Even though the boy’s anger was clearly directed toward her, she knew enough about kids not to take it personally. She didn’t know anything about this particular child. Whatever was going on between him and his father would have to be settled between them. She wasn’t involved.
She pulled out a small cork-covered pad and flipped it open. “All right, then. Let me write out the address.”
“I know where you live, Gabby.” Joe’s hand covered hers, and yearning pierced her, as sweet and poignant as the smell of pine on the cool evening air.
It was all she could do not to turn up her palm and link her fingers with his.
“Unless you’ve moved?”
“No.” Her voice sounded strangled even to her own ears. “Dad hasn’t moved.” Unnerved by the thought that he knew where she lived, she flicked the notebook shut, open. “Oh,” she said, dismayed as a sudden thought struck her. She looked up, made herself meet his gaze straight on. “And bring your wife, too. As Moon said, Dad likes a crowd.”
“I’m not married, Gabby.” Joe’s bare ring finger passed in front of her. He closed her notebook, his hand resting against the brown cork. “What time?”
“What?” Her mind went blank. Nothing made sense. Joe Carpenter, the Harley-Davidson-riding outlaw who could seduce with a look, had a son. Joe Carpenter knew her dad.
Joe Carpenter, whose kiss could melt steel and a young girl’s heart, was coming to her house for jambalaya and tree trimming.
And eggnog.
Sometime when she wasn’t paying attention, hell must have frozen over.
Even in Bayou Bend, Florida.
Chapter Two
“The time, Gabby?” The tip of Joe’s finger tapped gently against her chin, snapping her out of her bemusement.
“What time shall Oliver and I come caroling at your door?”
“Eight, I suppose. That might be late for your son, though.” She hoped Joe would pick up the hint and let her off the hook.
Joe Carpenter, of course, didn’t. “Not a problem. Oliver doesn’t start school until after the holidays.”
Gabby sighed, a tiny exhalation. Joe had a plan. She couldn’t imagine what was possessing him to take her up on her invitation, an invitation offered only out of politeness, not for any other reason.
Liar, liar. You like being around Joe.
With a jerk of her head, she silenced the snide little voice and dislodged Joe’s finger. Her chin tingled, as if that phantom touch lingered warm against her skin.
Bearlike in his red-and-green plaid shirt, Moon waited for them to join him. “Well, then, you folks ready to check out?”
He held up a red plastic ball made of two hoops and topped with mistletoe and a green yarn bow. “Free kissing ball with each tree.” Moon wagged the kissing ball in front of her until she thought her eyes would cross.
Resolutely, she kept her gaze fixed on the tip of Moon’s Santa hat and told herself she was merely imagining the heat lapping at her, washing from Joe to her, and wrapping her in warmth and thoughts of more than kissing.
“Somethin’ special for old Moon’s customers, this is. And we got treats in the shed. Cookies. Apple cider. The boy can have a cup of hot chocolate while I bundle up this beauty. So come along, y’all.” A trail of brown needles followed Moon’s progress as he herded them forward. “Good stuff, cocoa. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, young fella?”
Oliver ducked before Moon’s beefy hand landed on his head. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He trudged after Moon and the tree.
Moon grinned back. “Shucks, kid. Everybody likes hot chocolate.”
Oliver planted one new shoe after the other, following Moon and hanging one hand tight to the edge of Joe’s pocket. “I only like it the way my daddy makes it. Out of the brown can and stirred on the stove. And only with little marshmallows.” Head down, ignoring Moon, Oliver adjusted his shorter stride to Joe’s, matching left foot to left
The boy needed physical contact with his father. Gabrielle slowed and let the two of them walk slightly ahead of her, a team, just as the boy had stressed. Everybody else on the outside.
Her curiosity stirred again as she watched the two, one rangy and dark, a lean length of man, the other, short and dark, a stubby child with eyes only for his father.
“Where’s your tree, Gabby?” Joe stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. “Oliver and I’ll give you a hand with it while Moon bundles ours.”
“Umm.” She saw something tall and green from the corner of her eye and pointed. “That one.”
“That one?” Not believing her, Joe stared at the ratty tree. The one Oliver had insisted on was three good shakes away from mulch, but Gabby’s tree—“You sure?” He frowned at her. “This one is, uh, well—”
“It’s a terrific tree. It’ll look wonderful with all the old ornaments.” Gabby tilted her face up at him. Her off-center smile filled her face. Christmas lights sparkled in her mist-dampened soft brown hair, and he wanted to touch that one spot near her cheek where a strand fluttered with the breeze against her neck.
The look of her at that moment, all shiny and sweet and innocently hopeful, symbolized everything he’d come back to find in Bayou Bend, a town he’d hated and couldn’t wait to leave. Like the star at the top of a Christmas three, Gabby sparkled like a beacon in the darkness of Moon’s tree lot.
“Come on, Daddy. We got to go.” Oliver pulled anxiously on his hand.
Still watching the glisten of lights in the mass of her brown hair, Joe cleared his suddenly thick throat. “Right. But we’ll help Gabby first, Oliver. Because we’re stronger.”
“She don’t need our help. Moon can wrap her tree.”
“Mr. Tibo to you, squirt.”
“She looks strong enough to me.” Oliver scowled and kicked at the ground.
Joe scanned Gabby’s slight form, the gentle curves of her hips under some red, touch-me, feel-me material, the soft slope of her breasts beneath her blouse, breasts that trembled with her breath as she caught his glance. His gaze lingering on her, he spoke to his son. “Well, maybe she is strong in spite of the fact that she looks like a good sneeze would tip her over. Let’s say helping out’s a neighborly kind of thing to do, okay?”
“Neighbors?”
He would have sworn her breathy voice feathered right down each vertebra under his naked skin. Even as a teenager, her voice had had that just-climbed-out-of-bed sigh. He wondered if she knew its effect on males.
Her voice was the first thing he’d noticed about her back when he’d moved to Bayou Bend as a surly high school troublemaker.
Even
