It's Only Love

by Marie Force

  She nearly buckled under the weight of that statement, coming from him of all people, the only man she could imagine fathering her imaginary children. On top of everything else that’d happened, it was almost too much to take in one twenty-four-hour period.

  “El? Hello?”

  “Um, oh, sorry. Those.” She pointed to the apples she needed to make her grandmother’s recipe.

  “Was it something I said? About kids, perhaps?”

  Ella shrugged, reluctant to let him see her emotional reaction to the subject of children. On their first official day together, he didn’t need to know how she’d once dreamed of having a big family like her parents had. Now at thirty-one, she would be perfectly thrilled to have one baby.

  “We need ice cream.” She took off for the far end of the store without waiting for him. If they were going to talk about kids, she needed the kind of fortification only Ben and Jerry could provide.

  Gavin caught up to her, reached around her and plucked a pint of Cherry Garcia from the cooler, dropping it into the basket. Then he went back and grabbed a container of Cake Batter for himself.

  “You’re like a twelve-year-old.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You would take that as a compliment,” she said laughing.

  “I was a cute twelve-year-old.”

  You’re a cute thirty-four-year-old, too, she thought.

  He trailed behind her as they headed for the checkout and nudged her aside when it came time to pay, sliding his card through the reader before she could reach for her wallet.

  “I don’t expect you to pay for my groceries.”

  “They’re our groceries, and you can pay next week.”

  How could she argue with that? Even as her heart did a happy little leap at the mention of next week, his comment about kids and her future as a mother had popped Ella’s giddy balloon, leaving her out of sorts and not at all sure what she had to be out of sorts about. It was a nice thing for him to say, and it wasn’t his fault—entirely—that she didn’t have kids yet when she’d always hoped to be a young mother.

  But wasn’t it his fault in a way? After all, she’d been waiting for him, whether actively or passively, for years. There’d been other guys. A few that might’ve been serious if the specter of Gavin Guthrie hadn’t hung over everything, larger than life and exactly what her heart desired, even when he didn’t seem to know she was alive.

  No other man had a chance against the possibility of Gavin. How many times had she ended fledgling relationships with the words It’s not you, it’s me? And Gavin, she should’ve added, because he was always smack in the middle of her relationships even if he never met the guys she dated.

  In the parking lot, Gavin loaded the bags into the back of his truck, which they’d retrieved from the biker bar, while Ella went around to the passenger side and got in. She watched him stow the cart in the corral before he got into the truck. For the longest time he sat there, looking straight ahead.

  Ella was on the verge of saying something—she wasn’t sure what—when he turned to her.

  “Tell me what I did wrong in there.”

  She’d been unprepared for such a blunt question. “You . . . I . . .” Jesus, Ella. Get it together. “Nothing.”

  His eyes flashed with the starting of what might be anger. “Don’t do that. Don’t say it’s nothing when it’s clearly something. I told you I’d give this my all, Ella. You’ve got to do the same. You gotta meet me halfway.”

  He was right. She couldn’t even try to deny that he was absolutely right. But how was she supposed to broach this particular subject on day one of the relationship she’d dreamed about having with him?

  Reaching for her hand, he curled his fingers around hers. “Talk to me. I want to understand. I want to fix whatever I did.”

  “You didn’t do anything. You struck a nerve that you didn’t know was there.”

  “The kid thing is a nerve?”

  She was on the verge of saying sort of or kind of, but that wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t what he deserved from her. “Yes.”

  “How come?”

  In for a penny . . . “I used to think,” she said with a sigh of resignation, “that I’d have a lot of kids, the way my mom and my aunt Hannah did.”

  To his credit, he didn’t blanch or recoil or jump out of the truck in horror. Rather, he calmly said, “A lot, huh? Like ten?”

  “Aunt Hannah only has eight.”

  “Not much difference between eight and ten.”

  “Most people only have two kids. They’d tell you that’s a lot.”

  “Do you know that in all the years since Caleb died, neither of my parents has ever reminded me that I’m their only hope for grandchildren?”

  “Oh,” she said, caught off guard by the change in direction. “That’s nice of them.”

  “My mom would be an awesome grandmother, don’t you think?”

  “They’d both be terrific, and you know Hannah’s children will consider them grandparents.”

  “I do know that, and so do they. However, the continuation of the Guthrie name? It’s all on me.”

  “That’s a lot of pressure.”

  “They’ve never pressured me, but I’m aware of it. I don’t want the Guthrie line to end with me.”

  “That’s not a good enough reason to have kids.”

  “I know it isn’t, and until recently, I’ve been too unsettled to even think about having a family. But now . . . Now, it doesn’t seem so far off in the distant future.”

  “Now . . . What does that mean?”

  “Now that there’s an us and the possibility that you could be their mother—”

  “Gavin, please. I have to stop you right there. It’s way too soon for us to be having this conversation, and frankly, my fragile heart can’t take it. I just can’t allow myself to go there. Not yet.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to poke at a nerve or your fragile heart.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m glad to know you aren’t totally opposed to having kids someday, but I can’t talk about that someday today.”

  “Fair enough.” He started the truck and drove them back toward her place in town, where they’d dropped off her car on the way to the store.

  They were quiet on the short ride, and Ella wished she could know what he was thinking. Her thoughts were all over the place, scattered and unorganized. He was saying—and doing—everything she could possibly want him to, but she was still wary. She wanted so badly to believe everything was possible for them, but until last night he’d not given her any reason to have one ounce of faith where he was concerned.

  Hearing he could picture her as the mother of his children made her want to say to hell with caution and get busy making babies. More dangerous thoughts . . . She’d reined him in, but she needed to do the same to herself. Jumping ahead to someday wasn’t wise when today required all her focus and attention.

  Gavin followed her up the stairs to her apartment, each of them carrying grocery bags. This would be the first time he saw her home, and the thought of that made her oddly nervous.

  She was so rattled she nearly dropped her keys. The door swung open and the scent of the sage candle she’d burned last night greeted them.

  “Smells good in here,” he said as he followed her into the kitchen in the back of the small apartment.

  “My favorite sage candle.” She loved being able to share even the simplest of things with him, such as her favorite scent and where she kept her cereal. Ella loved stashing his Cake Batter ice cream next to her Cherry Garcia. She loved knowing his favorite kind, and that he loved cookies, ham and white bread, as gross as that was.

  Ella was reaching for the cabinet over the stove when his hands landed on her hips, making her forget what she’d been about to do.

  He gat
hered her in close to him, his chin on her shoulder. “Sorry, but I couldn’t stand to go another second without touching you.”

  She closed her eyes and focused on continuing to breathe as his nearness overwhelmed her.

  “Did you need something up there?”

  Gavin’s question didn’t compute until she realized he meant the cabinet. “I don’t remember what I was doing.”

  His low rumble of laughter sent goose bumps down her arms and backbone. “How long do we have until we have to head to your parents’ house?”

  “About forty minutes.”

  He brushed aside her hair and began placing kisses on her neck that made her legs go weak under her. Fortunately, he had an arm locked around her waist to keep her from sliding to the floor. No man had ever had such an effect on her, and she was wise enough now to know that no other man ever would. He was it for her. He always had been, which was why the stakes were so high in this new game they were playing.

  Then he was turning her and she couldn’t spare the brain cells to think about the high stakes or the game. Not when Gavin Guthrie was apparently planning to kiss her. He moved slowly, cupping her face in big work-roughened hands and gazing into her eyes.

  She wanted to kiss him—badly—but more than that she wanted to know his thoughts. “What’re you thinking right now?”

  “About how much I want to kiss you. I’m asking myself if this is real, if I really get to kiss Ella Abbott any time I want to. I’m wondering how I got lucky enough to have someone like you care so much about someone like me.”

  She curled her hands around his wrists and felt his pulse hammering under her fingers. “What does that mean? Someone like you? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Everything,” he said softly. “Every freaking thing is wrong with me, but for the first time in a long-ass time, I want to make what’s wrong about me right. For you.”

  Ella went up on tiptoes to join her lips to his. Like him, she couldn’t believe she was now allowed to kiss him any time she wanted to. She was going to want to often. She hoped he was prepared for that. Judging by his enthusiastic response, he was more than prepared.

  His hands slid down to cup her bottom, and then he was lifting her.

  Ella curled her legs around his hips, bringing his hardness against her softness and drawing gasps of pleasure from both of them. Then he was lowering her to the sofa and coming down on top of her, all without losing a beat in the tongue-twisting kiss.

  This kiss made the one they’d shared last summer at the beach in Burlington seem like child’s play in comparison. She’d spent all the months since thinking she knew what it was like to kiss Gavin. She’d known nothing. The kiss on the beach had been just the start of what they were capable of together.

  His hand slid under her sweater and came to rest on her ribs, making her skin burn under the heat of his palm. He broke the kiss, looking down at her as if to gauge her reaction. Then he pulled back, taking his nice warm hand with him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ella covered her face with her hands.

  He tugged on them until she gave way. “What did I do this time?”

  “You stopped!”

  “Because we have somewhere to be.”

  She glanced at the clock on her cable box. “In thirty minutes.”

  “That’s not enough time for what was going to happen on this sofa if I hadn’t stopped when I did.”

  Her heart beat erratically. “What was going to happen?”

  “Clothes were going to start coming off.” He leaned in to tug on her sweater. “Starting with yours.” His lips were swollen from kissing her, his jaw was covered in stubble, and brown plaid flannel had never been so sexy. She could lie there staring at him until tomorrow morning, and it wouldn’t be long enough to absorb the fact that Gavin was sitting on her sofa looking at her like he wanted to eat her up.

  Not that she would say no to that . . .

  “Quit looking at me like that,” he said gruffly.

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “You know. I’m trying to be honorable by not jumping you the first chance I get, and you’re lying there looking all sultry and sexy.”

  “Am I?”

  “Ella! Stop it.”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You’re breathing. That’s enough for me.”

  “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up, and it’s going to be Saturday night and my Cherry Garcia would’ve melted during the time I had this amazing dream about sleeping with Gavin and grocery shopping with him and making out with him.”

  “You’re not dreaming, and neither am I. For the first time in a very long time, I’m having a really good day, and it’s all because of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do not thank me. All the thanks goes to you, my little bulldog.”

  “Um, is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “Yep. You were tenacious like a bulldog, never letting me get away with anything and calling me out on my shit. You have no idea how much I needed someone to do that.”

  “I’m glad I helped, but let’s retire the bulldog analogy.”

  Smiling, he tugged on her hand. “Let’s get going to your parents’ place so I can talk to your dad about the work he wants done before dinner.”

  Reluctantly, Ella let him help her up, but she wished they had nowhere to be so they could continue with the kissing. The kissing was good. Very, very good.

  “Is it okay with your mom if I come to dinner?”

  “Oh yeah. She makes enough to feed an army every week. I think my aunt Hannah and cousin Grayson will be there today, too. I heard he was in town visiting his mom this weekend.”

  “I haven’t seen him in years. He’s in Boston, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did he ever get married?”

  Ella pushed her feet into the moccasins that had fallen off when he carried her to the sofa. “Nope, but you can hardly blame him after what he went through with his parents.”

  “No kidding.”

  Ella’s uncle Mike had walked away from his wife and eight children when the older kids were in high school and the youngest ones still in elementary school. “A lot fell to Gray as the oldest. He really stepped up for his mom and siblings. He probably has zero desire to have his own family after all that.”

  “Do they ever hear from their father?”

  “Occasionally, but it’s nothing regular.”

  “Can you imagine a man leaving his wife and children like that?”

  “No man I know would do something like that, but then again, we never thought Uncle Mike would either. He loved family life and his kids and Hannah. They were a true love match, or so we thought.”

  Gavin held her coat for her before donning his own coat. “Did you ever find out what went wrong?”

  “Not really. My mom suspects he had some sort of breakdown or something happened with his job. But I’ve never heard the full story. I don’t know if even my mom has heard the whole thing, and Hannah is her sister.”

  “And Hannah never remarried?”

  “To be honest, I don’t think they ever got divorced.”

  “Wow, and how many years ago was this?”

  “Well, let’s see, Gray is the same age as Hunter and Hannah, and they’re going to be thirty-six in December, so almost twenty years ago, I’d say.”

  “Twenty years. How’s it getting to be almost twenty years out of high school for us?”

  “Don’t say us. I’m quite a bit younger than you.”

  “Ha-ha,” he retorted. “Only a few years.”

  “I’ve only been out of high school thirteen years, so speak for yourself.”

  “I’m at seventeen, so not a geezer quite yet.”

  “But getting closer every day
.”

  Laughing, he said, “You’re full of beans today, Ella. I like you that way.”

  “Got to keep you on your toes.”

  “That you do.” He held the passenger door to his truck for her and then leaned in to kiss her as he belted her in. “Kissing you is becoming my favorite thing to do.”

  Ella ran her hand over the delicious stubble on his jaw. “Mine, too.”

  He kissed her again. “To be continued. Later.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “Mmm,” he said, his lips vibrating against hers, “me either.” He pulled away reluctantly, or so it seemed to her.

  She watched him walk around the front of the truck and get into the driver’s side. It was such a strange feeling to be free to look at him any way she wanted, to let him see the full extent of her desire for him, to not have to hide it anymore the way she had for so long.

  He backed out of her driveway and headed in the direction of her parents’ home. His hand found hers on the seat, and the brush of his skin against hers was all it took to set off a reaction that registered in all her most important places.

  Good God . . . She had to get it together before she forgot her plans to be cautious, to take this slowly, to protect her heart. If all he had to do to make her forget about being careful was hold her hand, she was in bigger trouble than she’d thought.

  After a quiet ride through Butler, they pulled into her parents’ driveway and their yellow labs, George and Ringo, came bounding across the yard to greet them. Ella got out of the truck and bent to give each dog some love. She couldn’t wait to have a home of her own someday so she could have dogs again. They’d always had dogs—all of them named John, Paul, George or Ringo—and Ella missed having pets, but that was the one thing her landlord didn’t allow.

  “Where’s Mom and Dad?” she asked the dogs.

  George barked and darted toward the house. The dogs rarely left her father’s side, so she took George’s word for it and followed her inside. Yes, George was a girl. It didn’t matter to Ella’s dad whether the dogs were male or female. They were all named after his favorite band of all time. He was a little over the top when it came to the Beatles, but his children indulged his obsession after being weaned on Beatles tunes growing up.