inches shorter than he was. “Did you finally decide to learn how to cook?”
Gabe grimaced and shoved a hand through the short layers of his hair as he led Maggie all the way inside. “Actually, I’m not really sure how it happened,” he admitted.
“Well, I am.” Penny Stringfield emerged from the master bedroom on the second floor and walked down the hallway overlooking the first floor to the stairs. The petite redhead was dressed in a hospital nurse’s uniform and carried a suitcase in one hand, a smaller toiletries bag in the other. “I put some soup on to boil and then forgot about it,” Penny explained to both Maggie and Gabe as she came down the staircase and walked over to them. “The pan boiled dry and the wallpaper caught fire, and the next thing I knew it was time to dial 911.”
Her face filled with regret, Penny set her things down, propelled herself into Gabe’s arms and hugged him fiercely. Over the top of her head, Gabe saw Maggie’s faintly disapproving expression as she watched what was going on between him and his houseguest.
“I’m so sorry, Gabe,” Penny said, in a voice still scratchy from the voluminous tears she had shed the night before. “I never meant to set your kitchen on fire while you were at the hospital. Especially after last night. If you hadn’t been here for me, well, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“I was glad to help,” Gabe said, knowing even as he spoke the soothing words how they would likely be misinterpreted by Maggie. He grasped Penny’s shoulders and drew her back so she had no choice but to look into his face. “You know that. But—”
“But nothing,” Penny sniffed indignantly. “I’m moving to a hotel now.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said firmly. Recalling how devastated Penny had been the night before, when she had first showed up on his doorstep, Gabe’s heart went out to her. Although why Penny felt that Lane Stringfield was about to stop loving her, Gabe still didn’t know, because she hadn’t explained. All he knew for sure was that Penny was very upset, very frightened and agitated, and still very in love with Lane. People in that condition needed a friend. And since he was the one Penny had turned to, he felt bound to do whatever was necessary to help her.
“Yes, I do, Gabe.” Fleeting regret crossed Penny’s face, as she wiped her tears away. “We both know it’s for the best,” she said, pausing to blow her nose delicately. “I never should have agreed to stay here with you in the first place. The last thing I want to do is drag you into the middle of the breakup of my marriage.”
Gabe wasn’t so sure the Stringfield union was ending—after all, the two had been man and wife for five years now. Happily espoused, as far as he and everyone else could see. Surely, whatever the misunderstanding was, it could be cleared up.
Catching the curious, slightly jealous expression on Maggie’s face out of the corner of his eye, Gabe faced his houseguest determinedly and tried again. “Penny—”
“I’ll be fine, Gabe.” Penny stepped back and away from Gabe. “Really. I’m not so sure about your kitchen, however.”
“Oh, we can fix that,” Maggie said, already eyeing the devastation with a professional kitchen designer’s unerring eye.
“Good. Because I want to help pay for it,” Penny said emphatically. She picked up her bags, stepped past. “I’ll talk to you later, at the hospital, Gabe.”
Gabe waited until Penny had driven away, then turned back to Maggie. As he had suspected, she did not look happy with him at all. “It’s not what you think,” he said quietly, guessing from the downturned corners of her soft lips what her thoughts were. “Penny Stringfield and I are not romantically involved.” He had not come between Lane and Penny the way he had inadvertently come between Maggie and his brother, when she and Chase were just days from saying “I Do.”
Maggie shrugged her slender shoulders as she plucked a small spiral notepad from one of the pockets of her khaki cargo vest. “Did I say you caused the breakup of Penny’s marriage?” she said coolly as she removed a pen from another pocket, flipped back the cover on her notepad and began to scribble notes to herself.
“You didn’t have to.” Gabe followed Maggie around as she inspected the damage the licking flames had done to his appliances, cabinets, walls and windows. Although all were still standing, all were so smoke-, flame- and water-damaged they were going to have to be ripped out and replaced. Needing some fresh air, Gabe tried to open the window and found the frame so warped it wouldn’t open. He went to the patio door opposite and opened that to let more fresh ocean air blow in. “I can tell by the look on your face that you’ve jumped to the conclusion that I’m responsible,” he continued as the first floor filled with the cool ocean breeze. “But it’s not true. Penny and I are just friends. All I was trying to do was help her out by giving her a place to crash until she calmed down.” And came to her senses, Gabe added mentally.
“Look, Gabe, it’s really none of my business.” Careful not to back up against anything, Maggie tipped her head back and studied the soot clinging to every inch of his kitchen ceiling, “Since you and I are just friends, too.”
“Yeah, well, that wasn’t really my choice now, was it?” Gabe said, as Maggie squatted down and tested the vinyl tile that had melted into the water-logged floorboard beneath it. “I wanted to date you.” And, in fact, had asked her out several times during the past few weeks, only to be turned down with one flimsy excuse after another.
Exasperation swept into Maggie’s high, delicately boned cheeks as she stood. Propping one hand on her hip, she squared off with him again. “We have to face it, Gabe, whether we want to or not.” Regret shimmered in her pretty long-lashed eyes. “I caused your entire family a great deal of unhappiness when I broke off my plans to marry your brother just days before we were to walk down the aisle, and I did it because I was attracted to you.”
Fresh guilt flooded Gabe. He refused to let it get to him as he met Maggie’s gaze, bluntly and emphatically reminding her of the reconciliation that had taken place a few weeks prior, after two years of considerable familial unrest. “Chase has forgiven us.”
“But I’m not so sure the rest of your family has, or ever will,” Maggie replied. “Nor can I say I blame them. The whole episode was really humiliating and embarrassing for everyone. And we only made it worse when we tried to date, immediately after I ended it with your older brother. So I think, for a lot of reasons, it’s best we continue just to be friends.”
Gabe sighed.
Intellectually, he knew Maggie was right. His parents, sister Amy and brother Mitch were a long way from ever forgiving Maggie for the acrimony she had caused his already broken family. It didn’t stop him from wanting her. Nor her, he guessed, from wanting him. That had been proven weeks ago, when, without warning, they had met to talk about something else and suddenly found themselves kissing again. And worse, been spotted by Chase when they were doing so!
Emotionally, he still wanted her—for reasons he had yet to closely examine. Reasons he probably didn’t want to examine.
“So back to why you called me here,” Maggie said, commandeering Gabe’s attention once again. “What is it exactly that you want me to do for you?” she asked in a crisp, all-business tone that let Gabe know in an instant that any fantasies he might still be harboring about the two of them were not about to come true, now or at any other time.
Gabe grimaced and pushed his disappointment aside, looked her straight in the eye and directed just as firmly, “I want all the damage cleared
