A Needful Heart (19 page)

Matt didn’t look like he believed her, but he
didn’t say anything more. He just clamped his lips and shook his
head in disagreement.

“So, you’ve been watching me, kind of, for
four years?”

He nodded once, expression guarded.
“Yep.”

“So, that day I ran into you…”

“I had finally decided to say something to
you. About your hair. Turned out great, huh? Bet you wished I’d
have left you alone.”

Gina sighed at the bitterness she heard.
“Actually, no. What I told my parents still stands. I think running
into you was the best thing that’s happened to me in a long
time.”

She rested her hand on his chest and tugged
his chin toward her for a kiss. Reluctant at first, he was hard to
move, but he gave in with a groan and cupped her head in his hands.
Gina leaned into him, and when he guided her down onto the bed she
was more than ready. If she could get him past the doubts, perhaps
they would actually have a chance to create a life for
themselves.

They made love that night slowly, and he
cradled her afterward almost poignantly. It was like there was an
ephemeral something in the air, and they were hesitant to speak of
it because they didn’t want it to drift away. Gina didn’t want to
go to sleep, because she was afraid this perfection was going to
disappear. They both had doubts and fears, she knew that, but she
also knew in her heart they could find some kind of common
ground.

She woke in the morning wrapped in his strong
arms, with his breath puffing in her hair from behind. Goose bumps
raised the hair on her arms when she felt the stubble on his jaw
brush against her. When she shifted, he tightened his arms around
her. “Not just yet,” he rumbled in her ear.

Gina was more than happy to stay where she
was, but her body wouldn’t let her relax. “I have to go,” she
whispered.

Sighing deeply, he relaxed his arms from
around her. Gina padded to the bathroom and did her business. She
brushed her teeth and finger combed her hair, then headed back to
her room. Matt was sitting up on the side of the bed, rubbing his
hands over his head. Gina paused at the doorway just to look at him
and etch in her mind how content she felt. There were lines on his
face where he must have lain on a folded piece of fabric, and his
eyes were blurry with sleep, but when he saw her at the door, he
smiled. Just for her.

She crossed the room to press a kiss to his
lips. “I love you, Matt Calvin.”

Stiffening, he pushed her away. There was a
harsh frown on his face. “What?”

“I know I promised not to pressure you, but I
had to tell you I love you.”

Gina expected to feel fearful of his
reaction, but instead she was totally content. Why not tell
him?

Matt shook his head and left the bed to
gather his clothes. Avoiding her eyes, he hopped on one leg,
dragging his jeans up around his hips. He snatched his shirt on the
way out the door.

Gina watched him leave, but she wasn’t
concerned that he hadn’t responded. It would be shocking, hearing
‘I love you’ from a woman. Hell, it might be the only time he’d
ever heard it. Her heart broke a little at the thought, because she
knew it was probably true. It would take a while for him to
assimilate her words, but if he had been watching her for four
years, three little words weren’t going to chase him off now. At
least, she hoped not.

Matt didn’t know what to do. Dragging his
t-shirt on as he jogged down the stairs, he walked down the hallway
to the kitchen and stopped. Gina’s mother stood at the stove,
turning something in a skillet. She smiled when she saw him in the
doorway, and he was struck by how much Gina looked like her. Curly
hair, rounded cheek bones. Gina would look exactly like her in
twenty years. His stomach turned in fear, and he fought not to bolt
out the door.

Linda must have seen something in his eyes
because she pointed at the exterior door. “Go out in the
garage.”

Matt shoved through the door and powered
across the yard blindly. The door of the garage stood ajar and
inside Eric sanded something on the workbench. The smells of the
shop immediately welcomed him, and he looked for something to do.
Eric seemed to know what he needed. He thrust a plank of oak into
his hands, and Matt turned to the double-side planer table in the
corner. Feeding the board into the machine, he smoothed off a
miniscule amount of wood. Flipping it over, he fed it back through
the machine. Over and over again, he repeated the process,
smoothing until it was uniform. Eric handed him another board, and
he did the same thing to it, leveling the rough spots and making
the surface usable. For the better part of thirty minutes he and
Eric worked without saying a word.

Matt finally felt calm enough to look Gina’s
dad in the eye. “I don’t understand your daughter.”

Eric chuckled and smoothed his hand over the
piece of wood Matt just finished. “Why are you telling me? Her
mother’s just as impossible.”

Matt huffed and shook his head. “How do you…”
He motioned with his hands, searching for words. He didn’t know
Eric well, but if anybody would understand, hopefully it would be
him. “I’ve never been in any kind of long-term relationship, so I
don’t know what’s expected or required. Is there some kind of
manual to go by or something, or do you just flounder around and
make a fool of yourself?”

Eric leaned against the workbench.
“Definitely the latter. Women are fascinating, quicksilver
creatures. Just when you think you know what makes them tick, they
throw you a huge curveball. I’ve been married probably longer than
you’ve been around, but I’m still barely keeping my head above
water.” He shrugged. “It’s what makes us love them though.”

Matt frowned. “I don’t know if I can give her
what she needs.”

“What has she asked for?”

Frustrated, he shook his head. “Nothing
specifically, but she needs more emotionally than I can give her.
I’m not…equipped to be in a relationship. I have no idea how one
even works.”

Eric’s keen eyes smiled at him. “It works
like any relationship, with give and take by both parties.
Compromise. You need to be caring of the other person’s well-being
and accepting of their mistakes. But I’ll tell ya,” he said with a
grin, “when it works right, you can’t ask for anything more. There
is definitely an art to love.”

Matt was awash in emotions. On the one hand,
he was honored that Gina had told him she loved him. In his wildest
imagination, he’d never expected that. When he spoke to her in the
doctor’s office, he thought perhaps they could talk to each other
occasionally about things other than George. Hell, it had only been
a little over a week since he’d knocked her down and broken her
wrist. His mind just couldn’t fathom how quickly they’d connected.
It had to be too fast. Maybe she was misunderstanding the gratitude
she felt for him. Hell, maybe she told all the guys she went out
with she loved them.

That depressed the hell out of him. He didn’t
want to be just another number in her long line of men.

“So, how long was it before you knew you
loved your wife?” Matt asked.

Eric looked down at the plain gold band on
his left hand, then held it up for Matt to see. “I knew within
hours that I loved Linda, and I bought the wedding bands a couple
of days later. I couldn’t believe it when she agreed to go out with
me, then accepted my marriage proposal. There were guys panting
after her like crazy, but she took a chance on me.” He shrugged
philosophically. “You can’t choose who grabs your heart.”

Those words settled into Matt’s mind and
stuck there. He was exactly right.

Matt felt more relaxed than when he had
stormed in. “Thanks, Eric. I didn’t mean to rush in here and scare
you or anything. I just needed...”

The older man waved him off. “No worries.
Anytime, Matt.”

Eric shifted and brought Matt’s attention to
one of the projects he was working on, and Matt was glad of the
distraction. For the better part of an hour they talked shop,
compared machines and methods, until Gina suddenly burst through
the door. Her hair was wild and her face was pale.

“Gabe’s in trouble. We have to go.”

Tension gripped Matt’s stomach. “What’s going
on?”

Tears filled her eyes as he reached out to
grip her shoulders. “He called my cell phone from my house and left
a message. Says he’s hiding from Chuck because he went off the deep
end and started destroying the house. We have to go.”

Matt turned and shook Eric’s hand, then
herded Gina out of the garage. Linda met them at the truck with
their bags. She hugged Gina and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Call
me,” she whispered. Then she turned a tugged him down for a kiss on
his cheek. Matt was stunned. “Take care of my little girl,” she
told him

Matt nodded and urged Gina into the truck,
settling her in the middle. He climbed in beside her, made sure
they were both belted in and started the truck. “She’ll be fine,”
he promised before he shut the door and took off.

They didn’t talk much on the way home. Gina
called her friend at child protective services, but reached her
voicemail. She debated calling Shelbyville PD. There was a chance
if they did find Gabe the police would just turn him back over to
Chuck. It had happened before. If there was no identifiable trauma
on the boy, he had to go back to his legal guardian. It was logged
as an unruly child call. It was ridiculous that the child got the
blame.

Tears came to her eyes as she thought about
him hiding under her stairs. He’d let himself into the house with
the key hidden outside, then called her from her kitchen phone.
She’d told him where to hide, and the fact that he hadn’t blustered
and said he was fine told her how scared he was. He took the
receiver with him and she told him if he heard anything to call
911.

She glanced at Matt. His jaw was tight, brows
furrowed fiercely. He had both hands on the wheel, and his foot was
heavy on the gas pedal. She prayed they didn’t get pulled over.

Time seemed to drag as the miles zipped away.
And it seemed the closer they got, the longer it took. The last few
blocks to her house took forever, and when they finally pulled into
her drive a little after ten, she jumped out of the truck and ran
to her steps before Matt had even stopped the vehicle. The house
next door was quiet, but there was stuff scattered all over the
lawn. Chuck was nowhere to be seen, though his car was parked
sideways in the driveway.

Gina shoved her key in the lock and ran
inside. Terror stopped her in her tracks when she found Chuck
standing inside her hallway, digging at the panel where Gabe was
hiding under the stairs. “No,” she screamed.

Chuck grinned fiercely when he saw her and
lunged. His bloodshot eyes were wild. “I’m so damn tired of you,
bitch.”

Before she could even turn away, he had
grabbed her by the hair and shoved her face first against the wall.
Pain blazed through her cheekbone. He didn’t get a chance to do
anything else though, because Matt blasted through the doorway.
Chuck took a swing at the bigger man and missed, and Matt was on
him. The first punch shattered Chuck’s nose. Blood gushed. The
older man turned back for more, so Matt cracked him in the jaw.
Gina heard the bone break from across the room and watched in
satisfaction as Chuck dropped to the floor like a bag of rocks. He
lay there, unmoving.

Gina fumbled her phone out of her pocket with
shaking hands and called 911, telling them she needed a squad car
and an ambulance at her address. Her cheek blazed with pain, and
she actually hoped there was bruising so that she could press
charges against Chuck.

She stumbled to the hidden door and tapped on
it gently.

“Gabe, you can come out, honey.”

The door was unlocked from the inside and
shoved open. Then she was holding him tight against her. As he
broke into sobs, it was all she could do to stay on her feet, so
she sat down on the floor and cradled him to her. “It’s okay,
buddy. It’s okay,” she whispered.

She looked over Gabe’s head and saw Matt just
standing at the front door. His bloody fists were clenched, and he
glared down at the unmoving older man. Gina thought she should
maybe get up and check on the man, but Gabe was her priority right
then. After several minutes, his tears began to ease and he pulled
back. The sounds of sirens built until they suddenly stopped
outside her house. Gina shifted to look down at the boy. A dark
purple bruise spread across the left side of his face, and she
cursed. “He did that to you? Why didn’t you tell me, Gabe? I’d have
had the cops here sooner.”

He shook his blond head. “I wanted to wait
for you.”

Matt went out the door to meet the policemen.
Gina heard yelling and a sudden scuffle. With fear in her throat,
she rushed to the door, tugging Gabe behind her. Matt was lying
face down on the porch, hands cuffed behind his back. One policeman
had his knee on Matt’s neck to hold him down. “No,” she yelled.
“You have the wrong man. Leave him alone!”

A young cop held her back as she tried to get
to Matt. She grabbed the man’s arm and tugged him toward the house.
She pointed at Chuck sprawled on her hardwood floor. “He’s the one
that broke in here after the boy. He went for me and slammed me
into the wall.” She pointed at her face and prayed it was red
enough for him to see. “Matt saved us. Chuck kept coming at us, but
Matt stopped him. You have to let him go,” she cried.

But it took thirty minutes and a gazillion
repetitive questions before they finally felt comfortable releasing
him. Matt outweighed the largest of the cops by about fifty pounds,
so she could kind of understand the hesitation. They snapped
digital pictures of Gabe’s face, then her own. They also found
where he had broken in through the kitchen door. Matt’s eyes burned
with anger and humiliation, and she wanted to go to him, but Gabe
was her priority. The ambulance arrived and checked him over. They
told her he needed x-rays to confirm that nothing was actually
broken. A woman from Children’s Services arrived and took a report
but refused to allow Gabe to stay with Gina. The woman told her how
to go about filing for temporary custody but was implacable when it
came to taking the boy. “You are not a relative. You are a
neighbor. That’s it. You need to go through the proper channels to
be granted custody.”