Page 19 of If This is Love

The room was suffocatingly silent and excruciatingly awkward for a moment, and I didn’t dare look up from my shredded hands. Maybe he didn’t hear me. Maybe if I just pretended I didn’t say it…

“For someone who just ate shit on concrete,” he started to say in that deep, cozy voice of his that was apparently kryptonite to me and made me look up at him. He narrowed one eye playfully at me, adding, “you sure are apologizing a lot, Ruth.” His bottomless eyes distracted me long enough to keep me from replying, and then he took my hands and turned my palms up. “Try to keep ‘em like this until I can bandage them.”

“Sorry,” came my knee-jerk reply.

That earned me a half-smile that was so sweet I couldn’t help smiling back.

“It’s getting a little old, Ruth.” He blinked one of his eyes and then looked back down at my foot, slipping off my sock.

No. That wasn’t ablink.

No, that was awink.

Hewinkedat me after I called himhandsome, all the while we were alone in his house and he was touching my leg and taking off my sock, and lordy, lordyLord.

Back in my old church, the elders would surely have rained hellfire down on me for this one single incident alone.

The only response I could think of was yet another apology, so I just kept my mouth shut. Especially since my apologies had led to a little flirtatious exchange. I’dneverflirted with anyone other than Michael, and I had no business flirting with a man who was somehow involved with Skye’s charity. Skye was myboss. And I hadn’t been touched by a man in seven years, so I was ripe for all sorts of temptation.

After Gabriel had fastidiously wrapped my ankle as well as a doctor could have, he placed his hand on my calf again, and a fireball of strange, heartache-y, painful, temptinglustshot through me out of nowhere. It was so powerful and sudden that I flinched, and he gave me that same concerned look below his knitted brow.

“You okay, Ruth?”

“Yes, I’m s—” I started to say, pausing as my gaze drifted to the shelves again. Maybe it would help if I just didn’t look at him. “Just a little sore.”

“Yeah, you’re probably going to be for the next day or two.” He reached to grab a throw pillow off the couch, set it on the coffee table next to him, and then rested my wrapped foot on it. Opening the large first aid kit, he pulled out a little bottle of peroxide and ripped open a package of gauze. “Not just with these injuries. A fall like that can jack you up in a number of ways.”

“Yeah,” I echoed, watching him soak the gauze with peroxide.

He leaned forward and cupped the base of my neck, and I froze up. “This shouldn’t sting, but it’ll be cold.”

His eyes were close enough to my face to give me a good look at their depth, and they were so mesmerizing that I couldn’t think of anything to say but, “It’s okay.”

Gabriel pressed the soaked gauze to my cheek, and it didn’t hurt, but it wascold. I flinched at that—maybe more because of my nerves about finding him so attractive, but never mind that—and his thumb lightly rubbed my skin where it was resting just below my earlobe. “Sorry. I hope it doesn’t actually sting after I said that.”

“It doesn’t,” I replied hastily. “I really appreciate all of this, so you don’t need to be saying sorry either, Gabriel.”

“Only my mama andMizzSunny McCarthy-Beauregard call me that.” Another ghost of a smile tipped up one corner of his mouth while he continued to dab my cheek. “It’s just Gabe.”

Instant mortification whooshed through me, my cheeks going hot, and here came some more apologies. “Oh myheavens, I am so sorry.” I scoffed quietly and cast my eyes down so I didn’t have to look at the silvery pools of his eyes. “I knew that. I remember that now. Idoknow you. I met you and your handsome boy at Chloe Laurent’s meeting at the bar earlier this week. I was so flustered about being late and forgot everyone’s name almost the second Skye introduced me.” My mouth was parched all of a sudden. “I saw it on your awards over there on the shelf.”

“All good, Ruth,” he said, looking at my cheek.

Since he was staring at my cheek, I took the opportunity to stare at his face up close. He really was a handsome man. Dark hair and pale eyes like he had were always attractive to me, though Michael had dark brown eyes. Gabe,notGabriel, also had a bit of a beard, whereas Michael was always clean-shaven. Then again, Michael was pretty young when he passed, as was I at the time, so it’s possible he might’ve had a beard by now. And I wouldn’t be in Gabe’s house with a rescue dog and road rash. I wouldn’t be in New Orleans at all.

Nevertheless, they were basically polar opposites in their appearance. And nevertheless, both were equally attractive to me.

Oh God help me.

I really needed something to distract myself from the fact that I was sort oflustingafter this very kind man, and his military background was a good topic to do just that.

“So you were a soldier?” I asked.

That caused him to flick his silvery gaze to my eyes. “Marine.”

“Right,” I said. “The military.”

His eyes flicked back to the gauze. “Marines aren’tsoldiers.”

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