Читать книгу Caleb's Bride - Wendy Warren - Страница 10

Gabby looked frantically around the coffee shop then back to her sister-in-law. “Shhhh! You see? This is why I don’t like to talk about it. It sounds worse out loud than it really is.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Lesley was so frozen in shock, it took her a moment to move her lips again. “Gabby, you’re thirty-three. Out loud or not—”

“I know!” Groaning, Gabby lowered her forehead to the table, rolling her brow slowly back and forth on the cold wood. “I know.”

“How did this happen? Haven’t you wanted to?”

“Of course I wanted to. But with someone I loved. And I kept, I don’t know, thinking it was going to happen with Dean, and I didn’t want to be…unavailable.” She raised her head. “I get props for trying to hold out for true love, right?”

“You’re thirty-three, not in the novitiate and practically a virgin again. No, you get no props.” Lesley wagged her head. Her voice fell to a hushed tone generally reserved for announcements that all heroic attempts to resuscitate have failed. “This is bad.”

Sitting up, pressing against the hard-backed booth, Gabby rubbed her sweaty palms on the rough denim covering her thighs. “Remember how in love Poppy and Grammy Joan were? How they’d look at each other, and you could tell they knew exactly what the other person was thinking?”

Lesley nodded. “Yeah. I’d catch Max staring at her picture after she died. Sometimes he’d wink at her like he thought she could see him.”

“Right. They were practically a local legend. The couple nothing on this earth could part. Well, that’s what I was waiting for—a forever love. Time got away from me, that’s all.”

The women were silent awhile. Lesley reached for her friend’s hand. “Madly in love or not, you’ve got to start your romantic life, Gabby. The meter’s running.”

Sitting straighter, Gabby nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m planning, Les—to start my life, romantic and otherwise.” Pulling a manila envelope from the pink-and-black nylon backpack she’d brought with her, she extracted a brochure and some boldly printed trifolds, which she spread out on the table. “Look at this.”

Lesley scanned the papers. “These are brochures for that new cruise line—the one that caters to singles. I read about it in Via.” Looking up so suddenly she almost gave herself whiplash, she gasped. “Shut. Up. You’re going to have meaningless cruise sex! Have you booked the trip?”

“No, no. I’m not going on a trip. I’m going to work, Les. On the ship.”

Lesley blinked. “Work. Wha—Where?” She stabbed a finger at the brochure. “On one of these floating bedrooms?”

“It’s not a floating bedroom. They’re not like that. Singles’ cruises are—” Gabby tried to remember how the brochure had put it “—a way to experience exciting destinations with a sophisticated group of like-minded adventurers.” She smiled.

“And then have sex with them?”

“Lesley.” Directing her in-law’s attention to the color photograph, she said, “Look, they have waterslide races.”

“Ahh, yes. The sophisticated waterslide race.” Lesley shook her head slowly. “Gab, I don’t get it. You’re going to apply to this cruise line, and if they hire you…do what with the barbershop?”

“I already applied,” Gabby corrected, gauging her sister-in-law’s reaction and realizing that Lesley, who should be the easiest sell of all the Coombs, was nonetheless struggling with the news. “They did hire me. I’m going to be the ship’s barber. I leave in two months.” She took a breath. “I’ve put the shop up for sale, but if I don’t get any bites, I may rent to another barber.”

Lesley was deadly silent, her eyes wide and unblinking, obviously thinking, I was so not expecting that. Her lips compressed, and she swallowed convulsively. Because she considered herself an unlovely crier, Lesley typically went to great lengths not to weep in public. Now tears filled her eyes.

Gabby’s chest clutched. Okay. First family member I’ve told…. It’s going well, I think.

“I’m going to need your help, Les,” she said, reaching across the table to pat her sister-in-law’s wrist. “I’m going to tell the family Sunday night. I want your support. I suspect Mom’s going to freak out a little.”

“Your mom is going to freak out a lot. So’s your dad. And the girls will—Oh, Gabs. Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

“You said I should kick my life into gear.”

“I said you should have sex, not move to the Pacific Ocean.” Lesley blew her nose into a paper napkin. “You won’t even have a zip code.”

Gabby rubbed Lesley’s arm. “Not while the ship is moving. But maybe I’ll have sex with some great guy who will romance me across the high seas then ask me to have his children and settle down in a house on Moon Lake. We’ll host fabulous family get-togethers, and Kate and Natalie will frolic with my children along waterfront property. How’s that?”

Lesley gave a watery laugh. “That’s all right.” She sighed, took several fortifying sips of coffee then rallied as Gabby hoped she would. “You’ll need a makeover.” She snuffled. “Total. You can’t get on a singles’ cruise with nothing but running shoes and blue jeans in your suitcase.”

Gabby did have other wardrobe items, purchased the last time she’d tried to make herself over—for Dean. Then, her goal had been to liberate her “true self.” This time, she was totally willing to assume someone else’s true self. The self of a woman who lived life to the fullest and had never seen Jerry Maguire or heard Tom Cruise tell Renee Zellweger, “You complete me,” which had probably depressed more singles than any other phrase in the history of spoken language.

Since Lesley’s help was both required and desired for the mandated makeover, Gabby nodded agreeably. “Check.”

While Lesley enumerated the myriad other activities necessary to become cruise-worthy—ballroom dance instruction, makeup lessons, bikini-ready exercise program, waxing—Gabby remembered that she used to sit in this very diner when she was a girl, imagining the day she would eat here with her husband and children, cutting hamburgers in half for small hands, intercepting straws as they jetted across the table, wiping milk shake spills…and smiling at her man, her very best friend, as they laughed together over the chaos called life and reaffirmed with their eyes alone that they were still crazy in love.

Despite what she’d said to Les about meeting someone, moving into a house nearby and having babies, Gabby knew she didn’t have the heart to perpetuate that fantasy anymore. This time she wanted to reach for a brass ring she could actually close her slightly chubby fingers around.

Travel. Excitement. Dancing on the middle of the Pacific Ocean under a sky smattered with stars—that was within her grasp. And there might be a man, eventually. She no longer required a be-all and end-all romance. She would accept it if the universe brought her someone…nice. Lively and fun. And maybe it wouldn’t last longer than the cruise, but, hey, compared to another twenty years loving someone who didn’t love her back—

It would be plenty.

“What do you mean, you know he’s back? You’ve been in touch with him?”

Gabby cornered her brother, Ben, in the kitchen of their parents’ home as their bi-regular Sunday-night-supper-and-Crazy-Eights tournament got under way.

Thirteen months younger than Gabby, Ben was still single, lived over an hour away in Bend and played the field with a success that rivaled George Clooney’s, but he usually managed to come home for Crazy Eights Sundays. And for the food.

“Don’t your girlfriends feed you?” Gabby asked, tugging on his sleeve to capture his attention and save the relish tray from demolition.

Ben popped two stuffed olives in his mouth before turning to lean against the kitchen counter. Lazily crossing his ankles, he winked. “That’s not why I date them, Gabrielle. Did Mom make rolls?”

“Ben.” She gritted her teeth. “I’m asking you a question. Have you been in touch with Caleb Wells for a long time?”

Possessed of the trademark Coombs red hair, but in a much darker, more auburn hue, Ben was too handsome and too chill for his own good. Their parents had always said that if a major earthquake hit Oregon, Ben would find out about it two days later on the evening news. He did everything on Ben time, including answering direct questions.

“What’s a long time?” he murmured now, eyeing the refrigerator as if the decision to walk over and examine its contents merited further deliberation.

“For cripe’s sake.” Gabby fished more olives from a jar and plunked them next to the gherkins on the neon-orange plastic tray her mother had left out for her. “Two months. Have you been in touch longer than two months?”

Ben’s green eyes examined the pot lights their parents had recently installed in the kitchen ceiling. “Two months sounds about right.”

“How did he find you? Facebook?”

“No, he phoned. Dylan gave him my number.”

“Dylan? He’s been in touch with Dylan?”

Ben shrugged. Reaching for a jar of roasted peanuts, he unscrewed the lid and shook out a handful. “He may have gotten in contact with Jeremy first. I’m not sure.”

“What?” At the mention of their youngest brother, Gabby upset an olive that rolled across the counter and onto the floor. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? What about Mom and Dad? Did Cal contact them, too?”

Crunching peanuts, Ben squeezed one eye shut, peering at his sister as if viewing her under a microscope. “Have you considered tranquilizers for this condition, Gabrielle, because, you know…” He sailed his hand like an airplane a few inches above his head. “Over the top.” He tossed a peanut in the air, catching it in his mouth. “What’s the problem, anyway? As I recall, you didn’t care one way or the other when Cal disappeared.”

Lowering her eyes, Gabby grabbed a towel to mop up olive juice. “I don’t like surprises, that’s all.”

“Hmm.” The doorbell rang, and, brushing the salt off his hands, Ben headed toward the doorway. “I hope Mom and Dad do.”

“What?” Gabby said, looking after her brother’s retreating form, but he either didn’t hear her or didn’t bother to respond and continued out the door.

Gabby remained in the kitchen, finishing the relish tray and wondering what was the matter with her. Ben was right: Her reaction to Cal Wells was over the top. In all likelihood he’d had so many, er, partners since her that he barely remembered he’d once spread a Navajo blanket beneath a giant oak and had seen her, the girl he’d practically grown up with, naked in the moonlight.

Gabby ate an olive. And then a gherkin.

Cal wouldn’t mention that night to anyone in her family. Would he?

Shaking her head, she dismissed her own anxieties. Because, come on, even if he did mention it, they were all adults, right?

She put three more olives in her mouth.

Please, God, I will do anything. Don’t let him mention it.

She couldn’t imagine having one of her brothers or—please strike me dead first—her parents finding out she’d begged Cal to make love to her.

Eeeeyeesh. What a sparkling romantic history—unrequited love with Dean and embarrassing teenage sex with Cal.

Her new life couldn’t start soon enough.

Picking up the relish tray, she headed for the living room where her family was assembled. Her brother Dylan and his girlfriend, Julie, were the recent arrivals, which meant everyone but Jeremy, who was backpacking across Ireland with a friend from grad school, was present. For the moment, she had to push aside the problem of Caleb and concentrate on the news she had for her family.

A florist by trade, Julie was handing their mother a vase of summer blooms.

“Those are gorgeous, Julie!” Lesley called out from the floor, where she and her two daughters were playing The Bee Game. “Dylan, please marry her so we can get a family discount on lilies. I love stargazer lilies.” She leaned back to see her husband, who was on the sofa, sharing a beer with his father. “You’re taking notes, right?”

“Stargazer lilies.” Eric nodded. “Check.”

Smiling, Gabby set the relish tray on the coffee table and went to hug Dylan and the lovely woman he’d been dating for almost two years. “The flowers are glorious. And you should marry my brother. However, unlike my opportunistic sister-in-law, I would love you even if you had only yourself to offer,” Gabby said as she took the flowers from her mother.

Behind her, Lesley snorted. “Suck up.”

“Suck up,” Lesley and Eric’s four-year-old daughter, Natalie, sang. “Suck up, Aunt Gabby!”

Eric nodded to his wife. “Nicely done, honey.”

The laughter helped soothe Gabby’s skipping nerves. She’d agreed with Lesley that she should tell her family about her plans at the top of the evening, just dive in, since the Coombses liked to process information for a long time and sometimes quite loudly. Telling them before dinner (the alternative being to mention it as she was backing out of the driveway) would be the mature thing to do.

Dive in.

Undigested olives and the beat of her pounding heart filled her throat. “Uh, excuse me, everyone,” she began. “I have some news, and I think it’s best if I—”

The doorbell rang.

Thank you God, thank you, thank you.

“I’ll get it,” Gabby offered brightly. Pretending not to notice the face Lesley made at her, she raced for the door.

Shifting the flowers to the crook of her left arm, she opened the door with a smile that was perky as heck.

It lasted an entire four seconds.

Staring at the person on her parents’ threshold, she almost dropped the vase she was holding.

Noooo. Seriously, universe?

“Don’t just stand there. Let him in, Gabs.” Ben’s sardonic voice nudged her. And then it clicked.

“You’re Ben’s surprise.”

Caleb, dressed in another crisp suit, this time navy blue, gave her a faintly apologetic smile. “Hello, Gabrielle.”

The deep timbre of his voice sounded disturbingly intimate.

“Who is it?” her mother queried from the other side of the room.

“Ben thought my showing up might be a nice surprise for your parents,” Caleb spoke softly, for Gabby’s ears alone. “If it’s going to ruin your night, though, I can say hello and go. Save visiting for another time.”

“Of course not,” she protested automatically, feeling lower than a snake, because, yes, she would love for him to make her night easier by leaving.

I am a butterfly, not a caterpillar, she reminded herself. I can handle this.

Retrieving her smile, she stepped to the side so Cal could enter, noticing for the first time that he held a bottle of wine. Fancy stuff, not the zipped-into-Sherm’s-Queen-Bee-while-the-motor-was-still-running variety. Tucked beneath his arm was a large box of truffles that probably cost as much as Gabby’s sofa. In the past, Cal had made her mother small gifts—carvings out of wood and music CDs he’d burned off her brother Eric’s system—saving his earned money for essentials. She may have been the same old Gabby, but he was certainly not the same Caleb.

As he entered the living room, the people inside the house fell silent. Except for Ben, who had known Caleb was coming over, and Dylan, who had already spoken to him, Gabby sensed that her family was experiencing the same shock she’d felt.

Stealing a glance at the surprise guest, Gabby saw a muscle twitch beside his left eye. A smile seemed to be fighting against his lips’ desire to remain in a straight line. Cal was nervous about his reception here tonight. He had, after all, disappeared from the lives of the family that had cared for him more than his own.

Seeing him look so vulnerable, Gabby’s heart squeezed uncomfortably.

Before she made a clear decision to act, she plucked the chocolate box from him and—oh, what the hell—looped her arm through his. “Look, everybody,” she said, turning toward the room. “Cal’s home.”

Finally, exclamations—and a gasp from her mother—circled the room. There seemed to be a brief time delay and then Coombses surrounded them. Nancy began to cry, enveloping the boy she had practically raised since puberty in a mother’s always-welcoming arms. Cal said hello to Eric and Lesley and the girls. Lesley made big Did-you-know-he-was-going-to-be-here eyes at Gabby. Dylan waited his turn to have Cal greet Julie.

The prodigal son had come home.

About to escape to the dining room to put the vase in the center of the table, Gabby looked up and caught Cal’s gaze seeking hers above her family’s heads. He didn’t say thank you, but she understood just the same. And then he did the thing that was so rare for the Cal Wells she remembered: He smiled openly. Boyishly. A little awed.

For a moment, she saw him as the young man who’d spent a good part of his early teen years offering to do chores for her mother and defending Gabby from her brothers’ roughhousing. The kid who never took the Coombses’ hospitality for granted.

Surprised by a sudden rush of nostalgia or sentiment or some dang thing, Gabby swallowed against the tears that filled her throat. Never one to cry copiously, she was surprised at the waterworks that turned on with the slightest provocation lately.

When Cal turned his head to respond to something her mother asked, Gabby moved off to set the flowers in the dining room and deposit Cal’s gifts in the kitchen. The problem, she realized, was that she suddenly felt a strong pull to be part of something which she would very soon be leaving behind.

Nancy’s expert nose told her when dinner was ready, and she enlisted her daughter’s help in ushering everyone into the dining room. Seated around a long pine table that was at least half as wide as it was long, the Coombses commenced serving themselves with an orchestral clinking of serving spoons against bowls, and lots of chatter. Gabby had long figured out that her family would make any authority on etiquette shudder, but she loved their casual, rowdy dinners.

Gabby hoped to seat herself next to her sister-in-law, but Lesley’s daughters clamored to sit on either side of her, and Eric sat next to them. Gabby moved toward Ben next, but he wanted to talk to Dylan and slipped into the seat beside him and Julie. Which, of course, left only her and Caleb standing while the others started helping themselves to the home-cooked food.

“A bit like musical chairs, isn’t it?” Cal cocked a brow.

Rats. He’d noticed her avoidance maneuvers. “I’m happy to sit next to you,” she lied, nodding toward the two empty seats at her father’s end of the table.

“You’re not happy about it at all.” He laughed. “But I forgive you.”

Gabby walked to the chair Cal held out. As she sank into it, he murmured, “Our reunion didn’t go too well the other morning. I owe you an apology.”

Surprised, she shrugged. “Forget it.” Forget everything, please. Especially the part about having sex with your favorite family’s desperate daughter.

Gabby plunked into her seat as Cal slid the chair toward the table then took his place next to her. “I’d like a moment alone, to talk,” he said quietly.

Alone? “Tonight?” she squeaked.

Cal shook out his napkin, set it in his lap then turned toward her, eyes glittering with wry amusement. “Tonight would be good, yes.”

Before she could respond, Ben passed her a bowl of rice pilaf, and her father boomed, “So, Caleb, what are you doing for a living?” Frank eyed the navy suit and well-groomed hands of the man who had been his hired hand on numerous occasions. “You don’t look like a farmer.”

Because the comment held more than a whiff of disappointment, Gabby’s brothers snickered. “All right!” approved Dylan, leaning forward to peer at his brothers. “Eric, Ben, we may be off the hook. Dad can hassle Caleb now about his career.”

“I don’t hassle you,” grumbled Frank. “You boys have fine jobs. But this farm is in your family, and someone ought to work it when I’m gone. Too many independent farmers are being run out of business these days.” He did a double take into the bowl Caleb passed him and sniffed. “What is this?”

“Rice,” Gabby offered.

“It’s brown.”

“It’s good for you,” Nancy scolded from the opposite end of the table, her plump arms supporting a platter of steaming corn on the cob. “Eat it.” She confided to Lesley in a loud whisper, “The doctor says he needs more fiber, but he refuses to eat oat bran.”

Lesley nodded back. “Fiber. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.” Catching Gabby’s eye, she winked. “Just like men.”

“Thanks, honey,” Eric murmured.

Gabby smiled weakly, accepting a large, heavy ceramic bowl of homegrown string beans from Ben on her left. As she struggled to balance the dish while forking up vegetables, Caleb pulled the bowl from her hands and held it so she could serve herself more easily. “Atta girl,” he commended in a whisper. “String beans are loaded with fiber.”

Gabby glanced up to catch his wink, surprised by how much he was enjoying himself. His forehead was relaxed. She recalled noticing on several occasions years ago that Cal’s brow was furrowed every time she saw him at school, but in her parents’ home, it smoothed out. Softened. He relaxed here.

The fact that he’d lost touch with her family had surprised her years ago, and in some ways it still did.

How worried her mother had been when Cal had dropped out of sight, choosing not to return from college to share either Thanksgiving or Christmas that first year, despite the fact that he’d spent the previous five holidays with the Coombses. Eventually, her parents had accepted that he’d moved on, had wanted to build a life of his own, probably, away from the community that had given him as much pain as pleasure.

After their night together, he’d come to the house only that one miserable time; other than that, she and Cal had avoided each other like the plague the rest of the summer. Most of the time, Gabby was able to convince herself he’d walked away from that sultry July night unscathed, just a teenage boy with raging hormones and a gaffe under his belt. Whoops, shouldn’t have slept with the Coombses’ virgin daughter. Mustn’t let that happen again.

No biggie.

But sometimes she wondered whether he’d felt more guilt than she credited him with, and that was when she felt the weight of their secret. He hadn’t known she was a virgin, after all. Maybe he felt he’d betrayed her parents’ trust and hadn’t wanted to face them. Maybe he was so immensely sorry they’d…you know…that he’d run out of town. Ugh.

The first few years after he’d left, she’d actually worried about him, despite trying not to think about him at all. Cal had always held himself apart from other people, especially at school, where he had been the quintessential tough-kid loner. Had he found people to belong to after he left for college? And, if not, was she the reason he had denied himself the comfort of a family to come home to?

Not a pretty thought.

She sneaked a peek at him. Strong jaw locked into position, he watched her family closely. Gabby remembered that about him now, how observant he had been, often studying his surroundings as if life were a documentary. What, she wondered now, had he been looking for?

“So what is it you do, Caleb?” Frank tried again, reaching for the bowl of string beans and heaping them onto his plate next to a tiny serving of brown rice.

“I’m a civil engineer,” Cal answered, turning his full attention to her father. “I attended graduate school in Illinois, interned with a company in Chicago then stayed on.”

“Chicago.” Ben was mightily impressed. “I’ve heard it’s a great city. Hot women.” He waggled his brows at his mother, who pestered him constantly to mend his playboy ways and bring home “a nice girl, not someone in a skirt cut up to her yoo-hoo.”

Frank was less impressed than his son with Caleb’s choice of venues. “Chicago? What do they grow there?”

“Ideas, sir. I spent a lot of time on the thirtieth floor, thinking.”

“Huh. We can use more engineers right here in Oregon, doing something to increase crop production for the small farmer while politicians sit on their keisters in Washington, D.C., thinking up new ways to plow us under—”

“Dad….”

“Frank.”

“It isn’t Cal’s fault, after all.”