Gabe (In the Company of Snipers, #8)(52)
He squeezed her shoulder. “You know what? Never mind. You’re worn out. You take it easy while me and the dogs run the riverbank for you. I’ll take a video of the whole thing. We’ll pop popcorn when I get back and make a regular movie night of it. Sound good?”
“I don’t know.” Whisper pushed her to her butt and settled into her lap like a poodle instead of the lumbering moose he was.
“Zack?” Gabe asked brightly, despite the stink-eye he was getting from his agent in charge. “Well? Can you hold down the fort or not? I won’t be gone long.”
Zack had a way of making a guy think he could kill them just by looking at them. He’d arch his left brow in a damned sharp spike. But not now. He grunted all the way to his toes in definite disapproval, but Gabe saw the hesitation through the tough guy routine.
He pushed the limit. “You said it yourself. If anyone can track Alex, it’s his dogs. If we’d done this a few days ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, would we?”
Zack stretched both arms behind his head, his forehead wrinkled up to his scalp. “What if they do? What then?”
“Then I’ll know he’s coming home someday,” Kelsey whispered. “And I can wait for him, Zack. You know Alex as well as I do. He’d never hurt me. He wouldn’t. He’ll come back for me.”
This gentle lady only wanted a shred of hope to hang onto. Zack didn’t seem too opposed to the idea, either, especially since the dogs had tracked their owner to those mysterious boot prints in record time. It didn’t hurt that Kelsey had just pinned him with her sad eyes, either. Who could resist?
He stalled.
Come on, big guy. Loosen up. Let me do this one little thing for her. Right damned now.
Finally, Zack offered her his arm. “Come on, Kels. You need to rest while he’s gone or you’ll be sick again.”
Gabe shot him a quick nod of thanks. One of these days he’d have to tell Zack about that revoked license. Not today. “Should we let Mark know what I’m doing?”
“I’ll take care of it. Just don’t take all day.”
Gabe winked at Kelsey. ”Remember? Movie tonight. My treat.”
Chapter Sixteen
In one day, this job had turned into one of her hardest.
Shelby couldn’t read the magazine articles in front of her nose. She wasn’t needed. And she certainly wasn’t in charge. Agent Lennox and Cartwright had made that clear. They seemed somehow in tune with Kelsey, and Shelby was the odd man out.
The nerve of Gabe to hug Kelsey while armed with those loaded guns of his. Yet he’d hugged her as if he’d never let her go. And she’d hugged him back and cried into his shirt, the last thing Shelby needed to watch. Everything she’d tried to do ended up being wrong or at least inadequate. Especially letting Kelsey look at all those old pictures.
Gah! I should’ve known better!
But that wasn’t what hurt the most. Listening to Kelsey explain how the simple act of breathing hurt—what should’ve been the automatic reflexive action of drawing air in and exhaling—brought the true nature of grief and loss home. Kelsey carried an invisible hole in her heart, still raw and weeping.
For that one moment, her pain was tangible, a wave of sorrow, and a wash of lost love that would never be again. If there were any way possible, Shelby would’ve reversed time and not pulled all those reminders of Mr. Stewart out of the closet. She would’ve come up with a diversion, anything to forestall dragging her kind patient through the anguish of missing her husband again.
And yet, what would it be like to love a man so deeply that your lungs didn’t want to take another breath without him? To be so smitten with your mate that you believed he surpassed all other males in the world, that you only had eyes for him even though he was gone? To ache so desperately, to need so intimately that you wanted to die instead of live without him?
Shelby set the stupid magazine aside. She’d worked hard to be independent, a strong woman in her own right and totally capable. She rented a comfortable apartment in a singles-only gated community in Silver Springs, drove the latest model, a new eco-friendly car, and had a good reputation as a home healthcare provider. True, it was a second chance after the debacle at the hospital, but she’d worked hard and she was good at it. Only—
Kelsey had so much more. She’d loved and been loved. No, make that adored. Any fool could see how much her dead husband had cherished her.
Shelby fingered the magazine cover, not seeing the glamorous starlet sprawled across the gossip rag. What would it feel like to be worshipped, loved so perfectly that living in this little cracker-box house with neighbors who didn’t take care of their yards or put their garbage receptacles away after garbage day, was—enough? Maybe more than enough? Maybe everything?
What had she said? There is no loved, only love?
Shelby stilled. Her heart pinched, constricting all she thought she knew about love right out of her.
The back door opened as the men and Kelsey trudged back in, the dogs, too. Shelby brushed her emotions off her face and lifted to her feet, prepared to get on with the business of doing what she did best. Putting on a happy face. Doing the best she could to make up for past mistakes. Trying harder.
She didn’t expect to run smack into the wall of Agent Cartwright’s muscled chest while Kelsey and Zack settled at the table behind him.