Someone to Watch Over Me. Roz Fox Denny

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СКАЧАТЬ yet bustling airport.

      Marc and Reggie were booked on the same flight to Boise. From there, each would go his separate way. With the new heightened security, sans luggage or a ticket, Gabe wasn’t allowed to accompany the men beyond the passenger terminal. As the three longtime friends prepared to part, it again became evident that their lives were changing. No one wanted to say what all were patently aware of—this might be a more lasting goodbye. All cleared their throats awkwardly.

      It was Gabe who finally threw up his hands. “Hell,” he growled, dashing at a sheen of moisture in his eyes. “Moss, take care, buddy. And phone.”

      “And you e-mail me. I wanna know where you end up if you decide to chuck the job with SOS.”

      Marc punched Gabe’s upper arm in manly fashion, but he’d grown strangely quiet.

      Gabe, always the leader, grabbed first Reggie, then Marc, and gave them fierce short hugs. “Kenyon, I’ll see your ugly mug whenever Marley transfers funds for me to deal on that Utah ranch. Plan on me taking you and Lizzy to dinner someplace nice.”

      Not waiting for Marc’s response, Gabe jammed his hands in his pants pockets, lowered his head and stalked out into the inky night. Dammit, hadn’t he learned by the age of two that tears made a man weak?

      Both Reggie and Marc stepped to the entrance and hollered after Gabe. He tossed off a backward wave and hustled out to his vehicle, fast. This felt like an ending. But of what? An era? A good one to be sure. So, why did he feel as if he’d been cut adrift? Was it because his friends’ lives had seemingly fallen into place while he floundered back at square one?

      That wasn’t true, either. He had money in the bank and two college degrees. And three staunch friends who’d lay down their lives for him. He had contacts in business if he wanted to make a career move. Last time he’d been at square one, he’d been a street punk living by the seat of his pants. It so happened that his proficiency with math came at an early age. By ten he was making book on the back streets of Houston. Successfully, too. Although in those days he’d lived with a permanent empty hole in his stomach.

      At thirty-eight, he’d come too far and gone through too much to still feel like that scared kid with a big chip on his shoulder. Gabe thought back to the walls he’d scaled since. The motto he’d learned to live by flashed in his head. Forgive and forget.

      His steps faltered when the next image that popped up was a sad-eyed Isabella Navarro. He hadn’t lied to his friends. A woman like her should be avoided at all cost.

      Except…her haunting image lingered as he clicked the remote to open the doors of his Lexus. Nor did he shake the vision as he rolled down the driver’s window and breathed in the loamy scent of new-tilled fields as he drove back to his empty room at the Inn. Isabella’s face followed him to bed.

      Gabe knew, long before sleep claimed him, that he would make the effort to see her again. And in spite of his own good sense and the unspoken agreement of his friends that she was trouble with a capital T, he planned to see her soon.

      Tomorrow.

      Surprisingly, his stomach felt better when he’d made that decision.

      CHAPTER THREE

      GABE LEFT HIS LODGING the next morning armed with the address to Isabella’s Bakery. He’d been eating a hearty breakfast at the Green Willow most days, but had at some point during the night made up his mind to forego steak and eggs in favor of coffee and a doughnut. And an opportunity to see if, in the light of morning, he still felt attracted to the baker herself.

      He finally located her bakery on a hidden side street, two blocks off Callanton’s main drag. He wondered how he’d missed it before, painted as it was in eye-popping orange. Luckily, in Gabe’s estimation, a large portion of the storefront was taken up with a plate glass window. That color was godawful.

      A bell tinkled overhead when Gabe entered the shop. At once he was struck by homey scents of cinnamon, nutmeg and spicy sausage. There didn’t seem to be a soul around, although twin display cases brimmed with freshly baked pastries.

      Gabe stood alone, studying available choices for several seconds, before the louvered café doors that led to a back room crashed open. Isabella Navarro, dressed in a style similar to what she’d worn at the reception, rushed out. Flour streaked her face and hair.

      She stopped dead in the act of wiping a powdery substance off her buttery fingers.

      “Oh…uh…may I help you?” she murmured, a note of wariness creeping into her voice the instant she recognized the man standing at her counter.

      Gabe felt as though he’d been slammed in the stomach. No, he needn’t have wondered if the attraction had faded overnight. Even in her disheveled state, he found this woman more compelling than ever.

      She approached him cautiously. “Did Summer send you all the way into town to return the leftover plastic dinnerware? I told her that wasn’t necessary. After all, she paid for that many.”

      Gabe realized he’d continued to stare at her without responding. “What? Oh, no. I stopped by for coffee and maybe a doughnut for breakfast.”

      She processed that news, thinking it must be nice to have a job where you could stroll in for breakfast at ten o’clock. Everyone she knew, herself included, had breakfast finished by five. But why kid herself? Gabe Poston didn’t just happen to wander into her out-of-the-way bakery. Unless she was mistaken, he had a purpose for everything he did. And for some reason, she’d become his current purpose. The thought sent a long-dormant flutter of sexual awareness to her lower abdomen. It was accompanied by a swift punch of fear.

      Gabe rubbed a hand over the back of his neck as he walked up and down past the gleaming display cases. “I’m afraid I don’t see anything quite as simple as a doughnut. Care to offer a recommendation?”

      A slight smile played at one corner of her lips. However brief, it was the first positive emotion Gabe had witnessed. Best of all, along with the tiny smile, he thought he saw an ever-so-minute spark come into her dark eyes. Gabe knew then that he wouldn’t be satisfied until he heard her laugh. Or better yet, saw that spark flame with…desire.

      “For my clientele,” she was saying, “I stock mostly Basque pastries. If you want something warm I have polvoróns due to come out of the oven in—” she glanced at the clock hanging on the back wall “—less than a minute,” she said, beginning to edge backward toward the café doors. “Coffee’s on the sideboard there to the left of the door. Regular, decaf and two specialty blends. Help yourself. Takeout cups and lids are on the shelf above if you want your food to go,” she called over the squeaky door hinges.

      “I’d planned to eat here,” he informed her loudly, sauntering behind the display case in order to peer at her over the still quivering louvered doors. “What’s a polvorón? Is that what smells so good?” he asked.

      Donning oven mitts, Isabella grabbed a spatula as she opened a wall-mounted oven and pulled out a tray filled with steaming round biscuits. “Polvoróns are cakelike biscuits made from finely ground almond and icing sugar. They sort of melt in your mouth. Especially when they’re hot.”

      “They aren’t very big,” Gabe said, sounding more uncertain after seeing the first batch set out on cooling racks.

      “Ah.” That one word held a wealth of meaning. “I’ll СКАЧАТЬ