Читать книгу More Than Neighbors - Janice Kay Johnson - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

ALWAYS AN EARLY RISER, Gabe was outside forking hay into the manger when the school bus passed the next morning. Without thinking about it, he’d known it was coming; the brakes squealed at every stop, and the Ohlers a couple of properties past the old Walker place had two kids that rode the bus.

Now he turned, thoughtful, when the bus lumbered on past without stopping next door. Would have made sense, when Ms. Malloy and her boy were in town yesterday, for her to have registered him for school, wouldn’t it? Today was Wednesday, though; maybe she meant to give him the rest of the week to settle in before he started.

April was a funny time of year to move, when it meant pulling a kid out of school and him having to start in a new one at the tail end of the year, Gabe reflected. Usually people with kids tried to move during the summer. Maybe this was following a divorce?

He shook his head as he unlocked the big double doors and let himself into his workshop. Why was he bothering to wonder about the new neighbors? All he cared was that they stayed on their side of the property line.

He always had several projects going at various stages. Today he settled down immediately to measure and mark what would be the pins and tails of dovetail joints, these particular panels to be sides and backs of drawers. He almost never used any other kind of joint but dovetail for drawers, liking the solidity and elegant appearance. Although they could be cut with router and jig, he preferred to use traditional hand tools.

Securing a solid board of alder with a vise, he reached for a dovetail square and pencil. Despite the care required, long practice meant he was able to let his mind wander as he worked to mark where cuts would be made.

That boy—Mark—was an odd duck. The mother hadn’t said how old he was, but he had to be almost a teenager. Middle school, at a guess. What had he been? Five foot nine or ten, Gabe thought. Clumsy, but a lot of boys were at that age. Gabe’s mouth twitched. God knew he’d been a walking disaster for several years in there, when he was outgrowing pants and shirts so fast, his mother despaired. Sometimes he’d felt as if those gigantic feet had been transplanted onto his legs during the night. He had to stare at his feet when he was walking to make sure he was setting them down where they belonged. Unfortunately, that didn’t work when he wanted to run or climb a ladder or even race up the bleachers in the gymnasium.

It wasn’t the clumsiness that suggested the boy was a little off. And maybe Gabe was wrong—but he didn’t think so. Mark’s excitement was more like a younger kid’s than a near-teenager’s. The way his mother seemed to be coaching him, too, as if he were a kindergartener who hadn’t yet learned to say please or thank you.

Grudgingly, Gabe conceded the kid had been nice enough, though. And he had known a surprising amount about horses and the breed of quarter horse in particular for someone who obviously had done his learning from books or on the computer rather than real-life exposure. Was the mother thinking of buying a horse for her son? Gabe hoped she wouldn’t rush to do so without seeing that he get some lessons first. And making sure the enthusiasm wouldn’t wear out three months down the line.

He continued to work methodically, out of habit marking the “waste” sections—the parts he’d be cutting out and discarding—with Xs, then, finally, reached for a dovetail saw as his thoughts reverted to yesterday’s two visitors.

The mom had an unusual name. Ciara. Irish? Probably. She was exceptionally pretty, he had to admit. Eyes so blue, a man more susceptible than he might liken them to the sky just before twilight or the vivid gleam of sapphire. Hair darker and not quite as bright as Hoodoo’s sleek sorrel coat. Envisioning it, he thought, bubinga. Bubinga was an exotic hardwood he liked and used on occasion. Harvested in West Africa, it was a reddish-brown with fine, dark lines that created interesting patterns, as if the coloration was made up of distinct strands. Yeah, that was it, he thought, pleased with the comparison.

She had the complexion of a redhead even if her hair wasn’t quite the classic red or auburn. Creamy pale, with a scattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. A pretty mouth—not too thin, not too plump. She was a couple inches shorter than her son, five foot six or so, at a guess, and willowy. Long legs and long fingers, too. Gabe wasn’t sure why he’d noticed that, but he had, when she laid her hand briefly on her son’s shoulder in a sort of gentle caution. Seeing her do that had sent an odd little shiver through him, as though—

He frowned, discovering that his own hands had gone still, and he was staring into space, his attention no longer split. Ciara Malloy had filled his head, and he didn’t like it.

—as though she’d been touching him. The sensation had been eerily real. Her hand could have been resting on him. He’d liked her touch.

Too long without a woman, he thought irritably, while knowing he wasn’t going to do anything about it. He missed sex—damn, but he missed it. The idea of bar pickups and one-night stands held no appeal, though, and his couple attempts since Ginny’s death at having an ongoing lover hadn’t ended so well. Maybe in the big city there were women who only wanted a casual lover, but here in Goodwater, anyone he hooked up with started envisioning diamond rings and moving in. Since he couldn’t imagine wanting that again, well, he’d decided he could survive living celibate, as long as he avoided temptation.

Which meant it would be safest all around if he had as little to do with these new neighbors as possible.

Comfortable with his conclusion, Gabe reached for the saw. No reason the pretty mom and boy would be interested in him. They’d make friends soon enough, and he’d be nothing but the reclusive man next door, whose horses they happened to see out their kitchen window.

There might be a whisper of sadness when he thought of himself that way, knowing he’d end up like Ephraim Walker, a man who, toward the end, had had to depend on the distant kindness of people who didn’t even much like him. And Ephraim, at least he’d had a son.

But Gabe knew himself well enough to be sure he didn’t want to risk again the kind of devastation he’d barely survived once. He let the brief sadness go and concentrated on something that did give him pleasure—the texture and smell of fine woods, the miracles his hard work and skill wrought from plain-looking beginnings.

He was like the most ordinary of boards, he decided, solid, reliable, but nothing astonishing likely to spring out at the touch of stain or linseed oil, and that was fine by him.

* * *

CIARA REACHED THE end of a seam and grabbed her small scissors to snip the threads. Without the whir of the machine going, the silence of the house struck her.

If Mark had finished the reading she’d assigned him, he was capable of concentrating by the hour on drawing or looking up something that interested him on the internet. Still...it was awfully quiet.

“Mark?”

No answer, which meant he wasn’t in his room. She left the pillow cover she was working on sitting in a small heap on her worktable and went to check Mark’s bedroom anyway. Empty. So neat, it belonged in a model home, but that was just Mark. One argument she’d never have to have with him was over cleaning his room.

She headed downstairs, calling his name but receiving no response. The social-studies book lay closed on the kitchen table, neatly aligned with the square corners of the table. The worksheet beside it appeared to be filled out. She flipped it over to be sure he really had finished. Yep. Ciara felt a twinge of worry that it had been way too easy for him. And boring. If she found some reading on local Indian tribes, or early white settlement in Eastern Washington, maybe that would be more gripping than standard stuff about the executive branch of the federal government. But he did have to learn the basic stuff, she reminded herself, and she had to be sure he’d pass end-of-the-grade-level tests, which meant sticking to the standard curriculum, didn’t it?

A worry for later. All she had to do right now was get him through the last couple months of the year. Then she could plan better for eighth grade.

There was no reason to be concerned because he’d gone outside. It was a nice day, and he was mostly sensible. She could guess just fine where he was. Those damn horses fascinated him, despite the fact that they were refusing to come to the fence no matter how he waved carrots at them or tried to whistle like their owner did.

But when she stepped out onto the porch, she saw them peacefully grazing down the slope toward their own barn, and no sign whatsoever of her son.

“Mark?” she called again.

She gave brief thought to returning to work. What kind of trouble could he get in? Even if he’d wandered as far as the road—and why would he?—no more than a vehicle or two an hour went by. More likely he’d wanted to explore the back section of their land, including the creek, which should be safe enough. Yesterday she’d looked up the distribution of rattlesnakes in Eastern Washington and been relieved to find they were rare to nonexistent in this upper corner of the state.

Ciara went back into the kitchen, grabbed a soda from the refrigerator and popped it open. Maybe she’d walk toward the creek herself, just to be sure. She’d feel better to definitely know that he hadn’t left their property.

* * *

“HI. ARE YOU BUSY?”

Gabe straightened from the bin of boards he’d been sorting through and saw Mark Malloy standing at the entrance to his timber store. This corner of the barn, walled off from the rest but for a wide doorway, held his supply of solid boards, veneers and smaller pieces of exotic woods. This space had a ceiling, unlike the rest of the barn with its high rafters and loft that hung over what had been stalls. A dehumidifier protected his stock of wood.

“This barn is my workshop,” he said. “Yes, I’m working.”

“You don’t look like you’re working.”

“I’m choosing some pieces of maple for a particular job.” He didn’t know why he was explaining, but did.

“Oh.” The boy came to his side and gazed into the bin. Right away, he asked why Gabe didn’t just grab a bunch of boards.

Gabe found himself explaining his criteria for this and other jobs, again without entirely understanding himself. He didn’t want to hurt the kid’s feelings, he told himself, but wasn’t sure that was exactly it.

Mark helped him carry half a dozen boards to his Felder saw.

“Your mom know where you are?”

“She was working.”

Lucky Mom.

“But she wouldn’t mind. She said I couldn’t go into the pasture, but she didn’t say I couldn’t visit you,” Mark confided with a winning smile.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Gabe asked, leaning one hip against a workbench. Or had school already let out? It occurred to him belatedly that Ciara might have driven her son today.

“I’m homeschooling.” The kid’s tone was odd, maybe stilted. “I went to school back where we used to live—you know, near Seattle—but Mom got mad at the school so she said she could be my teacher.”

Gabe knew he shouldn’t raise questions; all that would do was encourage the boy. But he was curious enough to risk it. “What grade are you in?”

“Seventh.”

“I see.” No, he didn’t. Did the mom want to give Mark an education steeped in religion? Or did she just not think it was fair for him to have to start at a new school so late in the year? “If you’re not going to school, you’ll have to find a way to make friends around here,” he commented. “It’s probably too late to sign up for Little League.”

Mark grimaced horribly. “I’m not very good at baseball.”

“Basketball? You’re tall for your age, aren’t you?”

“I guess, but I’m not very good at that, either. I hated PE.”

“You’ll grow into your feet,” Gabe said, nodding at them.

“How do you grow into feet?” Mark laughed nervously. “That sounds weird.”

“It’s a saying.” Gabe did some more explaining, this time about how bodies grow in fits and starts, and not always in a well-coordinated fashion. His own feet had reached their final size—a twelve—long before he’d attained his current height.

“Is that why baby horses—I mean, foals—look so different?”

“That’s right. They have to have long enough legs to reach their mother’s teats to nurse and to keep up with her when she runs. In the wild, they wouldn’t survive if they couldn’t run as fast as the herd. But it takes time for the rest of their bodies to mature so they’re in proportion.”

“Oh.” The boy shuffled his feet and hung his head. “I don’t think Hoodoo and Aurora like me. They won’t even take a carrot from me.”

Gabe knew why; he’d seen the kid a couple of times at the fence, jumping up and down and waving his arms and yelling to get the horses’ attention. God knows what kind of strange creature they thought he was, but it was unlikely to be a flattering conclusion on their parts.

“Did you remember what I said about staying quiet and moving slowly?”

His expression became mulish. “But if I just stand there, they ignore me!”

Smart horses. Gabe wished he could ignore the kid, too.

* * *

CIARA WENT OUT the kitchen door and made her way toward the creek that ran at the back of the property. In front, the land was all pasture, but sloping down behind the house was the beginning of a kind of open, dry woods that continued as far as she could see. The trees were evergreen, but there was no understory like there’d be in Western Washington, with ferns and salal and salmonberries, all encouraged by the generous rainfall. Instead there was thin grass and otherwise bare ground that she imagined would be really dusty once summer came.

Were there fish in the creek? She speculated about whether Mark would enjoy fishing. After a moment she made a face. She couldn’t picture him being willing to knock a wriggling trout he’d caught on the head to kill it. Or doing something as gruesome as cutting off the head. And Lord knows she didn’t want to do that part.

She ought to let him wander in peace. That was part of the beauty of owning a good-size piece of land, wasn’t it? If there was a raging river back here, that would be different, but he couldn’t drown in the creek, not unless he slipped, cracked his head on a rock and ended up unconscious and facedown in the water.

Her steps quickened. He did trip an awful lot. Still— Mostly, she just wanted him to let her know when he went outside and when he came back in the house. Plus, she didn’t know the dangers here. This was so different from any place she’d ever lived.

The day felt pleasantly like spring, blue sky arching overhead. Trees she thought might be cottonwoods clustered along the creek. Even so, it didn’t take her long to determine that Mark wasn’t here, either.

She cupped her hands and yelled, “Mark!”

There wasn’t any answer this time, either. Mild concern morphed into the beginnings of apprehension. She was running by the time she reached the house again. After bounding up the steps, she called his name one more time, but the same quiet met her. Damn it, where could he be?

Had somebody come by that she hadn’t heard? Would Mark have gone with anyone without having told her?

She grabbed her purse and car keys then raced back out. She’d go from neighbor’s to neighbor’s, driving slowly in between. She wouldn’t panic yet. A boy Mark’s age had no reason to feel a need to check in constantly with his mother. He wasn’t inconsiderate, exactly, but the idea of her worrying wouldn’t cross his mind.

Gabe Tennert’s first, she decided. Mark had been intrigued by him. Neither of them had yet met the people on the other side or the ones across the road. Although there were obviously some kids at the house a little ways down. Maybe—

She drove down her long driveway faster than she should have, dust pluming behind, turned right on the two-lane road then right without even signaling into Mr. Tennert’s driveway. As cool as he’d been, she was trying not to think of him as Gabe. That was too...friendly.

And friendly was the last emotion she’d feel if she found out he’d been letting Mark hang out without insisting her son call home first.

* * *

GABE KNEW MAD when he saw it, and there it was, vibrating in front of him, in the person of Ciara Malloy.

Mark didn’t seem to have noticed. “Mom! Look at all these cool tools Mr. Tennert has. And he’s like me. See? He has a place for everything, and he says he never quits work without putting every single tool away and cleaning up every scrap of wood and even sawdust.” He sounded pleased and awed. He hadn’t been as impressed by the huge band resaw or the pillar drill, grinder and sanding machines as he’d been by Gabe’s regimented ranks of clamps and the rolling chest with multiple drawers that held his tools, each placed as precisely in a slot designed just for it as a surgeon’s tools might be in the operating room.

“You disobeyed my direct order,” his mother said from between tight lips. She shot a fiery look at Gabe.

“I didn’t!” her son cried. “You said I couldn’t go in the pasture, and I didn’t.”

She stared at him. “If you didn’t cut through the pasture—”

“I went down the driveway and along the road. Didn’t you see my bike? Though it would be a lot faster if I could go through the pasture, Mom. Then I wouldn’t have to ride my bike on the road. The horses wouldn’t hurt me.” Momentary chagrin crossed his face. “They won’t even come near me.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “Okay, new rule. You need to tell me if you are going to leave our property. Always. No exceptions.”

“But Mom! You say I can’t interrupt you when you’re working. That’s already a rule.”

“Then you wait until I take a break.”

“But Mom—!” Even he seemed finally to notice she was steaming. “Are you mad?”

“I was scared when I couldn’t find you.” She transferred her gaze to Gabe. “Didn’t it occur to you I’d be worried?”

“I did ask if you knew where he was,” Gabe said mildly. “He said...” He frowned, unable to remember exactly what Mark had said. “I’m right next door,” he added.

“He knows better than to bother you, especially in the middle of a working day.”

“I’m not bothering Mr. Tennert,” Mark assured her. “Am I?” Eyes as blue as his mother’s met Gabe’s. The beseeching expression was his downfall. Damn it, the kid was a bother. Gabe would really like it if Ciara forbade him visiting. But looking into those eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to be that blunt. It would feel like kicking a puppy.

“Ah...a little break didn’t hurt anything. I’d have kicked him out pretty soon.”

“I wish you’d show me how to use your tools,” the boy said wistfully.

Gabe cringed at the idea of those uncoordinated limbs anywhere near a whirring saw blade. Hand tools, though...

“Whatever he says, you cannot pop over here whenever you feel like it and bother Mr. Tennert,” Ciara said. Her sigh was almost surreptitious. Did she have as hard a time crushing the kid’s hopes as he did? Gabe wondered.

“Make it Gabe,” he suggested, glancing at the boy. “Both of you.”

They beamed at him. “Oh,” the mother said. “My name’s Ciara. Did I tell you that?” She spelled it for his benefit, and he nodded. Spelling never had been his strong suit.

“I could give Mark a few lessons in using hand tools,” Gabe suggested, even as he thought, What the hell? “Unless you’re hiring someone to come in and do a sweeping remodel of your house, maybe he could take on a project or two. Learn how to strip and sand windowsills and moldings, say. The doorknob on the front door could use to be replaced.”

Her expression changed slowly to one of suspicion. “How do you know?”

“When Ephraim got old, he needed somebody to check up on him.” He shrugged. “Make sure he hadn’t fallen, that he’d gotten out of bed, looked like he’d been eating. I drove him to some doctor appointments, too.”

“Oh.” She looked almost disappointed, but her face had softened, too. “That was nice of you.”

“I’d known him a lot of years,” he said simply, although that wasn’t all there was to it. Ephraim had expressed gruff sympathy after Ginny and Abby were killed, then went back to treating Gabe the way he always had. He didn’t stare at Gabe every time he saw him with pity or avid curiosity, which made seeing him tolerable at a time when Gabe was avoiding everyone else.

“If you mean it,” she said slowly.

Mean what? Then he remembered. Oh, hell. He’d offered to teach her son to swing a hammer and apply a scraper and use sandpaper and maybe a handsaw. He considered himself a decent man; he didn’t hurt people’s feelings on purpose, and was rarely rude. Mostly, he limited the amount of time he had to spend with them, which allowed him to be polite when he was forced into company.

Well, this time he’d give a lesson or two then make excuses. Maybe start closing the barn doors when he was working instead of leaving them standing wide open. Or tell Ciara that he didn’t want to be bothered. She could be the bad guy so he didn’t have to be.

“A little time with Mark won’t kill me,” he said, and couldn’t help wondering at the expression of astonishment she wiped quickly from her face.

“Why don’t you give us your phone number, so Mark can call and find out a good time instead of just showing up?” she suggested.

He had some business cards in a drawer and took one out. He handed it to Mark, who stood closer. “You won’t lose that?”

“It’s really your phone number?” The kid inspected the card then turned it over as if he expected it to squirt water at him or produce a toy gun with a flag that said, Bang. What was with these two?

“It’s really my phone number.” He glanced at the boy’s pretty mother. “You might want to post it when you get home, in case you have an emergency.”

She thanked him. He escorted them out, reminding himself he was being neighborly, that’s all. Not so different than with old Ephraim. A single woman and a twelve-year-old boy might have a crisis they didn’t know how to deal with. He got the feeling they were coming from a very different environment than a county with barely over forty thousand residents. Most Seattle suburbs probably had that many people. Here, those forty thousand people were spread over one hell of a lot of empty land. Seemed to him Colville, the biggest city in the county, didn’t even have a population of five thousand. Goodwater claimed a grand total of 1,373 people, which put it in the largest few cities in Stevens County. That didn’t include the homeowners outside the city limits, of course, but still, living here wouldn’t be anything like what these two knew. Gabe had to wonder why in hell they’d made a move so drastic. Had Ciara even seen the house before she bought it?

Gabe watched them leave, hoping he hadn’t bitten off more than he was willing to chew. As he walked back into his workshop, he frowned, trying to figure out why he’d made an exception to his usual No Trespassing philosophy.

Maybe it was because the boy seemed so...needy. Yeah, that was it. And yes, he was odd, no question, but seemed unaware of it. At least, he’d shown no sign of being aware until Gabe had expressed his willingness to give him some time. Then he’d seemed perplexed, as if he wasn’t used to anyone welcoming him.

Gabe gusted out a sigh. Yeah, that had to be it. His offer had nothing to do with the boy’s mother. In fact, he stood by his belief that he’d be better off not seeing her any more than he could help.

* * *

IT DIDN’T TAKE Gabe twenty-four hours to regret his offer.

That happened when, late morning, his mobile phone rang. Unfamiliar number, but local. He always tried to answer in case he was going to pick up a new contractor or client.

“Can I come over now?” an eager voice asked. “This is Mark,” he tacked on belatedly. “You know. I live next door.”

Gabe almost groaned. But...hell. He was at a logical stopping point. “Sure,” he said. “But this is a working day for me, so you can’t stay long.”

“Okay!”

“Make sure you tell—” Realizing he was talking to dead air, Gabe gave up.

Because he was paying attention today, he heard the soft sound of bicycle tires on the asphalt not five minutes later. The kid popped into the barn. Nothing unusual about his attire for a boy his age: jeans, a plain T-shirt and, in his case, red canvas Converse shoes. His sandy hair was spiky and disheveled.

“I want to learn to make something,” he announced.

Not what Gabe had had in mind, but he reluctantly conceded that it wasn’t a bad idea. It would give the boy a sense of achievement. The high point of Gabe’s day in high school had been shop class, where he’d been introduced to woodcrafting. Mark wouldn’t get anything like that as long as his mother insisted on homeschooling.

“We can aim for that,” he agreed.

“But what can I make?” The boy gazed trustingly at him.

“A box.” That had been his first project in shop class, and thanks to a good instructor and his own perfectionist nature, it had ended up beautifully constructed. He kept it in his bedroom and was still proud of it.

Mark brightened. “You mean a wood box? I like boxes. I could keep stuff in it.”

“That’s the idea. But we won’t start on it today. You need to practice on scrap wood first.”

He was a little surprised to discover how quickly Mark took to measuring and how much pleasure he took in the tools Gabe showed him. Most kids that age would want to be slap-dash. When Gabe gave him a challenge, Mark measured and remeasured, his concentration intense.

He knew rulers and tape measures, of course, but was fascinated by the LDM—laser distance measuring—something Gabe rarely used but owned. His favorite was the angle gauge, which looked like two straight-edge rulers hinged together at one end, and was designed to measure the angle between adjacent surfaces. The kid understood the concepts right away, too, and Gabe began to suspect he might be good at math, as Gabe had been himself.

He let Mark do a little sawing by hand, but they hadn’t gotten far when Mark asked if he was hungry.

“Because I am. Do you have anything to eat here?”

Apparently, he was inviting himself to lunch. Gabe hesitated, not wanting to set a precedent, but decided feeding the kid a sandwich wouldn’t hurt anything. He’d send him home afterward.

“Yes, but let’s clean up first.”

That wasn’t a concept this boy had any trouble with, either, as it turned out. He remembered where each of the tools had been kept, and wiped them clean with a rag and put them away as carefully as Gabe would have. Apparently, yesterday’s admiration for Gabe’s meticulous storage had been genuine. He used a small hand broom to clean up his minimal amount of sawdust and then looked at Gabe expectantly.

His phone rang while the two of them were putting together sandwiches.

“Gabe? This is Ciara. I’m just checking to be sure Mark is still with you.”

“Yes, we’re having lunch right now. I’ll send him home as soon as he’s eaten.”

“You didn’t have to feed him.”

“I won’t make it a habit,” he said, thinking that he liked her voice, which had a lilt to it. It made him think of the creek out back, when the water rippled over rocks.

“All right.” Suddenly, she sounded awkward. “Um, just let me know if—”

“If?” he prompted after she fell silent.

“If he’s bugging you.”

He didn’t say, “Pretty sure that’ll happen soon. Any minute, in fact.” He had a bad feeling his patience today had created a monster. He settled for “I’ll do that” and ended the call, thoughtful.

Parents said that kind of thing all the time. He was sure his own mother had. But Ciara sounded more...resigned than he’d expected. Because she knew her son was a little unusual?

Mark chattered unaffectedly all through the meal. He wanted to know when he could start his box.

“After you learn some basic skills.”

“Can I ride one of the horses?”

“Maybe.”

“When?”

“Someday.”

“Can I today?”

“No. I have to work.”

Thanks to his mother, he did seem to understand that adults had to apply themselves to their jobs. But when Gabe asked what his mother did for a living, he was vague.

“She used to work at a doctor’s office. You know. She made appointments and stuff.”

“What about now?” Gabe didn’t even know why he was curious, but he was.

“She sews.” His forehead crinkled. “Sometimes people send her something and she uses it to sew, like, I don’t know, a pillow or something. It’s boring,” he concluded.

Gabe laughed, raised his eyebrows at the boy’s empty plate and said, “Time for you to go home now.”

“You don’t have cookies or anything?”

“Afraid not.” Desserts for Gabe were store-bought, and therefore rarely worth the bother. Sometimes he thought nostalgically about his mother’s home-baked cookies, but not often.

“Can I come again tomorrow?” Mark asked eagerly.

Precedents, Gabe reminded himself. “Depends how involved I get. Check with me tomorrow.”

“You mean, I have to call every time?”

“Unless we’ve made arrangements in advance.”

“Like, today you say I can come tomorrow.”

“Right. But I’m not saying that today.”

“Oh.” His shoulders sagged a little, but he let Gabe steer him toward the door without further protest.

Nonetheless, it seemed like forever before Mark finally got on his bike and pedaled back down the driveway.

Gabe shook his head and made his way to the barn.

His generosity today was going to bite him in the ass. He knew it. As he set up to get back to working, he practiced nice ways of saying no.