Her laughter held a desperate edge of relief. “Is that what all this is about? That stupid vase?”
“It's not a stupid vase. If it was, you wouldn't have it where you can see it all the time, you wouldn't have been so upset when I almost knocked it over. That vase matters to you, Gaby. That's not wrong,” he added hurriedly before she could deny it. “It's just totally alien to me and everything I am.”
“I know that our lives have been very different up till now, but, Connor, people can change.”
“Maybe I don't want to change.”
“Maybe I do.”
He eyed her in frank surprise before shaking his head discouragingly. “You can't change that much. I wouldn't want you to. Gaby, you're looking at a man who's never lived with one woman long enough to unpack his clothes, who sees a walk-in dentist because he hates being tied down to an appointment six months ahead of time, who...”
“Who makes me laugh and makes me crazy and who may have saved my life. Don't sell yourself short,” she pleaded. “Any man who can cook the wayâ”
“I cook when I get the urge to,” he interrupted. “I can go months eating out of cans between urges and like it just fine. That's not your style. Face it, Gaby. I have. I walked into your house and looked around and I couldn't imagine what it would be like to wake up there every morning.”
“I never said I wanted you to move in,” she said softly.
“Don't you see? I want it. After only a few days I want to wake up with you every morning and I've never felt that way before, ever. I want to be there for you and do all the things you shouldn't have to worry about doing. I want to mow your lawn and take out your trash and teach Toby how to swing a bat.
“I just don't think I can,” he went on. “Not for the long haul. I'm not the kind of man who deals well with schedules and routine. You said it yourself, dozens of timesâI'm not responsible.” His dark eyes were tortured. “I'm not Joel.”
“No one ever could be. No one expects you to try. Just be you.”
“That's the problem. You need a man who's housebroken, Gabrielle. And I'm not.”
“I don't want to break you,” she told him, holding a scream of frustration at the back of her throat as she moved close to him once more, this time refusing to be brushed aside. “I just want to change your mind about what kind of man I need. And I know I can, if you'll stop pulling away.”
“I know you can, too,” he conceded, closing his eyes as if the touch of her hands on his chest was hard to bear. “All too easily. That's why I spent last night down here, as far away from you and temptation as I could get. It's why I won't back down.”
Gaby felt him withdrawing and looped her arms around his waist. “Want to bet? I dare you, you big jerk.”
“Not this time,” he said, removing her hands, kissing the palms lightly, lingeringly before finally letting her go.
“Connor, this is crazy. To turn your back on something that might be so good, because you're afraid it might not work out...it's worse than crazy, it's...unAmerican.”
He shot her a puzzled look over his shoulder as he turned to go.
“All right, that's a stretch,” she admitted, “but at least it got your attention. All I'm trying to say is that I understand the risks involved here and I'm willing to take them.”
The puzzled look on his lean, whiskered face was edged out by one of regret.
“I'm not,” he said softly.
Â
Night fell in increments around the lake. First the sun dropped behind the tallest peaks of the pine trees ringing the water, changing the color of day from bright yellow to orange, as if there were a fire burning in the distant sky. It faded more as it moved lower, glowing through the crisscrossing branches with the look of burned orange lace. Gradually the orange mellowed and gave way to the purples and indigos of evening, the shades deepening, layer upon layer, until everything was black, the sky, the water, the trees, a vast expanse of shadows, waiting for the silver touch of the rising moon.
Connor didn't need to wait that long. At the first chirp of a cricket he was ready to call it a day, giving himself credit for making it through one more block of hours without weakening and doing what Gaby had dared him to do...what she continued to dare him to do a hundred times a day in a hundred different, wordless, soul-searing ways...what he wanted to do as much as he'd ever wanted anything. But going after what he wanted was to go back on his word that he would stay out of her life, something he was sworn to do because it was the best thing for her. And he was the worst thing for her.
Three days. It had been three days since they had stopped by her house and he had come to his senses. Three days of circling each other like bees around a honey pot too hot to touch. Three endless days.
The nights were worse. At least during the day Toby was around to act as a buffer. Even Connor knew enough to keep his hands off her in front of a five-year-old, a kid still too innocent to even wonder how this man who had once been a friend of his father's fit into his and his mother's lives now. It was a good thing he didn't wonder enough to ask, because Connor would have been hard-pressed to give him an answer.
The days he could manage. The nights were what got to him. Trying to sleep scrunched into that damn chair in the living room. He could have used the bed in his room, but since he was sleeping fitfully, up and down all night, he didn't want to disturb Gaby or give her an excuse to come checking on him, wearing that pale nightgown that clung and shimmered and made him want to slide his hands down her and feel her go all warm and fluid beneath the silk. That's how it would be. He knew it. He could close his eyes and feel it, feel her, smell her. Which is why he couldn't let her come looking for him in the night.
At first he figured that eventually he'd get tired enough to sleep through without waking. Instead, his restlessness was growing stronger. It was only partly due to the fact that he couldn't get his mind and body in synch where Gaby was concerned. The other part of it was something he was more comfortable with. He recognized it from his years on the force, a sort of sixth sense that was unlearned and unteachable, a hunch, a tightening at the back of his neck, an awareness that things were coming to a head.
These “things” changed from case to case. The feeling was always the same. And never wrong. This was a challenge he understood. He knew where this path led, all the bends and turns in the road, all the dark places where danger could be waiting. He was ready for it, even eager. He wished Lew Marino's hotshot computer whiz would get his act together so they would know exactly where they stood.
“Tomorrow,” Lew told him every morning when he checked in by cellular phone. “He says he thinks he'll have something for us by tomorrow.”
It turned out the files had been eradicated from the hard drive on the computer in Joel's office at home. Eradicated, as opposed to merely erased. According to Lew, who was in turn quoting the whiz, someone had gone in with a program designed for the express purpose of methodically and totally overwriting existing material so that it was rendered permanently irretrievable.
There was not, Lew explained, even the remotest chance that such a thing could be done accidentally. Which meant that either Joel or someone else had purposely wiped out the information so that no one would ever see it. There was still no proof who that might be, of course, but Connor knew whom he was betting on.
Fortunately the situation was slightly more encouraging at the accounting firm where Joel had worked. It turned out that the firm had updated its computer system within the past eighteen months. The computer from Joel's office had been one of those retained as a backup and had been rarely used, giving them a good shot at recovering anything Joel may have stored on it. The whiz found that files had been erased from it, as well, but not eradicated. Which meant they could be retrieved. The bad news was that it had to be done piece by piece, the file segments identified and strung together to formâhopefullyâan understandable whole. The whiz, according to Lew, was doing his best. He'd told Lew that the job would be a lot simpler if Joel was around to help. Connor couldn't suppress a sardonic smile of agreement when he heard that. It seemed to him that everything would be a lot easier on everyone if Joel were still around.
Ironically one of the things that bothered him most during the long, hot days was also one that scared him the most. It was watching Gaby and Toby together, playing a game of checkers on the deck, or their heads bent over a growing pile of sand as they dug a tunnel to China, or simply sitting together in the evening, Toby's hair damp from his bath and his head tucked under his mother's arm as she read to himâall these affected him deeply.
Marvin K. Mooney. That was Toby's favorite story, requested several times a day, and already Connor knew entire passages of it by heart. He also knew that Toby's favorite dinosaur was Tyrannosaurus rex and that he liked worms and wasn't afraid of the dark unless it thundered.
He knew too much, more than was safe. Seeing the two of them together, it was impossible not to be moved by the bond between them, by the tight, perfectly meshed unit they had formed in spite of or maybe because of all that they had suffered.
It was so different from what had occurred in his own family after his mother's death, when each of them had seemed to drift in a separate direction, as if the others only reinforced the memory of what they had each lost. He had blamed his father for letting that happen until the day the old man died.
Now he wasn't so sure. Maybe his father hadn't known how to forge that kind of bond any more than Connor did. It pained Connor to think that maybe his father had felt as lonely and disconnected as he did now, watching Gaby and Toby together, longing for something he didn't understand.
Gaby tried to include him. So did Toby, for that matter. They invariably called him to eat with them, which he did, and invited him to join them for a walk or whatever else they had planned, which he politely declined with the excuse that he had something he had to do, usually work on the boat.
He had now taken apart practically the entire engine, cleaned it and put it back togetherânot an easy task for a man with only one good handâand the damn thing was still sucking water under the cowling and stalling out after only a few minutes on the open water. It was frustrating, since ordinarily he was pretty good with engines and with his hands in general. The last thing he needed was a reminder of the bitter fact that some things were just beyond his expertise. In fact, he would have gladly thrown in the towel on the job days ago if his tinkering down at the dock didn't provide him with a ready excuse not to pick wildflowers or catch minnows in the shallow water by the shore.
Just yesterday Gaby had detoured by where he was working to ask if he wanted to take a break for a while.
“We're going swimming,” she explained as he grunted and kept his eyes on the shift lever he was realigning. He pretended not to notice that a bathing suit, a sleek black one cut almost up to her waist on the sides, was among the essentials she had seen fit to bring back with her. “Why don't you come with us?”
He lifted his head and squinted, as if it was the sun blinding him and not the lure of her sweet, firm flesh. “Thanks, but I really ought to finish up here first.”
“Maybe later?” Toby chirped hopefully from his spot by his mother's side.
Connor made a noncommittal gesture. “Maybe.”
He bent over the engine again, waiting until they were well along the path before lifting his head and watching them walk away. He continued watching as Gaby took Toby by the hand and together they inched into the water, staying close to the shore as she patiently taught him to float on his stomach and kick his feet. She ought to get him accustomed to putting his face under, Connor thought as he stood watching. And his hands. He ought to be using his hands more along with his feet.
As the afternoon passed, he did more watching them than be did working, his concentration broken each time Toby laughed or shrieked with excitement. He might as well have taken the afternoon off for all he accomplished.
Not that fixing the engine was any longer the goal, he mused as he found himself back realigning the shift the next morning. At some point, born of his need to keep busy, the process had become the goal, the means to an end the end in and of itself. And why not? Everything else in his life had been turned upside down and inside out. Why should the way in which he whiled away his time be any different?
“Want some help?”
Connor straightened abruptly, peering over his shoulder to find Toby standing behind him wearing his mother's sunglasses, too big for his face, and holding a wrench he had no doubt found in the toolbox nearby.
“No. Thanks anyway.” He wiped his forehead with the rolled-up sleeve of his faded denim shirt. “Does your mother know you have her glasses?”
“Nope.”
“Do you think maybe you ought to bring them back to her before she finds out?”