Gabe didn’t start the car. As she worked to peel off the left edge of the mustache and restick it, he sat with the full length of his leg pressed against hers.
“What are you doing now?” she asked.
“Enjoying the view.”
She flicked a gaze at his muscular thighs and just higher, for an instant. “Uh-huh! You were liking more than the view.”
“You’re the one on my side of the car.”
She bounced into her seat, returned the treat bag to her lap and stuck her tongue out at him. Then she reached up to jerk the mirror around to face him. “Yours is still loose on one side.”
He flipped the visor down in front of him and used that mirror to adjust his costume piece.
Immediately, Josie looked behind her visor and discovered another vanity mirror there. “You should have told me,” she said as she snapped it back into place. “I forget about the cushy doodads in your stuffy cars.”
He didn’t offer a countering response. When he finished adjusting his mustache, he turned toward her. “Better?”
His eyes held the mischievous gleam she’d seen a hundred times before, and that flash of teeth was devilish. Her heart skittered into a quicker rhythm.
Sometimes Josie wondered what it would be like to love a man like Gabe. To love a man fully. Sometimes she ached for that connection.
Gabe peered into the mirror again. “Still crooked?”
She averted her gaze. “Nope. You’re fine.”
“Good.” She heard the flap of his visor, then he started the car and backed out of the drive.
Finally.
Josie needed to get to that party. Her only thoughts should be about having a great time and forgetting the one man in the world who could hurt her. Who had hurt her, whether he’d intended to or not.
That man was her father.
Certainly not Gabe Thomas.
AS GABE BEGAN the thirty-minute drive from Augusta to Wichita, he and Josie talked about the party and who they might see there. About a hundred home-improvement industry professionals had been invited to the annual event thrown by Gabe’s mother and step-father, who owned a big lumber-supply company in east Wichita.
True to his word, Gabe drove past the east Wichita exits, continuing on to Ethan and Callie Taylor’s west-side home. By the time he approached their house, it was eight o’clock and well past dark. Yet the house behind the curtains was unlit.
“I hope everything’s okay,” Josie said, clicking out of her seat belt before Gabe had braked in the drive. “What if Lilly had another seizure? They could be at the hospital again.”
“Don’t decide that now,” Gabe said as he followed Josie to the porch. “Maybe they’re putting the kids to bed or sitting out in the backyard. Did they expect you?”
“Ethan’s working tonight, but Callie and the kids should be home. She’d leave the porch light on, I think.” Josie rang the bell.
Callie opened the door seconds later, calm and elegant despite the green glitter antennae she wore atop her blond head. “Hi, you two.” She smiled tiredly as she looked from her sister’s costume to Gabe’s. “How appropriate.”
“Everything okay?” Josie cocked her head to peer beyond her sister into the house.
“Sure. Things are fine.”
“Your lights are out,” Josie said.
“Oh. Sorry.” Callie opened the screen door and motioned them inside. “I’m trying to keep things calm for Lilly. When I ran out of candy, I turned off the front lights and took her and Luke back to the kitchen. I didn’t want the neighborhood kids to keep ringing the bell.”
Callie led them through the house to the kitchen. Lilly had fallen asleep in front of the bowl of Cheerios on her high chair. Five-year-old Luke sat at the table, his entire arm crammed inside a plastic pumpkin container. Wordlessly, the sturdy brown-eyed boy studied Gabe and Josie as he removed a lollipop from the pumpkin. After he had set it with a pile of similar treats, he said, “I didn’t know grown-ups could go trick-a-treatin’.”
“Gabe and I aren’t trick-or-treating.” Josie approached her nephew and claimed a chair next to him. “We’re on our way to a costume party.”
Callie pulled her sleeping baby from the high chair. “Lilly conked out a few minutes ago. I’ll go put her in her crib.”
Josie eyed her niece, a delicate blonde dressed in a pink bunny suit. “She’s really okay? Normal?”
“Not quite normal,” Callie said. “She hasn’t had any other seizures, but I’m noticing some eye fluttering when she wakes up. If she has another episode, her doctor’s going to give me a referral to a pediatric neurologist in Kansas City.”
“Good.” Josie saw that Gabe was still standing and yanked out a chair next to her. “Siddown, Gabe.”
“Oh, please do!” Callie said, standing with the angelic baby at her chest. “I forget you’re company. You aren’t company! Be comfortable!”
As Gabe sat, Lilly made signs of rousing, so Callie glided out of the room to put her to bed.
“Can I go to the party?” Luke asked, staring at his aunt. “I ate five red taffies. Mom says no more candy, but I can probably have some cake.”
“This is an adult party and you’d hate it,” Josie said, grinning at Gabe. “All talk and no cake.”
Luke wrinkled his nose, then picked up a piece of yellow taffy and squashed it between his fingers before sorting it into a pile. He scrutinized the badge on Gabe’s vest, then asked, “You a pleece-man?”
“Sort of,” Gabe said. “I’m dressed as Wyatt Earp, who was a lawman in cowboy days.”
Luke’s eyes widened. “Cool.” Then he studied his aunt, his expression serious again. “You a cowboy pleece-man, too, Aunt Josie?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re a girl.”
“Girls can be police officers or doctors or whatever they want to be,” Josie said. “Your mother’s a research scientist, right? That’s a difficult and very important job.”
“I know. My daddy says a girl can even be president.” Luke’s words made clear his belief in his father’s wisdom. “But does a girl pleece-man hafta dress like a boy? A spooky boy?”
Gabe chuckled at Josie’s gasp of offense. “She’s supposed to be Doc Holliday, who was a male dentist in cowboy days,” he said. “Sometimes he helped Wyatt Earp with the policing duties.”
Luke studied his aunt’s manly hairstyle for a moment. Finally, he gave a nod. Then he pointed proudly at his own badge. “I’m a pleece-man, too, but not a cowboy. I’m a detective like my dad. He rocks socks!”
“He is pretty great, isn’t he?” Josie said.
“Yep.” The little boy nodded. “Lilly can be a doctor like my mom. I wanna be a pleece-man. My teacher says I even take after Daddy!”
Josie’s hazel eyes grew distant. She sat staring at Luke’s candy piles.
Worrying about Lilly again, probably.
Gabe contemplated Luke’s blue police-officer costume. Nodding toward the cap hooked over the back of Luke’s chair, he said, “Cool hat.”
Luke yanked it from the spindle and placed it on his head, then bent sideways in