And all at once her heart was pounding bruisingly hard (surely not even Jude could editorialize about that). It saw what she wanted.
It was a funny paradox that a suit could make someone look so sexy that you immediately wanted to strip them of it.
He found her pretty quickly. Though he had an advantage in height, too, so locating a dumbstruck redhead, glowingly pale in a black dress, wasn’t too much of a challenge.
It took him about three seconds to get to where she was standing, and still it wasn’t quite fast enough.
He arrived, and she wanted to tip face forward into his chest and maybe inhale deeply to get a hit of the smell of him.
She tipped her face up instead.
His lips wererightthere.
He used them to speak.
“Have I ever fallen in...?” he prompted. Sounding just a little tense.
“...love,” she completed.
When she could get a word out.
He cupped his hand to his ear and said, “Sorry?”
“LOVE,” she all but bellowed.
Causing heads to swivel.
“Ah,” he said. “That’s what I thought. Oh yeah, a thousand times.”
Suddenly, like a cane at a gong show, an arm was looped through his and he was dragged backward by Meredith Blevins.
“Gabe Caldera, these two fellas want to be involved in next year’s fund-raiser. Come on over and real quick meet Darius and Ray of Canyon Collectibles.”
He flashed a mischievous look over his shoulder as he went.
She stood and unabashedly watched him, on fire with curiosity over how he was going to explain that “a thousand times.” She had to hand it to him. He was the least boring principal of a school possibly ever.
She remained tucked next to the snack table, semi-camouflaged in her black dress, because she didn’t want to talk to anyone else, the way she didn’t want to hear, say, death metal on the heels of “Nights in White Satin.” Not yet.
When Gabe returned approximately two minutes later, he said, conversationally, “Okay, the first time I fell in love with you was when you stopped to watch a squirrel and a blue jay fight over a french fry. And again when you told me about how your heart broke over and over again for Annelise. And how it had broken for me and my fiancée. And when you told me why you had only one cat. And when you told Jan that some people think that a man’s heart is just as important as his penis. And again when I kissed you for the first time. And again when you whispered my name against my hand because you couldn’t scream, the first time we made love. And when you asked me why I was being a dick. And when a baseball in a pink box was delivered to me this morning. A thousand little earthquakes, all reshaping my heart over and over. How can this be happening? I asked myself. But I fall in love with you over and over, a little deeper, a little harder, every single time.”
His voice had gotten a little quieter, a little hoarser, and his voice, which had begun with bravado, was now tender, uncertain.
Holy—!
Talk about weaponizing strengths!
Who on earth could withstand that kind of cut-to-the-chaseness without dissolving completely. Shenevercried in front of anybody if she could possibly help it, and now all her fellow Hellcat Canyon merchants were impressionistic smears.
He used his fingertips to collect them from her lashes.
“I’m sorry I hurt you. I was scared to death of losing you, and I didn’t want to admit it to myself or to you.”
“I figured that out. And I know I wasn’t entirely fair to you, either. I’m sorry, too.” She sniffled.
A few of the people in the room were copping on to the fact that something momentous was happening between the principal and the florist. Either that, or he was helping her reinstall a contact lens.
“How about you? Ever been in love?”