Sleigh Ride (Minnesota Christmas Book 2) (11 page)

Though he’d gotten dressed enough to be decent, she took one look at his bedhead, red-rimmed eyes and bare feet and drew in a gasp through lips forming an O of joy.

Arthur held up a hand, doing everything in his power to convey the gravity of the situation. “
Mom.
You have to not make a big scene right now. You cannot make Gabe upset.”

She could not stop beaming. “I would
never
, Arthur. Oh, baby, I’m so happy for you—”

Her happiness cut, because Arthur knew every drop of it was at risk the longer he stood talking to her. “Can you give us a minute?”

“
Absolutely.
You tell Gabriel not to rush into work. I’ll cover for him as long as he needs. He doesn’t need to worry about lunch, either. I’m buying.” She looked ready to burst with her joy. “I’ll bake him a pie. What kind is his favorite?”

“Mom, I’m serious. I need to go talk to him now.” He bit back an entreaty for her to keep this quiet. She wouldn’t, no matter what. Corrina Anderson would make sure the entire town knew her baby was dating everyone’s favorite librarian.

Except Arthur wasn’t exactly sure he was. And as he’d feared, when he finally got rid of her and went to Gabriel, things were bad.

Gabriel had come out of the shower and was toweling off his hair. He wouldn’t meet Arthur’s gaze, and his eyes were red-rimmed, his body language stiff and distant. “I need you to leave.”

The fear lurking in Arthur’s throat leached down his arms and into his gut. “Gabriel, we need to talk this through. If I hurt you, I’m sorry—”

“You didn’t hurt me. Not beyond what I asked you for. But I need you to leave.” Shutting his eyes, Gabriel gripped the shirt in his hand until his knuckles went white. “I need to go to work. I missed a meeting.”

“I’ll help you. I’ll make you breakfast, and I’ll take you.”

Gabriel refused to look up, and when Arthur started toward him, he held up a hand like a wall. “
No.
Just go. Leave me alone.”

“There’s nothing wrong with anything we did.” Shit, they’d hardly done anything at all. “You had a good time, you were beautiful—”

“
Stop. Talking.
” Gabriel hunched forward. “Leave.
Leave.
Red, red, red,
red
.”

Throat thick, gut churning, Arthur collected his socks, his boots, his jacket and hat. He took them to the garage and put them on. With one last, aching glance at the closed door to Gabriel’s kitchen, he left through the side door, got into his truck and drove away.

C
hapter Twelve

A
rthur tried to make up with Gabriel. Except no matter how he reached out, no matter what he did or said, Gabriel wouldn’t let him in.

Clearly Arthur had fucked up—again—and it made him sick. He’d lost Gabriel because he was Joe Amateur Dom, and he wanted to fix things or at least apologize. But he wanted to make up with Gabriel
more
because he missed Gabriel. He missed him like an arm.

He wasn’t sure how it had gone this far this fast, because basically they’d fucked twice and had two dates. He’d had repeats with tricks, but he’d never made them deer sausage. He’d never seen them having lunch with someone else and flipped out.

But he’d never hurt someone without understanding exactly how. It made him sick to think he might have pushed Gabriel beyond his limits. He replayed the evening over in his head, trying to find his mistake, the cue he’d missed. He couldn’t find a thing.

So he asked Gabriel—or tried to. He left messages on his cell phone after getting the number from his mother. Sent him texts. Apologized, endlessly. He stopped by the library, brought flowers. Frankie’s wine. Hell, he brought
Hallmark cards
.

Gabriel rejected them all, and the only thing he would ever say to Arthur was a brusque, “
Go away,
” before disappearing into his office.

The great irony was that all this attention only firmed up the conviction of Logan’s finest gossips that he and Gabriel were dating. Or rather, that Arthur was pursuing the librarian.

Some people thought it was a scandal and gave him dirty looks. Arthur wasn’t sure if this was because of the gay thing or because their sainted librarian was too good for a toad like Arthur. Some people though, were clearly on his side. Every time he stopped by the cafe, Patty gave him a wink and an extra cinnamon roll “on the house, for Gabriel”. He’d started taking on more odd jobs to pass the time because he’d finished painting the sleigh and had nothing to do now but go out of his mind in the cabin, and most customers asked after Gabriel.

Though eventually Arthur caved and explained they’d broken up, nobody took him seriously. They told him true love had bumps in the road, to hang in there and he’d be fine. Even after he’d given up gifts, the grocery clerk brought out choice bouquets she’d saved for him and produced boxes of chocolate she’d ordered special. “I know how hard it is to court properly in a small town. But we both know Gabriel deserves the best.”

Yeah, he did know. But Gabriel wouldn’t let Arthur give him anything. So Arthur bought the flowers and chocolates…and gave them to his mother.

She, at least, had figured out something was actually wrong. But she was worse than anyone else, because she was fixated on Arthur getting Gabriel back.

“We need to get the two of you together,” she kept telling him. “All he needs is a little time to remember who you are, and it’ll be fine.”

“Mom, you need to give it up.” Arthur slumped in his chair at her kitchen table. “Stop plotting and tell me about how I can learn to drive a sleigh. It’s a month out. I’ve got to get this done.”

“That’s
it
. He needs to see the sleigh. He needs to go
with
you to the driving lessons.”

“
Enough.
He doesn’t give two shits about the sleigh, Mom. Or me. Just let it go.”

She did give up the week before Thanksgiving. With a heavy sigh, she sent him off to hang Christmas decorations downtown and over to the Peterson farm to learn to drive a horse-drawn sleigh. She didn’t mention Gabriel anymore, didn’t say anything about having him over for dinner, didn’t hatch some scheme to get them back together.

It depressed the hell out of Arthur.

With little else to do, he threw himself into his sleigh-driving lessons, and the first order of business was getting Grandpa Anderson’s sleigh over to the Peterson place. Gary Peterson lived seven miles from the Anderson farm by road, but only a mile and a half via hayfield. Since the ground was fully snow-covered between the homesteads, they arranged a scheme to transport the sleigh the old-fashioned way, and the drive between farms would be part of Arthur’s first lesson.

Big Tom collected Gary, and Arthur rode Shakey, one of Gary’s two draft horses, across the field. It had been years since he was on a horse, and Shakey certainly took take advantage of that. But Arthur found a small measure of control soon enough, and by the time they arrived at the shed where the sleigh waited, Arthur felt pretty confident his horsemanship had come back to him.

That ended as soon as Gary put him behind the reins in the sleigh.

Once, a million years ago at a county fair, he’d driven a team before a carriage, and he’d assumed driving a sleigh would be more of the same. Three feet after calling Shakey to start, however, and he was swearing and gripping the seat as the sleigh shifted from side to side.

“A-yep, she likes to slide.” Gary took the reins from Arthur and slowed Shakey down. “Can’t take a corner too sharp or too fast, either. Meant to go in a straight line, sleighs, and only across thin snow or on ice. Used to drive a team with rollers down a road to flatten it before people could drive.”

Arthur had no idea it would be this complicated. “Will the field be too deep?”

“Oh, no. Checked it afore you came. Should be fine. Maybe a bit of pull, but not too bad.” He passed the reins over and reminded Arthur of how to tug to get Shakey to turn. “Once the two of you practice, you’ll get the hang of it. Thought you could make a nice track in the west field. Want to come over regular and exercise him. Might not be bad to alternate with Timber. Horse on standby’s a good idea. The way you’re selling tickets, you could use a backup horse.”

Arthur hadn’t given much thought to having to exercise the horses every day, but it made sense, and anyway, it was something to do besides sit with the rock in his gut over Gabriel.

He didn’t do too badly, all things considered. On that first trip, Gary had to rescue him several times, once when he took a corner too fast and nearly tipped them. But by the time they got to the Peterson place, Arthur had his feet under him. He’d only need a few more runs with Gary beside him, and then he could practice on his own.

“You’ve got the feel of it,” Gary said. “Shakey’s a good boy, but he’ll test you. Timber too, more so. I’d stick with Shakey until you know where you are with the sleigh. They want to know who’s boss, but they make you earn it. If they think you’re mucking around, they’ll resist you every time.”

Gary’s words hung in Arthur’s head all the way home.
If they think you’re mucking around, they’ll resist you every time.
That was what he’d done with Gabriel. Hell, with Paul. He’d been mucking around. He’d said, “Give yourself over to me,” but he hadn’t taken care, not they way he should’ve. With Paul it honestly was a case of not wanting the same thing.

Not Gabriel. He could see his mistakes now, and it ate at him. Because maybe he’d woken the kink in Gabriel, but Gabriel had stirred Arthur’s want. Not for sex. For a partner. For a connection. And he hadn’t told him. He’d seduced him, made him dinner, taken him out. Fucked him, woke up all those forbidden feelings. Told Gabriel it was okay to feel with him, but never told him why.

Never told him it was because Arthur cared for him more than he ever thought he could care for a guy.

He wanted to believe it wasn’t too late, that he could still say those things. But it wasn’t as simple as flicking Shakey’s reins to get his attention. And deep down, Arthur wasn’t sure he should get another chance.

Surely Gabriel deserved better than a clumsy dwarf of a logger. All Gabriel had to do was lift his head to see a thousand better men.

He let him go, let Gabriel move on. Arthur fixed toasters and re-plastered walls. He drove the horses, practiced driving the sleigh, and he tried not to think about how it could have been Gabriel riding beside him.

G
abriel did his best to keep busy, to not think about Arthur.

He filled out more grants, going so far as to flirt with a few of the job offers that crossed his desk so he could call up the state board and pretend to be considering them if only because he wasn’t sure how he could keep Logan going without at least one more round of external funding. It was library politics, a game he was good at, and by the Monday of Thanksgiving week, he thought he probably had the next fiscal year covered. It was good work. It was what he wanted to do.

It was lonely, because all he could think about was how he wished he had someone to go home and share his successes with, how much he wished that someone could be Arthur.

He was extra lonely at the moment because he was avoiding his usual chats with Alex. Gabriel hadn’t told her about Arthur, but somehow she had known something had been going on—and she knew too when the something had stopped. She nagged him incessantly in chat, trying to get him to tell her, and when he stopped logging in, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving she called him on the phone an hour before the library opened.

“Stop ducking me,” she said when he lied and told her he had to go to a meeting. “Tell me what you’re upset about.”

Gabriel glanced around the library. “It’s…nothing. Forget it.”

“Sweetie, tell me.” He heard a clicking in the background. “There. I’ve logged into chat. Type what’s wrong, if it’s easier.”

Gabriel grimaced and tucked the phone into his neck as he opened the chat window.
I saw Arthur—the redhead—a few times. It got intense. I ended it.

“Intense how? What do you mean—did he ask you to marry him or something?”

Gabriel’s face heated in a blush.
Sex things,
he typed.
Too much. Too…kinky.

Now she sounded concerned. “He asked you to do things you didn’t want to do?”

Gabriel rubbed nervously at his jaw. “This was a bad idea. I should let you go.”

“Fuck no. Tell me right now he’s not pressuring you into something weird.”

Gabriel swallowed and shut his eyes. “No. He’s not. I…did it on my own.”

“And now you want to say no, but he’s all Neanderthal?”

This was a
terrible
idea. “Seriously, let’s forget you called.”

She sighed. “Ah. You did it, you liked it, and now you’re freaking out because you think you
shouldn’t
.”

Yes, pretty much. “I can’t do this. It was a mistake to try and date him.”

“Hold the phone—you were
dating
?”

Gabriel covered his face with his hands. “I’m such an idiot. I got mad at him for playing too nice on our first date. I got freaked out when he gave me what I wanted. I can’t date him
because I’m a disaster
.”

“Those his words, hon, or yours?”

Gabriel became interested in the keyboard. “I…haven’t been answering his texts or taking his calls.”

“
Gabriel Joseph Higgins.
”

“
I know.
But I’m still freaked out. I think I’ll ignore this and hope it goes away.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

Terrible.
“Alex, what do I do?”

“You put on your big-boy pants, and you face him. You talk to him.”

Gabriel couldn’t.
Not a chance.
“I’ll…think about it.”

“Gabriel, I love you, but you’re a hot, neurotic mess.”

Gabriel rubbed his forehead. “I know.” The library door opened, and he straightened. “Someone’s here. I have to go, Alex, sorry.”

“Talk to him. Whether you want to or not.”

Hanging up, Gabriel pocketed his phone and went into the main room. He put a smile on his face, ready to welcome a mother and young child desperate for a haven. His face fell as he saw the mother was Corrina Anderson.

Ever since she’d found Arthur at Gabriel’s house, she’d been relentless. She seemed to think Gabriel and Arthur were dating, and she couldn’t be happier. She stopped by the library every day with baked goods and coffee—
amazing
baked goods and coffee. She brought him lattes made from her home espresso machine “because no one ever uses it, such a waste, and then I thought, I bet Gabriel could use a fancy coffee.” There were endless cookies and sweetbreads “because I need to dry run my new Christmas recipes, and honestly, dear, you could use a bit of fattening up.” And every time she dropped by with a little something, she never missed an opportunity to talk about Arthur, about what a nice couple they made.

Gabriel tried to drop hints she was reading far too much into the situation, but of course this was Corrina.

Today she had a bright smile and a caramel latte with fresh whipped cream and a cherry and a piping hot plate of banana bread. “I kept it warm in foil for you. And I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow.”

Gabriel frowned. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Thanksgiving. Do you have anything in particular you’d like to eat?”

She thought he was coming for Thanksgiving? “Corrina, I—”

“Arthur will be by to pick you up. Would eleven suit you?”

Arthur.
“Corrina, I don’t—”

“If you wanted to come earlier, that would be fine. And don’t you worry about bringing a thing. You’re special enough for me.” She winked. “Arthur too.”

Gabriel took a deep breath—then stared her down. It was time he told her the truth. Time she
heard
the truth. “Corrina, I’m not dating your son. I’m not
going
to be dating your son.”

It was easier telling Noah
Doctor Duckling
still wasn’t in than it was to watch the disappointment drain the life from Corrina’s face. “But—I saw—he was at the door, in his boxers—”

“It was a one-time thing.”
Two-time thing.
Also the date. “It was a mistake.”

“But he took you to the steakhouse—and you’ve been so much happier lately. Or you were. I know you’ve had a falling out, but surely you two can kiss and make up.”

Gabriel couldn’t look her in the eye any longer. He felt as if he were drowning a litter of kittens in front of her, one by one. “It won’t work out. Please leave it at that.”

“Was he rude? Did he offend you? Did he come on too strong? Because he’s always been exuberant, but he calms down, I promise.”