by Kim Law
“I knew you still had to like football.” He washed his hands in the sink, and while drying them on a dish towel, eyed her with suspicion. “Next week’s game is at home. You coming out?”
Erica merely shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I told you. I don’t do football anymore. So why would Cord be there last night? Doesn’t he live in Billings?”
“He does.” Gabe narrowed his eyes and tossed the towel to the countertop. “But we were about an hour in that direction, so he came out. How do you know where my brother lives?”
“Because he didn’t avoid talking to me Monday night.”
“Is that so?” Gabe crossed to stand in front of her. “What else did he tell you?”
She felt exposed in her current position, with arms at her sides and elbows pointing back and away from her body. Gabe’s features were a shade too focused on her. “Just things,” she said on an exhale. “I like talking to your brother.” She gave him a sly smile, unable to refrain from teasing him. She’d once made a habit out of teasing this man. “But then, why wouldn’t I? He is still the best-looking one of all of you.”
A low-pitched rumble came from Gabe’s chest, and she pushed off the counter to move to the other side of the island. It was suddenly too crowded in her kitchen.
And apparently close encounters made her flirty.
The bar top now stood solidly between them, and for some reason, she couldn’t let the topic go. “Why was he there? Even being an hour closer to Billings, that’s still several hours away from him.” She stared at Gabe, feeling as if there were something obvious just out of her reach. “Why would your brother travel so far for a high school football game?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Gabe’s jaw suddenly clenched, and this time, it was he who walked away.
He crossed to the dining room and eyed the garage door, and Erica ignored him while he roamed. She straightened a stack of celebrity magazines on the countertop—her guilty pleasure—and found herself wondering what he was really doing there in her space. He’d helped put up the groceries, but why? And what was the purpose of sticking around afterward?
She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and lined it up in the middle of the pile of magazines, plugging it in to recharge, then realigned the laptop sitting next to the magazines so that everything squared up.
Was it merely boredom that had kept him over here?
“What’s this?” he asked, and Erica looked over at him. He held up the violin case she’d left on the dining room table. She’d seen the instrument in a used music store one day that week and had made an impulse purchase.
“It’s a violin.”
“What are you doing with it?”
She suddenly felt silly for buying it. “I plan to learn to play it.”
Gabe’s expression turned quizzical as he stared at her, and she bit her lip to keep from trying to justify herself. Since Bree had left, she’d found herself roaming the businesses in the small downtown area every afternoon instead of coming straight home from work. She didn’t want to be stuck in one spot any longer, so she’d determined to try new things. That said, she had no idea if expanding her cooking repertoire and learning to play the violin truly constituted breaking out of a rut.
As if traveling along with her thoughts, Gabe shifted his gaze to her refrigerator. Then to the cookbook lying beside it. He lifted the violin back up in front of him and examined both sides of the case, as if by studying it hard enough, he’d be able to see through it.
“Cooking, music lessons . . .” he mused. “All this change. Anything else?”
The need to defend herself ballooned inside her. She could do whatever she wanted. She didn’t have to answer to him. And she could try out as many new hobbies as struck her fancy.
She clamped her teeth together and told herself to keep quiet.
Then she promptly opened her mouth and spilled her final secret. “An exercise class, if you must know. I stopped by the gym this morning. I’ll be offering two-day-a-week classes starting the week after next.” They already had Zumba, so she’d suggested hip-hop.
“An exercise class?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “The director of the facility was very excited about it.”
“I’m sure she was.”
And possibly, Erica had gone a little overboard with her attempts to venture out. She understood that. But she had to do something to fill her time. She couldn’t sit around any longer waiting for her marriage to suddenly reappear.
Gabe put the violin back on the table and crossed to her. “You’re staying busy.”
“Just trying not to get bored.” She fidgeted with the magazines in front of her.
“Lack of boredom is good,” he said, as if her explanation made perfect sense. Then he propped an elbow onto the counter beside her and leaned in to peer at her. “What did he do to you, Erica?”
“What?” She jerked her gaze to his. “Where did that come from?”
“You said you moved here because ‘life happens, plans change.’” He air quoted her words back to her. “You even claimed to have adapted, but I don’t believe it. What happened with the ex?”
Erica shook her head. She was not talking to him about that. Then he reached out a hand and covered hers, and her heart slammed against her rib cage.
“I read something entirely different than ‘moved on’ in your eyes every time I look at you,” he explained. “You’re always so pensive. And I can’t help but wonder why.”
The dinging of a text message broke the tension, and her entire body sagged in relief.
Gabe eyed the phone as if she’d planned the interruption for that very second. “Who’s that?”
“I have no idea.” But she was thrilled with the timing of it. “Nor do I know why you’d think my past is any of your business.” She tugged at her hand to pull it out from under his, and once freed, reached for her phone.
But Gabe snatched it up before she could get to it. And then he read her message.
Her eyes went wide. “How dare you.”
She went for the phone again, but Gabe held it out of her reach. And when his eyes showed both accusation and concern, her brief appreciation for the diversion turned to humiliation. She had no doubt who the text had come from. Damn JC for not leaving her alone. He’d sent several messages since she’d had that brief exchange with him Monday night, but she’d ignored them all.
“JC is your ex?”
It was as if Gabe could see inside her. As if he understood how tiny she felt. “He is.”
He eyed the screen once more, rereading the words to himself before paraphrasing. “He says that he misses you. That he really wants to talk to you.” He locked his gaze on hers. “He’s even begging for you to call.” The last was said with a distasteful curl of his top lip.
With a tired sigh, she held out her hand. “Will you just give me my phone, please?”
“If you’ll tell me what this is about. Are you still seeing him?”
“No,” she ground out. “He’s with someone else.”
“Married?”
“No. They just . . .” She couldn’t make herself admit everything. “He left me for her, okay?”
Gabe stared at the face of her phone once again, pushing the button to bring the message back to the screen. Then he slowly brought his gaze back to hers. The air in the room grew thick, and Erica found herself holding her breath as she waited to see what he’d say next. What he thought of her now.
“And do you still miss him?” he asked.
“I miss being married, yes.” She wished she didn’t feel the need to explain herself. “I miss having a plan for my life.”
“But that doesn’t answer my question.”
She pulled back in confusion. She hadn’t realized that what Gabe had asked and what she’d answered were two separate things. She missed being married. She’d been married to JC.
Did the two things not equate?
“I don’t know,” she finally replied. Until that moment she’d thought she missed her ex.
“How long have you been divorced?”
“We ended things nearly two years ago.”
He twisted his mouth to the side. “That’s a while.”
She nodded. She could feel the guilt climbing her face.
“So you’re not over him?”
“I am,” she hurried to say. “He cheated on me. We’re divorced. I just . . .” She stared at Gabe, wishing she could make someone understand, and wondering if that someone could possibly be him. “He was my high school sweetheart, you know? He was always there for me.”
“Ah. You mean that he was always supposed to be there for you?”
She felt so stupid. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Fair enough.” He handed over the phone. “But will you tell me why you let your ex of two years control you?”
The suggestion was too on point, and it pissed her off. “I don’t let him control me.”
“Yet you moved from your hometown because of him.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” she tried to argue, but she knew his words rang more true than false. She’d completely allowed JC to control everything about her life since she’d found out he was cheating on her. He’d decided when to end it. When to “surprise” her with the truth. He’d drawn up the settlement offer. And he’d been the one to reach out to her that past summer.
He was the reason she didn’t know what her life held next.
Her throat suddenly burned, and she found herself blinking back threatening tears, so she turned away and crossed the room. She stared at the brick wall on the far side of the living room. She did not want to cry over JC. Never again.
And she certainly didn’t want to do it in front of Gabe.
“I don’t know why I allow it,” she finally said in response to his question. Her voice came out so thin she didn’t know if he’d even heard her. “But I can’t get the man out of my mind for some reason, and I hate it. He’s there all the darned time.”
How in the world had they ended up talking about her ex?
Her hands shook, so she gripped them around her elbows and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. It was a trick she’d learned to keep the tears at bay. “Can we stop talking about this now?”
“Look at me, Erica.”
Gabe’s words came out at such a low octave that it felt as if they’d reverberated across the room and stroked down over her body. She shook her head. She would not look at him. There would be no benefit to witnessing his pity.
“You should just go.” She pitied herself enough for the both of them.
Her husband had not only cheated on her, but he’d done it with a woman who’d once been a very good friend of hers. He’d done it virtually under her nose. And he’d gotten the other woman pregnant.
And yet she couldn’t figure out how to be done with the asshole once and for all?
She was so stupid.
“Look at me,” Gabe repeated. His tone had gentled, but remained firm. He didn’t intend to walk away from this, she could tell. She remembered that stubbornness about him. So she forced herself to turn. To face his pity and be done with it.
But what she saw staring at her from the other side of the room wasn’t a man feeling sorry for her, but a man she’d once cared for very deeply. A man she’d once thought she might marry.
She’d loved Gabriel Wilde years ago. Even though their split hadn’t been the worst thing in the world, she’d loved him. They never would have worked with him adamant about living here, while she’d been just as determined to go home to Silver Creek. But that hadn’t stopped them from being good together.
“Now come over here and kiss me.”
No other words could have shocked her more. “Excuse me?”
“Kiss me,” he repeated.
“I don’t—”
Two long strides brought him to her, and he gave her a solid nod, his gaze never leaving hers. “Just a kiss. A temporary reprieve from your mind.”
She looked at his lips. “A kiss? To escape my mind?”
“Absolutely. That man is in there, and you want him out, right?”
“Yes . . .” She dragged her gaze off his mouth.
“Then I’m offering to help you with that.”
“To help me with . . .” She wrinkled her brow. “How will that help, exactly?”
“It’s simple. You kiss me, and you quit thinking about him.” The blue of Gabe’s eyes darkened, and though up to that point he hadn’t strayed from her eyes, he now dipped to her mouth. “We used to be really good at kissing.” His breathing grew unsteady. “Excellent, in fact. So it stands to reason that if we kiss, that if we’re still as good at kissing as we used to be, then you would think of something other than him”—he brought his eyes back to hers—“while kissing me.”
By the time he’d finished talking, he wasn’t the only one breathing raggedly. They had once been really good at kissing.
She swallowed. “Kissing wasn’t the only thing we did well.”
The line of Gabe’s jaw hardened, and Erica didn’t miss the flare of his nostrils. His eyes turned molten as he stared at her, and she forced herself to shake her head.
“I’m not offering that,” she told him.
“Then a kiss?”
She nodded. At this point, she wasn’t sure either of them could walk away without one.
“You reach for me,” Gabe said, his voice deeper than it had been. “You start it.”
His words caught her off guard. “Why do I have to start it?”
“Because you did that first night. You kissed me.”
She stared at his mouth then. He had a point. She had been the one to instigate their first kiss. But she’d done that because she’d been angry at JC—and because she’d thought Gabe was one seriously sexy man.
Funny how life had repeated itself.
So she didn’t give it another thought. Why not kiss the man?
A tiny shuffle of her feet brought them together, and her pulse bounced at the feeling of something hard and solid pressing just below her belly button. She fought the groan that begged to be let out, and with trembling fingers, lifted her hands to his chest. He wore a cotton pullover that was soft under her fingertips, but she didn’t care about soft cotton or the hard muscles riding underneath. She immediately slid her hands to his back . . . and then she flattened her chest to his.
“Damn,” Gabe whispered as her nipples went rock hard. His breath heated her cheek.
“This okay?” she whispered in return. “A little touch with the kiss?”
He nodded, the movement tight, and Erica closed her eyes as his hands landed at the small of her back. Maybe this was all she’d been missing. Because other than those couple of times over the summer, there’d been an extended dry spell since a man’s hard body had been anywhere near hers.
“This is nice.” She nibbled along his jawline, his whiskers from the day before scratching her lips and the taste of him lighting every last one of her fires. And when she inhaled, wanting to imprint his smell on her brain, her breasts burrowed deeper into his chest.
His body shuddered.
“Gabe.”
He stared into her eyes then, as needy as she, and she ended the wait for both of them.
His groan reverberated through her as her lips touched his. His fingers buried in her hair. Then without hesitation, he backed her into the brick wall, and when his tongue parted her lips it was her turn to moan. Entrance was demanded, and only when the need to breathe reached the edge of necessity did Gabe pull the slightest bit away. He looked down at her, his gaze fierce and his chest heaving with each gasp of air. And then he retook her mouth.
This kiss was slower.
His lips claimed hers leisurely, exhibiting patience in the wait, while at the same time, showing her everything that a kiss could be. The moment stretched into several, and with each stroke of his tong
ue, each tug of his teeth on her bottom lip, all Erica knew was that she wanted more. That she needed more.
That they had to stop now or they weren’t going to stop at all.
“Gabe.” She could barely get the word out as she sucked in a breath through her teeth, but he must have heard her because his mouth softened. His hands loosened their grip.
He put a foot of space between them.
They stared at each other, each dizzy with lack of oxygen, each on fire from the inside out. And they didn’t have to say it out loud to agree. They still knew how to pull off a damned fine kiss.
“You’d better go,” she managed. Though him going was the last thing she wanted to happen.
He nodded, and two seconds later her front door closed behind him.
Erica sank to the floor, her entire body vibrating with need, and she dropped her head to the wall behind her. She blew out a harsh breath. That was what she’d been missing. Not whatever her ex-husband might be able to give her.
And that probably didn’t need to happen again.
Because damn. She wasn’t sure she’d know what to do with more.
Chapter Nine
I just don’t know why I have to do this.”
Gabe bit his tongue to keep from snapping at his daughter. She’d certainly lost her pleasantness overnight. By the time he’d picked her and Haley up at Leslie’s house that morning, she’d been her sweet lovable self no more. She’d even been ugly to Haley, causing the two of them to snipe at each other all the way to Ben and Dani’s house. By the time he’d gotten the other girl home, he’d been ready to beg his sister to take Jenna off his hands, as well. And the plea would have been offered with a large sum of money. Because no one deserved to have to put up with that without some sort of reward.
“Da-aad,” Jenna whined, when he didn’t answer her.
Gabe grabbed his and his daughter’s work gloves off the seat, and looked in the rearview mirror at his kid. He gritted out a phrase he detested. “You have to do this because I said so, Jenna. End of story.”
“Good grief.” She flopped back, slamming herself into her seat, while at the same time sliding low enough to jab her knees into the back of his. “Mom wouldn’t treat me like this,” she spat out.