She tipped her head, studying the lingering discontent carved in his handsome features. She had no reason not to discuss her fiancé with him. She imagined the men would even like each other, given that they shared the same strong sense of fairness, stubbornness and a consuming drive to succeed. It just felt a little awkward to talk about the man she was to marry with Gabe looking at her as if she were doing something wrong.
“Scott Baker.” Her right hand closed over the pretty-but-modest diamond on her left one. She’d told Scott that she didn’t need an engagement ring, that a wedding band would do just fine. But Scott was like Gabe in his sense of tradition, too. “He’s a coach at Camelot High.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Six months. I met him at a basketball game.”
Gabe’s dark eyebrows merged. “I didn’t know you were into basketball.”
“I’m not. Wasn’t,” she corrected. “I went to a game with Ina and Eddy.” Eddy was the stable master. Aside from being one of the maids, Ina was also his wife. “Their son is on the team.”
“Has he been at the school long?”
“Shane?” she asked, thinking of Ina’s son.
“Scott,” Gabe muttered, planting his hands on his hips. “Do people around here know him? Do you know him? How can you even be sure you love the guy? Six months is hardly any time at all.”
The insistence in his deep voice was mirrored in his stance. He looked very big, very male and with all that muscle tense and bunched, he would have intimidated the daylights out of most men and any woman who didn’t recognize the look in his narrowed eyes.
He had the same intent look he got whenever he contemplated a responsibility that threatened to get out of control.
He took his responsibilities quite seriously. All of them.
She just hadn’t realized he still thought of her as one.
She could practically feel the tension radiating from his big, rather incredible body. Yet, her own anxiety suddenly began to ease.
“He’s taught there for five years. And, yes,” she replied, thinking of his last question. “I think I do love him.
“You know, Gabe,” she continued, smiling now that she understood what was going on, “you sound just like I’d imagine my father would. I know you told him you’d look out for me, but that was years ago. I was barely nineteen. I’m twenty-five now.” Affection entered her tone. “I appreciate your concern. I really do,” she said, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. Except for her father, she’d never known anyone whose concern meant more to her. “But it really isn’t necessary.”
He didn’t appear convinced.
“Scott is a nice man,” she assured him. Gabe wouldn’t relinquish an obligation easily. But it was long past time he let go of this one. “My friends like him, my mother is thrilled and, just between you and me, I really don’t need another dad. Just be my friend and wish me well. Okay?”
For a moment Gabe said nothing. He simply studied the delicate lines of her face while the sense of calm he’d always felt around her slipped into oblivion. He hadn’t even been thinking of the private promise he had made her father before he’d died, but the vow to make sure she stayed safe allowed him a handy, if not perfectly logical excuse for his behavior.
Latching on to it, he tried to ignore the strange void in his gut.
“I’m not trying to be your dad. But it sounds like you could use an older brother,” he muttered, not sure that role fit, either. “Just for the record, what do you mean by you think you love him?”
The challenge killed her smile. “I mean just that. I doubt it’s something any one of us can know for certain…”
“I would sure hope we could.”
“What I mean,” she continued, quietly overlooking his interruption, “is that none of us can know something like that for sure until we’ve been in the relationship for a few years. I don’t think real love is there at first. There are feelings that can lead to it, but the real thing has to grow. It’s kind of like a seed,” she explained, sounding like her father now. “Some plants flourish. Others struggle. Only with time and care can you tell.”
Gabe opened his mouth, and promptly shut it again. He wanted to know why she would marry someone without being as certain as she possibly could about how she felt. He wanted to know what she would do if a few years passed and she discovered that what she’d felt hadn’t been love at all. When he married, he wanted the certainty. He needed to know he was entering the relationship with everything going in its favor. What he absolutely did not want was a relationship that started out with only seeds of something that might grow into something lasting. He wanted those seeds rooted, stemmed and blooming.
That was precisely why he hadn’t felt any urgency over the advice he’d been given to find a wife. He knew that the woman he married had to be someone people could admire, and look up to. Someone the public could love. But before the public met her, he had to do all that first.
The direction of his thoughts had him backing off. So did the fact that he was about to ask Addie if she truly knew what she was doing. The wary way she watched him made it clear she no longer thought he was rowing with both oars.
His cousin’s kids saved him from asking, anyway. He heard his name hollered from a distance. It was echoed a second later. The wall of leaves muffled the small, male voices, but there was no mistaking the boys’ determination to find him as their shouting came closer.
“Gabe? Are you down here?”
“Gabe? Where are you?”
“Be right there!” he called back.
“Mom said to play soccer with us, and Trevor won’t let me be goalie.”
“I want to be goalie! And Kenny hid the ball!”
“Did not!” came a third voice. “Tyler did.”
Looking far more frustrated than he sounded, Gabe shoved his fingers through his windblown hair. “Give me a minute! Okay?”
“You’d probably better go now.” Addie stared at the beautifully muscled underside of his arm. Realizing what she was doing, aware that the view somehow changed the quality of the knot in her stomach, she jerked her glance to look past his broad shoulders. “It sounds as if you’ll be playing referee.”
The man was a state senator. He influenced the social and economic welfare of more than seven million people. He had offices in Camelot and Richmond and staff in both places. Yet, here, today, he would baby-sit.
The thought would have made Addie smile had it not been for the tension she could still feel radiating toward her. It seemed to tug at the knot, tightening it.
“I’d better go, too,” she said, stepping back, motioning behind her. “I have a section of sprinklers that’ll go off in a few minutes if I don’t change the timer.”
The boys called out again, their voices only yards away. Gabe stepped back himself—only to stop and glance to where she’d returned to the long row of gauges and digital displays.
“Where will you be tonight?”
“Helping my mom in the main house,” she replied, not sure why he’d want to know, too anxious for him to leave to ask. Had she considered it before yesterday, she would have honestly thought he’d be happy for her. An engagement was special. But all she sensed in him was an inexplicable sort of displeasure.
His only response was the lift of his chin before two dark-haired future heartbreakers barreled around the end of the tall hedge. He swooped the smaller one onto his back with the ease of a man completely comfortable with children and their exuberance. A boy