where he’d lied his way into a part-time job, she’d smiled at him in his black leather jacket and tight jeans and said, “Hi, Joe Carpenter. Welcome to Bayou Bend.” Her voice slid over the syllables and held him entranced even as he folded his arms and gave her a distant, disinterested nod.
At seventeen, a year older than his classmates and new to this small community, cool Joe Carpenter didn’t have time to waste on thirteen-year-old skinny girls with kind voices, not when high school girls fell all over one another offering to give him anything he wanted. Thirteen-year-old junior high girls were off-limits, not worth wasting time on.
But, touching that bitter, angry place he’d closed off to the world, her voice made him remember her over the next two years as she grew into a young woman, made him lift his head in baffled awareness whenever he heard that soft voice reminding him all the world wasn’t hard and mean and nasty.
And now, even years after he’d fled Bayou Bend, her voice sent his pulse into overdrive with its just-got-out-of-bed breathiness.
“We’re going to be neighbors?”
He shook his head, clearing his thoughts as she repeated her question. “Yeah, Gabby. All of us. You. Me. Oliver. We’re going to be neighbors. I bought the Chandlers’ house. Down the block from your place.”
“Oh.” Her hair whipped against his shoulder, tangled in the fabric of his jacket, pulled free as she turned toward the tree she’d chosen. “I hadn’t heard.” With two hands, she lifted her tree and thumped it up and down on the ground a couple of times.
He could have driven a pickup truck through the spaces between the branches, but at least her tree didn’t drop needles like a cry for help.
“We’re living in a hotel.” Oliver tugged him toward Gabby’s tree and checked it out critically. “For now. With a indoor swimming pool. I like the hotel.”
“You’re going to have a tree in the hotel?” Gabby’s quick glance at him was puzzled. “That’s nice, but—”
“A friend’s letting us store the tree for a day or two.We’re moving into our house on Tuesday.” Joe watched as her eyes widened, flicked away from his.
“Ah.” She touched the branch. “Tuesday. You’ll be busy. Do you need some—” She stopped, just as she had before she’d issued her invitation.
Help was what he thought she almost offered before she caught herself.
She was uneasy with him. Edgy. Aware of him.
He took a deep breath. Nice, that awareness.
With one hand still wrapped around Joe’s, Oliver poked his head under one of the branches. “This is a okay tree. Not as good as ours, though.”
Joe inhaled, ready to scold Oliver, to say something, anything, because the kid had a mouth on him. But then Gabby’s laughing hazel eyes stopped him. Her mouth was all pursed up as if she was about to bust out laughing. He shrugged.
“No problem. And Oliver’s right.” She gasped as his son glowered at her. “His tree is better. In fact, a few minutes earlier, we were negotiating which one of us was going to walk away with it.” Her expression told him not to sweat the small stuff.
At least that’s what he thought it meant.
“Right, Oliver?”
“We didn’t nogosh—didn’t do that thing you said,” his son, stubborn as ever, insisted. “It was my tree ’cause I seen it first. Me and her settled that.”
“Yes, we did,” Gabby confirmed, smiling down at Oliver.
Joe ran a hand through his hair. Should he make Oliver give up their tree to Gabby? Was that the right thing to do? Hell, what did he know? He was the last person to try and teach a kid about manners and being a good neighbor and—
This daddy business didn’t come with instructions. Wasn’t like putting a bicycle together. More like flying by the seat of your pants, he was beginning to see. He didn’t think he’d ever get the hang of it.
And he wasn’t used to having a small recorder around, copying his words, imitating his ways, watching everything he did.
The responsibility made him lie awake at night, his blood running cold with the sure knowledge that he wasn’t father material, while Oliver’s warm neck rested against the crook of his arm.
“I like this tree, Joe,” Gabby said gently, as if she could read his thoughts.
Her voice warmed the chill creeping through him. Scrubbing his scalp hard, he stopped his spinning thoughts. “Fine, Gabby. If that’s the one you want.”
“Oh, it definitely is.” Her laugh rippled through the air. “It will be absolutely perfect for Dad and me.”
“Whatever you say. Come on, Oliver. You take that branch and haul it up to your shoulder.”
“’Course.” His son puffed out a biceps you could almost see without a microscope. “Because I’m strong.”
“I can see you really are,” Gabby said admiringly, her expression tender as she looked down at his grumpy son.
God. His son.
Once more that weight settled over him. The responsibility. The constant fear that he’d mess up. But he’d asked for this responsibility, gone looking for it, in fact. He would do what he had to do.
“Ready, Oliver?” Joe heaved the tree off its temporary stand.
“Sure.” Oliver clamped onto the assigned branch with both hands. “This is easy.” His whole body was hidden by the branch held tightly in his grip.
“Can you see?” Gabby’s question brought Oliver’s attention back to her.
“I can see my daddy’s behind.”
“A guiding light, huh? So to speak.”
This time Joe was sure he heard a strangled laugh underneath her words.
“Watch it, smarty-pants,” he muttered to her as she walked beside Oliver. “Nothing good happens to smart alecks.”
“Who? Me?” Her hair glittered and glistened, shimmered with her movements in the damp air.
“Oh, sure. You have that butter-won’t-melt-in-your-mouth look to you, Gabby. Even in eighth grade, you looked as if you were headed straight for the convent. Still do, in fact.” He lifted one eyebrow and felt satisfaction as her face flamed pink. “But I know better. That nifty red skirt gives you away, you know. That skirt’s an invitation to sin, sweet pea.”
She sped up her steps, trying to pass him.
“You’re wicked, Gabby, that’s what you are.” He liked the flustered look she threw him. “Wicked Gabby with the innocent eyes and bedroom voice.”
Her mouth fell open even as she danced to his other side.
He liked keeping her off balance. One of these days, if he ever
