Gabe (Steele Brothers #6) (12 page)

“How do you see this working?” I asked, knowing for the sake of her impressionable daughter we had to set some ground rules for our relationship. “When Char’s home?”

“I know she’s still hoping her daddy and I will get back together,” she said, rolling on to her back and staring at the ceiling. “And I honestly think the sooner we dissuade her of that notion, the better.”

“So you want her to know we’re dating?”

“How would you feel about that?” she asked, turning to look at me.

I didn’t want Kendra’s little girl to see me as the enemy, especially since I’d invested so much time gaining her trust. But I didn’t want to be her mother’s dirty little secret, either. “I think I’ll let you decide how to handle that. You know your daughter best. When you feel the time is right, we can tell her together if you like.”

“I would like that,” she said, smiling, as she burrowed under her sky blue duvet and rolled on to her side, facing me. “Maybe we’ll just work up to it slowly, you know, holding hands when we take the dog for a walk, that kind of thing. Char’s a perceptive kid. I’m sure it won’t be long before she starts asking questions.”

Something else had been on my mind, but since she hadn’t volunteered any information, I wasn’t sure I had the right to ask. “I assume you texted me to ask about Jason’s schedule because you wanted to see him. How did that go?”

“Probably as well as your conversation with him did,” she said, tucking her hand under her pillow. “He’s still not ready to let go of this fantasy about us getting back together. I just hope after today he won’t continue filling Char’s mind with these ideas about us being a family again. It’s not fair to her, especially since he knows it’s never going to happen.”

“Have you ever thought about moving ahead with the divorce, even though you know he plans to contest it?” I asked, linking her free hand with mine.

“Of course I’ve thought about it, but neither one of us can afford a long, drawn-out legal battle and Jason knows that. That’s why he’s being so obstinate. He thinks if he can buy himself a little more time, I’ll change my mind and come back to him.”

“Have you ever thought about it?” I asked, feeling the air back up in my throat. “Going back to him?”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “No, I can’t say that I have. As far as I’m concerned, this marriage is already over. I’m just going to have to wait for Jason to come to his senses so we can have a judge make it official.”

“I guess from a financial standoint it would help if you were able to sell your house too.”

“It sure would.” She bit her lip. “Jason has so many reasons not to want the divorce. He’d have to sell the house, pay child support, be responsible enough to keep his plans with Char, even if he got a better offer.”

I couldn’t imagine any father not wanting to spend time with a little angel like Char. If she’d been my daughter, I would have considered it a privilege, not an obligation.

“Is this going to make things hard on you at work?” Kendra asked, looking concerned. “I mean, Jason is spiteful enough to tell all the guys that the chief is sleeping with his wife. How’re you going to handle that?”

“My guys know me,” I said, feeling confident if it came down to it, they would take my word over his. “They know my character, my moral code. They also know all about Jason and his questionable behavior.”

“Did you know he was cheating on me?” she whispered, looking sad. “Was it common knowledge among his friends and colleagues? Was I the last to know?”

“I don’t think so.” It bothered me to see her hurting. Mainly because I questioned whether it was her ego or heart that was still bruised. “At least I didn’t know.”

“Would you have told me if you did?”

That was a loaded question. Jason was my friend. Kendra had merely been an acquaintance before she moved in next door to me. “I try not to get involved in other people’s marital problems,” I said honestly. “So I can’t say for sure that I would have.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” she said, nodding. “I kind of suspected you’d say that anyhow.”

I kissed her, both to take away the sting of my words and because now that I’d finally tasted her lips, I craved them. “I’ll always be honest with you, Kendra. I swear to you. I’ll never give you reason to question whether you can believe in me or what we have.”

“I know that,” she said, wrapping her arms around me with a contented sigh. “That’s how I knew you’d be worth waiting for.”

Kendra

The following weekend, Jason took Char, so Gabe invited me to a family barbeque at Kane and Macy’s house.

“So, it looks like you and my brother-in-law are getting closer,” Macy said, curling her hand around a glass of lemonade, a self-satisfied smile curving her lips.

“We are.” I looked at Gabe over my shoulder, but he was manning the grill with Kane, giving us some time for a little girl talk.

Ever since Kane hired me as a private nurse to care for his wife after a car accident she’d had last year, I counted Macy among my closest friends.

“But we’re taking it slow.”

Macy rolled her eyes. “How much slower can you take it? You two have been practically inseparable for the past year and a half and you’re still not willing to cop to being a couple?”

“I didn’t say that.” I bit my lip, trying to hold back my grin.

“Then you guys have…” She rolled her hand. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Ssshhh.” I pulled Macy away from the crowd so we would have a little shelter from the sun and privacy from her raucous family. “We’re trying to keep it under wraps for now. I haven’t even talked to Char about it.” I’d been tempted half a dozen times, but then I imagined the tears and temper tantrum I was sure would follow and I chickened out. As much as she liked Gabe, and enjoyed spending time with him, he wasn’t her daddy.

“What are you waiting for?” Macy demanded. “The sooner she realizes you’ve moved on, the sooner she can move on too.”

I knew there was some truth to Macy’s statement, but I just didn’t think we were there yet. “We’ll get there,” I said, taking a sip of my Chardonnay. “In the meantime, we’re making it work.”

“You mean when Jason has Char you guys get a little alone time?” When I nodded, Macy said, “But I thought you said he’d only been taking her one or two weekends a month, that it hadn’t been a regular thing.”

“I’m going to talk to him when he picks her up this weekend. I want him to know that things can’t go on like this, and he’s going to have to step up and take responsibility, be the kind of father Char can count on.”

“How do you think that’s going to go?” Macy asked, looking concerned. “From everything you’ve told me, the guy has a temper. Maybe backing him into a corner isn’t such a good idea.”

I knew Macy was speaking from experience. She had a bad break-up last year. So bad, in fact, that her ex-boyfriend tried to take her life. “I’m not worried about Jason hurting me,” I said, squeezing Macy’s forearm to try to put her mind at ease. “And I don’t want you to worry, either. He’s never been violent with me or given me any reason to believe he would be.”

“But he’s never had to face losing it all before,” Macy reminded me. “You said yourself he’s been holding out hope that you’ll put your family back together. Now that he knows that’s not going to happen, who knows what he’ll say or do.”

“He knows about me and Gabe,” I said quietly, turning my back to the crowd so no one could read my lips. “He confronted Gabe about it.”

“Oh, God,” Macy said, clutching her stomach. “That couldn’t have gone well.”

“I think it was a good thing. It forced Gabe to face facts: that it’s really over between me and Jason. Not because of my feelings for him, but because Jason and I just aren’t good for each other.”

“You think he’ll finally go along with the divorce?” Macy asked, guiding me to a set of lawn chairs positioned under a shade tree. “Now that he knows you and Gabe are a couple?”

“I’m not going to give him a choice.” I’d been thinking about my situation endlessly over the past week, and I knew it was time for me to take matters into my own hands, no matter the fallout. “I’ll talk to him this weekend about Char, tell him that she needs more time with her dad. Hopefully he’ll agree and that will at least put us on friendlier terms.”

“You think then he’ll realize he has no other choice?”

I didn’t want to make him feel backed into a corner, like he was losing everything that mattered to him, even if he was the one who’d set it all in motion. “I’m going to give him a little more time to step up, settle into this visitation arrangement. Then I’ll tell him I need more help with Char… that we should work out some kind of definitive financial arrangement.”

“So you’re taking baby steps.” Macy nodded. “Maybe that would be for the best.”

I hoped so. I didn’t want to prolong the inevitable, but I also didn’t want to cause an irreparable rift with a man I’d have in my life forever through Char. “I just hope Gabe’s okay with that,” I said, smiling when his eyes met mine and he tugged on the brim of the baseball cap shading his eyes. “Now that we’re finally together, I don’t want anything to tear us apart.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Macy said, laughing. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. You couldn’t get rid of him now if you tried.”

***

Gabe

“You gonna fill me in on what’s going on between you and Kendra?” Kane asked, flipping a row of his wife’s homemade burgers.

“Things are good.”

I wanted to keep it under wraps for a little while longer. Not because I wasn’t proud to be the man in her life. I was. I just didn’t want my brothers and their well-meaning wives and fiancées giving us a hard time about our relationship, asking questions we couldn’t answer.

“That’s all I’m gonna get out of you?” Kane asked, sounding disgusted. “Didn’t I confide in you when I was trying to sort out my feelings for Macy?”

He had me there. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Is Jason out of the picture yet?”

I brought my beer bottle to my lips, pausing, before I said, “He’ll never be out of the picture, man. He’s Char’s dad.”

“You know what I mean,” Kane said, nudging me in the ribs with his elbow. “Has he finally agreed to the divorce?”

“No, but he knows there’s something between me and Kendra,” I said, my eyes drifting to her as I tipped my bottle back.

“He knows there’s something between you?” Kane parroted. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Look, I just want to take this slow, let Kendra set the pace. She has a hell of a lot more to lose than I do if things blow up.”

“You need to go to bat for your woman. Tell Jason he needs to sign those goddamn papers or you’ll shove them down his throat.”

I had to admit my brother’s idea held some appeal, but I knew I couldn’t do that. “It’s up to her and Jason to work that out, buddy. It’s their marriage, their divorce, their little girl who’s caught in the middle. I’m not going to be the one to try and rush it along because I selfishly want her all to myself.”

“Maybe you don’t mind it this way,” Kane said, tipping his head as he looked at me thoughtfully.

“What’re you talking about?” I didn’t like where this was going. My brother, the cop, was an expert at reading people and I got the feeling he’d picked up something he didn’t want to see in me.

“If Jason drags his feet, you and Kendra can keep it under wraps indefinitely. You won’t have to step up and acknowledge that it’s a real relationship as long as she’s another man’s wife.”

I used the burgers as an excuse to set my beer down and push Kane out of the way. Flipping them while toasting the buns on the top rack, I said, “Not everyone runs to Vegas and ties the knot even before they’ve had a real date. Some of us are content to take it slow.”

“Or stay stuck in neutral forever.” Kane started placing cheese on the buns, his intense gaze fixed on me. “Is that it?”

I swallowed, ignoring the uncertainty unravelling in me as I tried to process his question.

“You’ll never have to man up, tell the girl you love her, or plan a future with her as long as she’s legally bound to someone else, right?”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.

“I think you’re still afraid,” Kane said quietly. “Afraid to go all in. Afraid to have the responsibility that goes with a love that just might last forever. I think you’re afraid to break Kendra’s heart, afraid to break that little girl’s heart… the way the old man broke our hearts when he left.”

It always came back to him. The father who wasn’t. “I’m nothing like him,” I whispered fiercely, wondering if the resentment was as obvious to my brother as it was to me.

“Clean it up, bro. That’s the only way you’ll be able to move on with your life, with Kendra or anyone else.”

“Clean what up?” I asked, though I already knew who he was talking about.

“We’ve all made our peace with him.” He curled his hand around his bottled water, holding it against his chest. “That doesn’t mean we forget what he did to Mom or to us. But we have forgiven him. I think you need to do the same. Don’t you?”

“What I feel about him has nothing to do with what’s going on with me and Kendra.”

“Doesn’t it?” Kane gave me a long, hard, assessing look before shaking his head. “You’ve been running away from love and relationships all your life. Every time you meet a good girl who really cares about you, you find a reason to end it.”

I wanted to deny the truth, but I couldn’t go on lying to myself forever.

“I know you. You’ll never forgive yourself if you screw things up with Kendra. She just might be
the one
, Gabe. So for Christ’s sake, do yourself a favor and make peace with the past already.”

I started to defend myself, but Kane’s words stopped me.

“Fight for what you want this time… because you believe you deserve it.”

***

“You’ve been pretty quiet since we left the barbeque,” Kendra said, threading her hand through mine as we walked Poncho down the dimly lit street.

He didn’t really need another walk, since he’d been running around in Kane and Macy’s backyard all day, but I needed time to think and couldn’t find a reasonable excuse when Kendra offered to join me.