by Marie Force
Hearing he could picture her as the mother of his children made her want to say to hell with caution and get busy making babies. More dangerous thoughts . . . She’d reined him in, but she needed to do the same to herself. Jumping ahead to someday wasn’t wise when today required all her focus and attention.
Gavin followed her up the stairs to her apartment, each of them carrying grocery bags. This would be the first time he saw her home, and the thought of that made her oddly nervous.
She was so rattled she nearly dropped her keys. The door swung open and the scent of the sage candle she’d burned last night greeted them.
“Smells good in here,” he said as he followed her into the kitchen in the back of the small apartment.
“My favorite sage candle.” She loved being able to share even the simplest of things with him, such as her favorite scent and where she kept her cereal. Ella loved stashing his Cake Batter ice cream next to her Cherry Garcia. She loved knowing his favorite kind, and that he loved cookies, ham and white bread, as gross as that was.
Ella was reaching for the cabinet over the stove when his hands landed on her hips, making her forget what she’d been about to do.
He gathered her in close to him, his chin on her shoulder. “Sorry, but I couldn’t stand to go another second without touching you.”
She closed her eyes and focused on continuing to breathe as his nearness overwhelmed her.
“Did you need something up there?”
Gavin’s question didn’t compute until she realized he meant the cabinet. “I don’t remember what I was doing.”
His low rumble of laughter sent goose bumps down her arms and backbone. “How long do we have until we have to head to your parents’ house?”
“About forty minutes.”
He brushed aside her hair and began placing kisses on her neck that made her legs go weak under her. Fortunately, he had an arm locked around her waist to keep her from sliding to the floor. No man had ever had such an effect on her, and she was wise enough now to know that no other man ever would. He was it for her. He always had been, which was why the stakes were so high in this new game they were playing.
Then he was turning her and she couldn’t spare the brain cells to think about the high stakes or the game. Not when Gavin Guthrie was apparently planning to kiss her. He moved slowly, cupping her face in big work-roughened hands and gazing into her eyes.
She wanted to kiss him—badly—but more than that she wanted to know his thoughts. “What’re you thinking right now?”
“About how much I want to kiss you. I’m asking myself if this is real, if I really get to kiss Ella Abbott any time I want to. I’m wondering how I got lucky enough to have someone like you care so much about someone like me.”
She curled her hands around his wrists and felt his pulse hammering under her fingers. “What does that mean? Someone like you? What’s wrong with you?”
“Everything,” he said softly. “Every freaking thing is wrong with me, but for the first time in a long-ass time, I want to make what’s wrong about me right. For you.”
Ella went up on tiptoes to join her lips to his. Like him, she couldn’t believe she was now allowed to kiss him any time she wanted to. She was going to want to often. She hoped he was prepared for that. Judging by his enthusiastic response, he was more than prepared.
His hands slid down to cup her bottom, and then he was lifting her.
Ella curled her legs around his hips, bringing his hardness against her softness and drawing gasps of pleasure from both of them. Then he was lowering her to the sofa and coming down on top of her, all without losing a beat in the tongue-twisting kiss.
This kiss made the one they’d shared last summer at the beach in Burlington seem like child’s play in comparison. She’d spent all the months since thinking she knew what it was like to kiss Gavin. She’d known nothing. The kiss on the beach had been just the start of what they were capable of together.
His hand slid under her sweater and came to rest on her ribs, making her skin burn under the heat of his palm. He broke the kiss, looking down at her as if to gauge her reaction. Then he pulled back, taking his nice warm hand with him.
“I’m sorry.”
Ella covered her face with her hands.
He tugged on them until she gave way. “What did I do this time?”
“You stopped!”
“Because we have somewhere to be.”
She glanced at the clock on her cable box. “In thirty minutes.”
“That’s not enough time for what was going to happen on this sofa if I hadn’t stopped when I did.”
Her heart beat erratically. “What was going to happen?”
“Clothes were going to start coming off.” He leaned in to tug on her sweater. “Starting with yours.” His lips were swollen from kissing her, his jaw was covered in stubble, and brown plaid flannel had never been so sexy. She could lie there staring at him until tomorrow morning, and it wouldn’t be long enough to absorb the fact that Gavin was sitting on her sofa looking at her like he wanted to eat her up.
Not that she would say no to that . . .
“Quit looking at me like that,” he said gruffly.
“How am I looking at you?”
“You know. I’m trying to be honorable by not jumping you the first chance I get, and you’re lying there looking all sultry and sexy.”
“Am I?”
“Ella! Stop it.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re breathing. That’s enough for me.”
“I keep thinking I’m going to wake up, and it’s going to be Saturday night and my Cherry Garcia would’ve melted during the time I had this amazing dream about sleeping with Gavin and grocery shopping with him and making out with him.”
“You’re not dreaming, and neither am I. For the first time in a very long time, I’m having a really good day, and it’s all because of you.”
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me. All the thanks goes to you, my little bulldog.”
“Um, is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Yep. You were tenacious like a bulldog, never letting me get away with anything and calling me out on my shit. You have no idea how much I needed someone to do that.”
“I’m glad I helped, but let’s retire the bulldog analogy.”
Smiling, he tugged on her hand. “Let’s get going to your parents’ place so I can talk to your dad about the work he wants done before dinner.”
Reluctantly, Ella let him help her up, but she wished they had nowhere to be so they could continue with the kissing. The kissing was good. Very, very good.
“Is it okay with your mom if I come to dinner?”
“Oh yeah. She makes enough to feed an army every week. I think my aunt Hannah and cousin Grayson will be there today, too. I heard he was in town visiting his mom this weekend.”
“I haven’t seen him in years. He’s in Boston, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did he ever get married?”
Ella pushed her feet into the moccasins that had fallen off when he carried her to the sofa. “Nope, but you can hardly blame him after what he went through with his parents.”
“No kidding.”
Ella’s uncle Mike had walked away from his wife and eight children when the older kids were in high school and the youngest ones still in elementary school. “A lot fell to Gray as the oldest. He really stepped up for his mom and siblings. He probably has zero desire to have his own family after all that.”
“Do they ever hear from their father?”
“Occasionally, but it’s nothing regular.”
“Can you imagine a man leaving his wife and children like that?”
“No man I know would do something like that, but then again, we never thought Uncle Mike would either. He loved family life and his kids and Hannah. They were a true love match, or so we thought.”
Gavin held her coat for her before donni
ng his own coat. “Did you ever find out what went wrong?”
“Not really. My mom suspects he had some sort of breakdown or something happened with his job. But I’ve never heard the full story. I don’t know if even my mom has heard the whole thing, and Hannah is her sister.”
“And Hannah never remarried?”
“To be honest, I don’t think they ever got divorced.”
“Wow, and how many years ago was this?”
“Well, let’s see, Gray is the same age as Hunter and Hannah, and they’re going to be thirty-six in December, so almost twenty years ago, I’d say.”
“Twenty years. How’s it getting to be almost twenty years out of high school for us?”
“Don’t say us. I’m quite a bit younger than you.”
“Ha-ha,” he retorted. “Only a few years.”
“I’ve only been out of high school thirteen years, so speak for yourself.”
“I’m at seventeen, so not a geezer quite yet.”
“But getting closer every day.”
Laughing, he said, “You’re full of beans today, Ella. I like you that way.”
“Got to keep you on your toes.”
“That you do.” He held the passenger door to his truck for her and then leaned in to kiss her as he belted her in. “Kissing you is becoming my favorite thing to do.”
Ella ran her hand over the delicious stubble on his jaw. “Mine, too.”
He kissed her again. “To be continued. Later.”
“Can’t wait.”
“Mmm,” he said, his lips vibrating against hers, “me either.” He pulled away reluctantly, or so it seemed to her.
She watched him walk around the front of the truck and get into the driver’s side. It was such a strange feeling to be free to look at him any way she wanted, to let him see the full extent of her desire for him, to not have to hide it anymore the way she had for so long.
He backed out of her driveway and headed in the direction of her parents’ home. His hand found hers on the seat, and the brush of his skin against hers was all it took to set off a reaction that registered in all her most important places.
Good God . . . She had to get it together before she forgot her plans to be cautious, to take this slowly, to protect her heart. If all he had to do to make her forget about being careful was hold her hand, she was in bigger trouble than she’d thought.
After a quiet ride through Butler, they pulled into her parents’ driveway and their yellow labs, George and Ringo, came bounding across the yard to greet them. Ella got out of the truck and bent to give each dog some love. She couldn’t wait to have a home of her own someday so she could have dogs again. They’d always had dogs—all of them named John, Paul, George or Ringo—and Ella missed having pets, but that was the one thing her landlord didn’t allow.
“Where’s Mom and Dad?” she asked the dogs.
George barked and darted toward the house. The dogs rarely left her father’s side, so she took George’s word for it and followed her inside. Yes, George was a girl. It didn’t matter to Ella’s dad whether the dogs were male or female. They were all named after his favorite band of all time. He was a little over the top when it came to the Beatles, but his children indulged his obsession after being weaned on Beatles tunes growing up.
In the mudroom, Ella hung her coat and Gavin’s on the hook with her name on it. Will’s hook was to the left of hers and Charley’s to the right. The symbolic act of hanging Gavin’s coat on top of hers made Ella’s belly quiver with excitement and joy before she remembered that she was trying not to get ahead of herself. Whatever. What was that old saying about once the genie gets outside the bottle there’s no putting her back in? That about summed up her situation with Gavin. The genie was so far out of the bottle she’d never get back in at this rate.
Smiling, she glanced at Gavin and reached for his hand to lead him into the kitchen, where her mom was standing watch over something on the stove, and her dad was standing watch over her mom, hands on her hips, head tilted forward, saying something in her ear that was making Molly giggle madly.
I want that, Ella thought. To be married nearly forty years and still be giggling with the man I love. She cleared her throat. Loudly.
Lincoln Abbott turned, his face lighting up with pleasure at the sight of her and then zeroing right in on the fact that she was holding hands with Gavin Guthrie. “Hey, El, Gavin. Look, Molly, Ella’s brought Gavin.”
Molly turned down the heat under the pot on the stove and turned to hug and kiss both of them. “This is a nice surprise, Gavin.”
“Hope you don’t mind me crashing Sunday dinner.”
“Of course not. You’re always welcome here. You know that.”
“Thanks, Molly.”
Molly took a good long look at Ella before she enveloped her in a hug. “Keeping secrets, my love?” she whispered for Ella’s ear only.
Ella pulled back and smiled at her mom.
“Do we have a few minutes before dinner, Mol?” Lincoln asked.
“About twenty.”
“Let’s go look at those trees then, Gavin.”
“Sure thing.” He squeezed Ella’s shoulder and then followed her dad to the mudroom.
Ella watched them go, focusing in on the excellent fit of Gavin’s faded Levi’s jeans. Yum.
“Ahem,” Molly said the moment the door closed behind the men and dogs. “Something you want to tell me?”
“There’s been a bit of a development.”
“So I see.” Molly checked the pots on the stove and then returned her attention to Ella. “Care to share?”
“He . . . We . . . We’re giving it a whirl.”
“Well, that’s a huge development. What brought this on?”
“It’s been kinda happening for a while now.”
“I’d noticed that, but I wondered if it was somewhat one-sided.”
“It’s not one-sided.”
“Oh no?”
“No.”
Molly wiped her hands on a dish towel that she had tossed over her shoulder. “May I speak freely?”
“When have you ever not spoken freely?”
“When what I have to say might hurt one of my precious children. I tend to be a little more circumspect in those situations.”
“Whatever it is, just say it.”
“You know I love Gavin. I love him as much as I loved Caleb, and as much as I love Bob and Amelia. The Guthries are family to us.”
“I know.”
“That said, I worry about whether Gavin is in the right place, emotionally, to be what you need.”
“He’s well aware of his issues, Mom. I’m well aware of them. We’re working through them together.”
“As of when?”
“Last night.”
Molly folded her arms and leaned back against the counter. “What happened last night?”
Ella debated whether she should tell her mother the whole story. “He had a situation . . . And, apparently, I was listed in his phone as his ‘in case of emergency’ contact, so they called me. I went there—”
“Where is there?”
“A place called Red’s.”
“The biker bar on 114?”
“Yeah.”
“Eleanor Abbott! Are you telling me you went, alone, to a biker bar on a Saturday night to bail him out of yet another scrape?”
“He was there.” Ellie was determined not to squirm. “I wasn’t alone.”
“Honestly. And he condoned this?”
“He didn’t know they were calling me.”
“I don’t like this. Not one bit. Is this how it’s going to be? You bailing him out of ‘scrapes’ in bars?”
“No, that’s not how it’s going to be. He’s determined to turn things around and to make a go of it with me.”
“What if he can’t turn things around? What if he only wishes he could and you get swept up in the mess he’s been making of his life lately?”
“I don’t know, Mom!
I don’t know what’s going to happen or if he’s going to be able to be what I want and need. What I do know is that I’ve wanted a real, legitimate chance with him for years, and now that I finally have one, I’m not going to squander it by worrying about what might happen.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt, Ella.”
“I don’t want that either, but I refuse to spend the rest of my life wondering what could’ve been because I was so afraid to get hurt that I didn’t even try.” She swiped at her face, angered by the tears that wet her cheeks. Why was she crying?
Molly drew her into a hug. “Sweetheart, listen to me. No one wants you to be happy more than I do. I know how much you care for him. Anyone can see that. It’s just that he . . . Well, you may not be able to fix what’s broken inside him, sweet girl.”
“I can at least try, can’t I?”
“Of course you can. I just want you to be careful to protect yourself, and I don’t want you going to biker bars alone. You got me?”
“I’m thirty-one years old, Mom. If I want to go to a biker bar, alone or otherwise, I will.”
“I don’t care if you’re thirty-one or a hundred and one, you’re still my baby.”
“You’re planning to stick around until I’m a hundred and one, aren’t you?”
“You bet I am. This family would go to hell in a handbasket without me.”
“That’s the truth.” Eager to change the subject, Ella said, “What’s for dinner?”
“Roasted chicken and all the fixings.”
“Sounds good. What can I do to help?”
With the dogs running ahead of them, Gavin walked with Lincoln across the yard to the tree line.
“Couldn’t help but notice you happened to be holding my little girl’s hand when you came into the house.”
Whoa, Gavin thought, we’re going to dive right into it, are we? “Yes, I was. She’s got very nice hands.”
“Everything about her is nice.”