One Good Reason

by Sarah Mayberry

  “You really have a problem with me holding the ladder steady for you?” he asked incredulously.

  “I have a problem with what it represents. If I were Dino, would you be standing there worrying about me?”

  “Dino probably wouldn’t need the ladder to reach the top shelf.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “If he was up that high, I probably would,” he lied. “Liar.”

  “Fine. Have it your way.” He took a step backward, holding his hands wide to show her she was on her own. “My humble apologies—again—for being courteous.”

  “Courteous. Right. How would you like it if I implied you were incapable of climbing something as simple as a ladder? Or opening a door? Or changing a lightbulb? Are you telling me you wouldn’t find that even vaguely insulting?”

  Was there no end to this woman’s stubbornness?

  “Try not to burn your bra while you’re up there,” he muttered. “It’ll set off the smoke alarm.”

  “If you’re trying to be derogatory, at least get your facts straight. Contrary to popular belief, no bras were ever burned as part of the feminist movement.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I stand corrected.”

  “What’s wrong, afraid to really think about it? Afraid it will mess with your world order if you acknowledge that I’m perfectly capable of climbing a ladder on my own?”

  He frowned. “I was being courteous. Considerate. It was what my mother taught me to do.”

  She’d taught him a bunch of other things, too, of course. That he’d deserved every blow his father aimed at him. That he was ungrateful, selfish, no good. That he was destined for failure, along with his brother. That he was a disappointment and the cause of so much of her unhappiness.

  “I bet your mother told you pornography was bad, too, and that women belonged on a pedestal,” she said.

  She was right on the money, but he wasn’t going to let her know that.

  “You telling me you think pornography is good?”

  “Not all of it. There’s some good stuff around, but a lot it is frankly laughable. At the end of the day, it’s all about taste. So basically as long as it’s consensual, I don’t have a problem with it. I’ve got bigger things to worry about than sex between consenting adults.”

  There was a long silence as he grappled with the idea of a porn-loving Gabby Wade.

  “What’s wrong, cat got your tongue?” She was enjoying herself, her eyes bright with challenge.

  “I’m wondering what bigger things than sex between consenting adults you have on your mind.”

  “Touché.”

  “At last.”

  She was smiling as she started down the ladder. “I guess every dog has his day. If he waits long enough.”

  “I’ve always been a patient man.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to give him a dry look—which was probably why she fumbled the next rung. She wasn’t far from the ground. She probably wouldn’t have hurt herself if he’d stood back and let it happen. She might even have recovered her balance.

  He didn’t give her a chance. He reached up to support her lower back, his other hand making a grab for the side of the ladder. That hand gripped cool metal. The other grabbed a handful of feminine backside.

  A minor miscalculation.

  They both stilled. He knew he should let go and take a step backward, putting some distance between them. Knew he was about to get the feminist tongue-lashing of a lifetime. But he was too busy registering the warm resilient shape of her in the palm of his hand to do much more than stand there like a dodo.

  Who knew that Gabby Wade had been hiding a sweet, tight little butt beneath all that baggy khaki? A truly perfect handful.

  She cleared her throat. “Would you mind unhanding my ass?”

  “Sure. Of course.” But it took a real act of will to make himself uncurl his fingers and step away.

  She finished descending the ladder and made a big show of dusting her hands down the front of her khakis before meeting his eye.

  “Thank you. For the rescue, not the grope.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “I know. I just wanted to be clear.”

  She grabbed a sheaf of papers from one of the lower shelves and turned for the door. He waited till she was gone before mouthing an obscenity.

  This morning, she’d been an irritant, a thorn in his side. Then she’d walked into a beam of sunlight and he’d discovered the depths in her eyes.

  And now he knew she had a fantastic ass.

  She’s still got a mouth that won’t quit and more attitude than a mall full of teenagers.

  Both of which should have more than neutralized the power of those eyes and that ass. But today he’d also discovered that she had a sense of humor. The guys had ragged her mercilessly over her terrible hairstyle and her army boots and she’d copped it on the chin and laughed along.

  All of which led him to an almost inescapable conclusion: she wasn’t quite the unmitigated pain in the rear he’d first imagined her to be. Instead, she was shaping up to be almost…fascinating.

  Dude, you need to get out more. When was the last time you got laid?

  It was a good question. Well over two months ago, by his calculations, back when he’d been wrestling with the ghosts of childhoods past in Woodend. Clearly he was overdue for a little horizontal action if he was starting to eye his brother’s scary office manager with carnal intent.

  As for the idea of actually making a move on her…

  He laughed out loud. As if that was ever going to happen. He might be horny, but he wasn’t deluded. Gabby would shred him verbally then stomp all over him with her hobnailed boots if he even looked at her funny.

  Shaking his head at the craziness of his own thoughts, he followed Gabby.

  GABBY COULD HEAR HER HEARTBEAT thumping in her ears as she marched to her office. She wanted to pretend it was because she’d set such a brisk pace returning from the archive room, but she wasn’t that good a liar.

  Her heart was beating like a tom-tom because Jon had touched her ass. Not just touched, grasped. In a very male, very possessive, very intent way. She could still feel the heat of his hand burning through the seat of her khakis. Worse, she could still feel the answering heat that had washed through her.

  It had been a long time since a man had touched her intimately. Years, in fact, for reasons she’d spent the night sobbing over. And yet she’d gone up in flames the moment Jon’s hand had curled around her.

  It had taken every ounce of self-control she possessed to tell him oh, so coolly to unhand her then look him in the eye and chastise him for groping her. What she’d really wanted to do was grab him by his shirtfront and shake him and demand to know why, after all these years, he had to be the one who reminded her that sex had once been a very welcome and needful part of her life.

  Because that was what he’d done with a single touch. A bare five seconds of contact. Long enough to tilt her world off its axis.

  I don’t even like him.

  But she was wise enough in the ways of the world to understand that sometimes it wasn’t about liking the other person. Sometimes it was about pure animal attraction. And apparently, whether she liked it or not, the animal in her was definitely attracted to the animal in him.

  She could hear Jon’s footsteps and she pulled her keyboard close and started typing. Just in case he thought she’d been sitting here brooding over what had happened between them.

  She watched in her peripheral vision as he stopped in the doorway and crossed his arms over his chest, propping his hip against the frame. Waiting for her to acknowledge him.

  She made him wait a long time before she glanced up. “Sorry. I didn’t see you there. I thought maybe you’d gone home,” she fibbed.

  He let a beat pass. She had the distinct impression he could see through her, down to the fact that she was struggling to look him in the eye without blushing like a Catholic schoolgirl.
/>   “How much longer do you think you’ll be?”

  “About another half hour. Why?”

  “Just checking.” He pushed himself away from the doorway and disappeared into the workshop.

  She stared at the place he’d been standing, going over what he’d said in her mind. Then she went looking for him.

  He’d pulled a stool up to the corner workbench he’d made his own over the past few days and was poring over a set of blueprints.

  “Listen, Jon, you don’t need to hang around because of me.”

  He raised his eyebrows and immediately she felt stupid.

  “I mean, I lock up on my own all the time. So you don’t need to feel obliged to escort me to my car or anything.”

  “Okay.”

  It was the sort of frustrating nonanswer she should have expected from him and it left her with exactly nowhere to go. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Well,” she said.

  Turning on her heel, she went to her office. She spent the next twenty minutes trying to concentrate and failing miserably. Despite what Jon had said, she couldn’t get past the feeling that the only reason he was still hanging around was because of her. She hated the notion that he felt he had some misguided obligation to play bodyguard to her, but she suspected it was exactly the sort of Me-Tarzan-You-Jane value he subscribed to.

  She’d been working late for years, ever since Tyler had first employed her. Not once in all that time had she required the services of a security escort—and she didn’t want one now. But how was she supposed to get rid of a man who refused to admit he’d cast himself in the role of gallant knight?

  When she’d typed the wrong figures into a spreadsheet three times in a row, Gabby realized she was both too tired and too distracted to keep working. She saved the file and shut down her computer, then switched on the answering machine and grabbed her bag.

  Jon was still at his bench, his head propped on his hand as he studied the blueprints. It wasn’t until she was only a few feet away that she saw his eyes were closed. She remembered that, like her, he’d started early this morning. She reached out a hand to rouse him, only to find herself hesitating.

  He looked oddly boyish with his eyes closed. His dark lashes fanned across his cheeks, and there was something supremely innocent and unguarded in his expression. Perhaps it was the softness around his mouth, or maybe it was because he wasn’t barricading himself away behind those impenetrable eyes of his. Whatever it was, it made her pause for a heartbeat before she finally rested her hand on his shoulder.

  “Jon,” she said softly.

  His eyes snapped open.

  “You were asleep.”

  “Man. I only closed my eyes for a second.” He looked sheepish.

  She realized her hand was still on his shoulder. She dropped it to her side and took a step backward. “I’m heading off now. Do you want me to go over the alarm for you again?”

  “It’s Tyler’s birth year, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then I’m good.” He gave her a small smile and she could suddenly see how tired he was.

  “You should go home, too,” she said before she could stop herself. It was none of her business what he did. She wasn’t his mother, or—God forbid—his wife.

  “Yeah, I should.” He stood and stretched. “I’ll walk you out.”

  The hem of his T-shirt rode up as he arched his back and she caught a flash of hard male belly. She looked away, disconcerted. The last thing she needed was to know what Jon’s belly looked like.

  They walked to the showroom in silence. Gabby unlocked the door, remembering how she’d had to let him in this morning and how they’d squabbled like children after he’d apologized. She glanced at him and saw that he was watching her, a faint smile lurking around his mouth, and she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “One for the road?” she asked.

  “What the hell. What do you want to argue about? Freedom of speech? Animal cruelty? Politics?”

  “They’re all pretty tempting.”

  “We could always skip straight to the insults.”

  “Now, that’s really tempting.”

  His eyes glinted with appreciation. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Go for it. I’ll give you a free shot.”

  She eyed him for a moment, then shook her head. “You know what? It’s been a long day. I’m going to pass.”

  “Chicken.”

  “Maybe. Good night, Jon.”

  She slipped past him to the parking lot. As he had last time, he lingered until she was in her car and had started the engine. Then, and only then, did he lift his hand in farewell.

  As she drove home, she wondered how much longer he intended to work. Then she remembered that she’d been convinced he’d hung around only because he didn’t want her to lock up on her own.

  That was the thing with Jon—she never could find her feet with him. She had no idea where the truth lay—if he was a misguided chivalrous knight determined to minister to a reluctant damsel who definitely wasn’t in distress, or if he was simply a man who was in no rush to go home.

  She flexed her hand on the steering wheel, remembering the firmness of his shoulder when she’d woken him.

  It was the first time she’d touched him voluntarily. She wondered why that felt so significant. Then she shrugged it off. She was hungry and tired. She’d stopped thinking straight hours ago.

  Her apartment smelled stuffy when she let herself in. The light on the answering machine stared at her like an unblinking eye, signaling that she had no messages. There was dust on the windowsills and a vase of dead flowers on the corner table.

  She stared at them, wondering how long they’d been all wilted and shriveled and unnoticed. Two weeks? Three? She honestly couldn’t remember.

  She walked slowly into her bedroom and stared at the mess she’d left this morning. The scrunched up tissues from her crying jag, the discarded clothes, her abandoned towel.

  It occurred to her that Jon wasn’t the only person who wasn’t rushing home at the end of the day.

  “Gabriel Wade, you need to get a life.”

  Even though she was only talking to herself, her words had the ring of resounding truth.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JON WORKED LATE THE FOLLOWING two nights. Both times he manufactured reasons to hang around after the work Dino had assigned him was completed while waiting for Gabby to finish for the day.

  He was well aware that Gabby would spit nails if she learned he was staying because of her. But it was beyond him to walk away and leave her alone in a dark building in the middle of an industrial neighborhood. Tyler might be fine with it. Jon was not.

  It wasn’t as though he had anywhere better to be, and there was an odd sort of comfort in knowing another human being was only a few feet away. Even if he and Gabby barely exchanged half a dozen words once everyone else had gone home, hearing her at her computer and move papers around on her desk was far better company than sitting in his apartment staring at bad TV.

  It probably said something about both his social skills and current mental state that finding a more attractive third option was beyond him.

  Saturday brought a new challenge—his first full day in months with no work on hand to distract him. When he’d been in Woodend, there had always been something to do, no matter what the time of day or week. But he was a wage slave now—even if he wasn’t technically taking a wage—which meant his weekends were his own.

  Yippee.

  He tried to sleep in, but by 7:30 he was wide awake, staring at the ceiling. He cleaned the apartment and did his laundry. It didn’t take nearly long enough. The apartment was a shoebox, and after months of working on the house, most of the clothes he’d brought with him from Canada had been more or less trashed. His current wardrobe consisted of several pairs of new jeans and a handful of T-shirts in either black or white. One load of washing and he was done.

  Which meant by 10:
00 he was at loose ends again. He walked to the corner store to buy a newspaper, but by the time he’d read the damned thing from cover to cover he was ready to throw something off the balcony.

  He needed to do something. Frame a wall or rip up a floor or sand a table. Without the distraction of hard labour, his thoughts inevitably drifted to the past. He didn’t want to go there. But what he wanted didn’t seem to be holding much sway with his psyche these days.

  He’d thought he’d left it all behind when he’d left Australia. Thought he’d consigned all the beatings and abuse and fear to the dark corners, never to see the light of day. He’d made a life for himself in Toronto, built a business. No one had known the truth about him, where and what he’d come from. He’d been free to become whoever he wanted to be.

  Then, out of the blue, Tyler had called to say their father had cancer and it had all come rushing back.

  The pain. The shame. The failure and guilt and anger. All the crap Jon thought he’d walked away from. All the memories.

  His chair scraped across the floor as he stood abruptly and grabbed his car keys. What he really wanted to do was drive to the liquor store and load up on beer and spirits. Instead, he drove to the local school and ran lap after lap around the football field. Anything to stop his churning thoughts.

  He ran till he was dripping with sweat, till his muscles ached and his lungs burned. Then he stretched out on the grass and stared at the sky while the sweat cooled on his body and his heart rate returned to normal.

  For the first time all week he felt calm, his body relaxed. And all he’d had to do to get here was almost kill himself.

  After ten minutes, the sound of voices approaching made him sit up. Two women were circling the field, each with a small white dog straining on the end of a leash. One of the women was tall with red hair and legs up to her armpits. The other was small and petite with short dark hair.

  His eyes narrowed as he honed in on the shorter woman. Surely it wasn’t…? What were the odds, given all the football fields in all the suburbs of Melbourne?

  He glanced at himself. His T-shirt was soaked with sweat, his shorts equally drenched. He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it down. Then he caught himself. What the hell did he care how he looked, even if it was Gabby?