Awesome wasn’t what he’d call it. Dancing into dangerous territory was more like it. But for the first time in months, that constant buzz beneath his skin was quiet, and he had a pretty good idea tangling with the little kitten was the cause.
Chapter Four
Gabe snapped the cover on her e-reader closed and tossed it on the bed beside her.
Toothless lazily opened his eyes and glared his displeasure with the disruption of his cat nap. Despite having a queen-size bed to stretch out on, her lazy feline had opted to cozy right up next to her uninjured side. The light from her bedside lamp reflected against his shiny black coat, and his emerald green gaze implied further movement would not be tolerated.
“Like you haven’t had enough lazing with me the last five days.” She braced her arms on either side of her and pushed upright, careful not to jar her torso.
Toothless gracefully leaped to the floor. He sashayed out the door, snapping his tail as angrily as his movie namesake.
“Show-off.” Her dismount wasn’t nearly as smooth, but it was a sight better than it had been her first day at home. At least Danny had been right about her boss, Mike. He’d agreed to let her work the garage desk for two or three weeks, but only if she agreed to take the first week off and give herself time to heal.
With pay.
Talk about small miracles.
She padded through the living room and into the kitchen, flipping a few lights on along the way. Through the wide window over the kitchen sink, only a thin band of deep gold remained on the horizon, the sun having just disappeared. The view from her backyard was one of her favorites, especially when the lake was smooth like tonight and the brilliant colors were mirrored on its glossy surface.
She pulled a bottled water from the fridge, pried open the cap, and leaned against the counter. The microwave’s digital clock glowed a neon-green 8:12 p.m. back at her. Too early to go to bed and too late to start anything new. She’d thought she’d never get bored with reading, watching movies, or tinkering with her art projects, but nearly a week with nothing to do sure proved that theory wrong.
She ambled to the living room and the picture window that overlooked her porch and the other two homes that lined her cul-de-sac. The streetlight reflected off the subtle metallic flecks in her truck’s indigo paint. It wasn’t as flashy as Danny’s ‘69 Chevelle beside it, but it was everything she’d wanted. Classic, functional and fun with a hell of an engine under the hood. One she’d rebuilt and souped up herself.
Off to the side of the property, the lights inside their oversize detached garage glowed a soft buttery yellow. For the first time in months, Danny had shown up right after work and hit his own private haven to start work on a new custom job.
Her thoughts drifted back to the scary, take-control guys Danny had brought the night of Mrs. Wallaby’s break-in. Or, more accurately, the hot doctor. If she had a nickel for every time he’d bebopped into her head the past few days, she wouldn’t have to work for a solid month. The whole preoccupation was insane. She wasn’t even sure she’d uttered a complete sentence in front of the guy. If anything, he probably thought she was a basket case, and he sure wouldn’t give a girl like her a second glance.
She was halfway across the driveway, the crisp bite of grass just waking up from winter’s rest and the familiar algae scent of the lake filling her lungs, before she realized where she was headed. The closer she got, the stronger the strains of AC/DC grew. She opened the steel side door and let it bang shut louder than necessary so she didn’t scare the bejesus out of Danny sneaking up on him. She rounded the tail end of the black ‘37 Ford Coupe and found the driver’s door propped open with Danny stretched out across the bench seat, his head all but wedged under the dash. “You’ve got a long way to go on this one.”
“Boy, that’s no shit.” Danny twisted enough to make eye contact. “‘Sup, Sugar Bear?”
Ugh. The dreaded nickname of shame. All because her headstrong nine-year-old self had wanted nothing but Sugar Crisp cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a solid two-week stretch. By the time she’d moved on to grilled cheese sandwiches, the name had stuck.
She thumbed the radio behind her down to background noise and leaned a hip against his workbench. “You going to be out here all night?”
“Only been at it two hours.”
“I know, but I’m bored.”
Danny’s warm chuckle rolled out from the car’s dirty, dilapidated interior. “Can’t help you with that one. Got my hands full at the moment. The guy who hired me wants the job done in a month.”
She snorted. “Maybe if you worked on it full time.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen. I told him I worked at my own pace. Took a little to convince him it was less about money and more about art.” He glanced up at Gabe and grinned unrepentantly. “Wrangled a little extra incentive money, though.”
“Well, that’s a plus.” At least he had something new and fresh to work on. She’d never realized how much her job balanced out her life. Every engine that ended up in her bay was a riddle to solve and fix. Some were tiny, and some were huge and made her absolutely nuts in the short term, but they all posed a challenge. The whole indolent-lifestyle thing sucked. “You’ve been busy a lot lately. The body shop backed up?”
Danny’s back and forth with the ratchet paused for a second, then kicked in a notch faster. “I’m not working extra at the shop. Been picking up some new jobs. Learning new gigs.”
“With those guys that were here last weekend—the doc and his friends?”
“Yep.”
She smoothed her thumb along the workbench’s rough edge. More than once, she’d wished she asked them more about themselves when she’d had the chance. Asking Danny had been a crapshoot. Most of the time he clammed up whenever conversation steered their direction. “Zeke said they had a lot of business. What do they do? I mean, besides the doc.”
He shrugged. “They’ve all got their own gigs. Bars, restaurants, shipping, computers, security. One’s even got a private-jet charter service.”
“So, how do you fit in? With the jobs, I mean.”
“They’re teaching me stuff. Introducing me to people. Showing me how to run a business.” He peeked out from under the dash. “I met the guy for this job through them.”
So what happened if Danny found a whole different career?
You’ll be alone.
No Dad.
No Danny.
Just like your mom all over again.
She shook her head, pushed the negative thoughts aside, and cleared her throat. “Are Axel and Jace the ones the doc works for? The ones with enough money to have their own clinic?”
“Jesus.” Danny tossed the ratchet to the floorboard and sat up, pinning Gabe with an angry glare. “You’re like a dog with a bone. No one can just be a good guy with you, can they? Not unless they’re old and in a position where they can’t hurt you.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just asking.”
“Really? ’Cause it sure as shit sounded like you were trying to dig up dirt. Or, in your case, looking for reasons not to like them. That’s what you do, right? Find reasons people can’t be trusted and keep them at bay. Right?”
“It was just conversation.”
“You want conversation? Okay, here’s conversation. Zeke’s a good guy. Reached out to me and offered me not just friendship, but a whole different perspective on life when my own friends couldn’t be bothered to talk to me about anything except sports and chicks. He’d just worked a twelve-hour shift Friday when he dropped everything to help you. Axel and Jace had already put in a full week, too. But you? You looked at them like you couldn’t bear to breathe the same air as them.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Really? You didn’t even bother to tell Zeke thank you before we left
.”
She hung her head. Tears blurred her scuffed black boots and the oil-stained concrete beneath them, and a slow burn spread along the bridge of her nose. “I felt bad about that.” Countless times, she’d replayed the whole night and wished she’d said more. Or at least smiled.
“Shit, Gabe.” Rustling sounded from the car’s interior, and the next thing she knew Danny was in front of her, his big fingers pinching her chin and urging her head up the same way her dad used to. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, freeing her chin from Danny’s grip and dashing the single tear that escaped with the back of her hand. “No, you’re right. I could have been nicer. I should have been. I just...” Wanted to get the heck away from everyone and hide in my room where I didn’t feel like everyone was looking at me. Wanted to stop all the pessimistic gloom and doom in my head. “You know how hard it is for me around people. And my side really hurt.”
“I get that. But you poking around and asking questions about my friends is more about you fortifying those walls of yours than any social hang-up. You don’t trust. I get it. But not everyone is Mom. Not everyone is some quick-shot jock out to score a hot piece of ass.”
She jerked as sure as someone had slapped her and her ribs barked a sharp reprimand. Bracing her side, she held her breath and waited for the throb to ebb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she eked out. “I don’t know any quick-shot jocks.”
“Come on, Gabe. I’m a guy. We can spot a man out to nail a chick in all of five seconds. You think I don’t know that asshole in high school tagged you and ran?”
The blood rushed out of her face, and for a second she wasn’t 100 percent sure she’d stay upright. As awkward moments went, the only thing that could have been worse was to superimpose her dad where Danny stood. “You didn’t... You never said anything.”
“How the fuck could I? Or Dad? You locked yourself up in your damned room for days. Hell, it’s a wonder Dad didn’t string the bastard up by his nuts.”
She paced a few steps away, completely at a loss for words. All this time she’d thought no one knew about her seriously bad lapse in judgment, and here they’d known the whole time.
“I don’t blame you for being careful,” Danny said. “A girl like you, sweet and always willing to look after the people you care about, you almost have to be. But the brothers? They might have their own way of doing things, but they do them in a way they’re proud of. That they believe in. They take care of each other and the people they love, and they do it with a vengeance. Honest to God, I hope they’re around a lot more. I hope they let me in their circle so I can learn from them and make my life better like they have. If that happens and you want to keep your distance when they’re around, that’s cool. Just do me a favor and try not to treat ’em like they’re scum, because they’re not. Not to me.”
She swallowed and faced him, a whole storm of emotions she couldn’t quite identify swirling inside her at one time. Surprise for sure, but a little jealousy, too. She’d give anything to have friends she could count on like she did Danny. Friends her own age. “I don’t think I’ve heard you get that fired up about anything since Dad sold his part of the garage.”
“Yeah, well. I save my speeches for when it counts.” He stood there, patient and proud, his arms at his sides and his shoulders back, but vulnerability swam behind his dark eyes.
“I’m sorry I was rude,” she said. “You’re the last person I want to hurt. If they’re around more, I’ll try harder.”
He grinned, his usual, playful self whipping back into place. Emotions were always that way for him. He moved with them the way the wind ebbed and flowed over the lake’s surface, at one with what he felt instead of fighting against it. “I appreciate it.”
“And I didn’t mind breathing the same air as the doc.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Actually, I thought he was cute.”
Danny’s jaw slackened for a beat then he shook his head as though clearing an unwanted mental imagine. “Now, that’s information I could do without.”
She giggled and promptly winced, fighting back the rest of her laughter.
Danny lurched toward her as though he thought she might lose her balance and fall. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just better not to laugh. Or cough. Or sneeze. Or breathe.” She waved him off and slowly straightened.
“You think Zeke’s hot, huh?”
She rolled her eyes and paced to the Ford’s back bumper, running her finger along the worn, dull finish. “Doesn’t matter. He’s a doc and I’m a mechanic. In what fucked up world would that ever work?”
“Their world is a lot different than the one you’re used to. They make their own rules. Their own life. You might be surprised where a sweet mechanic might fit into it.” He ambled up beside her and tweaked her nose. “And don’t cut yourself short. You might’ve kept half the damned male population at bay through school, but that didn’t mean they weren’t prowlin’ around looking for a way in.”
“Whatever.” Danny had always made claims like that. Her father, too, but she never believed them. How could she when her own mother had chosen a life without her? “You really knew about Jimmy Franklin?”
“Hell yeah, I knew. I also made it painful for him to take so much as a step after I figured out he wasn’t coming back. Fucker probably had a few cracked ribs of his own to contend with.” He winked at her. “Karma’s a bitch, ain’t she?”
For the first time all day, her boredom and the suspicious thoughts she’d wrestled rolled off her shoulders. She slipped her arms around Danny’s waist and rested her forehead on his chest. “I love you.”
“Love you, too, Sugar Bear.” He kissed the top of her head, ruffled her hair like she was still two, and backed away. “Oh, speaking of the hot doc, he said he’d be out tomorrow to check on you.”
“He did?” she squeaked.
Danny hesitated midway situating himself on the car’s long bench seat and cranked his neck in her direction. The grin on his face said he’d caught the tell all too clearly. “Yeah, he did. And the more I think about it, the more I’m thinking there’s a good chance I won’t be here when he does.”
Chapter Five
Zeke paralleled his ride outside Gabe and Danny’s house and popped the shifter into Neutral, his gaze locked on the empty space next to Gabe’s flirty blue truck in the driveway. No Danny, which meant no buffer between him and Gabe for his friendly house call. The way he figured it, he had a fifty-fifty shot things would either snap, crackle and pop the way they had when he’d helped her take off her bra, or he’d end up zigzagging a landmine-rich environment.
He grinned, killed the engine, and strolled up the drive. He’d take the risk. Hell, with as much headspace as their last interaction had taken up the past six days, it was a miracle he’d held off visiting this long. He jogged up the front steps, pulled the old-fashioned silver screen door wide, and knocked on the white painted-wood door.
A red brick wall surrounded the raised patio, and a two-person porch swing hung at the far end. Cozy. The kind of place you’d kick back, chat with neighbors and finish off a beer on a spring or fall night. Picturing Gabe there was all too easy. People might make her jumpy and bring out her sharp tongue, but underneath it he sensed a quiet grace.
The slats on white wood blinds shifted enough for someone to peek out, and a second later the front door opened.
“Hey.” Gabe stepped back and gave him room to enter, tucking one hand in her jeans pocket. The denim was seriously old and probably as soft as her white cotton tank. “Danny’s not here yet. He said he’d be home in a bit.”
She was barefoot. Why that made her about twenty times sexier than last time, he couldn’t begin to describe. Maybe it was how dainty her feet were. Or the fact that her toenails weren’t decorated in some fashionable
color of the month. Whatever it was, he had a hell of a time trying not to ogle. The way her honey-blond hair hung loose around her face only made it worse. “How you doing, gatinha?”
She shut the door behind him and motioned him toward the kitchen. “I still don’t know what that means.”
“I told you to look it up.”
“I tried, but I don’t know how it’s spelled.”
He strolled behind her and set his messenger bag on the kitchen table. The stacked up pans in the sink and killer smells coming out of the oven made it clear she’d been cooking. Something with cheese and spice. “G-A-T-I-N-H-A.”
He’d barely gotten the last letter out when a black cat darted out from behind the couch and down the hallway to Gabe’s bedroom. “You and Danny have a cat?”
“I have a cat. His name is Toothless.”
“From How to Train Your Dragon?”
Surprise widened her gaze, and her lips softened in an almost-there smile. “You know animated movies?”
“I work in an emergency room. You’d be surprised what a good animated show will do to distract tiny patients.” He glanced down the hall. “Toothless isn’t too much on people, is he?”
She tucked her hair behind one ear and ducked into the galley kitchen. “He’s okay once he gets to know you.”
Kind of like Toothless’s owner, which only made him want to see what it would take to make her willing to hang around instead of running for cover.
“What is that anyway?” She turned on the water, picked up a pan, and started scrubbing.
“What’s what?”
“The language you used. Gatinha. It sounds Spanish.”
“Better be glad my mamãe didn’t hear you say that. You’d be sucking on a bar of soap.” He moseyed up to the counter beside her, grabbed the dishtowel lying off to one side, and waited for her to finish. “She and Dad are from Brazil, so we spoke almost nothing but Portuguese in my house.”
She eyeballed the towel, then him, then went back to washing the pan. “Huh. It sounds like Spanish.”
Wild & Sweet (The Haven Brotherhood) Page 5