her phone at Sarah who read aloud. “ ‘Leaving town. Dog @ EW. Code 195847362. Pls get him & letters for C.’ I guess EW means Eagle’s Way, and I guess C is for Celeste? What letters?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. He’s got a lot of nerve. This is Christmas! He shouldn’t expect me to drop what I’m doing and run up to his precious estate.”
Sarah handed back Nic’s phone. “Maybe it’s a trick. Maybe he’s trying to lure you up to his lair. I think he has a thing for you. He looks. I’ve caught him watching you.”
Nic stared at the screen on her cell. She hadn’t told the girls about the Christmas Eve event. What had happened at Eagle’s Way was personal and private and … devastating. For that short time, she’d become a part of Gabe’s pain, and it had destroyed her.
It wasn’t the sex that had left her quaking like a stand of aspens on a breezy day while she drove back to town yesterday. To be honest, sex with Gabe Callahan had been the most thrilling—if not satisfying—of her life. But afterward, to see him lose it, to watch him break down and mourn from the depths of his soul, had literally changed something inside her. Yesterday, through his grief, Gabe had shown her love with a capital L. Love like she’d never experienced.
If it hurt him that much to lose it, think of how wonderful it must have been to live it. How different from her own marriage it must have been.
She’d mourned her marriage and the dreams it had represented when it ended. She had loved Greg, or at least she’d loved the man she’d believed him to be. But even at the very worst of it, she’d never felt even a tenth of the emotion that Gabe had demonstrated yesterday. It had taken her years to recover, to get to the point where she could be ready to try again. If she’d needed years, Gabe Callahan would need decades. Chances were he’d never be ready to love again.
She wasn’t willing to play those odds. How could she compete with a dead woman? She couldn’t, so she wasn’t going to try. She’d played second fiddle enough in her life already. She refused to do it again.
“He might look, Sarah. He might even be willing to taste. But I want more than that. I deserve more than that. I won’t risk my heart for anything less.”
Sarah’s eyes widened and she drew back. “Whoa there, girlfriend. I wasn’t suggesting you fall in love with the man. I was thinking more along the lines of a kiss beneath the mistletoe.”
“Yeah, well, mistletoe can kill you.”
Sarah tilted her head and studied Nic for a long minute. “All right. What am I missing here? What aren’t you telling me?”
Nic debated how to respond. She and Sarah had a long history of sharing the highs and lows of their love lives. Ordinarily she would at least admit that something had happened, even if she didn’t provide details. This time was different. She didn’t have the words to explain what had happened yesterday even if she’d wanted to do so. Instead, she dodged the question by saying, “Believe me when I say that Gabe Callahan is unavailable. I didn’t realize just how unavailable until lately. I don’t think that sending me this text was his ham-handed way to ask me for a date. I think it’s just what he said. Gabe Callahan has left the building … and he’s neglected to take along his dog.”
The skeptical look in her best friend’s eyes told Nic that Sarah wasn’t buying her claim. “I’ll let it go for now. It is Christmas, after all. That said, I’m no dummy. I know there is more to the story of this text message than what you are telling me. Don’t think that we won’t revisit the subject.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Now, in the meantime, speaking of mistletoe …” She nodded toward Sarah’s entry hall, where one of the more interesting residents of the county, the mountain man known by only one name—Bear—crooked his finger in an attempt to lure his woman beneath the mistletoe. Patricia Robertson, who prior to joining Bear in his yurt northeast of town had worked for NASA as an honest-to-God rocket scientist, giggled like a schoolgirl as she allowed her lover to bend her over backward in a thorough kiss.
“Isn’t love amazing? You know what Patricia told me this