It Must Be Love

by Rachel Gibson

  "I'm going to paint them first, but I should be finished by the end of the day. I need something to do tomorrow."

  "What about a countertop in the back room? Kevin mentioned that he wouldn't mind seeing it replaced, and a job like that ought to last through Monday."

  "Hopefully, Kevin will make his move this weekend, and I won't be there Monday."

  Gabrielle's fingers stilled. "Maybe we shouldn't talk about this. You still think Kevin is guilty, and I don't."

  "I'd rather not talk about Kevin right now anyway." He raised the water and squirted a stream into his mouth. When he was finished he sucked a bead of water off his lower lip and said, "I have a few important questions I want to ask you."

  She should have suspected he'd been nice to her because he wanted something. "What?"

  "Where did you get that Barbara Eden, I Dream of Jeannie, outfit?"

  She glanced downward at her little blouse and bare middle. "That's one of your important questions?"

  "No, I was just curious."

  Since his gaze was directed at her stomach, she couldn't tell what he was thinking. "You don't like it?"

  "I didn't say that." He looked into her face, his cop's eyes carefully blank, and she still couldn't tell what he thought. "After you left the store yesterday," he continued, "what did you tell your mother and aunt about me?"

  "I told them the truth." She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and watched him show his displeasure the usual way. He scowled at her.

  "You told them about me being an undercover cop?"

  "Yep, but they won't say anything to anyone," she assured him. "They promised, and besides, they believe fate brought us together. They don't mess with fate." She'd tried to tell Claire that Joe wasn't the dark passionate lover of her psychic vision, that he was really just a bad-tempered detective. But the more she'd explained, the more her mother had become convinced that fate had indeed played a role in Gabrielle's love life. After all, Claire had reasoned, getting tailed, tackled, and forced to play girlfriend to a macho undercover police officer like Joe just wasn't a normal event, not even in the universal course of cosmic coincidence. "Anything else you want to know?" she asked.

  "Yeah. How did you know I was following you last week? And don't give me a bunch of crap about feeling my vibes."

  "I don't feel vibes. What if I told you it was your black aura?" she asked, although truthfully, she hadn't noticed his aura until after he'd arrested her.

  From within the shadow of his cap, his eyes narrowed, and Gabrielle decided to let him off the hook. "It was easy. You smoke. I don't know of any joggers who have a nice healthy cigarette before they set off on a run. Wheat grass, yes. A Marlboro, no."

  "I'll be damned."

  "The first time I noticed you, you were standing under a tree, smoke surrounding your head like a mushroom cloud."

  Joe crossed his arms over his chest, and his mouth settled into a grim line. "Do me a favor, will you? If anyone asks how you detected your surveillance, stick to that black aura thing."

  "Why? Don't you want the other cops to know a cigarette blew your cover?"

  "Not if I can help it."

  She tilted her head to one side and gave him a smile she hoped made him nervous. "Okay, I'll help you out, but you owe me."

  "What do you want?"

  "I don't know yet. I'll think about it and get back to you."

  "My other informants always knew what they wanted."

  "What did they want?"

  "Usually something illegal." His eyes stared into hers as he said, "Like for me to make their criminal record disappear or look the other way while they smoked a doobie."

  "You'd do that?"

  "No, but you can ask. It would give me a reason to frisk you." Now it was his turn to smile. And he did. A lazy turn of his lips that made her stomach flutter. He lowered his gaze to her mouth, then let it slide right on down the front of her blouse. "Maybe even force me to strip-search you."

  The breath caught in her lungs. "You wouldn't do that."

  "Of course I would." His gaze slipped down the row of buttons, lingered on her navel, then lowered to her skirt and the split riding up her left thigh. "I took a solemn oath. I've a sworn duty to protect and serve and strip-search. It's my job."

  The flutter in her stomach turned hot. She'd never been a good flirt, but she couldn't help asking, "And are you good at your job?"

  "Very."

  "You sound pretty confident."

  "Let's just say I stay at it until business is taken care of."

  She could feel herself melt, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside the booth. "What business?"

  He leaned toward her and said in a low voice that poured across her skin and raised her tern-perature a few more degrees, "Whatever blows your hair back, honey."

  She quickly stood and smoothed the crinkles in her skirt. "I have to…" She pointed to the front of her booth, confused. Her body was at war with her mind and spirit. Her physical desire was fighting for dominance over reason. Anarchy. "I'll just-" She moved to a table of massage oil and straightened a neat little row of blue bottles. She didn't want anarchy. One emotion ruling the others wasn't good. No, it was bad. Real bad. She didn't want to feel her skin tingle, her stomach flutter, and her breath catch. Not now. Not in the middle of the park. Not with him.

  Several college-aged girls approached the table and asked Gabrielle questions about her oils. She answered and explained and tried to pretend she didn't feel Joe's presence as strongly as if he were touching her. She sold two bottles of jasmine and felt, rather than saw, him come to stand behind her."Do you want me to leave your cheesecake?"

  She shook her head.

  "I'll put it in the refrigerator at your shop."

  She thought he would leave then, but he didn't. Instead, he slid one hand around her waist to her bare stomach and pulled her back against his chest. Gabrielle froze.

  He turned his face into her hair and spoke next to her ear. "See that guy in the red tank top and green shorts?"

  She glanced across the walkway to Mother Soul's booth. The man in question looked like a lot of the other men at the festival. Clean. Normal. "Yes."

  "That's Ray Klotz. He has a pawn shop off Main. I arrested him last year for receiving and selling stolen VCRs." He spread his fingers wide over her abdomen, and his thumb brushed the knot in her blouse just below her breasts. "Ray and I go back a long way, and it might be better if he doesn't see me with you."

  She tried to think past the brush of his fingers on her bare flesh but found it difficult. "Why? Do you think he knows Kevin?"

  "Probably."

  She turned, and without her shoes, the top of her head fit just beneath the bill of his cap. His arms slid to her back and held her so close that his nose touched hers and her breasts brushed his chest. "Are you sure he'd remember you?"

  His free hand slipped up her arm to just past her elbow. "When I worked narcotics, I popped him on a drug charge. I had to shove my fingers down his throat and make him puke up the cocaine-filled condoms he'd swallowed," he said, his fingers brushing up and down her spine.

  "Oh," she whispered. "That's disgusting."

  "It was evidence," he spoke just above her mouth. "Couldn't let a guy get away with my evidence."

  Standing so close to him, smelling his skin, the rich timbre of his voice filling her head, he sounded so reasonable, like making a guy throw up was normal. Like his hot palm on her bare skin had no effect on him. "Is he gone?"

  "No."

  She stared into his eyes and asked, "What are you going to do?"

  Instead of answering, he took a few steps backward into the shadow of the booth, pulling her with him. He raised his gaze to her hair. "What am I going to do about what?"

  "About Ray."

  "He'll move on." He looked into her eyes, and his fingers stroked the small of her back. "If I kiss you, are you going to take it personal?"

  "Yes. Won't you?"

  "No
." He shook his head, and his lips brushed across hers. "It's part of my job."

  She held herself still to keep from melting into the warm, solid wall of his chest. "Kissing me is your job?"

  "Yes."

  "Like strip searches?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Won't that draw Ray's attention to you?"

  "Depends," he said against her mouth. "Are you going to moan?"

  "No." His heart beat heavy against her breasts, and she placed her hands on his shoulders and felt the hard muscles beneath her palms. Her spiritual balance teetered in favor of falling headfirst into the desire robbing her of self-control and making her weak. "Are you going to moan?"

  "I just might." He softly kissed her mouth, then said, "You taste good, Gabrielle Breedlove."

  She had to remind herself that the man holding her within his strong embrace was as enlightened as a pet rock. He wasn't her soul's mate. He wasn't even close. But he tasted good.

  His mouth opened over hers, and he slipped his tongue inside. She didn't moan, but she wanted to. Her fingers curled into T-shirt and flesh, and she held on to him. He tilted his head to one side and delved deeper into her mouth. His palm slid to her side, and he stroked her bare ribs and sunk his thumb into her navel. And just as she was about to sink into the kiss and stay there awhile, he pulled back and dropped his hands to his sides.

  "Ah shit," he whispered next to her left ear.

  "Joey, is that you?"

  "What are you doing, Joey?" a female voice asked from somewhere behind Gabrielle.

  "Looks like he's making out with a girl."

  "Who?"

  "I didn't know he had a girlfriend. Did you, Ma?"

  "No. He never said anything to me."

  Joe whispered next to Gabrielle's ear. "Just go along with whatever I say, and maybe we'll survive without them picking out china and making our wedding plans."

  Gabrielle turned and looked into five pairs of brown eyes staring back at her with obvious interest. The women were surrounded by a group of smiling, giggling children, and she didn't know whether to laugh or hide.

  "Who's your girlfriend, Joey?"

  She glanced across her shoulder at the man by her side. Joey? Deep grooves bracketed his mouth, while a sort of weird deja vu feeling raised the hair on the back of her arms. Only this time he wasn't meeting her family. She was meeting his. If Gabrielle believed in fate, she might have thought her mother was right, that this was just too big to be cosmic coincidence. No, she didn't believe in fate, but she couldn't think of any other explanation for the freaky turns in her life since she'd met Joe.

  After several prolonged seconds, Joe took a long-suffering breath and made the introductions. "Gabrielle," he began, "this is my mother, Joyce." He pointed to an older woman wearing a T-shirt with Betty Boop's head stuck on Rambo's body. Across Betty's headband were written the words Rambo Boop. "These are my sisters, Penny, Tammy, Tanya, and Debby."

  "I'm here too, Uncle Joey."

  "Me, too."

  "And these are most of my nieces and nephews," he said, checking them off with his index finger. "Eric, Tiffany, Sara, Jeremy, Little Pete, and Christy. There are four more someplace."

  "They're either at the mall or playing basketball at the church," one of the sisters explained.

  Gabrielle looked at Joe, then back at his family. There were more? The group before her was overwhelming enough. "How many are there of you all?"

  "I have five children," Joyce answered. "And ten grandchildren. Of course that will change when Joey marries and gives me a few more." She took a small step back and looked at the table filled with small bottles. "What are these?"

  "Gabrielle makes some sort of oils," he answered.

  "I make essential oils and aromatherapies," she corrected. "I sell them in my shop."

  "Where's your shop?"

  "You wouldn't be able to find it," Joe answered before she could open her mouth, as if he feared what she might say.

  One of the sisters picked up a bottle of ginger and cedarwood. "Are these aphrodisiacs?"

  Gabrielle smiled. It was time she helped Detective Shanahan's karma pay him a visit. "A few of my massage oils have the chemical characteristics of aphrodisiacs. The one you have in your hand drives Joe wild." She wrapped her arm around his waist and snuggled close. She was definitely going to enjoy watching him squirm for a change. "Isn't that right… sweet cheeks?"

  His gaze narrowed, and her smile brightened.

  The sister set the bottle back down and winked at Joe. "How long have you two known each other?"

  "A few days," he said, giving the back of her hair a slight tug, which she supposed was meant to remind her to let him do the talking.

  The sisters glanced at each other. "It looked like more than a few days to me. That was a serious kiss. Did it look like a serious kiss to you?"

  All the sisters nodded to each other. "It looked like he was trying to eat her whole. I'd say that was a kiss a man gives after three weeks. Definitely more than a few days."

  Gabrielle laid her head against Joe's and confided, "Well, we may have known each other in a previous life."

  The women in his family just stared.

  "She's kidding you," he assured them.

  "Oh."

  "When you were over at the house the other day," his mother began, "you didn't mention a girlfriend. You never said anything."

  "Gabrielle is just a friend," Joe informed his family. He gave her hair another slight tug. "Isn't that right?"

  She leaned back, purposely gave him a blank look, then said, "Oh! Oh, yeah. That's right."

  His brows lowered, and he warned the women in front of him, "Don't get ideas."

  "Ideas about what?" one of the sisters asked, her eyes wide and innocent.

  "About me getting married anytime soon."

  "You're thirty-five."

  "At least he likes girls. We used to worry that he was going to turn out gay."

  "He used to put on Mom's red heels and pretend he was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz."

  "Remember when he skipped into the wall and had to have stitches in his forehead."

  "That was hysterical."

  "Jesus, I was five," he gritted through his teeth. "And you girls made me dress up like Dorothy."

  "He loved it."

  "Girls, you're embarrassing your brother," Joyce admonished.

  Gabrielle removed her arm from around Joe's waist and hung her wrist over his shoulder. Beneath his tan skin, his cheeks were suspiciously red, and she tried not to laugh. "And now that you're no longer a cross-dresser in red heels, you're a good catch?"

  "And now that he isn't getting shot at anymore," a sister added.

  "He's a great guy."

  "Loves children."

  "And pets."

  "He's really good to his bird."

  "He's pretty handy with tools."

  As if so much praise could not go unpunished, one sister turned to the others and shook her head. "No he's not. Remember when he took apart my Paula Pitter Pat to see what made her walk?"

  "That's right. He never could get that one leg back on. She'd just fall on her side and wiggle."

  "Yeah, Paula couldn't pitter-pat after that."

  "Well," a sister said above the rest, reminding them all they were supposed to be selling Joe's better qualifications, "he does his own wash."

  "That's right, and he doesn't turn his socks pink anymore."

  "He makes decent money."

  "And he-"

  "I have all my teeth," Joe interrupted, grinding out the words. "I don't have hair on my back, and I can still get a hard-on."

  "Joseph Andrew Shanahan," his mother gasped and covered the ears of the closest child.

  "Don't you women have someone else to bother?" he asked.

  "We better go. We've made him cranky." As if the sisters didn't want to jinx a good thing, they quickly herded their children and said their good-byes practically on top of each other.

  "It
was nice to meet all of you," Gabrielle told them just before they moved deeper into the park.

  "Have Joe bring you to dinner sometime next week," Joyce got in before she too walked away.

  "What was that about?" he asked. "Were you getting even with me for yesterday?"

  She dropped her hand from his shoulder and rocked back on her heels. "Oh, just a little bit."

  "How does it feel?"

  "I hate to admit it, but it feels really good, Joe. In fact, I never thought revenge could actually feel this good."

  "Well, enjoy it while it lasts." Now it was his turn to smile. "Paybacks are a bitch."

  Chapter Ten

  Joe watched his sisters and mother quickly disappear into the crowd, and his brows drew together. They'd let him off easy. Usually, when he got "cranky" they went in for the kill. He didn't know why they hadn't dragged out any more timed remember-when stories, but he suspected it had to do with the woman by his side. His family obviously believed Gabrielle really was his girlfriend, no matter what he'd said about it, and they'd fallen over each other to make him seem like a real good catch in her eyes. Which surprised him, when he considered that just one look at Gabrielle should have been enough to convince his family that she wasn't his type of woman.

  He glanced at her, at her beautiful face, her wild hair, and smooth bare stomach that made him want to fall to his knees and press his open mouth to her flat belly. She'd wrapped her gorgeous body up in an outfit he could easily shred with his hands, and he wondered if she'd done it on purpose just to drive him crazy.

  "You have a nice family."

  "They weren't being nice." He shook his head. "They were just tricking you into thinking they're nice in case you're their future sister-in-law."

  "Me?"

  "Don't be too flattered. They'd be happy with just about any woman. Why do you think they said all that stuff about me loving children and pets?"