One Night with her Bachelor(26)

“You’re always around. Always. I can’t do anything without you asking if I’m okay. Dad wasn’t like that. He let me do things on my own. You don’t let me be normal. That’s all I want—just to go hang out at Aunt Lily’s or with my friends and be normal again.”

Oh, God. Everything she’d feared she was becoming was reflected in his young eyes. Her fear was smothering him, making his dad’s house seem preferable to hers. She had to get a grip on all the worries consuming her because, no matter how hard she worked not to let them touch her son, they were infecting his spirit as much as hers. If she didn’t face her fears, she could lose him altogether.

She forced herself to give Gabriel a smile. “Sounds like I’m free Wednesday after six. And I apparently like Italian food and movies, as long as they aren’t scary. Any of that sound good to you?”

“All of it,” he said, his voice gruff and his eyes full of kindness.

God, he was beautiful. Molly glanced away so she didn’t throw herself into his arms. Beau was still on stage, and Buck was calling out for more bids. “Two thousand two-fifty…”

Lily’s voice shouted over the crowd. “Ten thousand dollars!”

Molly’s heart stopped. She spun in her chair and found her friend on the other side of the room, but Lily refused to meet her gaze.

Ten thousand dollars? Lily didn’t have that kind of money. She couldn’t. She worked as an office assistant, lived in a small apartment. How on God’s green earth could she bid that much… and for a man she couldn’t stand being in the same room with?

Molly felt sick. If Lily had organized this whole thing as a pretense to give her a whopping amount of cash she surely couldn’t afford to give away, Molly would be furious.

She needed to find her friend pronto. “Would you two excuse me a second?”

Gabriel nodded, and she walked all through the saloon looking for Lily to no avail. She’d disappeared.

Rumors of a heavy snowfall began rumbling through the room, so Molly returned to Josh and Gabriel. “We’d better go soon, but I want to thank everyone first. Josh, you should come up there, too.”

Buck had just drawn the last auction ticket when she asked if she could say a few words. He motioned for her to step onto the stage, and she hesitated, wishing there were a way to get Josh on stage without an ordeal that could embarrass him. Before she had a chance to think about it, Gabriel was lifting Josh, chair and all. Her heart seized as her baby and his chair were momentarily airborne, but a second later he was rolling over to face the crowd with her.

People were drunk and rowdy, but a shush rolled through the crowd until she had everyone’s attention.

“Boy,” she said, “this feels strange. My usual audience is about half your height, and they have their fingers in their noses.”

Everyone laughed—except Scooter Gibbons, who took his finger out of his nose and furtively glanced around to see if anyone had noticed.

“I wanted to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I can’t tell you how much tonight means to me and Josh. It’s humbling, what you all have done for us. Thank-you seems so inadequate, but we truly do thank you. Don’t we, Josh?”

He grabbed the mic from her. “Yep.” Then he handed it back.

Ten-year-olds: so eloquent when they wanted something, so minimal in their gratitude. She rolled her eyes at the crowd, and they chuckled in understanding.

“It’s no secret that this auction wasn’t my idea. There’s one person in particular who deserves recognition for putting it together. Lily, can you come up here?” She scanned the crowd, hoping the higher vantage point would help her track Lily down. “Has anyone seen Lily?”

Cora Bartlett, one of the busiest of the town’s busybodies and leader of a gaggle of gossips whom Lily had dubbed the Rottweilers, shouted, “Probably trying to find an easy way to come up with that ten grand she bid on Beau!”

That did it. Something inside her snapped. “Cora, I don’t think that was a very kind or generous thing to say, do you?”

The room went uncomfortably silent, and Molly swallowed hard. “Thank you all again. We really appreciate it.”

She mumbled her gratitude into the microphone one last time, handed it back to Buck and gave Gabriel a silent plea to help her get Josh down. He did, murmuring, “Hey there, hell cat. You might want to calm down before you get behind the wheel.”

“I’ll calm down when I’ve killed Cora. And Lily.”

He whistled long and low. “I don’t blame you for Cora, but Lily? Why don’t you wait till you’ve heard her side of the—”

“She shouldn’t have done it.” She rounded on him, poking his chest with every frustrated sentence. “I am not pathetic, Gabriel. I am not a charity.”

He captured her finger. “Hey. I know that.”

“Yeah? Then why did you build us a ramp? Why become my fairy gas-mother?”

His cheeks colored, as if his blood could acknowledge the truth even if his mouth wouldn’t.

“I am not too nice to take care of my son. I’m a Montanan and a single mom. Which of those things makes you think I’m helpless?”

“Mom, people are staring.”

She blinked and looked around. Embarrassment washed over her. “Sorry. I’m…” So very humiliated. “We should go. Bye, Gabriel.”