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Gabrielle froze inside. Outside. She couldn’t move or speak. She’d barely gotten over the shock of Hank showing up here unannounced and now he’d said this? That he wanted to be some kind of replacement for Kevin with Max?
There had to be something else going on here. She’d heard of survivor’s guilt. That wasn’t healthy for him—or for her. “Hank, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here. But Max already has a father, and he’s dead.”
His grip tightened around hers, almost painful. “Believe me, I know that better than anyone else.” His throat moved in a slow swallow. “I was there.”
Oh, my God. “When he died?”
“Yeah… .” His grip loosened, his thumbs twitching along her palms.
His head dropped, and he looked down at their clasped hands, the strong column of his neck exposed. Her eyes held on the fade of his military cut. And strangely, she ached to touch him there, to stroke and comfort him. To hold on to him and let him hold on to her, too. They’d both suffered the loss of Kevin, and right now that pain linked them so tightly it brought the crippling ache rushing back full force.
Please, don’t let her reach for him, which would have her crying all over his chest. The hint of tears a minute ago had brought him here in front of her… and when she’d cried before, they’d betrayed a man they both cared so much about.
So she gathered her emotions in tight and focused on him, and what he was saying.
“I tried to call you afterward from overseas, a couple of times, but calls out were few and far between.”
“I got the messages,” she whispered.
He looked up fast. “And you didn’t write back? Email?”
His voice on those recordings had poured alcohol on her open grief. “It was too painful then.” And his presence now? She didn’t know what she was feeling. “I figured hearing my voice would hurt you as much as it hurt me to hear yours.”
“Do you still feel that way?”
His deep blue eyes held hers, waiting, asking. She didn’t have the answers and her life was scary enough just dealing with Max’s surgery. She looked down at their joined hands and, holy crap, how long had they been holding each other like that?
She snatched her arms back, crossing them over her chest. “What are we doing here, Hank? Are you here to pick up where we left off after that kiss, now that Kevin’s gone? Because you have to realize that was a mistake.”
A dark eyebrow slashed upward. “If you have to ask that, you don’t know me at all. I mean what I say. I just want to be here for Kevin’s kid.”
“But you didn’t know about Max when you arrived.” And why hadn’t she thought of that until now? “What are you doing here?”
He shoved to his feet and paced in the space she’d decorated with such hope and plans, a blend of her dual roots. Then she’d met Kevin and thought, finally, she had found roots of her own, a sense of belonging.
Hank’s powerful long legs ate up the one-room apartment quickly, back and forth in front of the nursery nook before pivoting hard to face her. “Kevin wanted me to deliver a message.”
“A message?” A burn prickled along her skin until the roots of her hair tingled.
“I meant it when I said I was with him when he died.” His body went taut, his shoulders bracing, broadening. “I was right beside him until the end.”
She eased to her feet, steeling herself for whatever he had to share, for words that could haul her back into the agony she’d felt when Kevin died, when she’d given birth to their child alone. “What did he say?”
“He said he forgave us.”
Three
Gabrielle looked every bit as stunned as he’d felt when Kevin said the words to him, that he forgave them. The memory blasted through him of that hellish night at the checkpoint when they’d been ambushed, the smell of gunfire and death. Then Kevin spoke and said the unthinkable.
That he knew Hank and Gabrielle had feelings for each other.
Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but no words came out. She pressed her palm to her lips, turning away.
He wanted to reach for her, to comfort her. Do something—since he couldn’t seem to scrounge up the right words. He wasn’t much of a warm and fuzzy guy. He was a man of action.
A squawk from behind him stopped him short.
“Max,” Gabrielle gasped, rushing past him.
She swept aside the gauzy curtain and lifted her son out. Damn, the boy was so tiny. Scary small. The enormity of that little being going under the knife stole his breath and raised every protective instinct all at once.
Cradling Max to her shoulder, she patted his back. “I need to feed and change him.”
“Yeah, okay. What do you need me to do to help? With all those nieces and nephews, I’m not totally inept.”
“Unless you’re lactating, I don’t think you can help with this.”
Lactating? Breast-feeding?
Ohhhh-kay. He grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. “I’ll wait downstairs for the delivery guy to bring supper.”
She bounced the baby gently on her shoulder, his whimpers growing louder, more insistent. “The back entrance is just at the other end of the garden alleyway. Take the keys off the tea cart on your way out.”
“Roger that. Wilco—” Will comply. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes or so.”
Pulling the door closed behind him, he stepped back into the waning Mardi Gras mayhem. The tail end of the parade blinked in the distance, the crowd following and dispersing. He scooped up a couple of strands of beads and a feathered mask that must have strayed over the gate. He wanted her out of here, somewhere safer. She had enough on her plate taking care of the little guy without worrying about someone scaling that fence one night.
He sidestepped the round iron table and chairs, decorated with a few potted plants and hanging ferns. Chick-pretty but not safe. He eyed the shadowy alleyway, not impressed with security. And he would damn well do something about it.
Reaching the back gate, he leaned against the brick wall to wait and fished out his phone. He thumbed through the directory until he landed on the name he needed. He hit Call. The youngest of his four stepbrothers worked renovations of historical landmark homes. Even a couple of foreign castles.
For right now, he would settle for something more local.
The ringing stopped.
“Hey there, stranger,” his stepbrother Jonah Landis answered from on location at heaven only knew where. Jonah’s projects spanned the globe. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks, good to be back.” Or rather it would be once he got some things straightened out. He needed to put to rest the feelings he had for Gabrielle and figure out a way out from under the guilt.
“How much longer until the base cuts you free for some vacation time?”
“Actually—” he crossed one loafer-clad foot over the other “—that’s what I’m calling you about. I’m visiting a friend in New Orleans, and I’m hoping you can hook me up with a place to stay.”
“What exactly are the parameters?”
Parameters? Privacy topped the list. His father was a retired general who’d been on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now served as a freelance military correspondent for a major cable network. His stepmom—Ginger Landis Renshaw—was a former secretary of state, now an ambassador.
He hadn’t grown up with that kind of influence. And even once his family stepped into the limelight, he’d lived a Spartan life, socking away most of his paychecks and investing well, very well. He could retire now, except that military calling to serve couldn’t be denied. Even his family didn’t know his full net worth. Only that his investments left him “comfortably” well off, enough to explain if he spent beyond a military paycheck.
Which he rarely did. But he needed something private. A place for Max to recover from his surgery, a place where Gabrielle would have help before she collapsed from trying to tackle everything on her own.
“Jonah, I seem to recall you were starting a renovation down here in New Orleans right before I deployed.”
“Right, a historic mansion in the garden district that got whacked by a hurricane. It’s an Italianate cast-iron galleried-style—”
“Right. I just need to know if it’s finished and if it has a security system.”
“Finished, security system installed last week, up for sale with bare bones furniture to help prospective buyers envision themselves living there.”
Sounded perfect. “Think you can pull it off the market for a couple of weeks?”
“Any reason you’re looking for a house rather than a hotel?”
“Hotels are noisy and nosey.”
“Fair enough. What’s mine is yours.”
“I mean this as a business transaction. I insist on paying.”
“Really, bro, we’re good.” Jonah paused for a second, the sound of sheets rustling and him speaking with his wife about going to the other room. “Seriously, though, why call me? Any of mom’s or the general’s people could have taken care of a low-profile place to stay.”
Truth was easy this time. “Ginger would have heard about it, whether from her people or the general. She would have questions… .”
“There’s a woman involved.” Jonah laughed softly.
No need denying that. And heaven forbid, he mention the baby and Grandma Ginger—his stepmom—would come running straight to New Orleans. “I want this to stay quiet for a while. The last thing I need is the press or our family breathing down my neck, not now.”
“Understood.” Of course he did. Jonah Landis’s wife had royal ties as the illegitimate daughter of a deposed king. Privacy was a valuable commodity in short supply for them. “I can have the Realtor bring you the keys now.”
“No need to disrupt anyone’s Mardi Gras. I’ll swing by tomorrow and get them myself.”
“Party on, then.”
“Thank you. I appreciate this.”
“We’re family, even if you hide out from the rest of us. Good to hear from you, bro.”
And they were. Even if by marriage. His dad and his second wife, Ginger, had built something together after both of their spouses died. Hank looked up the iron stairs at the closed door leading to Gabrielle’s apartment. She needed his help, just the way Ginger and Hank, Sr., had needed help with their kids. They’d turned to each other rather than go it alone. That’s what friends did for each other.
Whether Gabrielle wanted his help or not, he was all in.
Gabrielle yanked her clothes off fast and tossed them all in the bathroom laundry hamper. Her knee bumped the sink. She bit back a curse, hopping around on one foot and trying not to fall into the tub in the closet-size bathroom. Any minute now, Hank could walk back up with supper and she needed to clean up after feeding Max. No bachelor was going to want to hear about—or smell—baby puke.
She didn’t have time for a shower but at least she could splash some water on her face and change clothes. Not that she cared what she looked like around him. She was just excited over her first real meal with another adult since Max was born. Silly, selfish and she had to remember this wasn’t a real dinner date.
Just supper with an old, uh, friend?
Oh, God, she was a mess. She sagged back against the sink. No amount of face washing or hair brushing was going to change the fact that she was a single mom, who wore nursing bras and eau de baby. Nothing was going to change that. She didn’t want to change that, damn it.
Even if Kevin had somehow given her permission to fall for his best friend. The realization that he’d somehow known clawed at her already guilty conscience and made her feel like a huge fraud.
Frustrated and running out of time, she yanked on a pair of black stretch pants and tugged a long tank tee over her head. She grabbed a bottle of lavender spray she’d bought because it was supposed to be calming, soothing and she’d been searching for any help to relax her son.
Tonight, she needed some of that peace for herself. She spritzed her body fast, spraying an extra pump over her head and spinning to capture the drift. She scrubbed her hair back into a high ponytail just as she heard the front door open.
Time’s up.
Her stomach knotted.
There was no more dodging Hank, that long-ago kiss and the fact that somehow Kevin had found out. She’d hurt the man she’d promised to love for the rest of her life. She rammed the lavender bottle into the medicine cabinet and padded back out into the living room barefoot.
And the breath left her body. Hank stood in the doorway, shadows across his face. In his flight jacket and khakis, he could have been any military guy coming home with supper for his family. Yet even with the anonymity of the shadowy light, she would never for a moment mistake him for anyone but himself.
The light clink of silverware across the room broke the spell, and she looked over to find a private waiter setting up things for them. Hank held out a chair for her at her little table that had been transformed with silver, china and a single rose. This was a world away from the sandwich and milk she’d planned for herself.
Their waiter popped a wine bottle—the label touting a Bordeaux from St. Emilion.
She covered her glass, even though her mouth watered. “No, thank you. I’m a nursing mom.”
The waiter nodded and promptly switched to an exclusive bottled water as Hank took his seat across from her.
“Whatever that is smells amazing.” She plastered on a smile as the waiter served their meal, then quietly left. “I concede you’re the king of late-night takeout food. If that tastes even half as good as it smells, it’ll be heavenly.”
“So the little guy’s down for the count?” His eyes heated over her, briefly but unmistakably lingering on her legs.
Was his head tipping to catch her scent? She had to be mistaken, sleep deprived and hallucinating. And if she wasn’t, she needed to get her priorities in order. Max came first, and for him, she needed to eat and keep her strength up.
“Sorry about the wine but Max is nursing as well as bottle feeding.” With his digestive problems, he fed more often than she could keep up with, even expressing. But that was far more detail than she wanted to share with him. “He will sleep for another hour and a half.”
“You’ve got to be flat-out exhausted.” He tipped back his water goblet.
“I’m not the only single mom on the planet.” She set out silverware and napkins. “I’ll survive.”
And survive well with the meal in front of her. Aromas wafted upward to tempt her with hickory-roasted duck, cornbread pudding and on and on until her mouth watered. Reaching for the fork, she realized she was really hungry for the first time in months.
Sure, maybe she was avoiding talking for a few minutes longer, letting herself be normal for just a stolen pocket of time.
Until she couldn’t avoid the burning question any longer… .
Without looking up, she stabbed a fork into the corn bread pudding, mixing it with a roasted-corn salad. “What did you mean by saying Kevin had forgiven us?”
Hank set his fork down carefully on the gold ring edging the plate. “He didn’t seem to know any details other than we had feelings for each other. He said he understood, and he wanted us both to go on with our lives.”
Gasping in horror, she dropped her fork. Shame piled on top of the guilt. Kevin had known. Somehow he’d seen her confused feelings when she’d thought she’d hidden them so carefully. He’d been so argumentative just before leaving, picking fights with her about anything because she wouldn’t agree to move closer. She’d held her temper in check because of his upcoming deployment—until nerves got the better of her.
He’d wanted her to skip out on work and party with him, but nerves were already chewing her over the last time he’d partied, gotten reckless and forgot birth control. She’d told him she was tired of always having to be the adult in their relationship. He’d snapped back, telling her to go hang out with Hank, then, since he was mature enough for ten people. The fight had been hurtful and a product of fears about him leaving.
How damn sad that a ridiculous fight led her to act on those feelings, to kiss Hank.
