Kaitlyn Rice - The Third Daughter's Wish

He yanked his boot from beneath hers, then swung around and offered her an elbow. She hooked a hand around it and they stepped outside. He waited on the porch while she locked her house, then offered his arm again as they approached the driveway.

Tonight should be a blast.

When Josie reached her truck, she stopped. Gabe kept going and nearly yanked her arm out of the socket.

“Ow!”

He mumbled an apology, but also untangled his arm and kept walking toward his pearl-white BMW, parked behind her truck in the drive. “We’re taking my car, kid.”

“Nope.” She lifted her keys to jingle them. “Move the overpriced status symbol. I’m driving.”

Gabe stopped and turned around near his car. He shoved his thumbs over his holster and leaned a hip against his fender, appearing as though he could wait all evening.

She sighed. He’d had that dang car just over a month. Every year when the new models came out, he traded up. She’d been driving the same Toyota pickup for ten years. It had heart, like her. Gabe’s cars were simply vehicles, and she told him so, often.

After a moment, he broke their staring match to frown down at his clothes. “I can’t ride with you,” he said. “I borrowed this shirt from Nadine’s husband.”

Nadine was Gabe’s younger sister by six years, and Livy’s twin. The fact that Gabe had borrowed the Western-style shirt from his brother-in-law was no great shock, but Josie couldn’t fathom what he’d meant by the comment.

“These boots used to be my mother’s,” she said. “How would borrowed clothes factor into this decision about who drives?”

“I can’t risk ruining the shirt with blood or broken glass,” he said, deadpan. Then he walked around to the passenger side of his car and opened it, indicating with a nod that she should duck inside.

She stood her ground. “You’re not risking anything. I’m a great driver.”

“Except you rely on everyone else to be on their toes.” He leaned down to pat the car seat. “Get in. We’re taking the car.”

She waved the paper bag. “Can’t. I need to go by Callie’s before the party.”

“I know the way to your sister’s house.”

Josie scowled and kept her feet planted.

“Come on, Josie.” Gabe leaned an arm across the top of his car door. “I’ll be the designated driver and you can have as good a time as you want.”

Now, that was tempting. A couple of beers and she’d be primed to party. Maybe she’d forget all her turmoil about her visit with her father.

“You can get completely schnockered if you like,” Gabe added.

Josie didn’t drink that much. She made certain she didn’t. And worried anyway.

Lifting her chin, she crossed the space between her truck and Gabe’s car. “For your information, I’ve never once been schnockered. I drink one or two at a time, and generally only on weekends.” She slid inside and slammed the car door before Gabe could respond.

But of course, after Gabe had come around and folded his long frame behind the steering wheel, he said, “You’re practically a miniature person, so two could get you into plenty of trouble.”

“I’m five-four—almost average for a woman my age.” She sounded huffy, but she couldn’t help it. Her height, or lack of it, was also a sore point.

Gabe winked.

Ooh! The man could push her buttons! Josie opened her mouth to tell him what she thought of his teasing, but shut it again when she noticed his eyes.

His gaze had locked on her lips, and he was frowning. His mustache hopped from side to side as he wiggled his jaw. Then he pursed his lips slightly.

“Uh, Gabe? What are you doing?”

He lifted his eyes to hers. “Your mustache is crooked.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” She felt her own pasted-on mustache and discovered one side hanging loose. “Can I borrow that?” She pointed to his rearview mirror.

“Sure.”

She set the paper bag on the floorboard, then slid halfway onto his car’s middle console and tilted the mirror her way.

Gabe didn’t start the car. As she worked to peel off the left edge of the mustache and restick it, he sat with the full length of his leg pressed against hers.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“Enjoying the view.”

She flicked a gaze at his muscular thighs and just higher, for an instant. “Uh-huh! You were liking more than the view.”

“You’re the one on my side of the car.”

She bounced into her seat, returned the treat bag to her lap and stuck her tongue out at him. Then she reached up to jerk the mirror around to face him. “Yours is still loose on one side.”

He flipped the visor down in front of him and used that mirror to adjust his costume piece.

Immediately, Josie looked behind her visor and discovered another vanity mirror there. “You should have told me,” she said as she snapped it back into place. “I forget about the cushy doodads in your stuffy cars.”

He didn’t offer a countering response. When he finished adjusting his mustache, he turned toward her. “Better?”

His eyes held the mischievous gleam she’d seen a hundred times before, and that flash of teeth was devilish. Her heart skittered into a quicker rhythm.

Sometimes Josie wondered what it would be like to love a man like Gabe. To love a man fully. Sometimes she ached for that connection.

Gabe peered into the mirror again. “Still crooked?”

She averted her gaze. “Nope. You’re fine.”

“Good.” She heard the flap of his visor, then he started the car and backed out of the drive.

Finally.

Josie needed to get to that party. Her only thoughts should be about having a great time and forgetting the one man in the world who could hurt her. Who had hurt her, whether he’d intended to or not.

That man was her father.

Certainly not Gabe Thomas.

AS GABE BEGAN the thirty-minute drive from Augusta to Wichita, he and Josie talked about the party and who they might see there. About a hundred home-improvement industry professionals had been invited to the annual event thrown by Gabe’s mother and step-father, who owned a big lumber-supply company in east Wichita.

True to his word, Gabe drove past the east Wichita exits, continuing on to Ethan and Callie Taylor’s west-side home. By the time he approached their house, it was eight o’clock and well past dark. Yet the house behind the curtains was unlit.

“I hope everything’s okay,” Josie said, clicking out of her seat belt before Gabe had braked in the drive. “What if Lilly had another seizure? They could be at the hospital again.”

“Don’t decide that now,” Gabe said as he followed Josie to the porch. “Maybe they’re putting the kids to bed or sitting out in the backyard. Did they expect you?”

“Ethan’s working tonight, but Callie and the kids should be home. She’d leave the porch light on, I think.” Josie rang the bell.

Callie opened the door seconds later, calm and elegant despite the green glitter antennae she wore atop her blond head. “Hi, you two.” She smiled tiredly as she looked from her sister’s costume to Gabe’s. “How appropriate.”

“Everything okay?” Josie cocked her head to peer beyond her sister into the house.

“Sure. Things are fine.”

“Your lights are out,” Josie said.

“Oh. Sorry.” Callie opened the screen door and motioned them inside. “I’m trying to keep things calm for Lilly. When I ran out of candy, I turned off the front lights and took her and Luke back to the kitchen. I didn’t want the neighborhood kids to keep ringing the bell.”

Callie led them through the house to the kitchen. Lilly had fallen asleep in front of the bowl of Cheerios on her high chair. Five-year-old Luke sat at the table, his entire arm crammed inside a plastic pumpkin container. Wordlessly, the sturdy brown-eyed boy studied Gabe and Josie as he removed a lollipop from the pumpkin. After he had set it with a pile of similar treats, he said, “I didn’t know grown-ups could go trick-a-treatin’.”