“Thanks,” she said and pulled on her underwear, then her jeans and his tee-shirt. It would work for today, she thought. She’d be able to walk down the mountain. She’d just have to go a bit slower this time so she didn’t further damage her feet.
“Eggs, bacon, and biscuits will be ready in about five minutes,” Teague announced and walked out of the bedroom.
Gabby meandered out from the bedroom herself, looking around at the cabin. It was bigger than she’d thought when looking at it from the outside. The main room held the kitchen, a massive stone fireplace, and a sitting area with three couches set up facing the fireplace. The furniture looked cozy and comfortable, but not overly expensive. The dining table was made of rough wood with wood chairs around it. Everything looked like it belonged in a lake house, but there were no roads up this way.
“How did you get all of this furniture up here?” she asked.
He pulled a pan of golden biscuits out of the oven, setting them on the stove. “I work construction. We have tools for things like hauling heavy things from point A to point B.”
He cracked several eggs, letting them sizzle next to the bacon that was almost finished cooking.
“Okay, point made. But still…the trees don’t seem to be far enough apart on the way up here to get a truck or forklift through them.”
He shrugged. “I have my ways,” he told her with a wink. “You just took the most difficult route. There are easier pathways up here.”
She sighed and sat down at the breakfast bar. “That’s the truth.”
He put a warm biscuit on a plate and handed it to her. “Butter this.”
She looked down at the biscuit, her mouth watering. She couldn’t help herself when he handed her the dish with real butter in it. She smothered the biscuit with the butter, closing her eyes as she took her first bite. “Oh, this is good!” she sighed.
Teague served her up scrambled eggs and several pieces of bacon, and sat down next to her with his own plate and two cups of coffee. “I’m glad you’re still the kind of woman who enjoys food.”
They sat and ate breakfast, talking about the cabin, the lake, the mountain, where he liked to hike, and all sorts of things. She relaxed since there wasn’t anything in the conversation that was controversial. She could handle light and fun discussions. She wasn’t ready to confront her reason for being here. A part of her knew that it wasn’t valid any longer. Not after last night.
“Come on,” he urged and took her coffee cup. “Let’s go sit on the dock.”
He moved two of the porch chairs so that they were at the end of the dock and Gabby curled up in the chair, her hands warmed by the coffee cup.
“Okay, talk to me, Gabby,” he encouraged after several minutes of tense silence. “Why did you run away from me a year ago?”
Gabby stared out at the lake, not really seeing anything, just absorbing the serenity. How could she explain? How could she tell him why she’d run away from him, from their marriage?
“We’d only known each other for a few days. Getting married was crazy,” she finally responded.
He looked to be contemplating her words before he moved on. “We weren’t drunk when we went to the wedding chapel, Gabby. You were fully aware of what we’d both decided.”
She nodded her head, conceding that point. “You’re right, but what I think is right at one moment, might not seem all that sane the next.” She paused for a moment. “You make me crazy, Teague. You do something to me that…I just…” she was having trouble trying to explain.
“You lose control around me,” he finally offered up.
“Yes,” she agreed, turning to look at him.
“And Toby doesn’t have the same effect on you.”
“No.” Toby wasn’t the crazy kind of guy. He was staid, stable. “He’s cautious, conservative.”
“And you want that?”
She bit her lip, trying to figure out what she wanted. Several days ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated. But after spending more time with Teague, she wasn’t so sure. “I know that you scare me,” she finally admitted, refusing to look at him. He might see a truth in her eyes that she wasn’t ready to accept.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment and Gabby was relieved, needing a moment to breathe while she accepted that she’d finally admitted why she’d run away so long ago.
They stared at the lake, not looking at each other for a long time. Finally, he took her hand and she felt his warmth, his gentleness. “What can I do to make me less scary to you?”
She laughed softly, shaking her head. “I doubt you would be able to do anything to make yourself less scary. And I wouldn’t want you to change for me.”
His expression didn’t change. “Gabby, I’m not letting you go. You’re my wife. You’re mine.”
She smiled gently, wishing that she could accept his words. She didn’t say anything. Nor did she pull her hand away from his. She needed his touch for some reason. The connection grounded her in ways she hadn’t thought possible.
“I grew up in a trailer park,” she announced, and sat there in silence as she absorbed the fact that she’d actually said those words aloud. When there was no judgment on his side, she realized -looking up at him- that he was waiting for her to continue. “We got our furniture out of the dump, things other people deemed too messed up to be worthwhile any longer.” Gabby stared at the lake, her heart pounding as those words echoed in the silence. She couldn’t believe she’d just told him that! Her secret shame was out there now! How could she have…why had she…!
Teague didn’t look at her as she spoke but his fingers tightened on her hand.
That small gesture…Gabby wasn’t sure why, but it seemed to break the control she had over her emotions. With a shaky sigh, she continued on. “My father left my mother before I was born. She’d conceived before she’d graduated from high school and he just…took off.”
“What did your mother do for a living?”
Gabriella laughed harshly. “She survived. At least, until after I’d graduated from college. That was the happiest day of her life,” she explained, wiping away a tear with her other hand. “She died a year later.”
“What from?”
Gabriella looked in the opposite direction, then back down at her cup of rapidly cooling coffee. “She died of poverty,” she finally whispered. “It started off as the flu. It had been a rough winter and trailers aren’t known for being especially wind-proof. But that winter, the temperatures in Richmond dipped down into the single digits. I was already working for a company up in Boston at the time. I’d called her, worried that she didn’t have enough heat. But I was already living with three other people during that period, sharing the rent to make ends meet, so I couldn’t send her any additional money.” Gabriella remembered that year. She’d been so poor and all of her co-workers would regularly hit the bars for happy hour. She’d declined all invitations, needing to send her mother whatever money possible while still paying her own portion of their rent. “She’d said she was fine. She’d said she was staying with a friend.” Gabriella wiped another tear, unaware that she was clinging to Teague’s hand now. “I’d called her every day and she’d laughed about the cold. Until the day she didn’t answer her phone.”
Teague waited, knowing that this was a hard story to tell but she most likely needed to tell it. “What happened, honey?” he prompted when she continued to stare silently out at the lake.
Gabriella sniffed and wiped her cheeks again. When she looked back out at the lake, she blurted it all out. “I borrowed money from my friends and took the train down that weekend. I found her dead in her trailer. She’d been sick. The flu had turned into pneumonia.” Gabby took a deep, shuddering breath. “She should have gone to the emergency room. But she was too afraid of the judgment.” She looked at Teague. “When you’re poor, everyone judges you. No matter the circumstances, they see the poverty, not the human.”
Teague stood up and lifted her into his arms, sittin
g back down in the chair with Gabby on his lap. “I’m sorry, honey. That must have been horrible for you, finding your mother like that.”
Gabriella cried on his shoulder, letting all of the pent-up anger flow out of her. She hadn’t told anyone about that story. She’d gone back to Boston later that week, after burying her mother. No one had come to the funeral. It had been Gabriella and the minister, the two of them watching as her mother’s coffin was lowered into the ground.
“It was a long time ago,” she finally answered, lifting her head and staring up into his green eyes. She was daring him…daring him to judge her, to condemn her for her past.
But all she saw in his eyes was tenderness. And understanding. There was no judgment, no revulsion that she’d been so poor or that her mother hadn’t felt comfortable going to a doctor that she couldn’t pay for to get the medicine she needed. That tension inside of her, the fear she hadn’t fully realized she’d been hiding, eased with his look, with his understanding.
“Yeah, but you’ve never told anyone what happened, have you?”
Gabriella took a deep, cleansing breath as she shook her head. “No. You’re the first.”
“You should have talked to someone, honey.”
He was right, but that didn’t make her past any easier. “Anyway,” she said, wanting to move on, “I paid back the funeral home and all of my friends, got a better job making more money, and then…” she looked at him. “Two years after her death, I met you. You were so different from any man I’d ever met.”
His arms tightened around her hips. “That’s a good thing.”
She smiled slightly. “You were crazy. I needed that.”
“You still do. You take life too seriously, love.”
She didn’t reply, not sure that he was right. “Anyway, that’s why I latched onto Toby. He was steady. He’s a member of the elite in Boston. When he walks into a restaurant, people snap to attention.”
Teague understood. “And if he were to walk into a doctor’s office, they would see him immediately.”
Both her mind and her body froze with his words. She hadn’t thought about it in that way before, but he’d hit the target dead on. “His children too,” Gabriella confirmed.
Teague understood. She wanted security. It was a human’s basic need. Survival. She needed to know that her partner could protect her from the world. He finally got it.
“Gabby…,” he was going to tell her that he could provide for her. That they wouldn’t be living in a trailer. Granted, he lived in one when he was on a job, but that was only for convenience.
But she stopped his words, her delicate fingers covering his lips. “Can we just enjoy the day?” she asked him, her violet eyes searching his green ones. “You’re right, I’ve never told that story to anyone and I think I’m emotionally worn out. I don’t think I could handle any other heavy conversation today.”
Teague accepted her request, but with reluctance. He needed to explain to her, to prove that he could keep her safe.
She saw the look in his eyes and smiled tenderly at what he wanted to say to her. “I have enough money in my bank now. I know that I can take care of myself.” She didn’t say the rest, that Toby’s respectability would keep people from judging her. He seemed to understand. Maybe not accept, but he understood.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested. “A slow, easy walk, so that your feet don’t get more torn up.”
She liked that idea. They walked around the lake, and he told her about the various animals he’d seen here in the mountains, the way the trees would bloom in the springtime and the various colors in the fall. When they came back to the cabin, they laughed as they cooked dinner together, which consisted of simple steak and potatoes, again with lots of decadent butter. And when the night fell, he made love to her in front of the fireplace, showing her with actions how he felt about her.
Gabriella curled up against Teague that night, but she had trouble sleeping. Her conscience was bothering her and she wasn’t sure what to do. Should she cling to her need for Toby’s steady position in the world? Or should she grab onto the happiness that Teague could offer her?
As she listened to Teague’s steady breathing, she worked through the financial aspect of life with Teague in her mind. Trying to estimate how much a small house would cost, what the mortgage might be. She added in home owner’s insurance, property taxes, sales taxes…there were so many small amounts that she didn’t know about that could pop up. She wasn’t worried about home maintenance costs. Teague was in construction, after all. She had complete faith that he could fix just about anything in the house. She looked around in the darkness at the cabin. How much of building this house had he done himself?
She smiled, thinking that it might be nice to have a guy who knew how to build stuff. She could have crown molding in all of the rooms, handsome looking shelves, and she had a lot of ideas that she’d seen in the various homes in Boston that he might be able to make. They would have to be on a budget, she thought. That didn’t bother her though. She’d been on a budget her whole life and she’d still managed to get the things she wanted.
“Go to sleep,” Teague mumbled in the early hours of the morning.
Gabriella looked over her shoulder at Teague, wondering how he’d known she was still awake. But his deep, even breathing told her that he’d fallen asleep once again.
He was right though. She needed sleep. She had a big day tomorrow.
Had she made her decision?
Breaking things off with Toby was mandatory. She couldn’t go back to Boston and marry him, not after spending two nights in Teague’s arms. That just wasn’t fair to Toby.
But what was she going to do with the rest of her life?
She rolled over, snuggling closer to Teague, smiling when he pulled her closer, even though she knew that he was still mostly asleep. He might not be able to protect her from the harsh judgments of cruel strangers, but this might compensate. Wasn’t having a man who loved her like Teague did…wasn’t that enough?
She wasn’t sure. And even as her eyes finally drifted closed, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. For the first time in a long time, Gabriella was unsure about her future and that wasn’t something she liked.
Chapter 8
Gabriella stared at the tall building, her body trembling and her stomach churning. Had she done the right thing? She’d left Teague and come back to Toby. Was she nuts? Teague made her laugh! Teague could make her body shiver with delight one moment, then scream out his name with pleasure the next!
Toby was nice. He was calm and sure. He was steady!
A sharp voice in the back of her head reminded her that Teague was steady. Teague hadn’t been with another woman since the day they’d been married.
Not that she suspected that Toby would cheat on her. No way. Not in a million years. He just wasn’t a very sexual person.
And she wanted that! She needed that in her life.
Didn’t she?
Yes! She needed it badly! She’d had crazy insecurities in her childhood. She’d been scorned as the poor kid, the trailer trash. Toby would never allow anyone to say things like that to her. He was kind and sweet and attentive.
Of course, Teague would most likely bash someone’s nose in for even the smallest insult.
But he made her crazy.
Case closed. Toby was the man for her. Teague was her past. He was the man she’d think of and wish…shaking her head, she stepped out of the taxi cab, giving the driver a large tip to thank him for waiting while she contemplated her life and her love for an impossible man.
Toby was wrong for her. She knew it deep down in her soul. Teague was who she needed, and she’d known it from the moment she’d seen him that first day back at the construction site.
She didn’t like the way Teague made her feel. Well, yes, she did. She loved the way he made her feel. She loved how he made her laugh one moment, then moan with pleasure the next. He could drive her nuts in so man
y ways.
And she loved him.
Goodness, she hadn’t known it was possible to love someone the way she loved Teague. What she felt for Toby was…affection. Friendship. Gabby couldn’t believe she’d been about to marry a man she didn’t love!
Standing on the sidewalk, she was completely unaware of the other pedestrians hurrying along to whatever destination awaited their presence.
Teague made her feel…good.
He loved the real Gabby. He didn’t like the Gabriella side of her.
But she needed to be Gabriella! She needed that security.
With a sigh, she shook her head, unconcerned about the other people on the street, looking at her curiously as she mentally berated herself for being so stupid. She’d left a man that she loved once. Now she had to make everything right again.
Darn it! She’d had her life all mapped out and now…she shook her head and forced her feet to walk into the building. She was going to talk to her lawyer. She and Toby couldn’t get married. Yes, it would be a mess. But he would understand. Besides, Teague hadn’t signed the papers. She’d just have to give the ring back to Toby. It was the right thing to do when she was in love with another man. Her husband!
Gabby laughed as she thought about her life. She was breaking off her engagement to one man because she’d discovered she was in love with her husband!
It wouldn’t be simple, but it was necessary.
Breaking up with Toby would be okay, she reassured herself. It wasn’t like they had any assets together.
Gabriella looked down at the diamond ring around her neck. She’d simply hand Toby’s ring back. She was wearing Teague’s ring again.
Shaking her head, she pushed her feet to move forward. She wasn’t delaying her conversation with Toby. Not at all. She was just…hesitant to hurt him. This was going to cause problems with his friends. There would be an embarrassment. But she’d dealt with worse in her life. The end result would be better. Yes, better to just end things with Toby. Everything would be calm and cool and controlled with Toby.
Gabriella chuckled with that thought. Teague was definitely…she banished that thought, not wanting to remember the way Teague made love to her. His whole mind and body made love to her. He ignored everything when he was touching her. He was in control of her in ways she loved.
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