“Here, Mom, guess what it is.”
Gabriella looked at the drawing. There were several short pathways, each one ending with a different object: a windmill, what looked like a gorilla or very big monkey, a dinosaur, and other items she recognized as part of the miniature golf course Justin had taken them to. There was a man, a woman, and a little girl standing by the path with the windmill. The little girl and the lady had big smiles. The man had a big frown.
“It’s the miniature golf course,” Gab said, trying to sound cheerful. She tried not to think about what the drawing meant or how Chloe might feel when she realized Justin wasn’t a part of their lives anymore.
Chloe beamed. “And look, Mom.” She pointed to the man’s sad face. “He’s frowning because he doesn’t know how to play golf.”
Gab nodded. “And why are the little girl and the lady smiling?”
“They’re happy.” Chloe gave her an adoring look.
Gab stooped down and lifted Chloe up into her arms. “Well, I’m happy because you’re home. How would you like to give your uncle a tour of Glebe Point, and we can get some dinner in town and then maybe go to Curly Custard afterward?”
“Yippee!” Chloe looked over at Tugger. “Curly Custard is awesome, Uncle Tugger. They got the best ice cream, and you can even get gummy worms on it.”
Tugger grinned at Chloe then turned to Gab with a grimace and told her, “Just what I was hoping for after a ten hour drive, a gummy worm sundae!”
After taking everything inside and showing Tugger the room he’d be sleeping in, Gab and Chloe gave him a quick tour. They walked out back and down to the dock, and he asked if she had any fishing poles, saying he might try his luck before shoving off in the morning.
The three of them left to drive into town around six, and twenty minutes later were seated in a window booth at Mosey’s.
“I can’t believe you live in a place where the restaurant of choice is called The Mosey Inn Diner.” Tugger shook his head. “Where’s the country club?”
“There isn’t one,” Gab told him. “And that’s precisely why I love it so much.”
“So you’re not ready to move back yet?”
“Not yet, and if part of your mission is to try and convince me of all the reasons I should, don’t waste your breath.” Gabriella set her menu on the table. “Chloe and I are happy here. I feel like this is where we belong now.”
Tugger screwed his mouth into a frown. “Lil isn’t going to be happy to hear that. She’s been hoping this move was just a fluke, and you’d come to your senses and move back home where you belong.”
“I know you all think Chloe and I should move back to Connecticut, Tug, and Chloe and I miss you all…”
Chloe leaned forward and looked past Gabriella.
“Justin!” she exclaimed. Her face lit up with a brilliant smile. “Hi, Justin. I’m back!”
Gab’s head swung in surprise and she looked up, shocked to find Justin standing right beside their booth.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, smiling at Chloe. “Welcome back. Did you have a good time at your grandma’s?”
“Yeah,” Chloe informed him. “I got to see my cousins, and we went swimming at the club. I got to go in the pool without my swimmies ‘cause I know how now.”
He winked at her and then shifted his gaze to Gab. The smile died in his eyes and with it any ray of hope she had that he’d forgiven her. He studied her face a second then looked across the booth at Tugger.
The two men took each other in as if sizing one another up. Gab was about to introduce them when Tugger reached out and broke the silence.
“Robert Fiorelli,” he said, shaking Justin’s hand. “I’m Gab’s brother-in-law.”
Justin nodded. “Justin Morrison.”
“Tugger…I mean, Robert brought Chloe home today,” Gab threw out the obvious, the tension making her so uncomfortable she could scream.
Justin looked at his watch. “You’ve got a long drive back. It’s going to be a late night for you.”
“I’m not leaving until tomorrow,” Tugger said. “I’ll be staying with Gabriella tonight.”
Justin gave him a bland smile. “That’s convenient.” Still smiling, his glance shifted to her, and she could see that he was furious. He laid a hand on her shoulder and she flinched.
“Could I speak to you a minute?” he said, his fingers gripping her almost in silent command.
Gab had no intention of exposing her daughter to a possible scene, and the way Justin was acting, she didn’t think whatever he wanted to say to her was good.
“Excuse us, please,” she said to Tugger. “If the waitress comes by, go ahead and order. You can ask her to bring me a burger and fries.” Turning to Chloe, she said, “I’ll be right back, honey. Justin and I just need to talk about adult things for a minute.”
Tugger gave Justin a narrowed look. “You going to be okay?” he asked Gab.
Gab nodded. Justin rolled his jaw, and as she followed him out of the diner, she heard him mumbling under his breath. When they got outside, Justin took her hand and led her around the building toward the parking lot in back.
Gab planned to tell him if he wanted to get together to talk, he could come out to the house tomorrow afternoon when Chloe was at camp, or she would come into town. Then she remembered it wasn’t as easy for him to get away during the day now that his office was open. He would have to come to her house one night during the week then, after Chloe had gone to bed.
“What the hell are you thinking letting that guy stay at your house?” he demanded to know when they rounded the back of the restaurant.
Gab’s mouth fell open. She shook her head in disbelief at his question. “What?” She’d been prepared for him to say something about her father or to ask for an explanation as to why it had taken her so long to tell him she was Philip Landfred’s daughter. She hadn’t expected him to jump all over her about Tugger.
“Fiorelli, what’s he doing spending the night?”
“He drove ten hours to bring Chloe home today. He can’t just turn around and drive back.”
Justin rolled his jaw. “So let him find a hotel. You shouldn’t be letting men stay the night with Chloe there.”
Gab put her hands on her hips. “I’m not going to tell him to go to a hotel. He’s my brother-in-law, Justin. Chloe’s uncle. She’s known him her whole life.”
He glared at her and she stared back, unable to believe they were even having this discussion.
“Is this what you brought me out here to talk about?” she asked, feeling like she was in somebody else’s life gone wrong.
“Tell him he can stay at Mary’s.” There was a hard edge to his voice. “She’ll make him feel right at home.”
He had simply ignored her question, as if she hadn’t asked it. Apparently he had no interest in talking about their real issue. And if he didn’t care enough to try to work on that, she didn’t know why he cared about Tugger staying at her place for the night.
“I don’t know why you even care, Justin, but Tugger’s staying with me. I’m sorry if that bothers you. I don’t think my daughter is going to suffer any long-term effects from her uncle spending the night, though.”
“I don’t want him staying with you.” he insisted, his expression hard as stone.
“Well, it’s not your decision. It’s my house, and if I invite someone to stay for a night or a month, I don’t need anyone’s permission.” She took a few steps away from him. “If that’s all you wanted to tell me, then I’m going to return to my daughter. I haven’t seen her in almost two weeks, and I’d much rather spend the evening catching up with her than standing out here arguing with you over something so ridiculous.”
Justin gave her a complacent smile, one so foreign to the teasing grins she’d fallen in love with that it made him feel even more like a stranger to her. “You know what’s really ridiculous? I actually thought I was falling in love with you. I’m sure as hell glad I found out what you’re reall
y like before I wasted any more time chasing that illusion.”
He turned around and walked away, leaving her to stand alone under a dim street lamp in the parking lot behind Mosey’s. She couldn’t think of another time she felt quite that empty. After several moments of deep breathing, she felt composed enough to go back into the diner.
She slid into the booth next to Chloe and put her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “What did you order, honey?” she asked, forcing as much normality into her voice as she could manage.
“Mac and cheese,” Chloe said, without looking up from the paper placemat she was coloring.
“Hey,” Tugger said from across the booth. “Are you all right?”
“Fine!” Gab looked across the table and put on a smile. “Happy to have my little girl home.”
Her dreams lay shattered out back in the parking lot…Justin didn’t love her…they weren’t going to live happily ever after.
She glanced out the window at the car lights moving slowly down Main Street.
“What color do you think I should color the mouse’s hat, Mom?” Chloe asked from beside her. Gab glanced down and saw the blue crayon in her daughter’s hand.
“Blue, I think you should color it blue.”
TUESDAY, JUSTIN got into an argument with Blake when he stopped by to ask if Justin wanted to go bowling with him and some of their buddies that evening. Wednesday, Sylvia told him if he grunted at her one more time, she was going to look for a new job. By Thursday, he was so punchy he couldn’t believe he made it through the day without breaking something over his desk.
Justin kicked his shoes off and put his feet up on the coffee table, thankful to be alone in his apartment where he didn’t have to hear one more person ask him if he was all right.
He wasn’t all right. He was losing the battle he’d set himself to. He had no idea how the hell he’d do it, but somehow he needed to mend things with Gabriella and figure out how to deal with this mess they were in. Ever since she told him about her father, he’d behaved badly, blaming her for their situation, telling himself she’d lied to him, trying to convince himself she’d somehow used him.
The only thing she had done was not tell him the truth about Landfred being her father and inheriting his house. And she hadn’t actually lied about it; she just hadn’t told him. Maybe, as Blake had tried to convince him, Gabriella just hadn’t found a way yet. He’d been so shocked and repulsed by her revelation that he’d taken his anger out on her without giving her a chance to explain.
Gabriella wasn’t a liar, and she didn’t play games. He’d been the one doing the game playing. Like Sunday night, when he’d seen her with her brother-in-law at Mosey’s. He still couldn’t believe he’d dragged her out of the diner and behaved so poorly. All he’d accomplished was to make their situation ten times worse by his idiotic behavior. It would serve him right if she never wanted to see him again. And why should she…so he could berate her again and accuse her of imaginary wrongs?
Justin sighed. He missed her so damn much. She had become a part of him, and that part was missing in action. His fault. He needed to let go of the past. Even if Landfred had been drunk when he ran his parents off the road, the guy hadn’t gotten in his car that night with the intent to go out to hurt someone.
He stiffened, his muscles tensing. Old frustrations and anger bucked for justice…but where was the justice? Would holding it against Gabriella bring his parents back? Would simpering in his anger make him happy?
She made him happy. She was the future he wanted. If the way he’d felt for the last week was supposed to be justice, he didn’t want it. He wanted her laughter back, and her silly jokes and adorable smiles. He wanted her loving him and making him crazy for her again. He wanted the quiet, consoling comfort of who and what they were together.
Somehow…
GABRIELLA WAS sitting on her back porch Friday night around eight thirty when a man walked around the back of the house. She screamed.
“Gab, it’s me.” Justin hurried around into the light reflecting from her kitchen window. “I knocked, but when you didn’t answer, I thought I’d come out here and see if you were on the porch. I didn’t want to ring the bell and wake Chloe.”
She relaxed for a moment, first threat aborted. Then her pulse picked up again, second threat standing on her porch steps looking at her with an expression on his handsome face she couldn’t interpret.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” He stepped up to the porch deck.
“Just the crickets and tree frogs, but they’ll get over it.” As if on cue the chirping chorus started up again. “See.” She hitched her head toward the night’s music. “Just a blip on the radar.”
His lips quirked. “I miss hearing them at night. They’re not so obvious in town.” Justin looked down at his feet, scuffed his shoe against the porch, and then raised his beautiful eyes to hers.
“Gabriella,” he said, her name barely a whisper on his lips, “I’d like to try and fix the mess I’ve made of things between us. If I haven’t screwed it up too badly, and you’re willing to let me try, can we get the hugging out of the way up front so I don’t have to do this from a mile away?”
He implored her with his eyes, and she slid off the porch swing. She stood in her bare feet, looking at him a moment. Justin opened his arms, and she crossed the distance between them and walked into them, the thought of making him pay never even occurring to her. He groaned.
“Thank you, Lord,” he whispered over the top of her head. He leaned his head back and lowered his gaze to hers. “You know everything I said Sunday night was just a bunch of jealous crap. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“I’m glad. Not that you got jealous, you’ve no need for that…just that you didn’t mean any of it.” Gabriella pursed her lips. “There’s a lot between us, Justin. You’re important to me, but we have some big issues.”
He nodded. “Yeah, and I know most of them are mine.” He brought his hands up to her face, cradling it in his palms. “I’m asking you to give me a chance. The kind of chance I should have given you but didn’t.”
“You’ve had a lot bottled up inside you for a long time. I think when I told you about my father, it was like pulling out the stick that held the dam together.”
“Maybe,” he said with a hint of a smile. “But it wasn’t fair to drown you in the flood waters.”
She looked up at him and saw the tenderness in his eyes. “Good thing for you I’ve been taking swimming lessons. I survived.”
“Gabriella, I…” He held her gaze, the raw emotion in his making her heart clutch. “I…” He brushed his lips over hers, whatever he’d been about to say, left hanging. When he finally looked up a couple of minutes later, she felt as if her world had gone from the pits to the pinnacle. He did care about her.
He took her hand and led her back to the swing, sitting down beside her. They spent the next hour talking. Gab explained why she hadn’t said something sooner. She told him how she’d never known her father, hadn’t been close to her mother, and that she’d always felt uncomfortable talking about her family because everyone else’s seemed so perfect when hers wasn’t.
“So when I inherited this house, it came as a total shock,” Gabriella explained. “Up until the time the lawyer found me, I had no idea where my father was, or even if he was alive. I had pretty much written him off when I was still a kid.”
“He never tried to contact you?”
Gab shook her head. “My mom left and didn’t tell him, so he never knew where we were. It upset her when I asked about him, so I just stopped.”
Justin rubbed his jaw. It was hard to know what he was thinking. His parents had been so different from hers. He had known her dad, too, or at least knew of him and had seen him enough times to form the impression that he had been an alcoholic. But Gabriella knew her father in a different way. She knew what had been in his heart. If she could find a way to show Justin the man she had come to know through his letters, h
e might be able to forgive him, or in the least, accept that what happened truly had been an accident.
She looked at her hands. “I know how difficult it is for you to think of my father as anything other than a…than an alcoholic, but…” She threaded her fingers through his and continued. “If you could just try to imagine what it might have been like for him to come home one day and find his family gone. You lost your parents suddenly, with no warning. In a way, that was how he lost his family. The only difference was that he knew we were out there somewhere…he just didn’t know where.”
She saw his jaw tense and knew she was asking a lot of him. She didn’t expect he would be able to get over all his feelings about her dad and what had happened. He’d lived with his anger for too long. She just wanted him to consider that perhaps her father had been a little more than a drunk old bastard who didn’t give a damn about what had happened.
JUSTIN HELD his tongue. She wanted him to forgive her father. He didn’t know if he could, but for her sake he wouldn’t openly criticize the guy anymore.
She hadn’t seen the man since she was a little girl, so he didn’t know how Gab thought she knew what her father was like. He’d never gotten the impression Landfred was warm and fuzzy, but Gab seemed to think he had been a lonely man who had longed for his missing daughter.
It was just as likely that her mom left the guy because he was intolerable to live with and didn’t care one way or another about her or Gabriella. Justin wondered how much of Gab’s feelings were the result of wishful thinking. Just because the guy left his estate to her didn’t mean he loved her. Hell, he’d heard of cases in which people left their estate to complete strangers they’d had a chance encounter with. He kept his thoughts to himself. If they were going to get beyond this hurdle, he was going to have to accept her feelings about the man, no matter how they differed from his.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, thankful for second chances. After the things he’d said to her last week, her unquestioning forgiveness humbled him.
Letters to Gabriella Page 21