скачать книгу бесплатно
The old explanation, the one he’d been running through his head for years, cropped up again, and as always he played with it awhile, half-hoping he could make it ring true.
The thing was, that very first day on the farm he realized Gabby was someone special. His first clue had been when she’d admitted to her father, Frank, that she’d hidden one of their older lambs, Chester, until she could “talk some sense into” Frank and make him see that the little guy should be a pet, not a lamb chop. She spoke with persuasive passion and loyalty, claiming that vegetarianism would be better for the whole family. A few weeks later she saved a spider from the shoe her brother Ben had been about to hammer it with, and more times than Cal could count, Gabby showered the people in her sphere with a similar protectiveness. In school she befriended the new, the awkward and the adrift, pulling them into her circle of friends. She wasn’t one of the most popular girls, but she was well-liked.
Despite the fact that she’d never shown him quite the same level of concern, Cal felt drawn to the sensitive girl. He enjoyed feeling like one of her brothers and reminded himself that he didn’t want anyone treating him like some defenseless lamb or brainless bug, anyway, so who cared if sometimes she kept her distance? By the time he turned fifteen, however, he knew he was nursing a crush on Gabby. She represented something innocent and good. Something he wanted in his own life. Something that could change him.
At seventeen, he’d realized he didn’t stand a chance with her. In a million years he wouldn’t be able to measure up to the golden boy Dean Kingsley, whom Gabby appeared to love with a loyalty Cal would happily die to feel…from someone.
At eighteen, Cal graduated from high school, the first person in his family of drug addicts and wastrels to do so, and he graduated on the honor roll. He had a college scholarship, a student loan, a dorm room waiting for him and more self-esteem than ever in his life. And he still thought about Gabby.
So, when he found her crying in the gazebo in Doc Kingsley park after the July Fourth fireworks display, her spirit crushed because Dean had returned from college for the summer with a girlfriend on his arm, Cal claimed that exquisitely vulnerable moment for himself and became Gabby Coombs’s first lover. He and Gabby had been two young people hungry to be held.
It had been an aching, tender, heartbreaking night… each of them wanting someone who didn’t return the feelings.
Cal’s steps slowed as he realized he was abreast of King’s Pharmacy, the business Dean’s father had owned. Dean had worked here through high school. And Gabby had gone in on one fabricated excuse or another every chance she’d gotten.
Turning toward the window with its large gold lettering, Cal noted the sign that read, Dean Kingsley, Pharmacist on Duty. The golden boy had not disappointed. Cal shook his head. “You could have had her if you’d crooked your finger.”
In the morning sun, Cal studied his reflection in the glass. Well-groomed, well-dressed and, when he wasn’t acting like a petulant imbecile, well-spoken; he was a far cry from the boy he’d been. Back then, he’d been a struggling youth with a messy past, and he doubted that anyone, including Gabby’s parents and brothers, would have preferred him over Dean Kingsley as her boyfriend. Against the bright light of the doctor’s perfect son, Cal hadn’t been able to shine at all.
Turning away from the pharmacy, Cal strode up the street. Some of the best advice he’d ever gotten had come from Gabby’s own grandfather. Max was the only person Cal had ever told about his confusing feelings for Gabrielle. He’d even considered turning down his scholarship so he could remain in Honeyford, near her.
Begged for a clue about how to claim Gabby’s attention, Max had put a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Son, if you keep one foot in the past and one in the future, you’re going to piss all over today. Just keep moving.”
Sound advice. There had been more, but that was the plainspoken guidance Cal had followed.
He planned to follow it again now.
His heart both hardened and softened as he thought of Minna, his beautiful, smart, talented, anxious daughter, who, so far, had been as unlucky in love as Cal. He had returned to Honeyford to give Minna the family they hadn’t been able to build in Chicago. The Coombs clan was the example he wanted to emulate.
He couldn’t afford another episode like today’s. He’d been rude and insinuating to the Coombses’ only daughter, a woman with whom he’d had no contact in fifteen years. What business was it of his whether she was staying, going or planning a trip to the moon?
Cal would die for his daughter. With a failed marriage to her mother, and no role models among his own relations, he required the Coombses’ guidance on how to create a successful, stable family.
If that meant killing off the last vestiges of his fantasies about Gabby, so be it.
By eight-thirty on Friday evening, only five hardy souls remained at the Honeyford Days Fourth of July Celebration Committee meeting. Unseasonably sultry June weather and Vernon Reynaud’s refusal to contribute to “wasteful government spending” by turning on the air-conditioning in the community center had considerably thinned their ranks. Gabby and Lesley remained, however, Lesley doodling idly on a yellow legal pad, and Gabby eyeballing the Honey Bunz—puffy croissant-style pastry balls with a crunchy honey coating—donated for the committee’s sustenance by Honey Bea’s bakery.
“No, leave it. We’re having dessert later,” Lesley whispered as Gabby’s fingers snaked toward a Honey Bunz.
“Right. Thanks.” She snatched her hand back, but holy sugar rush, Batman, did she long for the distraction of a quality insulin surge. She’d been horribly depressed since this morning.
“How late can you stay out tonight?” she whispered to her sis-in-law.
“Probably until ten,” Les whispered back. “I warned Eric I’d be late. He’s at your parents’ with the girls. What’s the matter with you? You keep kicking the table leg.”
“Are we still discussing the plans for Honeyford Days or have we decided to adjourn?” Flo Bixby raised her rickety voice above the irresponsible extraneous chatter in the room.
“Adjourn, I beg you,” Lesley muttered under her breath, but she rallied for the cause, smiling nicely at Flo and offering a succinct update on her choreography for Honeyford, A Retrospective in Dance, being presented by the Dancing Honeybees Senior Tappers.
As the secretary for tonight’s meeting, Gabby dutifully took notes, but her mind was a million miles away. She had a plan for The Radical Improvement of Gabrielle Coombs, a plan she intended to begin instituting immediately, and, forgive her, but plotting her transformation trumped working on yet another Independence Day lollapalooza. After this morning, she’d like to ignore July Fourth and its loaded memories altogether.
Cal’s reappearance and his pointed comments had whipped up a tumultuous sea of self-recriminations inside her. She’d been pretty successful over the years at burying the memory of the July Fourth when she’d lost her virginity to Cal Wells, but after his visit to Honey Comb’s, images from that long-ago night had been forming in her mind, growing sharper and clearer all day.
She recalled vividly, for example, that he’d found her in the dark shelter of the Doc Kingsley Park gazebo, sitting all alone, yielding to pitiful tears that had poured down her cheeks and trickled like brine into her mouth. The brackish flavor only partially masked the bitterness of Dean’s announcement that he was serious about the lithe beauty he’d brought home from college, someone he had known less than a year.
Gabby had spent five times that long trying to make Dean see her as a romantic possibility.
When the July Fourth fireworks had died down and most everyone filed out of the park, Gabby curled up on the gazebo bench and gave in to silent sobs that stabbed her abdomen. Time seemed irrelevant at that point, but she didn’t think she’d been there too long when a voice reached her, so soft and close that she jumped.
“Don’t cry.”
She’d turned to see Cal climbing the gazebo steps, his angular features tense in the moonlight. His plea, pained and earnest, only made her cry harder, however, and after a moment he’d slid onto the bench beside her. “Damn it, Gabby, don’t…”
She’d felt his strong arm curl around her shoulders, the unexpectedness of the gesture temporarily interrupting the flow of her tears. Other than the times when she cut his hair or he helped her with chores around the farm, they didn’t touch.
Through the shadows in the gazebo, she’d looked at him, her heart breaking, lips wobbling.
“What can I do?” he’d whispered.
A tsunami of hurt and frustration and regret and need had tossed her heart around like a piece of driftwood. Wetly, she’d blinked then pleaded with no forethought whatsoever, “Kiss me…”
“Stop kicking the table.” Lesley shoved an elbow into Gabby’s ribs.
“Sorry.” Heat flooding her cheeks, Gabby looked down at the notes she was supposed to be taking. Some secrets were too big to tell even your very best friend.
It took another half hour for the meeting to wrap up and then Gabby grabbed Lesley’s arm, hustling her to the diner, where they grabbed their favorite booth in the back and gave their order to Opal, who was hard of hearing and generally handed her ticket book to regular customers so they could write their own orders. She soon returned with a pot of decaf, a slab of marionberry pie and two forks.
“Oh, Mama, that’s good,” Lesley purred in appreciation.
Gabby picked up her fork. “You haven’t even tasted it yet.”
“I’m not talking about the pie, innocent child.” Lesley nodded pointedly toward the counter, where a lone man sat, his large hands cupped around a mug of coffee.
Gabby squinted. “Isn’t that the new pastor at Honeyford Presbyterian?”
“Yessiree. Pastor Keith. Single Pastor Keith.”
“Keith doesn’t sound like a pastor’s name,” Gabby commented, apropos of nothing, but grateful to have a moment before she launched into her own topic. Stabbing a few marionberries and a piece of crust, she moaned at the deliciousness.
“He doesn’t look like a pastor, either,” Lesley mused. “He looks like he should be on a TV show called Sex In The Small Town. Or Desperate Worshippers.” She waggled her brows.
Gabby put a hand over her mouth to trap the berries that nearly spilled out. “You’re ogling a man of the cloth? I’m telling Eric.”
“I’m not ogling him for me, you ninny.” Lifting her fork, she jabbed the tines at Gabby.
Gabby leaned forward, whispering fiercely. “You think I should date the minister of Honeyford Pres? Are you kidding? I grew up in that church. If we ever got serious, I’d picture half the choir in our bedroom, singing ‘Amazing Grace.’”
“Or ‘Glory Hallelujah.’”
“Lesley!” Gabby shook her head at her irreverent sister-in-law.
“He’s not a priest, Gabs. He can have sex. And FYI, so can you.” Abandoning the fork, she snatched a few tiny containers of creamer and laced her coffee, eyeing Gabby with barely concealed impatience. “So what about it?”
“No! I told you—”
Lesley waved a hand. “Forget the gorgeous man of God.” She took a fortifying sip of decaf. “I mean sex. What’s your excuse for not having any?”
Gabby squirmed, ironically feeling as if her best friend had caught her in the act, not out of it. “How do you know I’m not having any?”
Lesley slapped the table as if she’d heard a good joke. “Please.”
Gabby’s glance skittered away, a mouse hoping the cat one foot away might not notice her.
“I love you, Gabs,” Lesley said, sighing. “You know I’d never say anything to hurt you, but we’ve reached critical mass. I didn’t say anything while there was still a chance that Dean might…”
“I know, I know.” Plopping her elbows on the table, Gabby covered her eyes with her hands then peeked around to make sure no one they knew was nearby, but Les would not have spoken if there had been. Gabby knew her sister-in-law truly did have her best interests at heart. “If it comforts you any, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’m in a rut I have to get out of. And I am. I have a plan. But first, I need to tell you something. I need to tell someone…”
Save for a brief hiatus when the waitress came by to refill their coffee cups, Gabby did not stop talking until she’d filled Lesley in on That Night with Cal. Lesley’s eyes grew wider and wider, until she practically shouted, “You and Caleb?! And you never told me? I’m going to go home and write in my journal that we are nothing like Oprah and Gayle after all. But first—” She climbed so far over the table, her bosom was nearly in the pie. “How was it?”
Picking up Lesley’s discarded creamer containers and stacking them, Gabby shrugged. “It was…you know…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? What, it was too long ago? You can’t remember?”
She remembered. Sex with Cal had been desperate, frantic…
Out of control—that’s what it had been. What she had been that night. The experience stood, in fact, as the one out-of-control moment in Gabby’s highly controlled life. And her body had reveled in it, sweeping her mind right along with it.
At first, anyway.
Being a virgin at the time, she’d felt pain that had eventually allowed reality to intrude into the moment of madness, and once that happened…She shuddered. Regret and embarrassment had snuffed out lust. For her, at least. And, really, such a wild, out-of-control feeling—not her at all.
To Lesley, she responded, “I was young. And it was my first time, so…you know.”
“Oh.” Lesley nodded. “Right. Not great, then. My first time with Eric left a lot to be desired, too. But we tried again the next day, and that—”
“Too much info, too much info!” Gabby covered her ears, unwilling to hear details about her eldest brother’s love life.
“All right. Tell me what happened afterward for you two.”
“Nothing happened. He was going away to college.”
“Which left two months between the Fourth of July and September. So…?”
“So nothing. He dropped by the next day to check on me…” Reluctant to relive the details of that torturously awkward encounter, Gabby shook her head. “It was only a one-night thing.”
Lesley made a face. “Teenage boys and sex. Gotcha.”
Gabby shrugged noncommittally.
“Well, what do you want to do about it now?” Lesley questioned, finally digging into the pie that was unlikely to do any damage at all to her willowy, five-foot-nine-inch dancer’s body. “You say he’s back in town. I wonder how long he’s staying. Maybe you two could have a do-over and get it right this time.”
“No!” Gabby looked around a tad wildly, though no one new had entered the diner, and Pastor Sex Appeal was paying his bill. “Shhh. Don’t even suggest that,” she hissed across the table. “I’m hoping I don’t run into Cal again at all. I want a brand new start to my life, Les. Nothing I’ve done up to now requires a trip down Memory Lane.”
“That makes sense, I suppose.” Thoughtfully, Lesley licked berry juice off her fork. “You’ve had good sex since Cal, though, right?”
Lowering her gaze, Gabby confessed, poking at a piece of pie crust.
Lesley reached for her coffee cup, narrowing her gaze at Gabby over the rim. “I know you don’t like to talk about your sex life, and I’ve always tried to respect that, but there has been someone, right?” She nodded hopefully. “Someone who made your toes curl?”
Gabby’s brow knitted. She bit her lip. “Umm…no actual toe curling to report.”
“Huh.” Taking a sip of coffee, Lesley shrugged philosophically. “Okay. So someone who maybe wasn’t the greatest lover, but still…?”
“Ahh, let’s see…” Knuckles to her lips, Gabby closed one eye, pretending to have to think about it. “Mmmm…” She shook her head—a tiny, reluctant movement. “No.”
Lesley watched her for a protracted moment, her expression a symphony of shock, horror and awe. “Gabrielle Coombs! You are not telling me that you haven’t. Since that one time?”
Mouth open, Lesley braced her hands against the booth. “Are you serious? Caleb Wells has been your one and only lover?” She raised a hand to her heart. “I like a surprise as much as the next person, but this kind of shock could kill a girl!”
Chapter Three
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?”
