by Lois Richer
Gabe flicked her ponytail, slipped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close for a quick kiss. “I did taste them. They taste great,” he murmured, his face inches from hers. “So do you.”
“Oh, my! I didn’t realize I’d be interrupting.” Willie stood in the doorway, eyes sparkling. She made no attempt to leave, but stood inspecting Blair’s hurried exit from her husband’s embrace. “Don’t bother on my account. I expected a lot more canoodling from a pair of newlyweds than I’ve seen from you two.”
Blair wanted to groan. She ached to scream a denial, drop her apron on the counter and tear off across the valley to a quiet spot where her emotions didn’t do these strange acrobatics, a place where her brain functioned normally instead of sending out little snaps of electricity whenever Gabe came near.
Neither screaming nor leaving was an option with Daniel’s cake left to bake. So Blair focused on the job at hand and slid the cookies from the baking sheet to a rack.
“Gabriel, you have white stuff on the seat of those elegant pants.” Willie giggled. “Are you going somewhere?” Her voice laughed across the room in a tumbling cadence of genuine pleasure that Blair hadn’t heard enough of lately.
“Yes, Willie, I am. I have to make a quick trip to L.A. There’s a small problem with my company there, and I need to attend a meeting.” He craned his neck and plucked another dog hair off his pants, his mouth stretching in a grimace of displeasure. “If I can get out of here without being attacked again, that is.”
“I’m sure Blair didn’t mean to attack you,” Willie murmured, her back turned as she studied Daniel’s elaborate picture of a train cake on licorice tracks. She’d promised to ice the confection if Blair would bake it. “Say you’re sorry, dear.”
Blair made a face at Gabe. “I’m sorry.” She parroted the words without the least bit of sincerity.
“Yes, I can see that.” Gabe smirked at her raised eyebrows. “Can I get anything for the party?” he repeated. “I mean, maybe the car isn’t enough. It’s not…”
Blair set her hands on her hips and glared at him. “A car isn’t enough for a six-year-old? Enough of this, Gabriel. You can’t buy Daniel. As it is you’re spoiling him silly. What other six-year-old kid has a toy car to drive around a castle? Hmm?”
She considered the bright red bicycle hidden in Albert’s workshop. She’d scrimped and saved to buy it. It had taken months of careful, frugal planning. Without even considering her wishes, Gabe had eclipsed that gift a hundred times over.
“I wasn’t trying to buy him.” The happy banter drained away from Gabe’s low voice.
“Well, that’s what it looks like from here.” Blair stubbornly turned her back on him and rolled out more cookies. Frustration clamored for release as she considered the day to come.
Daniel’s sixth birthday. A day she’d planned for ages, long before Gabe had come on the scene. She’d planned to take the kids on a hike up near Lake Timco. They would have a campfire, a wiener roast, sing silly songs, go on a treasure hunt. But Gabriel’s arrival had changed all that.
Now Daniel wanted a pool party. The hike and wiener roast had been done before. Steven B.’s party last month was a treasure hunt and everybody had wieners. But nobody else had a pool.
Blair sighed. Would Daniel even want to ride a bicycle when he could drive a car?
The silence in the room drew her from her reflections. Willie turned from her cake study. A sad look filled her eyes as she studied Blair’s rigid backbone. “Excuse me,” she whispered after a moment. “My head hurts.”
Once she’d left, the tension grew enormously. Blair knew it was her fault. Gabe was doing his best, trying exceptionally hard to be the father he wanted to be. But she couldn’t accept that, couldn’t just allow him to walk in and take over their lives. Not completely.
She forced herself to keep on working.
“I’m not trying to overshadow you, Blair. Or show off.” Defeat edged the solemn words. “I guess we should have talked it over before I ordered the car. I didn’t realize you’d have objections, but now that I look at this from your perspective, I’m beginning to understand.”
He walked to her, gently turned her so she had to look at him.
“You probably had all kinds of plans for his birthday long before I showed up.” He winced, catching sight of the truth she knew was reflected in her woebegone face. “And his gift, too?”
Blair wanted desperately to pretend that it didn’t matter. She wanted to be blasé, to pretend an airy nonchalance so he wouldn’t see how much it stung. She wanted him to believe it didn’t matter that he was usurping her.
But it did matter. It mattered a lot.
She nodded.
He closed his eyes and tilted his head so his chin touched her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, his fingers on her shoulders drawing her closer. “I should have checked with you before I barged full steam ahead.”
“It’s all right.” It cost her dearly to say that. Blair kept her eyes closed so he wouldn’t see how much.
“No, it isn’t.”
She blinked her eyes open and stared as Gabe stepped back, his arms falling to his sides. He shook his head.
“No, it isn’t. I keep doing this! Why don’t I learn?”
She felt silly and childish as she watched the worry crowd out the joy that had filled his face short moments ago. “You probably put a lot of thought into that car.”
“Yes, I did.” His troubled eyes studied her. “I wanted to make a big splash, to give him something to remember. The first year his father was there for his birthday.” One lip curled. “Go ahead, call me selfish.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.” Liar.
“Weren’t you?” He raked a hand through his perfectly cropped dark hair. “Then you’re more charitable than I. I’ll take the car back.”
“No!” Blair gaped. He couldn’t mean it. Give up the gift every little boy dreamed of? Because of her?
“Yes. We should have decided on something together. Knowing you, you’d have weighed all the pros and cons until you came up with a perfectly planned gift.” He shrugged into his jacket. “What did you pick out?”
“A bike.” She couldn’t believe what she’d done. How had it happened? One moment she was mad because Gabe was trying to usurp her position as Daniel’s mother, the next thing she knew, she’d made her son’s father rescind his gift.
“That’s probably exactly what he needs.” Gabe nodded as he considered it. “Yes, it’s perfect. That way he can ride down to the neighbors to play for an hour. A boy should have a bike. It can go anywhere. The car would have only worked on the driveway.” Gabe tugged out his wallet. “Can I pay for half? That way it would be from both of us.”
“Of course, if you want. But what about…” Blair didn’t know what to say. She watched as Gabe laid two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills on the counter. “It didn’t cost that much.”
“Whatever.” He shrugged, stuffing his wallet into his pocket and managing to check his watch as he did. “I’ve got to go. The jet’s waiting at the airport. I’ll call the delivery people to pick up the car. It was a silly idea, anyway.”
“It wasn’t silly.” I was. She felt small, nitpicky. She’d ruined something special, a happy memory. She’d stolen it from him as surely as she’d accused him of trying to do the same to her. Unlike her, Gabe seemed to hold no grudges.
He snatched his briefcase, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and strode toward the door. “Whatever happens, I’ll be back tonight,” he told her. “I won’t miss tomorrow. Not for anything.”
Blair moved to the window and watched him leave.
Selfish, her conscience chastised. Have to have everything your own way. Try to shut him out if you will, but Daniel still needs a father. You’re only hurting him, your own son.
She squeezed her eyes shut, forced the tears back and turned to the cookies.
“I can’t lose him,” she whispered. “I can’t let Gabe buy his love
.”
“Are you sure that’s what he was doing?” Mac leaned against the door frame, his face reproving. “Are you certain Gabe wasn’t giving Daniel something he wanted, fulfilling a fantasy of his own?”
“I suppose Willie told you.” Blair tugged out the mixing bowl and began assembling the ingredients for Daniel’s cake.
“He’s lonely, Blair. He’s been lonely for a very long time.”
“Gabriel Sloan has always had hordes of people at his beck and call.” She cracked the eggs so hard, bits of eggshell slid into the bowl. She fished desperately for the elusive pieces.
“Not someone special,” Mac reminded her. “Not someone who cared for him. Not someone of his own.”
Blair dumped the eggs down the drain and started again. The words stung. Someone of his own.
“Daniel isn’t just your son. He’s Gabe’s child as much as he is yours. You can’t deny that, and you can’t make it go away. You’ve got to accept reality, Blair. You’ve got to learn to trust him. Gabe isn’t going away.”
She dumped in a cup of sugar and started the mixer. “He just did,” she muttered, certain her grandfather wouldn’t hear.
Mac heard. “Not for good.” His voice was raised sharply against the noise. Mac frowned. “He’ll be back, Busy Bee. He’ll always be back. This is his home now.”
“Is it?” Blair studied the certainty on her grandfather’s face for a moment. “How do you know that?” she demanded, turning away to add vanilla and melted chocolate.
When Mac didn’t answer, she stopped what she was doing and turned off the machine. Her grandfather stood by the patio doors, peering over the smooth, clear surface of the pool.
Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. “How do you know, Grandpa?”
Mac turned to face her, his mouth stretched in a beatific grin of smug satisfaction.
“Because he said so. And Gabe always keeps his promises.”
Would he?
She grabbed the flour canister and measured two and one half cups. She stirred cocoa into the wet mixture. She heated water to dissolve the baking soda. But still the thoughts pricked at her.
On our wedding day, he promised to love me. Can Gabe keep that promise?
Chapter Eleven
Gabe leaned back in his upholstered first-class seat and closed his eyes. Ten o’clock. L.A. was just coming alive and he was dead tired. No wonder, he was on mountain time. As soon as the plane gained cruising altitude and leveled off, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed. He needed a reality check.
“Hi, Jake. It’s me. Leaving L.A. Another meeting.”
“So how were the meetings?”
“Boring. Deadly dull and boring. Who cares if we gained two more points on the index or if some Korean firm is looking at a major purchase.”
Jake chuckled. “I take it there was someplace else you’d rather have been?”
Gabe closed his eyes and thought of Daniel racing in the door from his friend’s house. The three of them could have gone for a walk, watched the sun go down, even swam together. Lately Blair had taken to sitting outside in the hot tub long after everyone else had gone to bed. He watched her there, night after night, wondering if she’d welcome his presence. Maybe tonight she’d have told him to stay, to talk for a while. He ached for those words.
“Is this a bad connection or are you daydreaming?”
Gabe winced at Jake’s snappy retort. “Daydreaming,” he confessed.
“About your gorgeous wife, no doubt? So how is paradise?”
“Messed up.” Gabe hated thinking about how stupid he’d been. He’d almost drooled imagining Daniel’s expression when he saw that car sitting on the drive with his name on it. Gabe hadn’t spared one thought for the way Blair must have felt, the weeks of pinching pennies he knew she must have done so she could get that bike.
“Okay, what did you do this time?” Jake’s tone brimmed with long-suffering patience.
Gabe told him the whole story. “I always think about myself first, Jake, about how I’ll look. It’s the same reason I had to live in L.A. I thought people would take me more seriously if I had just the right address, came from the ritzy part of town, knew the right people.” He felt the weight of his stupidity. “I didn’t stop to reason out why, or to imagine how it might come across to Blair. I just wanted to show my son that I could get him whatever he wanted.”
“And did Daniel want that car?”
Gabe swallowed, shifted the phone to his other ear and admitted the truth. “I don’t think he even knew it existed until I showed him a picture in a catalogue. After I explained how fast it could go and all the rest, he got excited.” Gabe nodded at the copilot and accepted a cup of coffee.
Jake didn’t say anything for a long time. Then his quiet voice probed a little deeper. “What’s really bothering you, Gabe?”
The window by his elbow gave a view of inky blackness. Gabe could discern nothing, no city lights, no ground cover, nothing. Clouds obliterated the view. It was exactly like his life. No matter how hard he tried, the future he imagined just wouldn’t materialize.
“Daniel’s a replica of his mother. He isn’t impressed much by things,” he admitted finally. “He doesn’t seem affected by expensive toys or new clothes. Even by the castle. He likes the pool, but I get the feeling the river would work just as well. All he seems to care about is whether or not Blair and I are there.”
Jake shouted with laughter. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be, bud.”
“Yeah, I know.” Gabe swallowed a mouthful of coffee that he didn’t want, brooding on the whole puzzle. “But it’s exactly the opposite of who I am. Today Blair accused me of trying to buy Daniel’s love with the car.”
“Was she right?” Trust Jake to hit where it hurt.
“I don’t know. But the more I think about it, the more I’m afraid she was.” Gabe thought about her last night, curled up on the cold, dirty ground beside Daniel, trying to coax a squirrel to take some bread from her hand. “I made sure I took care of her family, got her a decent place to live. I bugged her about working so hard, trying to make her see she’s killing herself with worry. I thought I was doing all the right things that men are supposed to do when they want to build a family.”
“And?”
“None of it matters.” Suddenly Gabe didn’t want to pretend anymore. “Willie goes to the old house almost every day. I followed her once. She sits on the porch and stares into space. Then, when she gets too hot or thirsty, she comes back. I didn’t tell Blair, but I think her illness is getting worse. She seems to space right out.” He took a deep breath. “Mac goes there when he thinks Willie and Blair aren’t looking. He pretends it’s to help Albert, but it isn’t. He sits on a bale of hay by the barn and chews on a piece of straw. In between he whistles.”
“Whistles?” Even Jake seemed surprised.
“Uh-huh. That song, ‘Beautiful Dreamer,’ he whistles it for ages. Over and over and over. He walks to the top of the hill, stares out over the valley for a long time, then goes home. It’s weird.”
“Why?”
“Because they keep leaving the new home they’re in for the old ramshackle one they’ve left.” Gabe shifted as the hurt burned deep inside. What more could he do? Was he losing the only family he’d ever had?
“Perhaps they have some fond memories of the old place. Perhaps they feel more comfortable there.”
“But why?” Gabe pushed the cup away. He didn’t need more coffee. He needed answers. “I’ve given them everything they could ask for. Blair will never want for a thing.”
“Except maybe love. You’ve made them beholden, Jake. You haven’t loved them.”
Gabe closed his eyes as the truth of the words slammed home. “I can’t change that, Jake,” he whispered. “I’m not that kind of man.”
“Aren’t you? Then you need to pray for God to change you. Because the Bible says we’re to love our neighbor as ourselves. And that comes right after we love God with all our hearts,
all our minds, all our souls, all our strength.” He waited a moment, then grumbled his disgust. “Did you hear me, Gabe?”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“Then you know the Bible doesn’t say we should try to love. It doesn’t say we should squeeze our eyes closed, take a deep breath and hope we can do it. It says love. It’s a command. And if God said it, you can do it.”
The fear rose inside him like a mountain of gall, choking him until he could barely say the word. “How?”
“Let go of yourself. Stop thinking about how great you are to do this, how much you can do, how much you’ve provided, how they should appreciate you. Take you out of the picture. Loving is about the other person. What they want, what they need, what they feel.”
“I don’t think I can do that, Jake,” Gabe said sadly.
Jake laughed. “You’ve already started. You were concerned at the thought that you were trying to buy Daniel’s affection. That’s love, Gabe. Call it what you want. You don’t want Willie or Mac to suffer alone on the old home place. That’s caring, Gabriel.” He chuckled, the sound twinkling over the airwaves straight to Gabe’s heart. “You want Blair to approve of you, to commend you, to appreciate you. In my book, that’s love.”
“But—”
“‘And He who has begun a good work in you will not stop until it is complete.’ That’s the Bible, buddy. God’s word on the subject. He’s working on teaching you love, and He’s not going to stop until you learn the whole lesson.”
Gabe felt the slight shift in air pressure and knew they were nearing their destination. “Don’t you ever get tired of being right?” he complained.
“Nope.” Jake laughed at his snarl of disgust. “What you have to do, Gabriel, is put the people first. Forget about everything else. After the people, the rest just doesn’t matter. You’ve married into a family who is smart about these things. They already know what to value. People come first. In thirty years, is Daniel going to remember what he got for his sixth birthday, or is he going to remember that his parents were there, laughing and celebrating with him?”