Chapter 24 Gabriel
Gabriel
Itug my shirt away from my neck and flap it like a fan. “It’s hot in here. Probably need a repairman to look at the oven. Is it normal for it to give off this much heat?”
Sydney’s full lips purse. “Yes.”
“Diaper-change time.” Henry puts his glasses back on his nose and turns abruptly for the door. “Franki, could you bring the diaper bag?”
Franki grabs the navy canvas bag. “I’ll just take this and help. Supervise. Pass him wipes. I’ll be . . .” She points at the doorway to the hall. “Is half an hour long enough?”
“Long enough for what?” Sydney asks.
“For the conversation you two are about to have. Never mind. I just remembered a . . . thing . . . at the bungalow. So after the diaper, Henry and I will head back to do the thing. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Have fun, you two. Don’t forget you have a pizza in the oven. ” Franki waves and heads for the door.
Then they’re gone, and Sydney and I remain, staring at the doorway.
“That was weird,” she says.
“Very.”
She hesitates. “Why was it a secret that we were t-together?”
My hope that she’d be distracted and move on to another topic withers on the vine. “I didn’t realize Franki would tell you those theories, but we weren’t having a secret affair for seven years.”
“I remembered choosing your tattoos. We went on trips. Finished each other’s sentences.”
“Yes. But it was more of a . . . complicated business relationship for most of that time. I tried to flirt for years, but you didn’t take me seriously.”
“I can understand why,” she muses.
I slouch against the counter and paint an expression of bored amusement on my face out of sheer defensive instinct. “Sick of me already?”
“I meant because you’re you.” She indicates my face and body. “You’re gorgeous. Charming. Successful. I’m just . . .” She trails off with a twist of her lips.
“Just what?” My hands grip the edge of the counter to keep me in place.
I shouldn’t stalk her across this kitchen or press her back against the refrigerator with my body.
I shouldn’t tip her chin up and look down into her eyes.
I shouldn’t skate my parted lips across her cheek, then nuzzle her soft skin, damp with clean perspiration, beneath her ear.
There have always been too many “shouldn’ts” with Sydney Walsh McRae. And the longer we listen to them, the bigger the “Fuck it” that follows.
She moves close, and her hands twist my shirt where she holds on. “I’m just me.”
Fuck. It.
She gasps when my hands land on her ass, and I jerk her into the V of my thighs. My lips meet her silky skin and trail kisses up her neck to her earlobe.
“You”—kiss—“aren’t just anything.” I became defensive and closed down, but, unlike the woman I married, this Sydney didn’t bristle at my attitude, flip me the finger, and leave the room. She allowed herself to be vulnerable with me.
“You’re out of my league,” she breathes. “I’d have thought you had much better options than me.”
I straighten and open my mouth to disagree with her, but she hurries on.
“I’m not insecure. I like myself. But the only special thing I had going for me was athletics and that was over with college graduation. I suppose it would’ve mattered if you wanted someone to try to breed D-1 athletes with you?” She attempts a weak joke.
I shake my head, the mention of kids a sore spot I’m not ready for this Sydney to poke at.
“I’ve never been interested in preconceived ideas of who my children would be, and there are no ‘leagues’ when it comes to you and me.
We were made for each other. You are so stubborn in the best possible way.
You’re competitive, persistent, nurturing.
You gave to others when you were barely surviving yourself.
You make me want to be a better person. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Inside and out.”
For a moment, she looks lost. “You seriously see me as your equal?”
“No.”
She swallows hard, her gaze skipping away from mine.
“You’re a goddess. I’m just a man trying to deserve you.”
She throws her hands in the air, then lifts a finger between us. “If I didn’t take you seriously, then that’s why. You can’t say things like that.”
“It’s how I feel.”
I see the exact second she checks herself and chooses not to argue. Her expression changes from frowning to chagrin. Maybe she was going to tell me “No you don’t” or “Don’t be silly.” But she must have taken my words to heart when I told her she didn’t get to tell me how I feel.
She takes a breath, then speaks in a halting voice. “It’s hard for me to understand. But you don’t need to deserve anyone, least of all me. If I didn’t take your feelings seriously, it was about my insecurities, not about you.”
And we’ll go straight back to them when she remembers. “You’re missing too many details to make that call.”
“I understand enough to know what I did. I thought you’d go through women like toilet paper. That was fear left over from my childhood.”
The oven timer for the pizza goes off, and she steps out of my arms. “Can you grab that for me?”
“Do you want to eat at the table?”
She nods, then gathers place settings while I use the bulky black-and-white-checked oven mitts to slide the stainless-steel pizza peel under the hot pie and transfer it to a waiting wooden board. Pepperoni, olives, and green peppers.
Her sauce smells like home. No matter what house or apartment we stayed at, if we were there for more than a week, she cooked something with a version of this sauce.
Seeing it now. Smelling it . . . The temptation to pretend none of the last months happened curls around me like a lover.
What’s wrong with stealing a moment to imagine an afternoon on vacation with my wife and not a worry in the world?
I glance over to find her filling a glass of tea from a pitcher in the refrigerator. When it’s full, she inspects it, then slowly, back stiff and muscles tight, brings it to her lips and takes a sip.
I suppress my impulse to cheer. Drinking from the faucet is something she’s done on her own before, but using a glass and the refrigerator is new. She doesn’t notice me watching her, so I turn back to the pizza and don’t say a word.
Every new step added to her daily walk, every extra set of reps, every pound gained and new memory retrieved—even taking a nap when she needs it—is cause for celebration.
But I won’t make a big deal out of her eating or drinking. Not out loud, anyway. The therapist reminds us both to keep everything as low-pressure as possible, especially when it involves food or her speech.
So I keep the “That’s my girl” to myself and celebrate her sip from a glass of homemade iced tea in silence.
She passes me the colorful plates we chose together for this house, and I slide big, gooey slices of piping hot pizza onto the cheerful stoneware. We settle into our seats across from each other, but she doesn’t take a bite, and neither do I.
She clears her throat. I shift in my chair.
“It’s too hot,” she says.
“Definitely. Don’t want a cheese burn.”
Her gaze flies to mine, then she fidgets, tucking one foot beneath her and playing with her napkin. “While the pizza cools, could you tell me a story?”
“What kind of story?”
“How about the day we met?”
My hand tightens into a fist before I take a breath and loosen my fingers. I’ll always answer with the truth, but I watch her carefully, in case she shows symptoms of shock. “We met at my sister’s housewarming party. You were already there when I arrived, sitting on the porch swing reading a book—”
“No!” She rubs her temple, then speaks more quietly, her voice becoming halting with urgency. “N-not that one. I don’t think. Tell me something that makes you smile when you remember.”
She doesn’t remember, but she knows it was bad. Refusing to hear it is only a short-term reprieve for both of us, but I’ll take it. “A funny one, huh? There was that time I broke my leg in two places while we were hiking in Switzerland.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, haha. That sounds like a laugh a minute.”
“Patience, oh sarcastic one.” I flare my hands dramatically.
“I have to set the scene. It was, let me think, just about five years ago. We toured a research facility, and you met with the department heads. The tour, itself, only took around four hours. You weren’t even sure you wanted to go in the first place, but I made an executive decision.
Once we were there, it would have been a waste to go to the Alps and leave without exploring a little, so we stayed for a week. ”
“We used a work trip as an excuse for a vacation? What was your role?” My little goody-two-shoes sounds scandalized.
“Moral support,” I say dryly.
“Why did I need moral support?”
“Not for you. For me. I was crushed under the weight of unrequited love. What if you met a handsome scientist named Hans and defected? What if you fell in love with him while I was in New York, and you had adorable little science-nerd babies together while I wasted away in loneliness without you?”
“Thank goodness you were there to save me from a fellow science nerd.” Sydney grins. Then, without seeming to notice what she’s doing, she picks up her pizza and takes a bite as she waits for me to continue.
Don’t pump your fist. Don’t even mention it. Just keep the distraction going.
She gasps in horror when I tell the story of my tumble down a mountain. She laughs when I reveal it was an embarrassing drop of approximately four feet. I underplay the compound fracture of my femur and my cracked tibia because she’s never enjoyed anyone’s pain, let alone mine.
I talk about her calm pragmatism as she splinted my leg and applied pressure, before she freaked out when she couldn’t get the bleeding to stop.
“You yelled ‘Stay with me, McRae, so help me God, or I’ll kick your ass.’ It was very touching.”
Sydney bites her lip.
“I was pretty out of it, though. I heard ‘kiss your ass’ and said, ‘If it means your mouth on any part of me, I’ll die a happy man.’ Then you were still applying pressure, but your chin did that wobble like you were trying not to cry.” I grimace. “That part wasn’t funny.”
“Tell me the rest. Maybe I’ll remember.”
“The search and rescue team didn’t like my jokes. When they arrived, I was barely conscious, but I was afraid if I stopped talking, it would scare you. I don’t remember what I said, but finally one of them told me, ‘This is when you do the mouth-shutting or I make you sleep.’”
Sydney snickers and leans forward. By the time I get to the part of the story where the staff was prepping me for surgery, Sydney has eaten half her slice of pizza without a hitch.
“How are you making this funny? It’s awful,” she says.
“It’s a gift. Now, remember you had zero idea how I actually felt about you. And, at some point, the hospital staff decides you aren’t coming back to my room or getting an update on my condition.”
She scowls. “They kept you from me?”
“Have you met yourself? You told them you were my stepsister, and the bodyguard we had with us lied to their faces and backed you up. So”—I gesture widely—“I wake from surgery in this recovery area, and, apparently, I start hollering for my wife.”
“You weren’t married,” she accuses.
My lips twitch, and I shake my head. “I was confused. I thought you were my wife. Wishful anesthesia-ing, I guess.”
“Oh.”
“They told me my wife wasn’t there. So I described you in detail, including your perfect tits that were exactly the right size for my hands.
And I told them you were with me when I arrived.
They thought I was having some sick surgery-fueled fantasy about my stepsister because, by that point, both members of our security team were there and had well and truly convinced them we were siblings. ”
Her mouth falls open, and her hand drifts up to cover it. “Stop. No. I can’t.”
“They finally wheeled me back to the room where you were waiting for me, but you were afraid I’d blow your cover.
So, as soon as you saw me, you grabbed my hand, and—you’re a shitty actress.
It’s really important you remember that—so, you grabbed my hand and said, ‘Oh, stepbrother, I’m so glad you’re okay.
’” I speak in a high-pitched breathy tone.
Sydney’s eyes widen, then narrow. “I didn’t say it like that.”
“Yes you did. Exactly like a low-budget porn video. And my brains were still scrambled thinking you were my wife. My heart monitor went crazy. People came running into the room. I yelled, ‘Clear the set. We’re not performing for an audience.’”
She slaps her hand over her face and peeks through her fingers. “That’s a terrible story,” she says, sounding gleefully horrified.
“That’s where all our inside jokes about role-play originated. We kind of rolled with it after that. When I woke up a second time, I told them you were my fiancée, but you were afraid they wouldn’t let you in or give you information, so you and the team lied.”
Smiling, she sits back in her chair.
“You ended up staying with me to keep up the ruse, holding my hand and plumping my pillows. And that damn monitor told on me every time you got close until they disconnected it. You asked them to check me for a heart condition. The doctor said, ‘You’re his heart condition, Ms. Walsh.’”
Her eyes go soft. “Aww.”
“When we got back to New York, you came up to my place to check on me every night for a month. I’d have broken bones a hundred times over for those moments with you.” I glance at her plate. “Do you want another slice of pizza?”
She looks down.
“I did it,” she says, surprise in her voice.
“Yeah you did.”
She fidgets. “Dave took me shopping.”
I nod. Henry thought he’d have to tackle me to prevent me from following. But, for her sake, I kept it together and smiled when she waved goodbye.
Sydney straightens in her chair, glances at my name tag, then back into my eyes. “It went pretty well. I bought a new dress. It’s yellow. And, I . . .”
“What’s wrong?”
She twists her napkin. “Nothing. Just . . . Would you be interested in going out with me? On a date, I mean,” she blurts.
A slow smile floods my soul and spreads to my face. Leaning forward, I take her hand. “A date, huh?”
“Yes.”
Worry about the two of us appearing together in public tries to worm itself into this moment.
I push it back, too elated to give even a sliver of a doubt any weight.
We’re in Hawai’i, not New York . . . or London .
. . or Blackwater. The odds of anyone intruding on her peace or rubbing my past in her face here are so low, they’re practically nonexistent.
“So.” I rub my thumb over the pulse in her wrist and feel it kick in time with my own. “A new dress?”
“A sundress.”
I groan, and she laughs.
“And flirting is on the table?” I ask.
“What’s a date without it?”
My lips twitch. “With you? Agony.”