Rachel Gibson - It Must Be Love

He'd been spending time with Ann lately. Mostly in her deli. He'd stop by for breakfast, and a few times when he couldn't get away from his desk, she'd bring him lunch. And they'd talk. Well, she would talk.

He'd dated her twice now, and the last time he'd taken her home he'd kissed her. But something hadn't felt right, and he'd ended it almost before it began.

The problem wasn't Ann. It was him. She was just about everything he'd always looked for in a woman. Everything he'd thought he wanted. She was pretty, smart, a great cook, and she would make a great mother for his kids. Only she was so boring that he couldn't stand it. And that really wasn't her fault, either. It wasn't her fault that when he looked at her he wished she would say something really weird that would make the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Something that would set him back on his heels and make him look at things in a whole new light. Gabrielle had done that to him. She'd ruined his view of what he wanted. She'd turned it on its head, and his life and his future were no longer so clear to him. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was just going through the motions. That he was standing in the wrong place, but if he just stood there long enough, waited long enough, everything would click and his life would return to the old, familiar rhythm.

He was still waiting that evening. When he should have been having a great time with his family, he couldn't. Instead, he stood alone in the kitchen staring out at the backyard and thinking about Gabrielle's interrogation tape.

He could still hear her appalled voice when she'd been asked to take a lie detector test. If he closed his eyes he could see her beautiful face and her wild hair. If he let himself, he could imagine the touch of her hands and the taste of her mouth. And when he imagined her body pressed close to his, he could recall the scent of her skin, and it was probably a very good thing she wasn't in town.

He knew where she was, of course. He'd known two days after she'd left. He'd tried to contact her once, but she hadn't been home, and he hadn't left a message. She probably hated him by now, and he didn't blame her. Not after that last night on her porch, when she'd told him she loved him and he'd told her she was confused. Maybe he'd handled everything badly, but typical of Gabrielle, her announcement had shocked the hell right out of him. Coming when it had like that. Right out of the blue on one of the worst nights of his life. If he could go back and handle things differently, he would. He didn't know exactly what he would say, but it didn't matter now anyway. He was fairly certain he was one of her least favorite people these days.

His mother walked through the back door, and the screen slammed behind her. "It's about time for the cake."

"Okay." He shifted his weight to one foot and watched Ann conversing with his sisters. They were probably telling her about the time he'd lit their Barbies on fire. His nieces and nephews ran around the big yard, hosing each other with squirt guns, screaming at the top of their lungs. Arm fit right in, like he'd figured she might.

"What happened to the girl in the park?" his mother asked.

He didn't need to ask what girl. "She was just a friend."

"Hmm." She took out a box of candles and stuck them in a chocolate cake. "Of course, she didn't look like a friend." Joe didn't respond, and his mother continued just as he knew she would. "You don't look at Ann the way you looked at her."

"How's that?"

"Like you could look at her for the rest of your life."

In some respects, the Idaho State Correctional Institution reminded Gabrielle a bit of high school. Maybe it was the speckled linoleum or the plastic chairs. Or maybe it was the smell of pine cleaner and sweaty bodies. But unlike high school, the large room where she sat was filled with women and babies and a sense of depression so suffocating that it pressed down on her chest.

She folded her hands in her lap and waited like the rest of the women. Several times over the course of the past week she'd tried to write Kevin, but each time she'd stopped before she'd written more than a few lines. She needed to see him. She wanted to see his face when she asked him the questions she needed answers to.

A door to her left swung open, and men in prison blue jeans and identical blue shirts filed into the room. Kevin was third from the last, and the minute he saw her, he paused before he continued into the visiting area. Gabrielle stood and watched him walk toward her. His familiar blue eyes guarded, red flushed his neck and cheeks.

"I was surprised you wanted to see me," he said. "I haven't had many visitors."

Gabrielle took her seat, and he sat across the table from her. "Your family hasn't come to see you?"

He looked up at the ceiling and shrugged. "A few of my sisters, but I'm not real big on seeing them anyway."

She thought of China and her best friend Nancy. "No girlfriends?"

"You're kidding, right?" He returned his gaze to her, and a frown wrinkled his brow. "I don't want anyone to see me like this. I almost didn't agree to see you, but I figure you probably have some questions, and I owe you that much."

"Actually, I only have one question." She took a deep breath. "Did you purposely choose me as a business partner to use me as a front?"

He sat back in his chair. "What? Have you been talking to your friend Joe?"

His question and the anger behind it surprised her.

"The day I was arrested he came in and said I'd used you. He actually had the balls to act all pissed off about it too. Then the next day he came to my holding cell, and he goes off on me about how I took advantage of you. Isn't that a laugh, especially when he used you to get to me?"

For a moment she considered telling him the truth about Joe and herself and her part in his arrest, but in the end she didn't. She supposed because she didn't have the energy to discuss it, and it didn't matter now anyway. Nor did she feel she owed him anything. "You didn't answer my question," she reminded him. "Did you purposely choose me as a business partner to use me as a front?"

Kevin tilted his head to the side and studied her for a moment. "Yes. In the beginning, but you're smarter than I originally thought, more observant, too. And I didn't end up doing as much business out of the store as I'd originally planned."

She didn't know what she'd expected to feel. Anger, hurt, betrayal, maybe a little bit of all of those things, but mostly she felt relief. She could move on with her life now. A little older, a bit wiser. And a lot less trusting, thanks to the man sitting across the table from her.

"In fact, I was thinking about going completely legit until the cops stuck their noses in my life."

"You mean after you had the money from the sale of the Hillard Monet?"

He leaned forward and shook his head. "Don't shed any tears for those people. They're rich and they're insured."

"So that made it all right?"

He shrugged without the least bit of remorse. "They shouldn't have had such an expensive painting in a house with such a lousy alarm system."

Stunned laughter escaped her lips. There was no accountability for his own actions, and even in a society that liked to blame lung cancer on tobacco companies and death from handguns on gun manufacturers, blaming the Hillards for the theft of their own painting went beyond superlatively appalling straight to sociopathic. But the truly scary part was that she'd never seen it before.

"You need mental help," she said as she stood.

"Because I don't feel bad that a bunch of rich people get their art and antiques stolen?"

She could try to explain it to him, but she figured her words would fall on deaf ears, and she just didn't care.

"And you didn't come out so bad. The government took everything I own, but you get to keep the shop to do with as you please. Like I said, not bad."