One Step Away: Once Upon a Proposal

by Sherryl Woods

  “—Harry’s,” Gabe finished.

  “Right.”

  “Well, I hope your Uncle Harry doesn’t have too many friends like Boering that he sets you up with or you’re—”

  “No, no, no.” Her curls danced some more. “Uncle Harry didn’t set us up. He just happened to introduce us when I delivered some coffee to his office. He’s not supposed to be drinking it, you see, but when he called me—” Her shoulders lifted.

  “You couldn’t say no to him, either.” Gabe grinned a little.

  Her lips curved, and that dimple flirted into view again. “I was just doing a favor. Really.”

  “Well.” He tapped the doorjamb with the butt of his hammer. “Someday you can thank your Uncle Harry for me. Whoever he is.”

  This time her cheeks went even rosier than the velvety flowers. Her eyes sparkled. “You’re pretty gracious, considering everything.”

  “My grandmother would expect nothing less,” he assured wryly.

  “Right. And though Fiona has talked about you, we haven’t ever been properly introduced.” She tucked the roses under her arm and stuck out her hand. “I’m Bobbie Fairchild.”

  He took her palm in his. His hand practically swallowed her smaller one. “Gabe Gannon. It’s nice to kiss you, Bobbie Fairchild.”

  She laughed. “I suppose I deserve the teasing.”

  If he teased long enough, maybe he could forget the taste of her. Which would be the smartest thing all around. For one thing, he had seriously more pressing issues going on than his dearth of a love life. For another, he figured Bobbie was one of the causes that his grandmother had taken under her wing. What other reason would Fiona have for suddenly renting out the carriage house the way she had?

  It wasn’t as if his grandmother needed the money. And it wasn’t as if the carriage house was in such great shape. Structurally sound, maybe. But nobody had lived in the place for longer than Gabe could remember.

  Which reminded him all over again about the door.

  He lifted the hammer between them. “Fiona asked me to fix the door. It’s been sticking?”

  “If it’s not sticking, then it’s not locking properly.” Bobbie was grateful to focus on something other than the way she’d virtually attacked the poor man. It seemed like hours since she’d yanked open the door at his knock, but she knew it really had only been a matter of minutes.

  Only when she’d seen Tim Boering bearing down the walkway with determination in his step and roses in his hand, she’d simply panicked. No amount of hinting had been able to convince the man that she wasn’t interested. And since there’d been six-plus feet of very manly man already standing on her porch, she’d impetuously decided to show Tim that she wasn’t interested.

  She just hadn’t expected to find herself wrapped around a ticking bomb of sex appeal.

  Her heart was still dancing around inside her chest.

  And she realized that Gabriel Gannon, her sweet Fiona’s oft talked-about grandson, was clearly waiting for her to say something.

  The door. Right.

  Her face felt hotter than ever as she backed up until she was out of the way of the opened door. “It stuck so badly the other day that I couldn’t make it budge. I had to climb out the back window to get to work on time.”

  He had the decency not to laugh at that, though he didn’t stifle his grin all that quickly. “Can only imagine. This old door’s been warped since I was a kid.” He was running his very long-fingered hand down the edge of the door but his gaze—impossibly blue—was on her. “You work with my grandmother, don’t you?”

  “At Golden Ability?” Fiona was the founder and long-time director of the small nonprofit canine assistance agency. “I’m just a volunteer for them. I actually work at Between the Bean. It’s a coffee place downtown.” Just the latest job in a long string of them, but she wasn’t about to tell this man that. “Lots of, um, business people stop in there,” she added even though she knew she was rambling. She just couldn’t quite seem to help herself. Her brains still felt scrambled.

  “What sort of volunteering do you do?” He straightened again from studying the door and moved around to the inside, giving her another whiff of the intoxicating scent that she’d noticed when she was kissing him.

  “I’m a puppy raiser.” She dumped the roses on the narrow entry table that was a general collecting ground for her mail and keys and puppy toys, effectively moving far enough away from him so that she wouldn’t be in danger of accidentally drooling on him. He’d pulled a hefty screwdriver out of his back pocket and used it, along with the hammer, to tap out the hinges on the door. “Have been for about ten years.” It was the longest she’d ever stuck with anything.

  But then how could you not stick with raising golden retrievers that could—someday—become invaluable assistance dogs?

  “For some reason, I had the impression that you were in the office with her.” The hinges freed. He stuck the handles of his tools in the back pocket of his well-washed jeans, then wrapped his long, bare fingers around both sides of the weighty wooden door, lifting it right out of the door frame.

  “Well, I’ve helped out now and then when she’s short-staffed or something special’s going on.” She realized she was staring at the play of muscles beneath the short-sleeved white T-shirt he wore and quickly backed out of the way when he turned the door sideways to carry it out to the porch and down the steps where he leaned it against the iron railing. “What do you do with the door now?”

  He dusted his hands together as he straightened. “I’ll plane the edges. Shave off the warped parts,” he translated when she gave him a blank look. “I’ve got the tools in my truck.” He glanced at the sturdy watch that circled his wrist. “Won’t take me long, and then your door will be back in business.”

  “Good grief.” She darted down the steps, grabbing his wrist to look at his watch. “I forgot all about the time. I’ve got a class to get to.” She raced back into the house, straight to the kitchen where she kept the puppies’ kennel cages. Even when she was home, they preferred sleeping there, but when they heard her, the two fourteen-month-old dogs jumped to their feet and dashed out of the opened doors to race in circles around her. She snatched their leashes off the hook on the wall as well as the puppy jackets they wore when she took them out in public, and quickly clipped the leads onto their collars.

  It took only a matter of seconds, yet the exuberant pups nearly pulled her after them, their paws scrambling as they ran across the hardwood floor to the front door. She had them back under control by the time they made it outside, though, and they waited obediently until she allowed them to go sniffing around the bushes that clustered against the foundation of the carriage house.

  “Handsome dogs,” Gabriel commented.

  “They are.” Glad for a reason to keep her eyes off of Gabriel’s—well, everything—she crouched down and fondly scrubbed her fingers through Zeus’s golden ruff. His eyes nearly rolled back in his head with pleasure. Archimedes wasn’t so quick to finish his business before seeking out her attention, but that didn’t surprise Bobbie. She’d gotten the pups just after they’d been weaned and even then, their personalities had been developing. “Zeus here is a little lover, plain and simple.” She patted him on the back and nodded toward the other dog. “Archimedes there is the explorer.”

  And the explorer had moved from sniffing his way around the azaleas to the wooden door that was definitely not where he was used to it being.

  He whined a little and trotted back to Bobbie, obviously ready for his share of petting when he sat his too-big-for-his-body paws right on her thigh, nearly knocking her over. She laughed and righted herself even as Gabriel’s hand shot out to catch her arm.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.” Except that her arm was tingling all over again from his touch. “After all thes
e years with puppies like these two, I’m pretty used to it. Have a collection of bruises most days,” she added blithely as she moved away from him so she could breathe normally again and clipped on the leashes once more.

  “Maybe you should try smaller dogs,” he suggested dryly. “Ones that aren’t half your size before they’re even full-grown.”

  “Why?” She crouched down with the pups again, getting her face slathered with sloppy tongues while she deftly fastened their guide-puppy-in-training jackets on their backs. “What’s a bruise or two when you get love like this?”

  “There are bruises and then there are bruises.”

  She straightened again, unreasonably curious about the suddenly grim set of his lips, but he was already striding across the lawn toward the big dark blue pickup truck that was parked in the narrow drive in front of her cottage. A sign on the truck’s door said Gannon-Morris Ltd.

  “Come on, guys,” she told the dogs as she followed him. “You’ll be all right if I leave you?”

  He reached into the bed of his truck and hefted out a large, red toolbox. “I think I can manage,” he assured her solemnly.

  She smiled. “Right.” Of the two of them, there was no question that he would be the one in the “good at managing” column, whereas she was usually so not.

  The corner of his lips twitched as he watched her just stand there. “Thought you had a class to get to.”

  “Criminy.” Her face heated again. “I do.” She lifted the dogs’ leashes. “Obedience class, actually. It’s held in the park at the end of the block, rain or shine.” She glanced up at the partially cloudy sky. “So far, looks like we’ll have a little shine. Thanks for fixing the door. And, thanks also for...you know—”

  “Making it look good?” His gaze slid her way, and this time, the heat slowly oozed from her face and down her body into all manner of interesting places.

  Zeus and Archimedes were tugging at their leashes. They knew they had a walk in store.

  “Yes,” she managed around her dry throat as her feet slowly followed their pull toward the street. “Making it look good.” And then, before she could admit the painfully obvious—that he’d made it feel pretty darn good, too—she turned and followed the exuberant dogs.

  At least trying to keep up with them gave her a safe excuse on which to blame her racing heart.

  Chapter 2

  “Fiona!” A few hours later, the door repairs nearly completed, Gabe entered the rear of his grandmother’s house, going through the laundry room that—as far as he knew—had never once been used personally by his feisty, diminutive grandmother. That was something she’d always left for the “help”—individuals who, in Gabe’s mother’s opinion, were more in need of that particular quality than they were competent in providing it to Fiona.

  “Fiona,” he called again, gesturing for his son and daughter to go inside before he followed them with his heavy toolbox.

  “I don’t see why we can’t stay home.” Lisette continued her argument that had begun the moment she’d climbed in the passenger seat of his truck when he’d picked her up after her ballet lesson. “Twelve is old enough to babysit Todd.”

  “I don’t need no babysitter,” Todd returned acidly. He was two years younger than his sister, who never failed to remind him of her superior age. He headed straight to Fiona’s oversize refrigerator and pulled open the door, sticking his rumpled blond head inside. “I’m hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry,” Lisette observed with a sniff that would have done her mother proud.

  Gabe closed his hand around the back of her slender neck beneath the tight little knot she’d made of her pale-blond hair. “You should eat something, too,” he told her, managing to contain the rest of his thought—that she was too thin.

  “I’m not hungry.” The response was predictable. Unfortunately, the way she shimmied out from his touch was predictable, too.

  He stifled a sigh and set his toolbox on the floor in the kitchen. “Then help your brother. And if you wouldn’t mind, fix a sandwich for me, too. I’m going to find your great-grandmother.” Without waiting for an argument, he headed through a narrow hallway that led from the kitchen to his grandmother’s office. But she wasn’t behind the massive desk that had once belonged to Gabe’s grandfather. Nor was she in the sunroom, fussing over her orchids and begonias. Where he did find his nearly 85-year-old grandmother was upstairs, standing on a six-foot ladder with a long-handled duster in her hand, trying to reach the lower arms of the enormous antique chandelier that hung suspended over the two-story foyer.

  “Fiona,” he said calmly from the foot of the stairs, because the last thing he wanted to do was startle her, even though he had to clench his hand over the carved newel top to keep from bolting up the stairs, “You told me you hired someone to clean the chandelier.”

  “Oh, I did.” Leaning precariously over the handrail, she swiped the duster toward the chandelier. It groaned a little as it swayed slightly. “But Rosalie’s poor husband was arrested.”

  “Ah.” He began climbing the stairs. “The husband was the one you hired?”

  “No, no.” Fiona shook her head, and looked down, waving her duster at him as if he ought to know better. “Rosalie was the one I hired. But she obviously couldn’t be here when she needed to be at her husband’s side.” She turned her attention back to the lofty chandelier.

  “When was he arrested?” And for what?

  “Oh, a week ago. I told Rosalie not to worry about a thing, financially or otherwise.”

  Gabe let out a slow sigh. Between his kids, who gave every impression of wanting him to disappear from their lives—again—and his grandmother, who was a soft-hearted target for every soul needing some sort of break, he had definitely been learning the fine art of keeping his patience.

  He reached the top of the stairs and turned along the landing. “Grandma,” he said mildly, “why not hire someone else?” He knew from long habit that there was no point in trying to convince Fiona that she didn’t need to save everyone she met. “Or wait for me to get here and save your money altogether? You knew I’d be here today.” He made it to the ladder and reached up, closing his hands around her waist and lifting her right off the ladder.

  “Gabriel—” she swatted at him with the duster, giving him a face full of dust “—put me down this instant.”

  “That’s what I’m—” he let out a huge sneeze “—doing.” He set her well away from the ladder. And kept himself between her and it. He sneezed again, and swiped his hand down his face. “How much dust was up there?”

  “A lot,” Fiona said tartly. “Which is why it needed to be done.” She propped her narrow hands on her skinny hips and eyed him with no small amount of relish when he sneezed a third time. “That’s what you get for interrupting me.”

  He snatched the wooden handle out of her hand before she could brandish the feathery thing in his face again. “I’ll finish it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She grabbed the handle right back, proof that age hadn’t slowed her much at all. “I thought you had Lisette and Todd this afternoon?”

  “I do. And they’re downstairs raiding your kitchen as we speak.”

  Fiona’s eyes lit up. “They’re here, then? That’s wonderful. For how long?”

  “Not long enough.” He grimaced. “I tried to get Stephanie to let me keep them overnight, but—” He shook his head.

  Fiona’s gave a frowning sniff. “As usual, she wants to make things as difficult for you as she possibly can.”

  Gabe could have denied it, but what would have been the point? His grandmother knew as well as anyone in the family just how little love was lost between him and his former wife. Fiona was about the only one, though, who didn’t blame him for it.

  Now, she patted him on the arm and waved at the ladder. “It rea
lly needs to be cleaned up before that dreadful birthday party your mother is insisting on next weekend.”

  “Would that be dreadful because it is your birthday? Or because Astrid is throwing it?” Not only did his mother like to control everything, but she was far from a devoted daughter-in-law. Any party his mom threw would be about appearances—hers. Sweet and loving, she was not.

  Fiona gave him a look. “Take your pick. Were you able to fix Bobbie’s door for her earlier?”

  She didn’t wait around for an answer, but tugged at the sleeves of her sweater as she wandered along the long landing, straightening the frames of the portraits hanging there. Three generations of Gannons and not a blue-collar guy like Gabe among them.

  “Yeah.” He climbed the ladder and began finishing the job his grandmother had begun. “I’m going to replace the lock set, though, before I leave today. She said she’s been having problems with that, too.”

  “So you saw her, then.”

  “I saw her.” An understatement if there ever was one.

  “What did you think of her?” Fiona stopped in front of the portrait of her husband, cocking her white head as she nudged one corner of the frame. “A dear girl.”

  That “girl” had felt like she was all woman when she’d been filling his arms. “Seemed friendly enough,” he offered. Another understatement. He realized he was grinning like some damn fool at the crystal prisms above his head. “She was taking her dogs out to some class.”

  “She teaches it, actually. When it comes to the dogs, she’ll do most anything.” Evidently satisfied with the portraits, Fiona moved to the top of the stairs. “That’s good enough, darling. If your mother wants to get up on a ladder to inspect the thing, she’s welcome to do so.” She shook her head. “As if I need some darn party to remind me just how old I am.” She started down the steps with an ease that belied her age. “Will that lock thing take you long enough that I can purloin your children for an hour or so?”

  He eyed her from his perch atop the ladder. “What are you planning?”