Caleb's Bride

Spouting insights was easy. One of the signs in her window read “Haircuts—$10. Wisdom—priceless.” Her grandfather Max had started the custom of sharing philosophical quotes with his customers over fifty years ago. When he’d passed Honey Comb’s to Gabby, she’d gladly picked up the torch. She must have had hundreds of quotes packed into her brain by now. But talk was cheap unless action backed it up. Action—that was the hard part.

“Life is like crossing a set of monkey bars. You have to let go to move forward.” She muttered one of her grandfather’s favorite sayings, and taking one big deep breath, scrawled her name.

Wide-eyed and perspiring, she looked at the page. “Oh, my God, I’m really doing it.”

Unexpectedly, a chunk of anxiety fell away like rusted armor. Refusing to give herself time to chicken out, she quickly penned the date then signed on the other lines the real-estate agent had indicated.

For as long as Gabby could remember, she had planned to do two things with her life: Run Honey Comb’s—the coziest, warmest place on earth, and marry Dean Kingsley—the coziest, warmest man on the planet.

“‘The best laid schemes of mice and men do often go awry…’”

Despite the fact that Dean had never been anything other than friendly and kind, Gabby had convinced herself that he would fall for her when she was thinner, prettier, funnier. When she figured out how to keep her red hair from frizzing in the summer, or when she’d read all his favorite books. His love was going to be the chrysalis that changed her from plain, awkward Gabby Coombs to confident, graceful butterfly.

Dean had screwed up her great plan by falling in love with someone else. Someone who had been a stranger to all of them until only a few months ago. Now the man she’d dreamed about for twenty years (twenty—aaaaaagh!) was married with a child on the way, and Gabby felt like an old train that had rattled too long on the same dusty route, never veering from its chosen course but expecting the scenery magically to change.

Well, not anymore.

“It’s time for me to say goodbye, Poppy.” She lifted her gaze to the framed black-and-white photo of the man who had given her this barbershop on her twenty-third birthday, nearly one decade ago. Despite her firm conviction (it really was firm), tears filled her eyes. “I hope you understand.”

Her benevolent grandfather smiled down at her, leaning against the striped barber pole that, to this day, swirled like a dancing peppermint stick out front.

Six weeks earlier, on a whim, Gabby had applied for a job that would take her far from her hometown of Honeyford, Oregon. Three days ago she’d received an offer of employment from Rising Sun Cruises. The next morning she’d accepted the offer, and yesterday she had visited the real-estate agent to put her business up for sale.

Bold moves, every one, which was exactly what she needed right now. Bold moves to create a brand new life.

And a brand new Gabby.

When a knock rattled the barbershop’s glass door, she realized she was several minutes past opening, something she couldn’t recall ever happening before. Jumping from her stool behind the small front desk, she headed for the door.

Wiping the moisture from beneath her eyes, she smoothed a hand over the kinky hair that inevitably escaped her ponytail and turned the key in the lock. She plastered a smile on her face as she swung the door open, but words of welcome died on her lips. Surprise—and the stirrings of something that felt like dread—tensed every muscle.

June sunshine silhouetted a tall man with square shoulders. As Gabby’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that he was gorgeous—still gorgeous—in a way few males in Honeyford were. An edgy, mysterious, dangerous kind of gorgeous.

“Hi, there. Can I get a haircut?”

The lump of emotion filling Gabby’s throat all morning doubled at the sound of his voice, which was deeper, more gravelly than it had been fifteen years earlier when Caleb Wells had been an eighteen-year-old farmhand bound and determined to make something of himself.

Her gaze rose to his chestnut hair. Thick, wavy and glittering with deep bronze-and-gold highlights, it had obviously been expertly styled.

“You don’t need a haircut,” she said, her voice hoarse with shock. “You look…” She hesitated.

As a teen, Cal had been whipcord lean, perpetually hungry looking. Now in his thirties, he impressively filled his designer suit. As sharp as three points of a triangle, the chin and jaw that used to sport a light shadow were smooth and whisker-free.

“You look good,” she concluded, feeling her face flame.

The right side of his mouth curled just a bit in response.

He turned his head, glancing into the barbershop. “May I come in?”

Gabby hesitated, apprehension tingling throughout her body.

One of the signs in her window warned, “No Shoes, No Shirt, You Better Get Your Hair Cut Someplace Else,” but Cal looked more like the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company than a small-town kid who’d once struggled by on odd jobs and church handouts. Since she couldn’t justify keeping him out, Gabby stepped back and got a whiff of expensive cologne as Cal brushed past her. Whatever he’d been doing all these years, he’d managed to effect a complete transformation.

How ironic, she thought dazedly, feeling as if she were having an out-of-body experience, that Cal Wells, of all people, should reappear again now, when I’m about to take the biggest risk of my life.

A decade and a half ago, he had been the biggest risk she’d ever taken. And that time she had concluded she’d made an awful mistake.

As Cal entered the barbershop, his gaze moved to the wall of black-and-white pictures that framed the large mirrors above Honey Comb’s two cutting stations. The photos, most of which she’d taken, were the only things that changed in the shop on a regular basis.

While Cal moved closer, studying her work, Gabby busied herself opening the blinds and flipping the sign that said, “Shut Till We’re Not,” to the side that announced, “Come In Already.”

Several times she glanced over her shoulder, until Cal caught her gaze in the mirror and raised a brow.

“Your photos?” he asked, indicating the display.

She nodded.

Again he gave her that flicker of a smile. “You’re good. I knew you would be.”

Her heart stuttered a little in response. “Thanks.” How many times had she taken photos of him while he’d worked on her family’s farm? Hidden from view, she’d snapped candid shots, using the rough and beautiful Oregon landscape as the perfect backdrop for Cal’s untamed looks and solitary personality. Her family had praised the many photos she took of them all, but only Cal had truly studied her work, commenting on the light and the composition. Telling her that her work showed “passion.”

“So how about that haircut?”

Slowly she shook her head. “You don’t need it.”

Still looking at her in the mirror, he ran a hand over the thick waves. “I do. It’s too long.”

Because his hair was trimmed neatly above his ears, the comment surprised her. “It’s shorter than I’ve ever seen it. It was way past your shoulders the last time—” With the nature of their last encounter—and its aftermath—filling her mind, Gabby fumbled. “—the last time I saw you.”

Cal turned toward her, pinning her with the unwavering hazel gaze that had always hidden more than it revealed. “I haven’t tried to wear my hair like a rock star for years, Gabrielle. It’s time for a trim. And you were always the best.” When she continued to stare without speaking, he pressed, “It wouldn’t make you uncomfortable, would it? Now that I think about it, cutting my hair used to make you pretty damn nervous.”

“No, it didn’t.” Automatic and defensive, her denial made Cal grin.

A real grin, not the partial, inscrutable smile characteristic of him. This one was full and beautiful, which was strange since the boy Gabby had known came from a home life that hadn’t offered up many reasons to smile. She felt slightly woozy now, trying to remember when she’d last seen unreserved enjoyment on his face. Then he said, “You haven’t changed, Gabby,” and her stomach plunked to her feet.

“I resent that.”

The brow arched higher. “Why?”

“Why?” Because fifteen years ago she had looked like little Orphan Annie on steroids, and he damn well knew it!

Since Cal had left town, she’d shaved off twenty pounds and had grown out the curly hair she used to control by keeping it shaped like a spongy football helmet around her head. Sadly, she was missing a fashion chromosome, so her wardrobe had transformed only to the extent that she now bought smaller size jeans and tucked in the blouses she wore to work. Still, she had made a true attempt this past decade and a half to look better, and it was beyond frustrating to discover that her makeover made no impression at all on someone who hadn’t seen her since shortly after she’d turned in her high school cap and gown.

In an effort to preserve some dignity, she kept her tone instructional rather than plaintive. “No thirty-three-year-old woman wants to be told she seems the same as she did at eighteen.”

Cal walked toward her. “I liked you fine at eighteen.”

He kept coming until they were inches apart, and Gabby felt every nerve sizzle.