One Night with her Bachelor(29)

“It’s all right. Lily told me about the movies and she knows which parts to fast forward. And I figured you’d get something like a donut dinner. That’s why I’ve been stuffing you full of broccoli the last couple of days.”

Gabriel chuckled and shook his head in bafflement. He barely knew Lily, but the two women seemed so different he couldn’t figure out the root of their friendship. Something to ask Molly about, since he figured a lot of other topics were too emotional, too stressful.

Lily came and got Josh, and Molly changed her clothes and climbed into Gabriel’s truck. How long had it been since he’d driven around town with a woman who wasn’t his mom or sister? Had to have been before his last tour of duty in Afghanistan. His last tour ever.

He hadn’t noticed before how confined a truck’s cab was, even an extended cab like his. Molly shifted in her seat, and he figured she was as nervous as he was. He just had a hell of a lot more experience and training in how to mask it.

“I heard your sister was in town the other week.”

Gabriel snorted. “People do love to talk, don’t they?”

“Yeah. Mostly when they don’t have enough going on in their own lives. No one said anything bad about Camila—not to me, anyway. Just that she was visiting your mom, and isn’t it nice that she runs a camp for troubled teens.” She smoothed her hand over her knee. “I know it’s a long shot, but maybe you could ask her if she knows of some kind of adventure camp for kids with spinal injuries.”

He shot her a surprised look. “For Josh?”

She nodded. “I don’t think either of us is ready for it yet, but I don’t want his injuries to stifle who he really is.”

A strange, uncomfortable warmth filled his chest. “I can ask.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” She twisted to face him, drawing her knee up onto the seat. “Did you always want to join the Air Force?”

He grinned. “Twenty questions?”

“Just trying to get to know you a little better.”

“I can’t really remember wanting to do anything else. I always loved planes and helicopters. When I was a boy, I built model airplanes and pretended I could fly away to exciting places.” He’d mentally escaped his home life by gluing bits of plastic together. These days he worked with wood, but not much else had changed.

“It must’ve been tough.”

“Building models? Not really. They came with instructions.”

“No, I mean growing up like you did.”

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, and he tried to figure out if she was digging for information out of morbid curiosity or something else. “Lots of people have it far worse than I did.”

“I’m not trying to pry.” She conceded with a nod. “Okay, maybe I am. I’m just interested in you, that’s all.”

Something eased up inside him, some sealed-shut door blocking him from his childhood memories. Maybe because she’d been honest about her motivations. Maybe because he trusted she wouldn’t blab around town. Either way, he started talking before his brain could shut his mouth down. “It wouldn’t have been so hard if people had just let it go, stopped talking and speculating all the time.”

“My mom never told me much. I heard whispers, but people shut up when I came into the room, and I stopped asking questions.”

“What do you know?”

“Just that your mom was married to Aaron Wilder when she got pregnant with you and Camila.”

He stared at the road ahead. “Yeah. They lived on his family’s ranch—the one he lost a few years ago, when it was sold to that actress. My mom cooked for all the ranch hands. Wyatt was about two, I think, and Austin must’ve been one when she met my dad. He’d traveled up from Mexico City because he wanted to be a cowboy. He used to tell me and Mila stories of his cowboy days and how much he hated it. He was a city boy through and through. But being a cowboy was probably his equivalent of building model airplanes—a romantic fantasy life where he could do something totally different. Anyway, Mom doesn’t talk about it much except to say how lonely she was. Aaron worked hard, and she was on her own with two small kids. She and my dad just… connected, I guess. Nine months later, Mila and I were born looking like the perfect mix between them, and she broke down and told Aaron what she’d done.”

Her voice was soft when she said, “That must’ve been so tough.”

“Yeah—for her, for Aaron. I can’t even imagine how that must’ve hurt him.” He rubbed his chin. “Can you keep a secret?”

“You know I can or you wouldn’t be thinking of telling me one.”

He chuckled. “True. Aaron was the one who bought me the model airplanes I used to build. Not my dad. Not my mom. In fact, she thought I saved my pocket money and bought them myself.”

Molly’s lips parted in surprise. “Your mom’s ex-husband bought you toys?”

“They’re still married, just haven’t lived together since I was born. And yeah.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “He’s a nice man. He never blamed me and Mila for being born. He realized we had nothing to do with it. We were just caught up in the same scandal that had cost him a future with his wife.” His oldest half brother, Wyatt, on the other hand, had tormented him.