Once Upon a Proposal (5 page)

“Is he going to be all right?”

He gave her an odd look. “Yeah. Broke a few bones, but he'll probably be nagging me to get him back at the site before the doctor even says it's okay.” He followed her inside. “You're the only one who has asked that.”

Her little carriage house felt cozy at the best of times. With him standing in the center of her living room between the leather chair that she'd purloined from her mother's basement and the outdated floral-patterned but immensely comfortable couch she'd bought at a consignment store, the space felt even smaller. More intimate. “I'm sorry? I'm sure his coworkers want ed to know how—”

He waved his hand. “Yeah. Of course folks on the crew and at the office asked.” He ran his hand tiredly down his face, then around to the back of his neck. “Don't mind me.” He turned toward the short, narrow hall that would lead him to the bathroom, only to do an about-face a second later.

She nearly bumped into him and he caught her shoulders in his hands again. “Sorry.” He stepped around her. “Tools are in my truck.”

She chewed the inside of her lip, watching him leave.

He hadn't brought up the business about her posing as his fiancée. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd changed his mind so thoroughly that he didn't even want to bring it up.

As if she'd have forgotten it if he didn't.

She exhaled roughly and headed into the kitchen to let the dogs out of their kennels. The light on her answering machine was blinking, and she poked the button before opening the cage.

“Bobbie, this is Quentin Rich.”

She glanced at the machine as she snapped on Archimedes's leash. “Who?”

“We met at the Hunt Christmas party last year. I heard you were available and I thought it would be nice to get together again. Maybe dinner? Call me.” The caller reeled off his number.

Bobbie looked down at Archimedes. “Do you remember him?”

The dog's tongue lolled out of his mouth. He gave her a goofy look.

“Me either. And that party was ten months ago.” She erased the message and called Zeus, who'd been patiently waiting. With their leashes on, they both bolted out the front door, pulling her along with them. They veered away from their original target—the bushes—when they spotted Gabe and raced toward him instead.

A grin stretched across his face, erasing years of tiredness, as he set down his bucket filled with tiling tools and crouched down to greet them. “How you doing, Zeus?” He rubbed one dog down, then the other. “Archie? You staying away from eating Bobbie's couch cushions?”

“I'm surprised.” Bobbie slowly walked closer, giving the leashes more play. “Not even Fiona can tell them apart.”

Gabe figured it was safer all around for him to focus on
the oversized puppies slathering slobber over his hands and arms than on Bobbie.

Or he'd be the one likely to start slobbering over himself.

He was used to being around beautiful women. Hell, he'd been married to one, even if she'd turned out to be carved from ice. So what was it about
this
woman that turned his guts inside out? He knew he should look at her and think “too young,” but her age was truthfully the last thing he had on his mind when she was around.

Maybe that explained midlife crises…

“They've got their differences,” he pointed out a little doggedly. “Archie here has a quirk in the way he holds his ears. And Zeus just looks at you like he wants to lie on your feet and sleep for a week. Which is a thought I've had myself lately.”

Bobbie laughed softly, and he couldn't help himself. He looked up at her.

She wore stretchy black pants that clung to every inch of her shapely legs from knee to hip. And even though she had some gauzy white shirt on, it didn't do diddly to disguise the lush curves adoringly displayed by a sleeveless black top beneath it that ended well above her waist. What the thin fabric did succeed at was taunting him mercilessly with the filmy silhouette of those inches of bare skin exposed between the top and the pants. Bare skin that nipped in over a tiny waist that made everything else seem even more…curved.

He stifled on oath, dragging his gaze away.

Archimedes slapped his gold, feathered tail on the ground, still grinning sloppily as if he read Gabe's mind all too easily.

And maybe the dogs did, because Zeus trotted back over to his mistress, leaning his healthy, growing body protectively against Bobbie's legs. Her hand dropped to her side,
her slender fingers sliding over his well-shaped head. The dog looked as if he wanted to purr. “They're both good boys,” she said. “Once they go to their trainer, I'm sure they'll end up being excellent assistance dogs.”

Gabe distracted Archimedes from sniffing the bag of grout sitting inside the bucket. “How many puppies have you raised for Fiona's group?”

“Counting these two?” She didn't hesitate. “Seventeen.”

“That's a lot of dogs. You have them for nearly two years, don't you?”

“They usually go into training around eighteen months. I generally get them when they're about eight weeks old, but sometimes it's later because they've been moved from another raiser for some reason. These guys were littermates, so I got them at the same time. Usually, I have a mixture of ages. One time I had four dogs at once.” She grinned wryly. “Needless to say, my mother and sisters thought I'd lost a few screws. And it was a little…crazy. Compared to that, just having these two now is pretty quiet, actually. I have photo albums of all of my puppies on the shelf in the hall.”

The shelf he'd nearly knocked over the day he'd brought the tile in for her bathroom floor. “But in the end, you give them all up.”

She looked down at the dog beside her. “That's the point. I'm just the puppy raiser. Not one of Fiona's dog trainers.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is something I'm actually good at. All of the puppies I've raised have been successfully partnered with someone. Guide dogs for the blind, a few hearing dogs, a few service dogs. One even became a search and rescue dog out in Montana.” She lifted her shoulder and the filmy shirt shimmied around her hips. “It's my one part in helping someone else's life be a little easier.” Her cheeks colored and her
eyes looked like fog clouding Rainier. “I know that probably sounds—”

“—like Fiona talking.”

She shook her head, her lips curving slightly. “That wasn't what I was going to say.”

“But it's the truth.” For several generations, the Gannon family had had nearly every advantage in life. But instead of simply donating her money to some cause she believed in, his grandmother had spent most of Gabe's life personally involved in one. She'd founded her small agency that trained and placed assistance dogs around the country, and even though the rest of Gabe's family thought she was more than a little eccentric for working so hard for so long when she didn't have to, he'd admired her for it.

In her way, Fiona Gannon was as much the oddball in the family as he was.

“You're doing a good thing,” he told Bobbie now. Truthfully. He pushed tiredly to his feet. “And for the record, I'm certain that you're good at a lot more than raising puppies. But I still think it's gotta be damn hard to give them up when it's time.”

Her lashes swept down for a moment. “It's always hard to say goodbye. But I get to meet the person they're partnered with when they finish their training, and the dogs always remember me.” She looked up then with a crooked grin. “And I receive a ton of Christmas cards with the dogs' pictures in them.”

“Well, you're still a better person than I am.” He picked up the heavy bucket, lifting it away from Archimedes's inquisitive snout. “I probably wouldn't want to let them go.”

“You really don't have to finish the floor today, you know. It's not going anywhere. Take a break.”

Her gaze danced over him, then away again, and he wished to hell he knew what he could do to ease her obvious
nervousness. But he wasn't ready to hear her tell him again that he was on his own when it came to the fake fiancée business, so they were both stuck. Unfortunately, every day that ticked past was a day that took him closer to the judge's courtroom.

“It's not like you haven't been working hard enough already, covering for your injured guy,” she continued.

Unlike his ex-wife, who'd quite vocally considered Gabe's injured worker to be a personal inconvenience to her. “It won't take me long to grout the floor.” Not when her bathroom was barely large enough to turn around in.

“And then you'll go and have dinner with your children?”

“I'll take them to dinner,” he clarified. “They're none too happy right now to begin with, since their mother decided to go to D.C. with Ethan a few days ago for some meetings. The last thing to help that situation would be my cooking.”

She worried her soft lower lip with the pearly edge of her teeth for a moment. “Lisette and Todd have been staying with you, then? When is their mother coming back?”

“Tomorrow, and it was surprising that Steph was willing to leave them with me.” Particularly when she'd learned he was putting in even more hours on the job than usual, until she'd realized the advantage the situation might afford her. “But then she realized that I might do such a rotten job of caring for them full-time for a few days that she'll have extra ammunition against me when we go to court again.”

Bobbie's soft lips tightened. “No wonder you're tired. Extra work on that job site on top of your usual load, plus having the kids and getting them to and from school?” Shaking her head, she walked over to him and wrapped her free hand around the bucket handle, unsuccessfully trying to dislodge his hand in the process. “Give me that. My floor can definitely wait.”
The curls coiled on top of her head tickled his chin, smelling faintly of lemon.

He still didn't let go of the bucket. “I'll let the floor wait if you'll come to dinner with me and the kids.”

He had to steel his nerves against the soft gaze she turned toward him. “I think that's bribery or something.”

Bribery and a good dose of self-torture. “Is it working?”

“You're as bad as your grandmother,” she accused. But there was a faint smile on her soft, soft lips.

“That's probably one of the nicer things I've been accused of,” he admitted wryly. “Is that a yes?”

“Yes. To dinner,” she added quickly.

But he didn't mind the qualification.

After a little time with his kids, maybe she'd see that one more “yes” would be just another way of making someone else's life a little easier for a while.

Namely, his.

And if she did, the trick then would be for all of them to get through it unscathed when their arrangement was no longer necessary.

T
he next evening, Bobbie tilted her head sideways and studied her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the front of her closet door. The hem of the pewter-colored gown was pooling on the carpet around her bare feet, but that would be solved well enough when she put on her high heels. Squinting at herself, she gathered up two fists of ringlets and piled her hair on top of her head.

“I don't know, Zeus. What do you think? Does it look like I'm trying to play dress-up? What do you think Gabe will think?” She looked at the dog's reflection in the mirror. He was watching her with patient eyes from where he lay on the floor at the foot of her bed that was strewn with a half-dozen gowns, already tried and rejected.

The only gown left was the one she was wearing. She'd bought it on a shopping spree with Frankie—with her fashionable sister's mild approval—shortly before Lawrence had dumped her. She'd never actually worn it out. She would have
returned it to the store, in fact, except it had been a clearance dress and it had been less embarrassing just to shove it in the back of her closet than go back to the store and admit she hadn't needed the dress after all.

Not when her fiancé had decided
she
didn't need to accompany him to any more fund-raisers. Or to anything else, for that matter. He particularly didn't want her working on his reelection campaign. What was the point, since she didn't have a pipeline into the treasures of the HuntCom empire after all?

She let go of her hair and it fell down past her shoulders, settling into its usual disarray. Her hand swept down the folds of gleaming fabric that fell in a column from the empire waist. The gown had tiny cap sleeves that were little more than wide straps hugging the points of her shoulders. The front of the bodice was cut low and straight across her breasts, leaving more of her cleavage on view than Bobbie was accustomed to. But Frankie hadn't vetoed the dress, so Bobbie could only cross her fingers in the hope that it suited her as much as anything could.

Her phone jangled, startling her from her critical study of her self, and she picked up the extension on the nightstand. “Hello?”

“Bobbie?” The deep voice was unfamiliar. “This is Quentin. Quentin Rich. I've been hoping to reach you.”

She wrinkled her nose. The guy who'd left the phone message. Tucking the phone against her shoulder, she stepped over Archimedes, who was sleeping in the doorway, and went into the bathroom to rummage through the drawer for some hairpins. Where were the sparkly ones that Georgie had given her for Christmas? “Right. Quentin.” Whom she still couldn't remember. “How are you?”

“Great. Just great. Listen, I was wondering if you'd like to
meet up again. There's a new restaurant that's been getting rave reviews I've been dying to take you to.”

She lifted her eyebrows, a little taken aback by his enthusiasm. “Really. Dying, huh?”

“I know you'd love the place,” he continued confidently. “You actually dine in the dark. So you don't even see what's on your plate. It's all very…tactile.”

“Messy, you mean.” She couldn't help but laugh, as it finally came to her when they'd met. “Which seemed fitting, since you saw me spill a plate of hors d'oeuvres on myself at last year's Christmas party.”

“It was hardly your fault,” he assured quickly. “And that wasn't it at all.”

She rolled her eyes and slammed the drawer shut. Maybe the hair clips were in her jewelry box. “As I recall, you were pitching some sort of software to HuntCom. How'd that go?” She hitched up her dress again, stepping over the dogs on her way to her dresser.

“Great. Just great. Mr. Hunt's taken quite a personal interest lately, too.”

A stray thought had her hesitating. “Which Mr. Hunt?” As far as she knew, Gray was way too occupied with helming the worldwide company while keeping up with his wife and their kids to get personally involved with a software project that even she remembered had been relatively small and unexciting.

“Harrison,” Quentin provided smoothly. “I'll admit it's pretty flattering to have such a pioneer taking an interest in my work—”

The man prattled on, but Bobbie barely heard.

Harry.

First it had been Tim Boering. And now it was this guy. She hadn't had so much as a date since Lawrence dumped her,
but now, in a matter of weeks, she'd had two men claiming interest. And both were connected to Harry?

Suspicion niggled at her, but she dismissed it. Admittedly, Harry was one of the most manipulative—if oddly charming—men that Bobbie knew. But he knew what a blow the whole Lawrence episode had been; she couldn't imagine why he'd nudge guys her way now. He never had before.

If anything, he was probably looking for some innocuous per son to keep Quentin and his latest software project safely entertained.

Satisfied with her reasoning, she snatched up the sparkling hair clips shaped like daisies where they were buried beneath a jumble of inexpensive earrings and necklaces that would have given the orderly Georgie fits. “Listen, Quentin, I'm sorry, but I'm just on my way out.” Nearly.

“Ah. Then why don't I call you tomorrow?”

“No!” She winced a little at her own vehemence. “I mean, I appreciate you thinking of me, but I'm—”

“—seeing someone again already, I suppose.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, but the words didn't come. A vision of Gabe and his children crowding around her coffee table the night before to wolf down the best pizza Seattle had to offer swam inside her head much too readily.

“Well…” She forced a little laugh, hoping he'd draw his own conclusions without her actually having to tell an outright lie. She'd never claimed that she wasn't a coward. And she didn't want to hurt his feelings any more than she'd wanted to hurt Boering's. They were associates of her Uncle Harry's, after all.

“Message understood,” Quentin was saying. “But seriously, if you change your mind, you have my number.”

“Right.” Actually, she didn't, since she'd erased his earlier message with no thought or regret whatsoever. “I'll keep that in mind. I've really got to run now.”

“Sure. Good night, Bobbie.”

“'Bye, Quentin.” She quickly disconnected and tossed the phone on her jumbled bed. “Zeus, remind me to tell Uncle Harry I'm not the welcoming committee lady the next time I see him, will you?”

Zeus yawned hugely, then lowered his head down onto his outstretched paws.

“Thanks for the support,” Bobbie muttered. She stepped over him again to reach the mirror and pinned back several curls of hair with Georgie's fancy little clips. Then she pushed her feet into the shimmery silver shoes with the deadly spiked heels that Frankie had insisted were made to go with the gown and grabbed the long, black cashmere coat that had been a birth day present from her mother two years earlier.

There was no need for her purse since she was just going across to the main house. She swung the coat around her shoulders and snatched up the box containing the scrapbook she'd made as a gift for Fiona, then headed outside.

The enormous tent that had been erected on the graceful lawn was surrounded by little white lights that sparkled wetly in the damp night air. She could hear the band playing some old, sedate melody that sounded more in keeping with a museum opening than a birthday celebration and as she neared the tent, she could see that only a few couples were moving about on the dance floor. The floor was surrounded by linen and crystal-covered round tables, most of them occupied, and the nervousness that Bobbie had been more or less successfully holding at bay since she'd woken up that morning came barreling down the chute.

A uniformed young man carrying a gilded tray of filled champagne flutes crossed her path. “Wait.” The heels of her fancy shoes sunk into the grass a little as she took a step after him. “Can I—”

“Certainly.” He waited for her to take one of the flutes, which she did carefully lest she knock the other glasses over.

“Thanks.” She took a quick drink as her gaze skimmed over the crowd. “You wouldn't happen to know where the birth day girl is, would you?”

“Inside, I believe.” The young man continued on his way toward the guests.

Bobbie looked up at the deep terrace that led into the house. There were tables and guests there, too. She took another sip of champagne, chiding herself inwardly for feeling so nervous.

She'd spent several thoroughly enjoyable hours with Gabe and his children the evening before and he hadn't uttered one single syllable about his suggestion that she pretend to be his fiancée for the benefit of his child custody case. If anything, he'd treated her more like a sister. Certainly not like someone he'd twisted inside out with his very kiss.

And it wasn't as if he hadn't had an opportunity to talk to her privately, because after they'd ravenously consumed the pizza that she'd talked him into letting her order while he'd been wedged into her bathroom working on the floor, Todd and Lisette had been totally occupied playing with the dogs in the yard outside.

For all she knew, he'd come to his senses and realized the potholes in his thinking, so there would be no need for her to get into all the reasons why going along with his scheme was a bad idea.

Tightening her arm around the large gift-wrapped box, she went up the shallow steps to the terrace. On the way, she recognized Kanya, the community affairs manager from the company that Fiona was hoping to get that substantial grant from, and stopped long enough to exchange pleasantries. Hers was the only familiar face that Bobbie saw.

But when she spotted Gabe standing just inside the open
French doors of the living room, she forgot how to speak altogether.

Over the years, Bobbie figured she'd seen countless men in countless tuxedos. But not once had she ever been dumbstruck by the very sight. He looked…magnificent.

It wasn't just the formal wear, though the midnight-blue jack et and trousers were miles away from his usual jeans and T-shirt. He'd slicked back his dark hair from his face and when he shifted, looking out over the terrace, even from several yards away she was struck by the sharp angles of his handsome face, by the startling clarity of his blue, blue eyes.

And then those eyes turned her way.

His lips turned up at the corners and even though she knew it was fanciful of her, when his hand left his pocket to lift in her direction, it all seemed to happen in an achingly slow motion, accompanied by a swell of music from the band.

Her stomach dipped and swayed woozily, and she had the ridiculous sense that her life, in that moment, had just changed forever.

“So we're hoping to get an answer for Fiona on the grant,” she heard Kanya saying, though it might as well have been gibberish.

Bobbie dragged in a shaking breath and swallowed hard, mumbling something—hopefully coherent—to Kanya before she headed toward Gabe and his extended palm.

Only when she neared the open doors did she notice the other people he was with. Two men easily as tall as he was, though not quite as broad in the shoulders, but with hair equally as dark as Gabe's. She guessed that they were his older brothers, Liam and Paul. And the women with them were undoubtedly their wives—who looked like cookie-cutter socialites with their upswept hair, diamonds circling their
long throats and strapless black gowns showing their svelte figures to their best advantage.

They were so picture-perfect that Bobbie felt even more like a schoolgirl playing at dress-up.

Then Gabe stepped out onto the terrace, closing the distance between them. “I was beginning to think I was going to have to come and find you,” he greeted. His gaze ran over her. “But the wait was worth every second. Let me take that.” He plucked the box out from beneath her arm. “Heavy,” he commented.

She was still shaking, and she ordered herself to get a grip. “I made a scrapbook showing everything that's gone on at the agency since Fiona started it. You wouldn't believe some of the dusty old boxes I hunted through,” she added nervously. “I had everyone working there helping me keep it a secret. There ended up being a, um, a lot of stuff.”

His lips tilted. “I'll bet. And she'll love it.” Then he leaned toward her. “You take my breath away.” His low voice whispered over her ear as his lips brushed her cheek.

She actually felt faint for a moment and stared up at him as he straightened. “How can you tell?” She cleared her throat and tugged her collar. “I'm wearing a coat.”

He brushed his thumb over her chin. “Believe me. I can tell. Everything all right?”

Except that she knew she was being dazzled by him? “Fine.” She took another sip of her champagne, willing her heart to move back down into her chest where it belonged. “I didn't mean to be this late. I was held up this afternoon having lunch with my mother. Where's Fiona?”

“Being held captive by
my
mother and some guests she's introducing.” Gabe took her hand, setting off yet another bout of weak knees as he tucked it around his arm and turned her toward the house. He added her gift to the collection already gathered on a long table and his head lowered again so she
could hear his soft voice. “Astrid doesn't seem to recognize the irony in having to introduce someone to Fiona at Fiona's own party.”

“Maybe we should mount a rescue,” Bobbie suggested just as softly.

Gabe's eyes crinkled. “I knew you were a kindred spirit.”

Her smile felt shaky. The man was much too appealing. It was an effort to remind herself that he was still a man with an agenda—even as justified as his cause was.

She had no desire to get burned again, and every speck of self-preservation that she possessed was shrieking at her that she would be in even more deeply over her head where Gabriel Gannon was concerned than she had ever been with Lawrence. And even though she was finally realizing that she hadn't wanted to die of a broken heart when
that
had ended, the experience had still been a humiliating disaster.