More Than Neighbors

He took one last look as he started the engine, bothered by the knowledge that he wanted to see warmth again on Ciara’s face. That it would be easy for a man to get to crave the sight of that expression.

And there it was, just as he’d envisioned it, and the crack in his protective wall groaned a little as the damage done to it allowed further weakening.

He drove faster than he should have down their long, dusty driveway.

* * *

STARING IN DISMAY at the math problem Mark didn’t understand, Ciara wished she’d escaped to her workroom immediately after breakfast instead of making the mistake of lingering to ask if he needed any help. She’d mostly been okay with the seventh-grade math in the original curriculum, but once she downloaded the kind of work he’d already been doing in his advanced class, she was lost.

What’s more, this was the first major download she’d tried since discovering high-speed internet wasn’t available. In moving to such a rural location, they’d apparently lost a decade or two. Dial-up was torturous.

“This is geometry, isn’t it?” she said unhappily.

“Um...yeah.”

“Sarcasm is not appreciated.”

“Well, it’s about angles.”

“I can see that,” she snapped. It showed a shape—God help her, she didn’t even know what the shape was called—and wanted to know the sum of the angle measures in it. She’d taken geometry in high school and hated it. “You know, if you’re going to work on this stuff, I’ll have to review it in advance to be any help to you.”

“But Mom, it’s only eighth-grade math!” her son exclaimed.

Gee, and she hadn’t already felt stupid enough.

“Do you know how many years it’s been since I took this stuff?” she asked. “Things like percentages I use once in a while in real life. Geometry, never.”

“Oh.”

They both stared at the peculiar shape.

“Maybe Gabe knows the answer,” he suggested.

Because you had to know angles to shoot a Remington rifle?

“’Cuz he has this cool gauge that measures angles!” Mark said with new enthusiasm. “So he must understand them, right?”

“You have my blessing to ask.”

“Yeah!” He grabbed the worksheet and stuffed it into the daypack that already sat on the table. “It’s time for me to go anyway.”

“You’ve got the cookies?”

“You saw me put them in the pack.”

“Right.” Of course she had.

Anxious mother that she was, she walked as far as the front porch and stayed there while he pedaled down the driveway, turned right on the road then up Gabe Tennert’s nicely paved driveway. When he disappeared from sight behind the house, she figured he’d made it safely. Watson, nose pressed to the screen door, whined miserably. He’d wanted to go, and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t. Ciara shuddered at the thought of him in Gabe’s workshop.

He almost escaped when she opened the door, but swift use of her foot allowed her to slide inside and latch the door. “Not a chance,” she told him and went upstairs. He followed, of course, while Daisy lay at the bottom, watching sadly. She could barely handle the couple of steps from the back porch to the yard; a whole flight was out of her capability. Watson, on the other hand, would want to go in Ciara’s workroom, where he could do as much damage as he would in Gabe’s. The damage wouldn’t be as expensive, but Ciara couldn’t afford it.

She shut this door firmly in his face, too. He moaned but then subsided. As she plugged in her iron, she hoped her neighbor had a sweet tooth. Although she still found him alarming for reasons she hadn’t altogether figured out, ones that didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she also found him sexy, he’d so far been exceptionally nice to Mark. Oatmeal-raisin cookies were probably inadequate thanks, but she didn’t know what her next option would be.

Did he cook, or was he the kind of single guy who lived on microwave meals? Maybe tonight she’d bake bread. Everyone liked homemade bread. And if he kept letting Mark go over, she could invite him to dinner one of these nights. That would be the nice thing to do, wouldn’t it?

Steam puffed from her iron, and she gasped at the realization of how long she’d left it pressed on the delicate damask she was working on. Damn, had she burned it?

No, she saw in relief, but that was pure luck. She had to concentrate. Why on earth was she worrying about what a man she didn’t even know liked to eat? Mark’s sixth-grade teacher had been a man, and she’d never once considered sending him home-baked cookies.

Yes, but he’d been paid to teach her son. Nobody was paying the closemouthed, bearded guy next door to spend any time at all with Mark.

She winced, wondering what he’d think when Mark whipped out the geometry worksheet.

And then she wondered what Gabe Tennert would look like if he shaved off that beard.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_07984a63-873d-599a-b8b1-a84e27648221)

“IT’S A HEXAGON,” Gabe said absently. “Six sides.”

The boy’s forehead crinkled. “I thought it was a polygon.”

“It’s that, too.” Gabe explained that a polygon was a closed shape that usually had straight sides. “A triangle is a polygon.”

“Tri.” Mark’s face brightened as if it were lit from within, like his mother’s did. “Three.”

“Right. Four sided is a...?”

“Quadrangle.”

“Five sides makes it a pentagon.”

“Cool,” the boy decided. “So how do I figure out the sum of the angle measures in a hexagon?”

“Do you know what the measures of the angles of a triangle add up to?”

“A hundred and eighty degrees,” he said triumphantly.

“Good.” Gabe got out a ruler and pencil and showed him how to divide the shape up into triangles, then watched as Mark divided it into four triangles. He was able to multiply 4 times 180 in his head and come up with the right answer, which Gabe thought was pretty good.

“I don’t remember getting to geometry until high school,” he commented.

“My school did it in eighth grade. Except, if you were ahead, you did the eighth-grade stuff in seventh. Then if you were pretty good, you could skip Algebra 1 and take geometry as a freshman.”

“Gotcha.” Gabe nodded. “You okay with the next problem?”

They talked about a couple more, after which he put the worksheet away but pulled out a lidded plastic container. “Mom made cookies. She thought you’d like some.”

Gabe’s fingers were peeling the lid back before his brain gave the order. “What kind—” He inhaled. “Raisin oatmeal. My favorite.”