“Excuse me, please.” A waiter paused behind her, and Katherine realized she was blocking his way.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, and stepped aside so he could pass. As the waiter moved on, Gabe looked up and saw her. If the slant of his smile hadn’t leaped across the room to reach her, she might have held on to the righteous indignation that had brought her this far. If he hadn’t looked so happy to see her, so pleased by the simple fact of her presence, maybe she could have managed a face-saving aggravation.
But he rose, slowly pushing back his chair, the warmth in his whiskey-brown eyes welcoming her even before she was close enough to take a seat. Which she had had no intention of doing, but which now seemed imperative. The wobbly feeling at the backs of her knees did not bode well for remaining upright. She managed to traverse the space between them without losing her balance, but the moment he reached across and touched her hand, she felt the impact of attraction all the way to her toes and knew she’d better sit...immediately, if not sooner.
“Katherine,” he said, his voice flowing over her like raw silk warmed in the sun. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” He pulled up another chair, snatching it away from the nearest table without asking permission from the couple seated there. With great chivalry, he scooted the chair close to his and held it as she gratefully sank onto its sturdiness, all the while wondering what had happened to the cool and perfectly justified anger she had felt only a moment before. What in the world was wrong, when just the look in a man’s eyes could knock the stuffing right out of her? She was lucky he wasn’t wearing his coat, or she’d have been toast—with butter—right then and there.
“Hi, Mom.” Andy spared her a glance before resuming his rapt gaze out the window. “Santa Claus is throwing reindeer.”
“And presents,” Abby added without breaking her concentration.
“Hi, Katherine. Isn’t he good?” Janeen scooted back her chair, to allow an unobscured view of the dock outside, and of the juggler who was dressed like Santa and who was tossing stuffed reindeer and various wrapped packages into the air with apparent ease.
“I don’t know how long he can keep up the show, but they’ve been fascinated since he started.” Gabe nodded at the twins. “And still. I didn’t think they knew how to sit so still.”
She leaned toward Gabe, being cautious not to get too close. “I’m furious with you,” she whispered, hoping that the act of saying the words would reignite the feeling. “Absolutely furious.”
“Good,” he whispered back. “I always prefer it when women feel passionately toward me.”
Annoyance made a quarter turn inside her. “This is first cousin to kidnapping, you know.”
He leaned nearer, bringing the scent of his cologne and the subtle aroma of cinnamon and coffee with him. “No relationship at all,” he said. “I’m here completely of my own free will.”
Feeling more irritated by the moment, Katherine brought her commanding gaze to the man who had caused her to lose a lot more sleep last night than Abby’s half hour of upset stomach. “I asked you to stay out of our lives.”
Gabe took in the sparkle in her eyes, the high angle of her chin, the tenseness in her shoulders, the flush of excitement on her cheeks, and decided that whatever she was afraid of in him, she was equally enamored of. “I know you did, Katherine, and I thought about it. But I just don’t see that happening.”
“You don’t see...” She started repeating his statement, as if she must have misunderstood, then turned more fully toward him, the light of battle in her stormy eyes. “Well, do you see yourself being slapped with a restraining order?” she asked. “Because that’s beginning to look like a distinct possibility.”
Gabe decided this was the show to watch. Kate had the juggler beat all to pieces. “There’s no need to get so upset just because I can’t remember kissing you.”
She opened her mouth to refute that, but nothing came out, and she ended up just staring at him for a minute. “That has nothing to do with this,” she finally said.
“I think it does. I think that’s what all of this is about.”
“Well, it isn’t,” she snapped, but there was a note of distraction in her voice now. “I’m sorry I ever even told you about that. Forget it.”
Gabe put his lips so close to her ear he almost singed them on her furious blush. “Kissing you is all I can think about.”
She pulled back so fast he thought she would fall out of the chair. “But you can’t. That’s...impossible. You don’t remember anything about it.”
“Doesn’t stop me from thinking, Kate. Doesn’t stop me from imagining what it was like, how it felt. You’ve remembered that one kiss for a year,” he pointed out. “Next time I won’t forget...not a single detail. You can count on it.”
She gulped. He heard her. “There won’t be a next—”
“Oh, look!” Janeen’s exclamation drew Katherine’s attention, but Gabe was slower to follow her gaze to the entertainment on the other side of the window. His eyes lingered on her, his thoughts centered on the tight feeling in his chest. He’d dated plenty of women, been infatuated a thousand times, and imagined himself in love one time too many. But he’d never known a woman who he believed was so infatuated with him...and so desperately determined not to be. He could no more walk away from that mystery than everyone around him could keep from smiling as the Santa Claus juggler stopped tossing inanimate objects to comically scratch a visible, moving itch in his heavily padded belly.
When a small black head poked out, the juggler mimed astonishment, and Andy turned to look, wide-eyed, at Gabe. “It’s a monkey! Look! He’s got a monkey in his suit!”
Applause spattered around them, and the diners returned to their meals as the red-suited juggler put the monkey on his shoulder and began gathering up his props.
“I knew it was a monkey,” Abby announced as she slid down into her seat. “And I knew he wasn’t the real Santa the minute I saw him.” She arched an accusing eyebrow at Gabe. “You said Santa Claus was going to be here, so where is he?”
“I said I heard he was spotted in Central Park,” Gabe explained easily. “Maybe he’s at Wollman Rink.”
“Ice-skating?” Abby sat straight, interest written all over her face.
“He’s too fat to ice-skate.” Andy took his fork and began to spear green beans without mercy. “Hey, Mom, guess what? Gabe eats snails. I watched him.”
“We’re not going ice-skating.” Katherine scooted her chair an infinitesimal degree away from Gabe’s. “We’re going to the museum.”
Janeen picked up her purse. “Guess it’s time I headed back to the office.”
“Mom, please, can’t we go ice-skating?”
“Snails are slimy slugs, and Gabe ate a whole bunch of ’em.”
“Thanks for lunch, Gabe.”
“My pleasure,” he answered Janeen, wondering how he could persuade Katherine to spend the afternoon with him, wondering if he could ever be alone with her.
“Don’t you like slimy snails, Gabe?” Andy had been furtively sliding green beans off his plate and onto the floor all during lunch, but now he’d changed tactics and skewered the leftovers onto his fork. Gabe kept an eye on him, figuring it was only a matter of time before he fired them across the table at Abby.
“I do,” Gabe said. “I like snails. Uh, Katherine, does Janeen have to go back to the office?”
“Yes. No. Why?”
“If she takes the twins to the rink, I could take you to the museum.” He tried to make it sound logical, a simple solution to a perplexing problem, but he could see she wasn’t going to buy it. “Wouldn’t that be all right with you guys?” He turned to the twins, counting on their enthusiasm.
“Yes!” Abby bounded up to throw her arms around Janeen’s knees, lest she get away. “Please, please, please, Janeen! Take us, pleas
e. I’ll teach you to ice-skate. I’m real good at it.”
“Well, I...” Janeen looked to Katherine for instructions.
“I don’t want to go to no dumb museum.” Andy tilted the tines of the fork forward, testing his aim.
“Any dumb museum,” Katherine corrected, turning to Gabe. “And thank you, but no, thank you. We’re going to go to the museum.”
“All right. We’ll all go to the museum.” Putting his hands at her waist, he moved her aside and reached around her to scuttle the launch of the green-bean missile.
“Hey!” Andy frowned as Gabe lifted the loaded fork and set it aside. “I was gonna eat those.”
“I want to go ice-skating!” Abby’s plaintive protest ended in tears. “Please, Mom, let Janeen take me ice-skating.”
Katherine looked lost, suddenly, and Gabe picked up his coat, motioning to the twins to get theirs. “You’re coming with me,” he told Katherine. “They’re going to the rink with Janeen. No arguments.”
To his amazement, there wasn’t one.
But only because Janeen slipped on a green bean and sprained her ankle.
CHAPTER EIGHT
GABE DRAPED HIS arm around the back of the spectators’ bench and wished he’d brought his other coat. “Are you warm enough?”
“Fine.” Katherine huddled next to him, her scarf looped twice around her neck, her chin burrowed into its wooly warmth, her gloved hands forming a pocket of insulation around a foam cup. Steam escaped from a slit in the lid and wafted upward, laden with the aroma of hot coffee. “They’re bound to get tired of being out in this cold pretty soon.”
Gabe looked across the ice, easily locating the bright pink and purple parkas amid the multicolored bundles skating round and round Wollman Rink. From where he and Katherine sat on the row of benches in the parents’ gallery, he couldn’t see the twins’ expressions, but he’d have bet a hundred dollars they weren’t feeling the cold. From the way they were skating, darting awkwardly first toward, then away from each other, it was obvious to him that they were playing tag, and expending a lot of healthy energy to do it, too. “They don’t look cold,” he said and Katherine sighed, her breath escaping in a visible puff. “You can wait inside, if you want,” he offered. “I’ll watch them.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to stay, you know.”
“Oh, I think I do. After all, I’m the one who told them Santa would be here.”
Katherine’s eyes cut to his face, then returned to the twins as they rounded the far curve. “I thought we agreed you’d call off this ridiculous quest to find the real Santa Claus.”
“I don’t believe that’s what we agreed at all.”
“I’m angry with you for taking the twins out today without my permission.”
He nodded, acknowledging her right to the emotion. “Janeen did call the office to ask you if it would be okay.”
“She left a message which said, ‘G.H. was sure you wouldn’t mind,’ which is not the same as asking.”
“She told me you didn’t care.”
“And you believed her?”
He felt it was only fair that he admit some culpability in the deception. “I figured that at some point in the conversation you had said the actual words I don’t care. I just chose to accept Janeen’s interpretation that it was all right with you. But I didn’t know she hadn’t talked to you at all.”
“Don’t do it again, Gabe.”
He turned toward her, taking note of her seriousness. “You weren’t worried, were you?”
Her lips tightened. “If it had been anyone other than you and Janeen, I’d have been angry and terrified.”
“I never thought of it like that.” He was honestly surprised that he hadn’t. “I’m always so conscious of security, I just assumed you knew they’d be safe with me.”
“If I didn’t believe that, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me, now.” She raised the cup and blew softly on the steam. “But that isn’t to say I’m ready to give you carte blanche to drop by anytime you feel like it and take them out to lunch.”
Gabe was pleased beyond reason that she trusted him, flattered that she did so intuitively, and suddenly terribly conscious of the responsibility of that trust. “I’m sorry, Katherine. I didn’t even stop to think about it from your perspective. It won’t happen again.”
“No, it won’t.”
He decided to ignore the implications of that. It was one thing to be sorry because he had caused her to worry, another thing entirely to bow politely out of the picture just because he worried her. “From now on,” he said conversationally, “you’ll know everything I’m going to do up-front.”
“That’s a comfort,” she said dryly.
“Mom! Gabe! Look at us!” Andy waved as he and Abby skated past, their padded arms jerking up and down for balance, as if they were walking a tightrope instead of a solid sheet of ice.
“Isabelle Kinser skates with the Junior Olympians,” Katherine remarked pensively, her gaze following the twins as their legs scissored forward and back with unskilled but highly enthusiastic precision. Gabe watched their progress with more pride than he had ever taken in his own ability to zip around the rink chasing a hockey puck.
“Isabelle Kinser is going to grow up to be a snob, no matter how well she can skate,” he observed.
“So, you’re saying I should be happy my children won’t have the same opportunities as Isabelle to become snobs.”
“I’m saying Isabelle Kinser hasn’t a hope of ever reaching the level of self-worth that Abby and Andy already possess.”
She sighed heavily. “I guess her lower level of self-worth would be why Isabelle’s in school right now and Abby and Andy are suspended.” Katherine sipped her coffee. “I really should have insisted they spend the afternoon at the museum.”
“What for?”
“Because they might learn something?” she suggested with a touch of sarcasm. “Because since they’re not in school, they ought to be spending their afternoon doing something a little less fun and a little more educational?”
“Who says ice-skating isn’t educational?” he challenged. “Look at them. They’re out there on the ice having fun and learning things you couldn’t pound into their heads in school or a museum.”
“Like what? The law of gravity?”
He grinned. “They appear to be absorbing that one from the bottom up. But just think of all the other hands-on experience they’re getting in physics...the theory of relativity, the principles of momentum and resistance.”
“I don’t know about the theory of relativity, but they were born knowing about momentum and resistance. Any other bright ideas on what scientific principles they’re absorbing out there?”
“Well, they’re exploring the theory that an object set in motion, tends to stay in motion.”
“Mmm...sounds iffy to me, unless the discovery would be that an ice-skater, once set in motion, can only be stopped by resistance, gravity, or the toe of her brother’s ice skate.”
He laughed. “See, I told you, they’re getting a well-rounded education right here at Wollman Rink.”
“A well-grounded one, at any rate. Still, I can’t help but think I’m rewarding them for bad behavior.”
“I think if anyone’s being rewarded for bad behavior, it’s you.”
“Me? What have I done?”
“You hung up on me, for one thing.”
“I did not.”
“You did, and you also made certain I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“I don’t see how you can hold me responsible for your inability to sleep.”
He let his glance slide to her lips, let her own memory of their once-upon-a-time kiss rise to accuse her.
She lifted her chin in denial. “That gaze may work
beautifully on women who know how to purr, Gabe, but I’m not one of them.”
He shrugged, satisfied by the defensiveness in her response. “Ah, well, purring is overrated, in my humble opinion. Unless, of course, it comes from a cat. Have you ever given any thought to trading Abby’s stuffed lion for a kitten?”
Turning her head, she frowned at him with all the fierceness of a lioness. “No, I haven’t, and I don’t intend to, either. I don’t care if she did tell you that story about Matilda being a real kitten before a wicked witch—who just happens to look like me, as Abby loves to point out—turned her into a raggedy toy lion. We are not getting a kitten.”
“Obviously a sore point. I suppose, there’s no need to even ask about Sparky, the dog?”
“Imaginary,” she informed him. “Sparky, the imaginary dog. And that’s the way I intend for him to stay, too.”
“You don’t like animals.”
“I do like animals,” she said on a sigh. “But an apartment in the city is no place for one. I can’t take on the responsibility of a pet...the feeding, walking, training, walking, watering and, of course, walking. And don’t even suggest I could hire one of those pet-care services. I just don’t see the point.”
“Can I bring my dog to visit?” he asked, although he didn’t own a dog and wasn’t sure he remembered how to operate one.
“Is he obedience-trained?”
Gabe tried for an offended look. “His manners are impeccable...like his master’s.”
“Then I suppose it might be all right. Once. Abby and Andy would love it, but I’ll warn you now, they’ll bounce off the wall with excitement, so you may want to give the poor dog a tranquilizer before you come.”
“I’ll do that,” he agreed with a smile, wondering when it would hit her that she had just invited him over.
“Hey, Mom!” Abby yelled from some distance back. “Watch me! I’m going to do a spin!”
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