Something About You (Just Me & You) (16 page)

From: nola@ellasedibles…

To: sabrina@lacasadimarch…

Subject: Gobbles

Sabrina,

Rex surprised me with a pre-paid vacation to New Orleans
over Thanksgiving. I had no choice but to accept. Please don’t be upset, dear.
Rex doesn’t have adult children, and men like that forget how us old girls got
most of our stretch marks. (Ha-ha.) I’ll make it up to you with a home-cooked
T-Day dinner when I get back.

On a motherly and therefore more intrusive note, I called
Les at work today and gave him an earful. He actually expected you to entertain
the idea of selling the house to the boy? Really? The more I thought about it,
the madder I got, and before I knew it, I was reaching for the phone. So if he
mentions something about me coming completely unglued, you’ll know what that’s
all about. 

Give Molly and Sebastian my love when you see them on Thanksgiving.

Hugs,

Mom

P.S. A man accidentally picked up your cell phone last
night when I called. Who’s Gage?

Sabrina winced when she saw the pile of legal notebooks on
her desk. They contained numerous outlines of the women’s and children’s health
services legislation she had planned to send to drafting by the end of the week
before Theo hijacked her with his tax cuts bill. There was no way she could
have it pieced together by the end of the day. The bill was going to have to
wait until Thanksgiving weekend was over. With Nola out on an impromptu
holiday, Sabrina had made plans of her own. Those plans entailed just taking it
easy. Maybe she’d pack a sack lunch and take a long hike around Mt. Bonnell if
the weather was nice.

Watching sappy Lifetime Television movies didn’t sound too
bad, either …  

The front door to the office swung open.

“Sabrina! I need you in here ASAP!” Theo’s voice was
frantic.

“What is it?” She took a step back at the noxious odor that
emanated from the green gooey substance splattered across his lapel. “Is
that—?”

“Last night’s lentils.” Theo held his arms out so she could
peel the jacket off carefully. “Jill had an obstetrician’s appointment, so I
had to take the kids to school. One of them got carsick.”

“Don’t tell me you drove the Porsche,” Sabrina groaned. The
one time she had ridden in the car with the Hon. Rep. behind the wheel, her
fingernails had almost punctured the upholstery.

“I can’t think about the Porsche right now.” He looked as
though he were in great pain. “I seem to have meetings scheduled every
half-hour this morning, much thanks to a certain Chief of Staff. I’m short on
time and jackets.”

“Cool your jets and let me think, Theo.” Sabrina tried not
to breathe through her nose as she carefully deposited the soiled jacket on top
of one of the recycling bins. Violetta would have known just how to get vomit
out of fine Italian wool, but Violetta was gone. Sabrina resented Theo for
designating her his new office wife on top of all of her other duties.

Carlton sat behind Violetta’s old desk, trying not to look
disgruntled at getting stuck with morning phone duty. She eyed the shoulder
width and arm length of his cherished charcoal Prada mohair and quickly
compared it to the color of the soiled jacket. His eyes caught hers, sending
her a frantic signal:
Please, no! I beg of you!

“C’mon, Carlton,” Sabrina cajoled. “The two of you can live
without each other for two hours.” Carlton reluctantly shrugged off the Prada
and passed it to Theo, looking away with his mouth set in a mutinous line as
the Hon. Rep. slid his arm into the sleeve. The jacket fit as though it had
been custom-tailored.

“Carlton, I owe you sushi tonight,” Theo said, relieved.
“That’s your favorite, right?”

“We’re having a dinner meeting? It’s the day before
Thanksgiving,” Carlton pointed out. All of the other legislative staffers had a
half-day off starting at noon. 

“Exactly. The day
before
,” Theo pointed out as he
picked up his briefcase. “It ain’t turkey time yet. None of us will cry if we
miss the Cooking Channel specials, so I want to see everyone in the War Room at
five-thirty. Oh—” He ducked his head back through the doorway. “—what ‘people
policy’ am I peddling this session, Chief?”

“Better benefits for retired public schoolteachers, an
increased minimum wage, state grants for minority-owned businesses, and the
omnibus bill to improve health and public services for women and children.”
Sabrina rattled them off automatically.

Theo pondered for a moment. “What are the chances of those
bills getting voted out of committee?” he asked.

“Do you want that in percentages or odds? Both involve
nothing but zeroes,” she said dryly. Theo would make a half-hearted effort to
push her initiatives through, knowing that he would be met with a wall of
resistance. When questioned by newspaper reporters and journalists like Eva
Hayes, he would use this as leverage to show he cared about important social
issues. It was what kept voters coming back for more.

Theo finally nodded gave her the thumbs-up. “Remember to
throw another bone to the Tide Brothers and our other friends at the State
Builders’ Association — something more ‘eco-friendly’-ish that gives tax
breaks to developers.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Theo,” Sabrina said, feeling
drained. It was easy for him to get excited about legislative session when she
did all of the real work.

“Great!” His mouth spread into a pleased grin. “Sounds like
you’ve got a busy weekend ahead of you, Chief.”

Carlton waited for the door to the Hon. Rep.’s inner sanctum
to close before he said smugly, “Guess you can nix the long tryptophan nap,
Sabrina.”

Theo’s War Room pow-wow ran until eight. This left her only
an hour to get to the gym. Other than the college-aged woman at the check-in
desk, she was the only person there. Drops of sweat landed on the treadmill
console as she punched up the speed control, increasing her pace and stride
until the pain in her calves faded to a low burn.

Sabrina lowered the speed on the treadmill to begin her
cool-down. Her skin tingled. Post-workout endorphins coursed through her blood,
changing her entire perspective. Legislative session was revving up. She could
feel the energy in the air all over the city. She woke up too early in the
morning and dragged home too late. She was mentally exhausted. Stressed out.

To hell with Theo, she thought, shivering in her sweaty
workout clothes.
She
was the one in control.

Total control.

The inside of her car smelled of chicken katsu, leftovers
she’d saved from the office meeting. She turned the car into the driveway.
Someone had left the garage door on her side open. She glanced in the rearview
mirror. Her sweaty hair had dried in clumps and her eye makeup had run, making
her look all strung-out and emo. She craved a hot shower and sleep. Suddenly,
the nose of the Audi met resistance. She flinched at the clattery crash that
seemed to come from all around her, like the sound of a hundred bowling pins
being knocked over.

The garage light came on, and a shirtless Gage flew out of
the doorway that led from the small laundry room. With an exasperated look, he
frantically motioned for her to back up. Sabrina slammed the Audi in reverse.

“What the hell?” she shouted, getting out of the car. She
stopped short in front of a pile of long wooden posts that were strewn all over
the garage like giant Pick Up Sticks.

“You know,” he said slowly, rubbing his chin, “I’m not going
to make some clichéd comment about women drivers. However, I will say that it
takes amazing lack of hand-eye-foot coordination to drive into a pile of wood
clearly visible under low beams.”

“What is all this?”

“Cherry, pine and oak.” He hoisted two of the posts and
moved them to the other side of the garage.

“I can see that. Why is it in my garage?”

“
The
garage,” he corrected her. “It’s what I do in my
spare time. It’s what I make.”

“What? Venetian gondola poles?”

“No, beds. Gives me something to do at night. Turning a
hundred bucks of raw material into twenty times the profit for a finished
product isn’t a bad side gig. I used to have a workshop at my old place. Don’t
worry; I’ll keep things on my side after tonight.”

So that explained the massive four-poster in his bedroom,
Sabrina thought. And why his hands and hair had smelled like wood the night he
kissed her. Why the muscles in his back, chest and arms were so defined.

Movies at the Alamo Drafthouse were out. But conversing
wasn’t off-limits. After all, they
did
live together …  

“The bed in your room is truly lovely,” Sabrina told him.
When he leaned over to pick up the posts, she was momentarily transfixed by the
muscles that rippled on either side of his spine. “How did you learn to work
with wood?”

“My grandfather taught me everything he knew,” Gage replied.
“He was a furniture maker and a wood carver.” He looked back at her over his
shoulder as he hauled the posts out of the way. “There wasn’t much to do in
Iowa in the winter, so I had plenty of time to get it right.”

“Isn’t it time-consuming?”

“That’s the point,” Gage said. “Don’t you have any hobbies
or interests outside of work?”

“Sort of.” Sabrina thought of her gym membership. She didn’t
think that waging war against subcutaneous fat counted as a hobby. More like a preemptive
strike.

“If you don’t, you should,” he said. “All work and no play
makes Sabrina a dull girl. And probably a little rusty under the belt.” There
it was again: that sly, sideways smile, a distinctly
Gage
mannerism that
had already hardwired her to anticipate further verbal roughhousing.

“My career is very demanding, and it’s definitely not dull
by any stretch of the imagination.” She tried to suppress the ring of
defensiveness in her voice. It seemed like the appropriate time for her to add,
“I have a gym membership that I actually use. I jog around the neighborhood.”

“So that’s where all your free time goes,” Gage ribbed her
lightly.

His skin had taken on a sheen of sweat, emphasizing his
prizefighter’s physique. A tattoo of a gryphon covered his entire back from the
base of his spine to the nape of his neck. The span of the creature’s wings
covered his shoulder blades. And the body art she’d seen peeping out of his
shirt at Molly’s house was some sort of tribal Celtic knot. Tattoos that would
have seemed either commonplace or ludicrously menacing on other men somehow
suited him, emphasizing his sheer size and preternaturally pale skin.

Black ink rippled as he transferred the posts from one side
of the garage to another and stacked them neatly. Sabrina stared at her
training shoes and banished wanton thoughts.

This was Gage “Fitz” Fitzgerald, for crying out loud.

“There.” He dusted off his hands on the front of his jeans
when he was done.

Sabrina felt her mouth moving without her express
permission. “So. Do you, ah, have…”

“Do I have—?” He looked at her and waited.

“Do you have any more—? You know.” She patted her forearms
and chest with her hands.

“Sorry, my ASL’s rusty.” Then one side of his mouth twitched
into a smile. “Oh. D’you mean tattoos?”

“Yeah, those.”

“I see the word ‘tattoo’ is a pejorative in the world as you
know it. You can use the words ‘ink’ or ‘body art’ if that makes you
comfortable.”

“Tattoo.
Tattoos
. There. I said it twice, in both
singular and plural,” Sabrina said a bit crossly. “Well, do you?”

“Why do you want to know? So you can identify my mangled
corpse after my life is cut tragically short, say, by a Cap Metro bus?”

“No.” Sabrina ignored the reference to their conversation at
the market. “I’m just curious.”

“Well, then.” Gage sauntered forward, gazing at her
contemplatively. Her eyes were instinctively drawn to the broad expanse of
pectoral muscles, which flared out from the dip in his solar plexus. For one
absurd and delirious moment she imagined what it would be like to feel his
slick skin sliding against hers.

To be crushed under all that delicious weight.

“Because there’s no need to know, I won’t be sating your
curiosity,” he went on. “There is, ah, something you should probably know
whenever you ask a man about the T-word and its specific placement on his
person.”

He was just close enough so that she could pick up his
unique smell. Every man had one, but why did his have to be so divine? He even
smelled good when he sweat. Like nori and musk.

“What’s that?”

His smile grew wicked. “It’s code for ‘Did you bring
condoms’?”

Sabrina’s ears went hot. “That’s
not
what I’m
asking.”

“No? That’s what you Texans call a cryin’ shame.” Gage’s
voice was soft and rumbly, almost a whisper.
Wait.
Was he trying to
seduce her after all? She tilted her head up to look into his eyes. He was
gazing at her mouth just like he had the first time he kissed her. Enough
seconds passed for her imagination to dart off on a brief, wicked jaunt. She
even dared consider the dimensions of what was under those faded jeans.

Then the merriment in his eyes surfaced. 

One side of his mouth twitched before he broke down in
hearty laughter. Sabrina opened her mouth to protest, but everything she wanted
to say was lodged in that restrained place under her diaphragm reserved for
epithets yet unhurled at obtuse committee members and lackadaisical pages.

“Damn, honey,” he said. “You’re wasted on the mediocre
masses. I wish I could capture this moment for posterity. This is classic ‘Fitz
and Giggles’ material.”

Then he did the unthinkable: he reached out with one big
hand and ruffled her hair as though she were a child whose antics amused him.

She turned on her heels and marched to the door, blowing
away the long bangs that had fallen into her eyes after his mussing. He was
seriously not going to get away with having the last word. Not this time. Or
for that matter,
ever again
, she vowed.

“All right, Fitzgerald—” She held out a wavering finger to
make a point only to realize that the takeout bag was looped around her arm.
That accounted for the salty smell of the udon-seaweed salad, which meant that
his body scent was simply refined, perfume-grade musk. “—You want to know why I
didn’t want to take you on as a housemate? This. Here.
Right now.
This
is why — why I — why we can’t—”

“C’mon. You can spit it out.” Gage crossed his arms across
his chest and waited, still wearing the same shit-eating grin.

“
Converse
,” Sabrina spat before she stormed inside.

Once in her room, she sat in the middle of the bed with her
chopsticks chewing on cold nori. The alert screen on her cell phone told her
that Molly had called repeatedly while she was at the gym — likely
attempts to persuade her into joining Molly and the Cole brigade the next day
for turkey and tension. There was no way Sabrina was going to spend an entire
holiday with Gage Fitzgerald. Zero.
None.