Candy Crush (21 page)

“He doesn’t need my approval.”

Brandon snorted.

Rosalie thrust out her chin. “I don’t
approve of Stephanie. Why hasn’t she gone away?”

“She’s tenacious. You might want to pull out
the big guns. She seems hell bent on marrying into this
family.”

Rosalie gave him a look and he put up his
hands, palms out. “I never slept with her. She’s too damn clingy.”
His eyes strayed to Gabriella, who stood in the doorway listening
to the conversation.

“I wish Natalie never left. She was perfect
for him.” Rosalie sighed and turned slightly, presumably to include
Gabriella in the conversation. “I have to run a few errands. Would
the two of you mind if Laney hung out here for a couple of
hours?”

“Sure,” Brandon responded. “I’m making
vegetable soup. There’ll be plenty.”

“Bread?” Laney piped up from the bench.

“Plenty of bread, kiddo.”

“See you in a little while.” Rosalie bent
and kissed Laney’s forehead and left.

“Was that contrived?” Gabriella asked as she
stepped over to the bench to sit down next to Laney.

“Yep. I think she intended to leave her with
you.”

“How come?”

“A test. Make sure you are mother material,
probably. I brought you home for dinner, so of course she assumes
you are
the one
, but she just needs to make sure, for her
own piece of mind.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this
whole
the one
stuff.”

“Me neither, Sweet Pea. And I’ve had
thirty-two years to get used to it. You’ve only had a day.”

“Can you make them stop?”

“Nope.”

CHAPTER NINE

On Tuesday morning, Brandon woke up and
pushed the snooze button on the alarm clock. He glanced down and
looked at Gabriella, snuggled into the crook of his arm, and he
thought,
I could get used to this. Hell, I’m already used to
this
.

She stirred and snuggled closer, draping one
leg over his thighs. Brandon lightly brushed a finger across one of
her nipples and watched as it instantly puckered. His body hardened
in response. He snatched a condom off the bedside table and rolled
so that he was on his stomach, between her thighs.

Gabriella smiled and opened her eyes. “I
could get used to this,” she murmured.

He grinned and said, “My thoughts
exactly.”

An hour and a half later, Brandon leaned
against the kitchen counter, sipping coffee and impatiently tapping
his foot on the tile floor. “Gabriella,” he called through the
ceiling, “Let’s
go
.”

Since Daniel told her she could get back
into her candy shop today, and they only had one car because
Brandon’s truck was still at the DDA office, and it was still
pouring rain, they decided to drive into the office together. And
now Brandon was nearly late, again.

“Coming,” she called as she hustled down the
stairs. Brandon pushed the remote start on her car and tried not to
look so damn happy to see her, as she bounced into the kitchen and
poured coffee into a travel mug. She was making him late for work
two days in a row – although he supposed he could not entirely
blame her, since he’d been an active participant in the wonderful
ritual of morning sex – and yet, he couldn’t manage to stay annoyed
with her.

A lot of
firsts
and
nevers
were happening to him since she walked into his life. First time he
had to work hard to get a woman into his bed. First time he cared
to do it. He felt like it was his first time – emotionally – every
time they had sex. First time he’s taken a girl home to meet the
family. First time his family thought he’d met
the one
.

He had never let a woman interfere with his
life before. Hell, he missed the high school football game on
Friday, as well as watching college football on television on
Saturday and pro football on Sunday. He’d never been late for work
before – not that anyone would notice, since no one else on Main
Street opened until ten.

He had never been so scared as he was when
Gabriella told him some man threatened her with a gun. Well, maybe
he’d been more scared while he waited for Gabriella to say whether
she was planning to leave town. He shook his head and walked toward
the back door with Gabriella and Butter trailing behind him.

Brandon drove, and instead of pulling up in
front of the candy store, he drove around the block and splashed
through the alley behind the building, until he pulled the car
underneath the stairs leading to Gabriella’s apartment.

“Why are you parking back here?” Gabriella
asked.

“Because I’m sure you want to go upstairs
and check it out, and I figured I’d go with you to make sure
everything is okay.”

They dashed up the exposed stairs and
Brandon quickly inserted the key and they pushed through the door
into the kitchen. The apartment was cold and felt damp, because the
windows had been left open to try to dissipate the smell. Gabriella
could still smell it, faintly, so she made no move to close the
windows. She followed Brandon as he stepped through the kitchen and
glanced into the living area. The spot where the body had been
found was empty and clean. It looked as if it had been cleaned with
some sort of heavy duty cleaner, given that the area was brighter
and lighter than the rest of the carpet. Brandon quickly walked
across the room, peeked into the bedroom and bathroom, and returned
to Gabriella’s side.

“Everything else looks basically how it did
when we came up here last week. Just so you know, you are not
staying here. You’re still staying with me.”

He watched as several emotions flittered
across her face, before she settled for shrugging noncommittally.
He considered pressing to see if she would confess what she was
feeling at the moment, but really, all he wanted was her assent
that she would continue to live in his house, so he let it go.

“I’m going to stay up here and start
cleaning.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m just ready to clean it
up and move past it.”

“Okay.” He pulled her into his arms and
kissed her until he was certain her toes curled. “I’ll see you at
lunchtime.”

***

Gabriella spent the morning cleaning the
apartment. She straightened up, she threw garbage away, she decided
every piece of furniture needed to go, whether because it was
ruined or because it was old and outdated and wasn’t her taste
anyway. She needed to ask Brandon to see if his family could
reschedule to help her clean up on Saturday. By the time Brandon
arrived at noon, carrying a salad, a pizza and two fountain Cokes,
Gabriella was sweaty and dirty and in dire need of a shower.

As they sat down at the small kitchen table,
Gabriella commented, “I’m glad you’re not turned off by my
grubbiness. It seems like I’m always filthy by noon these
days.”

Brandon looked at her with a heated
expression and said, “There is nothing you could do to turn me off,
Sweet Pea.”

His eyes were so intense that Gabriella was
considering suggesting a quick romp on the kitchen table. The only
thing that stopped her was the fact that it probably would collapse
under them and there was no other place in this apartment that she
was comfortable getting naked.

“I’m still getting grief for those damn
flowers,” Brandon said as he bit into his pizza. “I called the
nursery and they came out this morning and pulled them all. So at
least now the barrels are all empty, instead of filled with dead
flowers.”

“Did they take soil samples?”

Brandon gave her a quizzical look. “I don’t
know. Why?”

“Because that’s the problem. That soil is
dead. Not a lick of nutrients in it. I checked a couple different
barrels and they’re all the same. Probably somebody accidentally
put some sort of high potency weed killer in place of
fertilizer.”

“Are you serious?” Brandon looked
dumbfounded.

“Yes. Ask them to take soil samples and have
them tested.”

“How do you know this?”

Gabriella shrugged. “I was in charge of
overseeing Miguel’s landscaping. I learned a few things from his
landscapers. And I did the exact same thing on purpose, when I was
trying to get him to let me go.”

Brandon jumped up and gave her a quick,
smacking kiss on the lips. “If you are right, I may have to marry
you after all. I gotta go. I’m going to call the nursery and have
them test the soil. You may have just made my day, Sweet Pea.” He
grabbed two slices of pizza and one of the Cokes and rushed out the
door.

Gabriella frowned after him.
Marry
her
? Was he crazy? They’ve known each other for a week.
Marriage was serious business, not something to joke about after
only knowing someone for a week. It was one thing for his family to
make all their hints and allegations, it was quite another for
Brandon to say something so – so – crazy.

That was the only word for it:
crazy
.

By the time Gabriella closed up the
apartment and drove back to Brandon’s house to take another shower,
she had worked herself into a state. She didn’t stop at his office
to let Brandon know she was going home. She wasn’t quite ready to
see him yet, and she hoped he worked late tonight.

When she emerged from the shower, her cell
phone was ringing. It was Brandon. She answered with a short,
“Hello.”

“Why didn’t you stop in to let me know you
left?”

“Didn’t think about it,” she lied.

“Where are you?”

“At your house.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Brandon instantly sounded worried. “Did
something else happen?”

Gabriella sighed. He was referring to the
candy store and the supposed jinx. “No, nothing happened.”

“Why are you being so short?”

“What do you want, Brandon?”

He suddenly sounded terse, matching her
tone. “I haven’t been to the gym in a week. I was calling to let
you know I’m going tonight, and I should be home in a little over
an hour.”

“Fine. Thanks for letting me know.”

She hung up the phone and went into the
guest bedroom to get dressed. She hadn’t moved anything into
Brandon’s bedroom, mostly because the old house had tiny closets,
and her clothes barely fit into this one, let alone trying to share
space with his clothes in the closet in his bedroom. They were
already sharing the same bathroom. So the only thing that had moved
into Brandon’s bedroom was her.

She debated whether to sleep in his bed or
the guest bed tonight, and decided she’d wait and see how the
evening progressed first. Maybe he’d come home and say the whole
marriage comment was just a joke, and he was sorry for making
tasteless jokes so early in their relationship. Maybe he’d come
home and say he talked to his family and they promised to stop
making ridiculous comments about her being
the one
. Maybe
he’d come home and propose. That thought caused her to head
downstairs and search for a bottle of wine.

What would she say if he did that? She knew
damn well what she would say: nothing. She was more likely to run
screaming for the hills. She shivered as she stood in the living
room, looking out over the gloom outside and sipping a glass of
merlot. The closest she’d ever come to getting married was when
Miguel announced that they were getting married so that he would
not be deported.

She dated Miguel for two years and didn’t
want to marry him. She’s known Brandon for one week – hell, they
weren’t even technically dating, were they? The sex was great, no,
the sex was unquestionably fabulous, but you couldn’t base a
marriage on fabulous sex.

They needed to get to know each other,
figure out if they truly could live with each other for the rest of
their lives. She tried to ignore the little voice in the back of
her mind that pointed out she knew Brandon better after one week
than she’d known Miguel after two years. And that was even
after
she started snooping into Miguel’s business
dealings.

Gabriella was so lost in her musings that
she was startled when headlights flashed across the living room and
Brandon’s truck pulled into the driveway behind her car. She
hurriedly sat down on the couch and flipped on the television,
trying to pretend that she had been casually relaxing on a Tuesday
evening, not fretting about his earlier offhanded comment about
marriage.

Brandon banged the back door shut, paused to
scratch Butter’s head and then strode into the living room.
Gabriella glanced up as he entered the room and felt her breath
catch in her throat.

His hair was wet and tousled and his face
still glistened with sweat. He wore a black t-shirt that was soaked
around the neck, armpits and down his back, and a pair of black
warm up pants with a white stripe down the outside of each leg.
Gabriella’s mouth started watering and she decided joking about
marriage wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

“I didn’t even shower before coming home
because I couldn’t stop thinking about our phone conversation. I
was half afraid you wouldn’t be here when I got home. What the hell
is wrong with you?”

Gabriella’s mouth stopped watering and her
eyes narrowed. He started out okay, but then he ended with “
what
the hell is wrong with you
.” She leapt to her feet, braced for
a fight.

“What the hell is wrong with me?
Me
?
I don’t go spouting off about marriage every forty-five seconds.
There’s nothing wrong with me. Nothing except the fact that I’ve
known you for one whole week and I’ve had to endure talk about
marriage more than I have for my entire life. And my mother is a
girly-girl, so there’s been plenty of talk of marriage in my
household!” She was nearly screaming by the end. She stopped and
glared at him, chest heaving.