Caleb's Bride

“So—” she cleared her throat, trying to change the channel in her mind “—you said, ‘worked.’ Past tense?”

“Very past tense.”

Forcing herself to focus on the actions that gave her confidence, Gabby took the first cut. Keep talking. Talking relaxes the client…and the barber. “You’re changing fields, then?”

As she began to work in earnest, snips of shiny brown hair floated to the cape like confetti. “Positions,” he responded. “I found a job that pays less, but I’ll be working on the land.”

“Where will you be—”

“Nope.”

“What?”

He looked up through the hair she’d pushed over his forehead. “How long have I known you?”

Gabby blinked at the unexpected question. “Well, technically we haven’t seen each other for—”

“Forget ‘technically.’” His gaze toughened. “Here are the stats. Years we’ve known each other—twenty. Times you’ve allowed conversations deeper than a puddle—fewer than a handful. Why is that, Gabby? I never noticed you skirting meaningful conversations with anyone else.”

Gabby faltered, blindsided, and loathing the feeling of being transparent. Yes, she had avoided deeper conversations with Cal. She’d put on a pretty good front with others, but Cal had read her too easily for her own comfort.

Sending her scissors skimming across the ends of his hair, she murmured, “I’m happy to have a conversation on any topic you like, but I want to finish your trim before my morning rush starts, so—”

“Let’s start with the topic of this barbershop,” he interrupted. “Why you’re selling it, for example. And whether it has anything at all to do with Dean Kingsley.”

Chapter Two

The scissors slipped, knicking Gabby’s knuckle. “Damn,” she swore, shaking the pained hand. After checking for blood (hardly any), she gaped at Cal in the mirror. “How do you know I’m—”

The answer came to her before she completed the sentence. She glanced toward the coat tree, where she’d told him to hang his jacket, then to the desk sitting right beside it, and her gape turned into a glare. “You snooped around my desk? When I went in the back? You read my private papers!”

“I glanced over,” he admitted. “Your ‘private papers’ are sitting out where anyone can see them, Gabrielle.”

“Anyone who leans over to read the fine print,” she snapped. Leaving him, she rushed to the desk to conceal the real-estate document. Good gravy, she didn’t need any of her other customers to walk in, read the papers and realize she was selling the shop—before she broke the news to her own family! Shoving the papers into a drawer, she slammed it shut…along with the scissors and comb she’d brought with her. Realizing her mistake, she yanked the drawer open, pulled out her tools and rounded on Caleb. “You couldn’t have known what those papers were about at a glance. You were snooping.”

As cool as ever, he shrugged. “I spent the morning at Honeyford Realty. I recognized their paperwork. Are you selling because of Kingsley?”

Resentment, hot and humid, filled Gabby from the stomach up.

Even though she’d tried to keep her infatuation for Dean under wraps, she knew Cal had figured out her secret.

Now his supernatural eyes pinned her to the spot. He looked like a boa constrictor laughing at a mouse.

“News still travels fast in Honeyford,” he said. “I bet I wasn’t downtown more than an hour before I heard that Kingsley got married a couple of months ago.” Cal’s head tsk-tsked slowly from side to side. “You’re not just selling the shop, are you? You’re running away.”

“Beep, beep! Comin’ through!”

Before Gabby could respond to Cal, Henry Berns, owner of Honey Bea’s Bakery across the street, opened the barbershop door. Pressing one scrawny shoulder against the glass, he bustled over the threshold, his knobby hands occupied with a pink pastry box. “Gotta set this down before I drop it. Don’t have the muscle strength I used to.”

Gabby watched Henry as if she were standing outside herself, a tight band of emotion constricting her breath so that she felt incapable of heaving a single word into her mouth.

Nearly a foot shorter than Cal, Henry nodded at the much younger man, whom he gave no indication of recognizing, then placed the string-wrapped box on the desk and winked at Gabby. “It’s a Dobish Torte. Two pounds of dark chocolate for my best girl.” Toddling happily to the vacant chair, he told Gabby, “You go ahead and finish up. I’ll grab a seat before the morning rush.” With a spryness that belied his seventy-five years (and the claim that he lacked muscle strength), Henry hopped into the chair next to Cal’s, helped himself to a comb and worked it through the gray waves he kept stiffly pomaded.

By sheer force of will, Gabby managed to murmur her thanks for the cake.

“Why, sure. Sweets for my sweetheart!” The old man winked into the mirror.

A knowing smile spread across Cal’s face, and Gabby blushed.

All her life she had felt a little more awkward, a little less beautiful than the girls around her, which was probably why the thought of Dean Kingsley had filled her with such joy. Dean had seemed so golden, so rich with gentlemanly grace, an innate country suave that had afforded Gabby countless hours of pleasure fantasizing about becoming Mrs. Country Suave.

In the barber chair to Cal’s right, Henry Berns hummed happily while perusing the latest copy of The Honeyford Buzz. All her most serious suitors were over seventy. Nothing had changed, and Cal knew it. As the curve of his lips bloomed into a full grin, Gabby felt once again that uncomfortable, haunting sense of déjà vu.

Reaching into his back pocket, Cal withdrew an expensive-looking leather wallet as he crossed toward her. Withdrawing a bill for the trim she hadn’t completed, he laid it on her desk. “See you around, Gabrielle.”

The door clicked softly shut behind him, and suddenly Gabby remembered exactly when she’d last seen his grin—full of enjoyment and humor and mischief—prior to today.

It had happened fourteen years, ten months and three weeks ago. The summer they’d graduated from high school.

Dean had come home from college to work in his father’s pharmacy, and Gabby had decided the time had come: She was going to tell her beloved exactly how she felt so they could begin their life together. Her courage stoked, her expectations huge and glorious, she waited for Dean to arrive at the Fourth of July celebration downtown. But when he showed up, there was a girl clinging happily to his arm, a lovely girl he introduced to everyone as the woman he hoped to marry.

Numb at first, feeling frozen inside, Gabby somehow managed to smile and congratulate Dean along with everyone else. Two hours past the fireworks display, however, her emotions thawed and the misery poured out in waves so overpowering it was difficult to breathe.

She had expected to become a woman in Dean’s arms. The best moments of her life were supposed to have happened with him. At eighteen, she had yet to experience her first kiss. Suddenly, it all seemed like such a horrid waste.

That was when Gabrielle Coombs decided enough was enough and threw herself at a boy for the very first time.

And Cal Wells took pity and made love to her.

Cal slipped on a pair of ridiculously expensive sunglasses, a gift from his ex-wife, who had never met a label she didn’t like. The dark glasses gave him the comforting illusion of privacy. He preferred not to make eye contact with others this morning. Not that many people in town were likely to remember him or would rush to welcome him back even if they did, but Cal’s emotions were running so high at the moment that he didn’t want to make small talk.

Gabrielle Coombs. She was still here, in their hometown. Still single from what he gathered. And, even though she hadn’t admitted a thing, he’d bet his last paycheck that she was still in love with Dean Kingsley.

Beneath his breath, Cal muttered a word that would cost his ten-year-old daughter a dollar if she said it.

“I acted like a jackass.” He spoke out loud to himself, a habit he’d gotten into since his marriage disintegrated. He’d gone years during which his lengthiest adult conversations occurred as he looked into the mirror while he was shaving. “Gabby never got over him,” he muttered.

Fifteen years ago, when Cal headed back to college after what had amounted to the best and worst summer of his life, he’d assumed that if he ever returned to Honeyford, he’d find Gabby married with kids, a home, a PTA membership. Her husband, he figured, would love her, but would have no clue as to how lucky he was to be part of the Coombs clan.

Cal would have known.

For five years—from the time he was thirteen until he’d gone off to college—Cal had spent every minute he could on the Coombses’ farm, making himself too useful for anyone to complain about his constant presence, studying every detail of normal family life as if there’d be a pop quiz at the end of each week.

He’d met two of Gabby’s brothers in wood shop at school, and they’d invited him home one afternoon to hang out. Their mother, Nancy, had made an enormous platter of sandwiches as a snack—not even for dinner, which had astounded him. At that time in his life, he was lucky to scrounge up enough food for a single daily meal at home. Nancy had insisted they all wash their hands before they touched a bite. While her sons had rolled their eyes and protested, their perpetually smiling mother had kept up a running commentary about the baseball jerseys she had mended that day, the old clothes she’d boxed and wanted her sons to drop off at the church, and the barn dance she would like them to attend, because “Lord knows your wives will thank me someday.” Cal had listened to the woman’s every word and followed her instructions without a peep.

For years he had wondered whether such a family existed outside of television reruns. After he’d found them, and even though they hadn’t belonged to him, he had known instantly that he wanted to be asked back again and again. And he had been. To this day, he counted what he had learned in the Coombses’ old farmhouse to be one of his greatest blessings.

Maybe you wanted Gabby so you could become a permanent part of the family. Maybe that’s all it ever was.