pulled back his face was serious. “I wouldn’t ask you to. Ever.” He kissed her again, this time lingering a little longer. “But I am going to ask you to trust me.”
He was asking a lot, because she didn’t do trust all that well. Maybe because it hadn’t worked out for her well in the past. Or maybe because she knew he was talking about a whole lot more than saving a little girl’s tea party. Either way, Regan closed her eyes and whispered, “Okay.”
If Gabe thought corralling a group of investors in a down-turned economy was difficult, it was because he had never spent the afternoon with a group of sugar-streaming, six-year-old girls.
“How did you—”
Gabe didn’t hear the rest of Regan’s question because a three-foot-tall girl with blonde curls, a pink crown, and enough attitude to take on the entire PTA screeched by, cupcake in hand, wand over her head, and giving “bat out of hell” a whole new meaning.
When she collided with another princess—this one covered in cupcake—fingers started pointing, tears started flowing, and normally Gabe would have found himself walking...right out that door. Instead he walked over, righted both kids, wiped off the cake and tears and, after making sure Holly was having a good time, sat down with Regan to share a cupcake.
And that was when Gabe realized that Regan was asking the wrong question. It wasn’t about how he’d done it but why. And for the past hour, watching a bunch of sugarcoated kids tear apart Pricilla’s teahouse, he’d been asking himself that same question over and over.
The answer was easy. He wanted to be her hero. He wanted to be that person who made Regan happy, who she counted on. And he wanted to be that for Holly. Somewhere between trying to chase Regan out of town and then into his bed, Gabe had fallen for her. Hard.
“Seriously,” Regan asked, breaking the cupcake in two and offering up half to Gabe. “How did you get them all here? Isabel runs the Mommy Mafia.”
He took the cupcake, set it on a napkin, and sucked the frosting off her fingers. She moaned, then her eyes flickered around to make sure no one had seen them. That was his fault, one he meant to fix. Right now.
“I called a few of the dads I know and said I was looking forward to seeing them at the tea party. When they asked why I was going I explained that the birthday girl was my girlfriend’s daughter.”
Regan bit her lower lip and a pretty blush covered her cheeks. “What about when Abigail—”
“She’ll get over it?” Gabe leaned over the table, the cupcake, and a stuffed cat with some kind of damn antlers on its head and kissed Regan. He kissed her in front of just about every gossip in town, knowing that his brothers were going to chew him a new one, that Abby was going to blow something, and that ChiChi was already picking out wedding dates.
And he didn’t care.
By the time Christmas Eve rolled around, Regan had a Band-Aid on every fingertip, glitter permanently stuck to her forearms, and enough sewing experience to moonlight as a seamstress. She’d finished all the costumes, helped Holly run her lines, and still managed to see Gabe twice. Sunday she’d met him at The Cannery with Holly for breakfast. Monday she met him on his couch, in nothing but mistletoe. Holly had been at her final rehearsal.
Now Holly was backstage, covered in fur, red lamé knickers and vest, waiting for the play to start. Regan unrolled and rolled the program in her hands and looked over her shoulder, past the garland-lined rows of packed seats, past the thirty antlered glee club kids gathered in the back waiting for their cue, to the theater’s entrance.
She hadn’t expected the painful flitter that fisted against her rib cage as the lights dimmed and the doorway remained empty. Just like the chair to her left.
Holly would be devastated if she stepped out on that stage and saw her second seat empty. Then again, Gabe wasn’t the kind of person to stand up a six-year-old. She looked at the entrance again.
“Will you stop? Every time you turn you smack me with the ball on your hat,” Jordan said from the chair to her right.
“Plus, I think it’s blocking everyone behind us from seeing”—Ava took in her hat—“anything.”
“Oh, sorry.” Regan took off her macaroni-trimmed elf hat, something Holly made for her in class, and set it under