Caleb's Bride. Wendy Warren

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СКАЧАТЬ the pen so hard her knuckles turned white, Gabby forced her shaking hand toward the real-estate document that would put her business, Honey Comb’s Barbershop, up for sale. Her heart quaked as much as her hand. She’d only worked in one place her entire life, and it was right here in this century-old, brick-walled storefront.

      “‘One cannot look into a bright future if her eyes are filled with tears from the past,’” she quoted aloud, pressing the quivering ballpoint to the signature line, but her fingers refused to move.

      Spouting insights was easy. One of the signs in her window read “Haircuts—$10. Wisdom—priceless.” Her grandfather Max had started the custom of sharing philosophical quotes with his customers over fifty years ago. When he’d passed Honey Comb’s to Gabby, she’d gladly picked up the torch. She must have had hundreds of quotes packed into her brain by now. But talk was cheap unless action backed it up. Action—that was the hard part.

      “Life is like crossing a set of monkey bars. You have to let go to move forward.” She muttered one of her grandfather’s favorite sayings, and taking one big deep breath, scrawled her name.

      Wide-eyed and perspiring, she looked at the page. “Oh, my God, I’m really doing it.”

      Unexpectedly, a chunk of anxiety fell away like rusted armor. Refusing to give herself time to chicken out, she quickly penned the date then signed on the other lines the real-estate agent had indicated.

      For as long as Gabby could remember, she had planned to do two things with her life: Run Honey Comb’s—the coziest, warmest place on earth, and marry Dean Kingsley—the coziest, warmest man on the planet.

      “‘The best laid schemes of mice and men do often go awry…’”

      Despite the fact that Dean had never been anything other than friendly and kind, Gabby had convinced herself that he would fall for her when she was thinner, prettier, funnier. When she figured out how to keep her red hair from frizzing in the summer, or when she’d read all his favorite books. His love was going to be the chrysalis that changed her from plain, awkward Gabby Coombs to confident, graceful butterfly.

      Dean had screwed up her great plan by falling in love with someone else. Someone who had been a stranger to all of them until only a few months ago. Now the man she’d dreamed about for twenty years (twenty—aaaaaagh!) was married with a child on the way, and Gabby felt like an old train that had rattled too long on the same dusty route, never veering from its chosen course but expecting the scenery magically to change.

      Well, not anymore.

      “It’s time for me to say goodbye, Poppy.” She lifted her gaze to the framed black-and-white photo of the man who had given her this barbershop on her twenty-third birthday, nearly one decade ago. Despite her firm conviction (it really was firm), tears filled her eyes. “I hope you understand.”

      Her benevolent grandfather smiled down at her, leaning against the striped barber pole that, to this day, swirled like a dancing peppermint stick out front.

      Six weeks earlier, on a whim, Gabby had applied for a job that would take her far from her hometown of Honeyford, Oregon. Three days ago she’d received an offer of employment from Rising Sun Cruises. The next morning she’d accepted the offer, and yesterday she had visited the real-estate agent to put her business up for sale.

      Bold moves, every one, which was exactly what she needed right now. Bold moves to create a brand new life.

      And a brand new Gabby.

      When a knock rattled the barbershop’s glass door, she realized she was several minutes past opening, something she couldn’t recall ever happening before. Jumping from her stool behind the small front desk, she headed for the door.

      Wiping the moisture from beneath her eyes, she smoothed a hand over the kinky hair that inevitably escaped her ponytail and turned the key in the lock. She plastered a smile on her face as she swung the door open, but words of welcome died on her lips. Surprise—and the stirrings of something that felt like dread—tensed every muscle.

      June sunshine silhouetted a tall man with square shoulders. As Gabby’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that he was gorgeous—still gorgeous—in a way few males in Honeyford were. An edgy, mysterious, dangerous kind of gorgeous.

      “Hi, there. Can I get a haircut?”

      The lump of emotion filling Gabby’s throat all morning doubled at the sound of his voice, which was deeper, more gravelly than it had been fifteen years earlier when Caleb Wells had been an eighteen-year-old farmhand bound and determined to make something of himself.

      Her gaze rose to his chestnut hair. Thick, wavy and glittering with deep bronze-and-gold highlights, it had obviously been expertly styled.

      “You don’t need a haircut,” she said, her voice hoarse with shock. “You look…” She hesitated.

      As a teen, Cal had been whipcord lean, perpetually hungry looking. Now in his thirties, he impressively filled his designer suit. As sharp as three points of a triangle, the chin and jaw that used to sport a light shadow were smooth and whisker-free.

      “You look good,” she concluded, feeling her face flame.

      The right side of his mouth curled just a bit in response.

      He turned his head, glancing into the barbershop. “May I come in?”

      Gabby hesitated, apprehension tingling throughout her body.

      One of the signs in her window warned, “No Shoes, No Shirt, You Better Get Your Hair Cut Someplace Else,” but Cal looked more like the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company than a small-town kid who’d once struggled by on odd jobs and church handouts. Since she couldn’t justify keeping him out, Gabby stepped back and got a whiff of expensive cologne as Cal brushed past her. Whatever he’d been doing all these years, he’d managed to effect a complete transformation.

      How ironic, she thought dazedly, feeling as if she were having an out-of-body experience, that Cal Wells, of all people, should reappear again now, when I’m about to take the biggest risk of my life.

      A decade and a half ago, he had been the biggest risk she’d ever taken. And that time she had concluded she’d made an awful mistake.

      As Cal entered the barbershop, his gaze moved to the wall of black-and-white pictures that framed the large mirrors above Honey Comb’s two cutting stations. The photos, most of which she’d taken, were the only things that changed in the shop on a regular basis.

      While Cal moved closer, studying her work, Gabby busied herself opening the blinds and flipping the sign that said, “Shut Till We’re Not,” to the side that announced, “Come In Already.”

      Several times she glanced over her shoulder, until Cal caught her gaze in the mirror and raised a brow.

      “Your photos?” he asked, indicating the display.

      She nodded.

      Again he gave her that flicker of a smile. “You’re good. I knew you would be.”

      Her heart stuttered a little in response. “Thanks.” How many times had she taken photos of him while he’d worked on her family’s farm? Hidden from view, she’d snapped СКАЧАТЬ