At 3:55 Thursday, Cade’s mind was not on his upcoming presentation to the chairman’s committee, which was almost done except for proofreading and printing the handout. He was staring at the computer screen in front of him, where he was supposed to be looking it over. Instead he’d just typed an entire paragraph, not about Fitzgerald. It was about an unemployed, hapless guy who’d come back to a Midwestern town and felt unable to connect with family or friends.
Suddenly he laughed and rubbed his forehead, shaking his head. His writing mentors would love his prose, the clever words he’d used to describe his sad sack character. But reading it over again, it was so depressing he started laughing again. Hopelessness, desperation, darkness…it struck him as…awful.
Yet there it was before him. One whole paragraph. And it wasn’t about Gabby, even though he hadn’t stopped thinking about her.
The first thing he’d written in three years that wasn’t entirely full of shit.
Then there was a knock on the door, and he knew it was time for his meeting with Gabby. When she walked in, he pretended not to be affected, lifting his head up from his work as if he hadn’t been anticipating her visit for the past half hour.
Today she was wearing jeans and a navy blouse, with red earrings and red shoes. And that same red lipstick that accented her full, beautiful lips. Her hair was long and curly and wild. The urge to touch those silky curls, to kiss her, drove out all other thoughts.
Her arms were full of books and bags…and coffee cups. “I picked up your books that were being held at the library, and I stopped by the Bean, and Kaitlyn was trying to get rid of a fresh pot of Jamaican Gold, so I brought us some.” She set down a cup in front of him, and the rich, strong scent of good coffee wafted up to his nose. He couldn’t have been more grateful. Unfortunately, his daughter took after his ex—she was always up at the butt crack of dawn, ready to conquer the world. Whereas he couldn’t seem to really start thinking until after ten at night. Add his propensity for night-owlishness to a good case of insomnia, and you had a man desperate for coffee.
“Thank you, Gabby.”
She smiled and started walking behind his desk. For a startled second, he thought she was going to touch him—hug him or worse—but instead she pulled something out of a plastic bag she had slung on her arm.
As she passed by, he caught a whiff of her scent. Something clean and fresh, maybe a little fruity—he had no idea—but he liked it a lot and he was coming to associate it only with her.
She turned and held up a bright green plant inside a very colorful pot.
“What is that?” he asked, struggling to focus on the plant and not the rest of her, which was way too close to him.
“Well, it’s a long story. Do you want to hear it?” She set the plant down on his windowsill. It was one of those his mom used to call a spider plant, which tended to have offshoots that hung down and produced new little plants. The container was brightly painted pottery with streaks of blue, red, and green, and he had to admit it brightened his office. But not as much as the woman in front of him.
“That’s colorful.”
“Yes. Well, my sister’s an artist, and she does pottery. And she gave this pot to my nonna, who was transplanting plants today. And Nonna gave it to me with this plant inside. But I kill plants, and I had the idea that your office could use some color. So when I told Nonna that, she buried a coin inside.”
“What’s the significance?”
“She said it’s for good luck in your new job. Nonna says when you bury a coin, it always means good luck. Of course, you know my nonna, so you also know we take everything she says with a grain of salt. She may have just gotten that from the angel legend. You know, kiss someone, toss a couple of coins in the water, get your pic taken, and voilà.”
He raised a brow. “Voilà?”
“True love forever. Apparently that’s all it takes.”
“Hey, that works for the Angel Falls Chamber of Commerce, judging by how many tourists come visit every year.”
She chuckled softly at his joke, but a flicker of something passed in her eyes—maybe sadness—but it was gone in an instant.
“I really enjoyed talking to your grandmother at the wedding,” he said. “I’m sorry about the dementia.”
“Thank you. But it makes us appreciate the good moments more, you know?”
He nodded. “You seem to have a very close family.”
“Close and crazy,” she said with a smile.
He had no experience with an intact, close-knit family so instead he made a point of inspecting the plant.
“Well, thanks. It’s very…homey.”
She moved past him again, giving him another whiff of that scent.
“Um, we’d—better get started,” he said, trying to drag his brain to where it belonged, onto business.
She put the stack of books on his desk and sat down, grabbing a pen and notebook from her bag. “Okay, I’m ready to work.”
Funny, but all he could think of was the thousand ways he wanted to kiss her. Up against his wall, for starters. Dragging his lips over hers and tangling his hands in all that wonderful hair.
Cade swallowed. What the hell had he been thinking when he’d practically begged her not to quit his class? He should have paid her to leave, but he never went back on his word. So he grabbed the first book off the pile and began flipping through it.
“Why Fitzgerald?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why do you love Fitzgerald?”
“Oh. Well.” Cade thought about the question, one he hadn’t heard in a long time. It wasn’t like him to be at a loss for what to say, but so much of what he felt about Fitzgerald was visceral, impossible to put into words. “The man never wrote a bad sentence. He says so much with an economy of words. Every word counts and is full of feeling. Yet his personal life was a disaster. His wife had bipolar illness, and they had a tempestuous relationship. He battled alcoholism and was dead at forty-four.”
“You sound very passionate about him.”
“I’ve read everything he’s ever written.”
“Do you aspire to be like him?”
He paused a long time. Like Fitzgerald’s, Cade’s first book was published and soared to success. His marriage had led him to heartache. And he’d had his own demons to battle.
“As a professor, it’s my job to analyze great works, not create them.”
If she said anything, he didn’t hear it. He must’ve gotten lost in his thoughts without realizing it, and when he looked up, Gabby was staring at him. “What is it?” he asked.
“Just that you look a little sad.”
“I sort of feel this conversation is turning personal.” He’d said that to shut her down. But she kept talking.
“I’m just trying to understand. You attended the most prestigious writing program in the country. You made the New York Times list with your very first book. And the desire to write has completely left you? I’m not sure I buy it.”
Her words knifed him in the gut. She was drilling down to places he didn’t allow anyone within a mile of. So he turned the tables on her. “People change their minds all the time. You’ve said you’re seeking something different by taking my class—searching for something else besides your day job.”
“Maybe, but my situation is different.”
“How so?”
“Well, I have a great job. A job that took years of study and hard work to get. I mean, I’m very grateful for it and for my education.”
“Grateful isn’t the same as fulfilled.”
Gabby flinched, and he knew he’d hit a nerve. Good, because this conversation was veering into dangerous territory—apparently for both of them. “Well, I think we can both say life doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to sometimes.” He turned back to the book, trying to find something else to change the subject.
“Anyway,” Gabby said, “I’ve double-checked all your annotations and made sure everything is in MLA form. What else do you need for tomorrow?”
“I just have to proofread and make the handouts.”
Cade’s gaze kept getting tangled up in hers and held for a moment longer than what was decent. She made him want to tell her more. Confess his confusion. Tell her her confusion wasn’t so bad after all. And then there was that kissing thing he couldn’t stop thinking about. Except the longer she was here, the more erotic his thoughts became. That wall fantasy again…in his mind, they’d somehow ended up on the floor, in a tangle, her curves molding to his.
His phone buzzed, forcing him to tear his gaze away and answer it. After a minute, he disconnected the call and stood. “It’s my next-door neighbor. Apparently a large branch from one of the trees in my backyard broke off and fell on my roof.”
“Oh no. Good thing you and Ava weren’t home.”
“Yeah. My neighbor says it looks like it might’ve damaged the roof over my kitchen.”
“Give me your computer password,” Gabby said.
“What? No. I can handle it.”
“I can proofread your handout. Then I’ll make copies, and you’ll be all set for tomorrow.”
“I really don’t need—”
“Let me help,” she said quietly. “Then you won’t have to figure out how to get here at seven a.m. tomorrow to do it yourself. You can trust me—just go take care of things.”
The fact that she’d jumped without hesitation to help him touched him immensely. He’d spent the past two and a half years going it alone with Ava, and Gabby’s kindness was a reminder that he no longer had to handle every little crisis on his own.
“Okay,” he said, letting out a big breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “I accept. Thank you.” He busied himself shrugging his jacket on, scooping up his book bag, and pocketing his phone. “I do trust you,” he said as he jotted down the password on a sticky note. “And I really appreciate this.”
“Don’t mention it. Oh, don’t forget your laptop,” she said, reaching over his desk and handing it to him on his way out the door. “And you’ll probably want your cord too.”
As she handed it to him, their fingers grazed. Hers were soft and warm, and he had to fight not to grasp her hand. “Thanks again,” he said.
“No problem,” she said, already heading for his computer.
Then he ran out the door before he did something really foolish.
* * *
Gabby sat down at Cade’s desktop computer to pull up the presentation document. His screen saver was a picture of Ava in a pink polka dot bathing suit holding a hose straight up in the air as it sprayed all around her joyous little face. Seeing it made Gabby smile. His desk was sparse, but notable items were a paperweight of the starship Enterprise and a stick figure drawing of two people holding stick hands that he’d tacked to the wall at the side of his desk. That made her smile too.
Gabby ran her hands over the surface of his desk, a standard-issue metal type that looked like it had seen its share of professors. She sat back in his chair, picked up one of his pens, and tugged open the center desk drawer to find sticky notes and more pens—the standard-issue drugstore kind, not fancy—and peppermint gum. She knew she shouldn’t be snooping, but she felt hungry for any clues as to who Cade was—not as a dad or a professor, but as a man.
Nope, no shocking revelations in his desk drawer.
She typed in the password and the screen saver gave way to a Word document, the cursor blinking right in front of her eyes and drawing attention to a single paragraph of text. It was clearly not Cade’s presentation. It was bad enough she’d been peeking in his drawers. She should just open the document she’d offered to proofread, which was sitting right at the bottom of the screen.
Again, her eyes were drawn magnetically to the blinking cursor, and she began to read. The paragraph before her eyes told a tale of a dismal man in a dismal town, and the words he used caused a flash of pain to sear right through her. She felt the character’s desolation, his abject lack of hope.
How could anyone write this stuff and not die of sadness? Cade appeared to want to write the kind of fiction that made her want to run screaming for the hills. It was similar in tone to his bestseller, with the same bleak outlook, as dark and overcast as stormy weather.
Then another thought occurred to her. Maybe he couldn’t write it. Maybe that was the problem, why the brilliant young author hadn’t released a book for the past three years. And maybe that was why he’d turned to doing research instead.
It was just conjecture. Gabby knew some literary works took years to write. But he’d told the class he’d left his writing behind. And she’d heard his mom slip up a little, saying something about hoping he’d rediscover his passion and be able to write again. Could Cade be…blocked?