Chapter Six
Devlin pulled her car into the home store parking lot. She’d texted Prudence that she was on her way and only got a smiley face emoji as a reply, which seemed a little odd. Prudence prided herself on being on time, so an emoji rather than written confirmation was out of character.
She noted how busy the store was as she found a spot at the far side of the lot. She squinted into the sun and swore she saw Gabe Atwood standing at the front entrance. Slamming her car door shut, she sidled around a large SUV, not seeing any sign of Prudence or her car.
“Oh, Pru, you didn’t,” she muttered.
Gabe looked perfect. His hands tucked into the front pockets of his jeans; he bounced on the balls of his feet while looking around. The spring in his step stopped when he spotted Devlin, and he lifted his hand in a wave. As she glanced back at her car, a longing voice whispered it’s not too late, just turn around and leave . He couldn’t know she was there for him, or whether she was coming or going. He didn’t know Prudence had oh so casually said that she could use some company when she was going to pick out furnishings for a client the next day. Gabe squinted and repeated his wave, and he seemed so unsure of himself in that moment that Devlin had no choice but to head over to him.
“Out doing some early morning shopping?” Gabe asked as she approached.
Well. He obviously didn’t know she was going to be there. “I’m supposed to meet Prudence to help her shop for a client.”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed. “I’m Pru’s client.”
“I think we’ve been set up.” Devlin sighed.
Gabe glanced around one more time before settling his gaze on Devlin.
“Okay, what are you here for?” Devlin asked after a prolonged silence. “We might as well shop. I’ll deal with Prudence later.”
“She was going to help me pick out some things for my house. I’ve been renovating it over the last few years.”
Devlin wasn’t going to say that she knew this—Prudence had mentioned sparse details of the renovations before—and asked instead, “Oh really? What kind of renovations?”
“My parents’ old house.” Gabe shifted, rubbing his hands together like he was warding off a chill. “I don’t suppose you want to help, since Prudence isn’t here?” When Devlin hesitated, he added, “Even just to warm up, it’s cold out here.”
She accepted with a nod and went through the door as he ushered her in. They stood for a moment and took in the size of the store. She’d been here a few times before but preferred to shop at smaller boutiques rather than big box stores.
“I come here when I know I’m going to be ordering in bulk for a large project, otherwise I like the shops downtown for everything else,” he said, as if reading her mind.
“Cutting costs is always a good idea, then you can spend a little more on the finishing touches. All right, if I’m going to be of any help, I need to know more about what you’re looking at getting done today. I don’t have an expert eye like Pru, but I’m here and I’ll do what I can. What do you need?” They started wandering through an aisle.
“I’m working on the basement. Most of the rest of the house is done, but I hadn’t decided on what to do downstairs until the last few months.”
She raised her eyebrows in question.
“I’m going to have a wet bar and game room.”
“How very bacheloresque of you.” Devlin stopped herself. She had no right to offer any critique of what he was doing with his house. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. Have you started on anything down there?”
Gabe shook his head. “Nothing, it’s a blank slate. Insulation and sheetrock is all that’s down there. And the bathroom, but just the toilet and sink so far.”
“So, let’s start with the tile then.” She guided him to the right section. “What kind are you thinking?”
Gabe pointed to a busy mosaic pattern. “I like this one.”
“What tile do you have upstairs?”
“It looks more like this.” He pointed to a classic subway tile found in many old farmhouses in Massachusetts.
“Will there be a guest room?”
“No, I have four bedrooms upstairs, that’s enough.”
“But what if you have a family?” she asked without thinking, then could feel her face heat in a deep flush. “I mean…you know, they might not always be guest rooms.”
Gabe studied her for a long moment, his expression inscrutable, before replying, “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
If the silence before was long, it had nothing on the current lonely stretch of highway they were cruising down, the traitorous image of mini-Gabe Atwoods running around a renovated farmhouse filling her mind.
“Back to the tile.” She redirected them to the original subject, pushing out the picture of little boys with wheat-colored hair—and her nose—out of her mind.
“You want to keep as much of the original style as possible. The house has a history, and it would be such a waste to think that history didn’t mean anything anymore, but I’m sure you know all that.” Gabe wondered if she was alluding to their history, as little as they had. “You seem like the kind of guy that would try to hold on to that—isn’t that why you started remodeling the house?
Gabe was surprised by the question. He’d never looked beyond the aesthetics of the project, about why he felt the need to remodel other than the basic fact that the place had to be updated. He wasn’t ready to think about the why, so he kept it to the basics. “The stairs had a runner carpet that was so threadbare it had to come off. I never paid attention to it when my parents lived there—the house wasn’t mine and besides, doesn’t every kid think their childhood home is perfect?”
“Not every kid.” Devlin seemed like she was avoiding Gabe’s searching gaze, answering the question he didn’t have to ask. “My childhood was fine, just not the picture of suburban paradise. So, what about the carpet?”
Gabe hesitated and Devlin moved away, touching another sample. She clearly didn’t want to talk about her childhood right now. “The kitchen has a door that leads to the driveway that I use, but one sunny day after Greyson and I bought it from our parents, I went in the front door and when the light hit the stairs, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed how worn the runner was before.”
Devlin laughed. “It just took a little sunshine for you to see all the imperfections?”
“I find that sunlight is the best light to see anything, imperfections and all.”
He hesitated and Devlin must’ve picked up on the pause. She continued, asking a neutral question. “What did you do then?”
“I spent the rest of the day going through the house just looking and observing, and I saw so many things I’d never noticed. I called Greyson and told him we needed to renovate the house and he wanted nothing to do with it. He was too busy with his career and gave me his half of the house.”
“He just gave it to you?” Devlin seemed skeptical.
“He wouldn’t let me buy him out and said the money I saved would be his contribution to the remodel. He also added that this way I wouldn’t be calling him anymore with boring questions about what crown molding would look best in the foyer and to just make the damned decisions myself. That’s where Pru came in. I didn’t want to second-guess anything.”
“What did your parents say?”
“They said the house looked fine, but that’s what everyone who did a remodel in the eighties thinks. Ultimately, they said the house was ours—mine—and whatever changes I made was my decision.”
Devlin stopped at a thick carpet and ran her fingers through it, giving it a slight scrape with her fingernails. Just like she did to my hair. And there it was—their kiss back in the forefront of his thoughts once again.
“This is the one,” she declared.
Gabe ran his fingers through it also, just brushing hers, and electricity between them ignited. She snatched her hand away, cradling it.
“I’m sorry.” Gabe reached out but she stepped back.
“I’m fine, just a shock. You should get this kind. It’s nice and thick, and with a good pad underneath the cold from the floor won’t seep through. Unless you get water in the basement, then no carpet.”
“No, no water. One of the good upgrades my parents did was drain tile and a sump pump.”
“That’s good,” she murmured, walking over to look at paint colors. “Our basement got water. That’s where my room was, so I could never have carpet. The place was always so cold.”
He knew she was hesitant to share anything of her past, or talk about any of their past, so he kept on going with the most mundane topics, just to keep their conversation alive and to not lapse into yet another silence, awkward or otherwise. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to thank or throttle Prudence for this stunt.
“Where did you live growing up?”
Devlin turned a corner to walk down another aisle and he lost sight of her until her voice came from across the shelf. Most of her was obscured by paint cans but she continued, almost as if not being face-to-face helped her to keep talking.
“Just a neighborhood in South Boston. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Gabe remarked.
Her eyes popped up meeting his through the gap in shades of yellow, then she continued down the aisle, and her voice floated from a few rows over. “I like this color.”
He followed the path she had taken around the corner of the shelf to a section where darker paints were shown on a wall display in different settings.
“Which one do you like?” he asked, coming to stand next to her, his shoulder almost brushing hers.
“That one.” She pointed to a dark blue. “Everyone wants to brighten a basement, but I say let it be.” She looked at the color again then pointed to a deep green. “This one is nice, too. Dark doesn’t mean a cave. It can be warm, and with the right fixtures around it, very cozy.”
He watched her smooth her short hair, much like she had outside the community center a few days ago, and realized she was designing what she’d wanted her room to be as a kid. He felt his heart squeeze in his chest and ached to reach out and pull her into a bear hug and never let her go. He stepped away from her, shaking himself out of this impulse to save her. She didn’t need saving. Whatever had happened, she’d already saved herself—he recognized that strength in her.
“I like the forest green,” Gabe decided, looking at Devlin.
Her face bloomed into a smile. “Me too.”
“So, we have carpet and paint, what’s next?”
“I’d wait until you get those done. After that, you can tell what the character of the room will be, and you can pick out furniture and everything else later.” She pivoted her head, her eyes meeting his. He was startled to realize for the first time that she was almost as tall as him. “If you have the time, that is.”
Gabe studied her face, the arch of her brow, the curve of her cheeks and the tiny slope of her nose. “I have nothing but time,” he said with the most truthfulness he’d used in quite a while. He felt like time was irrelevant when he was with Devlin. A year ago, a minute ago, a second ago. It all rolled up into a timeless capsule that would be forever theirs.
The sound of an announcement crackling on a speaker snapped Gabe out of his reverie and he noticed Devlin move away from him. Damn whoever needs a manager in aisle seven. But he was thankful for it at the same time. He had no right to have these thoughts about her. Or them.
“All right, that should do it for now,” Devlin stated, hiking her bag higher on her shoulder and turning to the front of the store. “I think five gallons of paint should do just fine, maybe an extra gallon for touch ups later. You know the square footage for the carpet order?”
They checked out and walked to his car to unload the purchases they were able to take today. He slammed the trunk and turned to Devlin.
There was that long, questioning silence again. Gabe lifted his hand, trailing it along the fringe of her short bangs. Her breath was coming out in small puffs into the cold air, dancing across his cheek. She moved her hand to the front of his jacket, quick, then stepped back. He could sense something in her, a softening that hadn’t been there a mere hour ago, but the feeling was gone before he could catch it and he wasn’t ready to chase after it just yet.
“Well, thank you for helping me shop. The vintage tile will look much better than anything I would’ve picked.” He was surprised to realize that he didn’t want this time with Devlin to end. “Did you want to grab an early lunch? I know a little place just up the road.”
Devlin lifted her eyes to his, her expression unreadable.
“No,” she responded after a moment, and Gabe’s hopes deflated. “Thank you, though, for offering. I have plans for the rest of my day.”
“Okay. Well…”
Devlin reached around him and grabbed his phone that was tucked into his back pocket. Her fleeting touch on his ass set him aflame and his jeans became an uncomfortable level of tight. Damn .
She held the phone in front of his shocked face, the phone unlocked, and she tapped in a quick staccato then held it out to him, seeming reluctant to let it go when he took it back. “Here’s my number. I know Prudence is your designer, but if she’s busy and you need help, let me know.” Devlin turned and walked to her car before he could say anything, her skirt whipping around her legs in the wind.
He was bewitched by the fact that in addition to her jeans and blue Chucks, she also wore skirts in winter. The more time they spent together the more details he noticed, and the more his attraction grew. He watched her get into her car and realized they hadn’t talked about the one thing that was both binding them together and pushing them apart—the shop between them—but figured they’d get to talk about it at some point before the next meeting. They’d seen each other enough times this last week that he was expecting to be thrown together for yet another random reason. At least he’d get a chance to re-group his emotions when he went to the cabin without her there. Out of sight, out of mind.