Getting Gabriel (11 page)

He was looking at her strangely. "Interesting," was all he said. "I’m going to have the salmon. How about you?"

She cringed. Oops. It was the advertising executive who loved salmon fishing and dreamt of owning a yacht. Who wanted a woman by his side as he put wriggling worms on hooks.

Men had the weirdest hobbies.

And on the subject of men, what was keeping Gabriel? After what he had inadvertently revealed the last time, she was quite anxious to see him again. He should be here. This was his idea after all. He’d insisted to protect her on her blind dates.

A sigh. "At the grocery store, if you must know. Frozen food section, aisle seven. I’m stocking up on TV-dinners and cold drinks. Then I’m going home to work on my house. I have a hot date with a scraper."

"A scraper?" Alice repeated stupidly. The mention of ‘hot date’ had thrown her off balance.

Gabriel sighed again. "Yes. Old wallpaper. Needs to be scraped off before applying new wallpaper. Kind of like girlfriends if you think about it."

"Huh?"

"To answer your question – I’m at the grocery store. Then I’m going home to work on my kitchen. That enough information for you or will you be resorting to truth serum?"

Alice shook her head and got her brain processes back in gear. "Stocking up on TV dinners? You’re shopping? I’m on a blind date here! What happened to saving me from a fate worse than death?"

"Chicken? Good choice." She heard rustling in the background. "Tikka Masala. Excellent. Thank you, Alice. Bye!"

"You know what I mean," Alice managed to interject. "You’re chicken. You’re backing out because of what happened yesterday."

"Sure. Hey, I’m a man. You’re female. I’ve wanted to kiss girls since I was twelve or so. Men have uncontrollable hormonal urges. It’s biological. Don’t take it personally."

The phone clicked in her ear, and she only just managed to avoid stomping her foot in frustration. He’d hung up on her! That man was impossible.

"Glad to see you escaped that fate worse than death," Gabriel drawled when Alice was suddenly standing in his back yard a couple of hours later, wearing something completely unsuitable for a house undergoing major repairs, blinking in the glare of the work lights he’d rigged.

He turned his back to her and continued to mark the tiles for cutting. Scraping wallpaper was too mindless. He’d needed something more complicated to keep his mind off Alice, so he’d started to lay tiles in the bathroom instead.

It had been going pretty well, but now he’d somehow managed mark this one diagonally. He tossed the marker to the side and grabbed a rag, rubbing the errant mark. Hey, as long as he wasn’t drawing hearts and arrows, he was probably okay...

"How was your date?" he asked pointedly. He needed to remind both of them that Alice was on a mission, and he was not one of the intended targets.

"Fine. Terrific. And you’re fired, too, just to make things crystal clear." She strode back into the house, and he twisted around just in time to see her push open the bathroom door. "No!" he shouted, but it was too late.

He sighed as she cursed, and leaned against the wall, staring up at the evening sky. It had been inevitable, hadn’t it?

Slowly, Alice lifted her foot. She leaned against a wall to inspect the sole. "Great," she bit out. "New shoes. Ruined."

"Use the upstairs bathroom," he grumbled. "I’m working in there."

"You should get some Men-at-Work signs," she shot back as she hopped around, pulling off her shoe. "This place is a hazard area! Do you have any idea how much time I spent finding the perfect shoes to go with this outfit?"

"I left the bathroom for a second to cut the last few tiles -- there’s barely a square foot of wet mortar left on that floor, and of course you manage to put your perfect shoe where it doesn’t belong..." He shrugged and stared up at the sky again, shaking his head. "It is The Way of the Alice."

Alice beamed at him, her bad mood obviously evaporating in an instant. It often did. Alice never held grudges. "Gabriel, this is so cute! We’re having a lover’s tiff! Just like an old married couple!"

He took one threatening step towards her and she giggled as she ran up the stairs towards the upper bathroom, one foot bare, the other wearing a 3-inch heel. "Be right back," she called. "Just need to clean this mess off my face. Susan wanted to experiment, and I swear, it’s almost as horrid as that gunk on your floor."

Gabriel rolled his eyes and quickly finished cutting the remaining tiles. With luck he’d be able to finish setting the last tiles before Alice got back. Then all he had to do was apply grout, and at least two rooms in this house would be perfect.

The upstairs of the house looked slightly better than downstairs. Gabriel was getting better at house-improvement. The upstairs bathroom needed serious work too, but it was clean and the water worked.

The two bedroom doors were not closed, but not open wide enough for her to see inside. She tiptoed to the nearest door and pushed it slightly open. She reached inside and felt for a light switch, and the room was bathed in soft glow instead of the 100 watt work light that seemed the standard in every other room in the house.

When she got back downstairs, the tiles were finished, except for the grouting, and Gabriel had retreated to the kitchen and peeling wallpaper. She used a closed paint can to stand on as she hoisted herself up on the counter right next to where he was crouched in a corner. "Gabriel, when are you going to tell me why you’re fixing up this house?"

"You have a secret girlfriend," she said. "You have a girlfriend you don’t want to tell me about, and she’s going to move in with you."

"I don’t have a ‘secret girlfriend’, Alice. For God’s sake, I’m not ten years old!"

"So she’s not a secret? Then why haven’t you told me about her?"

Gabriel straightened He pushed the hair away from his face, leaving another smudge on his temple, and looked seriously annoyed. "Alice – whoever that room is for – it is none of your business. Understood?"

Chapter 9

It was a sad day in a copyeditor’s life when she had to look up lay versus lie.

None of her business? Yes – he was probably right about that, damnit. Strictly speaking it was none of her business. She didn’t own Gabriel. She didn’t own so much as a single cell of him.

Alice pushed the keyboard away and covered her face with her hands. She’d struggled to push Gabriel out of her mind. She’d excused herself from the rest of the self-defense course, and Gabriel had let her off the hook after a short test of what she’d learned so far. She’d continued dating her alphabet men. She’d gone through B, C, D and E already, without meeting a single axe murderer. She was up to F, damn it.

She wasn’t past G. Perhaps that was the problem.

And why should she be past him, anyway, she thought, straightening her back. He was interested. He definitely was, despite his protests. Should she let him go, just because he was pushing her away for some obscure reason?

Hell, no!

Not without a fight! She was a woman of the 21st century! She would not let a lovely fish get away just because he thought the water was bluer on the other side.

It could have been just a ruse. After all, he was trying to escape, all because of some silly little-sister concept. And that bedroom didn’t necessarily mean he had a specific occupant in mind. He’d never said he had a girlfriend. How could he have had a secret girlfriend, with the way he reacted towards her and all the time they’d spent together recently? And why would a girlfriend be secret anyway?

Susan bit on a pencil. "Peculiar. But if Gabriel has a girlfriend moving in, why would she get her own bedroom? Wouldn’t she move into his bedroom?"

Susan shook her head. "Alice, are you sure it isn’t just a guestroom? People do have guestrooms. If it’s for a girlfriend, why wouldn’t he just tell you? I mean – if Gabriel had a girlfriend, Michael would know about it."