Comfort And Joy

“Take the wagon,” she said, trying to regain her composure. “Don’t worry about getting it back to me today. I won’t need it until spring, when I’ll use it to carry my seedlings from the nursery.” Oh, great. Now she was babbling. What had gotten into her? Besides three pairs of blue eyes that said they needed relief from their recent experiences, even if one pair—his eyes—said he didn’t need it from her.

“Have fun!” she said, trying to sound positive, wondering why she was so disappointed he didn’t want her company. “If I see any of the boys’ classmates, I’ll be sure to bring them over for introductions.”

She turned to leave, but Justin stopped her. “Teacher! Are we going to get our faces painted?”

“Your dad will take you.”

“But I wanna see your face painted like a pumpkin.”

“Maybe Ms. Marshall has plans to meet other friends,” Gabriel said.

“No,” she replied, without thinking. “I mean…I’m flexible.”

“Come with us,” Justin urged. “Pretty please with gumbo on top.”

Gabriel still looked uncomfortable, but he seemed to soften. “How can you refuse a ‘please’ with gumbo on top?”

“Sounds messy,” she said. Almost as messy as stepping beyond the absolutely professional with the father of two of her students. “But yummy.”

“Then lead the way.”

She did, as the mayor, standing high on City Hall’s steps, bullhorn in hand, exhorted those participating in the race to assume their positions at the starting line.

“When the race starts,” she warned the boys, “there’ll be a big bang. It always makes me jump. But it’s just the starting gun, letting the racers know they can begin to run.”

“Noise doesn’t bother them,” Gabriel said, his voice low but bitter. “They’ve gotten used to close quarters and too little peace and quiet over the past twenty-seven months.”

Twenty-seven months. Not rounded down to two years. As if each month was etched painfully into his memory. Distinct. Unforgettable. Now, that just wasn’t fair. Her heart went out in sympathy.

When they approached the face-painting station, Jessie Nix and Sheria Hobson—middle-schoolers now—came forward, paint palettes in hand. “Hey, Ms. Marshall!” they chorused, as Sheria looked at Gabriel. “Is this your boyfriend?”

“Sheria!” Olivia felt her cheeks tingle.

“Oops! My bad!” The girl dimpled with mischief and then shot Jessie a knowing look, which Jessie returned.

The girls knelt by the boys in the wagon. “Twins! Cool!” said Jessie. “Are you gonna let us paint your faces?”

“Can you paint Spider-Man?” Justin asked.

“I think he’d take too long, and you’d miss the fun,” Sheria replied. “But we can do Spidey’s web. Okay?”

Both boys nodded vehemently, and the girls got to work.

“It’s cold and it tickles!” Justin exclaimed.

“Want me to stop?” Jessie asked.

“Nope. Ms. Marshall said it’ll make me tough.”

Olivia glanced at Gabriel and found he was staring at her. His intense gaze caught her off balance, and so she was unprepared for the signal beginning the race.

Not far from them, the starter’s gun cracked.

With an indecorous squeak, she jumped, stubbed her toe on the curb and fell against Gabriel’s chest. He was rock solid and smelled just good enough that in an instant she stopped thinking of him as the father of two of her students, or even as a childhood friend, and instead thought of him as a man. Plain and simple.

Although he definitely wasn’t plain, and the situation sure wasn’t simple. On top of which, the crowd pressing closely around them made it impossible to extricate herself.

In Katrina’s aftermath, Gabriel had thought he was immune to the unexpected, but surprise didn’t describe how it felt to find Olivia Marshall up against him. With so many layers of cold-weather clothing separating them, you’d think he wouldn’t be able to feel her heat. But he did. Or maybe it was his own.

For more than two years, he’d been so busy eking out an existence for the boys and himself that he’d had no time for women. No time to acknowledge that he sorely missed their company. No time, now, to separate, as you might under normal circumstances, the simply social or the mildly amusing from the purely physical. He’d been without for so long, his reaction automatically skipped to physical want.

Olivia felt damn good.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding breathy and smelling of peppermint. She struggled to pull away, but the crowd pushed them closer.

He could kiss her, she was that close. And if this had been a New Orleans Mardi Gras, no one would even blink. But this was the Turkey Trot in Hennings. A different atmosphere altogether.

“Daddy! Look at us!”

As Gabriel turned to look at his sons, his mouth grazed Olivia’s forehead and created a spark of static electricity. She gasped and managed to free herself from his embrace—because embracing her was what he found himself doing. What he found himself wanting to do, until he noticed the openmouthed gazes of two adolescent girls, paint palettes and hand mirrors frozen in midair.

“Did you trip?” Justin asked Olivia, innocent curiosity lighting his face.

“Y-yes…I’m afraid I did.”

The girls dissolved in not-so-innocent giggles.

“Because your shoe’s untied!” Justin exclaimed as Jared pointed to Olivia’s hiking boot, its lace dangling.

“That must be the reason,” Olivia replied, red-cheeked.

Gabriel really couldn’t have said why he bent to tie her shoe. Reflex, perhaps. Because in the past four years he’d tied so many, at the twins’ insistence. Anyway, as he bent on one knee and she did the same, their heads met in a painful bump.

“Ow!” Justin shouted in empathy.

“I second that,” Olivia said, rubbing her head.

“Do you two need ice?” one of the face-painting girls asked.

Gabriel rubbed the already rising lump on his forehead. “That would be a good idea.”

“We’ll get some,” the second girl offered, and both headed for the concession stand.

“If this was a typical November,” Olivia remarked, tying her boot, then rising, “we could stick our heads in a snowbank.”

“They have banks for snow?” Justin asked.

Gabriel thought of the difficulty of explaining this concept to kids who’d been raised in a warm Southern climate. “I think this is something that gets explained in kindergarten.”