Keeping Secrets in Seattle - By Brooke Moss Page 0,45

paying for everything?” I asked, clipping the hair close to his ear.

“She’s still starting out, and her job at the restaurant only pays minimum wage,” he said. “Besides, we’re getting married. My income is our income now.”

Not yet, I thought bitterly. “And her family isn’t paying for a thing?”

Gabe shook his head. “They’re paying for the flowers and part of the catering. But Alicia’s dad is really big on self-sufficiency. So we’re trying to take care of it ourselves.”

“Huh.” I ran a brush through his hair. “Where are her parents from?”

“Portland. Alicia went to South Summit High.”

“And they’re wealthy?” I pressed.

Gabe looked up at me and grinned. “They do all right. I haven’t asked her dad for a bank statement or anything.”

I decided to push the subject further. “Well are their cars nice? What about their house? Is it huge?”

“I…actually, I don’t know. I’m assuming so, based on what Alicia’s told me.” Gabe took another bite.

I scrunched up my face. “Why don’t you know?”

He seemed oblivious to my concern while I gripped my clippers with white knuckles. “The times I’ve met them, they’ve come to Seattle to visit us. We’ve gone to nice restaurants, though.”

“Who paid?”

Gabe let one of his shoulders rise, then drop. “I dunno. I did, I guess.”

An overwhelming protectiveness came over me, and I had to fight the urge to growl like a mother tiger. He explained how he once imagined himself getting married in his parents’ backyard, with twinkling lights strung along the fence and his father working the grill on their back porch. I made a face when Gabe bemoaned how the intimate affair he’d envisioned had grown into the over-the-top gala Alicia was planning. He described how she’d always dreamt of a fairy tale wedding, and how he didn’t have the heart not to give it to her.

“Have you talked to her about scaling things down a bit?” I was careful not to sound bitter.

“Yeah, but she just cries. She says I guilt trip her for wanting her one special day. And I hate seeing her cry.”

“That’s nice of you.” I tried not to gag and folded down the cuff of his ear so I could trim around it carefully. “But, you’re going to be paying off this wedding for ten years. Do you realize that? Does Alicia really want to start off your marriage with a ton of debt?”

“I haven’t told her how much debt we’ve acquired just yet.”

I groaned. “At this rate, you could be on a second mortgage by the big day.”

Gabe glanced up at me. “The things a guy will do for the woman he loves, right?”

I bit my lip. He might as well have punched me in the gut.

There was an awkward pause.

“Enough about that. Did you girls have fun trying on dresses and stuff?” he asked.

Swallowing my compulsion to blurt out everything I’d heard Alicia say, I said, “Sure. What did Alicia say about it?”

“Well, we haven’t seen each other yet today, since she had so much wedding stuff to do. But when she called, she said that everyone had been fitted and that the dresses were all picked out.” He looked up at me with a worried expression. “Did something go wrong?”

“No, not exactly.”

“What’s up?” Gabe asked.

“Nothing’s up.” My voice was high-pitched, and I cleared my throat again.

“You’re being cryptic. What gives?”

“Everything went fine. I just think that some of the girls…left with slightly smaller egos than they may have had before.”

Gabe’s laughter filled the kitchen. “Well, that might be a good thing. Since some of Alicia’s friends are…”

“Snobby bitches?” I bent to trim the hair at his neckline.

“Be nice.”

I tapped his shoulder. “You started it. But honestly, they are a snooty group.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But Alicia’s known some of them for a long time, and she can’t help how her friends are.”

Gabe was still under the impression that Alicia wasn’t nearly as pretentious as her friends. How she managed to keep such a dominant personality trait a secret from the man she was in love with, sleeping with, and engaged to marry was beyond me. She deserved an Academy Award.

“It’s a good thing Alicia is different then, huh?” I pulled the towel from his shoulders, scattering his dark hair all over the kitchen floor. “You’re all done. Go look in the mirror and make sure it looks all right.”

When Gabe stood up, it revealed his cut chest again, so I immediately turned to the sink and began rinsing off my scissors. Oh, Lord, he’d been working