His Answered Prayer. Lois Richer
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he looked at me.”
Still does, Blair wanted to yell. She quelled that schoolgirl response.
“I never understood why his Hollywood buddies didn’t offer him a job. He’s every woman’s dream man.” Clarissa giggled. “Except mine, of course. Wade’s the one I dream of.”
“Lucky Wade.” Blair covered a rush of feelings by asking Clarissa innumerable questions about her pregnancy, her husband of almost one year, her readymade family. Anything to keep the talk off of Gabe.
“You’re stalling, Blair. Trying to throw me off the scent. That’s always a good sign. I guess I’d better let you go so you can think about Gabe some more.” Clarissa chuckled at her mumbled protest. “Keep me posted,” she ordered before she rang off.
“As if there’s anything to keep her posted on!” Blair said to herself. She emptied her cold tea into the sink and concentrated on work.
“So this is where you’re hiding out?”
Blair whirled, shocked as much by the low, amused tones as by the sound of his rich, full voice echoing among the rafters of her bee barn.
“I wasn’t hiding,” she disagreed. “I have work to do. Unlike some people I could mention. Are all the little peons at Polytech too busy to miss you, Gabe?” She got back to dipping.
He didn’t take offense. Instead he walked up and watched what she was doing.
“If you want the truth, they don’t want me there anymore,” he told her, a mocking smile tilting his lips. “It seems that I’m bad for their thinking. Their productivity goes way up when the boss isn’t hovering around.” He watched as her hands suddenly became busier with a series dipper that held six wicks. “I didn’t know you sold dipped candles, too. Can I try that?”
Blair frowned, but after studying his face, she found no hint of mockery. He looked genuinely interested in her work.
“I suppose.” She showed him how to dip the wicks, then turn and redip to get the multicolored effects her customers loved.
Gabe tried several, lips pursed in concentration as he perfected the action. When she could stand the silence no longer, Blair took the rack out of his hand and set it aside.
“What do you really want, Gabriel?”
“I want my son.”
Blair knocked the rack on the floor, completely ruining all her work. She ignored the mess and the expense as she stared at him, searching for an answer in his unfathomable stare. The words rocked her to the core of her being. Why, when she’d known it would come to this?
“You want Daniel? But you don’t even know him!” She glared at him, daring him to deny it. “He’s a little boy who’s only ever known this place as his home. What kind of a father would rip him away from the only family he knows?” She chewed him out with her eyes, letting him see the contempt in them.
Gabe stayed where he was, his eyes watchful, swirling and slumbering with hidden menace as they studied her. “I don’t want to take him away from you, Blair. I know how much you mean to him. I lost my own mother when I was young. I know what that’s like.”
She frowned. What did that mean, and why was he suddenly opening up now? He’d never given her much insight into his past when they were engaged.
“I came to ask you something,” he murmured at last.
“Go ahead. I reserve the right to refuse an answer.” She wouldn’t let him see her fear. Please help me, God. Don’t let him take Daniel.
“Will you marry me?”
Blair wanted to laugh. Or cry. Something. Her eyes studied him, shocked by his quiet words. “Marry you? Why, for goodness sake?”
He looked innocent enough, his hands hanging at his sides, his feet crossed at the ankles as he leaned against the workbench in his natty designer clothes. Blair knew the pose was a disguise to conceal his thoughts. What was he planning?
“Why? Hmm.” He frowned for a few minutes, then smiled at her, his eyes lighting up in the teasing glint she’d almost forgotten. “To keep a promise I made once, over six years ago.”
“What promise?” She kept her gaze trained on him, refusing to fall for the diversion. “You never actually proposed. I did that, I think. You said okay.” She looked away from his eyes, noticed the wax hardening on the floor. She bent to scrape it off the tiles, glad to avoid the speculation in his curious stare as the heat of a blush burned her cheeks.
“Maybe I didn’t actually say the words, but I led you to believe that’s what I wanted, too. Now it’s pay-up time. So will you please marry me?” He waited till she’d straightened, then held out a black velvet box, and when Blair didn’t take it, snapped it open to reveal a glittering marquise diamond set on a narrow gold band.
“Please, Blair?”
Blair’s breath got tangled up in her throat, and she couldn’t draw fresh air into her lungs. She stared at the gorgeous ring and wondered how he’d known she had always loved that particular setting. It wasn’t what he’d chosen last time.
“I’m building a house, a home. That’s why I bought that land from your grandfather. I’d planned to move here anyway. I’m leaving Los Angeles. For a while, at least.”
“Why?” Her voiced croaked, her disbelief echoing around the room.
Gabe shrugged, but she could see him closing up against her probing, hiding his thoughts away, just as he’d always done. “Because I need to regroup, get a new game plan, figure out where I’m going from here.”
She snickered, tossing the lump of misshapen wax into the garbage. “Yeah, right! You’ve always known that, Gabriel. Straight to the top. Business first. The biggest, the best, the brightest. That’s always been your focus.”
“It was,” he admitted quietly. “But lately, it just doesn’t mean as much. I feel like I’m missing something.”
“So by marrying me, latching onto my son, you’ll fill in some piece of your life that you didn’t know existed seven years ago?” She shook her head, her ponytail flopping from side to side. “I don’t think so. Thanks anyway, but we don’t need your pity.”
“It isn’t like that.” He sighed, leaning his narrow hips against her counter. He set the ring on the workbench as if it didn’t matter a whit to him whether it got lost in the wax kettle or not. “Besides, he’s my son, too. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
There was something in his voice, some plaintive yearning that made her stop fiddling with the wax and look at him.
“Would you have believed me?” she murmured. She could have wept at the hurt that darkened his eyes and made his lips pinch together. But it couldn’t stop the questions.
“Can you guarantee that you wouldn’t have tried to take him away or talk me into giving him up for adoption?” She made herself continue in spite of the torture contorting his handsome features. “You said you never wanted a child.”
“That was before I knew, before I realized….” He stopped, brushed a hand across his eyes, scuffed a polished toe against the floor. “Maybe I’m just not saying this right.”
Unreasoning anger flooded her.
“You’ve said everything you need to say. You’ve done your duty, Gabe. Don’t worry, I’ll tell Mac you offered. But no, I won’t marry you so you can try out your hand at playing father.” She saw his mouth tighten and hurried on.
“Daniel is the most important thing in the world to me. I love him, and I won’t let you hurt him. You don’t want a gold digger for a wife, or the encumbrance of a child in your life. Remember?”
When he winced at the repetition of his own words, Blair felt a stab of shame. But she wouldn’t