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She fell into step beside him. “I appreciate this.”
Her breath was still shaky and he waited again for her to tell him what was troubling her. She didn’t, so he asked, “Have you had dinner?”
She shook her head, still preoccupied with something. The cynic in him wondered if she’d lost her keys again or overdrawn her bank account, but his gut felt differently. This wasn’t an airheaded moment. She’d been afraid when he’d first seen her. And she was still nervous.
“I was thinking about getting a burger at the Cowboy Café,” she said.
Gabe pointed toward the charcoal grill at one end of his back porch. “I’m thinking club steak and fresh corn on the grill.”
Her dimple flashed. “I like the way you think.”
“That’s better,” he said. “For a minute, I thought you’d lost your sense of humor.”
“I had,” she said.
“Are you back?”
“I think a steak and fresh corn might fix me up.”
Gabe grinned. Nothing like a woman who knew how to joke.
When A.J. saw their approach, he threw a leg over the four-wheeler so fast he nearly fell. He ran forward, mouth open wide, chattering a long, garbled sentence that ended with, “Book! Hi. Hi. Come pay outside.”
Brooke went to a crouch and A.J. slammed into her, short arms going around her neck. Gabe watched while Brooke’s eyes closed and her lips curved in a soft smile as if holding A.J. was the most wonderful thing in the world. A.J. was wild about her, and unless he was way off, Brooke felt the same about the boy. He wished he could find a way to change her mind about the nanny job.
She stood, bringing A.J. up with her. The boy pointed to the bandage on his arm.
“No Elmo,” he said.
Brooke raised a questioning eyebrow at Gabe.
“No Elmo,” he repeated. “There’s no Elmo on the bandage. He has Cookie, Ernie and Bert, but no Elmo.”
Brooke squinted at the bandage. “Well,” she said in an ultra-serious voice. “What happened to Elmo?”
A.J. lifted both hands in a baby shrug. “Elmo went bye-bye.”
“I take it Elmo is his favorite?” she asked, amused.
“Hands down. Ranks right up there with Buzz Light-year.” Gabe hitched his chin toward the umbrella-covered table to the right of the porch. “There or here?”
“Either. It’s really nice outside today.” She let a wiggly A.J. down with a final hug. A.J. made a beeline for his ATV, hopped on and pressed the button, and with herky-jerky motion, he puttered the length of the porch. “Do you grill much? If you say yes, you may have company all the time.”
Gabe wondered if that would be a good thing or a bad thing, considering how he couldn’t stop sneaking glances at his new neighbor. Today she wore a long, sky-blue T-shirt over a pair of trendy jeans, the kind with rips strategically placed for best effect. He’d never pay good money for a pair of torn jeans, a reminder that he and Brooke came from different generations. She looked like what she was—a fresh-faced college grad with the world in front of her while he was already worn around the edges—like her jeans.
With an inward sigh and a swift kick in the mental pants, he opened the metal grill lid and checked for cleanliness. Sometimes he got caught up in work or A.J. and forgot to scrub. “A grill’s a bachelor’s best friend if he likes to eat at home.”
“When I was small my dad used to grill in the back yard in the summers.” She pointed to the space that was now overgrown with flower bushes, grass and other unidentifiable plants. No grilling apparatus was anywhere to be seen. “The smell of those hamburgers lured every dog for miles around and a few nearby neighbors. Mmm. So good…”
A nostalgic smile spread across her face. “While Dad cooked and Mom brought out the dishes and fresh vegetables, all three of us kids ran around, kicking a ball or playing chase. Sometimes one of us would grab Dad’s water bottle and squirt the other—usually my brother Zach—then the war was on.”
“Sounds fun.” A lot more fun and playful than his own childhood. Brooke was a Clayton in a town owned by Claytons. Gabe Wesson had been the son of a poor, uneducated laborer who worked such long hours he was never home to grill anything. Later, after Dad’s death, life had been even harder.
