Wind Chime Point

“How thoughtful!” Samantha said, her expression amused. “You just keep telling yourself it’s as innocent as all that. I’m so mad I wasn’t there to see the two of you for myself. I would have known right off if sparks were flying. Grandmother said they were, but she’s unreliable. She sees what she wants to see. Emily doesn’t see anything except Boone these days. She didn’t even know you spent close to a half hour huddled with Wade. Her powers of observation are pitiful.”

Gabi sighed. “Is this why you wanted me to drive over here, so you could try to set me up with Wade? I thought you wanted to be supportive.”

“Nudging you in Wade’s direction is being supportive. He’s a great guy.”

“Who’s probably not one bit interested in being saddled with a woman carrying another man’s baby,” Gabi said. “What sensible man would want to sign on for that?”

“If you ask me, sensible can be highly overrated. Wasn’t Paul sensible?”

“Point taken,” Gabi conceded. “But please, please, leave this alone. I can’t take one more complication in my life right now.”

“Which is why you need someone like Wade to help you shoulder the burden,” Samantha insisted. “He’ll make you laugh. Even when you were pretending to be oblivious to him this summer, he could still make you laugh.”

“I doubt there are enough comedians in the country right now to make me laugh,” Gabi said.

“I think Wade’s up to the task,” Samantha contradicted. “Grandmother says he had you smiling yesterday. And given that he asked you out after seeing that you’re pregnant, obviously your situation hasn’t scared him off. He gets points for that, too.”

“Cora Jane needs to mind her own business,” Gabi said with frustration, unwilling to admit that it had been surprising to find that Wade wasn’t put off by her pregnancy. She wasn’t entirely sure if that made him extraordinarily rare, or perhaps just a little bit odd.

Samantha laughed at the reference to Cora Jane’s penchant for meddling. “Let me know if you find a way to make Grandmother stay out of our lives.”

Yeah, Gabi was pretty sure it was mission impossible, too.

3

The custom cabinetry Wade had built for a kitchen in an oceanside condo was giving him fits. Though his measurements had been checked and rechecked, once he started the installation, it was clear something was off. Tommy Cahill, the contractor who’d hired him for the renovation, was as bewildered as he was.

“I can’t deal with this now,” Wade said, glancing at his watch. “I have to be somewhere at six.”

Tommy nodded. “I’ll give it some thought. There has to be something obvious we missed. The top cabinets fit perfectly. These bottom cabinets...” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I have an idea,” one of Tommy’s helpers chimed in, clearly eager to impress his boss.

“Oh?” Tommy said, his skepticism plain.

The young man, barely eighteen and wearing jeans that looked destined to fall to his ankles at any second, took a marble from his pocket and set it on the floor at one end of the room. As Wade and Tommy stared, it took off rolling toward the other end of the room. The two men exchanged an incredulous look.

“The blasted floor’s not level,” Tommy muttered. “Not even close. How the devil did I miss that?”

“We both did,” Wade said, shaking his head. “Jimmy, you win the prize for figuring this out. What made you think of it?”

The kid shrugged, his cheeks pink. “No big deal. I helped my dad fix up our place. There wasn’t a level floor in it. We had to compensate for that in every room.”

“Well, it’s going to make my life a whole lot easier tomorrow when I get back here.” Wade met Tommy’s gaze. “I assume you don’t want to fix the floor.”

“No way. Not in the budget.”

“You need to double-check with the owner? Maybe they’d like to get it resolved now.”

“They balk if I buy an extra box of screws,” Tommy said with disgust. “Cheapest sons of a gun I’ve ever worked for. Let’s just get this over with.”

Wade nodded. “I’ll do some fiddling with the base of the cabinets to level things out,” he said, considering the problem and potential solutions. “I have more of the cherrywood in my shop. I’ll bring it along in the morning. Thank goodness the guys measuring for the granite countertops aren’t due for a couple of days. We should have this straightened out by then.”

Tommy nodded. “That’s what margins for error are all about. I never give a customer a schedule without building that in. Since the hurricane, with renovations and repairs going on all up and down the coast, I allow even more cushion. I work with great subcontractors, but they’re all busier than ever right now.”

Wade turned to the young man. “I owe you, Jimmy. Later this week we’ll pick a day and your lunch will be on me. I’ll take you to Castle’s. Best burgers on the beach.”

“Not that the food is the attraction for you,” Tommy taunted, a grin spreading across his face. “I heard Gabriella’s back in town.”

“She is,” Wade confirmed. “But I doubt she’ll be at the restaurant that much.”

Tommy looked surprised. “I thought Cora Jane put her granddaughters to work over there the minute they hit town.”

Wade wasn’t about to explain. He said only, “Not this time.” He glanced at his watch. “Now I really do need to hit the road. See you tomorrow. I might be a little later than today. I have another project that could take some time first thing in the morning.”

Since Tommy knew Wade would never blow a deadline for him, he merely nodded. “See you when you get here.” He looked a little more closely at Wade and grinned. “You seem awfully eager to go. Hot date?”

Wade felt himself coloring. “Just dinner and a movie with a friend.”

“A female friend?” Tommy pressed. “Gabi, maybe?”

“No comment,” Wade replied emphatically, hoping to end the guesswork.

Tommy seemed to consider the remark telling enough. “Thought so,” he said. “It’s about time, if you want my opinion.”

“Which I don’t,” Wade retorted. No more than he’d wanted his sister’s or anyone else’s.

His attraction to Gabriella might be the first step on the road to recovering from his grief, but he had a hunch given her pregnancy, this particular road he’d chosen was going to be a bumpy one. In the past twenty-four hours since he’d first laid eyes on Gabi’s baby bump, he hadn’t allowed himself even a second to consider just what a huge mistake getting involved with her might be. He’d been worried about her fragile emotional state, not his own. That, he suspected, would come later.

* * *

Gabi looked at the pitiful wardrobe of loose pants and T-shirts spread out on her bed and sighed. She couldn’t go out with Wade looking like a refugee from a thrift shop. Maybe it wasn’t a date, but she had more pride than that. Why hadn’t she brought anything fancier with her from Raleigh?

Because she hadn’t anticipated being seen in public any more than necessary, she reminded herself ruefully. Now not only was she going to be on display, tonight was going to be perceived as a date no matter how cleverly she or Wade tried to spin it.

She looked at the assorted pieces hoping to spot some combination that hadn’t occurred to her before, but the sad truth was, even if she’d brought along everything in her closet back home, nothing would fit anymore. Who’d have thought a tiny little baby could have such an effect on her figure so quickly?

“Ah, just as I suspected,” Samantha said, coming into the room again, this time without even bothering to knock.

“Whatever happened to the concept of privacy in this family?” Gabi grumbled.

Samantha merely grinned. “We’re sisters. We have no boundaries. Besides, you’re going to be very glad I’m here.”

“Really?” Gabi said skeptically. “Why is that?”

“Because I’m about to save the day,” Samantha told her, tossing a shopping bag onto the bed.

Gabi eyed the bag from a boutique with interest. “For me?”