Getting Gabriel (3 page)

"Bless you," Gabriel breathed, raising the cup to his lips. At last. Heaven in liquid form. He opened his eyes slowly after the first reverent gulp to find the girl looking at him with a huge grin. "I know," he said with a wink. "I’m a sad case. I blame my mother. Something has to be her fault. I’m guessing not enough caffeine in my bottle."

The girl giggled and wave him goodbye as he left. He walked home – and not only because he didn’t want to spill a drop of his precious cargo. No, he was also in no hurry to face Alice or Michael again.

He pressed the doorbell a few times, and yes, it was indeed broken. His porch light didn’t work either, and he made a mental note to buy a new bulb. Then there was the leaking faucet in the kitchen, the constant dripping that was the reason he kept his bedroom door shut.

Reaching into his pocket he realized he’d forgotten his keys as well as his wallet. Of course. It fit the pattern. Everybody had keys to his house except him. No surprises there. He rapped hard on the door and eventually it opened.

"Didn’t you get us any coffee?" Alice demanded, noticing the cup in his hand, then looked down to see the loose doorknob in her own hand. "Oops. Did you know your doorknob is broken?"

Gabriel stepped over the threshold before answering, in case she got any ideas about locking him out. He took a sip, but the coffee was already only lukewarm, lacking a decent kick. He drank it anyway, staring at her over the brim. "No. I only buy invited bedroom guests coffee. Bedcrashers get their own."

Alice was feeling exhausted, not to mention more then a little cranky and quite a bit embarrassed. Hangovers did that to her – even her half-a-beer hangovers. Then on top of everything else she’d just had to endure half an hour lecture from her big brother about the wisdom of staying out of Gabriel’s bed in the future.

Hah! She should be so lucky. As if Gabriel would ever, ever see her as anything but a kid. He’d been naked in bed with her half the night – and nothing. Admittedly she’d been fully dressed, and drunk, and crying, and probably not looking anywhere close to her best -- but she was pretty sure that even if she performed a striptease for him, he’d just hand her his bathrobe, pat her on the head and call her mother to come get her.

She’d sort of come to terms with Gabriel’s brotherly feelings towards her. At least he was a good – if cranky -- friend, and she could always count on him to speak his mind, even if he usually said things she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.

Sometimes, she acknowledged, she realized later that she’d needed to hear them.

In the relationship department he was the same abysmal failure as she was. Not a single long-term relationship in his past. The only difference was, he seemed to want it that way, while she wanted a soul mate and a family and a home and happily ever after more than anything in the world.

But now she had only had an hour sleep after a disastrous night, Gabriel didn’t even want to share his coffee, she was due at the magazine in half an hour, and she needed to get home to shower first. What a way to start the day.

"You okay?" Gabriel asked.

"Sure. I hate my life, but other than that I’m fine," she said, raking back her hair as she walked back to the kitchen. God, she needed a shower. And coffee.

"You’ve got a great life. Just cut the self-pity." He looked into his paper cup, then reluctantly handed it to her. "There. Take it."

"You’re giving me your last drops of coffee? Aw. Thanks." She accepted with a grateful smile and forgave him the self-pity comment. He was sweet underneath the rough exterior. He always was. "Michael left."

Gabriel looked up at the ceiling. "Thank you, God!"

"It wasn’t God. It was me. I kicked him out." She glanced around, looking for a place to park her cup. "You need a kitchen table, Gabriel. I can’t believe how empty this place is."

She smiled at him. "Okay. Well, I should get going." She stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks. You’re sweet, Gabriel."

Gabriel swore. "Hell, no, I’m not. You’ve got nothing to thank me for." He grabbed her wrist as she turned to leave. "Alice... about what I said last night... " He shook his head and looked rather wretched. "I’m a cynical bastard. Don’t take it too much to heart." He cursed. "What I’m trying to say -- if you believe in true love – keep believing."

"Don’t worry, I’ll live." She looked at her watch, and shoved a hand through her tangled hair. "Hey, can I maybe borrow your shower before I go? That way I can go straight to work." She looked down at the outfit she’d dragged out of the closet in the middle of the night in the fit of self-pity that had eventually brought her to Gabriel. "Ugh. I’m not looking my best, am I? Well, I’ll just tell everybody I decided to have a Casual Monday."

"Shower? Sure. Help yourself. There are towels..." he scratched his head. "Uh, I think there are clean towels in a plastic bag somewhere. I don’t have a washing machine yet, so I’m using a Laundromat."

Alice gave him a strange look. "Laundromat? And I thought you moving to this house was weird enough. Remind me to force the entire story out of you soon. Now -- where would those plastic bags with the towels be?"

Gabriel wandered back to the kitchen. Alice in his shower.

Not something to think too much about, since he was keeping Alice firmly inside a locked ‘off-limits’ box in his brain. Having her fully clothed in his bed had been bad enough – having her naked in his shower didn’t bear thinking about. Soon she’d emerge, clean and damp, smelling of his soap, wrapped in his towels...

He knelt down by the kitchen sink and grabbed a wrench. While Alice was in the shower, he needed to keep his mind on plumbing and that leaking kitchen faucet.

A few minutes later, the scream cut through flesh and bone and made his heart try for take-off to Mars. His head hit the roof of the cupboard under the sink, and he was halfway to the bathroom when he slowed down, realizing that the emergency was more likely to be an itsy bitchy spider than a homicidal burglar, in which case Alice might not appreciate him barging in on her in the shower.

He rapped on the door instead. "Alice? What’s wrong?" He heard only cursing behind the door. "You okay?" he called. "Need me to kill a spider for you?"

The door was flung open to reveal Alice, looking even tinier out of her clothes. Thanks to the size of his towels, all but the soaked black curls, laced with white foam, and her furious face was hidden from view – except one wet arm, currently shaking a finger at him. "You do not kill spiders," she stuttered through chattering teeth. "You bring them outside, where they can lead a productive and useful existence in harmony with the ecosystem."

"They won’t, you know," Gabriel sighed. "They like the indoors ecosystem much better."

Alice ignored him. "And besides, if a spider needed killing I’d do the butchering myself."

He peered past her, into the wet shower cubicle. No steam, and a shivering Alice. Those were clues. "No hot water, huh?"

"Oh, yes, there was hot water. If there hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have attempted to take a shower. There were exactly twenty seconds of hot water. Just enough for me to get shampoo in my hair. Then we moved to glacial water." Fresh goose bumps appeared on her naked arm and shoulder, distracting him from the shower, and she cursed again. "I swear, I should have cuts all over my body from the icicles."

Reaching past her, Gabriel turned on the faucet and tested the water. "Damn." One more thing to fix. One more he had no idea how exactly to fix.

What caused hot water to disappear? Was the problem with the faucets? The pipes? The heater? Was this a ten-minute job or a week-long?

"Getting dressed," she said, teeth still chattering. "There was a draft in through the door, which was not helping my goose bumps. So, I closed it."

"Okay." He turned a trickle of water back on and ran his hands over the pipes, checking for any warmth. Damn, he didn’t know what he was doing.

Behind his back, Alice yanked the shower curtain closed, cutting off the light. Irritated, he pulled it open again, only to reveal her goose bumped backside as she was pulling on her underwear. She shrieked, as only women accidentally caught in the nude could shriek.

"Gabriel!"

He snatched the curtain closed again and swore for a full minute, leaning against the tiles with his arms crossed, eyes squeezed shut as he worked hard on purging the image from his retinas.

"I told you I was getting dressed out here!" She joined him in cursing a blue streak, and moments later, fully dressed, she wrenched the shower curtain to the side. And down.

They both stared at the floor, then simultaneously raised their gazes to the gaping holes in the mortar where the railing had been.

"Oops," Alice whispered.

"Yep. That’s oops, alright." Gabriel stepped over the bundle of shower curtain and opened the door. He was feeling pretty calm about this. In the great scheme of things, what was one more disaster? "Guess I’m not quite ready for houseguests yet."

Alice followed him into the kitchen, her hair dripping a foamy path through the towel on the wooden floor. "I suppose it would be too much to hope that the kitchen faucet has hot water so I could at least rinse the shampoo out of my hair with warm water?"

"Well, what do you know?" Gabriel stared at the faucet. "It isn’t leaking anymore."

Alice muttered something unladylike and turned on her heel, going back to the bathroom. He heard the rush of water, and a series of curses echoed around the house for half a minute. Then she reemerged, looking blue, which clashed nicely with the purple towel she had wrapped around her hair.

"Do you have any idea how painful it is to wash your hair with icy water?" she asked, teeth chattering again as she rubbed her hair hard through the towel. "The pain radiates through your skull, almost like noise. It hurts."

"Right. Plumbing is on my to-do list. I’ll have the shower in working order the next time you stay the night." It was a promise he felt safe to make. Alice had never stayed the night with him before, and he doubted she would again. He couldn’t let that happen. Far too confusing. His libido didn’t handle well the concept of ‘just a friend’ in his bed. Not when it was Alice.

He reached for the empty paper cup off the kitchen counter and took a whiff. That would have to sustain him for now, but the grocery store was definitely the first stop today. After the hardware store, of course. And the bookstore, for a DIY book on plumbing.

He’d never imagined home improvement involved so much reading. This was worse than law school.

"Why don’t you fix the place up?" Alice was finger-combing her hair, using his teakettle as a mirror. "Gabriel, this place has potential and the neighborhood is really nice, but as it is, it’s a complete dump. A stray cat would be embarrassed to take up residence here."

"I am fixing it up. One thing at a time."

"What did you fix yet?"

There were plenty of things he’d attacked with his brand-new toolkit. The doorbell, for instance. Only it hadn’t worked, hence the Invasion of the Psycho Siblings this morning. In hindsight, he’d probably been lucky not to electrocute himself. The creaking doors didn’t creak anymore, but instead they oozed oil on the floor. He wasn’t going to think about that ladder and the hatch to the attic.

And absolutely not was he confessing to any of his failures. The learning curve was steep – but he’d always been a quick study. "This and that," he grunted. There were occasions when being a man of few words came in handy.

"Gabriel, you could hire people to help you. This place is falling apart. It’s not like you don’t have the money, right? Heck, you probably make more in a month than I do in a year. Not to mention your family’s fortune."

He didn’t reply.

Alice shrugged. "It’s your life. But money really has no higher purpose than making life more comfortable. I don’t see the point of bathing in cold water when you don’t have to and the money is just sitting there in the bank, or your portfolio, or wherever."

"Maybe life isn’t meant to be comfortable. Maybe it’s time I found that out."

"What do your parents think about this?"

Gabriel shrugged. He wasn’t ready to put his family’s skeletons on display. They were particularly dusty these days. "It’s my life, as you just said."

She smiled, rubbing her finger-combed hair with the towel one last time before looping it around his neck and dropping a quick kiss on his chin. It was the farthest she could reach standing on tip-toe, and had been her substitute for a kiss on the cheek since she was a kid.

Unfortunately, his chin had been threatening to turn into an erogenous zone. Damnit. "In that case, I hope you enjoy your icicle shower." She waved. "Bye, Gabriel. See you later."

"Bye," he said, as the door swung shut, staring after her.

She did have a lovely back. Goose-bumps and all. Those goose-bumps would make it difficult for a while to remember she was off-limits. And she was. Even if he hurt and alienated every other woman in the world, he wouldn’t do that to Alice. He cared too much about her to take any such risks.