One Step Away: Once Upon a Proposal

by Sherryl Woods

  She waved her hand at him. “Nothing for you to worry yourself about.”

  He made a face. “The last time you told me that, I ended up with two hamsters that had to live with me,” he reminded her. And those two hamsters had quickly multiplied...fertile devils that they were. It had taken him nearly three months to find homes that had been satisfactory to his kids.

  “We won’t come back with anything that breathes,” she assured, disappearing down the hallway where he could hear her cheerfully greeting his kids.

  He shook his head and climbed off the ladder. Just because whatever it was didn’t breathe didn’t necessarily mean it would be welcome. But he wasn’t going to complain.

  Neither Todd nor Lisette was chomping at the bit to spend time with their old man, but they did enjoy their great-grandmother and for that, Gabe could be grateful. He folded up the ladder and carried it and the duster downstairs, stowing them both in the cluttered utility closet. Fiona and the kids were still in the kitchen when he got there. Not surprisingly, there was no sandwich waiting for him and the way their chattering clammed up the second they spotted him wasn’t exactly comforting. “No new pets,” he warned again, giving each of them—including Fiona—a stern look before he picked up his toolbox and headed for the door. “I’ll be done in an hour and maybe, maybe, I’ll take you to the movies afterward. Okay?”

  One thing Gabe knew was that Stephanie and Ethan rarely let the kids go to a movie theater. And maybe he shouldn’t be proud of offering them this particular treat, but sometimes a man had to pick his battles. He’d had an ongoing one with Stephanie when it came to the children since they’d split up eight years earlier, but now the stakes had escalated.

  And sometimes he simply needed to see a smile on his kids’ faces. One that was directed at him.

  Right now, both Lisette and Todd were looking surprised and pleased. “Check the newspaper for the movie times,” he added. “And nothing rated R.”

  “Dad.” Lisette rolled her dark blue eyes—the only feature she’d inherited from him. “Don’t be lame.”

  “Would you rather I said to find something rated G?”

  She rolled her eyes again, but shook her head. “I’m not going to the theater in my leotard, though. Somebody might see me.”

  “You’ll have time to change,” he promised, smiling faintly.

  “Nobody cares what you look like anyway,” Todd added, ever the supportive little brother. “’Specially not Jeffrey Russell,” he goaded.

  “Shut up.” Lisette rounded on him, lifting her fist. “Or you’ll—”

  “Make me change my mind about the movie altogether,” Gabe warned.

  Lisette’s hand slowly dropped, though she gave Todd a killing glare. One that he returned, complete with crossed eyes.

  Fiona quickly nudged Gabe out the door. “Go on. Finish Bobbie’s door. Everything’s fine here.”

  He wouldn’t go so far as to say fine, but they were pretty much standard. The only thing Lisette and Todd could unequivocally agree on was their mutual annoyance with each another.

  That at least was something that Gabe understood. He’d grown up with two older brothers, and a day hadn’t passed when they hadn’t been squabbling about something. But as he crossed the expanse of lawn leading toward the carriage house, he hoped to hell that he could keep Lisette and Todd from growing up to be as distant from one another as he was now from Liam and Paul.

  When he reached the carriage house, he could hear dogs barking inside. Evidently the obedience class was over.

  He knocked and a moment later Bobbie pulled open the door, a phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder and her other hand latched onto Zeus’s collar. Her dark brown hair hung in dozens of long spirals around her shoulders. “Hey,” she mouthed. “Door works great.” She swung it back and forth.

  He held up the new lock set. “It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  Her mother was chattering in her ear, but Bobbie didn’t really hear her. “You’re replacing the lock, too?”

  Gabe’s deep blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “Neighborhood like this, a pretty woman should be able to lock her door securely.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at that. Fiona Gannon’s neighborhood wasn’t exactly one prone to petty crime and break-ins. It was far too well-bred.

  “Bobbie?” Her mother’s voice had sharpened in her ear. “Are you listening at all?”

  “Sorry, Mom. Can you hold on for just a second?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but tucked the receiver under her arm and focused on her landlady’s handsome grandson again. Not exactly a hardship. The man was eye candy in a serious way. And he’d taken note when she’d mentioned the troublesome lock. “You didn’t need to replace it,” she told him now. “I figured it just needed a squirt of oil or something.”

  “It needs replacing,” he assured. “The tumblers are worn down to nothing.”

  “Well.” She moistened her lips, very aware of the fact that she was practically staring at him. “That’s really nice of you. Thanks.”

  “We at Gannon-Morris are all about full service.”

  Warmth zipped through her. “I’ll bet.”

  “Bobbie? RobertaNicoleFairchild—”

  She realized the faint voice was coming from the forgotten telephone tucked beneath her arm and felt a new flush—this one entirely from embarrassment—flood her cheeks. “Excuse me,” she told Gabe and quickly turned away, pulling Zeus with her into the kitchen. She pointed, and he trotted into the kennel cage alongside Archimedes, turned a few circles and plopped down with a noisy breath. “Sorry, Mom. I wasn’t ignoring you.” She stuck the phone back to her ear, keeping her voice low. “I just had someone at my door.”

  She heard her mother give a faint sigh. “And you still haven’t answered me. Why did I have to learn from Harry, of all people, that my own daughter is engaged again? You can imagine what he thought when it was clear I had no idea what he was talking about.” Cornelia Fairchild’s voice rose slightly, a true indicator that she was genuinely perturbed.

  If there was one person in the family to perturb the normally unflappable, elegant woman, Bobbie knew it was she, Cornelia’s youngest daughter. The one who was entirely flappable. And decidedly inelegant.

  A pain was beginning to form between her eyebrows. “I’m not—” she broke off, lowering her voice again. “I’m not engaged,” she said in a half-whisper.

  “Then why is Harry so certain that you are?”

  There could be only one reason, Bobbie knew, though she really couldn’t fathom why Tim Boering would have immediately trotted out the story for her honorary uncle. Only a few hours had passed since then, for heaven’s sake. “It’s just a misunderstanding,” she assured. She lifted the roses out of the plastic pitcher that she’d stuck them in, and dumped them in the trash.

  “Harry sounded perfectly clear to me, Bobbie. He said you and this Gabriel person were engaged!”

  “Honestly, Mom—” her voice rose despite herself “—do you really think I would be seriously involved with someone and not tell you?”

  Cornelia’s silence was telling and Bobbie pressed a finger to that pain over her nose. Yes, over the years, there had been a few things she hadn’t told her mother. Mostly because she knew it would just make Cornelia worry. And Bobbie had already caused her mother enough worry to last a lifetime.

  “I promise you,” she said more quietly, “I am not engaged.” Particularly not to the eminently kissable man who was working on her door not twenty feet away from her, probably overhearing every word, even though she was nearly whispering.

  “It’s not the idea of you being engaged that alarms me, Bobbie,” Cornelia countered smoothly. “It was the fact that I thought you hadn’t told me first. I would be delighted to think that one of my daughters is finally settling down.”


  The pain went from a dull ache to a sharp throb. “You mean that I was finally settling down.” Sticking with something. Anything.

  “Don’t put words in my mouth, darling. That’s not what I meant at all.”

  Bobbie paced the confines of the small kitchen. She was twenty-seven years old and kept telling herself that she should be past the need for her mother’s approval.

  But saying it and feeling it were two very different things.

  “I’m not even dating anyone, Mom. I haven’t since—” She broke off. There was no need to finish. Her mother knew what she was referring to, and Bobbie had no desire for Gabe to overhear that her love life had as much altitude as Death Valley. A state of reality since the beginning of the year, ever since the man she’d been in love with—Lawrence McKay—had thrown her over for an entirely more suitable woman to stand at his side while he took the political scene by storm. A woman whose hair didn’t look like she’d stuck her finger in an electric socket and who didn’t need to stand on a stool just to reach the shelves in her own kitchen cabinets. A woman who was cool and elegant and who always had the right words for any situation.

  A woman just like Bobbie’s mother. Or her sisters, for that matter.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. Zeus started whining. She heard her mother sigh again. Faintly.

  “All right. I’ll just have to call Harry and correct his misinformation.”

  “I’ll call him if you want me to,” Bobbie offered. Her honorary uncle was an eccentric one, but she had a soft spot for the man anyway. After Bobbie’s father died when she was little, Harrison Hunt had been one of the few males left in her life. Whether it was the fact that he’d been childhood friends with George and Cornelia, or the fact that George had later married Cornelia, or even that George had been in business with Harry, once Bobbie’s father had gone, Harry had tried—in his oft-awkward way—to do his best by the Fairchild family. The man was insanely brilliant but had—according to some—a computer chip like those that had made him rich for a heart. And given the way he’d treated his own sons for most of their lives, it wasn’t an entirely inaccurate accusation. But to Bobbie, he was just her rather odd-duck Uncle Harry. And being an odd duck herself, maybe that’s why she felt a kinship to him.

  “I know he enjoys hearing from you,” Cornelia was saying. “Particularly since you sneak him those coffees he loves—and don’t bother denying it, darling. I’ve been onto this collusion between the two of you since you went back to work at that little coffee house after you and Lawrence ended things. But I’m having lunch with Harry tomorrow, anyway, so I’ll set him straight. Now. Do you need grocery money? What about gas for the car?”

  Bobbie couldn’t prevent a groaning laugh. “No, Mom. I don’t need grocery money or gas! I do have a job, remember? I can afford to take care of myself.”

  “Yes, I know you have a job. And I also can guess just how much of your income you’re spending on those dogs of yours. If I came over there right this moment and looked in your pantry, would I actually see food for you and not just enormous bags of dog food?”

  “Yes, you would.” She childishly crossed her fingers as she envisioned the virtual void behind the pantry door.

  Cornelia made a soft sound that Bobbie translated as disbelief. But her mother didn’t pursue the matter. Maybe because she herself was the most independent woman that Bobbie knew. And she’d raised her daughters to be the same.

  “Besides,” Bobbie added, “I’m helping Tommi out this week at the bistro.” She smiled, thinking of her older sister’s penchant for feeding the world through her charming Corner Bistro in downtown Seattle. “So you know I’ll be eating well there, at least.” As far as Bobbie was concerned, Tommi was the best chef in town. What her sister could do in the kitchen was simply magical.

  “That’s something, I suppose,” Cornelia allowed. “All right, then. You’re certain there isn’t anything going on in your life that I should know about?”

  The sound of a hammer filled the small cottage, a needless reminder of the man on the other side of the very thin kitchen wall. “Positive.” She had no intention of informing her mother that she’d practically accosted Gabriel Gannon in order to avoid her uncle’s young friend. “Tell Uncle Harry hello for me when you see him tomorrow. Love you.”

  She barely waited to hear her mother return the sentiment before she hung up the phone.

  Alongside his sleeping companion, Zeus cocked his golden head, watching her as if he knew exactly how many times she’d skirted the facts with her mother. She rubbed her hand over his silky head and tossed him the hard rubber bone he liked to chew. Then she ran her hands over her hair in a vain attempt to smooth it down, straightened the hem of her long-sleeved T-shirt around her hips, and went back out into the living room.

  Gabriel was crouched down next to the open door, working on the latch and the lock, his muscular thighs bulging against his worn jeans. She sucked in a careful breath and managed a smile when his vivid gaze turned toward her. “Your mother, I take it?”

  Feeling more like a schoolgirl than a grown woman, she nodded and willed herself not to blush.

  “Sounds like news traveled fast.”

  Forget staving off the blush. She felt heat plow up her neck into her face. “Yeah.” She rubbed her palms down her thighs. “Guess you heard.”

  “I tried not to.” He looked amused as he focused again on the new lock he was installing. “But it’s kind of a small space.”

  And feeling smaller by the second. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “Getting your name involved in all this.”

  “Like you said, it’s just a misunderstanding. No sweat.” He finished tightening a screw, twisted the door latch a few times and pushed to his feet. “And I know how mothers can be.” He shut the door and turned the lock. It latched with a soft, decisive click. He looked down at her. “Ought to keep you snug as a bug in here now.”

  She was feeling quite snug, with the door shutting out the world and shutting him in. “I, um, should pay you for the lock.”

  “Not necessary.” He shook his head and smoothly unlocked and opened the door again, letting in a rush of cool, damp air. “Fiona has a long list of things she wants fixed or replaced over here. One lock set isn’t going to make a difference.” He leaned over to fit his tools back into the tool box and his shirt stretched tightly across his back.

  She quickly looked past the tantalizing play of muscles beneath white cotton, through the open door, grateful for the waft of fresh air. “I told Fiona she didn’t have to fix anything. Except for the door sticking, everything is fine over here.” And the rent was ridiculously low.

  “Don’t say that,” he drawled. “Business down the way it is, I need all the work I can get.”

  Horrified, she opened her mouth, not certain what to say.

  But he was giving her that crooked grin again. The one that sent strange little squiggles of excitement through her belly. “I’m kidding. Playing Mr. Fix-it for my grandmother isn’t exactly a hardship and after all the hours I’m spending in the office these days, it helps keep me from forgetting where I started.” He lifted the toolbox. “If it stays dry enough tomorrow, I’ll get new shingles up on your roof. Otherwise it’ll be the floor in your bathroom.”

  She was almost afraid that he’d ask to see it, and considering the lingerie that was hanging over the shower rod to dry, she really wanted to avoid that. “When Fiona said she’d send someone to fix the door, I didn’t expect it to be you.” In fact, her elderly friend had implied it would be someone employed by her grandson’s construction firm. Not her grandson himself. From what she’d heard over the years from Fiona about her wealthy family, very few of them were the hands-on type. Doctors and lawyers. Administrators.

  Only her grandson ha
d bucked the old money and professional tradition and gone into construction. And now he had branches in Colorado and Texas as well as Washington State. All details courtesy of Fiona, of course. The woman didn’t try to hide how proud she was of him.

  “Afraid you’re stuck with me,” he said. “I’ve got everyone on my payroll working at the moment.”

  “That’s good, though, right?” She knew how construction had taken a terrible hit in this economy. “A sign of better things?”

  He looked out the door. “I’m hoping so.”

  Something in his voice caught at her, but she didn’t have time to examine it, because footsteps pounded on the walkway outside and a moment later, two kids—a boy and a girl—practically skidded to a stop on her porch.

  “We picked the movie,” the tousle-haired boy said. “But it starts in twenty minutes.”

  “And I still have to change,” the girl said. She was wearing a black leotard with a short, filmy skirt over pale-pink tights, her hair fastened in a classic knot at the back of her blond head.

  “Right.” Gabriel looked back at Bobbie. “But first say hello to Ms. Fairchild. This is my daughter, Lisette. And my son, Todd.”

  Of course. He had children. Fiona had mentioned them. As well as the fact that their father was doing his best to regain partial custody of them. “It’s nice to meet you,” she greeted. “But call me Bobbie. Please.”

  Both of the youngsters had their father’s brilliant blue eyes, but that was all. His hair was as dark a brown as theirs was pale blond. Even their features were different, not as sharply drawn, though she supposed that could just be the difference between youth and maturity.

  “Hi.” Todd was the first to speak. “You have the curliest hair I ever seen.”

  “Todd,” Lisette groaned, rolling her eyes.

  “Well she does,” he defended innocently.

  Bobbie laughed. “It is pretty curly,” she admitted. “I always wanted smooth, blond hair, just like your sister’s.”

  Lisette’s hand flew up to her bun, looking away shyly. “Mother won’t let me cut it,” she said.