by Kaitlyn Rice
“I’m fine,” Josie repeated. “But I can’t help wondering if I’ll wind up like him. Alone in this house with my beers and excuses.”
No. She wouldn’t. Father and daughter were both stubbornly independent, but Josie cared about people. She wouldn’t hole up and allow the world to disappear. She wouldn’t deny her own family.
She also made better choices for herself, whether she recognized it or not.
Gabe would let her form her own opinions about her relationship with her father. There would be time for this discussion later, when Josie’s emotions weren’t apt to come spilling out.
She shivered, and he drew her into his embrace again, intending to hold her only until she was still.
But instead of settling her head against his shoulder, she lifted it, seeking his mouth with her own.
Sending a jolt of powerful and specific need from Gabe’s lips to his soul.
He might have curbed the kiss, but Josie sure as hell didn’t. She kissed with eager passion. With emotion.
For a moment.
Then she moved her head past his, cuddling her face against his chest. “Sorry. I broke my own rule,” she murmured. “I guess I needed to grab on to some of your strength for a minute.”
Gabe heard the excuse, but he was still back at the kiss.
Josie had kissed him the way a woman kisses a man she loves and desires—almost as if her body understood what her heart and head didn’t.
The vulnerabilities that this search had exposed had made him realize he felt more than friendship for Josie. Ironically, Josie’s all-consuming goal to know her dad had left her too weary and confused to judge her own feelings.
Gabe saw it now, though. Clearly. Josie loved him, too, in that way. He knew she did.
That was enough.
Chapter Twelve
Gabe’s arms encircled Josie’s back and legs, then he lifted her, carrying her across to her sofa and lowering her lengthwise across it. Before she’d had time to think at all, he knelt beside her and continued the kiss she’d started.
She couldn’t fathom stopping him, and not only because she’d invited his actions with her boldness. She kept her eyes closed, loving the exquisite warmth of Gabe’s body and mouth as he trapped her against the sofa cushions. He was so talented with those lips.
He inched them away from hers. “Josie?”
She opened her eyes. He was right there, studying her, those beautiful blues formed into a query.
In answer, she reached around and hooked a palm around his neck, tugging his face back down to hers.
Josie realized she’d have to stop, but she couldn’t yet. Gabe’s kisses were too mind-boggling, his attention too satisfying. When his tongue touched her lips and then retreated, she followed it with hers. She was even fine with tongues for now.
Then he opened his mouth wider, tasting her.
Devouring her worries with his searing sexuality.
She decided that tongues were more than fine. Tongues were brilliant.
When Gabe shifted his kisses to a tender spot below her right ear, she surprised herself with a burst of laughter. Who’d have known they would kiss so well together?
“What’s so funny?” he growled as he eased his hands beneath the hem of her shirt.
His move was potent. He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t hesitated or warned her.
She felt an ache grow, deep in her middle.
Was he really doing this?
Was Gabe Thomas really rubbing his thumbs over her lace-clad nipples? Plucking at them?
She stopped smiling. She could barely remember to breathe. As she watched his hands maneuvering beneath the material of her sweatshirt, she wondered if she’d ever seen anything so erotic. Until she noted Gabe’s face and realized he was watching his hands, too.
His eyes were brilliant, his expression full of want.
He hadn’t asked for permission to proceed.
But he was taking control.
Josie’s sex spasmed.
She tugged at her sweatshirt hem, raising it until her flesh was exposed to him. Willing him to shove the lace aside and touch naked skin.
To taste her.
And Gabe, good man, did exactly as she wished. He stuck his thumbs beneath the band of her bra and glided it upward. Then he swooped down, pulling her nipple into his mouth. He suckled her.
That ache grew to a hard tension.
She couldn’t breathe.
He lifted to inspect the wet, excited tip, then stared brazenly into Josie’s face. “I knew you’d be beautiful, there,” he murmured, his voice husky and sweet.
Josie shook her head, overwhelmed by the intimacy. Closing her eyes, she willed away the unwanted refusals and allowed herself to simply feel as he nibbled and toyed with her body, pausing only once to whisper about how much he loved what was happening between them.
This was okay. Manageable.
Josie was neither prude nor virgin.
Gabe wasn’t close enough. He’d remained in the spot where he’d landed, next to the sofa on his knees. He touched her with only his hands, mouth and chest.
She yearned to feel him—all of him—against all of her.
“Come up here,” she whispered.
Gabe wiped wetness from her nipple with his thumb, his pleasure wonderfully apparent, then he leaned close to press a soft kiss against her mouth. “With you, on that tiny sofa?” he asked.
She bucked her hips slightly. “With me, on this tiny sofa,” she whispered.
Gabe kissed her again, but also settled on top of her, adjusting his long legs around hers.
When she felt his arousal pressing into her lower belly, her body reacted. Her wanting was stronger. Almost violent.
Sweet mercy.
He kissed her neck, her ear, her jaw while he eased his erection between her legs. He was right there. Ready for her. Hot. Hard.
Willing.
It would be so simple. If she stayed quiet. Let things go on. Relaxed in his heat. In his need for her.
She’d have what she ached for.
Sex.
With Gabe.
Sex with a man who knew her very soul.
With a man who loved her.
Whom she loved already.
What was she doing?
Josie shoved at his chest.
“What? Am I too heavy?”
Too heavy. Too real. Too…dear.
“Yes!”
When Gabe rolled off the couch and back to his knees, she jockeyed over him and strode into her kitchen, as if some Sheetrock and wooden beams could keep her from diving back into his arms and grabbing at what she wanted.
After finding a glass from her cabinet, she filled it with water and drank slowly, attempting to slake one thirst by satisfying another.
“You’re not ready,” Gabe said.
She didn’t turn around. Whenever Gabe talked to her in her kitchen, he leaned against a certain spot at the counter, next to her fridge.
She knew where he was.
She couldn’t fathom what he meant. Ready for what? Did he think sex was inevitable between them? Or was he talking about something more?
She was afraid to ask.
Gabe belonged in that spot next to her fridge.
The thoughts and questions about sex were out of place.
She set the glass next to the sink and turned around. Gabe stood with his arms folded in front of him, looking rumpled. To-die-for sexy.
He wore an expression of determination.
She might as well talk about what had happened. Gabe would never leave until they had analyzed the question out of it. The man loved dang discussions lately.
But Josie would lead this conversation, and decide when it was finished. “Sorry. My fault,” she said.
“What was? The starting or the stopping?”
“Both. Probably.”
He held her gaze for a moment, one eyebrow lifted.
“Okay. Maybe you had something to do with the starting,
” she said.
“You bet I did.”
Josie tried not to notice, but Gabe was still aroused. He looked as if he was prepared to make love to her whenever she said the word—a minute ago, in two days.
Right now against the kitchen counter.
Hadn’t she dreamed something like that once?
She pretended ignorance. “At least you got my mind off Joe’s dismal eating habits.”
“At least.”
She crossed to the fridge beside him, just as she’d done a hundred times before. However, a new awareness of Gabe made her movements jerky.
“We’re okay,” he said. He reached around her to grab a cola, an action he’d done a hundred times before. The informality comforted her. “You still going to that group lunch thing on Wednesday?” he asked.
A normal question. Thank God.
Some of the crew on the Kramer project had planned to eat out together in Wichita’s Old Town, to celebrate the end of their huge collective effort. The construction crews had finished a week ago. Josie would finish decorating the last model by the beginning of the new year.
“I am.”
“Good. I’ll see you then if not before.”
Josie wondered if she imagined a deeper warmth in his expression.
She would always wonder.
She could never ask.
“Thanks for the drink,” he said, lifting it.
“Thanks for helping with Joe.”
Gabe held her gaze just a hint longer than necessary, then nodded. “I’d better head home. I have an early meeting with the bread folks about that new office wing.”
Josie didn’t walk him out. She seldom did, and it felt natural to be casual. But after he’d left the kitchen, she waited until she’d heard his car start up and leave.
Then she wandered into the living room and sat on the sofa, peering down at the cushion and resting her palm against it.
As if she could still feel Gabe’s heat.
She could have made love to him, tonight.
Josie scanned her dark living room, until the unlit tree caught her attention. Noticing a tilt on the new tree topper, she crossed the room to correct it.
An angel. Her mother had always insisted on a star, but Josie liked the angel.
Gabe deserved an angel as beautiful as he was, inside and out. Not a wisecracking, beer-drinking tomboy. Not a woman who might be on her way to alcoholism, despite her mother’s warnings.
A woman who might very well wind up in a small house, with one chair and a television.
If Josie let herself love Gabe and he grew weary of her quirks, how would he tell her?
When she’d adjusted the angel, Josie nodded at it. “You know I’m right, don’t you?” she asked, frowning at the doll’s porcelain smile.
After plugging in the cord to light the hundreds of white bulbs, Josie stood back to admire her tree. She opened her drapes then, sending a picture of holiday merriment out into the darkness.
Few people would be around to enjoy the decorations on her tree. The neighborhood was still sparsely populated, even after all these years. Josie didn’t care. She’d lit the tree and opened the curtains because it made her happy to do so, and she wouldn’t abandon her favorite pleasures in life because of her choices.
Yes, she’d done the right thing about Gabe. She knew that, if nobody else would.
Soon, this pinch of physical emptiness would lessen, as well as her loneliness.
She was certain.
“CAN I OPEN the green one next?” Luke asked, turning quickly to get his mother’s approval before he unwrapped another of his gifts.
At Callie’s go-ahead, Luke tore off the paper, crumbled it into a loose ball and tossed it backward as he gasped over a new toy helicopter. The paper landed in the knee-high flood of Christmas wrap, bows and toys that had deluged Ethan and Callie’s family room.
The white, velvety bow fell near Lilly as she sat playing with a new toy phone. As she picked up the bow to examine it, her ability to focus was apparent. The bow’s wide, twisted pattern would probably keep her enthralled for several minutes.
She sat up on her own now. She cackled, sometimes, at Luke’s big-brother antics. She hadn’t spoken yet, but Callie said that her little girl had a lot of catching up to do.
Ethan believed she’d be a star kindergartner in a few years. He suspected that she would excel at science, like her mother. Already, she paid attention to details.
The seizures had vanished with the B6 treatments. Everything else would follow.
When Josie had sat down cross-legged on the floor near both children, she’d intended to help them open their gifts, but they hadn’t needed her. Luke’s fingers were growing nimble, and Lilly preferred to concentrate on her things one at a time.
Despite the children’s independence, the morning had been a crazy one in the Taylor home. Ethan and Callie had invited Josie to sleep in their guest room last night so she could enjoy the kids’ Santa surprise.
Of course, that meant they’d all been awakened before dawn, when Ethan’s quarrel with Luke had escalated past whispers. Ethan had kept saying that five-fifteen was too early, even on Christmas. Luke had kept saying that Santa had already been here—he’d peeked—so it was fine.
When Josie had then heard Lilly’s cries from her crib and Callie’s murmured responses, she’d come out of her room to encourage the adults to start the party.
It was six now and the kids had nearly finished with their gifts. Ethan had disappeared into the kitchen seconds ago, presumably to prepare his speciality—French toast.
Although Josie was expected to stay the entire day, she was ready to go home. She wasn’t hungry, she wanted more sleep and she craved alone time. Maybe she was getting sick.
After the earliest breakfast she could remember eating in a while, Josie watched Ethan and Callie sit together on their sofa to open gifts. She was happy for them. Yet they made her feel lonely.
Rick and Brenda’s arrival in the early afternoon didn’t help. Their presence put Josie in the oddball seat again. Then, immediately after dinner, Isabel telephoned, speaking excitedly about her morning with twenty-three members of Trevor’s family.
After she’d handed the phone to Callie, Josie made up a plate of food for Joe and used it as an excuse to leave. She knew her father would be home. He’d told her that he didn’t care for all the hoopla.
He was as full of poppycock as she was sometimes.
Joe was at home, but he’d obviously found his favorite way to celebrate. The endless string of smokes and drinks had left him too bleary-eyed and queasy to eat the plate of food. Josie placed it in his fridge and helped him into bed, after hiding the cigarettes in a kitchen cupboard.
Disappointed, Josie returned to her quiet house and took a long nap.
The next week, she worked hard on the Kramer project, managing to meet her final deadline and refusing to scan the street in front of the houses, looking for Gabe’s car. He’d finished his part of the job and moved on.
On New Year’s Day morning, her phone awakened her. She managed to ignore the ring, knowing the machine would pick up, but then her cell phone started ringing. That would have to be Callie.
Josie had left the phone in her bag, so she trotted through the house to the front door, where she’d dropped her purse on Saturday evening after work. She grabbed the phone and clicked it on. “Everything okay, Cal?”
“Sure it is,” Callie said. “Ethan’s feeding the kids, so I had a minute. I thought I’d missed you. You awake?”
Josie glanced at the clock and mewed something noncommittal. It was after ten, so she certainly should have been up and around.
Callie chuckled. “If you’re still in bed, you must have had a good time at your party last night. Ethan and I expected you to drop by ours. He invited a new work buddy who was hoping to meet you.”
Her sister had assumed that Josie had gone out to celebrate with Gabe last night, as she usually did. Callie must a
lso think that Ethan had neglected to tell her about his work buddy. But Ethan had told her. She just hadn’t cared.
“Oh. Well.” Josie stopped herself, having no clue what to say.
“Never mind,” Callie said, laughing again. “I know your social calendar is full and I’m truly not offended. I just wanted to wish you a happy New Year.”
Josie returned the wish and hung up feeling as if she’d lied to her sister. She’d thought she might go to Callie and Ethan’s annual gathering. She’d bought some chips and beer to take along, and she’d even decided to wear her sophisticated black sweater.
She’d thought she should be ready to meet an available man and start dating again. She’d told herself that surely some really great kisses could make her forget Gabe’s.
But she hadn’t been able to convert all those mights and shoulds to a true desire to go. She’d sat in her nice sweater at home, eating the chips, drinking the beer and wallowing.
She’d fallen asleep on the sofa at eleven o’clock.
Now she maneuvered around her Christmas tree to open her curtains before heading for the shower.
A knock sounded at the door.
She might be tempted to ignore it, but the person outside must have seen her open the curtains. Josie glanced down at her tank top and panties.
It had to be Gabe out there.
Heat flooded her limbs. Wouldn’t it be fun to open the door as she was, then run to her bed to see if he followed?
Sighing, Josie stepped closer to the door to check the peephole.
Sure enough.
“Hang on a sec,” she hollered. “I’m not decent.”
There was a silence, so Josie peeked again. Gabe peered at the door, his expression serious and also sort of…pained.
Chortling, Josie trotted to her bedroom to jump into a pair of jeans. A year ago, she might have met Gabe at the door like this—in jeans and tank top.
No matter how much she kept telling herself that things between her and Gabe hadn’t changed, they had. She could only deal with it.
After pulling a flannel shirt from her closet, she slipped it on and buttoned it on her way out. When she opened her front door, Gabe’s eyes barely touched her face before they dropped to her chest. “You’re dressed.”
“I know.” They stared at each other. Then Josie noticed the dusting of snow on the ground behind him and realized it was very cold. She shoved the door open wider. “Get in here, Gabe.”