“I told him that I was hungover on tequila after a night of sweaty jungle-gym sex with a guy I picked up at a bar,” she answered directly, in one matter-of-fact breath, even though she felt her forehead growing more and more tense and wrinkled as she spoke. “And that’s when I knew we were in a relationship, because after I succeeded in driving my brother away so he wouldn’t ask more questions, I felt guilty the rest of the day for fake-cheating on you with a pretend person I had just made up.”
The seriousness with which he looked at her made her stomach curdle, but just when she thought she was going to have to cry and run away from the plaza in dramatic fashion, he started to laugh. Not a quiet chuckle like she usually got from him either. He opened his mouth and laughed so loudly from their little perch across the plaza, it almost drowned out the singing.
“Shh.” She put her sandwich down and her hand over his mouth as he quieted into less raucous laughter, but his eyes twinkled merrily at her as the loudness ebbed and she pulled her hand away. “Come on, now, it’s not that funny. What are you even laughing at? What I did to Zac, or that I’ve been feeling guilty? We have to come up with a plan or everyone’s going to be squinting at us at work, just like I spent the day squinting at Zac and Ella!”
“If they can handle you trying to throw yourself over Niagara Falls, I think they can handle this.”
“I wasn’t trying to throw myself over the falls.” For some reason, that seemed like the most important part of his statement to address. Or at least the easiest part. “I’d have needed a barrel for that. I just wanted to put my hands in the water. I wasn’t going to let go of the railing, I just was doing it from the other side because I didn’t think it through very well. Then Charles panicked and dragged me back—almost dumping me into the river in the process, I might add. I had a better grip on the railing than he thought, but no one really trusted in me to not fall on my face every other day at that point.”
“My point is the same, this is hardly something that will knock them for a loop.” Then he ticked off on his fingers what he’d no doubt learned from her albums before she’d rescued them from him. “Skydiving. Monster trucks. Crash-up derby...”
“My parents are married but they hate each other, because they can’t imagine getting a divorce. Does that tell you anything about how traditional they are?”
“Do they really hate each other?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
“Why?”
“You know, Miranda’s existence? Dad’s affair and whatever? Mom never got over that one.” And Miranda was probably who Penny was closest to, but who she absolutely didn’t want to tell that she was having a baby outside marriage. Not that Miranda was judgemental, but with the way things had been, growing up—single mom, no father in the picture until her mom had died—it felt like anything even passably resembling the situation had the chance of hurting her only sister. “I guess things were different earlier, back when they trusted one another, but as soon as that trust went, everything went with it.”
He finished his sandwich; hers was half-gone, but she’d lost all interest in it. These discussions could probably even sour a stomach completely devoid of pregnancy hormones.
“Trust is important,” he agreed.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask whether he trusted her. Clearly, he didn’t, if he needed a marriage and documentation as much as he’d claimed. “So, I’m just going to say this, because I don’t know how to do this relationship thing. All I can think is that being direct is the best way to go.”
“Say what you want to say.”
“Okay. I can’t say I’ll ever marry you, but if I can get to this place where I’m even willing to dip a toe into relationship-infested waters, it’s possible I could eventually come around to the idea of marriage too. If we do this the right way. Like let it unfold naturally. Figure out how to be together as a couple, not just as two people who made a baby. It’s not a promise, I literally hate spending time anywhere my parents are in the same room together. Charles’s wedding is coming up, which I need a date for, by the way, but also if you come, you’ll see them together. You’ll understand what I think of when I think marriage. I have some other issues because I’m, you know, a basket case.”
He let her go on and on, nodding here and there to show he was still keeping up. Of all the people in her life, Gabriel was the only one who would let her babble on for ages uninterrupted, which was another mark in his pro column.
“That’s a bunch of I-don’t-knows, but here’s what I do know. I can’t seem to think of you as just my partner anymore. And, to be honest, I haven’t been able to since Schenectady.”
His expression closed down, and he’d stopped nodding, but she knew he’d heard her. He’d heard every word, she felt it in the gravity of his gaze and the way he reached over to tuck a flyaway strand of hair into her knit hat. “It sounds like they’re winding down.”
The singing. She went with the redirect and cocked her head toward the music to listen.
“‘Carol of the Bells,’” she murmured, gathering up her dinner refuse to dispose of. “Want to go closer to listen? I can’t believe they got a bunch of eleven- and twelve-year-olds to learn this complicated a song.”
Trash disposed of, confessions made, she held her hand out to him, needing to test that boundary and know if he’d take her hand in public. When he did, she tucked in close enough to almost lean as they walked back toward the audience to hear the last of the singing.
That first bridge crossed, Gabriel stepped behind her to wrap his arms around her waist, and when she leaned back, she felt pounds lighter. This relationship business was like a dark room and she only had a flickering flashlight. Sometimes she could see a path forward, but then the light went out and left her blindly feeling her way and wondering if she’d just stepped on gum or something worse.
Right now, her flashlight was working. Gabriel stood behind her, his arms around her waist, listening to kids singing Christmas songs while she gazed up at the legendary, glittering tree. In that breath, she could picture it. She could picture glittering Christmas trees in the future, and a chubby-legged toddler with warm brown skin, curly black pigtails and blazing blue eyes. In Gabriel’s lap. Not because she wasn’t healthy enough to stand on her own but because there was nowhere she’d rather be than on her daddy’s knee.
Stinging in her eyes let her know she was going too far into that fantasy, but it was a good step. It was something happy, something besides the cold nature Christmases had taken in the Davenport household these past fourteen or so years.
“I ordered a bunch of Christmas decorations for the loft,” she said, as much to try and take her mind off that wandering path as to make a sideways approach to including him in it. She’d pretty much used up her daily courage quota, so she couldn’t come directly at the question she really wanted to ask. The best she could do was hint and hope he’d just come out and tell her he was going to move in. “Do you think you’d like to come help me decorate this weekend?”
CHAPTER SIX
BY THE TIME Penny got home the next evening, the white sneakers she wore when on the floor scuffed and squeaked across the polished lobby floor, she so failed at lifting her feet fully while walking. Then again off the elevator to her door. Most days in the ER weren’t especially exciting for her, but today had been so busy she’d spent the day longing for five minutes just to sit down.
Sliding her key into the lock even felt like a feat of strength. Before she turned the thing, she heard sound through her door. Had she left the television on this morning? Had she even watched television this morning?
That creeping sensation of being watched came up on the back of her neck and stilled her hand. Living alone in New York, she’d developed enough situational awareness to come alert instantly when things seemed out of place. She’d also learned sometimes it
was worth looking like a paranoid idiot and getting Security to go into her place with her if she was spooked. Like she suddenly was.
As quietly as she could, she slid the key from the lock and then turned to run for the stairwell, not wanting to wait for the elevator. She could be both brave and smart about things like this, which involved running the other way just this once.
Five minutes later, she had the on-site security guard at her door with her keys, opening it. He had a Taser in hand, and when the door swung open, he dashed in like they were on an episode of COPS, yelling that he was armed and if anyone was loitering in the apartment, they should make themselves known.
Basically, her worst nightmare.
But then the nightmare got worse. Her apartment glittered with twinkling white Christmas lights strung up the columns near the door, which she hadn’t put up. And then she saw him: Gabriel, rising from the floor in front of a massive, half-decorated Christmas tree, hands in the air, one glittering silver ornament dangling from his thumb over his head. “I’m supposed to be here.”
Her stomach sank a good five thousand feet.
Gabriel had come and decorated all by himself. He hadn’t said anything other than “Maybe” when she’d invited him to decorate with her, but here he was. She’d caused a Taser to be pointed at him for all his effort.
He caught sight of her peeking around the guard and with hands still in the air, ornament dangling, he shrugged. “Surprise?”
Dammit!
This would be the second time she’d had to apologize to him. But first she should stop the guard from Tasering him—then she’d really have to apologize.
“Don’t shoot! I’m sorry. This is my fault.” She darted around her escort and moved into the line of fire, her back to Gabriel so she could address the guard. “I didn’t expect it, but this is Dr. Gabriel Jackson. He has keys now. I just forgot. And I wasn’t expecting him, and then I got all stupid, and then...”
“Everything’s okay, Miss Davenport?” the guard double-checked, before putting his Taser away.
“Everything’s very okay. Thank you for coming with me. I’m sorry for...the fuss.” She puffed and, after sharing an apologetic look with Gabriel and making a mental note to get the guard something nice for Christmas, she walked him to the door with more apologies.
Gabriel waited patiently until she’d closed the door before he asked, “You thought I was an intruder?”
“A little bit,” she admitted, chewing her lip. “I’m sorry. But remember yesterday when I said I’m lousy at knowing how to have a relationship? That’s this. I definitely want you here, I just... I didn’t expect you to come over. Not so quickly. Last night it just seemed like one big question mark, and...then you decorated. Oh, my goodness, Gabriel, you didn’t have to do all this by yourself, but it’s so beautiful!”
He let it all roll off his back, just nodding and looking wonderfully rumpled but not at all put out by the confusion. Even if he’d had a Taser pointed at him by someone of passing competence. Then he went with the subject he’d probably planned for all day, knowing him, “Don’t look on the other side of the loft—that’s where the mountain of boxes is living.”
She never saw him dressed in casual clothes, not really. Even when he’d been there with her for days, he’d put on slacks every morning. But now he wore jeans. And he wore them fantastically. The white T-shirt he had on was also rumpled, and she could see that he’d had a long day just by the state of his attire. It made him more real. It made him even more attractive, if that was even possible.
Sexy. Right down to the silver glitter that had fallen off the ribbons and ornaments and which would definitely linger in the loft for months, and may need a good scrubbing to get off that rich skin.
Immediately she had mental images of them washing one another, luxuriating in soap-slickened muscles under her hands, and the way his whole body had gone tense when she’d gripped him...
Focus. She looked at the tree, at the fade in and out of the white lights, and tried her best to push memories of their shower out of her head. Even if he needed a shower to get the glitter off him, she couldn’t offer to help. She could barely believe he was even there.
“You like it?” He sounded just a little tentative, like she was going to hate it. Like it was even possible that he’d done all this, wasted his whole afternoon. Like he wanted to please her.
“Are you kidding? It’s the worst. I mean, I hate it. All the wonderful, glittering lights and big red bows,” she said, trying to ignore the warm feelings spreading through her chest, scrambling to find her center, that banter she counted on to help her keep it together. “I love it. Can’t believe you did all this. How did you get it done in one day?”
“The tree’s not done. But I got here right after you left this morning. Borrowed a ladder from Maintenance.” He paused. “You sure you like it? Some things I wasn’t even sure what they were, or what to do with them. I improvised. And the tree still needs the rest of the ornaments.”
“I love it,” she said again, pulling her coat off and dropping it as she jogged straight for him and flung her arms around his shoulders. The man smelled like heaven, if heaven were filled with earthy pleasures. “Thank you. Today was such a dreadful day, I wasn’t even sure I had the energy to walk up the stairs to bed. Of course, I was going to detour to the fridge to grab something and stuff in my face as I crawled up the stairs...but all the excitement of you being a possible intruder, and then discovering it’s actually you, only adorably dusted in silver sparklies? Even better. I love it.”
His hands fell onto her hips and then he gave in and hugged her back. Resting her cheek on his shoulder, she breathed out slowly, instantly relaxing. Then he began to rock, and being too relaxed became a danger to the evening that suddenly had become full of possibilities.
“If you keep this up, I’m going to lose my burst of energy,” she murmured. “And possibly sleep standing up.”
“Before dinner?”
His voice was like warm honey to her ears, and she grinned against his shoulder, no longer hesitant to ask. “Does this mean you’re staying? Tonight? Moving in?”
“I’m staying. We’ll call it a trial run. Still think we should take things slow,” he confirmed, sounding a little more resolute now, and breaking the spell a little as he let go of her and gestured to something she’d missed entirely in all the awesomeness that had gone on since she’d walked into a magical twinkling wonderland-style living room, complete with sugar-frosted boyfriend. “I just dumped my bags in the guest room and came straight downstairs, haven’t unpacked at all. Tomorrow, I guess.”
Boyfriend.
The word stuck in the front of her brain, and made her smile. He was her boyfriend. That particular word didn’t even scare her right now, not like relationship did. It came with images of hand-holding and slow dancing under starry skies. That special time before things inevitably blew up.
“Something smells good, other than the cinnamon. Smells meaty. You cooked?”
“I warmed up a pre-cooked turkey breast, and got stuff for good sandwiches. So, I barely cooked, but I thought you did all right with a sandwich last night.” He nodded to the blanket. “It’d be nice to have food that doesn’t need utensils by the fire.”
Romantic.
“This is a date, isn’t it?”
He shook his head, and then gave the kind of half-shrug she knew to be man-speak meaning: Yes, but I don’t want to make a big deal of it or even have it spoken about.
“Well, let me go get out of my work clothes.” She gave him her best, over-the-shoulder sultry voice. “Just so you’re aware, I’m going to put on a negligee.”
“I thought we agreed to take things slow.” Instantly alarmed.
“By negligee you should understand I mean flannel pajamas in cotton-candy pink.” She grinned at him as s
he headed up the stairs, and saw him shake his head, but he was smiling again.
When she returned, she diverted to the stereo to turn on some light mood music. Christmas music, actually. Christmas music was absolutely necessary for a living room Christmas picnic and conversation. And lower lights. And her fireplace all sparked and roaring. She couldn’t fully appreciate the twinkling if the overhead lights were canceling out the glow.
By the time they’d settled with their plates on their knees and her with her now usual mug of hot apple cider tea, she began picking his brain about Jackson family Christmas traditions.
This conversation naturally turned back to Davenport traditions, namely her tradition these past few years: Penny’s Christmas Adventure.
“I don’t know when it started. I guess around twenty-one? I just never really cared about Christmas. It always felt like someone else’s holiday, that it was made for the healthy kids—the kids who had a future.”
He frowned over his sandwich, so sharply she knew he was taking her literally.
“No one ever said that to me. That’s just how I felt. Years of illness takes its toll. I always had very nice gifts, designed to stimulate my mind, and all I wanted was the toys that would stimulate my body. My siblings got bikes and rollerblades, I got a microscope. And then I got a telescope. New computers. Dolls. Good Lord, the dolls. I hated the dolls.”
“Didn’t they ask what you wanted?”
“Sure. I just didn’t have words to tell them, or the heart to say, ‘I want to go play in the snow. I want to go sledding. I want to ice skate and trampoline.’ Eventually I got better, but Christmas never dazzled me after that. It was tainted with years of heartbreak. I guess that’s why I started traveling. Go somewhere new or somewhere I already loved and hadn’t fully explored, have some new adventures... I liked it better than sitting with family by the fire, waiting for some present that would disappoint me. Live life, don’t just watch from the sidelines.”
He looked at the fire, then back at her. “I thought the fire was nice.”
The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle Page 9