A Taylor-Made Life (6 page)

Her smile fell, but she nodded. “So,
where are we going tomorrow?”

He clasped her hand and entwined their
fingers more fully. “Let’s have a picnic lunch at Dallas Blooms.
The Arboretum is a big supporter of CanSM, and they’ve given us
tickets. I’ll bring the food. You bring the blanket.”

She impishly bit her bottom lip. “And
what do you plan to do with this blanket?”

The muscles in his lower abdomen
tightened.
Shit
.

Gavin waited for the bellhop to open
his door then walked into the room. The young man, a heavy dose of
acne marking his face, sat the luggage in the dressing area. Gavin
pulled out a twenty and handed it to the guy who looked a lot like
what he’d expected from his CanSM apprentice.

He locked the door and leaned against
it. Taylor Smith hadn’t been at all what he’d expected. And that
was good and bad. Clearly, the young woman already had a serious
crush on him. Although he was used to the attention of women, her
attention was different. Pure and honest. And the sparkle of her
sweet dimpled smile….

Shaking the thought from his head, he
frowned.
Bad, Gav, very bad.
He should contact CanSM
tonight. They’d obviously made a mistake. The right thing to do
would be to recuse himself, but the thought sent a shiver down his
spine. Was that really the right thing?

He pulled out his laptop and started
it up. Checking his email, he found forty-seven new messages since
three that afternoon. A light email day. Four of them from Marissa
and one from Taylor. He scanned the selections. Marissa apparently
didn’t get him. None of these women were what he was looking for.
Hell, Taylor was a better choice. He froze. Therein lay the problem
with this whole damn situation.

Everything about the girl fit. A
queasy feeling rose from the pit of his stomach. Marriage—sex with
a seventeen-year-old. He shuddered. A dirty, old man at the ripe
age of twenty-five.

The difference in age was a little
over seven years, according to her birth date, but it was the wrong
seven. As a thirty-year-old, he could easily date a
twenty-two-year-old. In five years, the age difference would never
matter.

In five years, neither of them would
be alive, and then it really wouldn’t matter. Why was he even
thinking about this?

He stared at her message before
opening it.
It’s just an email.
Then why did he feel like he
was breaking some law to read it?

He clicked the screen before he
changed his mind. The message opened.

To: Gavin Taylor <
[email protected]
>

From: Taylor Smith <
[email protected]
>

Subject: Nice meeting you and I’m
gonna kick your butt

I wanted to remind you to bring your
laptop and maybe we could play a game of CROG. That is, unless
you’re scared, Oggerboy.

Looking forward to tomorrow. I have
the greatest picnic blanket in the world. Hope your food can keep
pace.

Tay

His spirit leapt then plummeted. Her
bright eyes and smile really
had
stolen his heart. She was
lovely. Hopeful. Innocent.

A vision of her in a hospital, hooked
to tubes and enduring the same indignities he’d suffered, burned
through his mind. His heart shattered. His eyes stung and prickled,
as he squeezed them shut and took a leveling breath. He’d been
petrified in the hospital and could still feel the pain. The pain
of needles, of humiliation, the pain of being alone. What must it
have been like for her?

So much pain. That was what came to
mind when he thought of cancer. Yes, it could kill. Yes, it sucked
away his time and body, but he’d never understood the pain until
he’d experienced it himself.

Taylor Smith was the girl he would’ve
picked if he were still in high school. Not that she would’ve given
a tech geek like him more than a passing glance over her pompoms.
But he
wasn’t
in high school. He needed to nip this in the
bud before it came around and took a chunk out of his
ass.

But what would she think if he recused
himself after the wonderful dinner with her family? There would be
no way to explain it. She’d think the worst. The thought of how it
would affect her was unbearable.

No.

Disappointing her now, after he’d met
her, hurting her like that—it wasn’t something the flames of hell
could scare him into doing. He’d have to follow through with the
mentorship and keep the relationship in check. She may not be an
adult, but he was. And for her sake, he could manage the situation.
He managed a billion dollar business. One infatuated
seventeen-year-old shouldn’t be a problem. His own attraction…well,
he’d handle that the same way he handled all his uncomfortable
emotions. Deny and divert.

He typed his email.

To: Taylor Smith <
[email protected]
>

From: Gavin Taylor <
[email protected]
>

Re: Nice meeting you and I’m gonna
kick your butt

I wanted to remind you, Ms.
Cheetdeath, that while you may have had beginners luck with CROG,
it is still my creation and as such still calls me god.

I will bring my laptop, and will expect
a rematch.

While I have my doubts about the
greatest picnic blanket in the world, I do not have any about the
five-star cuisine from this hotel and am more than confident it can
keep pace.

See you tomorrow.

Gav

He smiled and hit send.

* * * *

I sat in the leather seat of Gavin’s
rental car. Being with him was like a trip to Disney World in my
favorite pajamas—fun, exciting and comfortable. I twisted so I
could see him better and leaned back against the car door.
“Favorite color?”

He scratched his head. “Uh…I suppose
I’m like most guys. Blue, I guess.”

“Shade?”

“Huh?”

I giggled. We’d spent the drive to the
Arboretum taking turns asking silly questions and getting to know
each other. I’d found out that
Transformers
and
The
Bourne Identity
were Gavin’s two favorite movies. He liked
baseball, but hated basketball. I’d told him I loved Rihanna,
especially
We Found Love
. He didn’t know the song. Then as
if the
Wizards of CROG
heard my plea, it played on the
radio. My cheeks heated again. They did that a lot with Gavin.
There was no way he could miss the message in the words and how
they related to us as a couple. I already considered it
our
song
.

He cleared his throat and stared
straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly.
“It’s nice.”

Where was Edward Cullen’s ability to
read minds when I needed it? Sometimes Gavin gave off a vibe I’d
swear was attraction, but other times he seemed like a big brother.
It was confusing as crapadoodle.

I wasn’t confused about my feelings,
though. I was wildly, madly, deeply in love with Gavin Taylor,
computer geek and
hawt
genius extraordinaire.

“First kiss?” I was pressing my luck
with that one, but I wanted to see how far he’d let me go. I knew,
from my time with Matt, that talking about it was the first step
toward actually doing it.

He arched his eyebrows in older
brother mode. “Excuse me?”

I decided to push a little harder.
“Okay. If you don’t like that one, then how about the first time
you had sex?” I pretended my voice didn’t just crack.

His jaw dropped, and his face turned
bright red. Then he scowled. “You first.”

Crap. I hadn’t anticipated that one.
“No fair.” My cheeks flamed again as I dropped my head and bit my
brittle fingernail, snapping it off between my teeth, but my gaze
never left him.

He smiled, apparently satisfied at my
embarrassment and then to my pure delight said, “My first kiss was
Jenny Jenkins in a corner booth of a Pizza Hut in St. Louis.” He
grimaced. “Not the most graceful for either of us.” He darted a
glance at me. “You?”

I took a deep breath. “Technically,
Marshall Vance was my first kiss in eighth grade. We were at a
party after the school play.” I studied some invisible speck on my
lap. “I don’t really count it, because he didn’t make full contact
before his mom came to pick him up.”

I darted a glance back to Gavin. The
smug smile on his face infuriated me. “But my real first kiss was
with Matt McCallum. He’s at Stanford on a football scholarship
now.” I noticed Gavin’s smile faded as his jaw clenched. “We went
out twice.”

“Football, huh?
Quarterback?”

I shot him a smug smile of my own.
“How’d you know?”

He rolled his eyes, but otherwise
seemed unaffected. “Lucky guess.”

“So anyway, he kissed me after
Homecoming. We were on my front porch.” I sighed more wrapped up
with the memory than I’d intended to get. “It was nice.” Had I
seriously just shared my most private, prized memory? Gavin really
was easy to talk to once I got past the embarrassing
part.

“What happened?”

“Well, he walked me to the
door—”

“Not during the kiss.” He quirked a
disapproving eyebrow at me. “I think I can figure that one out on
my own. I mean, why only two dates? Was he a bad
kisser?”

A heavy cloud hovered over me, because
while I loved the memory of the kiss, I’d just as soon forget what
came immediately after. “I got sick. He left for college. We broke
up.” I dropped my head back against the headrest. “He used to bring
me a single daisy every time I saw him.”

Gavin stared at the road but took my
hand and softly kissed it. “Sorry.”

My heart rate spiked with the touch of
his warm lips on my fingers, but a heaviness remained with me. It
always did when I thought about Matt. “It was pretty hard at the
time, but I’m over him now.” That sick feeling rose in the pit of
my stomach—the one that made me think I’d never be able to eat
again.

* * * *

Gavin’s heart splintered. Taylor was a
young lady who deserved the best but who’d lost so much. He
released her hand and gripped the steering wheel. He’d actually
felt a twinge of jealousy when she described her kiss with this
Matt.

Humph.

The entry to the Dallas Arboretum was
backed up two blocks. They sat silently, waiting to pull
in.

After several minutes, Taylor craned
her neck to see over the cars in front. “It’s not usually this busy
during the week.” Her gaze apparently caught something. “Oh! I know
why. It’s spring break.”

Finally, they got a parking place and
walked the stone path to the botanical gardens. A squat woman with
a bandana and a big smile greeted them. Taking their tickets, she
then handed him a map. “Don’t miss the butterfly
garden.”

Her thick Texas twang made him smile.
He carried the basket of food the hotel prepared. Taylor carried a
zippered tote she swore was a picnic blanket. He hoped it wasn’t a
sleeping bag, and he scowled suspiciously at it.

They walked a cobbled path to a large,
open area framed in a sea of bright spring flowers. He found a
place out of the sun on a grassy knoll near a bed of
tulips.

Irises dotted the beds with deep
purple. Daisies, jonquils and daffodils crammed full beds with
myriad color. Monarch butterflies littered the field, flitting from
blossom to blossom in a drunken state, overwhelmed at the
abundance. He breathed in the spring fragrance. These were things
he never noticed before the cancer. Now they
seemed…holy.

She unzipped her green blanket to
spread over the grass. Smiling in apparent satisfaction, she placed
her hands on her hips. “Well, what do you think of my picnic
blanket now, Mista Hata?”

He chuckled at her sass and sat down.
“I’m sufficiently impressed with this
amazing
blanket.”

“Thank you.” She plopped down
cross-legged next to him.

Clothed in the lose-fitting jeans and
tight pink T-shirt, she moved with effervescent grace. She caught
his gaze. Realizing he was staring, he dropped his head and began
to dig in the basket. “We have chicken salad or ham and cheese. Do
you have a preference?”

“Oh, I like both. Which one do you
want?”

“I actually like both,
too.”

She dimpled. “Hmm… How about we share?
We can each take a half.”

“I like the way you think, Smith.” He
divvied them up, took a big bite of chicken salad, and asked around
a mouthful, “Mmm…. So what is your best subject in
school?”

She finished chewing her bite and took
a sip of her Perrier. “Well, I actually don’t go to school anymore.
I got my GED a few months ago. But when I was in school, my best
subject was English. Yours?”

“Computer Science.”