Lynn said they’d been called to a job site where there were ongoing problems with a difficult client.
Lynn sat across from her, flour on her cheeks and circles under her eyes. “I heard about Gabe taking Tomas up on the roof. You didn’t approve.”
“Once Gabe explained his theory, I actually got it, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t scared out of my wits the whole time they were up there.”
“I can imagine,” Lynn said. “When I found out Mitch was letting Jeremy use power tools, I flipped out. He finally got me to see that it was better he try things with strict supervision than sneak in there on his own and try them with nobody looking.”
“That’s pretty much what Gabe said, too. What is it with little boys and danger?”
Lynn laughed. “They want to be like the big boys, especially the ones they admire. It’s a guy thing. Since neither of our sons had especially good role models as dads, at least when it comes to that sort of thing, I think it’s natural that they gravitate to guys like Mitch and Gabe.”
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