Caleb's Bride

Chapter Two

The scissors slipped, knicking Gabby’s knuckle. “Damn,” she swore, shaking the pained hand. After checking for blood (hardly any), she gaped at Cal in the mirror. “How do you know I’m—”

The answer came to her before she completed the sentence. She glanced toward the coat tree, where she’d told him to hang his jacket, then to the desk sitting right beside it, and her gape turned into a glare. “You snooped around my desk? When I went in the back? You read my private papers!”

“I glanced over,” he admitted. “Your ‘private papers’ are sitting out where anyone can see them, Gabrielle.”

“Anyone who leans over to read the fine print,” she snapped. Leaving him, she rushed to the desk to conceal the real-estate document. Good gravy, she didn’t need any of her other customers to walk in, read the papers and realize she was selling the shop—before she broke the news to her own family! Shoving the papers into a drawer, she slammed it shut…along with the scissors and comb she’d brought with her. Realizing her mistake, she yanked the drawer open, pulled out her tools and rounded on Caleb. “You couldn’t have known what those papers were about at a glance. You were snooping.”

As cool as ever, he shrugged. “I spent the morning at Honeyford Realty. I recognized their paperwork. Are you selling because of Kingsley?”

Resentment, hot and humid, filled Gabby from the stomach up.

Even though she’d tried to keep her infatuation for Dean under wraps, she knew Cal had figured out her secret.

Now his supernatural eyes pinned her to the spot. He looked like a boa constrictor laughing at a mouse.

“News still travels fast in Honeyford,” he said. “I bet I wasn’t downtown more than an hour before I heard that Kingsley got married a couple of months ago.” Cal’s head tsk-tsked slowly from side to side. “You’re not just selling the shop, are you? You’re running away.”

“Beep, beep! Comin’ through!”

Before Gabby could respond to Cal, Henry Berns, owner of Honey Bea’s Bakery across the street, opened the barbershop door. Pressing one scrawny shoulder against the glass, he bustled over the threshold, his knobby hands occupied with a pink pastry box. “Gotta set this down before I drop it. Don’t have the muscle strength I used to.”

Gabby watched Henry as if she were standing outside herself, a tight band of emotion constricting her breath so that she felt incapable of heaving a single word into her mouth.

Nearly a foot shorter than Cal, Henry nodded at the much younger man, whom he gave no indication of recognizing, then placed the string-wrapped box on the desk and winked at Gabby. “It’s a Dobish Torte. Two pounds of dark chocolate for my best girl.” Toddling happily to the vacant chair, he told Gabby, “You go ahead and finish up. I’ll grab a seat before the morning rush.” With a spryness that belied his seventy-five years (and the claim that he lacked muscle strength), Henry hopped into the chair next to Cal’s, helped himself to a comb and worked it through the gray waves he kept stiffly pomaded.

By sheer force of will, Gabby managed to murmur her thanks for the cake.

“Why, sure. Sweets for my sweetheart!” The old man winked into the mirror.

A knowing smile spread across Cal’s face, and Gabby blushed.

All her life she had felt a little more awkward, a little less beautiful than the girls around her, which was probably why the thought of Dean Kingsley had filled her with such joy. Dean had seemed so golden, so rich with gentlemanly grace, an innate country suave that had afforded Gabby countless hours of pleasure fantasizing about becoming Mrs. Country Suave.

In the barber chair to Cal’s right, Henry Berns hummed happily while perusing the latest copy of The Honeyford Buzz. All her most serious suitors were over seventy. Nothing had changed, and Cal knew it. As the curve of his lips bloomed into a full grin, Gabby felt once again that uncomfortable, haunting sense of déjà vu.

Reaching into his back pocket, Cal withdrew an expensive-looking leather wallet as he crossed toward her. Withdrawing a bill for the trim she hadn’t completed, he laid it on her desk. “See you around, Gabrielle.”

The door clicked softly shut behind him, and suddenly Gabby remembered exactly when she’d last seen his grin—full of enjoyment and humor and mischief—prior to today.

It had happened fourteen years, ten months and three weeks ago. The summer they’d graduated from high school.

Dean had come home from college to work in his father’s pharmacy, and Gabby had decided the time had come: She was going to tell her beloved exactly how she felt so they could begin their life together. Her courage stoked, her expectations huge and glorious, she waited for Dean to arrive at the Fourth of July celebration downtown. But when he showed up, there was a girl clinging happily to his arm, a lovely girl he introduced to everyone as the woman he hoped to marry.

Numb at first, feeling frozen inside, Gabby somehow managed to smile and congratulate Dean along with everyone else. Two hours past the fireworks display, however, her emotions thawed and the misery poured out in waves so overpowering it was difficult to breathe.

She had expected to become a woman in Dean’s arms. The best moments of her life were supposed to have happened with him. At eighteen, she had yet to experience her first kiss. Suddenly, it all seemed like such a horrid waste.

That was when Gabrielle Coombs decided enough was enough and threw herself at a boy for the very first time.

And Cal Wells took pity and made love to her.

Cal slipped on a pair of ridiculously expensive sunglasses, a gift from his ex-wife, who had never met a label she didn’t like. The dark glasses gave him the comforting illusion of privacy. He preferred not to make eye contact with others this morning. Not that many people in town were likely to remember him or would rush to welcome him back even if they did, but Cal’s emotions were running so high at the moment that he didn’t want to make small talk.

Gabrielle Coombs. She was still here, in their hometown. Still single from what he gathered. And, even though she hadn’t admitted a thing, he’d bet his last paycheck that she was still in love with Dean Kingsley.

Beneath his breath, Cal muttered a word that would cost his ten-year-old daughter a dollar if she said it.

“I acted like a jackass.” He spoke out loud to himself, a habit he’d gotten into since his marriage disintegrated. He’d gone years during which his lengthiest adult conversations occurred as he looked into the mirror while he was shaving. “Gabby never got over him,” he muttered.

Fifteen years ago, when Cal headed back to college after what had amounted to the best and worst summer of his life, he’d assumed that if he ever returned to Honeyford, he’d find Gabby married with kids, a home, a PTA membership. Her husband, he figured, would love her, but would have no clue as to how lucky he was to be part of the Coombs clan.

Cal would have known.

For five years—from the time he was thirteen until he’d gone off to college—Cal had spent every minute he could on the Coombses’ farm, making himself too useful for anyone to complain about his constant presence, studying every detail of normal family life as if there’d be a pop quiz at the end of each week.

He’d met two of Gabby’s brothers in wood shop at school, and they’d invited him home one afternoon to hang out. Their mother, Nancy, had made an enormous platter of sandwiches as a snack—not even for dinner, which had astounded him. At that time in his life, he was lucky to scrounge up enough food for a single daily meal at home. Nancy had insisted they all wash their hands before they touched a bite. While her sons had rolled their eyes and protested, their perpetually smiling mother had kept up a running commentary about the baseball jerseys she had mended that day, the old clothes she’d boxed and wanted her sons to drop off at the church, and the barn dance she would like them to attend, because “Lord knows your wives will thank me someday.” Cal had listened to the woman’s every word and followed her instructions without a peep.

For years he had wondered whether such a family existed outside of television reruns. After he’d found them, and even though they hadn’t belonged to him, he had known instantly that he wanted to be asked back again and again. And he had been. To this day, he counted what he had learned in the Coombses’ old farmhouse to be one of his greatest blessings.

Maybe you wanted Gabby so you could become a permanent part of the family. Maybe that’s all it ever was.

The old explanation, the one he’d been running through his head for years, cropped up again, and as always he played with it awhile, half-hoping he could make it ring true.

The thing was, that very first day on the farm he realized Gabby was someone special. His first clue had been when she’d admitted to her father, Frank, that she’d hidden one of their older lambs, Chester, until she could “talk some sense into” Frank and make him see that the little guy should be a pet, not a lamb chop. She spoke with persuasive passion and loyalty, claiming that vegetarianism would be better for the whole family. A few weeks later she saved a spider from the shoe her brother Ben had been about to hammer it with, and more times than Cal could count, Gabby showered the people in her sphere with a similar protectiveness. In school she befriended the new, the awkward and the adrift, pulling them into her circle of friends. She wasn’t one of the most popular girls, but she was well-liked.

Despite the fact that she’d never shown him quite the same level of concern, Cal felt drawn to the sensitive girl. He enjoyed feeling like one of her brothers and reminded himself that he didn’t want anyone treating him like some defenseless lamb or brainless bug, anyway, so who cared if sometimes she kept her distance? By the time he turned fifteen, however, he knew he was nursing a crush on Gabby. She represented something innocent and good. Something he wanted in his own life. Something that could change him.

At seventeen, he’d realized he didn’t stand a chance with her. In a million years he wouldn’t be able to measure up to the golden boy Dean Kingsley, whom Gabby appeared to love with a loyalty Cal would happily die to feel…from someone.

At eighteen, Cal graduated from high school, the first person in his family of drug addicts and wastrels to do so, and he graduated on the honor roll. He had a college scholarship, a student loan, a dorm room waiting for him and more self-esteem than ever in his life. And he still thought about Gabby.

So, when he found her crying in the gazebo in Doc Kingsley park after the July Fourth fireworks display, her spirit crushed because Dean had returned from college for the summer with a girlfriend on his arm, Cal claimed that exquisitely vulnerable moment for himself and became Gabby Coombs’s first lover. He and Gabby had been two young people hungry to be held.

It had been an aching, tender, heartbreaking night… each of them wanting someone who didn’t return the feelings.

Cal’s steps slowed as he realized he was abreast of King’s Pharmacy, the business Dean’s father had owned. Dean had worked here through high school. And Gabby had gone in on one fabricated excuse or another every chance she’d gotten.

Turning toward the window with its large gold lettering, Cal noted the sign that read, Dean Kingsley, Pharmacist on Duty. The golden boy had not disappointed. Cal shook his head. “You could have had her if you’d crooked your finger.”

In the morning sun, Cal studied his reflection in the glass. Well-groomed, well-dressed and, when he wasn’t acting like a petulant imbecile, well-spoken; he was a far cry from the boy he’d been. Back then, he’d been a struggling youth with a messy past, and he doubted that anyone, including Gabby’s parents and brothers, would have preferred him over Dean Kingsley as her boyfriend. Against the bright light of the doctor’s perfect son, Cal hadn’t been able to shine at all.

Turning away from the pharmacy, Cal strode up the street. Some of the best advice he’d ever gotten had come from Gabby’s own grandfather. Max was the only person Cal had ever told about his confusing feelings for Gabrielle. He’d even considered turning down his scholarship so he could remain in Honeyford, near her.

Begged for a clue about how to claim Gabby’s attention, Max had put a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Son, if you keep one foot in the past and one in the future, you’re going to piss all over today. Just keep moving.”

Sound advice. There had been more, but that was the plainspoken guidance Cal had followed.

He planned to follow it again now.

His heart both hardened and softened as he thought of Minna, his beautiful, smart, talented, anxious daughter, who, so far, had been as unlucky in love as Cal. He had returned to Honeyford to give Minna the family they hadn’t been able to build in Chicago. The Coombs clan was the example he wanted to emulate.

He couldn’t afford another episode like today’s. He’d been rude and insinuating to the Coombses’ only daughter, a woman with whom he’d had no contact in fifteen years. What business was it of his whether she was staying, going or planning a trip to the moon?

Cal would die for his daughter. With a failed marriage to her mother, and no role models among his own relations, he required the Coombses’ guidance on how to create a successful, stable family.

If that meant killing off the last vestiges of his fantasies about Gabby, so be it.

By eight-thirty on Friday evening, only five hardy souls remained at the Honeyford Days Fourth of July Celebration Committee meeting. Unseasonably sultry June weather and Vernon Reynaud’s refusal to contribute to “wasteful government spending” by turning on the air-conditioning in the community center had considerably thinned their ranks. Gabby and Lesley remained, however, Lesley doodling idly on a yellow legal pad, and Gabby eyeballing the Honey Bunz—puffy croissant-style pastry balls with a crunchy honey coating—donated for the committee’s sustenance by Honey Bea’s bakery.

“No, leave it. We’re having dessert later,” Lesley whispered as Gabby’s fingers snaked toward a Honey Bunz.

“Right. Thanks.” She snatched her hand back, but holy sugar rush, Batman, did she long for the distraction of a quality insulin surge. She’d been horribly depressed since this morning.

“How late can you stay out tonight?” she whispered to her sis-in-law.

“Probably until ten,” Les whispered back. “I warned Eric I’d be late. He’s at your parents’ with the girls. What’s the matter with you? You keep kicking the table leg.”

“Are we still discussing the plans for Honeyford Days or have we decided to adjourn?” Flo Bixby raised her rickety voice above the irresponsible extraneous chatter in the room.

“Adjourn, I beg you,” Lesley muttered under her breath, but she rallied for the cause, smiling nicely at Flo and offering a succinct update on her choreography for Honeyford, A Retrospective in Dance, being presented by the Dancing Honeybees Senior Tappers.

As the secretary for tonight’s meeting, Gabby dutifully took notes, but her mind was a million miles away. She had a plan for The Radical Improvement of Gabrielle Coombs, a plan she intended to begin instituting immediately, and, forgive her, but plotting her transformation trumped working on yet another Independence Day lollapalooza. After this morning, she’d like to ignore July Fourth and its loaded memories altogether.

Cal’s reappearance and his pointed comments had whipped up a tumultuous sea of self-recriminations inside her. She’d been pretty successful over the years at burying the memory of the July Fourth when she’d lost her virginity to Cal Wells, but after his visit to Honey Comb’s, images from that long-ago night had been forming in her mind, growing sharper and clearer all day.

She recalled vividly, for example, that he’d found her in the dark shelter of the Doc Kingsley Park gazebo, sitting all alone, yielding to pitiful tears that had poured down her cheeks and trickled like brine into her mouth. The brackish flavor only partially masked the bitterness of Dean’s announcement that he was serious about the lithe beauty he’d brought home from college, someone he had known less than a year.

Gabby had spent five times that long trying to make Dean see her as a romantic possibility.

When the July Fourth fireworks had died down and most everyone filed out of the park, Gabby curled up on the gazebo bench and gave in to silent sobs that stabbed her abdomen. Time seemed irrelevant at that point, but she didn’t think she’d been there too long when a voice reached her, so soft and close that she jumped.

“Don’t cry.”

She’d turned to see Cal climbing the gazebo steps, his angular features tense in the moonlight. His plea, pained and earnest, only made her cry harder, however, and after a moment he’d slid onto the bench beside her. “Damn it, Gabby, don’t…”

She’d felt his strong arm curl around her shoulders, the unexpectedness of the gesture temporarily interrupting the flow of her tears. Other than the times when she cut his hair or he helped her with chores around the farm, they didn’t touch.

Through the shadows in the gazebo, she’d looked at him, her heart breaking, lips wobbling.

“What can I do?” he’d whispered.

A tsunami of hurt and frustration and regret and need had tossed her heart around like a piece of driftwood. Wetly, she’d blinked then pleaded with no forethought whatsoever, “Kiss me…”

“Stop kicking the table.” Lesley shoved an elbow into Gabby’s ribs.

“Sorry.” Heat flooding her cheeks, Gabby looked down at the notes she was supposed to be taking. Some secrets were too big to tell even your very best friend.

It took another half hour for the meeting to wrap up and then Gabby grabbed Lesley’s arm, hustling her to the diner, where they grabbed their favorite booth in the back and gave their order to Opal, who was hard of hearing and generally handed her ticket book to regular customers so they could write their own orders. She soon returned with a pot of decaf, a slab of marionberry pie and two forks.

“Oh, Mama, that’s good,” Lesley purred in appreciation.

Gabby picked up her fork. “You haven’t even tasted it yet.”

“I’m not talking about the pie, innocent child.” Lesley nodded pointedly toward the counter, where a lone man sat, his large hands cupped around a mug of coffee.

Gabby squinted. “Isn’t that the new pastor at Honeyford Presbyterian?”

“Yessiree. Pastor Keith. Single Pastor Keith.”

“Keith doesn’t sound like a pastor’s name,” Gabby commented, apropos of nothing, but grateful to have a moment before she launched into her own topic. Stabbing a few marionberries and a piece of crust, she moaned at the deliciousness.

“He doesn’t look like a pastor, either,” Lesley mused. “He looks like he should be on a TV show called Sex In The Small Town. Or Desperate Worshippers.” She waggled her brows.

Gabby put a hand over her mouth to trap the berries that nearly spilled out. “You’re ogling a man of the cloth? I’m telling Eric.”

“I’m not ogling him for me, you ninny.” Lifting her fork, she jabbed the tines at Gabby.

Gabby leaned forward, whispering fiercely. “You think I should date the minister of Honeyford Pres? Are you kidding? I grew up in that church. If we ever got serious, I’d picture half the choir in our bedroom, singing ‘Amazing Grace.’”

“Or ‘Glory Hallelujah.’”

“Lesley!” Gabby shook her head at her irreverent sister-in-law.

“He’s not a priest, Gabs. He can have sex. And FYI, so can you.” Abandoning the fork, she snatched a few tiny containers of creamer and laced her coffee, eyeing Gabby with barely concealed impatience. “So what about it?”

“No! I told you—”

Lesley waved a hand. “Forget the gorgeous man of God.” She took a fortifying sip of decaf. “I mean sex. What’s your excuse for not having any?”

Gabby squirmed, ironically feeling as if her best friend had caught her in the act, not out of it. “How do you know I’m not having any?”

Lesley slapped the table as if she’d heard a good joke. “Please.”

Gabby’s glance skittered away, a mouse hoping the cat one foot away might not notice her.

“I love you, Gabs,” Lesley said, sighing. “You know I’d never say anything to hurt you, but we’ve reached critical mass. I didn’t say anything while there was still a chance that Dean might…”

“I know, I know.” Plopping her elbows on the table, Gabby covered her eyes with her hands then peeked around to make sure no one they knew was nearby, but Les would not have spoken if there had been. Gabby knew her sister-in-law truly did have her best interests at heart. “If it comforts you any, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’m in a rut I have to get out of. And I am. I have a plan. But first, I need to tell you something. I need to tell someone…”