One Night with her Bachelor(2)

But tonight Josh was going camping on Copper Mountain with his scout troop, one last gasp of summer before school started on Tuesday. And that meant it was Mama time.

Not that she’d call it that when she got to Gabriel’s cabin. Hi, want some Mama time? Mama wants some time with you! Talk about a turnoff.

At least, she hoped he didn’t have any mama fetishes.

As Josh hoisted himself into the truck, slammed the passenger door and started chattering about spending the night in a tent, she turned the key in the ignition and let her mind find peace and stillness in her fantasies about the way things would go down—ahem—tonight.

Gabriel had grown up on her street and been best friends with her brother, Scott. He was five years older than her, so they hadn’t overlapped in school, but he’d probably spent more time at her house than his own. And who could blame him? His family could’ve had their own reality TV show, while hers had been as boring as the Cleavers.

She’d worshiped Gabriel throughout her childhood, but he’d barely noticed her. He and Scott had spent almost every second together. They’d graduated together, enlisted in the Air Force together, and joined the elite force of combat search-and-rescue specialists together.

They’d even been together when Scott died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan last year. The only time they hadn’t been together was at Scott’s funeral, since Gabriel had also been wounded and was being treated in Germany.

She had no idea when he’d come back home. He hadn’t visited her or made his presence known. People had simply started sharing snippets of gossip whenever they saw her, as if she had the same claim on him her brother had. Did you hear Gabriel’s back? He’s moved up to his grandpa’s cabin on Copper Mountain, just outside the National Forest land. I don’t even think that place has electricity!

All summer she’d debated hiking out to his cabin to see how he was doing. He had to be grieving Scott’s loss as much as she was, and she wanted to see how he was recovering from his own injuries, whatever they were. According to Carol Bingley, Marietta’s most accomplished gossip, he walked a little stiffly but otherwise seemed fine. And if he needed prescriptions, he wasn’t getting them filled at Carol’s pharmacy, or the whole town would’ve known.

But something had held her back, a gut feeling he would’ve spotted her motives from a mile off. Pity for all he had to be suffering. Desperation to see his gorgeous face, hear his deep voice, smell his scent.

Gabriel wouldn’t welcome either her pity or her desperation, so she’d talked herself out of the trek time and again.

Molly hadn’t caught a glimpse of him until last week at the grocery store. She’d only gone in for milk, so she hadn’t picked up a basket. But then she’d remembered she was out of Josh’s favorite cereal. And she didn’t have enough sugar for her coffee in the morning, which meant she was liable to kill someone by lunchtime. Oh, and eggs—she needed eggs. As she’d grabbed everything, she’d experienced an irritating twitch in her lower belly that signaled the start of God’s monthly revenge on her distant ancestor for eating that dang apple. Unsure whether she had any tampons at home, she’d grabbed a small box and got in line at the checkout, realizing with a start that Gabriel stood right in front of her.

He hadn’t noticed her, a blessing for which she was grateful since she was wearing a T-shirt decorated with her former students’ handprints, and the tampon box was balanced precariously in her overloaded arms. He just stood there, looking fit, healthy, tall, and beautiful. But then the woman in front of him had frantically searched through her purse to find her wallet and pulled it out with such triumph that Gabriel had taken a hasty step back and bumped into her. She’d been so captivated by the broad sweep of his shoulders that her groceries had gone flying before she’d realized he’d moved.

The eggs had taken a suicide plunge onto his boots. The milk carton had exploded at her feet, soaking into the hem of her long skirt and creeping upwards. The sugar bag had hit the edge of the counter and torn before tumbling over and dumping granules into the milk and eggs. And the tampons had fallen onto his bag of carrots on the conveyor belt.

Her cheeks had burst into flames. She’d always wanted to be the kind of woman who could toss around tampons or condoms without giving a fig—a woman like her friend Lily, who came off as overflowing with confidence until you got to know her. But she wasn’t. Never had been. Bodies were private and bodily functions even more so. So she’d stood there frozen, wishing she could sink into the batter at her feet and die a thousand gloopy deaths.

But he simply gave her a sympathetic twist of his lips before picking up one of those plastic divider thingies, laying it down behind his groceries, and plunking her tampons on her section of the belt without a word. Like a true gentleman. A worldly gentleman who knew women got periods but wasn’t fazed by it—unlike that nimrod Scooter Gibbons behind her, who’d said loudly, “Someone get paper towels—oh, wait. Molly has her super-absorbency tampons for extra-heavy flow here. They should soak all that up.”

Gabriel’s clear green eyes had glared at Scooter, and he gave her another of his lip twitches that clearly said Ignore that idiot. You’re beautiful and sexy, and I’m not thinking of your flow at all.

Or something along those lines. Anyway, they’d shared a moment. They totally had. As a member of staff mopped up and handed them a roll of paper towels to wipe off their shoes, they’d connected in a zap of heat that should’ve turned the batter into a fully cooked cake.