Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
NATALIE
How I ever kept my hands off Gabe in the back of the sleigh, I will never know.
I could see the honesty in his face when he told me the ex-girlfriend’s stories were lies. And it feels true. So, I choose to believe what I’ve seen and felt with my own eyes and instincts this last week over tabloid scandal.
Yes, Gabe was wrong to lose his temper with Wyatt. But I get that he was in a bad place at the time and not the man he is now. And he’s obviously sorry about it and has tried to make amends.
Decision made. Screw it. I’m going for it. I’m fucking going for it. Going for two weeks of fun. The first even vaguely irresponsible, hedonistic thing I’ve done purely for myself and no one else in my goddamn life.
Hence, I’m still kicking off my boots inside his front door when I unzip his parka and push my hands inside it.
Oh damn, it’s so warm and inviting in there .
And the last couple of hours have really revved my engines.
The way he made me laugh by firing the pig ears off my head with his water pistol, the intimacy of being squished together on the donkey/reindeer ride, how he immediately grabbed me when I was jolted from the seat. And when he casually draped his arm around me as we walked back to his car, my body naturally sank against him and my panties were already damp.
Now we’re in private and, oh, how my hormones are raging.
“Hey, what’s brought this on?” Gabe asks, pulling his jacket off his wide shoulders while I slide my hands up and over his ridiculously firm chest.
“Got to make the most of you while I can.” I wrap my arms around his waist, press my chest against his, and find a welcoming hardness in his jeans with my hip.
I’m not sure why my brain chose to acknowledge out loud that the clock is ticking on our time together, but I guess there’s no harm in speaking the truth.
“That’s something I can definitely get on board with,” he says through that sexy smile and sexy beard.
Before I know it, he’s hiked me up by the butt cheeks and my feet lock together behind him. “But first, the thing I have for you.”
“Why are you walking to the kitchen? Isn’t the thing in here?” I reach down between my legs and find that glorious shape in his jeans—the size of it more exciting than scary now.
“We’ll get to that thing in a minute.”
In the kitchen, he sets me down on the island.
“Ah.” I reach for his belt. “Got a thing about granite counters, huh?” I give him a dramatic wink .
“They’re marble. And no. Or maybe yes. Probably be a bit cold on your ass. Either way, and I really can’t believe I’m fending you off, but the other thing first.”
He turns and moves toward the fridge, where he bends over, giving me a fine view of his firm ass as he opens the freezer drawer.
When he stands up, he’s holding a brown cardboard box that’s about twelve inches square.
He turns his back to the freezer and slides it shut with his foot at the same time as he tosses the box at me. “Here.”
Surprised, I manage to catch it before it hits my chest. “Gee, thanks for the careful delivery.”
He leans back against the counter next to the fridge and folds his arms.
His expression is hard to read. It’s part excited, part satisfied, part nervous, and part something else I can’t put my finger on. Something I might not have seen in him before.
I turn the box over in my hands. It’s kind of heavy. “A gift? I thought you were trying to avoid Christmas things with every fiber of your being.”
“It’s not Christmas yet.” He shrugs. “So it’s just a regular old non-specific-occasion gift. And you need to open it sooner rather than later.”
“Why?” I ask, picking at the brown packing tape.
“The clue is in the fact I just took it out of the freezer.”
I rip off the tape, only to discover the box seems to have been fastened shut by some sort of industrial stapler or maybe a nail gun.
“Who wrapped this? Brinks?” I finally get my fingertips under the edge of a flap and pull. But all it does is rip the box and leave the giant staple exactly where it is.
I offer it to Gabe for assistance.
He tightens his arms across his chest, like he’s holding himself back, and shakes his head. “Nope. You decorated the entire front of my house single-handedly. I’m damn sure you can rip open a cardboard box.”
“Just when I was starting to like you.” I set it on my lap and dig under the torn part until I can get two fingers in, then give it a hard yank. “Ah-ha!”
It gives me enough room to tear off the rest of the top.
Looking inside reveals nothing helpful. There’s something a bit like the gel ice pack Gabe gave me for my ankle that first night lying across the top.
When I lift it off, I still for a second, reading and rereading the lid of the carton below it. Every inch of my skin goes tingly as my brain struggles to process what it’s seeing—process that this is real.
But real it most definitely is.
Surrounded by a blue-and-gold filigree are the words “Amoroso Gelati” in a swirly font. Exactly as I’ve seen them on the Italian ice cream shop’s website the hundreds of times I’ve looked at it.
I lift the tub out from the rest of the cold packaging and turn it around and around, gazing at all the Italian words in wonder. I sense my lips part as my mouth drops open, my mind swirling in disbelief as to how I’ve come to be holding a tub of ice cream that I know for sure is not sold on this continent. I don’t think it’s even sold anywhere outside of Italy. Or even outside of their own store in Florence.
The thought that Gabe has done this for me makes me feel like there’s a bird fluttering its wings inside my heart.
“Um, do you like it?” He sounds unsure.
“Oh, God, yes. Yes .” I lift my gaze to his concerned face. “Of course I do. I’m just…well…stunned. How did you even get this?”
“Remember I was busy yesterday because I had rehab and meetings and some things to do?”
I hold up the carton of ice cream. “Are you saying that was a cover for going to Italy for the day to buy this?”
He releases his clenched arms and pushes his fingers into his pockets as a smirk plays on his lips. “No. I don’t like you that much.”
God, his teasing is such a turn-on.
“I made the calls to get it here though,” he says. “Then went to go pick it up from the airport this morning.”
“The airport? Which airport? You drove to JFK and back?”
“No. The ice cream arrived at JFK. Then I had it put on a private plane up to Stewart Airport. I drove there to get it.” He shrugs like it’s nothing. Like he just stopped at the corner bodega to pick up a loaf of bread.
Who is this man? And how does someone like this want to sleep with me ? How has any of this even happened?
“You chartered a private plane for a quart of ice cream?” I hold up the tub on the palm of my hand. “A whole plane for this little guy seems a bit extravagant.”
Gabe pushes off the counter, pulls two spoons out of a drawer and holds them up. “How about we stop talking about airports and taste the damn stuff?” He offers me a spoon. “It was the strawberry one, right? The one your mom always talked about?”
“Yes.” The surprise of it all suddenly hits me and morphs into an emotional lump in my throat that’s the size of one of these large strawberries. “ You remembered perfectly.” The last word cracks as I fight the sting of burgeoning tears.
Perfectly. He remembered fucking perfectly and had ice cream shipped here from Italy for me. For me .
Has anyone ever gone to such incredible effort to do something so generous, kind and thoughtful for me before? Nothing on the scale of sweet European treats, international flights and private planes, obviously. But no, I don’t think so.
Todd once booked us a surprise weekend away in the Hamptons on Long Island. I thought he was making an effort to be romantic, until it turned out there’s a pine barrens preserve there and he wanted to see how it was being used to purify the local drinking water.
And now this is happening. One day I’m decorating the Sullivans’ house like usual, then a week later a walking sex dream of a sports star is flying ice cream in for me from Florence. What the actual fuck?
“Seems to me you do a lot of things for a lot of people,” Gabe says. “But maybe not many people do things for you. And I had it in my power to make this happen. So I made it happen.”
He shrugs again, this time with just one shoulder. “It was really just a couple of calls.”
I swallow hard and sniff as I blink back the tears. I can’t let him see me being all weepy or he’ll think I’m getting attached. And I’m sure that’s the last thing he wants.
“Come on.” He taps the side of the carton with his spoon. “No time to waste. Hurry, before it melts and it was all for nothing.”
I pry off the lid and peel away the protective film underneath to reveal rich vanilla ice cream with strawberry chunks so large I can smell them already .
“Oh my God, Gabe, look at it.”
“To hell with looking at it—dig in.”
As carefully as if I’m taking part in an archaeological dig, I scoop out exactly the right amount of ice cream to go with a strawberry chunk.
The moment it hits my lips my whole body goes weak. It melts on my tongue and slides down my throat, soothing the emotional lump.
“If it induces a noise like that, I am going to start getting jealous of this ice cream,” Gabe says.
I open my eyes to find him scanning my face. “I made a noise?”
He nods and shifts his hips, as if adjusting himself inside his pants.
“I take it it’s good then?” he says.
“Out of this world. It’s like the richest, creamiest, vanilla-iest cream and the freshest most strawberry-tasting strawberries.”
“My turn.”
I expect him to do the thing that every man would do and just stick his spoon in and take out a huge random chunk, probably from the middle. But he doesn’t. He takes half a spoonful from an area around the edge that has no strawberries in it.
“Oh, that is fucking good,” he says the instant it hits his tongue.
I put another spoonful in my mouth and realize I never want this sensation to end. Not just the sensation of the deliciousness, but the sensation of having Gabe standing next to me, right after giving me the most beautifully considerate gift I have ever received.
He could have flown in anything he wanted from anywhere in the world—jewelry, exotic flowers, a dozen puppies. But no. He remembered I’d mentioned it was my dream to taste this ice cream, so he went to all the time, trouble, and effort to find it and get it here for me.
It’s not about the expense of the gesture. It’s about the thoughtfulness behind it.
What have I done to deserve this?
I put down my spoon and wrap my arms around his neck. “I just realized I haven’t said thank you. So thank you.”
And suddenly there’s space for all the feelings trapped inside me to bubble up. The fact that my parents were always away. The fact that they told me about all the places they visited but I’ve never been to any of them. And the fact that this incredible man has just brought one of them to me.
“Hey, Bugs.” He wipes away the single tear that’s tumbled down my cheek.
“This is truly the most amazing, thoughtful thing I have ever known.” My voice cracks on almost every word.
“Maybe you’re worth it,” he whispers, then stabs his spoon upright in the ice cream before stroking my face with the backs of his fingers. “When you’re not scaring the shit out of people by jumping on them in the dark and covering their house in Christmas crap, that is.”
Then his lips are on mine and our cold tongues come together in a meeting of strawberries and mutual appreciation and something that feels like it might have a whole lot more potential than just a festive fling.