by Lois Richer
Gabe went for honesty. “I can’t swim,” he told her.
Blair frowned in perplexity. “Then why?”
“I’m going to learn.” He shut out his father’s mocking voice and faced four sets of curious eyes. “It’s just something I have to do.”
“And you couldn’t do this in the community pool? You had to build your own?” Blair shook her head in disbelief.
He knew she thought he’d gone to excess on some things, but Gabe didn’t care. This was going to be his home, and he wanted it to be perfect for everyone. Then maybe she would stay, settle down. Relax and build a future with him.
“It might take me a long time to learn. I didn’t want to hog it.” Or have everyone gape and stare while I have a panic attack.
“I might just take those lessons with you.” Mac shoved himself upright and grinned. “Never did learn even the dog paddle. ’Spect I could take a dip or two with you. But not in winter. I draw the line there.”
Gabe couldn’t stop his mouth from spreading in a grin even if he’d wanted to. This was what he liked about them. No questions. Just acceptance. If he wanted to stick a big pool in his back yard, well, they embraced that just as they embraced him. No problem.
“I’m going to heat it, Mac. Maybe we could enclose it. You know, have an underground tunnel to the house, or something?”
“You can do that? You don’t say!” Mac clapped him on the back. “Thought of pretty near everything, haven’t you, son?” He shoved his hands in his back pockets, teetering on his heels. “I can always go to the old place to do my whittling. Wouldn’t want to mess up this castle.”
Gabe pointed a finger. “There’s a workroom right over there if you want it, Mac. I had it put there specially. That way you won’t have to take the stairs to get there.” While Mac and Willie enthused over the room, Gabe moved closer to Blair. “Do you want to come and see the master bedroom?” He kept his voice diffident, absent of meaning so she wouldn’t panic.
“It’s on the main floor?”
He nodded and led her out of the kitchen, through the adjoining family room and the solarium to the rooms he’d insisted on designing himself.
“This is the bedroom, walk-in closets, bathroom. The Jacuzzi is through there, and there’s a steam room, too.”
“You’d think you were addicted to water,” she muttered. “If the tub upstairs was a foot longer, you wouldn’t have needed the pool.” Her eyes were huge as she studied a tub set on a higher level against a bank of opaque windows. “Does this open?” She tried one and found that, indeed, it swung out onto a flagstone patio that was surrounded with a bounty of trees and flowering shrubs ready to be planted. At one end lay the beginnings of a rose garden.
Gabe spared a glance to notice that they’d already planted a few of the prickly bushes. He turned to the room he’d planned so carefully, then adjusted after she’d quietly agreed to marry him late one night last month.
“This will be a two-sided fireplace,” he told her, motioning to the roughed-in area that snuggled against one end of the hot tub, while the other looked over the bedroom. “Is it okay?”
He was beginning to worry. She hadn’t said much, just walked around, touching a hand here, a finger there.
“It’s very…romantic.” Her voice whispered across the silence. “But I don’t need it. I’m not a fancy person, Gabe. I’m not the socialite deb you thought I was. I’m a working woman, a mother, a plain, ordinary person. This is so—” she waved a hand, taking in the rich cedar beams, vast amounts of window space and glistening amenities “—so much. I don’t need all this, Gabe.”
He grinned. She was worried about spending a lot of money. He could handle that.
“Nobody needs this, Blair. And it won’t bring us happiness or make us any more satisfied. There’s always bigger and better. I know that.” He tried to put it into words without letting her see the shadows that still lingered from so long ago. “But I wanted something special. I’ve never had a home, remember?”
“But your condo? What about it?” She sank down on one of the steps that led to the Jacuzzi and, after a moment, Gabe sat beside her. “It wasn’t anything like this.”
“It wasn’t home. It was a stopping place. I needed a place to sleep and it did the job.” That was all it had been. The knowledge hit him with amazement. It didn’t have the warmth, the welcome that Mac’s little farmhouse offered, in spite of the ridiculous cost.
“Gabe, don’t take this the wrong way, okay?” She laid a hand on his arm in supplication, her dark eyes glowing in the fading light. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble here. And a lot of expense. You already know how much I love swimming. And that jungle gym area you had set up for Daniel is wonderful. I know he’ll enjoy it, but…” Her voice trailed away, her forehead furrowed. “It’s too much,” she finished at last. “I don’t want him to become, well, jaded.”
“You mean jaded like me?” It hurt to have her say such things, but he needed to get it out into the open.
“No.” Her head swung slowly, thoughtfully from side to side. “I don’t think you’re jaded. But a lot of your friends were. They had no pity left for a homeless person or a fellow who was down on his luck. They couldn’t see past their own selfish lives to the bounty they enjoyed. I don’t want Daniel to grow up like that. I want him to understand that love is more important than any of that.”
Gabe thought about the little boy for a moment and let his lips turn up at the remembrance. “I think Daniel already has that fact firmly established. And I’m not trying to buy his affection, Blair. Please don’t think that.” Her hand was still on his arm, sending little prickles of heat straight to his chest. He shifted a bit so that he could entwine his fingers with hers. “Maybe I’m not saying this properly.”
“Just say whatever’s on your mind.” Her perfume, soft and enticing, drifted across to him. “I’ll try to understand.”
He studied her beautiful face for a moment, then gave in to temptation and told her what was in his heart. “I don’t know anything about building a family, Blair. I never knew what that was like. But, I think it’s what I want.” He swallowed hard, then pushed on.
“I thought if I could get this part of it right, the building, the rooms, the places for everyone so they’ll be comfortable here, well—” he stopped, hating to go on, to show how much he needed her to help him with this “—I figured maybe you could do the rest of it.” It came out in a rush.
Blair frowned at him, curling tendrils of her glossy hair tumbling about her face and down her neck. “I could do what?” she asked in confusion.
“The family part. Or at least, you could teach me. You and Willie and Mac. You’re good at it.”
Her fingers tightened around his for just a moment. He stared at them, then looked into her eyes. To his surprise she had tears glistening on her lashes.
“I can’t make us a family, Gabe.”
His heart sank to his heels at the death knell of those words. His head dropped to his chest. He’d known, deep down, that it couldn’t work, that he was asking too much, giving too little. Blair didn’t care about money. He’d always known that, though he’d pretended otherwise. Why would she be any different now? Why would his castle make any difference to her feelings for him?
“I understand.” He eased himself away from her, preparing to get up as he loosened his fingers and let hers slip away. It was just like his dream—slipping out of his grasp.
“Gabe?”
He froze, preparing himself for her chastising. “Yes?”
“No one person can make a family. It’s a give-and-take relationship. And it takes time. We can’t just automatically be a family because you want it.”
“I know.” He didn’t look at her, but kept his eyes on the rough floorboards, still unfinished. A work in progress—just like him.
“We’ll have to work at it. Hard. We’ll have to be prepared to give in sometimes. We can’t run away when times get tough. We’ve got to keep wor
king through the problems. That’s how families are made. It’s the rough times that make you solid, seal the bonds.”
New life surged through his brain. Was she offering to help him? He waited, his heart racing a hundred miles an hour. Moments later her warm, dainty hand crept inside his.
“There aren’t any guarantees with marriage, Gabe. I can’t promise that it will always be sunshine or that you’ll like everything that happens. I can’t make the past all better.”
“I know.” He held her fingers fast, drawing air into his starved lungs as he listened to her words, heard the tentativeness in her voice.
“But I can promise that I’ll stay here. I promise that I won’t give up and run away. If you really want this, I’ll do my best to make it work.”
He fingered the ring on her finger, twirled it, caught a beam of light in it and let it play over the wood. And all the while he tried to control the emotion that made him want to bawl like a baby.
“I really want this, Blair.” He forced himself to meet her steady regard. “I promise that I won’t take off, won’t fly into a tantrum, won’t demand my own way all the time. I’ll stick it out until you tell me to go. I’ll be the best father and husband I can possibly be.” He gulped down the fear. “There’s just one thing.”
She smiled that goofy, lopsided smile. “With you there always is. Well?”
“Don’t expect perfection. I have no idea how things are supposed to work. I know diddly about family life and even less about being a father. If I’m doing it wrong, promise you’ll tell me.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you.” She smirked at him, then her face grew serious. “There’s no ‘supposed to’ about this, Gabe. We make up our own rules as we go along. Nobody has all the answers except God, and if we trust in Him and keep pushing, we’ll figure it out together. Okay?”
“Very okay.” He slipped an arm around her waist and hugged her close, swallowing when she hugged him back in that free, generous, nondemanding way her family had. “Can I kiss you?” The words slipped out before he had time to think about the inadvisability of asking such a thing.
Gabe stared at her perfectly sculpted face and wondered when this need had begun to grow inside. He wanted to hold her close, to protect her, to keep her safe. But mostly he just wanted to hold her.
“I guess.” She shrugged at his startled look. “Nothing has gone the way I expected lately. Everything seems bigger than life.”
“Is this a bad time to tell you that there’s going to be a hot tub at the end of the pool?” Gabe held his breath. To his amazement, she burst out laughing.
“Always full of surprises.” She cocked her head, then slipped her arms around his shoulders. “If you’re kissing me, you’d better get started. I hear the pitter-patter of Daniel’s feet.”
Gabe leaned forward and kissed her. As kisses went, it wasn’t a ten. For one thing, he almost missed her lips. For another, he felt choked up with emotions of all kinds, and he didn’t want her to guess that her words had touched him so deeply.
But the beginning of the kiss didn’t matter. When his lips touched hers, it was perfect, right. He knew she was everything he’d wanted in his life, beauty, joy and a zest for the future. Maybe with Blair he could finally find some measure of peace.
“They’re kissin’ again,” Daniel chirped from the doorway, making it sound as if his parents did little else.
Which, as far as Gabe was concerned, wasn’t a bad idea at all. Not half bad.
Three weeks later, Blair sat in the upper balcony of the little church she’d grown up in and listened as the organist practiced for the Sunday service. There was no one around, no one to take her mind off her thoughts. No reason to mask the guilt.
You don’t trust Gabriel Sloan. You don’t need him—not really. You don’t believe he’s going to stick around. Why act as if you do?
Her conscience kept asking the same questions over and over.
Why pretend you’ve forgiven him when you know perfectly well that you’re still nursing a grudge?
Blair sighed, the old anger at his cavalier treatment of her youthful innocence welling up anew. She shifted uncomfortably, remembering those moments at the castle when he’d opened up to her just the tiniest bit. He’d done that because he thought she trusted him. And she didn’t. Not as she should trust the man she was marrying in a few weeks.
“Is everything okay, honey?” Aunt Willie slipped in beside her and lifted one hand to brush away the tear that had fallen to Blair’s cheek. “I know you think my pills make it so I don’t see and hear a lot of what goes on, and maybe I don’t. But can’t you tell me why you’re crying? I promise I’ll try to understand.”
“It’s so hard, Willie.” When Blair dashed a hand across her eyes she caught the flash of Gabe’s diamond. The tears wouldn’t stop. “He’s done nothing wrong, nothing. He’s really trying. He goes to Grandpa for advice, he’s never angry or pushy with Daniel, he’s really attempting to work through our problems.”
“We’re talking about Gabriel, of course?” Her aunt nodded her graying head. “And yet you still can’t forgive him, can you?”
“It hurts, Willie. It really hurts. I loved him so much. I’d poured myself into that relationship, and he just threw it away. Now he walks back into my life and expects to pick up the threads. How can I do that? How can I just let it all go and say, ‘Okay, Gabe, we’ll be married. No problem. Let bygones be bygones’? I can’t stop asking why. Why wasn’t my love enough for him? Why did he need the protection of his money?” The words wouldn’t stop. “Why did God let me go through that?”
“Because you needed to learn a lesson? Maybe to help you grow strong and rely on Him.” Willie stared at the picture of Christ in the garden that hung above the choir section. “Honey, you know that Grandpa and I think the world of you, that we love you more than life, don’t you?” She waited for Blair’s nod. “And I would never purposely choose to hurt you, unless it was for your own good.”
Blair made a face. “Uh-oh.”
“You know what I mean.” Willie leaned back and closed her eyes. “You’re one of those people who need to feel useful, who need to do. You know I’m right.”
“Yes, you are. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Somebody’s got to do things.” Blair rushed to defend herself.
“Of course they do, dear. I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m just wondering if perhaps, well, you get so busy doing that you’re starting to believe your works are what make you strong. I’ve seen you almost run yourself ragged these past few weeks, hurrying here and there, trying to keep so busy you won’t have time to think.”
“I guess I don’t know what you’re saying.” Blair watched the sun flicker across the stained glass windows, highlighting scenes from Jesus’s life. “You think I should just sit and do nothing?”
“I think you should lean on God instead of your own strength. I don’t know what’s changed in Gabe’s life. I don’t know why he suddenly feels he has to start over, begin a new life. Maybe we’ll never know. But I believe this is an opportunity for you.”
Blair frowned, twiddling one curl around her finger as she studied her aunt. “An opportunity to do what?”
“To get past the past. To believe that God has forgiven that sin and that He doesn’t see it anymore. He’s already done it, but you’re acting as if you can’t accept His gift of grace.”
“I am?” Blair considered the words while privately acknowledging the sting they brought to her heart. So even Willie had seen her bitterness.
“Aren’t you? Isn’t that what this taking care of everybody is about? You’re trying to make yourself worthy of love, and you already are worthy. God loves you just the way you are.”
“But I get so mad at him. Why wasn’t he like this before? Why wasn’t I smarter? Oh, I mess up so much!” The tears welled as the secret grudge inside her shifted until it was under the microscope of her heart.
“Sweetheart, we all mess up. Me more than most. You thi
nk you should be perfect and you want to know why God doesn’t make you more like Him.” Willie waited until Blair nodded. “He is, my darling. Every day. He’s just not finished yet. But until He is, His grace is sufficient to overcome all of your flaws.”
“But I’m not worthy of loving. I know He died for my sins, but I just keep on sinning. I get angry at Gabe when he tries to fit into our lives, when he assumes that we can be a family just because he wants it. How can I be a child of God and still do that?”
“Because you’re human. And because you won’t give up on this belief that you can earn love. You can’t earn love, my dear. I don’t love you because of what you’ve done for me. I just love you. That’s it. No strings attached.” Willie picked up Blair’s hands, touching the diamond as she spoke.
“Listen. When Jesus died, He knew what He was taking on. He saw the sins you would commit, now and in the future. He knew all of that. And He forgave you. He took your place. You’re not a prisoner anymore. You can walk away from guilt, stop worrying about being worthwhile. He loves you as you are.” Willie squeezed her hand hard. Her voice dropped. “The problem is, you don’t want to extend that same grace to Gabe.”
The words hit hard, scoring a direct blow on the bubbling cauldron of anger and retaliation that gurgled inside Blair’s heart, begging release. She sighed, kicking her toe against the carpet.
“I want to believe that Gabe is sincere, Willie. I want to believe that he thinks more of Daniel and me than his company. I want to believe that I can rely on him. But I just can’t. The past isn’t past! It’s right here beside me every day, every time I see him.”
“Then let it go. Trust that God is in control and that He will work all things together for good. Give Gabe your trust.” Willie’s eyes fixed on her steadily, holding her gaze.
“How?” Blair mumbled, trying to look away but not succeeding. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“You know how, Blair. Deep in your heart, you know. Let go of the grudge. It’s eating at you, ruining your joy. You can’t change the past. You can’t make it better. You only have now.” Willie’s fingers were gentle on her shoulder. “If you can’t trust Gabe, you can trust God. Leave Gabe to Him.”
