Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Autumn
My limbs were stone-heavy and I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the energy to walk again. Sex with Gabriel had been . . . I knew it would be good. I just hadn’t expected it to be so completely life changing. And I hadn’t expected him to be so filthy. I’d loved it.
“Do you concede at Monopoly?” he asked, fastening his jeans.
I glanced at him with a frown. “Absolutely not. Do you?”
“No, of course not.”
I tried to bite back a grin. I liked that the serious, almost gruff side of Gabriel was back.
It wasn’t as if that wasn’t him during sex.
Just that he was . . . more. He was open and far less guarded.
I liked it all. I just hoped I wasn’t about to get a case of whiplash again.
There had been a number of times when I thought my attraction to him was reciprocated and then he receded into being my boss and a man I happened to live with.
After tonight, I wasn’t sure I’d handle it from him.
“So, do we have to have a talk now about how this shouldn’t have happened?
” If that was the way this was going to go, I wanted to know now.
I liked Gabriel and the sex had been the best I’d ever had.
Whatever I’d been doing before couldn’t really be described as sex anymore.
There was no real comparison. “Because, it has happened. And I can’t regret it, Gabriel. ”
He pulled me toward him, circling my waist with one arm. “That’s not how this is going to go. I like you, Autumn. There’s a connection between us that I can’t ignore, however hard I try.”
“But I don’t understand why you’ve tried so hard.” I wasn’t a virus to be avoided.
“There are a lot of reasons. Dexter. Hollie. You’re young. A great nanny. All that, and my last relationship didn’t go so well. I don’t want to hurt you, Autumn. And I don’t want . . . Bethany’s life disrupted.”
Gabriel usually said so little, but right now he seemed to be sharing almost everything on his mind. I didn’t want to push things too hard. I wasn’t angling for a ring. Honesty and openness were all I wanted.
“I’ll tell you what it will take me to concede at Monopoly,” I said, wanting something from him that was beyond words. “Show me your workshop.” I’d been wanting to get behind that door since the moment I moved in. And now I’d seen him naked, it seemed suddenly unfair that he was keeping it from me.
“Now?” he asked.
I shrugged. Seemed as good a time as any. He looked deliciously rumpled, softer somehow in the afterglow of the best sex I’d ever had.
He shoved a hand deep into his jean pocket and pulled out a key.
“Okay,” he said, like it was no big deal.
I wasn’t sure if my heart was racing like a greyhound out of the gate because I would finally get to see where Gabriel disappeared to every night, or because he took my hand, kissed me on my knuckles, and then slid his fingers between mine. “Don’t touch anything, mind.”
The click of the lock sounded, and he bent to kiss me before he turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.
I didn’t know where to look first. “It’s a .
. . workshop.” A huge wooden island sat in the middle of the room, aged with layers of bumps and scratches.
Clamps were attached around one edge and a couple of machines were set on the other side.
Beneath my feet were bare floorboards littered with wooden boxes full of .
. . implements. The walls on two sides were covered in green racks of chisels, hammers, and lots of other tools I had no name for, sitting over built-in wooden cabinets.
Along another wall was open shelving, stuffed full of books and cans of paints and tubs and jars.
It was like I’d walked into a small factory.
How was all this hidden behind that door?
“I told you it was a workshop.”
“I know you did,” I replied, stepping inside. “But I didn’t expect it to be this kind of workshop.” Gabriel Chase, the serious, soulful lawyer, was a secret carpenter on the side. Who would have guessed?
He glanced down at his feet. “I’ve never shown anyone.”
I snapped my head toward him but didn’t say anything, feeling sad for him that for whatever reason, he hadn’t had anyone to share this with. I was honored to be the first.
“So, you use all this stuff?” I asked, trailing my free hand over a smaller side bench that was up against the near wall.
I liked the idea of him in those worn jeans, flexing his delicious muscles as he sanded, painted, and chiseled.
It was so earthy. So freaking sexy. And I thought he was sexier than any man I’d ever met before I’d known what was behind his secret door.
“Yeah. I’m surprised you’ve never heard me.”
Now that I thought about it, I had heard banging from time to time, but I’d assumed it must be the neighbors. I wasn’t exactly used to living in silence at the Sunshine Trailer Park, so I’d just accepted it.
“What kind of thing do you do in here?”
He dropped my hand and moved to the far side of the room.
“This is my latest project,” he said, pulling off the plastic cover from a huge bookcase, taller than even Gabriel.
“I haven’t really started yet but it’s a Globe-Wernicke,” he explained, and his chest lifted with a hint of pride as he spoke.
“It’s nice,” I said, unsure what to make of the reddish-brown, hulking piece of furniture.
“It’s not really. Not yet. And I overpaid for it.” He sighed. “I’d wanted to do one for ages.”
I grinned up at him. “And when you say you want to do one, what exactly does that entail?”
“Well,” he said, bending and running his fingers down the edge of it. “See here? The beading has been knocked. It’s splintering all down this side. And this . . .” He pinched the brass knob on the front of one of the shelves. “This is my favorite part.”
Each of the six shelves had a glass front and he lifted up the door on one and pushed it back on itself so it stayed up. “Isn’t it great?” he said, turning to me, a grin across his face. “These little up and over doors . . . It’s perfect. Or it will be. Two of the shelves are broken.”
“So you’re going to fix it?”
He nodded. “I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll sand off the entire thing.
I doubt it. I’ll probably just polish it up.
You can’t plan too much with these things because there’s always something that comes out of left field and surprises you.
But if I was going to take the lacquer off and take it back to the wood and then re-stain and re-coat it all, it would take me years.
Between work and Bethany, I don’t get too much time in here. ”
“I’ve imagined a hundred things that could have been behind this door,” I said. “But I didn’t suspect anything like this.”
“Are you disappointed?” he asked, smirking and lifting me by the waist up onto the workbench island.
I smoothed my hands over his shoulders, taking in the room from this change of viewpoint. “I should have guessed. I mean, I know you’re good with your hands.”
He chuckled and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “This place saved me after Penelope left.”
He’d never mentioned his wife before tonight, but apparently she was a shadow that loomed over him. Was she an ex-wife? Hollie had explained she’d walked out without any warning when Bethany was a baby, but I didn’t actually know if they were divorced.
“Distraction is a good thing,” I said, trying to keep neutral and not wanting to open a can of worms marked ex.
“It didn’t work so well with you,” he replied with a grin.
I shrugged. “I’m relentless,” I said on a yawn.
“We should get to bed.” He checked his watch. “It’s late and I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.” He took me by the waist and set me down on my feet. “You were right, though. I need to get back to the office.”
“Good. Remember this so that next time I don’t have to sleep with you to convince you to see it my way.”
“Okay,” he said, grinning as we filed out of his workshop. “But maybe I like having you convince me.”
“Yeah, I don’t mind that part so much either.”
He smiled one of those rare smiles I liked enough to count.
I pushed my hands through his hair. “Thank you for showing me this,” I said.
Gabriel unlocking that room and sharing it with me felt like a turning point between us.
More than the flirtatious glances and the illicit touches.
More even than the sex. Him showing the workshop to me was him letting me in.
And I wanted to stay. But I knew better than most that real life didn’t have many happy-ever-afters.
It had for Hollie, and there was no one more deserving, but there was no way London could be my salvation too, no matter how hard I wanted it to be.