Still Not Into You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Snow, Nicole

  Then I grab the food bag, let myself out of the car, and march right up to the front door of the beach house. I’m prepared to have to wake Gabe up, but I’m surprised to see motion through the window inset into the door. He’s up and moving around, hauling and taping up boxes.

  There aren’t many, but it makes me wonder. Did he bring all those things from home?

  Does he even have a home back in Louisiana, or does he just drift around with his life in the back of his truck?

  I shouldn’t be wondering these things about him. I start to lift my hand to knock, but before I strike the door he glances up, locks eyes with me, then sets the box he’s holding down in a strain and flex of muscle against his sweat-dampened, clinging shirt.

  He crosses to the door and opens it, looking down at me with a puzzled knit to his brows. “Sky? Everything okay?”

  My tongue feels thick. Suddenly the reasons for coming out to see him feel flimsy, almost embarrassing, and I hold up the fast food in its thin, crinkly bag like a shield.

  “Burgers,” I blurt out. “You know...in case you're hungry.”

  He arches a brow, then steps back. “Well, then come on in, darlin’.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I retort without thinking.

  “Right,” he says, his back to me as he leads the way inside. “Old habits. Sorry.”

  There’s an airy little atrium where the dining area was set up, and he holds a chair out for me at a little glass-topped table. I stare for a moment, trying to figure it out.

  It’s not quite registering, this chivalry, until I remember that Southern courtesy is part of his makeup. Then I awkwardly settle myself in the chair.

  My heart’s thumping when he leans over me, heavy bulk shrouding me for a moment, wrapping me up in heat as he gently pushes my chair in.

  Then he’s gone, leaving me breathless as he pulls away and rounds the table to settle in the chair opposite me. “So what’s for dinner?”

  “Bacon double cheeseburgers, fries, and strawberry milkshakes.” I deposit the bag on the table and just tear it down the side to expose the wrapped burgers and a pair of cup holders stuffed inside; fries spill over the paper. “Don’t tell me it’s your favorite.”

  “Depends. Pickles or no pickles?”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Ew. No pickles.”

  “Then it’s not my favorite.” He chuckles and reaches for one of the burgers, unwrapping it before taking a hefty bite, chewing, and swallowing. “Still good, though.”

  “Perfect,” I say. “You mean perfect. Pickles are just embalmed cucumbers, and that’s disgusting.”

  “Now see, I’m gonna be a gentleman and keep letting you be wrong.”

  I tilt my nose up, trying not to smile.

  “Saying that isn’t a very gentlemanly thing to do,” I point out, then glance around the beach house as I drag my fries closer and pick up a clump of them, biting the tips off all of them at once and swallowing. “You’re packing?”

  “Moving out,” he says.

  Moving?

  There’s a weird leap of fear in my chest that he’s leaving for good before he continues, “Checking into one of those extended stay AirBnBs real soon. Think I’ve worn out my welcome here, since Landon can’t trust me not to fuck his employees.”

  Ugh. It just hits me like a baseball bat upside the head.

  Hiding my wince in another huge bite of my fries, I duck my head, mumbling around the mouthful. “Well, I don’t get why that would be a big deal, anyway. It’s not Landon's business who I'm sleeping with, or who you're sleeping with either. It’s just sex. People do it all the time.”

  Something dark and heated flashes in Gabe’s eyes. It's so intense I have to look away.

  Obviously, I wasn’t saying I want to fuck him, but it sure as hell sounded like it – in the most awkward way possible. Lucky me.

  Whatever. Maybe I can’t deny that the idea has more appeal than I’ve been willing to admit.

  But a moment later, that heat is replaced by gentle amusement, and he points out softly, “He’s not just your boss. He’s your friend. He cares about keeping you safe and happy, and he’s not going to take it kindly if another friend he trusted with that is careless enough to jeopardize you. He thinks if I’m distracted, I’ll get you killed – and even if I don’t, he doesn’t want me to break your heart when I roll out of town like the gigolo he thinks I am.”

  I roll my eyes. “Losing a man could never hurt worse than losing a child.”

  Jesus Christ.

  I have got to learn to check my mouth. Everything I say is practically rationalizing why we should fuck. Any other man would probably take the bait, jump at the chance.

  But Gabe just watches me with that maddening gentleness, that patience, that icy calm – and worse, that understanding.

  I'm so, so screwed.

  I don’t like being understood.

  It makes me feel too vulnerable.

  Especially when he says, “You’re in no place to be thinking about that, Sky. I’ve been watching you this week. The lights are going off later and later. Your leads are going cold, and you’re frantic and scared and not making good decisions.”

  The anger that slashes through me is white-hot, like a lightning strike. Suddenly the awkwardness between us is, instead, all static and charged fury. I bristle, opening my mouth, a retort on my lips, but he holds a hand up to stall me. It’s less that huge wall of a hand and more the sheer gall of it that silences me, leaves me sputtering that he'd even dare.

  But in the split second’s reprieve, he’s managed to retrieve that weird little black book of his. He flips it open and rips out a page near the back.

  Without a word, he pushes it across the table. When I reach out to pick it up, he nods.

  I scan it quickly, feeling my face heat.

  At first, I don't understand the words and numbers. They don't compute.

  The instant they do, though, the anger drains, leaves me swaying, vertigo striking hard, and I grasp at the table, struggling to breathe.

  Jesus. It can't be!

  But it is.

  It’s a license plate number. The address of one of the dive bars on my list of leads. A set of GPS coordinates.

  My informants have repeatedly spotted Harmon there in the past, but he’s been absent for a while, completely off the radar. There’s a time scribbled on the page in Gabe’s slashing handwriting.

  11:00 p.m.

  Je-sus. Again.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper, rocking unsteadily to my feet. I shove the page in my pocket and stagger for the door. “I gotta go, Gabe. I have to –”

  Gabe’s not a lion. He’s a cheetah in a hulking body, and I'm shocked how fast he moves to intercept me.

  He cuts me off, angling his wall of a body in front of me, and gently grips my shoulders to stop me. That gentle gaze is cutting me open with warmth, concern, kindness.

  “No, Sunbeam. You can’t,” he says, quietly but firmly. “Tomorrow’s the VIP job with your Duke, remember?”

  Crap, no, I hadn’t remembered. I’d forgotten everything but my chance. Everything but Joannie.

  “Tonight, you need to sleep,” Gabe continues. “Take care of yourself. I’ll take care of this. I’m not gonna be the fool who hands you a roadmap straight to the trouble I’m supposed to keep you from.”

  I crumple inside, pushing at his chest – though I can’t muster much strength behind it.

  I’m tired, so tired. Feel like I’m going to shatter. “No, I can’t – I can’t quit now! I’m so close, if this could lead us right to Joannie –”

  “Not if you’re falling apart. Ain't close to anywhere, Sky.” He curls his knuckles against my cheek.

  The tenderness, the intimacy in the gesture, in his smile, nearly push me over the edge into breaking.

  “Let me take care of it. Please, woman. You've got my word I’ll kick Harmon up one side of the California coast and down the other, then bring him to you in handcuffs. But only if you s
tay home, get some rest, and go to work like usual tomorrow. This ain’t exactly a legal apprehension, and you need an alibi. Then tomorrow night I’ll wait for you, and you and me? We’re gonna have a heart to heart with that old bastard. Sound good?”

  Not a chance.

  No, it doesn’t sound good. It sounds insane. It sounds like both the worst and best thing ever, when this crazy man just found me a miracle and won’t even let me be part of it.

  It’s bittersweet, so bittersweet, and I can barely fight the lump in my throat as I look away. “Fine. Sure. Sounds good.”

  “Come on, then.”

  He takes my hand. His fingers are coarse, thick, and strong, and I hate to admit that his grip is comforting. He leads me to settle at the table again, then gently rests his hand on the top of my head.

  “Finish your dinner,” he murmurs. “I’ll load up the truck, then follow you home before heading to my place. I’ll be back later tonight to stand watch.” He pauses then, his hand falling away. “You really just came by to bring me burgers?”

  I feel like a doll, sitting here and staring at the cooling combo meal remnants spread out in front of me. It's the most ordinary thing in the world when the world suddenly twists sideways and surreal.

  I don’t have it in me to lie, or to feign pride.

  Not when I’m this torn between hope, despair, and frustration.

  “No,” I admit. “I...I was going to apologize. I know. I know you’re here for a job, and this wasn’t your idea, and I’m just…I’m making it harder, and you’re being so nice and going out of your way for me. Gabe, I’m sorry. Sorry I said what I did to Landon. I’m sorry he’s mad at you because of me. I’ll fix it. I’ll talk to him, I’ll fix it, I swear, I just...damn it, I’m sorry.”

  He blinks like he’s never heard those words in his life

  Then his smile returns like a winter sunrise. That big, boyish, gentle, warm, and wonderful smile I haven’t seen in a week. That smile I didn't know how bad I was missing until now.

  His fingers curl against my cheek again, and he laughs softly.

  “You didn’t have to do that, darlin’, but I do appreciate it. I don’t need your apologies. Just need you to stay safe for me tonight.” His thumb grazes under my chin. Vivid hazel eyes search me so deep, it’s like I can feel him touching all the trembling, scared places inside of me.

  Then he leans in close, and I smell a hint of strawberries and sweetness on warm breaths that curl against my cheeks before he brushes his mouth to mine.

  Holy, holy hell.

  It’s slow and soft and chaste, and I don’t think anyone’s ever kissed me so gently, but so powerfully.

  Who knew a gentle, steady, slow moving storm would be the thing to hit with enough force to shatter me?

  Who knew I’d be trembling, close to breaking, frozen and stunned and ready to burst out sobbing, just because he kisses me like he doesn’t want to fight me? Just because he touches me like I just might mean something to him? Because, more than anything, he damn well doesn’t want to break me?

  I’m scared. So scared.

  For Joannie, for myself, for these feelings I shouldn’t be having right now – and I can’t move, as he carefully plies my lips apart and tastes me for one hot second. The force, the gravity, the feral heat of his breath and the contact of his tongue...God.

  It jolts right through my heart. It turns me upside down. It levels my knees. I'm shaking in his behemoth grasp before he finally pulls back, looking down at me with those warm eyes that see far, far too much.

  “Can you do that? Can you stay safe for me, Sky?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I whisper, even though I’m not quite sure what I’m saying when I’m so dazed, completely shaken inside. “For you.”

  8

  Don't Look Now (Gabe)

  I’ve never seen Skylar look that lost, and I ain’t gonna lie.

  It scares me a tad.

  And I’m in a hell of a situation to be asking myself if I’m doing the right thing when right now, I’m ass-planted on a barstool in this dive bar called Brew Valley, waiting for Harmon Ketchum to show his ugly face.

  The game's on, the setup, and there’s no backing down now. I’ve got cuffs in my pocket, a gun under my jacket, a roofie for his drink, and a syringe with a sedative in case I can’t get him to take his medicine the easy way.

  And if it gets harder than a quick slip of a needle into his neck, well...

  I’m ready.

  Just don’t know if I’m ready to be this person, right now – especially when I can still taste Skylar on my lips, still see those wide blue eyes looking up at me, vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen before.

  I want to be with her, dammit. Not stumbling along, mashing myself into the mold of someone I’m not.

  'Course, I’m no stranger to dives like this. To jobs like this, things where people look the other way while you do the quick and dirty to get results, even if it ain’t quite lawful.

  This used to be my life, day in, day out. I took the money, did my work, and didn’t ask questions. Not even when people I knew only by a name and a target description stared up at me with terror in their eyes, asking me why I was doing this.

  Most of 'em were dirty to be winding up on shitlists in the first place.

  Still, their looks left nagging, heavy questions. Like how I could live with myself, treating them like just another mark as long as I got paid.

  Truth was, I couldn’t. That’s why I sobered myself up and got the fuck out.

  But here I am again, slipping right back into old habits because I couldn’t sit by idle while Sky tumbled into despair.

  I stare into my beer. I don’t want to drink it. Haven’t touched a beer or any other booze since I turned in my resignation to Deep Horizon Private Security.

  I’m afraid if I get tipsy, that black edge will come back. That darkness hovering around me, waiting to swallow me into a void I’ll never escape from. The memory loss, too.

  I know it’s just alcohol-induced memory impermanence, nothing more sinister. Too bad it just makes me think of my old man and that hole in his brain and how maybe even now there’s little gremlins biting chunks out of my grey matter, too, and I wouldn’t even goddamn well know it.

  I can’t. I can’t do it.

  I need the adrenaline high I’m on right now too much. Adrenaline keeps me sharp. Alcohol makes me dull. Hopefully nobody will notice my beer ain’t disappearing like everyone else’s.

  To distract myself from it, I flip my book open on the bar and jot down a few notes. Just impressions of the smell of the place – stale peanuts, old beer, and spilled gas with a good mix of dirty sock sweat – and the shapes of old beer splatters. They're dried in little preserved bits of foam on the bar top.

  I note the scratches on the laminate, the wood underneath.

  Nothing blue or delicate or beautiful here, but it still calms me, brings me back into those hours in Iraq, that quiet time right before a mission. I’d take a minute to myself and burn everything I saw into my brain. Just in case it was the last memory I ever had.

  I didn't write my life down yet. Not religiously. Not from fear of what happened to my old man. But the instinct to remember, to hang onto every subtle bit of each moment was there.

  I’d thought the stakes were high then.

  Turns out they’re nothing compared to the urgency in my blood when I’m doing this for a woman.

  A woman, plus a little girl’s life.

  The sound of a heavy tread and the stink of whiskey mixed with sweat alerts me I’ve got company.

  I stop writing, but don’t look up, my gaze fixed on the tip of the pen. The scrape of a barstool sounds next to me. Then rank body heat invades as a sense of bulk and dark presence settles next to me. I glance from the corner of my eye.

  Harmon Ketchum stares at me sourly, in the flesh, his mouse-brown hair oily and straggling into his small, piggish eyes.

  I can see how if you cleaned his nasty ass up he
might’ve been handsome enough, once, to hook somebody like Monika. Underneath the slime, dirt, and desperation, and the ugly, gruesome sneer, there’s a hint of a sharp, square jaw. What you’d call movie-star cheekbones, I guess.

  But he’s let himself fall far, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a drug habit involved, considering the yellow of his eyes and the brown stains creeping on his teeth.

  Hooking him and reeling him in was easier than it should’ve been. See, the way I used to work, I got people in every city. Back then I never knew when I was gonna need to be someone else for an operation, and then disappear like someone who never existed.

  During my work with Deep Horizon, I got shipped around a lot on the job, tracing targets, so I developed a network of people who worked on less than legal things – including fellas who’d get you a fake ID and a weapon with no serial number, then destroy the paper trail and the evidence when you were done.

  Exactly the kind of person Harmon’s been looking for.

  Bastard looks like he wants to fall off the face of the Earth.

  Ain’t hard to guess why.

  So when I made a few calls around, it wasn’t tricky to find out that a guy matching Harmon’s description had come sniffing and been turned away. Too desperate, which made other guys good at making people disappear very wary.

  You don’t survive in the underworld by getting involved with people who can point right back to you the second they get sloppy. No money on Earth is worth that.

  But it made it easy to insert myself as a referral. Had my guy give Harmon a call back and say he can’t get involved, but he’ll refer Harmon to someone who’ll do what he needs, no questions asked. That’s how, middle of the night last week, I finally ended up sprawled on a park bench pretending to watch the old decorative faux-gaslights come on while he sat on a bench behind me, pretending not to know me while we talked at empty air and happened to overhear each other.

  He was a rude-ass then, and he’s a rude-ass now. He beckons greedily to the bartender, bites off a demand for whatever draft he’s got on tap, and then goes back to staring right at me with all the subtlety of a charging bull.