Читать книгу A Kiss, A Kid And A Mistletoe Bride - Lindsay Longford - Страница 10

Chapter Two

“The time, Gabby?” The tip of Joe’s finger tapped gently against her chin, snapping her out of her bemusement.

“What time shall Oliver and I come caroling at your door?”

“Eight, I suppose. That might be late for your son, though.” She hoped Joe would pick up the hint and let her off the hook.

Joe Carpenter, of course, didn’t. “Not a problem. Oliver doesn’t start school until after the holidays.”

Gabby sighed, a tiny exhalation. Joe had a plan. She couldn’t imagine what was possessing him to take her up on her invitation, an invitation offered only out of politeness, not for any other reason.

Liar, liar. You like being around Joe.

With a jerk of her head, she silenced the snide little voice and dislodged Joe’s finger. Her chin tingled, as if that phantom touch lingered warm against her skin.

Bearlike in his red-and-green plaid shirt, Moon waited for them to join him. “Well, then, you folks ready to check out?”

He held up a red plastic ball made of two hoops and topped with mistletoe and a green yarn bow. “Free kissing ball with each tree.” Moon wagged the kissing ball in front of her until she thought her eyes would cross.

Resolutely, she kept her gaze fixed on the tip of Moon’s Santa hat and told herself she was merely imagining the heat lapping at her, washing from Joe to her, and wrapping her in warmth and thoughts of more than kissing.

“Somethin’ special for old Moon’s customers, this is. And we got treats in the shed. Cookies. Apple cider. The boy can have a cup of hot chocolate while I bundle up this beauty. So come along, y’all.” A trail of brown needles followed Moon’s progress as he herded them forward. “Good stuff, cocoa. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, young fella?”

Oliver ducked before Moon’s beefy hand landed on his head. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He trudged after Moon and the tree.

Moon grinned back. “Shucks, kid. Everybody likes hot chocolate.”

Oliver planted one new shoe after the other, following Moon and hanging one hand tight to the edge of Joe’s pocket. “I only like it the way my daddy makes it. Out of the brown can and stirred on the stove. And only with little marshmallows.” Head down, ignoring Moon, Oliver adjusted his shorter stride to Joe’s, matching left foot to left

The boy needed physical contact with his father. Gabrielle slowed and let the two of them walk slightly ahead of her, a team, just as the boy had stressed. Everybody else on the outside.

Her curiosity stirred again as she watched the two, one rangy and dark, a lean length of man, the other, short and dark, a stubby child with eyes only for his father.

“Where’s your tree, Gabby?” Joe stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. “Oliver and I’ll give you a hand with it while Moon bundles ours.”

“Umm.” She saw something tall and green from the corner of her eye and pointed. “That one.”

“That one?” Not believing her, Joe stared at the ratty tree. The one Oliver had insisted on was three good shakes away from mulch, but Gabby’s tree—“You sure?” He frowned at her. “This one is, uh, well—”

“It’s a terrific tree. It’ll look wonderful with all the old ornaments.” Gabby tilted her face up at him. Her off-center smile filled her face. Christmas lights sparkled in her mist-dampened soft brown hair, and he wanted to touch that one spot near her cheek where a strand fluttered with the breeze against her neck.

The look of her at that moment, all shiny and sweet and innocently hopeful, symbolized everything he’d come back to find in Bayou Bend, a town he’d hated and couldn’t wait to leave. Like the star at the top of a Christmas three, Gabby sparkled like a beacon in the darkness of Moon’s tree lot.

“Come on, Daddy. We got to go.” Oliver pulled anxiously on his hand.

Still watching the glisten of lights in the mass of her brown hair, Joe cleared his suddenly thick throat. “Right. But we’ll help Gabby first, Oliver. Because we’re stronger.”

“She don’t need our help. Moon can wrap her tree.”

“Mr. Tibo to you, squirt.”

“She looks strong enough to me.” Oliver scowled and kicked at the ground.

Joe scanned Gabby’s slight form, the gentle curves of her hips under some red, touch-me, feel-me material, the soft slope of her breasts beneath her blouse, breasts that trembled with her breath as she caught his glance. His gaze lingering on her, he spoke to his son. “Well, maybe she is strong in spite of the fact that she looks like a good sneeze would tip her over. Let’s say helping out’s a neighborly kind of thing to do, okay?”

“Neighbors?”

He would have sworn her breathy voice feathered right down each vertebra under his naked skin. Even as a teenager, her voice had had that just-climbed-out-of-bed sigh. He wondered if she knew its effect on males.

Her voice was the first thing he’d noticed about her back when he’d moved to Bayou Bend as a surly high school troublemaker.

Even then, the soft breathiness of Gabby O’Shea’s voice held something sweet and kind that soothed the savage creature raging inside him.

Seeing him on the sidewalk outside the grocery store where he’d lied his way into a part-time job, she’d smiled at him in his black leather jacket and tight jeans and said, “Hi, Joe Carpenter. Welcome to Bayou Bend.” Her voice slid over the syllables and held him entranced even as he folded his arms and gave her a distant, disinterested nod.

At seventeen, a year older than his classmates and new to this small community, cool Joe Carpenter didn’t have time to waste on thirteen-year-old skinny girls with kind voices, not when high school girls fell all over one another offering to give him anything he wanted. Thirteen-year-old junior high girls were off-limits, not worth wasting time on.

But, touching that bitter, angry place he’d closed off to the world, her voice made him remember her over the next two years as she grew into a young woman, made him lift his head in baffled awareness whenever he heard that soft voice reminding him all the world wasn’t hard and mean and nasty.

And now, even years after he’d fled Bayou Bend, her voice sent his pulse into overdrive with its just-got-out-of-bed breathiness.

“We’re going to be neighbors?”

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts as she repeated her question. “Yeah, Gabby. All of us. You. Me. Oliver. We’re going to be neighbors. I bought the Chandlers’ house. Down the block from your place.”

“Oh.” Her hair whipped against his shoulder, tangled in the fabric of his jacket, pulled free as she turned toward the tree she’d chosen. “I hadn’t heard.” With two hands, she lifted her tree and thumped it up and down on the ground a couple of times.

He could have driven a pickup truck through the spaces between the branches, but at least her tree didn’t drop needles like a cry for help.

“We’re living in a hotel.” Oliver tugged him toward Gabby’s tree and checked it out critically. “For now. With a indoor swimming pool. I like the hotel.”

“You’re going to have a tree in the hotel?” Gabby’s quick glance at him was puzzled. “That’s nice, but—”

“A friend’s letting us store the tree for a day or two.We’re moving into our house on Tuesday.” Joe watched as her eyes widened, flicked away from his.

“Ah.” She touched the branch. “Tuesday. You’ll be busy. Do you need some—” She stopped, just as she had before she’d issued her invitation.

Help was what he thought she almost offered before she caught herself.

She was uneasy with him. Edgy. Aware of him.

He took a deep breath. Nice, that awareness.

With one hand still wrapped around Joe’s, Oliver poked his head under one of the branches. “This is a okay tree. Not as good as ours, though.”

Joe inhaled, ready to scold Oliver, to say something, anything, because the kid had a mouth on him. But then Gabby’s laughing hazel eyes stopped him. Her mouth was all pursed up as if she was about to bust out laughing. He shrugged.

“No problem. And Oliver’s right.” She gasped as his son glowered at her. “His tree is better. In fact, a few minutes earlier, we were negotiating which one of us was going to walk away with it.” Her expression told him not to sweat the small stuff.

At least that’s what he thought it meant.

“Right, Oliver?”

“We didn’t nogosh—didn’t do that thing you said,” his son, stubborn as ever, insisted. “It was my tree ’cause I seen it first. Me and her settled that.”

“Yes, we did,” Gabby confirmed, smiling down at Oliver.

Joe ran a hand through his hair. Should he make Oliver give up their tree to Gabby? Was that the right thing to do? Hell, what did he know? He was the last person to try and teach a kid about manners and being a good neighbor and—

This daddy business didn’t come with instructions. Wasn’t like putting a bicycle together. More like flying by the seat of your pants, he was beginning to see. He didn’t think he’d ever get the hang of it.

And he wasn’t used to having a small recorder around, copying his words, imitating his ways, watching everything he did.

The responsibility made him lie awake at night, his blood running cold with the sure knowledge that he wasn’t father material, while Oliver’s warm neck rested against the crook of his arm.

“I like this tree, Joe,” Gabby said gently, as if she could read his thoughts.

Her voice warmed the chill creeping through him. Scrubbing his scalp hard, he stopped his spinning thoughts. “Fine, Gabby. If that’s the one you want.”

“Oh, it definitely is.” Her laugh rippled through the air. “It will be absolutely perfect for Dad and me.”

“Whatever you say. Come on, Oliver. You take that branch and haul it up to your shoulder.”

“’Course.” His son puffed out a biceps you could almost see without a microscope. “Because I’m strong.”

“I can see you really are,” Gabby said admiringly, her expression tender as she looked down at his grumpy son.

God. His son.

Once more that weight settled over him. The responsibility. The constant fear that he’d mess up. But he’d asked for this responsibility, gone looking for it, in fact. He would do what he had to do.

“Ready, Oliver?” Joe heaved the tree off its temporary stand.

“Sure.” Oliver clamped onto the assigned branch with both hands. “This is easy.” His whole body was hidden by the branch held tightly in his grip.

“Can you see?” Gabby’s question brought Oliver’s attention back to her.

“I can see my daddy’s behind.”

“A guiding light, huh? So to speak.”

This time Joe was sure he heard a strangled laugh underneath her words.

“Watch it, smarty-pants,” he muttered to her as she walked beside Oliver. “Nothing good happens to smart alecks.”

“Who? Me?” Her hair glittered and glistened, shimmered with her movements in the damp air.

“Oh, sure. You have that butter-won’t-melt-in-your-mouth look to you, Gabby. Even in eighth grade, you looked as if you were headed straight for the convent. Still do, in fact.” He lifted one eyebrow and felt satisfaction as her face flamed pink. “But I know better. That nifty red skirt gives you away, you know. That skirt’s an invitation to sin, sweet pea.”

She sped up her steps, trying to pass him.

“You’re wicked, Gabby, that’s what you are.” He liked the flustered look she threw him. “Wicked Gabby with the innocent eyes and bedroom voice.”

Her mouth fell open even as she danced to his other side.

He liked keeping her off balance. One of these days, if he ever had the time, he’d have to figure out why he liked pushing her buttons. Always had. “You’re a bad girl, Gabby.” He waggled a finger in a mock scold. “Santa’s not coming down your chimney this year, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, stop it, you fool,” she sputtered, finally darting past him with a laugh. “You’re incorrigible, Joe, that’s what you are.”

“Shoot, everybody knows that.”

“What’s corgibull?” Oliver planted his feet firmly in place, stopping the procession. He stuck his head up from behind the branch. “And why are you and her laughing? What’s so funny?”

“Your daddy is funning with me. He’s making very inappropriate jokes,” Gabby said primly, digging in her wallet and sending Joe a sideways scolding look as she dragged out money for the tree.

“Yeah?” Oliver stuck his fist on a nonexistent hip and rushed to Joe’s defense. “My daddy’s ’propriate.”

“Oliver’s right, Gabby.” Joe tightened his mouth. “I’m very appropriate. Especially—”

“Uncle,” she said, her eyes gleaming with laughter and something else that made Joe want to step closer and see for himself what shifted in the depths of those changeable eyes.

But he didn’t.

Getting too close to Gabrielle O’Shea would be one of the stupidest moves in a lifetime filled with mistakes.

“I give up, Joe. Let me pay for this dratted tree and get home. Dad’s probably wondering what sinkhole opened up and swallowed me.”

Joe stood the tree against a pole.

Pine needles in his hair and all over his clothes, Oliver stomped up beside him.

“Stay with Gabby, Oliver, while I lug this tree over to Moon.”

Mutiny glowered back at him.

“It’s polite, son. To provide ladies with an escort.” Feeling like a fool, Joe didn’t dare look at Gabby. She’d be laughing her head off at him. Him. Giving etiquette lessons to a kid. What on earth was the world coming to?

When he turned around, though, she wasn’t laughing. Her face had gone all blurry and kissable, and he couldn’t figure out what he’d done to make her look at him the way she was.

If they’d been alone, he would have kissed her for sure. Would have stepped right up to her, wrapped his arms around her narrow waist and given in to the itch to see what that shiny blouse felt like under his hands.

No question about it. He wanted to kiss her more than he’d wanted anything for himself in a long while.

Instead, ignoring the warning alarms in his brain, the voice screeching Stupid! Stupid! he gave in to the lesser temptation and slicked back the curl of hair that had been tantalizing him for the last fifteen minutes.

Against the back of his hand, her hair was slippery like the silk of her blouse. Against his palm, the slim column of her neck was night-and-mist cool. For a long moment she stood there, not moving, just breathing, hazel eyes turning a rich, deep green, jewels shining in the darkness as she stared at him. He curled his palm around her nape and dipped his head.

Well, he’d never laid claim to sainthood.

Against the end of his finger, her pulse fluttered and sang to him, a siren call.

And beside him, clinging like a limpet, his son leaned, small and cranky and utterly dependent on him.

The strains of “O Holy Night” drifted to him. Heated by her body and nearness, the scent of Gabby, so close, so close, rose to him. Surrounded by scent and sound, he forgot everything except the woman in front of him.

Forgot the silenced alarms in his brain.

Forgot responsibility.

Forgot everything.

Oliver pulled at the edge of Joe’s pocket. “I want to go, Daddy. I’m tired.”

Joe stepped back and let his hand fall to his side. He wasn’t about to tell sweet Gabby he was sorry, because he wasn’t, not at all. If it wasn’t for Oliver, well, mistake or not, he’d have Gabby O’Shea wrapped up against him tighter than plastic wrap.

But Oliver was in his life with needs and fears Joe was only beginning to glimpse.

His son had taken up permanent residence in the cold, lonely recesses of Joe’s heart.

No one else had ever found the key to that cramped room. But Oliver had, that first time three weeks ago when Joe had taken his small hand in his and walked with Oliver out of the apartment where he’d been left.

Not hesitating, Oliver had picked up a raggedy blanket, latched onto Joe’s hand and said only, “I told Suzie you’d come. I told her I had a daddy who would find me.” He’d smiled at Joe, a funky, trusting, gap-toothed smile. “I knowed you would. You did.”

That had been that.

Next to that power, even Gabby in Christmas mist and glittery lights could be resisted.

He hoped. And maybe only because she backed away at the same time he did, both of them knowing better than to yield to that sizzle.

So when his son’s gruff voice came again, Joe knew the choice was easy. Whatever he wanted wasn’t a drop in the bucket compared with what Oliver needed.

It couldn’t be.

He wouldn’t let anybody, not even himself, cause this tiny scrap of humanity one more second’s worth of pain.

“Okay, squirt. You’re right. It’s late. But first we have to drop off Gabby’s tree with Moon. Then we’ll hit the highway. We’ll decide what to do about the party later.”

Oliver’s sigh was heavy enough to crush rocks. “I want to go home. Now. And I don’t want to go to a party.”

Joe was torn. What was he supposed to do? Yell at the kid for being mouthy? Is that what a good parent would do? It didn’t feel right, though, not with Oliver looking up at him like a damned scared puppy who’d just peed on the rug. Hell. Strangled, Joe tugged at his shirt collar.

Gabby curled her fingers around Joe’s arm. “No problem, Joe. You and Oliver decide after you get back to the hotel whether you want to stop at the house tomorrow night. Right now, Oliver’s tired and probably hungry.” Not crowding his son, she added casually, “Maybe having some of Moon’s cocoa and doughnuts would be a good idea.”

Her skirt pulled tight across the delicate curves of her fanny as she stooped to Oliver’s level, her manner easy and relaxed. Joe admired the way she gave Oliver space.

He admired her tidy curves, too, and decided a man could be forgiven for appreciating a work of nature. Looking didn’t hurt anyone. Be a shame not to admire Gabby’s behind. After all, she’d checked out his.

She caught his faint grin and yanked her skirt free where it had tightened against her.

“Turnabout’s fair play,” he drawled. “And the view is swell.”

Being a woman of good sense, she ignored him. “Oliver, I understand you’re particular about your cocoa. Anybody would be, but Moon makes a killer cup of chocolate. The older guys like it. But maybe it’s an acquired taste.” She stood up, shrugged. “You’d make Moon feel good if you gave his cocoa the Oliver taste test.”

His son hesitated, reluctant to give in. Stubborn little squirt. “Maybe I’ll take a sip. If it’ll make Moon feel better.”

Bless her. Oliver was probably hungry. Joe kept forgetting how fast a six-year-old ran out of gas.

“I was thinking—” Gabby wrinkled up her face “—that you look like a guy with discriminating taste buds.”

Intrigued, Oliver quit scuffing the ground.

“Doughnuts might not be your thing. Want to try some trail mix?” Gabby pulled out a plastic bag with chips of dried fruit and nuts. Opening the closure, she pulled out a couple of raisins and offered the bag to Joe.

“Trail mix sounds good. Raisins, huh?” Joe hated raisins, hated dried fruit. Prissy stuff. But he took a handful and handed the bag to Oliver, who, imitating him, grabbed a fistful and shoveled it into his mouth.

“Lots of raisins.” A sly smile tugged at Gabby’s mouth, curving her full bottom lip up. “You like raisins, don’t you, Joe?”

“Yum. My favorite—” Dubiously he looked at the wrinkled speck he held between two fingers.

“Fruit, Joe. Filled with nutrition.” Her eyes sparkled up at him.

“Yeah. I know.” He ate a raisin and figured he’d learned another lesson. Carry food. He reckoned his jackets would start looking like chipmunk cheeks before the kid grew up.

No wonder kids needed two parents. His respect for single parents shot up five hundred notches. How did they do it, day after day? How could he be this kid’s only adult? Day after day.

Impossible.

He scowled.

“Hope your face doesn’t freeze like that, Joe.” Gabby poked him in the stomach.

“I was just thinking.”

“Oh?” The sweetness in her voice almost undid him.

“Nothing.” Grimly, he picked up the tree and walked to the shed, Gabby slightly ahead of him. Clamped at his side, Oliver chomped happily on trail mix.

The kid deserved better than a selfish thirty-year-old loner who didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do now that he’d become a parent literally overnight.

You couldn’t return a child like a piece of merchandise.

A kid was for life.

The kid hadn’t asked for Joe, either, not really. Oliver had wished on a star for a dad, and a whimsical fate had thrown him Joe.

So, the kid was stuck with him as a dad. Joe was all the kid had. Where was the fairness in that? The justice?

Coming to the end of the aisle of trees, Joe tipped his head up to the velvet blackness of night in Bayou Bend. Nothing in the star-spangled darkness answered him. Sighing, he glanced back down at his son.

And in that moment, as he watched Oliver manfully chew on trail mix while checking out Joe’s reaction, wonder settled over Joe. Nobody had ever looked at him like that, like he’d hung the moon and stars, like their whole world was filled with him.

He might be all the kid had, he might not be worth a tinker’s damn as a father, but, by heaven, he had one thing working for him.

He wanted to do right by this boy more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. That ought to count for something.

Taking a deep breath, Joe grinned at Oliver. “Come on. Hitch a ride on an old hoss.” Holding the tree with one hand, he swung Oliver up onto his shoulders and settled him. “Been a long day, huh, partner?” He patted Oliver’s foot.

Oliver rested his chin on top of Joe’s head as they approached the shed. “Yeah.” Oliver’s chin ground into Joe’s head with each munch of trail mix. “I like it up here.” He folded both arms on top of Joe’s head and wrapped his legs around Joe’s neck.

Hell, nobody was born knowing how to be a parent. There were plenty of books on the subject. Joe could learn. He’d make mistakes, but he could keep from making the same mistake twice. With a little luck.

And a lot of work.

He could do this daddy business.

“I’ll find Moon, Joe. If you don’t mind, just lean the tree against the shed and you two go have that cup of cocoa.” Gabby reached up and wiggled Oliver’s toe. “Nice meeting you, Oliver. Let me know what you think of Moon’s cocoa, hear?” She pivoted and whisked behind the corner of the shed so fast Joe didn’t have a chance to stop her.

He thought the night seemed darker and colder without the glow of Gabby’s face.

“Let’s go, Daddy.” Leaning forward, Oliver peered into Joe’s face. “We don’t need anybody else, do we?”

“Duck, son. The shed door’s low.” He didn’t see Gabby again. By the time he and Oliver drank cocoa, checked out the baskets of ornaments and made their way to the van, Gabby was nowhere in sight.

“Gabby leave yet?” Joe slammed the van door shut.

“Right after I tied down her trunk. She was in a hurry. Worried about her dad, I guess.”

“Milo looked fine when I saw him. But that was from a distance.” Joe lifted Oliver into the passenger side and motioned for him to fasten the seat belt. “What’s the problem?”

“Damned if I know. Milo’s complaining about Gabrielle coming home, swearing she’s making a fuss over nothing, that’s all I know. He’s worked up a head of steam about Gabrielle threatening to sell her Arizona condo and come back to Bayou Bend on a permanent basis.” Moon leaned over confidentially. “You ask me—and I notice you didn’t—that’s the problem.”

“I don’t get it. What do you mean?” Sticking the key into the ignition switch, Joe paused. “She’s back for good?”

“That’s what’s making Milo crazy. He’s ranting and raving that she would be making a mistake, that he doesn’t need any help—”

“Does he?” Joe straightened out Oliver’s twisted seat belt and snapped it into the slot.

“I don’t know.” Moon rolled his shoulders. “He was in the hospital for three weeks back around Halloween, but you know Milo.”

“No, actually, I don’t. Not well, anyway.”

“Huh.” Moon raised his eyebrows. “Funny. I thought you knew the old man. Don’t know where I got that idea.”

“Neither do I.” Joe kept his face empty of expression. What Moon might know or might guess wasn’t important. Joe wasn’t about to fill him in on any details.

He’d told Moon the truth. He didn’t know Milo well.

Not in the usual meaning, at least.

Moon nodded. “Anyway, if Milo’s got a health problem, he sure wouldn’t broadcast it. He’d make a joke out of it, but he’d keep any problem to himself. Milo’s good at keeping secrets.”

Joe didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to read between the lines. Moon knew something, after all, about that night years ago, but, like Milo, he could keep a secret. “Thanks for your help, Moon.” Joe reached out to shake Moon’s ham-size hand.

Moon’s face split into a grin. “Sure. Any old time.” His squeeze of Joe’s hand was hard enough to discourage circulation for a few minutes. As Joe started to pull the driver’s door shut, Moon rested his hand on it, stopping Joe’s movement. All the folksy drawl disappeared from Moon’s rumble of a voice as he gave Joe a keen look and said, “Merry Christmas to you and your boy.” He slammed the van door shut. “And, Joe...”

“Yeah?”

“Welcome home.”

Looking at Moon’s large, sincere face, where understanding lay beneath the good-old-boy mask, Joe felt his throat close up.

He’d felt the same way years ago when Gabby welcomed him to Bayou Bend, a place he’d never called home.

A place he couldn’t wait to run from as fast as he could.

A place he’d returned to because of Oliver.

And if it killed him, he was going to make this town home for his son.

Staying away from Gabrielle O’Shea would be part of that price, no matter how drawn he was to her sweetness.

In the hotel later, Joe watched shadows dance across the wall. Shifting, changing, like his life, the shadows passed one after another, each blurring into the other until the original pattern was no longer visible.

Beside him, snoring gently, small bubbles popping with each breath, his son slept. Peacefully. Securely.

Safely.

For the first time since he’d heard about his son, a son he didn’t even know he had, Joe slept soundly, too.

In his dreams, pine scent and Christmas carols mingled, and he followed the glow of Gabby’s smile, like a star leading him through the darkness.