She waved a hand. “We’re getting way too personal.” And with Boone of all people! She’d never expected to share such things with him.
Because she’d promised herself no expectations of him at all.
“Definitely too personal,” she declared for emphasis. “I never told Ethan my mom’s marital history.”
“Wasn’t it bound to come up?” Boone asked. “If you married him?”
She remained silent for several heartbeats, then found herself answering. “It was exactly why I turned him down.”
“You said no because of your mom’s four husbands?”
“No,” she said. “Yes. It…agreeing to marry…that whole thing…”
“What?” Boone pressed. “That whole thing what?”
“Seemed much too hopeful.”
A silence welled, the kind she couldn’t leave empty. “A person who commits to marriage, they should be convinced it’s forever, right?” she demanded. “They should believe—at least at the moment—that the other will stay with her forever, right?”
“You don’t think a man will stay with you…be there for you always.”
Gemma shrugged, feeling defensive. “I don’t think you can blame me.”
“No,” Boone said. “I understand. Completely.”
“Wow.” She stared at him, and with the truck’s cab lit only by the streetlight his expression was difficult to read. “Thanks for that. Maybe I’ve needed a male point of view all this time, because I’m sure the women I know would insist I squash such a pessimistic attitude.”
Another silence ensued, one that Boone broke this time. “We could be friends,” he offered. “I could be that man who stays for you in that way.”
Her heart jumped to her throat, which was weird, because it was a fear response and Boone was offering nothing to be afraid of. “Have you ever had a female friend?”
“Not really. You’d be a first for me,” he said. “But…well…I never told anyone about my cat either.”
“Boone…”
“No pressure,” he began. “If—”
“I want to be friends,” she heard herself assert around the large lump in her throat. “That would be good.”
“Good,” he answered.
“Very good,” she echoed. And it sounded that way, it sounded very good to have a man like Boone in her corner.
But she’d have no real expectations about that friendship either, she reminded herself. It was smart to always err on the side of caution.
Chapter 13
In the local coffee place, Harry’s, Boone stepped up to the counter and looked into the eyes of Sophie Daggett, barista, caterer, and little sister of one of his close friends and poker buddies, Cooper. He stared, alarmed by the purplish shadows under her eyes and the pallor of her complexion. It was six p.m., and though she’d likely been manning the counter and espresso machine for a few hours, she looked as if she’d been on her feet for days.
“Hey,” he said softly, as if a louder voice might frighten her. “What’s going on, Soph?”
She dredged up a wan smile. “I could ask the same of you. We missed you last night.”
“Yeah.” Shuffling his feet, he looked away for a moment. His buddies hadn’t canceled their usual weekly ritual, but card games hadn’t been on the agenda, and women had been welcome. “I didn’t feel up to a big gathering.” Not when only one week had passed since Kim’s death, and not when Hart had yet to return to town. Instead, Boone had opted to spend the evening with Gemma, watching TV and eating pizza.
As friends do.
“An Americano?” Sophie asked now. Boone nodded, then hesitated. His plan was to drop by Gemma’s shop next, where he thought he must have left his favorite measuring tape the day before. Though he’d made no promise or plan to see her, he didn’t like being without one of his best and most-used tools. “A vanilla cinnamon latté too, please.”
Sophie’s eyebrows rose, but before she could comment or question, he had his own demand. “Soph, kid—”
“He calls me that,” she said, her mouth twisting. “Hart, I mean. But I’m not twelve anymore. I wish all of you would figure that out.”
“Okay,” Boone agreed, holding up his hand. “I hear you. But I also see that something is keeping you from sleeping at night.”
She rang up his purchase without meeting his gaze, took his money, made change. It wasn’t until he stuffed a five into the tip jar that she glanced at him. “Will he ever be happy after this?” she asked, her voice cracking. “Can he be…Hart again?”
Poor woman had been lying awake worrying, he guessed. But what comforting words did he have to dispense? It wasn’t as if he’d been getting eight peaceful and dreamless every night himself.
“Life events can change us,” Boone hedged. Not him, though. He kept telling himself that, anyway, in those sleepless hours alone in his bed. Nothing had been irrevocably altered despite this new friendship he’d somehow forged with his neighbor. “But not essentially. We’re still who we are down deep.”
As Sophie moved to the machine to make the ordered drinks, he thought about that. He might have let Gemma convince him to binge watch a home renovation show and she might have cajoled him into the kitchen to roll out pizza dough and toss on cheese and toppings, but neither of those would domesticate him—turn him into the kind of man she needed. Despite that self-proclaimed pessimistic attitude of hers, he remained convinced a better emotionally-equipped man than Boone would come along one of these days and capture her heart.
Leaving his friendship as extraneous as a lone field daisy to a woman with an armful of long-stemmed red roses.
Sophie walked back and placed the drinks before him, then bit her lip. “So Hart will come home, restart his life? His work will go on the same, poker night too, and he’ll hit the dating scene and find some other lucky woman?”
“His fundamental nature hasn’t been transformed,” Boone insisted. And neither has mine. Nothing about me has really changed.
With a goodbye to Sophie, he exited and drove the short distance to Gifts for Girlfriends. Only the outside security lights shone and a dim glow from the downstairs, as she’d apparently closed down for the night. Boone refused to feel disappointment, though he’d thought he might find her catching up on paperwork or flitting about the rooms, rearranging merchandise or setting out new stock in anticipation of the weekend—the second-to-last before Galentine’s Day would be celebrated as well as its older cousin, Valentine’s.
Idling on the street outside the shop, he considered calling her and getting the okay to go inside—she’d given him keys and the security code earlier in the week when he’d had time to come in and work before opening hours. But that could possibly lead to talk of a shared dinner or other Friday night activities and he wanted to ration their time together.
No point in this friendship thing becoming a habit he might miss once she found that man of her dreams.
He pulled into a parking spot out front and hopped out. Better to retrieve his tape and head home for a solitary and early night. Tomorrow, he had to put in time on a job at first light.
Inside the shop, he flipped on a few more lights then stood in the main room, breathing in the girly scent of it and taking a necessary moment for the mishmash of colors and textures to settle into singular, identifiable items.
When he’d mentioned the need to Gemma, she’d said she required that same pause when she entered the local—and jam-packed—hardware store. When I first walk in, I can’t detect the bins of nails from the boxes of lightbulbs from the plumbing gadgets.
He smiled, thinking about plumbing “gadgets,” then smiled wider as he spied a nearby rack and a blanket thingie on it he’d been told was a hand-crocheted throw. A similar one now hung across the arm of his couch, and the night before Gemma had snuggled beneath the soft wool as he tried to explain the rudimentary rules of blackjack so she wouldn’t lose her shirt if she ever tried playing at a casino again.
Though he�
�d tried to reimburse her for the afghan, she’d refused to take his money, referring to it as partial payback for his work on the upstairs apartment.
Glancing at the steps leading to it now, he frowned, trying to recall if it was there he’d left his measuring tape. But he felt sure it had to be on the first floor, because he’d been carrying it around as they discussed where she might mount some additional shelving.
With his gaze sweeping the surfaces, he made his way from the main shopping area toward the rear break room. He took in the new display area, labeled Gear for Guys, which presented products for men, including a tube that had shown up in his own bathroom, a thick hand cream that he had to admit wasn’t greasy and felt damn good on the rough patches on his fingers and palms.
He’d demonstrated its effectiveness by running the back of his knuckles along Gemma’s smooth cheek. Her eyes had closed in response and he’d struggled to keep his cock under control.
Yeah, touching her like that had been a bad idea.
Another reason for a friendship hiatus for the night. Friends didn’t let friends get them horny.
In the back room of the shop, he glanced at the hooks beside the door. Gemma’s light jacket was there, and he thought that was her purse, hanging by a long strap. There was definitely her cell phone, on the countertop nearby. Puzzled, he directed his gaze out the back window and saw her car in the tiny employee parking lot.
Where the hell was she?
He stilled, listening hard, trying to detect her movements, but surely he would have found her on the first floor.
She had no reason to be on the second. It smelled strongly of paint fumes and he’d recommended she stay out until he’d completed a final coat and it had thoroughly dried. Looking again at her phone, her purse, her jacket, he turned and headed for the stairs with long strides, some new urgency filling his chest.
He took the steps two at a time, his throat so tight he didn’t have the voice to call out. In any case, suddenly he needed to see her, touch her, have her person under his hands to make this belly-hollowing strange…concern abate.
In the narrow hallway, he glanced into the darkened bathroom, then rushed toward the main living area. All looked as he’d left it. Empty.
Empty of Gemma, as his life had been before they’d met, though he’d not truly appreciated the lack until she’d shown up with her big blue eyes and a plateful of brownies.
Shoving that thought away, he hurried into the hallway again, his boots clattering on the hardwood surface. And over that, somehow, he heard another sound.
Or felt it, maybe, as an intuition he didn’t know he possessed caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise.
He choked out her name. “Gemma! Gemma!”
A thump in the near-distance had him spinning around. He leaped for the bathroom, again noted it empty, and leaped back out once more, his gaze snagging on that undersized door cut into the wall that she’d offhandedly indicated the first day he’d climbed to the second story.
A storage area.
Instead of a regular doorknob, it had an odd, old-fashioned metal latch that had been painted the same color as the surrounding wood and wall. Without hesitation, he made for it, curled his forefinger in the circle of metal, yanked.
Nothing happened. Not on the second jerk either.
He leaned close to the door. “Gemma,” he said, his mouth almost kissing the flat surface. “Baby, are you in there?”
A muted thump sounded and that was answer enough. But even though he’d found her, the urgency didn’t abate. Sweat dampened the edges of his hair as he attempted to open the door again. And again.
The fucker didn’t budge.
From the other side, he could feel her anxiety vibrating through the wood.
“I’m still here,” he said, practically shouting. “But I have to get something to force open the door. Do you understand?”
Two slow thumps seemed to indicate her resigned understanding, but he ran down the steps anyway, all the way to his truck and the toolbox in the bed. Armed with a pry bar, a screwdriver, and a hammer, he hustled back into the shop. Once positioned outside the barrier that kept him from his woman, he raised his voice again. “Take a step back, Gemma. I don’t want you to get hurt by mistake.”
His first weapon of choice was the pry bar, and he didn’t bother with finesse as he attacked. The edge of the door splintered, then cracked. Inserting the claw into the space created, he drove his weight against the bar’s shaft, and with a thick thwop, the door popped open two inches.
Dropping the metal bar with a clatter, he got a grip on the raw wood and heaved, making enough space for a small, heated body to rush through and launch itself on him.
Boone caught her against his chest, her arms circling his back as she pressed her damp face against his chest. He felt her shudder and he peered into the space behind her, noting it was dark and cramped, with narrow shelving built against the walls.
“Sh sh sh,” he said against her hair, breathing deep of her scent and feeling his heartbeat calm as she continued to cling. “Take it easy. I’m here. I found you.”
“Don’t go,” she said into his T-shirt.
“Going nowhere,” he promised, bringing up one hand to stroke the back of her head. “I’m always going to be right here.”
She pressed closer. “I got locked in.”
“I guessed.” He continued running his hand over her. “What happened to the light inside?”
“It went out.” She shuddered again. “Stupid to go in there alone. Stupid to be so afraid—” He could feel a spurt of fresh tears.
“Not stupid,” he said, holding her even more firmly. “Lots of people don’t like small dark spaces.”
“For sure I don’t,” she said, then looked up, her face tear-stained, her lashes spiky, her mouth trembling. “But you rescued me.”
He stared down at her, and the world halted midturn.
She…he…
His mind stuttered, his heart thumped too hard against his ribs, and the surroundings grayed, leaving only Gemma in vibrant, living color. Gemma, who had an eye for beauty and liked all things that smelled good. Gemma, who introduced him to pizza with goat cheese and had him smearing on hand cream on the off chance his rough skin might inadvertently brush her much more tender flesh. Gemma, who had fooled herself into thinking the right man wouldn’t come along and give her everything she needed, everything she deserved.
The right man who knew how to do all that.
The right man who knew how to do all that and who wasn’t Boone.
And yet…and yet…
And yet he was in love with her.
Fuck.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Fuck.
She buried her face against his chest once more and he closed his eyes, absorbing these stolen moments. Pressing a surreptitious kiss to the top of her head, he tried to understand how he’d come to this.
It wasn’t supposed to happen, after all—being in love. He didn’t have the foundation or the tools, those had been lost to him years ago. But apparently falling in love with someone didn’t require perfect, inspection-proof footings or possessing the proper kind of equipment.
“Take me home,” she whispered.
Yeah, he’d do that. He’d take her home, and he’d try to forget what he felt for her, but that was as ludicrous as every other vow he’d made lately.
He’d always considered himself a man with formidable willpower, but that had, apparently, changed too.
* * *
“You don’t really want to hear all this,” Gemma said, from her place on his sofa, wrapped up in the afghan she’d given him.
“Yeah, I do,” Boone replied, bending to light a fire. Flames began licking at the wood.
“You use real logs.” She sounded distracted.
“Yeah. Your friends next door opted for the gas-only option. I have both.” A whistle sounded from the kitchen and he headed there to make her a mug of tea f
rom the small box of bags she’d brought over earlier in the week and the kettle she’d unearthed from one of his cupboards. He had no recollection of where it came from.
Crossing back into the family room, he pressed the hot tea into her hands, noting their chill. “Hold onto that. It’ll warm you up.”
To ensure he didn’t assign to himself that particular task, he took the opposite end of the couch. “You told me a bad childhood experience gave you that fright—”
“And you told me plenty of people don’t like being shut up in the dark.”
He might have left it alone, but a visible shudder ran through her and it was either get her talking or he’d find himself saying things that he shouldn’t.
Let me keep you safe forever. I’m in love with you. I’ll do everything I can to make you happy.
It was that last line that he knew was impossible. He didn’t know how to make her happy.
“C’mon, Gemma,” he said now. Twisting on his cushion, he wedged his back against the arm of the sofa and stretched his legs into the space between the couch and the coffee table. His boots had been left by the door and he crossed one stockinged foot over the other. “You know you’ll feel better if you give the me the whole story. Then I’ll rustle you up some dinner.”
She cocked her head. “Like what?”
“I have eggs in the fridge. Hash browns in the freezer and toaster waffles.”
“Well, for toaster waffles—”
He reached out a leg and nudged her with his toes. “Don’t scoff at toaster waffles. And there’s real maple syrup in the pantry.”
Instead of answering, she sipped at her tea. But he was comfortable with silence, so he sat back, waiting, knowing she didn’t have his level of patience.
Within moments, she leaned forward and set her mug down with a clack. “Husband Number Two.”
He lifted a brow. She huffed out a sigh.
“When my mom married him, he seemed a nice enough guy…to a six-year-old anyway.”
“How’d she meet him?”
Gemma seemed to think for a second. “I don’t really know. I don’t know how she meets any of the men who enter her life. I think they come to her, bees to honey. Like that.”
ALL IN (7-Stud Club Book 1) Page 16