Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(42)
“She thinks you’re experiencing…” His bushy brows furrowed as he tried to think of something. “Situational depression.”
“What the holy f*ck is that?”
“She showed me a book about it, and, I have to say, you have some of the symptoms, and I—”
He pushed back, practically knocking over the chair. “You know what I have, Nino? Situational anger. Seriously royal pissed-offedness that I am f*cking helpless to get my own kid. And you know what else frosts my situational ass? The only woman I ever loved is dead. I think you know how that feels.”
This time Nino couldn’t even swallow. His eyes filled up as he stood. “You’re damn right I do. It feels like…like…” He fisted his ham hocks and punched his barrel chest. “This is broken and bleeding red-hot misery.”
“Go easy,” Gabe warned. “You crack that feeble chest, where the hell would I be without you?” He scooped up his plate, more for something to do than a favor for the cook. “And tell that woman to stick her nose in the business I pay her to stick her nose in, which isn’t mine.”
“You don’t think you’re depressed?”
He couldn’t even conjure the words to deny that moronic question hotly enough. “I don’t know what that shit is, Nino. I’m…I’m impotent.”
“Oh dear, that’s—”
“Not literally.” Though he couldn’t remember the last time being with a chick was anything but a physical release. Maybe…five years. Since he’d last seen Isadora.
He yanked the dishwasher door open with so much force it was a wonder the thing didn’t go flying. “I mean I can’t do anything. Do you know what it’s like to have to send my pal and my little sister to do the job I should be doing? It sucks balls, I tell you. But if I get killed, then that kid won’t have a mother or a father. I can’t do that to him.” He turned to Nino, knowing his own expression was probably as pained as his grandfather’s. “So, excuse the f*ck out of me if I don’t want to look at pink flowers when I drag my sorry ass out of bed to face another day in this shithole that I moved to so I could be closer to her before I knew she was…” Dead. Dead. Dead. “Gone.”
Nino blinked. And, damn it, a tear almost fell out of his watery eyes. “This child could give you a new life.”
“Christ knows I could use one.” He stuck his fingers in his hair and dragged hard, but that didn’t pull the misery out. “I’m going out.”
“Like, for the night? Maybe that’s a good idea, grandson. Stop into that Toasted Pelican and meet a lady. You need—”
“I don’t need a lady.”
“Somebody to just get your mind off things.”
“A substitute,” he muttered. “Which is what every woman will be from now until the day I close up shop and head to hell.”
He marched out the back door, ignoring the call of his makeshift gym, his shirtless body, and bare feet. He ran.
He ran through the stupid gardens with too many pink flowers—especially those things that looked like lilies and smelled like hot nights in Cuba. Hibiscus. Isadora used to put them in her hair.
Crushing the memory, he headed to the resort road and down to the beach with too many bright umbrellas and, of course, a picture-perfect sunset that could make the most miserable person happy.
But not him. He didn’t know what the hell situational depression was or meant or how it felt or how long it would last. But he sure as hell didn’t like the darkness of his soul and didn’t need to give it a name other than loss. Frustration. Agony.
Love.
God, he’d loved her so hard. He turned away from the umbrellas and the happy resort people, heading to where the sand was far less populated. He jogged in the soft stuff because it was a challenge, ignoring the stabs of stones and broken shells on the bottoms of his feet. He heard his own breath and felt his blood pump and waited for some chemical release in his brain that would numb the pain.
He passed a couple walking hand in hand, throwing some mental shade at them for being so lucky. A father and daughter picking seashells. He turned away so he didn’t stare at them.
There was no one else for another hundred feet, except a woman in a long black beach cover-up, walking slowly, bending to pick up shells. She stood and looked out at the sunset, brushing some blond hair off her face and…
Gabe slowed his momentum ever so slightly. That gesture. That move.
Damn it, would he go through life seeing her in every woman…but not seeing her at all?
She walked to the water’s edge, her shoulders squared, but her gait was long and even and…familiar. Come on, Rossi! You gotta stop.
She glanced to her side as he approached on a run, doing the slightest double take, then looking away. His spy training kicked in as he summed her up and figured out her life in one half-second glance.
Thirties, a little too skinny, probably one of the bridesmaids for the weddings they were always having at this place. Pretty enough, too proud to accept the nose job her father offered when she was fifteen.
He ran closer, and she stole the slightest look, one so sly a less-well-trained spy wouldn’t have noticed it, but she was checking him out. Comparing him to the best man her sister was trying to set her up with, no doubt.