More Than Neighbors (9 page)

The dog kept big brown eyes trained on Gabe’s face. His tail swung wildly.

“Watson!”

“It’s okay,” Gabe said. “He’s excited because I’m new, that’s all.” He laid a hand on Mark’s thin shoulder and gently squeezed. “You’re right. He seems a little less excitable.”

“Mom makes me take him out for runs all the time.” His face scrunched. “She says I need the exercise, too.”

Gabe laughed. “She’s right.”

“Mom made one of my favorite dinners. I told her I bet you’d like it, too.”

“So what’s this favorite dinner?”

Watson whirled around them as they walked toward the porch. Gabe noted how many boards on the steps were cracked. Might be an ideal example of good, practical carpentry Mark could help him with.

“Manicotti. Mom makes really great manicotti.”

Gabe’s stomach growled. Lunch seemed like a long time ago.

Daisy was waiting on the porch, her tail wagging. He stopped to give her a good scratch and speak softly to her, even though Watson and Mark were seething with impatience. They all entered the house together.

“Mom won’t let Watson in the kitchen when she’s cooking or when we eat,” Mark confided. “Only tonight we’re eating in the dining room—you know, because you’re a guest—so I have to shut him in my bedroom. He might howl.”

“I suppose you can’t put Daisy in with him.”

“Uh-uh. She can’t climb the stairs.”

“She looks good, though,” Gabe observed. “I think she’s walking a little better.”

“Mom’s giving her some pills the vet suggested. Do you know Dr. Roy?”

“He takes care of my horses. Rides in cutting-horse competitions, too.”

“Really?”

Gabe nodded toward the staircase. “Why don’t you go on and take Watson up? I’ll go say hello to your mom.”

“Okay.” The two raced up the stairs, sounding, as Gabe’s mother would have said, like a herd of elephants.

He pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen then stopped, hit with sensory overload. The manicotti smelled amazing, and Ciara was bent over, removing garlic bread from the oven. The sight of her in tight jeans and a frilly lemon-yellow apron made his mouth water in a different way. She either heard the door or his stomach growling again, because she swung around quickly, her eyes startled.

“Oh! I heard your pickup, but I thought maybe Mark had dragged you upstairs to see his room.”

Gabe ambled forward, hoping he looked unthreatening, although he wasn’t sure why it mattered. It might be best if she did find him intimidating. “No, he’s currently dragging Watson upstairs to lock him in solitary confinement.”

Ciara made a face. “I swear that dog’s last family must have let him help himself to food right off their plates. I refuse to gobble down my meals, ready at every moment to defend my food.”

Gabe found himself smiling at the picture. “Might be good for your reflexes.”

“More likely it would cause indigestion.” She tilted her head. “Was he coming right back down? Dinner is ready to go on the table.”

“I think so.”

Feet thundered on the stairs.

“Can I carry anything?” Gabe asked.

She gave him the salad bowl and carried the glass baking pan filled with manicotti herself, using crocheted potholders, then went back for the garlic bread.

“This is our first meal in the dining room,” she said, pulling out her chair.

As he took his own seat, Gabe looked around reflectively. As with the rest of the house, Ephraim had let the room get shabby. In retrospect, Gabe felt guilty that he hadn’t done more to help. At the time, he’d thought his neighbor would be insulted at any implication he was letting his place get run-down.

The house was solidly built, older than his own, Gabe thought, but the wallpaper was peeling, the wood floors were scratched and had lost much of their finish, and the molding needed either to be refinished or painted.

Ciara handed him the spoon to serve himself first. “Do you know Vince Mays? Audrey Stevens recommended him.” Her thoughts had obviously paralleled his, or else she’d been able to tell what he was thinking. “I may hire him to refinish the floors. Although now I’m trying to figure out how we can do it and keep living here.”

“It would be tough,” he said honestly. “Especially with the dogs.”

She sighed. “I may put it off, but now I feel guilty since he came all the way out here.”

“I was thinking the front porch steps need replacing. Mark could help me do the job. It’d be a good learning experience for him.”

The boy’s face lit with pleasure. “I can? You mean, saw the boards and nail them and everything?”

“I don’t see why not.” Gabe helped himself to some broccoli then passed it to Ciara. Their fingers brushed. He felt like he’d just touched a hot burner.

“I can’t ask you—” she began.

“You didn’t. I offered. Mark’s old enough to be doing some of the basic work, once he learns how.”

“Really?” She must have heard how doubtful she sounded, because she glanced at her son, but he was glowing and appeared not to have noticed. Gabe had come to realize that Mark didn’t notice much about what other people were thinking or feeling. He was oblivious to the subtle cues that worked for most people. Discouraging him would have taken more cruelty than Gabe wanted to employ.

“Why not?” he said. “He’s doing fine with what we’ve been working on.”

He had a feeling she wouldn’t have wanted him to see her surprise, but he did. He pondered it as they all started eating. Was the boy such a screw-up, then? Gabe wouldn’t have guessed it. He seemed smart, and his concentration was impressive. Gabe liked that he was meticulous, too. He hated making mistakes as much as Gabe did.

The first bite of manicotti had him stifling a moan. This would be one of his favorite meals, too.

Ciara asked questions about Goodwater, mentioning folks she’d already met. He told her most people stocked up on groceries and other supplies with an occasional run to the city, the way she was talking about doing. She wanted to explore fabric stores in Spokane one of these days, too, which had Mark grimacing and the corners of Gabe’s mouth twitching. At that age, hanging around a fabric store would have been his idea of a fate worse than death, too.

He eyed the manicotti, wondering if it was too soon to take a second helping. Or would she expect him to eat his broccoli first?

She saw the direction of his attention. “Please, have more.”

He didn’t hesitate, but tried to disguise his gluttony with some conversation. “Mark says you have your own business, but he was a little vague about what you do.”

She gave her son a fond look. “That’s because he doesn’t see the appeal. I make custom pillows. Decorative ones,” she added after seeing Gabe’s blank expression. “I also sell one-of-a-kind pillows in a bunch of small home-decor-type stores, but my specialty is using a piece of fabric that holds sentimental value to someone as the centerpiece of a pillow.” This time, she smiled at his bemusement. “Say you were the starting forward for your high school basketball team, and you’ve treasured that jersey all these years. Instead of it being stuck in the bottom of a drawer, I cut it apart and use it with some complementary fabrics to make a pillow that looks really cool on your family room sofa. It’s right there, making you happy because you’re reminded more often of your glory days, plus people notice and comment on it, and you can laugh and say, “Isn’t it a kick?” But hey, now you get the chance to tell people about your stardom without having to figure out a way to work the conversation around to it.”

Gabe considered the idea. “That’s damn clever. Sports jerseys, huh?”

“That’s only an example, although I’ve had people send me a bunch of those. But I’ve sewn lacy pillows out of wedding or prom dresses—the prom ones are fun for girls to take to college for their dorm room. I can make gorgeous pillows from tattered family quilts that might have been thrown away otherwise. An Olympic gymnast sent me her leotard. I sewed a whole set of pillows from a World War II uniform with the patches as accents. I never know what I’ll get, so I try to keep a varied selection of fabrics to go with anything and everything. Sometimes I have to head out to search for something that’ll work, but...hmm, I have a certain style, and I like certain looks.” She shrugged.

“How do customers find you?” he asked, deeply intrigued.

“Website. My business is called Pillow Talk.”

“Sounds racy.”

She grinned. “If that draws attention...”

“I’ll have to take a look at it.”

Her nose looked cute when she scrunched it up. “Except it has a whole lot of pictures showing examples, which means it would take you twenty minutes for it to load. It never even occurred to me there were places still without high-speed internet.”

“Yeah, browsing the internet isn’t something you do in a hurry in these parts. There’s talk that high-speed is coming, though. The cable TV company is working on bringing it to us.”

“That I could get excited about.”

“Me, too,” Mark interjected. He’d been getting restless, Gabe had seen out of the corner of his eye. Mom’s business didn’t interest him. “There’s all these cool sites, but they take so long they’re hardly worth it. And the library in town is so
small
.”

Gabe raised his eyebrows. “Goodwater is a small town. We’re lucky to have a library at all.” He suspected he sounded defensive, but didn’t care. “You can order anything that’s in the system, you know, and interlibrary loan is faster than you’d think.”

“I’ve already ordered a few books, and Mrs. Upton was really helpful,” Ciara put in.

There was something in her voice, though, that made him wonder. Gloria Upton might be helpful, but she was also a busybody. Gabe didn’t know of any other kids in the area who were being homeschooled. Gloria might have been scandalized by the very idea that this newcomer didn’t think Goodwater schools were good enough for her son.

Come to think of it, did that have something to do with Ciara’s decision to teach Mark at home? Had she wanted a rural lifestyle, but assumed her kid was too good for the small school in a backwater town like this? And this from a woman who obviously couldn’t handle the math her son was supposed to be learning?

Would she tell him why she was homeschooling if he asked? Maybe—but probably not in front of Mark if her motivation was specific to him and not more general, as in having to do with her religious beliefs.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bothered speculating much about anyone’s life or reasons for doing anything. Better not to ask, he told himself. Keep this relationship casual. He was enjoying sharing his skills with Mark more than he’d expected. It took him back to that shop class and Mr. Avery, who had meant a lot to him. Paying it forward, he thought; that was all he was doing. And he was getting some damn good food out of it, too.

“Apple pie, anyone?” Ciara asked.

Oh, damn. Bad enough that she was pretty and that he didn’t dare let himself look too long into eyes that made him want to be a poet. Now she was assaulting his defenses in a whole new way.

CHAPTER FIVE

E
VERY TIME THE
renewed whine of the circular saw penetrated the closed doors and windows, Ciara’s anxiety rose. Mark could lose a finger or a hand in less time than it took to blink. Should she really be trusting a man she didn’t know that well? In the week since he’d first come to dinner, she had had him once more, but that was it. She still hadn’t figured out why he was giving so much time to Mark, or how he could be so patient.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Gabe Tennert out there with your son,” Audrey Stevens said. When she’d called earlier, Ciara had invited her to come by for a cup of coffee. She could use the distraction. Otherwise, she was afraid she’d be outside hovering.

Her several phone conversations with Audrey had wandered from the subject of reliable local plumbers, electricians and carpenters into personal interests. It had turned out that not only was Audrey a fount of local knowledge, she was a quilter like Ciara used to be, when she had time.

“He’s been really nice to Mark,” she said now, pretending her ears weren’t acutely tuned to the sounds outside. As long as there weren’t any screams...

Surely they’d give up soon, as chilly as it was out there. She’d peered out earlier to see the thermometer reading only forty-two degrees Fahrenheit. They were now in the first week of May. When was spring around here? June? she thought indignantly. July? And neither Gabe nor Mark was bundled up the way she would have been, if she were doing outside work.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never seen him be anything but kind,” the other woman assured her, in a tone that suggested she was giving the devil his due. “He rides in cutting-horse competitions. I don’t know if you’re aware of that.”

“He’s mentioned it.”

The whine was replaced by silence then the steady thud of nails being driven. Thank God. Mark would live with a swollen thumb.

“Gabe has friends from that. But otherwise...” Audrey hesitated. “He stays to himself.”

“I...had that impression,” Ciara admitted. “Would you like a refill?”

“Thanks.” Audrey grinned. “Your coffee is better than my coffee.”

Rising, Ciara found the empty bag that had held the beans and held it up so the other woman could see the logo featuring a stylized bull. “Chimayo Coffee Company. I don’t suppose the local store carries it, but it’s worth ordering online.”

Audrey accepted a fresh cup, inhaling the rich, dark aroma. “I’m sold.”

It had been a long time since Ciara had made a new friend, so she was warmed by this budding relationship. She knew Audrey was the driving force; between work and being a single mother, Ciara didn’t have time to look for activities where she’d meet other women.

Men—well, she was off men. A disquieting whisper suggested,
Except for Gabe
.

Ridiculous. He was a godsend for Mark, assuming he didn’t abruptly lose interest. That was all.

“He was married and had a daughter, you know,” Audrey said abruptly.

“What?”
Had
a daughter? Alarm speared Ciara. What did that mean? He’d lost contact?