More Than Neighbors (24 page)

This time, she was the one to collapse slowly on top of him, feeling boneless, sated and happy. Yes,
happy
, like she could never remember being before.

Gabe’s powerful arms closed around her, and he nuzzled her forehead, his lips soft, his nose bumping her. Listening to the hard tattoo of his heartbeat, loving the soft, springy feel of his chest hair beneath her cheek, Ciara smiled.

He mumbled something.

“Hmm?” It was too much effort to formulate a word.

“I said,” his voice was husky, a little slurred, “is this slow enough for you?”

Her forehead creased. What? “Slow? That wasn’t exactly slow.”

“You wanted to take it slowly.” She could feel his lips moving against her temple. “That’s what you said.”

Oh. That kind of slow.

She mulled over what he’d said, and, more, some underlying tension in his tone.

Carefully, she separated herself from him so that she could push herself up enough to see his face. She was suddenly conscious of her nakedness in an entirely different way than she had been.

“You don’t like it.”

“I like everything about you, Ciara. Except I’m starting to wonder whether this is all you want.” There were troubled lines on his forehead. “Sneaking over here in stolen moments. Pretending the rest of the time that we’re nothing but friendly neighbors.”

She grabbed a pillow and clutched it in front of her. “What do you suggest? I say, ‘Hey, Mark, I’m running down to Gabe’s for some sex’?”

“You know that’s not what I’m suggesting.” He took her hand in his. “I’d like for us to go out to dinner. To maybe kiss good-night in front of him. To let him know something is happening between us.” He went quiet for a minute. “Unless you don’t think anything is.”

“Of course I do!” she flared. “What do you call this?” A waved hand encompassed the bed, them.

“Sex,” he said, his jaw muscles spasming. “Although I thought we were making love.”

Her heart pinched. “We are,” she whispered. “It’s not like...like I just want a quickie. You don’t have to make it sound—”

“I’m sorry.” His voice had softened. “I’m pushing you.”

“I don’t even know what you want.”

Those gray eyes took in her face, her doubt, her fears. “I think you do,” he said gently. “I told you I had expectations.”

She wanted what he was implying. She wanted it so fiercely, she almost doubled over from the pain.

“What’s wrong, Ciara?” He was reading her mind. “What aren’t you telling me?”

That made her stiffen. “What makes you think I’m hiding something?” she asked sharply.

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

“It’s only been a few weeks.”

Did that sound as weak to him as it did to her?

Yes, she saw in his eyes that it did.

The truth was, she’d been falling in love with him almost from the moment she saw him walking toward her and Mark that first day, big and closed off and unfriendly. When, despite the unfriendliness, he hadn’t been able to make himself be unkind to Mark.

Sexy
and
kind. What could be more irresistible than that?

But...he was right. If he knew about Bridget, knew what she, Ciara, carried in her genes, knew her shame, he wouldn’t want her anymore. She was the one to search his face now, hunting for hope.

Might
not want her anymore, she tried to tell herself.

It was like falling off a cliff. One minute so happy, the next scared. Her pulse seemed to pound in her head, blurring her vision. He wasn’t going to let them go on like this, snatching at small pockets of happiness. He was going to insist on the whole shebang...except she couldn’t offer that without letting him see the stain on her character. And, oh, she didn’t want to. She didn’t.

I could tell him a little.
It was the cowardice in her that had her begging.
See how he reacts.

But he wouldn’t understand, not unless he met Bridget. Bridget in the abstract was one thing, in the real, disruptive, disturbing
right there
reality, another.

Ciara didn’t know which would be worse: Gabe horrified by her sister, repulsed by the possibility that, if they had a child together, he or she might be like her, or Gabe gentle and, yes, kind with Bridget, and stunned to find that Ciara wasn’t as good a person as he’d thought her to be.

No, she knew which would be worse—and which was likeliest.

“I need to go home,” she said, suddenly frantic. Still trying to hide behind the pillow, she scooted off the bed and snatched up her jeans and panties from the floor. Her shirt—there. Her bra lay half under the bed.

Gabe sat up. She felt waves of hurt coming from him. She was behaving as if she was afraid of him, and it wasn’t that at all. But she had to show him she wasn’t, she realized. Or—not physically afraid anyway. Fleeing to the bathroom to get dressed wasn’t an option. After a moment, she let the pillow go and bent to step into her panties then her jeans.

Following her example, Gabe dressed, too. All the lines in his face seemed to have deepened. The sight of him, wounded by
her
, made her feel sick to her stomach.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last.

Shirt in hand, he looked at her across the bed. “Sorry for what?”

“For freaking like this.”

“I was pushy. Maybe I should apologize for that,” he said slowly.

“No. You’re not the one who should be apologizing. I’m just...” Just what? A coward?
Yes
. “There are things I haven’t told you,” she admitted.

He stiffened. “You aren’t still married, are you?”

“No! I’ve been divorced since Mark was six. It’s...nothing like that.” She bent to put on her socks and shoes, hopping in place, wishing he did have that rocking chair in here.

“I need a chair in here,” he said, looking around. It had to be obvious to him, too, there was no space.

She’d been tempted to ask before whether all the bedrooms in the house were this small, but hadn’t, because she suspected she knew. He’d moved out of the master bedroom after his wife died. She wondered if he kept it as some sort of shrine. It and his daughter’s bedroom. The wondering had hurt, so she had blocked it out until this fleeting pang.

“This is fine.” She was done anyway. Thank goodness for clogs that didn’t have to be laced.

Then they looked at each other across that bed, until the silence had gone on too long.

He was the one to say, “I can be patient, Ciara,” although those little lines carving his forehead remained.

That felt like a blow. He was the most patient person she’d ever known.
She
was the one with flaws, deep, ugly ones. The kind that would have him tossing a chunk of wood away. She’d seen him do that, when he discovered the clear grain that showed on the surface didn’t go all the way through.

“Can we talk about this another time?” she begged. “I really do need to go home.”

“Sure.”

He followed her out, but he didn’t kiss her goodbye and disappeared inside his workshop even before she started down the driveway. That scared her, but who could blame him? If it had been the other way around—oh, there was no doubt what conclusions she’d have jumped to.
All he wants is sex. I’m handy, but he has no intention of acknowledging any kind of relationship in front of other people.
That’s what she’d have thought.

She knew what she had to do, but the resolution felt like a huge, horrible bruise. An old one, maybe, with so many shades of color they couldn’t be described. The pain of it was so familiar, she forgot about it for long stretches of time, until she moved wrong. Stretched.

Fell in love.

She’d always believed in peeling off bandages in one quick yank. So she’d just do it.

She would call her mother as soon as she got home.

* * *

“
G
RANDMA AND
G
RANDAD
are coming!” Mark announced as soon as he arrived for his woodworking lesson the morning after the scene that had Gabe on edge. “Did Mom tell you?”

One of those things she didn’t want to talk about? Or had she talked to her parents yesterday, sometime after she left Gabe?

“No,” he said. “This been in the works?”

“Uh-uh.” The boy frowned. “I mean, Mom kept saying we’d have to have them someday, ’cuz they’d want to see our place, but not like she knew when they
were
coming. Aunt Bridget is coming, too,” he added, as if the addition were a minor and relatively meaningless fact.

Gabe didn’t miss the phrasing: we’d
have
to have them. A lot of enthusiasm there.

“Aunt Bridget?” he said. “This your mom’s sister?” Not Mark’s father’s sister, surely.

“Yeah. She’s...” Mark didn’t often hesitate, but this was an exception. “She’s...I don’t know. You’ll see.”

So Ciara did have a sibling. Now, it might be chance she hadn’t mentioned her before; maybe they were far apart in age or not close for some other reason. But Ciara’s reticence when it came to talking about her family was so notable, Gabe’s antenna quivered.

“When’s this visit happening?” he asked casually, as he wiped clean a saw blade and put it away to clear a worktable for Mark’s project.

Mark looked at him as if he was nuts. “They’re coming for my birthday. That’s next week, you know. Grandma said it was lucky she hadn’t already mailed my presents. They’ll be here Tuesday. Grandma said they might stay a whole week, if Aunt Bridget is okay with it.”

Gabe translated that to whether Aunt Bridget could get that long off work.

“Now, where were we?” he asked, getting down to business.

“Don’t you
remember
?” Mark looked shocked.

A smile tugged at Gabe’s mouth. “I remember. I’m checking to see if you do.”

“I get to stain my box today.” The boy did the hopping from one foot to the other thing, as if standing still was impossible when he was excited. It reminded Gabe of a restive horse prancing. “And then as soon as it’s dry, I can put the finish on. So then it’ll be done.”

“Except for hardware. I’m thinking hinges for sure.”

“And a latch. Maybe one with a little lock.”

“Good idea. Once you start getting notes from girls, you won’t want your mom to be able to read them.”

Mark’s face scrunched up. “Why would
girls
write me notes?”

“Now, come on. You can’t tell me you aren’t starting to notice pretty girls.”

Watching the way Mark’s gaze slid away, Gabe thought,
Aha
. So he was.

“Well, they won’t be writing
me
,” he mumbled.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know any, for one thing. Plus...you know. That stuff we talked about.” He didn’t have to say the word aloud:
weird
.

“You know Jennifer Weeks,” Gabe pointed out. “She’s only a year younger than you.”

“She’s my
friend
,” the boy objected. “That’s different.”

Too often, that was true. Even so, Gabe said mildly, “Doesn’t have to be. A girlfriend
should
be a friend.” He shook himself. “What say we get to work?”

Staining didn’t take long. Almost sorry that Mark had just taken—and aced!—the test to show mastery of seventh-grade work, Gabe asked if he was doing any math on his own.

“A little, but just fun stuff.” He smirked. “When I said I might do more this summer, Mom said
she
wasn’t doing any schoolwork until September.”

“I suspect teachers of all kinds look forward to summer as much as kids do.”

Mark’s surprise suggested he’d never thought of his teachers as human beings before. Come to think of it, Gabe reflected, that probably hadn’t crossed his mind, either, when he was that age.

Gabe didn’t have much selection of miniature latches and the like—he built large, not small—but he let Mark look through what he did have and then browse a catalog.

“I was thinking,” Mark said, in an ultra-casual voice. “It’s almost Mom’s birthday, too. Hers is in August.”

Interested, Gabe waited.

“So, do I have to quit coming when I’m done with my box?” he asked in a rush. “Or do you think I could make another one? Because then I could give this one to Mom.”

The thought was generous, even if it was clear that, if there was to be only one box, Mark was keeping it.

“You can keep coming,” Gabe said without hesitation, although with some bemusement. Not all that long ago, he’d assumed these sessions were of limited duration. Give the kid some basic skills, send him on his way. Now? Now he wanted this relationship to become something else—family—but Ciara’s reaction to his hints suggested that possibility was somewhere between unlikely and not happening. “If you make a second box, you can work more unsupervised. Just ask if you don’t remember how to do something. Or we can experiment using a different technique.”

“Can we do dovetail corners?” Mark asked eagerly. “They’re so cool-looking.”

They could be shaped in different ways to add a strong decorative element, too. Gabe smiled. “Why not?”

Mark finally hopped on his bike for the ride home after saying with satisfaction, “Then I’ll give this box to Mom. It’ll be the best birthday present
ever
.”

Gabe thought it would be, too.

Quiet settled in the old barn once the boy was gone, leaving Gabe to brood instead of getting back to his own work.

The next move had to come from Ciara. If she cared about him at all, she had to share whatever it was that ate at her, that kept her from talking about her childhood and family. His stomach tightened whenever he tried to imagine what that might be. Her marriage had obviously been no picnic, and the way her ex treated his son made Gabe feel violent in a way foreign to him. But she was willing to talk about all that.

Had she been abused? But if so, he couldn’t imagine why she’d invite her parents to stay, or allow them to have a relationship with Mark. She would protect her son from anyone, tooth and nail. And Mark had sounded excited about having his grandparents here. So it couldn’t be that simple, that obvious.

He swore out loud. Why wouldn’t she trust him enough to tell him? After her initial wariness, she did trust him with her son.