Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
NATALIE
“There you go, Bugs,” Gabe says, as I let go of that ridiculously muscular arm and flop down on his ridiculously large—and wow, it’s like sitting on a cloud—couch.
The living area of the open-plan room is set up almost exactly the opposite way around from the way the Sullivans had it. And where theirs was full of color and life, this is all designer neutrals and, of course, lacking any sign of the festive season.
The sharp pain in my ankle has turned into more of a dull ache. And it only twinged a little bit when he helped me out of my shoes. But he insisted I didn’t put any weight on it and that I hang on to him and hop inside. And, honestly, I’m not mad about getting another opportunity to wrap my hand around that arm—or rather, partially around it. I’d have to have fingers as long as the bunny feet to fully encircle that muscle.
The prospect of spending the night in the home of a man I’ve known for not much more than an hour—albeit a home I’m familiar with—seems like the thing people warn you about before you go to college. And on those true crime shows.
“The switch is there.” I point to the right of the front door.
“What switch?” he asks.
“To turn off the decorations you loathe so passionately.”
“Ah, yes.” He trots back and flicks it with more disdain than I thought possible.
“I’ll chill an icepack for you.” Gabe rummages in the bag he brought in from the car.
“You travel with ice packs?”
“And a heating pad.” He looks up at me, and I see him in good light for the first time. The skin of his face is fair, with smooth cheekbones chiseled above the neat line of his dark beard. “Bad shoulder, remember?”
Eyes as grouchy as his have no right to have that much mischief behind them, and they definitely have no right sparking that fluttery thing in my belly.
Distraction required.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket. “Just need to call my aunt and let her know I’m spending the night with a man I just met.”
“That a call you make often?” He pulls two white plastic floppy things from his bag and heads past me toward the open-plan kitchen without looking at me again.
“Oh yeah, totally,” I say as he walks away. God, those shoulders are broad and square. “Forever spending the night with men who threw me to the ground and sprained my ankle.”
“Got a boyfriend?” Gabe slides open the drawer in the bottom half of the fridge-freezer and tosses the white things inside.
A rush of something between nerves, excitement, and nosy-fucker floods my chest. “And what business might that be of yours?”
He pulls open one kitchen drawer after another. “Just wondering if I’m going to be awakened at two in the morning by an angry, jealous man banging on the door.”
“Well, if he did, if there was one I mean, you’d obviously just fling him to the floor and sit on him.”
He pulls a dish towel from the sixth drawer he looks in and holds it under the fridge’s ice dispenser.
“I did not sit on you,” he says, throwing me a quick glance over his shoulder as ice rattles into the cloth.
“Felt like it.” I point at my cell and exaggeratedly mouth my aunt . “Oh, Aunt Lou. Hi.”
“Hi, sweetie. You still at the Sullivans’?”
“Yes. Well, except it isn’t the Sullivans’ anymore.” I look up and meet Gabe’s eyes as he walks toward me, his shovel-sized hands twisting the cloth into an ice ball.
“What do you mean?” Aunt Lou asks.
“Turns out they sold it last week.”
“Oh. So how come you’re still there?”
“Well, in summary?—”
Gabe sits two cushions away from me on the sofa and taps the empty one between us.
I gingerly lift my foot onto it.
“I decorated the house, changed into the bunny costume, and when a car pulled in, I jumped on the guy who got out, and he threw me to the ground, sat on me?—”
“Did not sit on you,” Gabe mumbles.
“What?” Aunt Lou says. “Should I be calling the police?”
“God, no. It’s fine. I’ll explain…ah-ah-ah-ah…” The makeshift icepack Gabe’s taking care to slowly rest against my ankle is freezing. Even through my sock.
He tilts his head and rolls his eyes as if to say Stop being such a baby .
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Aunt Lou sounds genuinely concerned, and I can’t have her up all night worrying when she’s so busy with all the Christmas stuff at Senior Central.
“Totally,” I say. “Well, not totally because he twisted my ankle. Anyway, he was driving me home?—”
“Driving you? What about your bike?”
“It’s in the trunk of his swanky SUV, with the bunny suit. But, anyway, a tree had fallen down across the road down the hill, so…” I’m sure it’s complete coincidence that I lose the power to form words right at the moment Gabe eases down my sock to make sure the ice is in full contact with my skin.
A tingle runs up the inside of my leg. And doesn’t exactly stop when it gets to the top.
“Now you’re stuck there?” Aunt Lou fills the void.
“Yup. And I’m about to spend the night at the home of a man I met about an hour ago.” For some reason, it feels a whole lot less dangerous and absurd than it sounds. But it’s likely that’s also been the final thought of a whole bunch of people in those true crime shows.
“Put him on,” Aunt Lou says.
“What? No. I can’t, that would be embarra—” Actually, it might be hilarious. “Sure.”
I hold my phone out to Gabe.
“What?” He looks from the phone to me.
“Aunt Lou wants to talk to you.”
“Lou? ”
“Louise. When I was little, I called her Loulou and Aunt Lou stuck. Would you please talk to her?”
“Why?”
“So she thinks there’s some hope of me returning home alive tomorrow.”
He opens his mouth, presumably to say something smart-assy, but pauses, then releases a sigh. “Put your hand here first.” He scrunches the ice-filled towel he’s holding against my ankle.
My fingers graze the back of his hand as he lets go. It’s rough, a little hairy and generally oozes testosterone.
“Hello, Aunt Lou,” he says into my phone.
There’s silence for a moment, and I wonder what on earth she’s saying that’s made his thick eyebrows rise like that.
“Yes,” he says. “I’m sure she is a delightful young woman. It was just a little tricky to know that when she was swinging from my shoulders in a bunny suit.”
Silence again.
He gets up off the sofa and strides across the room toward the large empty open fireplace that now has a giant TV hung above it where family photos of the Sullivans used to be. Damn, look at that ass. It’s so round and solid that it looks like he’s had a butt job.
“It’s not that bad,” he says into my phone. “I have her icing it for the moment. I imagine it’ll still be sore in the morning, but she’ll be able to walk on it as long as she’s careful.”
As he listens to Aunt Lou he turns around, thankfully slowly enough for me to quickly lift my eyes from butt level before he looks hard into them. “No, ma’am. No, I am not a doctor.”
Ma’am . He called Aunt Lou ma’am . Like he’s some sort of Southern gentleman.
“I’m a hockey player.”
More listening.
“Well, it does mean I know something about injuries.” Ooo, that was a little snippy.
I gesture for him to give me back the phone before he makes things worse. But he takes a step back, like he’s starting to enjoy bickering on the phone with a sixty-year-old woman he’s never met and wants to taunt me with it.
“Give it back,” I whisper-shout, stuck on the couch with only one fully functioning leg.
“The Apollos,” he says.
Oh, no. I shake my head at him with a rueful smile. That’ll teach him. Now he’ll never get off the phone.
“Gabe. Gabe Woods.”
I can hear Aunt Lou’s shriek from here. It’s followed by rapid chatter I can’t make out. He must be one of her favorites. Although, to be honest, they’re all her favorites.
I wouldn’t know a hockey player—or a hockey stick for that matter—if he hit me in the head. Or tossed me into the snow and sat on me, obviously.
But Aunt Lou is an Apollos fan, raised that way by her dad from when she was a little kid. While my mom played with clothes and makeup, Aunt Lou watched hockey with Grandpa.
Gabe pulls the phone a couple of inches away from his head and grimaces. “Well, I’m not sure I’ll have time to fit in a visit to the retirement village. I’ll have to look at my sched?—”
He widens his eyes at me in horror at her full-on-ness.
I don’t even try to suppress my giggle. Serves him right .
“Okay, Aunt Lou,” he says, even though I can hear her still talking. “I need to get some fresh ice for your niece’s ankle, so I’ll pass you back.”
He holds the phone out to me, arm outstretched and leaning back like he can’t put enough distance between himself and it.
She’s still talking as I put the phone to my ear. It now smells kind of spicy, and maybe a little bit of oranges.
“…and a couple of the residents were season ticket holders years ago, so they’d love to meet you.”
“It’s me, Aunt Lou.”
“Oh.” She barely hides her disappointment.
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re staying with Gabe Woods,” she whispers, like somehow he might hear her.
“I am. Yes. Is that special?”
“Very. Oh my goodness. The man’s a hero, and so handsome. I’ll sleep well knowing you’re in such good hands. There were just those stories in the papers a few years ago, but it was probably nonsense. Whatever he says to do with your ankle, you do it. And I know you’re safe, so that’s fine. Once they’ve moved the tree tomorrow, I’ll be right up there to bring you home.”
Stories? But finally she pauses for breath, and I seize the opportunity to get off the phone. “Okay, great. See you tomorrow.”
“You have a lovely night under Gabe Woods’s roof.” She says it with a giant wink in her voice like she’s encouraging me to sleep with a man I just met purely because she likes the way he slides a disk around a sheet of ice.
“Stop it,” I hiss. “He’s really annoying.”
“And he can hear you,” Gabe says, approaching from the kitchen, holding the floppy things he put in the freezer earlier.
“Gotta go, Aunt Lou. I’ll call you in the morning.”
She’s making a sort of ooo sound as I hang up.
“You are annoying,” I tell him.
“I promise you,” he says. “Nothing is more annoying than planning a solitary non-Christmassy Christmas only to find someone’s poured a dump truck of Christmas all over your house. And that that someone now can’t leave.”
He nods at my ankle. “Take that off and give it a rest from the ice for half an hour. I’m going upstairs. I’m exhausted. You’ll find the guest room over there.” He nods to the other side of the kitchen. “It has an attached bathroom. I imagine there’s everything there you need. Certainly should be if the people I paid to stock the house did their jobs properly. And take these gel packs with you. Use them no more than twenty minutes at a time. And when you’re ready to go to sleep, toss them back into the freezer, then they’ll be good to go if you wake up in pain during the night.”
“Annoying, yet also remarkably efficient at handing out instructions.” I lift the tea towel ice pack off my ankle and use it to wipe up the cold trickles of water running across my numb skin.
“The swelling’s going down already,” he says, ignoring my insult.
He’d paid enough attention to it that he can tell?
“Need a hand up?” he asks.
“No, thanks. I have to be able to get myself to the bathroom, so might as well practice.”
“Okay, well then.” He picks up his bag and swings it over his shoulder. “If you need anything, just shout. I’m a light sleeper.” And he heads toward the open staircase. The wood steps project from the wall like they’re miraculously suspended in midair, enclosed only by a glass panel.
Gabe could almost be floating up the wall…like a tall, muscular, bearded angel.
“Oh, there is one thing,” I say.
He stops mid-float. “Go on.”
“Got a spare T-shirt I could borrow?”
“Why?”
“For me to sleep in.”
He sighs and puts the bag down on the stair two above the one he’s standing on. After a quick dig, he pulls out a blue shirt with orange edging around the sleeves and tosses it over the glass panel.
It drifts down and lands perfectly in my lap.
“Thank you.”
“Good night,” he says and continues his upward float until his feet disappear from view.
Instinctively I pick up the T-shirt and sniff it.
Then my brain screams, What the fuck are you doing, you fool? and I drop it back into my lap.
The aroma of competitive spirit and grumpiness is pretty heady though.