One Step Away: Once Upon a Proposal

by Sherryl Woods

  She pushed her bare feet into fuzzy slippers and exchanged the afghan for an oversized Mariners sweatshirt that nearly reached her knees. Then she went outside.

  Stephanie was waiting by Gabe’s truck, her arms crossed and her toe tapping, as if Bobbie had deliberately taken her time. Ignoring her, Bobbie unlocked the truck and peered into the back where, sure enough, a thin reading book had slipped beneath the seat. She pulled it out and handed it to Stephanie. “I’m sorry we didn’t notice it earlier.”

  Stephanie didn’t acknowledge the words as she took the book and turned toward her own car—a sleek BMW that Bobbie figured was worth more than she’d earned in the last five years combined. “Tell Gabe not to forget our appointment with Toddy’s counselor this afternoon.”

  Bobbie highly doubted that Gabe would have forgotten it, but she had no desire to antagonize the other woman. “I will.”

  Stephanie pulled open her car door and tossed the book inside. But instead of getting in, she looked back at Bobbie. “He’ll break your heart, too, you know.”

  At first, Bobbie wasn’t certain she’d even heard right. She stared at the other woman across the uneven pathway and it slowly dawned on her that Stephanie’s rigid posture wasn’t entirely formed by disapproval.

  Bobbie also knew that she was afraid of that very thing—a broken heart—just as she knew it was already too late to prevent it.

  It had been from the night she’d walked up Fiona’s terrace for the birthday party and Gabe had held out his hand toward her.

  But she took a few steps toward the other woman. “I think he’s worth taking the chance.”

  “Hmm.” The other woman looked over at Gabe’s truck. “I suppose you’re young enough that you can afford to think that way.” She looked back at Bobbie. “I’m not anymore. All I have are my husband and my children. Ethan has given me everything that Gabriel wouldn’t, and he wants me at his side when he goes to Switzerland, and I want to be with him. Gabe’s intent on destroying that. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  Bobbie took another step closer. She could feel the hard edge of the stone paver beneath her soft slippers, and let the solidness of it ground her. “Gabe’s not trying to destroy anything. He’s just trying to hold onto his children.”

  “By taking them away from me.”

  “By sharing them with you!” She lifted her hands. “Stephanie, all he wants is to be their father, but how can he do that when they’re halfway around the world?”

  “How can I be their mother if they’re halfway around the world from me?” Stephanie’s voice rose. “He hates me. He’ll turn them against me.”

  Bobbie shook her head. There’d been an edge of something painful and hurting in Stephanie’s voice that made the other woman seem suddenly far more human than before. “He wouldn’t do that,” she said quietly.

  “He’s hauled us all back into court,” Stephanie clipped.

  “Because you’ve given him no other choice! That doesn’t mean he’s trying to turn your children against you.”

  Stephanie gave a cool smile that was nevertheless tinged with something sad. “I’ve known Gabe for more than twenty years. How long have you known him?”

  Bobbie didn’t answer that.

  How could she?

  Because the truth of the matter was, she had only known Gabe a matter of weeks. And even if every cell inside her said to trust him, what had her judgment in the past ever shown her other than that her judgment was all too fallible? “All I know is that the two of you managed to create two really wonderful children. Maybe the only thing you have in common anymore is your love for them, but that’s still a lot of love that Todd and Lisette deserve to know. It just seems to me that there ought to be a way for you to work things out.”

  Stephanie just shook her head and tsked, the cool, superior tone right back in place as if it had never been displaced. “Young and naive. I wonder how much your connection to Harrison Hunt will shield you when those qualities wear off?” Then she slid into the car and closed the door with a soft, final click.

  A moment later, she was backing out of the long drive, and then driving off.

  Bobbie exhaled.

  So Stephanie knew about Harry, too.

  Was that why she’d kept her claws mostly sheathed? Did even she think Bobbie held some sway when it came to Harry and HuntCom?

  She slowly turned and went back inside, taking the now-empty candy bowl that was still sitting on the step with her. She called the dogs out of their kennel where they’d been sleeping and let them outside for a few minutes. When they came back in, she had a pot of coffee brewed and the shower had finally stopped.

  She filled a sturdy white mug with coffee and carried it to the bathroom door, knocking softly. “Coffee?”

  The door opened and Gabe stood there in front of the mirror, one of her plain white towels wrapped around his hips. “Thanks.” His smile was slow and easy as he took the mug from her and she felt her insides melting all over again. “You need a new showerhead.”

  Bobbie blocked out Stephanie’s words that wanted to twine through her mind. There would be time enough to worry about Gabe’s ex-wife. Right now, she knew her time with Gabe was slowly ticking down to the custody hearing and she was feeling very protective of that time. If it meant wringing every moment with him that she could out of it, then that’s what she would do.

  So she leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb and put a faint smile on her face. “Know any available handymen who might want to help me out?”

  His eyes narrowed as he sipped the hot brew, then he set the mug on the little shelf near her sink. “I think I might.” He looped his fingers into the collar of her sweatshirt and reeled her toward him. “Did the shower wake you up?” He nudged her head back to kiss her chin. Her nose.

  Her breath shortened. “No.” Her hands settled on his wide chest, her fingers pressing into his warm, damp skin. She would never get tired of the feel of him, even if she had fifty years to enjoy it. “We had a visitor,” she murmured as his lips settled over hers.

  He tasted like her minty toothpaste, only far, far more delicious.

  “Hmm?” His hand cradled the back of her neck as he drew her even closer. His other hand dragged at the long sweatshirt until she felt his palm meet the skin of her thigh. Then her hip.

  His fingers trailed teasingly around to the small of her back, drifting lower over her rear.

  “Stephanie,” she managed before she could forget how to speak altogether.

  His hand paused.

  “Todd forgot a book in your truck the other night.” She wriggled a little, until her backside felt the delightful warmth of his palm again. “He needed it for today.” She trailed her hands down his torso, loving the feel of his tight muscles bunching beneath her touch. He might be forty-one, but he had the tightest abs she’d ever seen. And since she’d once done a brief stint as a receptionist at a fitness center, she’d seen plenty.

  She grazed her knuckles over the edge of the towel, very much aware of the hard length of him barely contained beneath it.

  “She say anything else?”

  Bobbie pressed her lips against his collarbone. Tasted the moisture still clinging there. “Nothing important.”

  His hands slid beneath her rear and he lifted her onto the chilly edge of the sink, then he stepped between her knees and she forgot all about the cool porcelain beneath her. “I don’t want her upsetting you.”

  “She didn’t.” Not exactly. Bobbie ran the sole of her foot along the back of his leg. “What time do you have to be at the office?”

  He smiled faintly. His damp hair was tumbling over his forehead and his blue eyes gleamed. His hands delved beneath the sweatshirt again, setting off ripples of delight as his fingers skimmed over her waist, walked along her ribs, and then slowly curved
around her breasts. His thumbs brushed circles over her nipples until they felt positively frenzied. “I’m the boss, remember?”

  “Thank goodness.” Her voice had gone breathless. She tugged at the towel and it slid off his narrow hips. She leaned forward to nibble at his chin, then his lips. Her fingers grazed over the length of him, loving the feel of that velvet-covered steel. “I want you, Gabriel Gannon, like I’ve never wanted anyone.”

  His chest expanded against her. “Good. I’d have to kill the other guy if you did.” His hands moved suddenly, and she had to let go of him when he pulled the sweatshirt over her head. He tugged it off her arms and pitched it aside, then filled his hands with her breasts. “Perfect,” he murmured, and bent low enough to capture one peak between his lips.

  Sensation streaked from her breast straight to her core and her head fell back until it hit the mirror behind her. She ran her hands over his shoulders, then slid them along his corded neck. She sank her fingers into his hair and tried not to cry out when his teeth gently grazed her, followed by the slick heat of his tongue.

  “I know something else that’s perfect,” she managed. Her thighs slid along his, her ankles looping behind his back. Even hunched over her the way he was, she could feel the nudge of him against the very heart of her, demanding and very hard where all she felt was wet and wanting.

  She lifted her hips toward him, flushing at her blatant invitation, but was too far gone to care. Besides, she had been pretty blatant the night before, and that hadn’t exactly sent him running for the hills. “You inside of me,” she finished throatily.

  His lashes lifted and his gaze met hers above the achingly tight nipple he was tormenting with his tongue. The faint lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled a little and then his lips were burning along the valley between her breasts, then upward, ever upward until he’d straightened again and his mouth was hovering a hairsbreadth away from hers. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint a lady,” he murmured.

  His hands curved around her hips, slid beneath her bottom and lifted her onto him.

  She cried out, nearly convulsing right then and there as he sank into her so deeply, so completely, that she felt consumed.

  She hauled in a shaking breath. Then another. “No disappointment here,” she finally managed and felt her heart fall open even more when he gave a short bark of a laugh.

  “What am I going to do with you, Bobbie?”

  Love me. The words rang insistently inside of her head. But she just smiled into his eyes. “Make love to me.”

  The corners of his lips kicked up in that faint smile that never failed to make her breathless. “That—” his hands cradled her rear “—I can definitely do.”

  Then she felt the pulse of him reach to the very center of her and her head fell forward, her forehead resting in the heated crook of his neck.

  She could hear the charging beat of his heart, could feel the raggedness of his breathing and she twined her arms around his shoulders, clinging for dear life when he lifted her a few inches, then lowered her again. His name was in her breath. His body was in her very cells. And then he was moving again, and she shuddered, clinging ever tighter as he carried her out of the bathroom, down the hall and back to her bedroom.

  A thin band of sunlight from the window was creeping across her tumbled mattress as he slowly lowered her to the bed, never parting from her. And when she drew his weight down over her, she cried out again.

  His mouth found hers, his fingers twined with hers as he slowly, devastatingly thrust into her, until every molecule of her soul felt ready to explode. She gasped and he raised himself up on his hands, the cords in his arms and his shoulders standing out. The pleasure was almost more than she could bear.

  And then, when his gaze finally lowered, hers followed and she realized the band of sunlight was slowly widening. It flowed across her breasts, her abdomen, and the heat inside her flamed even brighter as if Gabe directed the golden light himself, stoking it wider, brighter, until that ray of light was cutting over their bodies where they were joined as closely as two could ever be.

  Her breath caught as she hung at the edge of an exquisite precipice, dangling there at his mercy, at his pleasure. And then he whispered her name, roughly, half broken, and just like that, she slid so smoothly, so perfectly, over the edge, her head falling back, her eyes closing as she tumbled into bliss, giving him everything that she was.

  And she knew that in this moment, at least, he was giving her everything in return.

  * * *

  “This was the best start to a day that I’ve had...ever.” Gabe’s arm was wrapped around her waist, holding her on the running board of his truck. The sun was steadily climbing above the horizon. “Is it bad etiquette to say thanks?”

  She grinned. “I’d be hurt if you didn’t.”

  His eyes crinkled. “Then thank you.” He punctuated it with a kiss. “Thank you.” Another kiss. “And thank you.” Another. Then he slapped her playfully on the rear. “Now go inside before I blow off the entire day.”

  “I have to go brew coffee for people, anyway.”

  “As long as you don’t accompany it with the kind of service you treated me to.”

  “I have some standards, you know. I don’t—” she waved her hand in the air “—you know, with just any customer.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he drawled. “Or men across Seattle would be dropping like flies from heart attacks. It’s a wonder I survived.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Being the ancient soul that you are and all that, I suppose. I guess for an old guy, you did fairly well.” She hopped down onto the ground, her slippers barely cushioning her feet against the hard ground, and gave him a mischievous smile.

  “I’ll give you old,” he warned, smiling slightly.

  A shiver danced down her spine. “I do hope so.”

  He muttered an oath and shook his head. “Go inside, woman, before I forget we both have jobs to get to.”

  Smiling, she turned on her heel and sauntered back to the house, giving him one last look over her shoulder and nearly laughing with delight to find that he was still watching her.

  After she went inside and closed the door, she heard his engine start, and then the crunch of his tires rolling over the drive.

  Still smiling, she raced into the kitchen to feed the dogs. She picked up her Pippi costume, which was still lying in the center of the kitchen floor, and felt herself flush all over again at her own wholly unfamiliar boldness. She went into the bathroom and took a quick shower, raked some smoothing lotion through her wet curls before pulling them back in a ponytail, and put on clean clothes.

  Only when she was ready to step outside her door did she suddenly slow down.

  She held out her hand and the diamond ring on her finger winked up at her.

  The narrow, nearly white band fit perfectly.

  She curled her trembling fingers into a knot and the diamond caught the light again, sending prisms dancing across her living room. She exhaled shakily.

  If only the intent behind the ring was as real as the diamond itself.

  * * *

  The day passed quickly once Bobbie reached the Bean, with plenty of customers to be served, while in between she and Doreen switched the Halloween decorations—ghosts and spiders—for cornucopias and stuffed turkeys wearing pilgrim hats. She tried not to keep checking her cell phone to see if Gabe called, but it was hard.

  On her lunch hour, she raced over to Tommi’s bistro for a panini. Her sister was too slammed with customers to do more than lift her head when Bobbie poked hers into the kitchen for a second, and maybe that was just as well, because she wasn’t sure what she’d have said to Tommi about Gabe if she’d had enough time to talk. Knowing her sister, Tommi would probably have known right off that something major had occurred.

  And Bob
bie wasn’t ready to have the fragile connection she had with Gabe picked apart. There’d be time enough for that after his custody hearing.

  So she took her panini with her back to the Bean, and even by the time she finished her shift, her phone was still stubbornly silent. No calls from Gabe.

  She drove to the hospital to visit Fiona, but she was dozing over a magazine, so Bobbie quietly sat down in the side chair and stared out the window, watching the clouds slowly drift in the sky, moving in, then out of the sunbeams.

  She sighed. She’d never again be able to look at a shaft of sunlight and not think of Gabriel...

  “That’s a pretty heavy sounding sigh.”

  She looked over at Fiona. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  Fiona waved her hand. “All I’ve been doing is sleeping,” she dismissed. She yawned as she closed her magazine and set it aside. “So is that a Gabriel sigh or something else?”

  “Fiona—”

  “Oh, relax, dear. I’m not going to grill you about your engagement.” She exhaled tiredly and leaned her head back against her pillow. “I know it’s not real.”

  Bobbie blinked. “But...how? Did Gabe tell you?”

  “Heavens, no. All I have to do is look at your face whenever the subject comes up.”

  Guilt swamped her. “We never intended to lie to you, Fiona.”

  “I figured that, too. And I suspect you never intended to fall in love with my grandson, either.”

  Bobbie stared. “I—”

  “—can’t even deny it,” Fiona inserted gently. “Just because I’m an old woman doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be swept off my feet with love for a man when you least expect it.”

  “It’s not going to get me anywhere,” she said huskily.

  “Hmm. Maybe. Maybe not. Gabe felt responsible for the breakup of his marriage, even if it was Stephanie who did the cheating. I’d dearly love to think he’d get over that self-blame and find the sort of future he deserves. I suppose this little pretense of yours is to aid his cause where Todd and Lisette are concerned?”