A Sweet Life-kindle

by Andre, Bella

  But she’d show them that she’d grown, despite all of them. And then she’d leave.

  And she’d never come back.

  Chapter Four

  Gabe was having one hell of a time keeping his mind on his work.

  Unsettled, he tried to focus on the stack of paper centered on the desk in front of him—parking and speeding violations that he needed to process. It was a job he’d taken on because no one else in the station wanted to do it, and normally he just bulldozed his way through, but today… today his thoughts were haunted by a woman with grey fire in her eyes.

  And so he looked up eagerly when he heard the station door swing open. The wooden panel slammed into the plaster wall with enough force to make him wince. It also told him who his visitor was, even before he set eyes on them.

  “Son.” Ed Gabriel always made a big, loud entrance into the building where he’d reigned as sheriff for nearly forty years. Gabe thought it was his father’s way of making his mark now that he had no other ties to the station, to the job he’d held for so long.

  He stopped in at least once a week, and it had put a definite strain on their relationship. So his relief over a potential distraction tightened with tension as he watched his father make his way through the small waiting room, past Suz, who worked in dispatch, past the door to the back room, where Pete, one of his deputies, was brewing a pot of coffee.

  “Dad.” Gabe was puzzled when his father tossed a bakery box full of doughnuts onto his desk. “What’s this?”

  “What? I can’t bring my son something to go with his coffee?” Ed scowled, his brows knitting. Chest puffed out with his characteristic swagger, he lowered himself into a chair across the desk from Gabe.

  “Well. Thank you.” Gabe didn’t quite know what to say. Ed Gabriel had never made it a secret that, while age had forced him to turn over his job to his son, he still clearly knew better than Gabe ever would, at least when it came to this job. And he’d never pretended that his visits were anything but what they were—a check in, to make sure he approved. After every visit, Gabe was left with shoulders knotted from tension after an hour or more spent defending his decisions, the way he did his job.

  Yes, he could tell the older man to lay off. But this was his father, and in his mind, you owed your parents some measure of respect.

  His thoughts flashed to Ellie, to Estelle, and bitterness coated his mouth. There were two sides to every story, true enough, but there were exceptions to every truth, as well.

  He watched, eyes narrowed, as Ed drummed his fingers on the desk. They might not always get along, but he knew the other man well enough to know that something was stuck in his craw.

  Opening the box of doughnuts—at twenty-seven, he was still able to eat pretty much what he liked, though he suspected that would change in a few years—he selected a maple bar, then settled back to wait.

  His father wasn’t a man who’d ever been able to keep his thoughts to himself. He’d spit it out sooner or later.

  It was sooner. The sweetness of the pasty had just spread over Gabe’s tongue when Ed leaned forward, braced his arms on the desk.

  “Saw Ellie at the store.” In the past, she’d been ‘that Kendrick girl’, but after the spectacular mess that was the breakup of Ellie and Gabe, there was no point in playing games, not even for Ed.

  Still, it set Gabe on edge. He swallowed, reached for his cold sup of coffee to wash it down. “Well, that’s not a surprise. Always figured she’d be through at some point after Estelle died.”

  Ed huffed out a breath. “Said she’s going to sell the shop. The apartment.”

  “Hmm.” This wasn’t a surprise either. Estelle and Ellie had been saddled together while Ellie was a child, but Ellie had left the other woman—left him—as soon as she possibly could. “Well, I never figured on her wanting to keep it.”

  Sitting back, Ed sat still for a long moment, gazing out the window that showed the street. Gabe continued to work on his doughnut, a show of nonchalance, waiting for whatever it was his dad was after.

  “I want you to buy the shop for me.” Ed pinned Gabe with a sudden, ferocious stare. Gabe waited for one beat, two, but no further explanation came.

  Blinking once, he placed the last bite of his maple bar on the lid of the box, looking his father over slowly.

  “What?” His gut was churning, the pastry suddenly heavy as a rock. “Why on earth would you want to buy Estelle’s?”

  “I have my reasons.” He nodded, decisive. “I never asked you for details about you and Ellie. Man’s got a right to keep his own business private.”

  “Jesus, Dad.” Of all the things he’d thought his dad might want to talk about today, this hadn’t even crossed his mind. “If you want it, then buy it. What do you need me for?”

  “She’ll never sell it to me. She’d see it abandoned first.” Ed’s voice was grim. And Gabe was shocked, all the way to his core, that his first instinct was to defend Ellie.

  “I can’t do this.” Sitting up straight, Gabe shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

  He had honestly thought that Ellie Kendrick and the wild tumult of their relationship was long in his past. And he’d been surprised and not a little angry to discover the intensity of his reaction, just seeing her face framed by a window the night before.

  She’d once been a tsunami, a beautiful and awe inspiring force of nature whipping through his life, where every day was the same, packed full of monotonous expectations.

  And even though he was fully capable of understanding the difference between the rebellious teen she’d been and the woman she was now, after seeing her he wasn’t as sure as he’d been a day ago that she would ever be fully out of his system.

  Buying a piece of property from her… it would throw them together. He wasn’t at all sure that was a good idea, even if some small part of him sat up and paid attention to the notion.

  “She won’t sell it to me, either.” He said finally. This was the safest answer. “In case you’ve forgotten, things between us didn’t exactly end well.”

  “And that’s why you owe this to me, son.”

  Gabe’s mouth fell open a bit when his father planted his palms flat on the desk, and glared at him over the desk.

  “I owe it to you?” He couldn’t help but think back to when he and Ellie had been torn apart. He’d been out of his mind, and his father hadn’t had even an ounce of sympathy. “How do you figure?”

  Under his own watchful eye, Ed, the man who was intimated by nothing, shifted a bit in his seat, breaking eye contact.

  Gabe’s stomach sank. “What did you do?”

  Ed blustered a bit, trying to stare down his son. But he’d trained Gabe well, and he held his own until Ed slammed his hands down on the desk, the sound reverberating throughout the small station.

  “I did what any responsible parent would do. I saved you from ruining your life on a girl who would never give you anything but trouble.”

  The words slammed through Gabe like a full body blow. He looked at his father, unblinking, as the reality of what he’d just learned sank in.

  “She didn’t leave after she got sick again.” This made so much more sense. “Estelle sent her away.”

  “It was the best for both of you.” Gabe could see his father pulling defensiveness to himself like a shield. “Nothing good was going to come, the way you two were going.”

  “You don’t understand.” He’d been furious, devastated, lost when Ellie had broken her promise to him. And yet he knew that if she’d needed anyone while she recovered, it would have been him.

  The anger that he’d held so tightly to for the last decade, a life preserver in a sea of loss… it was all a lie.

  And now he wasn’t sure what to hold on to.

  “Did she try to get in contact with me?” Gabe asked quietly. His father had just turned his word upside down.

  “Irrelevant by now, isn’t it?” Ed huffed, and Gabe watched as the older man visibly struggled to shove the
hints of guilt aside. “Point is, you moved on with your life. Made something of yourself without the distraction of a girl who would have dragged you down. I made sure of that. I did my duty as a father. So you owe me.”

  As if pulled by strings, Gabe found himself rising to his feet. Ed stood with him, and the two men stood, facing off.

  It was impossible not to be struck by all of the similarities, the things he’d inherited from his father.

  Gabe had always known he didn’t want to be a clone of his father. But in that moment, seeing how angry, how self-righteous Ed was, he knew he would go to the ends of the earth to avoid it.

  “I don’t want to see you right now.” Gesturing to the door with his thumb, he inhaled deeply, tried to calm himself. “I’m going for a walk. When I get back, I expect you to be out of the station.”

  “Watch your tone with me, boy.” Ed sputtered as Gabe reached for his cell, strapped it to his belt. “This was all for your own good.”

  “Maybe it was then. But I’m a grown man now, and I can decide that for myself.” Strolling to the door, Gabe nodded at Suz, who watching the scene open mouthed. “I’ll be gone for an hour.”

  The air outside was warm, but it was still early enough that it held only the promise of the heat that would come later in the day. Gabe savored the slight chill, letting the briskness wake him up as he started to stride down the street.

  He could tell himself he was just going to walk off his mad. But even before he turned in that direction, he knew where he would end up.

  ***

  The meeting with the realtor was not positive.

  “I won’t lie to you, Ms. Kendrick. I’ve never understood how a business like yours survived in a town like this.” Billy Huggins was one of the few people since coming back to Florence that Ellie hadn’t recognized. It should have been a relief, but his news had ruined that. “Most things that succeed in Florence? They have to do with the prisons. Cheap motels geared toward people visiting inmates. The bookstore with the literacy outreach program. But a florist… you can’t take flowers to an inmate. Though heaven knows if I can think how you’d make a shiv from a rose stem.”

  He chuckled a bit at his own joke, while Ellie sat, stone faced. Some small devil inside of her kept urging her to just walk away, to let someone else deal with it.

  But though she hadn’t thought she’d cared, she found that she needed to have some say in the fate of Estelle’s, the place where she’d spent so many years of her life.

  “I am going to list it. Will you do it or not?”

  Billy blinked at her sharp tone. “Of course I’ll take the listing. But you need to understand that this isn’t going to be a quick sale. The economy is down, and Florence isn’t a well-to-do place to begin with.”

  A throbbing headache started to pinch the nerves behind Ellie’s eyes. “Is there anything I can do to make things go faster?”

  Billy steepled his fingers, placed them under his chin.

  “Well, I can’t say that I know anything about flowers,” he started slowly, nodding at Ellie with a motion that was almost hypnotic. “But the apartment… you could make sure it’s appealing to buyers. Fresh paint, nice carpet. Things like that. In fact, I don’t know that you’ll ever sell without that.”

  Ellie winced. “And will we be able to raise the price if I do updates?” Not that it really mattered. She just didn’t have the liquid cash to undertake something like that—she made enough every month to live comfortably, and no more.

  Billy hesitated, his wince barely detectable but present nevertheless. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  Ellie wanted to throw something—she knew a brush-off when she heard one.

  But what was she to do? Billy wasn’t the only realtor in town, but deep down she knew that they’d all tell her the same thing. And they may not even be as nice about it.

  Just running away from it all wasn’t a viable option due to her sheer stubbornness—and no matter what others thought, she’d never been the time to just dump her problems on someone else, like her parents had.

  But she was stuck between a rock and one hell of a hard place here. She needed to sell the place. And if she didn’t have to buy any paint or carpet in order to do so, she would have been okay with selling it a bit under value, though she knew that would make Estelle roll over in her grave.

  But if she needed to fork out money, she needed to recoup that investment.

  Which she didn’t have in the first place.

  Damn it all to hell.

  Consequently, her mood was sour as she left Billy’s office. She hadn’t listed the property, though she clutched a business card with his smiling, moon-like face in a clammy palm.

  What the hell was she going to do?

  The sun rose high overhead as she walked, and she shrugged out of her thin cardigan before she’d gone half a block. In Colorado weather could change in a split second, and she was used to dressing in layers. She’d forgotten that the desert had mostly one kind of weather.

  Scorching, dry heat.

  After returning her groceries to the apartment above the flower shop, it had seemed silly to drive the whole three blocks to the realtor. But as her cheeks heated and sweat dripped down the curve of her spine, Ellie found herself dreaming of the air conditioning in the rental.

  Seeing the all too familiar figure leaning against the closed door of Estelle’s Blooms didn’t do a thing to improve her mood.

  “If you’re out for a stroll, you can just keep on walking.” Pulling the metal ring that was weighted down by heavy shop key from her battered red purse, Ellie fit it to the lock, cursed when the deadbolt wiggled a bit and she missed.

  “You need a new lock. Especially if you’re going to be staying here.” Gabe came up behind her, took the keys from her hand, unlocked the door himself. “And if you’re going to get prickly, consider that advice from your friendly neighborhood sheriff.”

  “Yeah, well, this place needs a lot of things.” Ellie ground her teeth together when the heat of Gabe’s body, his front to her back, threatened to make her knees wobble. She wouldn’t show weakness in front of this man. She’d die first.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s going to get them.” Wrenching the door open, she pushed through. Even though she knew Gabe would follow her in, she let the door fall shut behind her, enjoyed the twinge of satisfaction.

  It was a brief sensation, quickly replaced by irritation that two minutes around him was all it took for her to revert to childlike behaviour.

  Still, she didn’t apologize. If he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge all that she’d gone through in the past, then she certainly didn’t need to say sorry for a door accidentally-on-purpose slamming in his face.

  Ellie stalked to the flower cooler, opened the weighted door. Even though it had been turned off for two weeks, the dim interior was infinitely cooler than the heat outside, and she drew in a lungful of the stale air greedily.

  Gabe followed her right on in. Frustration dogged her steps as he took the keys he still held, fitted one—the correct one, she noted—to the lock that led upstairs, and opened the door for him.

  “What are you doing here, Gabe?” Pausing with her hand on the doorknob, Ellie turned to face the man who had haunted her dreams for the last decade. Chin raised defiantly, she stood tall and proud, though after the morning she’d had, she was feeling more vulnerable than she had in years.

  Those intense green eyes that she could still picture perfectly, even when they weren’t right in front of her, pinned her in place, made a quiver run through her.

  “My dad stopped by to see me this morning,” he admitted quietly, and Ellie felt her entire body tense. “And I wanted to see you.”

  “And I’m sure he had nothing but wonderful things to say.” Wrenching the door the rest of the way open, Ellie started up the stairs, knowing Gabe would be right on her tail. The bitterness in her voice made her sad.

  Her relationship with this boy—this man—had shape
d the entire course of her life. And yet with him here, in front of her, all she could feel was the pain.

  They reached the top of the stairs in silence. Ellie stood for a moment, looking over the living room of the apartment, taking in the same things she had the night before. But where last night they had just held memories, now she saw them through the eyes of a potential buyer.

  The place was a dump. Estelle hadn’t changed a thing since the day that Ellie’s mom had dropped her off, and likely long before then.

  It would take more than carpet and paint to sell this place. It would take a miracle.

  Ellie wasn’t one to panic. Though once upon a time the sensation had come creeping in whenever it damn well pleased, she’d learned to just stand her ground through it.

  But the longer she stood there, looking at that room, the grief and old memories and trepidation all came down on her in one big rush, and she found the room spinning, her knees giving out.

  “Whoa.” Like a cliché from the drugstore novels that Estelle had liked to read, Gabe caught her under the arms just as she wobbled. “Damn it, Ellie.”

  Opening her mouth, she intended to snap at him to get his hands off of her—he’d lost the right to touch her long ago. But she couldn’t deny the surprising little stab of heat and, more than that, the familiar comfort as he swung one arm behind her knees and lifted her off of her feet.

  Her stomach did a slow roll, gratitude and need and anger mixing together into one hot mess.

  As he carried her to the kitchen, the gratitude and anger faded a bit, but the need did not, and Ellie became rather painfully aware of how closely she was pressed against Gabe’s chest. The muscles beneath the thin fabric of his T-shirt were solid, more developed than they’d once been, and she would have been a big fat liar if she denied appreciating the sensation of them flexing beneath her weight.

  The scent of his skin, soap and man and him, made her feel like she was fifteen again.

  And that longing had her kicking like a mule, planting her hands on his arms and trying to wiggle free. “I can stand up. Put me down.”