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And he didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one little bit.
“I’m sorry, honey, hold that thought.” He gave her a quick smile, not sure whether he was trying to reassure her or himself. “Buckle up, there’s something I need to do.”
Tom thrust the key into the ignition, waited until he heard Gabby’s belt click, then checked in his mirrors before doing a U-turn. Caitlin hadn’t gotten far, had just turned the corner into the next block.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. His mouth was dry. And he couldn’t figure out what the hell he was going to say when he pulled over. Didn’t want to appear to be a sleaze-hanging-out-the-window-and-trying-to-convince-the-girl-to-get-in kind of guy.
“Is that Miss Rose?” Gabby burst through his thoughts again the way she always did.
“She looks cold. Don’t you think she looks cold?” Tom asked, needing the kid to agree with him.
Gabby met his gaze, the smile in her eyes settling him. “I guess.”
“I think she does. How about we offer her a ride home?” Tom asked her.
His pint-size passenger shrugged. “Okay.”
Tom didn’t need any further encouragement. He slowed the car to a crawl and pulled up to the curb, lowering his window at the same time.
Caitlin looked back, a frown line creasing the smooth skin of her face, and picked up her pace.
Damn. He’d done exactly what he’d hoped not to do. Tom leaped from the car and called over the hood, not wanting to frighten her any more than he already had.
“Caitlin!” he called. “You need a ride home?”
This time when she turned the beaming smile was back. Tom hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until he saw that, was pleased she’d recognized him straight away. She held her bag clutched under one arm, was holding her hair with the other to keep it from her face.
“You scared me before.”
He walked around the front of the car and gestured to the passenger side. “Can we give you a ride? It’s too cold to walk.” Tom could tell she was thinking about it. “Please.”
He’d negotiated enough to know when someone was about to say yes, but he still didn’t take it for granted. Tom turned his back and opened the door.
“Scoot, kidlet,” he said to Gabby.
She obliged, scrambling into the backseat and leaving the front free.
He rocked back on his heels and smiled. Didn’t find it so hard to do this time because it came more naturally. “Jump in.”
Caitlin nodded, before walking briskly to the car. She paused, looked nervous, before slipping past him and onto the seat. “Thanks.”
Tom shut the door behind her and walked around the back of the car this time. Took a moment to touch the cool metal of the trunk as he sucked back a breath and prepared to get in the car with a woman who was doing strange things to him. Making him yearn for things that weren’t within his grasp any longer.
But this was just a car ride. This was just him taking his niece’s teacher home. Nothing to get all hot under the collar about. Even he wasn’t capable of screwing this up.
Tom jumped behind the wheel and buckled up. “Do you always walk home in the freezing cold?”
She responded with a laugh that settled every bone in his body.
“No,” she said, leaning back into the headrest and angling her face to peer back at Gabby. “My car’s at the shop and I thought the exercise would do me good. Are you sure it’s no problem to drive me?”
He took his eyes off the road for a beat and glanced at her. “No problem. The last thing I need is Gabby coming home and telling me her teacher is off sick because I was too careless to stop and offer her a lift.”
Caitlin grinned at him before brushing her fingers over his arm in the most casual of ways. As though she was used to touching him, as though it was something she did often.
Tom kept his eyes on the road and wrapped his right hand tighter around the wheel. He wasn’t used to contact like that. Aside from Gabby, and maybe his sister-in-law, no one usually touched him. Almost all his adult life he’d had to be strong, physical, brave—and with that came a solitary life most of the time.
“Well, it was very kind of you to stop.”
He’d stopped in more way than one. Her skin against his had near stopped his brain from processing.
Caitlin tried to relax but her heart was skipping erratically. She hoped Tom didn’t pick up on it.
Hadn’t she heard something about guys like him, trained so carefully for special operations? That they could feel a heartbeat and know instinctively whether someone was lying or not? If they were dishonest? That’s what the kids had told her, years ago, in one of her past lives. She’d moved so much as an army kid that she found it hard to remember sometimes.
She wasn’t lying about anything, but the thumping of her pulse racing was signaling that something was affecting her. And she didn’t want him to know her nerves were on edge.
“So tell me how you ended up staying with your uncle Tom?” Caitlin decided it was safer to direct questions at Gabby. She’d be in less risk of getting hot and bothered.
“Mom and Dad are away.” Gabby’s voice was like a lullaby, a soft melody that spoke only of happiness. Caitlin loved teaching children like Gabby, when she knew instinctively that they were happy at home, that they were safe and loved.
Tom caught her eye, before he was focused on the road again. “They’re on a second honeymoon.”
Catlin laughed at the way he rolled his eyes. “Did they renew their vows?”
Gabby piped up then. “Daddy gave Mommy her rings back, plus a special new one that’s all sparkly, and they keep kissing. All the time.”
Tom and Caitlin both laughed out aloud.
“Okay, what?” she asked, suddenly not quite so nervous of making eye contact with Tom.
“Believe me, it’s a long story, but the short version of it is that Penny came back from serving overseas and Daniel did everything he could to prove that he was worth coming home to.”
Caitlin had questions, but she wasn’t going to ask now. “Sounds romantic.”
She watched as Tom flicked the fingers of his left hand against the wheel. “Yeah, they’re kind of cute.”
Caitlin watched him, suddenly unable to stop staring at him.
“If they don’t make you sick first with all the loved-up antics,” he added.
She laughed. Truly laughed, liking the way his mouth kinked up when he grinned back at her, as if he was trying to be serious and struggling.
“So that’s why you’re looking after Gabby?”
She watched as Tom’s lips parted, only to be interrupted by his niece. “Grandma is away already and so they weren’t going to go, but then Tommy came home and he said he’d have me.”
Caitlin got the feeling that Tom didn’t mind being spoken for. He was friendly, sure, but he wasn’t exactly bursting to talk. Was probably more comfortable being the quiet guy.
“Well, aren’t you lucky having an uncle to look after you?”
Tom looked serious, but she could tell he was comfortable in his role as uncle. Probably liked playing protector. Maybe she’d lumped him into the same category as other military-type tough guys too quickly. Perhaps he was kind, and didn’t misuse his physical strength or abilities. He sure seemed fond of Gabby; that kind of behavior was impossible to fake. She’d been around children and parents enough to know that for sure. Not to mention the way Gabby treated him, as if he was her placid Labrador puppy, jumping to her every command.
But still, it didn’t change the way she thought. There was no room in her mind or her heart to take any risks where men were concerned.
“Hey, Tommy?” Gabby asked from the backseat.
Caitlin watched as his eyebrows rose, waiting for the question that was sure to follow.
“Yeah?” he asked back.
“I think you promised that I could have ice cream before dinner tonight.” Gabby was giggling now, looking at him in the rearview mirror.
Tom put on a stern face. Gabby was still laughing, but Caitlin wasn’t convinced, and didn’t know what was going on.
He pulled over, before turning in his seat and staring long and hard at Gabby.
“Did I or did I not tell you to keep that a secret?” he demanded, voice low and gravelly. “Gabby Cartwright, answer me this minute!”
Caitlin’s heart started to pound in fright; her hands became clammy. She was trapped, felt that she couldn’t move, wasn’t in control. Wanted to do something and was paralyzed from action.
“Gabby?” he growled.
A high-pitched trill of laughter filled the car, verging on squealing. “Tommy!”
Tom pulled a face before opening his door, but not before he grinned at Caitlin. “I know you’re her teacher and you’re probably going to tell me off, but I did promise her ice cream before dinner. You know, trying to be the favorite uncle and all.”
“You’re my only uncle, Tommy,” Gabby piped up.
Caitlin nodded, it was all she could do. Tried to make her relieved smile appear stronger than it felt, needing a moment to let blood pump back through her leeched-dry veins.
Gabby and Tommy got out of the car, but it wasn’t until he opened her door that she followed—prised her fingers from the seat and forced her legs to cooperate.
They were at the ice cream shop. She turned her head slowly, could see the pink lettering glittering in the near-dark. But her heart was still pounding.
She knew it was stupid—she could see them holding hands, was watching as Tom poked at Gabby and had her leaping around and laughing, but for a moment there she’d almost lost it.
Because she hadn’t known they were joking around. Had thought she was about to witness something she didn’t ever want to see again.
Because she knew firsthand what it felt like to be spoken to like that, only without the laughter and jokes at the end.
When it had happened to her, that kind of seriousness, that type of conversation had never ended in ice cream.
“Caitlin?” Tom looked concerned. Gabby was watching her, too. “You all right?”
She closed the car door and fixed her smile again. “Sorry, I was a million miles away.”
Tom slung his arm around his niece and waited for her to catch up. “My shout.”
And just like that, Caitlin found herself having ice cream before dinner with a man she’d thought this morning that she’d never see again, and one of her favorite little students.
Tom passed Gabby her ice cream before reaching for the single scoop of chocolate Caitlin had ordered. “Enjoy.”
Her fingers brushed his as she took it from him. “I can’t believe you two talked me into this.”
Tom liked her smile, liked the fact that nothing about her seemed put on. “Believe me … the things that this girl makes me do.”
Gabby was licking furiously at her ice cream, completely ignoring him.
“It’s nice that you’re so close to her.”
That made him look up. “She’s pretty special to me, to all of us.”
Caitlin waited. He liked that about her, too, that she didn’t feel the need to press for information like some people did. He hated being quizzed when he didn’t want to talk about something, but he was finding with her that he was opening his mouth and spilling his stories before he even had a chance to think about it.
That needed to stop.
“We kind of made a pact, the three of us, when Gabby was born,” he told her. It wasn’t something they ever spoke about, had never needed to talk about again, because they were all committed to making sure she was the happiest little girl around. “There was a time when Gabby’s mom and dad both had to serve at the same time, and I was always there to step in, although her grandmother, my mom, she’s great with her, too.”
“Were you scared something would happen to them? That she could end up with—” Caitlin paused and lowered her voice, although Gabby was walking far enough ahead not to hear their conversation “—no parents?”
Tom felt a catch in his throat. “Yeah.”
Caitlin’s fingers fell over his forearm, rested there for a moment as they walked. “You’re very brave, Tom.”
He forced himself to look up. Not to shrug away the contact until she let her hand fall away of its own accord, not to recoil at her words. He sure as hell didn’t feel like he deserved the brave tag.
“Do you mean for serving in the Navy or for looking after her?” He had to ask, had to know what she was thinking.
Caitlin’s eyes met his, her gaze fluttering as if she found it difficult to hold the contact. “Both. But what I meant was that not many men are that committed to a child, especially to a niece or nephew.” She blew out a breath. “Hell, half the dads I meet seem to be less committed to their own children.”
Tom relaxed, was pleased they were still talking about kids, that she hadn’t tried to flip the subject back to his work. To that kind of bravery.
Caitlin looked fragile enough to snap beneath the weight of harsh words, and he didn’t exactly find it easy to bite his tongue these days. Not when it came to his work or what had happened to end his career.
“There was always the chance that one of us wouldn’t make it home,” he told Caitlin, suddenly wanting to talk, wanting to get the words off his chest. “I wanted my brother to know that I’d always step in, wouldn’t hesitate to fill his shoes if I had to. And Penny—” He paused, not able to help but smile. “Penny’s like the sister I never had. She’s pretty special to me.”
His eyes darted back to Caitlin, to see the look on her face, needing to see her reaction. The response was warm, a soft acknowledgment by way of a gentle blink, a curve of her lips in one corner, before she turned her attention back to her ice cream.
Tom didn’t know why, or how, but there was something about Gabby’s teacher that was pulling him in, reeling him like a fish resigned to being caught on a line. Maybe it was just because she was so good at her job, was skilled at playing the kind, caring teacher, at getting people to open up.
But something else, some whisper of a voice in his mind, told him that her being a teacher had nothing to do with it.
That he needed to back off now if he ever wanted a chance of escape.
Caitlin didn’t like to be confused. Ever. And tonight she was more confused than she’d ever been.
Tom was being sweet, kind … verging on downright charming, but she had no idea where he was going with it. Was he trying to impress her? She didn’t think so. Or maybe she just didn’t want it to be so.
