Baby Makes Three. Molly O'KeefeЧитать онлайн книгу.
A small voice reminded her that she made that promise almost every night.
Sometimes she wanted to punch the small voice, but instead she breathed deep of the slightly putrid air and tried to get Zen about the whole situation. She took a sip of her coffee, and listened to the sound of traffic.
The parking lot was pretty empty, but soon the hungry folks of Albany would be getting off work and looking for a sunny patio and drink specials and a lot of them would head to Johnny O’s. The kitchen would be loud and on fire for about eight hours and in those eight hours, while arranging plates of pasta and firebaked pizzas and grilling steaks and fish specials, she would forget all the reasons she had to drink.
Maybe she’d help the cleaning staff tonight. Work herself into a good exhaustion so she wouldn’t need the red wine to relax.
She tilted her face up to the sun and stretched out her feet, pleased with her plan.
A black truck, mud splattered and beat-up, pulled in to the lot and parked directly across from her. She thought about heading back inside, or at least opening the door and yelling to warn Trudy customers were arriving and the kitchen was on demand. But Trudy had been in the business as long as she had and could handle cooking for a truckload of guys.
But only one guy got out.
One guy, holding a droopy bouquet of yellow roses.
One guy, whose slow amble toward her was painfully, heartbreakingly familiar.
Coffee sloshed onto her pants, so she set the cup down on the bench and clenched her suddenly shaking hands together.
Spots swam in front of her eyes and her head felt light and full, like a balloon about to pop.
The man was tall and lean, so handsome still it made her heart hurt.
He stopped right in front of her and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, displacing his dark blond hair. The sun was behind him and he seemed so big. She used to love his size, love how it made her feel small and safe. He’d wrap those strong arms around her and she felt protected from the world, from herself.
He smiled like a man who knew all the tastiest things about her.
That smile was his trademark. He could disarm an angry patron at four feet with the strength of his charming smile. He could woo frigid reviewers, disgruntled suppliers…his ex-wife.
“Hello, Alice.” He held out the roses but she couldn’t get her hands to lift and take them.
She left her shades on, so shattered by Gabe’s sudden appearance in front of her, as if the past five years hadn’t happened.
“Gabe.” Her voice croaked again and she nearly cringed.
He took a deep breath, in through his nose, no doubt hoping for a bit more welcome from her, some reaction other than the stoic front that was all she had these days.
His hand holding the roses fell back to his side.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She sounded accusatory and mean, like a stranger who had never known him at all.
And she felt that way. It was why, in part, the marriage had ended. Despite the late-night talks, the dreams of building a business together, the sex that held them together longer than they should have been, in the end, when things got bad, they really never knew each other at all.
“I could ask you the same thing.” His eyes swept the bench, the back door to Johnny O’s. The Dumpsters.
Suddenly, the reality of her life hammered home like a nail in her coffin. She worked shifts at a chain restaurant and was hungover at three on a Friday afternoon.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she thought bitterly, hating herself with a vehemence she usually saved for her dark drunken hours.
“I work here,” she said, battling her embarrassment with the sharp tilt of her head.
He nodded and watched her, his blue eyes cataloging the differences the five years between them had made. And behind her sunglasses, she did the same.
Gabe Mitchell was still devilishly easy on the eyes.
He’d always had her number. One sideways look from him, one tiny grin and she’d trip over her hormones to get into his arms. There was just something about the man and, she surmised after taking in his faded jeans and the black T-shirt with the rip at the collar, the work boots and his general allaround sexiness, there still was something about him.
But, she reminded herself, underneath that lovely candy coating beat one cold, cold heart. She’d learned it the hard way, and she still hadn’t recovered from the frost burn her five-year marriage had given her.
Call it fear of commitment, call it intimacy issues, whatever it was, Gabe had it bad. And watching him walk away from her and their marriage had nearly killed her.
“You look good,” Gabe said and it was such a lie, such an attempt to sweet-talk her, that she laughed. “You do,” he protested.
“Save the charm for someone else, Gabe.” Finally she pushed her shades up onto her head and looked her ex-husband in the eye. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”
CHAPTER TWO
“AND—” HIS SMILE SEEMED a little brittle around the edges “—I think we both know you didn’t mean it.”
She arched her eyebrows in response. Oh, she’d meant it all right.
“What do you want, Gabe?”
“A guy can’t visit an old friend?”
She laughed outright. At him. At them. At this stupid little dance.
“Gabe, we were never friends.” The lie slipped off her tongue easily. It was better to pretend they had never been friends than to dwell on those memories, to give in to the sudden swell of feelings his presence stirred in her belly. “What. Do. You. Want?”
He ran his fingers through his too-long hair and scowled at her, the fierce look that always warned her he was running out of patience.
Good, she thought, get mad and leave like you always do.
She scowled back. She’d never been overly gracious—she was too busy for that—but in her time with Gabe she’d learned to be polite.
But not anymore. There was no one in her life to be polite to, so she had no practice.
And she wasn’t about to apologize. Not to him.
“I need you,” he said and she fought to keep herself from choking on a sound of disbelief.
“Gabe Mitchell at my door, begging.” She shivered dramatically. “Hell is getting colder.”
“Alice.” He sighed. “This isn’t easy for me. You know that. But I need you. Bad.”
His low tone hit her in the stomach and snaked down to her sex, which bloomed in sudden heat. Too familiar, those words. Too reminiscent of those nights together, when they’d needed each other so much, good sense got burned to ash.
“I really can’t imagine why,” she said, crossing one leg over another, and her arms came across her chest, giving him every signal to stop, to say goodbye and walk away.
But he didn’t and she wondered what was truly at stake here. The Gabe she knew did not fight and he never begged.
“I built the inn,” he said softly. “The one we always talked about.”
It was a slap. A punch in her gut. Her eyes burned from the pain and shock of it. How dare he? He’d walked away with her pride, her self-respect, her dreams of a family and now this.
She wanted to scream, just tilt her head back and howl at the pain and injustice of it all.