by Jody Holford
There were a few people ahead of them in the pre-paid line. Ophelia bumped shoulders with him while Gabby talked to his dad about attending a theater performance.
“I like her,” Ophelia said quietly.
Owen turned his head so he was looking at his sister. “Me too. Lots to like.” More than he ever could have imagined.
“Must have been a quick transition,” Ophelia said. He could tell when she was digging.
He shrugged.
It didn’t put her off. “You just woke up one morning and thought, nope, friendship isn’t enough?”
His pulse scrambled. Yeah. Basically, this morning. “Something like that.” He put a hand to her back and nudged her forward. “Our turn, let’s go see Santa.”
Ophelia laughed loudly. “Words I have not heard from you in a long time.”
Santa’s eyes widened a bit when he saw the six of them heading toward him. Don’t worry, big guy, no way are all of us sitting on your lap. Owen was willing to go along, but he had boundaries.
Apparently, so did his dad. Leo took a step up onto Santa’s platform, and squeezed himself to the right of the oversized red chair, in between a giant snowflake and a fake tree. “I’ll stand back here. Son, get on the other side.”
“Ho, ho, ho. Not often I get all grown-ups,” Santa said, adding a few more ho-ho-hos. “Have you been good?”
“Owen hasn’t,” Ophelia said, standing in front of him, also to Santa’s side.
“She lies,” Owen said. His gut cramped. Actually, I do. To the people I love.
Gabby went to the other side and Patty and his mom each took a knee. Owen’s lunch threatened to return when Patty smiled widely at Santa and gave his beard a playful tug.
“Careful, Santa,” she said, “I’m newly single so I might get the wrong idea.”
Fortunately, Santa gave a few more deep chuckles and the woman taking the picture grabbed their attention.
They smiled and it was over. Easy as that. See. I can be fun and spontaneous. He was about to say so to Gabby and his sister when his mother took Gabby’s hand.
“We’ll move out of the way. I want one of just you two with Santa,” she said. She and Patty stepped down. Ophelia did as well. Leo pulled himself out of the winter wonderland and stood beside his mom.
Owen closed his eyes and counted to three. If he wished really hard, maybe he’d disappear. Even if Gabby was only pretending to be his girlfriend, he didn’t need his mom providing fodder for years of teasing to come.
Gabby was biting her lip when he opened his eyes. His sister nudged him in the shoulder.
“You can show it to your kids one day,” she said, laughing at him.
His mother made a swooning noise. “Yes, please. Lots of grandbabies. I worried you’d never find a girl and give them to me.”
But his gaze was on Gabby so he noticed the way her eyes dimmed, the way her smile faltered and she lowered her chin. He took her hand and pulled her closer.
“You okay with this?”
“Sure. Why not?” She pulled her hand from his and took a seat on Santa’s left knee.
“You go over there, honey,” his mom said.
As if there’s another choice, Mom. He wanted to look at Gabby, but the photographer was waiting for them. He had a feeling his smile was tight.
“You two make sure you’re good,” Santa said.
“You, too, Santa,” Gabby said. Her tone was no longer playful, but since his mother was nowhere near done with her plans, Owen wouldn’t have a chance to talk to her anytime soon.
Chapter Eleven
After shopping, they went for hot chocolate and listened to carolers in the park. There was an indoor/outdoor nursery next to the park and they’d supplied decorations for a Christmas tree decorating contest. It had been pretty amusing to watch, and a few of the trees had turned out beautifully. They’d spent so long there, they’d decided to forgo the skating, which Owen was secretly happy about. Did he really need Gabby seeing him fall flat on his ass?
By the time they returned to his apartment, it was time for dinner. Gabby helped his mom and Patty in the kitchen while his dad watched television. After dinner, Gabby snuck away with her sketch pad. Owen was in the middle of a card game with his sister while his dad snored on the couch. His mom and Patty had gone over to Gabby’s to watch a movie. Bing played softly around his dad’s noisy sleeping. It was like a time warp had sent him back to 1995. His mind kept wandering to Gabby, but he knew to leave her when the mood struck. Sometimes she’d be gone for hours, madly creating whatever vision only she could see. He’d seen her pour her heart onto the canvas and been there in the moments afterward where she seemed physically drained from the effort.
“Gabby okay?” Ophelia said. She tossed the card she’d picked up onto the discard pile and flipped one of the ones in front of her.
Owen smiled. “Yeah. She’s like you when you bury yourself into a character. Sometimes she can’t pull herself out.” Owen flipped his card, then eyed his sister’s. She was going to beat him again.
“So, earlier, I asked you about getting together with her. In all the texts we’ve sent, you never mentioned when things shifted between you two,” Ophelia said.
Owen took his turn. “Is that a question?”
Ophelia laughed. “Is there an answer? You never said how you two decided to cross over from friendship.” She laid down her final card, showing a score of zero.
Owen shook his head and wrote down their respective scores. “It just sort of happened, you know?”
“We’d know more if you actually gave some details. Did you ask her out? Take her on a date?” Ophelia pulled all of the cards in and shuffled them.
“Obviously we’ve been out. It just…transitioned. That’s all. The way some things do.”
An itch started under his skin. The conversation was unnerving. He didn’t want to tell more lies. Especially since the original lie was starting to feel more like the truth.
“I think I’ll call it a night,” he said, just as she started to deal.
Ophelia snorted, a clear sign she knew a retreat when she saw one.
Owen thought he’d find Gabby curled up on the oversized chair in his bedroom, sketchbook in hand. He had looked forward to seeing her there like that, he realized. Instead, she was sitting in the middle of his bed, in a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top, laughing at whatever album she seemed to be flipping through.
“Hey,” he said, ignoring the warmth crowding his chest. He shut the door behind him and arched an eyebrow when she slapped the album shut and put it behind her back. No. Mom wouldn’t have…
“Hi.” She scooted back on the bed, pushing the dark blue album, which he now recognized, under the pillow.
“Gabby. What are you doing? You were supposed to be sketching,” he said, advancing.
If it was possible to look down her nose at him while she looked up at him, she managed. “Is that what I was supposed to be doing? I didn’t know I had to confirm my activities with you.”
His legs hit the bed and Gabby’s body tensed, like she was ready to spring from the mattress. With the album, most likely.
His heart dove into his stomach. “Did my mother give you that?”
Her smile started slow then took over her entire face. Her eyes shone with it. She nodded.
Oh, Mom so did. He thrust out his hand. “Give it.”
“Oh, no. It’s too good. There are actual bath shots, O. And the time you dressed up as your sister. And there’s one shot of you learning how to pee standing up,” she said. Her words came out slightly muffled as her hand shot to her mouth to cover the fit of laughter.
He launched himself at the album, but she tugged it away just in time and he landed on top of her. The album went flying to the floor and Gabby laughed, twisting in his arms, trying to get away.
“You think that’s funny?”
She nodded. “I really do. I think I’d like to do a new series. Owen: the younger years. From print t
o paint.” Gabby’s body convulsed in laughter. She struggled with him as he tickled her and tried to get her to promise never to do such a thing. It didn’t take long for her to cave.
“Okay. I promise. Stop. I promise.”
“Say ‘I swear on my favorite set of brushes to erase all memories of what I saw in Owen’s baby book,’” he said, pinning her hands above her head.
She bit her lip, considering. “Owen, I will never, in my life, forget what I saw in those pictures. In fact, in times of trouble or sadness, I may purposely recall them,” she said. He tickled again, his fingers grazing her breast accidentally on the way up her arm. She squealed. “Okay. Okay.” He paused. “I swear on my favorite set of brushes to never use the images I will forever hold dear as the subject of any of my artwork. Ever.”
Owen stopped fighting his grin. He groaned as he collapsed to the side of her, letting her hands go. “Good enough. I can’t believe she gave you that.”
Though he’d let her wrists go, their bodies were still plastered together as they both tempered their breathing. He felt every curve, every dip, the softness of her body against his own. She whispered, “Best Christmas present ever.”
Trying, with everything in him, to keep it light, he pinched her side. “Not funny, Gabs.”
“Ow.” She rolled to face him so the front of her was pressed to the front of him. As her warm breath fanned over his face, the desire to kiss her, the need to kiss her, was a living, breathing thing. Instead of moving back as he should, giving her the space she deserved, his hand rested on her hip. His thumb stroked the tiny strip of skin exposed between her shorts and shirt. He told himself that the shiver he felt rush through her wasn’t from his touch. Because, while he was busy falling, she was just doing him a favor.
He looked at her lips, which were slightly parted. There was no way she couldn’t feel the effect lying so close was having on him. For some perverse reason, he squeezed her hip, which moved her even closer. Gabby’s eyes widened. There was a reason they’d never crossed this line. He hated chaos, he hated change. Doing anything right this minute, giving in to the lust swirling inside him like a tempest would not only change everything, it would throw his life into chaos. He and Gabby were perfect. As friends.
He didn’t believe in staying friends with exes. Relationships ended for a reason and were best left in the past. But if things took a wrong turn with Gabby, she’d leave a hole unlike any other woman. He’d dated enough women to know what they had was beyond special. It was everything.
Could he risk that to see where this led for real? Would she even want to try? He was about to give in to the aching need to roll her onto her back and kiss the air out of her, to explore every inch of her body until neither of them could move or speak or think, despite his own warnings, when she spoke.
“You’ve really closed your family out, Owen. I don’t understand why.” Her hand rested on his chest.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like you don’t want them to know you,” she said. Her gaze moved from his chest, over his face, then finally settled on his eyes. “You’re different than them, but they love you. They see you and accept you. Or they would if you let them in. They want to be part of your life and lying to them, letting them believe things that will never happen, isn’t fair.”
He moved his hand up and down her side, not sure if he was soothing her or himself. “It’s only for a week, Gabs. It’s not a big deal. It’s not like I’m hiding some deep, shameful secret for fear of their response. I just didn’t want to deal with having lied to my mom about a girlfriend. Especially not over the holidays and with Patty’s situation. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.” It wouldn’t have been if all these feelings hadn’t rained down on him like a freaking storm.
Her lips pressed tightly together and he wished the urge to kiss them would lessen.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said.
He waited, but she said nothing. “Then what?”
With a growl of frustration, she pulled away from him and sat up. Pulling her knees to her chest, her hair formed a curtain around them. He didn’t trust himself to avert his gaze from her face. There was no way her shorts wouldn’t be riding up. He had to work at staying with the conversation.
“Kids.”
That pulled him all the way in. “Excuse me?”
“Your parents think you want kids. They said we’d show our Santa picture to them someday. Did you never tell them you don’t?”
It was his turn to sit up. “What are you talking about?”
She pushed a hand through her hair but it fell back immediately. “You broke up with your last girlfriend because she wanted children and it didn’t fit into your perfectly plotted life. You’ve let them believe not only in us, which is bad enough and I feel guilty about it, but in the idea that you’ll one day give them grandchildren. It’s selfish. Stop hiding from them. Just tell them the truth. It’s cowardly not to.”
Emotions battled in his chest. Anger led the way. “I’ll repeat, what the hell are you talking about, Gabriella?” Why the hell would she think he didn’t want kids? And if he didn’t, which he damn well did, she thought he’d hide that from the people he loved? Was that how Gabby saw him? Did she really think he was so much of a coward he wouldn’t set them straight on something that important? In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help thinking what he was making her go through this week was further proof of him being all those things.
Her head snapped up at his tone, but fire burned in her eyes. “You’re a lot of things, Owen. But you’re not slow. Your family is wonderful and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why you keep hiding things from them instead of letting them see who you really are.”
His mouth dropped open, but Gabby wasn’t finished.
“Do they or do they not know that you and Vanessa broke up because of kids?”
She really does think that. As if he’d break up with a woman based on that alone. Owen jumped off the bed and stalked to his closet. He needed a second to breathe, to absorb the fact that the person who supposedly knew him better than anyone apparently thought he was a shallow bastard who would dump a woman for wanting to start a family with him. No, he’d never explicitly divulged the truth to Gabby—because he thought she’d know. Because she knew him. She knew he loved kids…didn’t she? They were so close, but were there parts of themselves they didn’t share simply as an awareness of the invisible boundary between friend and lover?
He yanked his shirt over his head, tossing it toward the hamper, not picking it up when he missed. He shucked his jeans next and whipped them in the same direction. Pulling open one of the drawers of the built-in wardrobe, he pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms but was too angry to worry about a shirt.
She was sitting on her knees, her eyes uncertain now. “Owen.”
He put his hands on his hips and glared at her. “They know, as I thought you did, that one of the reasons I broke it off with Vanessa was because she didn’t want a family. In case you’re unsure, some of the other reasons included her wanting access to my bank account, her annoying laugh, her constant complaining about my job, and the fact that she irritated the hell out of me at the end.”
Gabby winced. He didn’t lose his temper often, but he couldn’t stop himself now. He wanted to shake her and ask her how she could not know something so basic, so fundamental about him. He was overreacting, surely. Shoving his hands into his hair, he paced the length of the room, back and forth in front of the bed.
Her body sagged. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For not knowing better. For assuming it was you.”
The anger began to wane. He wasn’t even sure who he was angrier with. Why should she know what he’d never said? God. Even now he was hiding things from her. How could he tell her, though, that his feelings had shifted?
“Why did you?” he asked.
Her lip quivered and his heart
pinched. “She was perfect. I was joking the other day when I was talking about your list, but I know you have one—at least a mental one. And she had it all. Tall, blond, looks like a model, steady, respectable job, looks great in an evening gown or designer jeans, kept up with the news and could have a political discussion.” Gabby rolled her eyes at the last point.
When he tried to discuss politics, she did the same thing as when he talked computer codes: she feigned immediate sleep. It always made him laugh. She called it “politics-induced narcolepsy.”
A smile worked its way to his lips, but his heart still pounded too hard. She may not have known he wanted children one day, but she’d been bang-on about the rest of his list and it was a hell of a thing to realize she hadn’t been entirely wrong—he might actually be a shallow bastard. He realized not one of the things she listed now mattered to him. It wasn’t about the list, it was about the person. And the person sitting on his bed was fast becoming the only woman he could imagine wanting.
Gabby sniffled and he saw the first tear fall. Everything else fell away and he was beside her, pulling her into his arms, ignoring the pleasure that spread through him at the feel of her cheek against his bare chest. Her tears burned his skin, knowing he’d been the cause of them.
“Don’t cry, babe.” His own throat went tight. He couldn’t stand to see her cry.
“I’m sorry. Here I am lecturing you and it’s like I don’t even know you. And even if I do, who am I to tell you how to live your life? I’m sorry. It’s none of my business what you choose to tell your family. How you choose to let them view you is up to you. I just hate thinking they’re missing out on any part of you because…”
He tilted her chin up, rubbing his thumb along her skin to catch the tear hovering on her cheek. Tenderness swamped him. “Because?”
“Because you’re you. It’s like you only let them in so far so they can’t disappoint you or vice versa, but it doesn’t work like that when people love you. When you’re a family. You’re perfect. To the people who love you, you’re perfect. They’ll accept every part of you because that’s what family does. They want what’s best for you, even if you can’t see it.”