She stiffened, her delicate jaw taking on a firmness he knew well. The flash of resentment in her eyes was almost a relief. That's right, get mad, he thought. Push me away.
“No,” she replied in a stiff voice. “Have you?”
“As a matter of fact I have. On more than a few occasions. That's why you have to believe that I know what I'm talking about when I tell you it's not the kind of thing you ought to be doing.”
“Let me see if I'm getting this,” she said slowly. “You can, but I shouldn't.”
“You're not me. You're Joel's wife.”
Her head shot up defiantly. “Wrong, Connor. I'm Joel's widow.”
“Same thing,” he said, releasing her with a shrug.
“No. No, believe me, it's very different.”
“You're right. You were a lot smarter as a wife. For instance, back then you saw me for what I am and you knew enough to keep away.”
“Oh, Connor.” Her eyes softened as she lifted her hand toward his face. “Are you really that afraid of letting someone close to you?”
Connor grabbed her wrist to stop her from touching him. “Like I told you when we were in the back of that van, Gabrielle, I'm not afraid of anything.”
He thrust her hand aside as he turned to go. “Leave the rest of the dishes,” he said to her over his shoulder. “I'll get them in the morning.”
Letting the door slam behind him, he crossed the deck in a few long strides and headed toward the lake, a glossy stretch of ebony under the almost starless sky. He didn't stop until he passed a thick stand of cedar trees that formed a natural barricade between the cabin and lake at that spot. As if, he thought sardonically, he needed a barrier to block the force drawing him back to the cabin and to Gaby. A place to hide him from the thoughts that had followed him out, pounding at his heels with each step, telling him to go back and finish what he'd started, that it was what he wanted, what Gaby and he both wanted tonight. And that he was being an idiot.
Alone in the blackness between the cedars, he did what he'd seldom done in his lifetimeâput thoughts of tomorrow ahead of tonight. By his own code of living for the moment and damn the rest, that, too, made him an idiot. So be it. He understood that sometimes it took an idiot to risk doing what had to be done. This had to be done. Tonight, tomorrow, the next day... until the end of the week. It wouldn't get any easier after that, but at least then he'd have distance on his side. After Friday he wouldn't be stuck here alone, watching over the one thing he wanted most in the world and couldn't have.
Talk about the wolf getting into the henhouse, he thought with a morose smile. Worse, for some insane, unnatural reason the hen had decided to invite him in. Crazy woman. And who could blame her with all he'd put her through in the past couple of days? She wasn't thinking straight. She couldn't be.
Which meant, Connor told himself, that it was up to him to make sure things stayed under control around there. That meant that somehow, no matter what it cost him, he was going to have to find a way to keep his hands off Gaby for the next four days..
Chapter 7
B
y the time Connor returned to the cabin, the kitchen was clean, the dishwasher running, the leftovers wrapped and put away. He had to admit he was glad. While not a fanatic by any means, he did disprove the conventional wisdom that said all bachelors were slobs by nature. He much preferred his surroundings to be clean and reasonably orderly.
Like his decision to learn to cook a decent meal, it was probably a reaction to the condition of his own all-male home after his mother's death. If Gaby had taken him at his word and left the dinner mess for the morning, he would probably have decided to deal with it before turning in and he really wasn't in the mood.
As he reached to turn out the kitchen light, he noticed the note propped between the now unlit candles in the center of the table. It read, “Sweet dreams, tough guy.” Beside it Gaby had placed his lighter. He must have left it on the table earlier, he realized, slipping it into his pocket and smiling in spite of himself at her note.
So. She wasn't angry. He'd fully expected her to be, at the very least, annoyed and quite possibly furious with him, either for kissing her or for stopping. It was a call he couldn't make with any certainty. That was another thing he knew about women. You could never be sure of the details. That didn't alter the fact that the basics were carved in stone. Or so he'd thought.
He glanced again at the note, thinking how most women would have been angry with him, if only to hide their bruised feelings. Gaby had said he was full of surprises, but it seemed to him she held a few of her own. The note was written in a clean, feminine hand, and on impulse he folded it and slipped it into his pocket along with the lighter. Then he took two aspirins in hopes of calming the throbbing in his injured hand and headed for bed.
Sweet dreams, tough guy.
The words ran through his head as he climbed the stairs. Sweet dreams. Not likely, he thought, not tonight. And he didn't feel like such a tough guy, either, as he passed Gaby's tightly closed door.
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For no particular reason Gaby had set the alarm on the clock radio beside her bed before going to sleep. It clicked on at exactly seven o'clock, drawing her awake with the soft sounds of an old Bette Midler song. It was one she'd always liked. “From a distance...” Even half-asleep her mind supplied the rest of the words: “God is watching us, from a distance.”
She rolled onto her back, stretching her arms wide and smiling even before she opened her eyes to discover that it was a gorgeous morning. It was the sort of clear, sunlit morning that made it easy to believe there was a God watching over the world, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary presented on the nightly news.
Actually ever since Joel had died, she'd felt she had a little extra action going on in the watched-over department. She usually thought of it in regard to Toby. It helped to believe she wasn't raising him entirely alone, that in some way Joel was still looking out for him and that he would never let anything bad happen to his son. It hadn't been easy to maintain that belief when Toby was sick, but she had held on to her prayers and her trust. And in the end, when Toby pulled through against all odds, her confidence in the power of love, from all directions, was stronger than ever.
At times she suspected that Joel wasn't only watching over Toby, but over her, as well. She couldn't define the feeling and she never tried explaining it to anyone, convinced it would simply be dismissed as a natural part of the grieving process, of her coming to terms with her loss. Maybe that's all it was, but Gaby didn't think so.
Whenever it happened, which wasn't often, she got this strong, absolutely clear sense of what she ought to do at that moment, as if someone was speaking to her and guiding her from within. She might have considered that it was her own common sense, except for the fact that when it happened, she felt a certainty and confidence she rarely felt as she muddled her way through life as a single parent.
That sense that Joel was watching over her was partly why she had accepted Adam's proposal even though they weren't in love with each other. Though she had to admit, she'd never quite felt that crystalline sense of certainty where Adam was concerned. It had been more like a gentle current washing her in his direction.
He'd been one of Joel's closest friends, after all, and he'd been there at the hospital with her the whole time Toby was sick. That proved his concern and that he could be counted on. Everyone told her so. Marrying Adam would mean that Toby wouldn't have to grow up without a father. Everyone said that was very important, too. And merging their interests in the Black Wolf would secure Toby's future even further. With his health always a lurking question in her mind, in spite of the doctors' assurances that he was fine, his future security was very important to her. Marrying Adam had seemed like the wise thingâthe right thingâto do at the time. Now she wasn't so sure.
And why? she asked herself sheepishly. Because Connor DeWolfe had blown back into town, kissed her and made her knees buckle? That had never happened when Adam kissed her. But, she reminded herself, weak knees were not essential for a successful marriage. Especially not the second time around. Hadn't she made a conscious decision to opt for security over romance?
Sighing, she looked out the window at a sky of solid blue and cowardly shifted her thoughts to Toby instead of the prickly problem of what to do about Connor. It had only been two days, and she missed Toby like crazy. She missed his smile and the sweet smell of him, still half baby, half little boy. She missed him running in to wake her in the morning, full of plans for whatever he wanted to do that day, his eyes sparkling with an innocent assurance that today was going to be the best day ever.
Lord, how she'd had to struggle in the weeks and months following the explosion not to let her own sadness overwhelm his spirit. They'd been together constantly, and there had been times when she'd barely managed to tuck him in at bedtime before the pain that she'd been holding at bay all day came crashing in on her, the harbinger of another tear-filled, sleepless night. In the morning, puffy eyed and exhausted, she would once more haul herself out of bed and rustle up a smile for Toby's sake.
Sometimes she had longed to escape for a while and would wish she had a job she could go to where she could perform some mindless task and forget she'd ever been a wife and mother. Looking back, however, she saw how lucky she was to have been able to stay home with Toby, where she had an ever-present reason to smile even when she didn't feel like it.
Before her marriage she'd worked restoring antique stained glass at a gallery in Boston. She enjoyed the sense that she was creating something new and rescuing something old and beautiful at the same time. After Toby was born, she continued to work at home on a free-lance basis, accepting projects that interested her and that could be adapted to her unhurried pace. Joel had deemed it a labor of love, since her income in no way reflected the hours she devoted to each restoration, painstakingly matching colors and cutting intricately shaped pieces of glass to replace those that had been lost or damaged over the years.
Fortunately they hadn't been dependent on her income to pay the bills, and that remained the same even after Joel's death. The money from his life insurance, along with their share of the restaurant income, more than took care of her living expenses, enabling her to continue working at home. She worked for enjoyment and to keep her skills sharp for the day when she could return to it full-time. For now, being there for Toby, to take him to the playground and teach him to ride a bike, was her top priority.
She glanced at the clock, wondering what Toby was doing right then. Seven-fifteen. He was probably eating breakfast. Sugar-coated Crunchies cereal, no doubt, his favorite, which she seldom bought because it was too sweet and which his grandmother always had waiting on the cupboard shelf as a special treat. At least she didn't have to worry about his wellbeing while she was away. He adored his nana and she doted on him. The two of them had been looking forward to spending this week together while Gaby was away on what was to have been her honeymoon. They had made grand plans for how they would spend each day.
Her mother would no doubt go ahead with all their plans for strawberry picking and the zoo and the rest. Although she was probably worried sick about Gaby, she would hide her concern from her grandson and do all she could to keep him happy and entertained. If anything, Gaby thought ruefully, he would be too well cared for, and it would take her a few days after they returned home to ease him back into a routine that didn't include Crunchies cereal and unlimited cartoons.
She thought wistfully of the serene pattern of their days together, of rainy mornings spent finger painting and how they saved bread crusts for their weekly trip to feed the ducks and their spur-of-the-moment picnics in the park. She had a sudden, unbidden image of Connor in the middle of all that simple domesticity and she grinned. It was almost as hard to picture the Black Wolf feeding ducks as it was to picture him wielding a spatula. Yet he had learned to cook, she mused, lending credence to that old adage that where there's a will, there's a way.
Not, she told herself sharply, that she was entertaining any notions that Connor would be fitting himself into her daily life. Or that she even wanted him to. The opposite was in fact true. She wanted to get through this and get back to her life and away from him as quickly as she could. Friday, she thought. Four more days after today. Three if you didn't count Friday itself. Surely she could survive a few more days. Couldn't she?
Unconsciously she lifted her fingertips to her lips, recalling last night and the way Connor's mouth had felt on hers. It occurred to her suddenly that perhaps survival in the classic sense was not what should concern her most. Maybe what was at risk for her here was not her safety or her temper, although so far both had been tested. Maybe something more elusive and infinitely more portentous hung in the balance. She'd glimpsed hints of it. It was there in the air whenever Connor came close to her and it was hidden between their words whenever they talked about anything more serious than the weather.
She wasn't sure exactly what that something was, only that her thoughts and feelings about Connor were shifting so quickly it was hard to know what to hold on to and what was mere illusion. Was this what it felt like just before an earthquake, she wondered, faint rumblings from below as the earth gets ready to split wide open?
She stroked her fingers across her lips, purposely trying to recapture the way she had felt last night in Connor's arms. It was impossible. She'd never experienced that sort of wild, instantaneous desire before, so how could she hope to recreate it all by itself, as if it were something tangible, like a stained-glass panel she could study and analyze and duplicate with near perfection? This was all new and more than a little intimidating.
For just a second she felt a stab of disloyalty for admitting even to herself that she had never felt as excited as she had last night when Connor was kissing her. Her marriage to Joel had been happy and fulfilling in every way, but their passion had built over time. They had been much younger when they met, coming together in a predictable pattern of dates and incremental intimacy, with no preconceived notions of each other to add the kind of tension that made the air between Connor and her seem to crackle with invisible sparks.
The difference between last night and the first kiss she ever shared with Joel was like the difference between a flash flood and a lawn sprinkler.
A good thing, too, she thought, smiling a little self-consciously. If she'd been exposed to Connor's passion twelve years ago, she would surely have drowned. Or at the very least run away.
And now? she challenged herself. Was she really so much more worldly and self-possessed now? Could she handle this...whatever “this” was? Was she ready to deal with the way Connor made her feel? Hungry and womanly and ... alive. Very much alive, she thought, recalling and savoring the exhilarating way it had felt to be caressed and held in his arms, to respond to his blatantly male demands with a matching fervor she hadn't known she possessed.
It was rare these days for her to feel so intensely any emotion that did not involve Toby. Over the past few years she had developed a shell to protect her from feeling too much ... too much pain, too much anticipation, too much need. She'd blocked out the highs and lows, steadily narrowing the span of allowable emotions. It was a self-defense mechanism obviously, and a darn good one if she did say so herself.
It was also one that Connor had managed to blow through in less than forty-eight hours. He had made her feel intensely again, and not only when he kissed her. It occurred to her that since he'd snatched her off the church steps she'd been more frightened, more furious, more confused, more resentful and more aroused than she had been in years. More alive, in every sense of the word, good and bad. Now that she thought about it, she supposed that's what being alive meant. All she knew was that it felt great. How long, she asked herself, since she'd woken up smiling?
She must have needed that shell as a buffer or she never would have created it. Adam, for all the time they spent together, had never threatened it. Connor had not only threatened it, but he'd also cracked it wide open and left her with a choice as to whether she wanted to try to patch it up and stay safely inside or come out and live again. Really live, that is, with all the risks and the pleasures and the uncertainties that life encompassed, instead of simply going through the motions.