More Than Neighbors (7 page)

“Use the leash a lot these first days,” he instructed him. “If your mom is okay with it, you can walk him in the pasture, as long as he’s
always
on the leash.”

After a moment, she nodded. Reluctantly, he thought, but she must have been able to see the sense in his suggestion, and had surely become convinced his quarter horses were too scared of her son to want to trample him to death.

“Why don’t you pet them?” he suggested, having noticed she was hanging back like she had last time.

He stayed where he was to gentle the horses, which might have been a mistake. She stepped close enough to allow a citrus scent to rise to his nose. Probably shampoo. He studied her fingers as she tentatively stroked one sleek neck and then the other, giving a surprised squeak when Aurora lipped her fingers.

“Her mouth is so soft!” Ciara exclaimed.

He couldn’t help thinking her lips looked soft, too. So did her skin. It was exceptionally fine-pored, more like a young child’s than an adult’s. In self-defense, he began to scratch Hoodoo’s poll. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so tempted to touch a woman. Hell, if he laid a hand on her, she’d probably jump six inches and shy away just like one of the horses did to an unwelcome surprise, he thought ruefully.

But the face she turned up to him was alight with pleasure. “They’re so friendly! They’re just like dogs.”

For that moment, all the guardedness he’d seen in her was gone. Those eyes, huge and bright, shone with delight. And the way her mouth curved...

He’d have sworn he heard a cracking sound, the first ominous fissure in the Grand Coulee Dam, holding back the weight of enough water to wreak havoc through the whole Columbia River basin. Nobody else seemed to hear the sound, originating in his chest, where he’d built walls he would have sworn were rock solid.

Panic spiked, and he took a step back.

Irritable, that was his defense.

“Just so you remember, horses weigh two thousand pounds,” he reminded her and her son.

She shot a worried look at the boy before fixing her gaze on Gabe again. “Do they ever, well, step on you?”

“Yeah, I’ve had horses step on a foot. Sometimes they don’t even notice. That’s why it’s a good idea to wear boots around them.” He glanced at Mark. “You have any?”

“Uh-uh. Maybe I should get some, Mom.”

“Is leather really good enough?” she asked Gabe. “Or do you get steel-toed or what?”

Amusement eased his panic. “You ever seen a cowboy boot coated in steel?”

“Is that what I should get him? Cowboy boots?”

“Yeah, probably,” he said in resignation. Sure as hell, he’d be putting the kid up in the saddle before he knew it. Might have to do it on a lead line, if Mark didn’t turn out to have any more ability to center his weight when sitting than he did on his feet. Quarter horses had been bred to turn on a dime, whether their rider went with them or not.

“Well, okay.” Ciara gave him another sunny smile that had him backing up yet another step. “Thank you for...well...”

His eyebrows climbed. “Not shooting the dog?”

The boy grabbed his dog’s collar. “You wouldn’t!”

His mom’s smile turned to a glare. “Don’t say things like that!”

Gabe chose not to say anything.

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you
have
a gun?”

“A rifle. Yes, I do, ma’am.”
Ma’am
—that was good. Distancing.

“You hunt?” Her voice spiked with disapproval.

“I was raised hunting,” he said. “My family needed that meat on the table. But no, actually, I don’t.”

“Then why—?”

“Do I keep the Remington on hand?” He hesitated, not wanting to tell her it had been a gift from his dad, which at the time had meant something. In these parts, giving your son a fine rifle was a way to acknowledge he’d reached manhood. His father hadn’t been very good with words, but sometimes he’d done something that had made Gabe glow with pride. Not often, which is maybe why those rare moments stuck with him. “Anyone with livestock has to worry about coyotes or wolves,” he said instead. “If I heard someone breaking into my workshop, I’d reach for it, too.”

She looked shocked, giving him an idea how she’d cast her ballots. His mouth twitched. If he was right, she’d be in a minority in this corner of the state. The thought made him wonder anew what she’d been thinking, a woman raising her child alone, buying a house so isolated, in a county where she and her son might both have trouble fitting in with what neighbors they did have.

He glanced from her outraged face to Mark’s. The kid was kind of dorky-looking to go with his personality. Lips a little too big and loose, expression too open. Gabe’s amusement faded. Sure as hell, Ciara Malloy had gone for isolated on purpose. He just hoped she hadn’t made one hell of a mistake.

He dipped his head. “I need to be getting back.” He met Mark’s gaze. “You want a dog, teaching him what’s acceptable and what isn’t is your responsibility. You understand, son?”

The boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“All right, then.” Gabe walked back to his truck, not allowing himself any softening chitchat. Whatever that strange feeling he’d had when Ciara smiled, he had to have imagined it.

He was going to be pissed if he was back here in two hours because the damn dog was already in the pasture nipping at his horses’ heels again.

“Sir? I mean, mister...I mean, Gabe?”

The driver’s-side door was open; he didn’t have a lot of choice but to glance back.

Neither woman nor boy had moved. The old dog had settled her butt and looked as if she’d be content never to move. The young dog, however, was getting antsy.

“Yes?”

“I can still come to your place this morning, right?”

Oh, hell. In his exasperation, he’d forgotten. He wanted to say,
You’ve already wasted enough of my day,
but the apprehension coupled with hope that the boy couldn’t hide stopped the words in Gabe’s mouth.

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “I’ll be expecting you.”

He took one last look as he started the engine, bothered by the knowledge that he wanted to see warmth again on Ciara’s face. That it would be easy for a man to get to crave the sight of that expression.

And there it was, just as he’d envisioned it, and the crack in his protective wall groaned a little as the damage done to it allowed further weakening.

He drove faster than he should have down their long, dusty driveway.

* * *

S
TARING IN DISMAY
at the math problem Mark didn’t understand, Ciara wished she’d escaped to her workroom immediately after breakfast instead of making the mistake of lingering to ask if he needed any help. She’d mostly been okay with the seventh-grade math in the original curriculum, but once she downloaded the kind of work he’d already been doing in his advanced class, she was lost.

What’s more, this was the first major download she’d tried since discovering high-speed internet wasn’t available. In moving to such a rural location, they’d apparently lost a decade or two. Dial-up was torturous.

“This is geometry, isn’t it?” she said unhappily.

“Um...
yeah
.”

“Sarcasm is not appreciated.”

“Well, it’s about angles.”

“I can see that,” she snapped. It showed a shape—God help her, she didn’t even know what the shape was called—and wanted to know the sum of the angle measures in it. She’d taken geometry in high school and hated it. “You know, if you’re going to work on this stuff, I’ll have to review it in advance to be any help to you.”

“But Mom, it’s only eighth-grade math!” her son exclaimed.

Gee, and she hadn’t already felt stupid enough.

“Do you know how many years it’s been since I took this stuff?” she asked. “Things like percentages I use once in a while in real life. Geometry, never.”

“Oh.”

They both stared at the peculiar shape.

“Maybe Gabe knows the answer,” he suggested.

Because you had to know angles to shoot a Remington rifle?

“’Cuz he has this cool gauge that measures angles!” Mark said with new enthusiasm. “So he must understand them, right?”

“You have my blessing to ask.”

“Yeah!” He grabbed the worksheet and stuffed it into the daypack that already sat on the table. “It’s time for me to go anyway.”

“You’ve got the cookies?”

“You saw me put them in the pack.”

“Right.” Of course she had.

Anxious mother that she was, she walked as far as the front porch and stayed there while he pedaled down the driveway, turned right on the road then up Gabe Tennert’s nicely paved driveway. When he disappeared from sight behind the house, she figured he’d made it safely. Watson, nose pressed to the screen door, whined miserably. He’d wanted to go, and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t. Ciara shuddered at the thought of him in Gabe’s workshop.

He almost escaped when she opened the door, but swift use of her foot allowed her to slide inside and latch the door. “Not a chance,” she told him and went upstairs. He followed, of course, while Daisy lay at the bottom, watching sadly. She could barely handle the couple of steps from the back porch to the yard; a whole flight was out of her capability. Watson, on the other hand, would want to go in Ciara’s workroom, where he could do as much damage as he would in Gabe’s. The damage wouldn’t be as expensive, but Ciara couldn’t afford it.

She shut this door firmly in his face, too. He moaned but then subsided. As she plugged in her iron, she hoped her neighbor had a sweet tooth. Although she still found him alarming for reasons she hadn’t altogether figured out, ones that didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she also found him sexy, he’d so far been exceptionally nice to Mark. Oatmeal-raisin cookies were probably inadequate thanks, but she didn’t know what her next option would be.

Did he cook, or was he the kind of single guy who lived on microwave meals? Maybe tonight she’d bake bread. Everyone liked homemade bread. And if he kept letting Mark go over, she could invite him to dinner one of these nights. That would be the nice thing to do, wouldn’t it?

Steam puffed from her iron, and she gasped at the realization of how long she’d left it pressed on the delicate damask she was working on. Damn, had she burned it?

No, she saw in relief, but that was pure luck. She had to concentrate. Why on earth was she worrying about what a man she didn’t even know liked to eat? Mark’s sixth-grade teacher had been a man, and she’d never once considered sending him home-baked cookies.

Yes, but he’d been
paid
to teach her son. Nobody was paying the closemouthed, bearded guy next door to spend any time at all with Mark.

She winced, wondering what he’d think when Mark whipped out the geometry worksheet.

And then she wondered what Gabe Tennert would look like if he shaved off that beard.

CHAPTER FOUR

“
I
T’S A HEXAGON
,” Gabe said absently. “Six sides.”

The boy’s forehead crinkled. “I thought it was a polygon.”

“It’s that, too.” Gabe explained that a polygon was a closed shape that usually had straight sides. “A triangle is a polygon.”

“Tri.” Mark’s face brightened as if it were lit from within, like his mother’s did. “Three.”

“Right. Four sided is a...?”

“Quadrangle.”

“Five sides makes it a pentagon.”

“Cool,” the boy decided. “So how do I figure out the sum of the angle measures in a hexagon?”

“Do you know what the measures of the angles of a triangle add up to?”

“A hundred and eighty degrees,” he said triumphantly.

“Good.” Gabe got out a ruler and pencil and showed him how to divide the shape up into triangles, then watched as Mark divided it into four triangles. He was able to multiply 4 times 180 in his head and come up with the right answer, which Gabe thought was pretty good.

“I don’t remember getting to geometry until high school,” he commented.

“My school did it in eighth grade. Except, if you were ahead, you did the eighth-grade stuff in seventh. Then if you were pretty good, you could skip Algebra 1 and take geometry as a freshman.”

“Gotcha.” Gabe nodded. “You okay with the next problem?”

They talked about a couple more, after which he put the worksheet away but pulled out a lidded plastic container. “Mom made cookies. She thought you’d like some.”

Gabe’s fingers were peeling the lid back before his brain gave the order. “What kind—” He inhaled. “Raisin oatmeal. My favorite.”

“Really? I thought she should make chocolate chip. That’s
my
favorite. But she says these are better for us.”

“I like chocolate chip, too,” Gabe admitted. “I wouldn’t turn them down. But these are great.” He took a bite and closed his eyes to better savor the burst of flavor. “Really great,” he mumbled a minute later.

He gobbled two before he remembered he shouldn’t waste the time eating when he was supposed to be—teaching, he guessed. He turned his mind back to his woodworking class and said, “I want you to do some measuring, and then you can experiment with the saw.”

Having seen how clumsy Mark was, Gabe did a lot of talking about safety precautions but was still a little unnerved when they got to the stage of practicing first with a handsaw, then a jigsaw and finally a circular saw. Interestingly, he found that the boy was both careful and precise. His focus was as intense as Gabe’s was when he worked. Gabe began to relax. They talked about the options for corner joints and decided that for Mark’s first effort, they’d go for a rabbet joint, good-looking and relatively simple.

He did some marking, chose clamps for his scrap lumber and practiced cuts with various saws. They talked about woods, and Gabe explained what his next stage was for the three separate cabinetry jobs he had going. Mark eventually decided to use cherry for his box; he liked the rich color of a darker stain better than the look of light woods. Truthfully, Gabe did, too, although he especially liked being able to use contrast.

It felt companionable putting sandwiches together with the kid again, with the bonus today that they both ate a couple more cookies. Gabe carefully put the top back on the container. Ciara had sent a couple dozen. That would keep him in cookies for...well, that depended on how greedy he allowed himself to be, didn’t it?