CHAPTER FIVE
TAYLOR
Thankfully Gabe is doing better. His face is still red and his blue eyes are watery, but he’s not explosively sneezing any longer. I thought the poor guy was going to keel over after he sneezed ten times in a row. I didn’t even think to mention that I had a cat. I feel terrible.
“What’s your address?”
He croaks it out and I don’t even need to pull it up on my phone or put it into his GPS. He actually doesn’t live that far from me.
I do turn on the radio because I always think better when I have music. He’s attractive and a nice guy. He’s also seriously allergic to cats and I’m not re-homing Monica. She’s my baby. I wonder if he would be willing to take allergy meds or get allergy shots.
It’s crazy to even be considering these things. I barely know the guy! I should probably drive him home, make certain he gets inside his house safely, tell him to pop some antihistamine or something, hand over the bag of food, and wish him well. No harm, no foul.
“Thank you so much, Taylor.”
He sounds marginally better and at least fully understandable now. I glance over and he offers me a crooked smile.
And my heart melts.
Ugh!
I’m going to get my heart broken again. I know it.
“You’re welcome. I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault. What’s your cat’s name?”
I laugh. “Why? Are you hoping it’s Destroyer or Damien?”
He issues a wheezy laugh, and I reach over and pat his leg. His extremely muscular and hard leg. “Don’t laugh. I don’t need you going into a coughing fit. I should have grabbed you a water.”
Gabe covers my hand with his. “Name?”
Sighing, I send him a quick frown. “Her name is Monica, and she’s eight years old.”
“Cute.”
Shaking my head, I laugh again. “Cute and extremely furry. She sheds like crazy, as you might have noticed.”
Gabe lives in a nice two-story house at the end of a cul-de-sac. I can already imagine the basketball hoop and kids riding their skateboards. It’s a nice development.
“Kids?” I ask.
He wheezes again and his hand pats at mine. “No kids, no wife, no secret girlfriend, or a crazy stalker ex. Just me.” Underneath the hoarseness his tone is sad.
“And no cat,” I tease, trying to lighten things up. That’s me, always trying to joke my way out of tense situations.
“Or dog.” He reaches up and presses at a garage opener.
I ease the big SUV into his three-car garage, not at all surprised to see another vehicle in there, a low-slung yellow Corvette that looks like a classic car or whatever the term is for cars older than twenty years. “Sweet ride.”
“Thanks.”
Ever the gentleman, Gabe grabs the bag of food and leads me into his house via the garage door.
We pass through a nicely sized mudroom filled with a lot of grungy sneakers and boots.
The guy has a serious shoe addiction it seems. In the kitchen he places the bag on the granite counter and turns and looks at me.
“I’ll be back,” he mutters, grabbing a bottle of water from his large stainless steel fridge before hurrying down the hallway.
I imagine he’s going to the bathroom to grab some allergy meds or something.
While he’s gone, I walk around his kitchen.
My townhouse has a decent sized kitchen, but this is other level.
I guess he wasn’t kidding when he said he could cook.
With a kitchen like this he could host dinner parties for forty or more.
I’m taking in the clean white cabinets, the six burner gas range, and the gorgeous granite countertops and kitchen island big enough to serve as a couch in a pinch when Gabe returns. He’s changed into different clothes, and he looks far more relaxed and less red.
“Thanks a lot for being so understanding.”
Dumbfounded, I can only gape at him. “What is there to understand?” I finally sputter. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention I had a cat earlier.”
Gabe leans against the corner of the island. “We didn’t really do a lot of talking earlier.”
A full body cringe makes me want to hide my face. No, I was too busy being a brat while also thinking of ways to bed him to do a better job of actually being a decent date. I’ll do better.
“You’re right. We should get started with that now, and also eat.”
“I’d like that.”
Gabe pulls out plates while I unpack the food I hastily shoved into containers at my house.
Thankfully I had planned for quick and easy.
Tossed salad with chopped steak. “All from the farmers market,” I proudly state as I scoop salad onto our plates.
I don’t miss Gabe’s quick grimace. Does this man seriously not eat salads?
“The steak is from a local butcher, too.”
At the sight of the perfectly grilled steak, he brightens, and I roll my eyes and fight back the urge to call him a caveman. Sadly, that thought also has me picturing him in nothing but a loincloth, and I curse my active imagination.
We eat dinner in his dining room, sitting across from each other at his long and gleaming dark wood eight-person table.
“Sure you don’t have dinner here with your wife, kids, secret girlfriend, and crazy stalker ex?” I ask, gesturing at the empty seats.
“Not hardly. I got the table because it fit the room better. A smaller one looked odd.”
Okay, he definitely has a point there.
“Why the big house if it’s just you?” I ask because we said we were going to get to know each other so why not ask the hard-hitting questions?
Gabe freezes like a deer caught in headlights, his blue eyes wide. Chewing rapidly, he swallows and pats his mouth with his napkin as those wide shoulders of his droop. “When I bought the place it wasn’t supposed to be just me. I was engaged.”
Obviously, it didn’t work out. Except now I want to know why. I wait to see if he’ll volunteer the information and when he doesn’t, I go for it. “So what happened? And why keep the house?”
He drops his fork, his mouth turning up into a bitter grin.
“What happened was there were more than two people in our relationship and I wasn’t happy about that.
As for why I kept the house, I had just taken out a mortgage on it and I couldn’t stomach the capital gains taxes if I were to immediately sell it.
Then the market took a downturn and if I’m being honest, I like this house. I wouldn’t have bought it if I didn’t.”
Cupping my chin on my hand, I give a slow nod. “What about if your future wife doesn’t want to live in a house picked out for another woman?” I’m just making idle conversation. It probably wouldn’t bug me. Not that I’m thinking Gabe and I will get to that point, but hey, I like to think ahead.
“Then I’ll sell this one or rent it out. I would want my wife to be happy.”
“Oh, good answer!” I cheer and resume eating.
Gabe has gotten into the spirit of things and starts his own line of questioning. “What about you? Kids, crazy exes, secret lovers? What are you hiding?”
“Me? I’m hiding nothing.” Jeff does pop into my head, but I blocked his number and he’s too nice of a guy to get a burner phone just to harass me. That brief relationship is over.
“Then how is a beautiful woman like you single?”
“I can turn that right around. How is a handsome man like you single? Sure, you have a failed engagement, but like they say, there are plenty of fish in the sea.”
His eyes turn cool. “There’s also a lot of trash and sharks out there, as well.”
“There’s a lot of truth right there.” I roll my shoulders. “I wasn’t engaged, but I split with my boyfriend of three years about five months ago. There was no cheating, no deception, or anything horrible. We simply weren’t right for each other and neither wanted to admit that for a long time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. But that’s life.” I pick up my fork and continue eating, though my appetite has waned. “After that I’ve gone out with some other guys, but things didn’t work out.”
An awkward silence grows between us with both of us no doubt thinking that we’re not going to work out either.
“You’re right, by the way. This produce is amazing,” Gabe announces suddenly.
“Naturally,” I say brightly, trying to save this evening.
“Taylor-”.
“Gabe-”.
We both speak at once and grin at each other. He waves his hand for me to go first, but I’m too curious about what he is going to say. Shaking my head, I waggle my finger. “No, no. You go first.”
“I wanted to ask if you take all your first dates to a farmers market.”
Some heat fills my face. “No, I don’t.”
A soft grin curves up his lips.
My mouth goes dry looking at how perfectly his mustache and beard outline that area. I haven’t been with many men with facial hair before. It suits Gabe and I can’t picture him clean-shaven.
“Why me?”
I pull my attention from those tempting lips and force myself to look into his cobalt blue eyes. “Because I doubted this date would amount to much.”
He nods thoughtfully. “I understand. I didn’t have high hopes for it either.” His smile grows. “Yet here we are.”
“Yes,” I agree as want fills me. “Here we are.”
Gabe is up out of his seat and around the table in a flash, his hand on my arm, urging me to stand.
I take no convincing, already rising as he touches me.
Staring up into his face, I read the same need that’s been coursing through me since I first saw him. Our hands grasp, reaching for each other as his mouth swoops down and hungrily covers mine.
At the first touch of his lips, I draw in a quiet gasp.
His mouth is much softer than I ever could have imagined.
I cling to his shoulders, feeling the power and the tension in them as his lips move over mine with an expertise I wasn’t expecting.
Though it makes sense with him being older.
We haven’t even explored how much older yet.
None of that matters as I get swept along in the brush of his tongue and eagerly open for him. Our tongues touch and swirl, rubbing against and learning the contours of each other’s mouths.
Abruptly, he pulls his mouth away and turns his head in time to avoid sneezing into my face.
“Bless you,” automatically leaves my lips before understanding fills me. “Shoot, it’s my clothes. I’m probably covered in Monica’s fur.”
Gazing back at me, Gabe’s eyes smolder as a wicked grin tugs up his lips. “Well then, we should do something about that, shouldn’t we?” he asks as his hands go to the hem of my shirt and inch under it.
My tongue runs over my lips as I nod. “Yes, I guess we should.”