by Nicole Helm
“Do you think we should send one of the boys to pick up the floral arrangements? I’m worried about weather and the roads,” Becca offered.
“I’ll do it,” Gabe piped up, because, God, it would get him out of here and this.
“I’ll call the florist and see if that works for her,” Monica said, making a note in the binder. “But you aren’t worried about the food and cake getting up here?”
“Mom’s church ladies will build a road here for that. She’s probably with them now with eighteen hundred backup plans. Besides, the guest list is so small, if we end up having to eat sandwiches and Twinkies, I’ll live.”
The women were banging around louder now. Jack had taken Colin out on a ride, and Rose was still asleep, something about pregnant women getting a pass. But these two were making enough noise for ten men.
Gabe placed his head on the table and tried to cover his ears with his arms, while Alex groaned. “Why aren’t you hungover?” Alex asked his soon-to-be bride.
“I am hungover,” Becca replied. “I’m just tougher than you.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” Gabe muttered. “Can’t I just get out of here and get those flowers?” The inside of a truck would be quiet. No banging. No chattering.
“This’ll help,” Becca offered, sliding a plate full of eggs and toast in front of him.
Gabe smiled up at her. “You sure you don’t want to marry me?”
“Sorry, Hannibal doesn’t like you.”
“How do you know? I’ve never seen this mysterious cat you claim to have.”
“That’s how I know,” Becca replied happily. She set another plate in front of Alex before going back to the toaster and adding more bread. “Why doesn’t Monica call the florist, and if they give the okay, you two can head out there?”
“Two?” Gabe said, jerking his head toward Becca and immediately regretting it as his stomach roiled.
“I need someone there who knows what the flowers are supposed to look like. And if you’re going to transport them all, it’s probably a two-person job.”
Gabe wanted to withdraw his offer, but he knew what that would look like, so he focused on eating. Becca and Monica blah-blah-blahed while he and Alex sluggishly ate their breakfast.
In the end, the florist gave the okay, so Gabe spent the remainder of the day dreading the car ride to get the flowers with Monica.
At least there was work to do, even if it was wedding-prep work. The small number of guests would be seated in the barn on a variety of chairs and benches they were pulling from the house. There’d be rented portable heaters, decorations, and then a reception in the same spot.
That afternoon, Gabe had been given sweeping duty, though it was currently giving his shoulder a hell of an ache. Still, he wasn’t about to admit that. Jack was scrubbing down chairs, and Alex was alternating between washing windows and hanging more Christmas lights up around them. Rose was inside, putting together a playlist for the reception, and Becca was apparently practicing with Ron Swanson for his flower goat duties.
Flower. Goat.
Sometimes Gabe couldn’t help but wonder if Revival Ranch was some weird dream world that only existed in his head.
He swept the pile of straw bits and dirt into the industrial-size dustpan, then headed for the trash bin outside. It was nice and cold out here. Inside was some mix between too cold to take off a coat and too warm to leave one on. Besides, it was quiet out here instead of the low strains of music Jack had cruelly insisted they put on.
Most of the hangover had receded after lunch, but he still wasn’t one hundred percent. So he gave himself a moment to cool off, look at the gray sky and heavy winter around him, and breathe.
Except soon enough, the world around him wasn’t gray—at least not solely. Instead, a bright blob of red was headed toward him, blond hair wisping out from underneath her green hat.
She looked like a Christmas postcard. Which was not appealing. Last night and the foolish offer he’d made had been a joke.
He kept trying to make himself believe it.
Monica crossed the yard, overly wrapped up in coats and hats, her hands shoved deep into her pockets.
“Hey,” he greeted, because he wasn’t about to let her know he felt uncomfortable over the events of last night. Or that they stuck in his mind in glaring detail—wide, blue eyes, the way there’d been a moment of considering as they’d stood oh so damn close, and then the stuttering, shuddery way she’d turned him down.
His body did not tighten at the thought. He wouldn’t let it.
“Hey. Listen, I know it’s an inconvenience, but I was hoping we could run a few errands before we pick up the flowers. It’s hard to find the time to get into town, and I have a few Christmas things I need to pick up for my parents and Colin. If I’m unloading flowers right when I get back, I can hide the Colin stuff where he can’t snoop.”
Gabe scowled. He didn’t want extra time with this woman, but how could he argue with that? “Does he still believe in Santa?”
Monica’s mouth turned into something he might have labeled a pout on any other woman. On her it just made him think about, well… He wouldn’t let his mind go there.
“No. Some jerk-off in his kindergarten class spilled the beans and I couldn’t repair the damage. But I still like to pretend, especially because he gets to pretend to be so over it while practically screaming with joy over things.”
Gabe couldn’t help but smile. “Well, I’m driving.”
“Are you expecting me to argue? I hate driving up here. Why do you think I make Colin ride the bus?”
“Who’s going to pick him up?”
“The Lanes. Their daughter gets off at the same stop, and I think Colin has a little crush on her. They had to do a school project together, so he’s been over to their house a few times. Summer Lane is the sister of the man Rose’s sister is married to and whose cabin I’m renting.”
“I didn’t follow that.”
Monica waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Would you be up to leaving now?”
“And get out of sweeping duty? Yeah, let’s hit the road.” He might not want to spend quiet time in a truck with Monica, but his shoulder was screaming, and this was a way of getting out of the work without admitting that.
“So,” Monica began, studying him out of the corner of her eye as they headed for where the Revival Ranch truck was parked. “Feeling better?”
“Sure.”
“You certainly had a lot to drink.”
When he looked at her, he noticed that despite all those layers, he could see her cheeks were pink and her blue eyes were shifty.
This wasn’t about therapist stuff, which pleased him way more than it should have. “If this is your shitty way of asking if I remember last night, let me answer you plain. I remember everything.”
“Everything,” she echoed, staring at her feet as they stepped one after the other into the heavy snow.
He tried to fight off a grin. “Yeah, especially the way you threw yourself at me and I so politely declined.”
She stopped in her tracks and the sound that came out of her mouth was some amazing mix of outraged screech and threatening growl.
It really shouldn’t turn him on.
“I turned you down,” she said through clenched teeth, glaring up at him.
“Oh, right.” Gabe stroked his chin with his gloved hand as if he was going back over it in his head. Then he flashed her a grin he hoped would make her turn even more red. “Regret it yet?”
She stared at him openmouthed and then shook her head, something like a laugh escaping her mouth. “You are something else.”
“Doesn’t answer my question.”
She stood there, staring at him too hard and too long, to the point he felt a little…lost in it all. Blue eyes and a mouth he desperately wanted to taste.
>
You do not want the shrink.
Except, he did. He did want this woman, no matter what she was. The only way he was going to do the sane thing was to admit it to himself. Pretending it wasn’t there wasn’t going to eradicate that want. He had to face it. Head-on.
Just not his…head. On anything.
“Maybe I don’t know the answer to your question,” she said quietly, damn near solemnly, those blue eyes of hers staring up at him as if he’d have any clue what to do with that.
They stood like that, in the cold that felt somehow like heat, eyes seemingly incapable of looking away.
Finally, she cleared her throat and gestured toward the truck. “We should head out.”
“Yup.” Yup. Head out of crazy town. ASAP.
* * *
Monica sat in the passenger side of the ranch truck trying not to relive the horror of saying Maybe I don’t know the answer to your question.
What on God’s green earth had she been thinking? And there was no alcohol to blame for that gigantic lapse in judgment.
There might be some teeny, tiny, idiotic, worthy-of-scrutiny part of her that did regret turning down Gabe’s “offer.” She might have dreamed of his voice, low and somehow seductive even drunk, which wasn’t possible.
She was hard up and losing her mind. Even camels needed water at some point, and boy, was she a sex camel. Gabe was the first offer of water she’d had in a long time. Didn’t mean the water was safe to drink.
Right. Right.
“So, where to first?” Gabe asked.
Monica rattled off her list as Gabe navigated what little traffic there was in Bozeman. It was the closest town with a box store, and while she’d ordered most of Colin’s gifts off the internet to be shipped and delivered while he was at her parents, she still needed a few odds and ends for stockings and the like.
She grabbed a cart as they entered and figured Gabe would go off on his own, but he merely followed her.
“Are you done with your Christmas shopping?” she asked, hoping he’d take the hint and vamoose.
“Gift cards aren’t complicated.”
She frowned at him as she wheeled her way to the video game aisle. “You did not get your family gift cards.”
“I didn’t get my family anything. I got my Revival family gift cards. Well, I got Becca a llama bottle opener and a gift card. Yours is to the liquor store. Colin’s is to that video game shop in Merriton. Merry Christmas.”
She opened her mouth. He’d gotten her and Colin gifts? She hadn’t…considered that. Of course, she’d planned gifts for everyone at Revival, but it hadn’t occurred to her they’d buy anything for Colin, or anything that might be a personally tailored sort of gift rather than just a rote thing you gave coworkers.
“What do you get from your family?” he asked, squinting at some display as if trying to figure out the trial video game, while Monica considered a scarf with Colin’s favorite video game villain on it.
“My mom will get me clothes. Maybe winter gear, since I’m always complaining about the cold. I shouldn’t say ‘my mom.’ It’ll be from both my parents.”
“And Colin?”
“Oh.” She pretended to study the price tag. “Well, depends.”
“On?”
“If they made something in school and he remembers to bring it home.” Which she shouldn’t have to defend. He was ten, and what would be the point of buying something for herself and having him give it to her? She glared at Gabe where he was still fiddling with the game system. “We’re not big on gifts,” she said imperiously.
“But gift cards are a travesty, huh?”
“He’s ten.” She threw the scarf in the cart. “Now, I need to get my parents books.”
“Somehow less of a travesty than a gift card?”
“Yes. Picking out a book for someone shows that you know them, and you have some clue as to what they like. It shows you’re paying attention, and that you like them.”
“So, what book are you going to get me?”
She tapped her chin, pretending to ponder it. “Maybe I’ll find one on the great art of narcissism.”
He chuckled good-naturedly.
“You can stay here and play your video games.”
“Nah, I’ll look at books.”
So they walked over to the book section of the store, and Monica tried very hard to concentrate on finding a book that her mother would like, and then her father. It was admittedly hard to concentrate with six-foot-something of former Navy SEAL just…lurking.
Which was silly. She was used to tough military men in her life. She’d been raised with one, then married to one, and none of that lurking had ever affected her. Not like this.
Sex camel. Sex camel. Only one cure for a sex camel.
“Hell,” she muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I think I’m going to have to order something for my dad. None of this really works. Besides, it’s nearly five, and we should head over to the florist.”
“Here. Try this one.” He handed her a book.
She took the heavy, dry-looking tome. She wrinkled her nose at the black-and-white picture on the front. It was some complicated-looking nonfiction book about the role of presidents during wars of the twentieth century.
Damn Gabe Cortez.
“How did you know he’d like this?” she demanded.
Gabe shrugged, taking it upon himself to push the cart toward the front of the store while she trailed behind.
“Marines are all the same. Like all that bullshit about politics and war. Like it’s complicated and not always a dick-measuring contest.”
“Is that all war is?”
“Is to me.”
“I don’t believe that.” He looked sharply over his shoulder at her, but she simply held his gaze. “You don’t join the military if you think that.”
“First of all, you don’t know the first thing about why I joined the military. Second, a lot of guys think it once they’ve been through one. Because you don’t come out unscathed from that. You either double down on what you believe, or you realize it’s all a bunch of bullshit.”
“So, you’re the enlightened, I suppose.”
“No, it’s not enlightened. It’s just how you deal. One way’s not better than the other.”
He always managed to surprise her. She was used to uncompromising military men, and there was an element of that to him. But it was somehow…open-minded. There was a lack of judgment. Gabe seemed to believe in survival however you managed it. Considering that was at the heart of her therapy mission, it was impossible not to admire him for it.
“So why did you join the military?” she asked, unable to resist. It wasn’t a therapist’s question either. No, this was a Monica question. She wanted to know, as a person, about his person.
She wasn’t sure what to do with that, but he smiled. Not those bitter ones meant to push her back a few paces, but one of his charming smiles. The ones he flashed her before he said something…suggestive. Her cheeks heated against her will and that foreign flutter from last night was back in full force.
“Sorry, sweetheart. That’s not a question I answer for just anybody.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to sound calm and not at all affected as she started putting her items on the conveyer belt of the checkout line. “What would an anybody have to do to become a somebody?” She steeled all her courage and calm and self-possession and looked pointedly at him.
But that grin didn’t change any, except maybe turn the air a little hotter. Which was impossible. All this heat was a figment of her over-wintered imagination.
“I’m not sure. No one ever has. But you’re more than welcome to take on the challenge.”
That word wound though her. Challenge. She never, ever backed down from
a challenge. It was one of those things her parents had insisted she learn to do: face any challenge, any hardship, any responsibility.
And she had. Over and over again. But this was different, because she had a bad feeling his challenge would involve nakedness.
Oh, remember male nakedness? That was nice. His would be very, very nice.
The cashier cleared her throat and Monica blushed even deeper. “Sorry,” she mumbled, fumbling to pull her credit card out of her purse. She centered herself with the rote actions of sliding the card through the reader and taking the receipt as Gabe loaded up the cart with her bags.
As they walked out of the store, side by side, Monica kept her gaze forward. “I might take that challenge,” she said hastily as they reached the truck.
“You might fail.”
She looked up at him and gave him a very carefully blank smile. She knew it irritated him by the way his lips firmed and his jaw tightened.
“I might,” she agreed, validated somehow when he was the one to break eye contact and finish loading the bags into the truck bed. “But I also might not,” she added, heading for the passenger side door.
The fact that Gabe didn’t slide into the driver’s seat for another minute or so was very validating indeed.
Chapter 9
Gabe pulled at the collar of his shirt as he, Jack, and Alex were lined up by a very overzealous friend of Becca’s mother. The barn had been transformed, the pastor from Sandra’s church was calm and ready, and the guests were all seated.
Gabe felt like a monkey on parade. “I hate suits,” he grumbled, trying not to scowl at the small group of people in attendance.
“You hate everything,” Jack replied, giving him a slight nudge as the woman arranging them glared in his direction.
It was fair enough. He also hated weddings, but he’d kept that one to himself because he was a good friend, after all.
Alex didn’t say anything. He stood, still as a statue, beside the pastor, his eyes glued to the barn doors, which would be opened when it was time to start.
“Nervous, big guy?” Gabe asked.