Baby Makes Three

“You look good,” Gabe said and it was such a lie, such an attempt to sweet-talk her, that she laughed. “You do,” he protested.

“Save the charm for someone else, Gabe.” Finally she pushed her shades up onto her head and looked her ex-husband in the eye. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

CHAPTER TWO

“AND—” HIS SMILE SEEMED a little brittle around the edges “—I think we both know you didn’t mean it.”

She arched her eyebrows in response. Oh, she’d meant it all right.

“What do you want, Gabe?”

“A guy can’t visit an old friend?”

She laughed outright. At him. At them. At this stupid little dance.

“Gabe, we were never friends.” The lie slipped off her tongue easily. It was better to pretend they had never been friends than to dwell on those memories, to give in to the sudden swell of feelings his presence stirred in her belly. “What. Do. You. Want?”

He ran his fingers through his too-long hair and scowled at her, the fierce look that always warned her he was running out of patience.

Good, she thought, get mad and leave like you always do.

She scowled back. She’d never been overly gracious—she was too busy for that—but in her time with Gabe she’d learned to be polite.

But not anymore. There was no one in her life to be polite to, so she had no practice.

And she wasn’t about to apologize. Not to him.

“I need you,” he said and she fought to keep herself from choking on a sound of disbelief.

“Gabe Mitchell at my door, begging.” She shivered dramatically. “Hell is getting colder.”

“Alice.” He sighed. “This isn’t easy for me. You know that. But I need you. Bad.”

His low tone hit her in the stomach and snaked down to her sex, which bloomed in sudden heat. Too familiar, those words. Too reminiscent of those nights together, when they’d needed each other so much, good sense got burned to ash.

“I really can’t imagine why,” she said, crossing one leg over another, and her arms came across her chest, giving him every signal to stop, to say goodbye and walk away.

But he didn’t and she wondered what was truly at stake here. The Gabe she knew did not fight and he never begged.

“I built the inn,” he said softly. “The one we always talked about.”

It was a slap. A punch in her gut. Her eyes burned from the pain and shock of it. How dare he? He’d walked away with her pride, her self-respect, her dreams of a family and now this.

She wanted to scream, just tilt her head back and howl at the pain and injustice of it all.

The inn. The home they’d dreamed of. He’d built it while she worked shifts grilling grade B steak and making nachos.

She let out a slow breath, emptying her body of air, so maybe the shell she was would just blow away on the wind.

“Good for you,” she managed to say through frozen lips and got to her feet. “I need to go.”

He stopped her, not by touching her—good God wouldn’t that be a disaster—but by getting in her way with his oversize body.

“It’s gorgeous, Alice, you should see it. I named it the Riverview Inn and it’s right on a bluff with the Hudson snaking through the property. You can see the river from the dining room.”

A mean anger seeped into her, culled from her crappy job, her hangover, her ruined life…even from the Dumpster. She didn’t need to be reminded of how much she’d lost and she really didn’t need to be brought face-to-face with how well Gabe had done.

“Like I said—” she didn’t spare the sarcasm “—bully for you. I’ll tell all my friends.” She ducked by him.

“I need a chef, Alice.”

She stopped midstride, snagged for a second on a splinter of hope. Of joy.

Then she jerked herself free and laughed, but refused to meet his earnest blue eyes. Was this real? Was this some kind of trick? A lie? Were the few remaining friends in her life setting up some elaborate intervention?

“Me? Oh, man, you must be in some dire straits if you are coming to me—”

“I am. I am desperate. And—” he inclined his head to the Dumpster, the plaza parking lot “—from the look of things…so are you.”

The bravado and sunglasses didn’t work. He saw right through her and it fueled her bitter anger.

“I’m fine,” she said, stubbornly clinging to her illusions. “I need to get back to work.”

“I want to talk to you about this, Alice. It’s a win-win for both of us.”

“Ah, Gabe Mitchell of the silver tongue. Everything is a win-win until it all goes to shit. No.” She shook her head, suddenly desperate to get away from him and his magnetic force that always spun her in circles. “I won’t be your chef.”

She walked around him, careful not to get too close, not to touch him, or smell him, or feel the heat from his arm.

“I know where you live, Alice,” he said, going for a joke, trying to be charming. “Look, I just want to talk. If you decide after we talk that it’s not for you, fine. That’s totally fine. But maybe you know someone—”

“I don’t.”

“Alice.” He sighed that sigh that weighed on her, that, during their marriage, had filled the distance between them and pushed them further apart. The sigh that said, “Don’t be difficult.”

“I don’t,” she insisted. “I don’t know anyone who would want to live out there.”

“Except you?” Gabe said.

“Not anymore,” she lied. “My break is over. I have to go.”

“I want to talk. Can I meet you at home?” He caught himself. “At your house?”

Painful sympathy leaped in her. He’d loved their house, had craved a home, some place solid to retreat to at the end of the day. He’d finished the basement and hung pictures and shelves and repaired the bad plumbing like a man in love. And in the divorce he’d given it to her, shoved the lovely Tudor away like a friend who’d betrayed him.

“The locks are changed,” she said.

“I’m sure they are, but I’ll bet you a drive out to the inn that you still keep the key under that ceramic frog you bought in Mexico.” He smiled, that crooked half grin. Charm and bonhomie oozing off him and she wanted to tell him no matter how well he thought he knew her, he didn’t.