“Where the heck have you been?” he demanded. “Were you asleep?”
“Yes.”
“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon! I thought...”
She pushed tousled hair away from her face, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, she examined him more closely. “You thought what?” she asked. Then realization struck her. “You thought that I... Gabe! I’d never do something like that! I was asleep! I didn’t... Last night wasn’t very easy for me. I stayed up late thinking, like you said.”
He looked away from her, to a car passing on the street. To hide the fear that Raine could still easily see in his face?
Her flash of indignation melted. “I didn’t mean to worry you,” she said quietly. “I had no idea what time it was, or that you’d be concerned.”
He shrugged dismissively, but he still didn’t look at her.
Raine frowned, then became aware that the top two buttons of her pajama top were undone, and that the resulting gap revealed far more of her right breast than she would ordinarily expose. “Oh!” she murmured and quickly righted the problem.
Gabe stuffed his hands in his pockets and chanced a quick glance her way.
For some reason Raine blushed. Because of the inappropriateness of what he’d seen? Because of embarrassment over what he’d previously thought? Because of both?
“I came to ask if you’d like to have dinner with me tonight,” he said, “or, I guess for you, lunch. I promise I won’t make chili. It’ll be something light and nutritious.”
“You sound like a chef,” she teased, striving hard to bring them back to their usual footing.
“It goes along with being a fire fighter,” he said.
“Is that what you big he-men do all day? Sit around the station and talk about recipes?”
“We’re liberated.” He grinned.
“I think it’s more that you just like to eat. You want to come in? Have some coffee?” She moved back a step so that he could enter.
He shook his head. “I have some things to do. That’s what I originally came to tell you. I’m going to be out for a few hours this afternoon. If there’s anything you need that I haven’t—”
“I’m fine,” Raine interrupted. “In every way except one.”
“You’re remembering what I said?” he asked.
“I’m remembering,” she said. He started to turn away, but she stopped him. “Gabe, I truly am sorry I worried you.”
Another slow grin spread across his lips. “A few more minutes and I might have called up reinforcements.”
“The rescue squad?”
“No, an ax...to break down the door!”
“I can just imagine how much Mom would appreciate that!”
“She would if it was necessary.”
Raine didn’t miss the ring of truth behind his reply. “Yes, well...”
He smiled and gave a little wave before walking away. A minute later she heard a car start up in the garage next door and soon a late-model, dark blue Ford Explorer backed out of the drive onto the street.
Raine spent a moment wondering where he was going. To visit a friend? A girlfriend? Considering the closeness she felt to him, she knew very little about his adult life. Her only information came from the small nuggets gleaned from her mother.
A huge yawn overtook her and she turned back into the house, planning to make herself the cup of coffee that she had offered him.
* * *
THAT EVENING RAINE gave the dual sets of quick taps on Gabe’s door that had long been the private signal between the two households. Even their parents had come to use them, having been taught by their children.
Gabe answered the door and saw her inside. The aromas that greeted her were wonderful.
“Vegetable soup and sourdough bread,” Gabe announced when she asked.
“You made bread?”
“No, all I supplied was a pan and the oven. But I made the soup.”
“I’m still impressed.”
“Wait till you taste it. Are you ready to eat? Or would you like to wait?”
“I wasn’t very hungry before, but now...yes, I’m ready to eat.”
Gabe seated her at the table, where two places had been set and where a vase with a single sprig of bright yellow forsythia blossoms, cut from the hedge separating their two yards, served as a centerpiece. After ladling soup into two bowls, he settled across from her and motioned for her to begin.
Raine took a small sip. The flavors bloomed in her mouth. She lifted an eyebrow and took another sip. “Mmm. This is very good, Gabe,” she exclaimed.
“It’s Chief Sorenson’s specialty. Mine’s the chili I told you about yesterday.”
“Chief Sorenson...Ed Sorenson? Becky Sorenson’s dad?”
Gabe nodded. “He became fire chief about two years ago. He’s a good man. Knows what he’s doing.”
“And Becky?”
“She’s doing something with helicopters in the army. I think she’s stationed at a base in Texas.”
“Becky?”
Gabe grinned. “She’s learning to be a pilot.”
“Becky?” Raine’s repetition was even more incredulous. “But she’s afraid of heights. When we were in school together, she got nosebleeds on the second floor!”
“She must have gotten over it.”
Raine shook her head, remembering the quiet, frail-looking girl who had had a secret crush on Gabe for years and who had always envied Raine her free and easy relationship with him.
“How long has she...?”
“Two years. She wants to be a career soldier.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask about anyone else.”
“You remember Mitch Reynolds?” he asked.
She nodded. Mitch had been one of Gabe’s best friends.
“He’s out in California, doing some pretty amazing things in computer software technology.”
“He always was smart.”
They both ate more soup and pulled pieces off the sourdough bread.
Raine looked at Gabe curiously. “Do you ever wish you’d left Tyler, Gabe?”
“What for?”
“To see something different. To be with other people. To, I don’t know, see something of life!”
“I have everything I want right here. I like the people. I like my job. Tyler’s a good place.”
“But it’s so...” She searched for the properly derogatory word.
“So much the same?” he completed for her. “You always did think sameness was boring. But I kind of like it.”
“But you’re a fire fighter! Surely every fire’s not the same.”
He laughed. “No. You have me there. Each fire has its own personality.”
“I never knew you wanted to be a fireman, Gabe.”
“I never knew it myself.”
“Then what made you decide?”
“One day I just walked into the station and asked how to become one. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Raine stared at him, stunned that someone, especially Gabe, could have fallen into a career choice so haphazardly. To her, that was tantamount to opening the yellow pages, closing your eyes, sticking in a pin...and wherever it landed, that was what you did with your life! She’d dreamed of being on the stage forever. She’d prepared for it, one way or another, almost from the cradle. There was never any question about what she wanted to do. Yet look at her. Here she was, back in Tyler, her prospects for the future bleak.
Her good-natured veneer crumbled. She could continue putting her difficulties to the back of her mind, trying to pretend that everything was normal, but that didn’t mean that it was. She had a problem. She had a big problem, and hiding from it wouldn’t solve anything.
Gabe reached for her hand, which had stopped, frozen, in midair. Gently, he guided the full spoon back to the bowl. Then he curled his fingers around hers and gave them a sympathetic squeeze. He said nothing. What could he say?
“I wish...” she began, but didn’t finish.
“What do you wish?” he asked quietly.
She bit her bottom lip and looked down at the table. “That I knew the right thing to do.”
“Some people would say you don’t have a choice.”
“Have the baby, you mean.”
He nodded.
“Are you one of those people, Gabe?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Yet you...” She stopped again. This time he didn’t press her.
The litany of alternatives tumbled once again through her mind—the numerous difficulties she would face with either choice; all the “what-if’s” for years to come. She could see herself at some point in the future, looking back. Would she be happy with the decision she’d made? Or would she long to turn back the clock in order to whisper a better answer into her younger ear?
Raine would be the first to admit that she wasn’t particularly religious. She never had been. So religious considerations didn’t enter into it. For her, there was only her own sense of fealty, of duty.
She looked at Gabe and saw the man he had become...after being raised by his father, alone. Then she looked deeply within herself. Her mother had raised her alone, too. Neither of their parents had taken the easy way out when tragedy or trouble visited early in their lives. They hadn’t run off in pursuit of a dream. They had stayed where they were and worked with what they had, doing their very best for their children.
Raine had long ago acknowledged that she wasn’t made of as strong stuff as her mother. She’d been the child who’d been taken care of, who had been abandoned by one parent, but not the other. Her mother had given her twice the love, twice the encouragement. Could Raine do anything less for her child-to-be? Beginning with the most basic decision of all—whether to let it be born?
“Gabe?” His name on her lips broke the long silence.
He looked up from a contemplation of the tabletop.
“Does your offer still stand?” she asked. “Are you still willing to marry me?”
He grew very still, his blue eyes riveted on her face. “Yes,” he said simply.
“Then let’s do it. I—I want to keep the baby.”
A pleased light entered his eyes and his hand on hers tightened. Reverend Sarah Fleming Kenton was not the sort of person to ask many questions, which made her the first person Gabe thought of when it came down to choosing who would marry them.
“You’ll like her, Raine,” Gabe said as he pulled the Explorer into a parking space across from the stark brick building with its high steeple and the sign out front stating Tyler Fellowship Sanctuary. “She came to town about four years ago and has really settled in. She lost her first husband—he was a minister, too—but some months ago she married again. To someone...well, a bit unexpected in the role of a minister’s husband, not to mention in some other quarters in town.”
Gabe could hear himself droning on, sounding for all the world like a lonely old gossip. He kept thinking that at any moment Raine would pull out, change her mind, come to her senses. The ink on the marriage license was barely dry from their trip to the county courthouse in Sugar Creek, and here they were, already on their way to the ceremony. Sarah had told him she had a half hour of free time available that morning, and Gabe had quickly jumped at it.
He chanced a glance at Raine. She was quiet, very quiet. She hadn’t said more than ten words since he’d called for her earlier that morning. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her face revealed nothing.
But she was beautiful in a pale yellow dress of some kind of soft material, simple in design, yet a striking contrast to her bright hair and pale skin.
“Turns out he’s a Baron,” Gabe continued as he collected her from her seat and closed the passenger door. “A son no one knew Ronald Baron had. He showed up around the time of the F and M fire. For a while people thought he had something to do with starting it. But it turned out that he didn’t.”
Gabe wasn’t sure if she was listening to him or not, which might be just as well. He clamped his jaw shut in an attempt to stop himself from talking.
He, too, had taken special care with his clothing, wearing his best dark suit. It wasn’t every day that a guy got married. Even if it was supposed to be pretend. Even if he wasn’t supposed to love the bride.
He glanced at Raine again, wondering if he’d spoken out loud. It was that kind of time, that kind of moment where everything seemed to speed by on one level, yet move in slow motion on another. He’d experienced that same phenomenon in the midst of battling a fire, when tongues of flame flicked dangerously close.
When Raine caught his look and smiled, a short, tight, grateful effort, he had a moment’s pause to wonder if he was doing the right thing by her. He wanted to help her, not—
Reverend Sarah hurried across from the parsonage to meet them at the side door of the church, her robe billowing out behind her. She was a small, slim woman about the same age as Gabe, with dark red hair, golden-brown eyes and a liberal array of freckles. She shook hands with him and smiled at Raine when he introduced them.
“I’ve heard so much about you from your mother,” the minister said. “I’m glad to finally meet you. Is it just the two of you?” she asked as they entered the church.
“Just us,” Gabe replied.
“We’ll need a couple of witnesses. Mrs. Williams is here, and I’ll see if I can catch Michael before he leaves. Unless...” She stopped to glance at Gabe. “That is...if it’s all right with you?”
Gabe’s work with Reverend Sarah was carried out mostly over the telephone, when she alerted him to people in special need of assistance. He knew her husband far less, but was aware of the town’s lingering distrust. “No, it’s fine,” he said after what he hoped was only a short pause.
Sarah smiled and hurried away.
Gabe and Raine sat down on a pew. When Gabe took one of her hands, it was like ice. He laughed and rubbed it, but he wasn’t sure his were much warmer. “We should have stopped for some flowers,” he said.
“Gabe? Who’s Michael?” Raine asked, confirming that she hadn’t taken notice of what he’d said earlier, or, for that matter, what he’d said just then.
“The reverend’s husband.”
She nodded.
Suddenly he leaned forward. “Raine, if you want to change your mind—”
The side door swung open and Sarah entered the church, her robe once again caught by the wind. Directly behind her was a nondescript woman in wire-rim glasses and a tall, dark-haired man, who had the Baron good looks, only with a rougher edge. The robe settled as the door shut.
Sarah made the necessary introductions, then had them come to the front of the church, where she positioned them and started the ceremony.
It was over in less than ten minutes...and felt as if it had happened to someone else. Gabe had given his replies, Raine had given hers. But when Sarah told them they could kiss, that they were now man and wife, Gabe was momentarily flummoxed.
His hesitation was embarrassing. He knew he wasn’t responding like a normal groom. He wasn’t sweeping his bride into his arms and sealing their union with a triumphant kiss. He could sense Sarah’s puzzlement, her curious look. So he quickly leaned down and slid his lips across Raine’s cheek.
Raine, too, looked slightly dazed, but she accepted his gesture with a tremulous smile.
Then Sarah and Michael and the church secretary were congratulating them, and it seemed natural to grin and wave and hurry out of the church.
Back in the Explorer, Gabe sat very still, as did Raine in the seat
next to him. They had done it and he was glad, but it hadn’t been as he’d hoped—if he ever allowed himself to hope. The ceremony had been quick and bloodless, and as they now sat side by side, there was no real joy.
How did she feel? What was she thinking? He looked at Raine. Tears were welling in her eyes, ready to spill over onto her cheeks, and Gabe’s heart gave a hard twist. The marriage wasn’t at all what she had wanted, what she had dreamed...because he had never been a part of her dreams.
Without a word he started the engine, and when it caught, he backed the car out of its slot and set off in the direction of their homes.
CHAPTER FOUR
A LITTLE WORD HERE, a little word there...news about the wedding spread quickly through Tyler. Julia Innes had been on her way to drop off her daughter at TylerTots, the day-care center in the basement of Tyler Fellowship Sanctuary, when she’d seen Raine and Gabe come out of the church. She’d recognized Raine instantly even though it had been some time since she’d last seen her. She mentioned her observation to Patricia Sikes, who, dressed for her exercise class, was dropping off her younger son. Patricia mentioned it to her friend Marcia at the exercise class, who later, in a seemingly offhand way, mentioned it to Reverend Sarah during a meeting both attended. Sarah told her about the short ceremony, not suspecting the barrage of telephone calls her news would unleash.
* * *
THE SIMPLE GOLD BAND weighed heavily on Raine’s finger. It had been Gabe’s great-grandmother’s ring, his mother’s mother’s mother. Raine remembered seeing it when she was a child, when Gabe had shown her the special box his father kept in his top bureau drawer. Gabe had gotten into trouble for doing it, but he’d never told that she’d begged to be allowed to see it. Gabe’s great-grandfather had bought the ring in France while serving in the military during the First World War, and Raine had burned to touch something from so far away. Now it was hers, on her finger, and she felt such a fraud.
Immediately after the ceremony she’d known that she shouldn’t have done it, that she shouldn’t have taken advantage of Gabe’s good heart. She’d wanted to rush back inside the church and demand that the minister take everything back. That she dissolve the fledgling union, even if it was only in name. Gabe had looked so dejected when she’d finally let herself glance at him. Had he just then realized the gravity of what he’d committed himself to?
Daddy Next Door (Hometown Reunion) Page 4
