Anne McAllister - Gibson's Girl

Chloe smiled. “And that’s when you realized...you didn’t like it?”

Sister Carmela shook her head. “I did like it. A lot. It was wonderful, and by the ‘real world’s’ standards, I was a success. But in the end, I knew it wasn’t right for me. I saw that, no matter how ‘successful’ I was out there, I belonged here. And so I came back.”

It made sense. It made an incredible amount of sense. While Sister Carmela had been talking about her monastic life, she might as well have been talking about Chloe’s.

She’d been feeling every bit as unsure, every bit as restless as the date she and Dave had finally set for their wedding approached. Granted it had been, at that time, still four months off. But some nights Chloe couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking about the rest of her life...and wondering if it was going to be any different than what she’d already had.

It wasn’t that she was dissatisfied really. It was just that she didn’t know!

She and Dave had been together so long, they seemed so perfect for each other—like Sister Carmela and the monastery—that it made her nervous.

“You’re asking for trouble,” Dave said.

But Chloe knew that wasn’t true. She was asking for a test. She needed to see what was beyond the rolling hills and river bluffs of the northeastern Iowa town where she’d grown up. Collierville was wonderful. Dave was wonderful. She loved them both. But maybe, like Sister Carmela, she was taking the easy way out.

Maybe she should leave, too.

“Not for fifteen years!” Dave had said when she told him how long Sister Carmela had stayed away.

“Of course not! A couple of months. That’s all. What do you think?”

“I think it’s nuts,” Dave had said with his customary bluntness. “What’s out there that isn’t here? Besides crime, poverty, dirt and air pollution, that is.”

Dave knew they had all that, to some degree, in Iowa. He was just trotting out the time-honored arguments that all self-satisfied midwesterners indulged in when they felt morally superior to big city folks.

But in the end, he’d supported her. He’d told his parents that if Chloe felt she had to do it, then she had to do it. He’d told her parents that he didn’t mind waiting to get married. They’d waited often enough.

“I’ll be back in August,” Chloe had reminded them all.

“Leaving me to do all the work,” her mother had said darkly.

But in fact, Chloe thought her mother was secretly pleased. She had far more interest in making it a wedding to remember than Chloe did.

“I’ll take the phone book with me. I’ll contact the florist, the caterer,” Chloe promised. “I’ll send out the wedding invitations from there.”

She’d brought the phone book. But she wasn’t working on lists of florists and caterers tonight. Tonight she was staring out at the New York skyline, periodically pinching herself, hardly able still to believe she was here.

It was going to be wonderful. The experience. The job. She would do a good job—she was determined about that. Despite her disastrous, humiliating beginning, she would salvage her job. And she would go home at peace, having seen the bright lights and big city; she would be ready to settle down with Dave.

Like Sister Carmela, she would get her taste of the big broad world, and then she would go home.

“The grass isn’t greener on this side of the fence,” she said aloud now. Then she giggled. From where she stood and looked out the window, there wasn’t any grass to be seen at all.

She closed her eyes and thought about Iowa. She thought about how green the grass was now, how blue the sky. She thought about Dave. Strong. Steady. Dependable. Dave.

He was all she’d ever wanted in a man.

But just before she went to sleep she found herself hoping that, when she came to him naked on their wedding night, he would look at her with the same intensity that Gibson Walker had.

You’d think Gina had an in with the Almighty!

Well, Gib admitted, maybe she did. She was always doing good deeds and helping other people. Maybe that was why everything she wanted for Chloe seemed to be falling into place.

He’d just been standing there by Edith’s desk, telling her that if she wanted to keep Chloe she’d have to find her a place to stay, when the door opened and Sierra, the hair stylist, came in.

“She’s staying?” Sierra sounded delighted. “Your sister’s friend? You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was,” Gib grumbled. “She won’t leave.”

Sierra’s eyes got big. “Took one look at you, did she? Decided she can’t live without you?” Sierra came in to do hair frequently on Gib’s shoots. She knew how many women flung themselves at his feet. She also knew it irritated the hell out of him.

“She’s engaged,” Gib said dampeningly.

Sierra blinked in surprise. Then she shrugged. “You could cut him out.”

“I’m not interested!”

The force of his voice had Sierra stepping backwards. She lifted her shoulders again. “You never are, are you?” It was common knowledge that for all that women threw themselves at Gib, he never chased them. He dated, but never seriously.

“No,” he said firmly now. “I’m not.”

“So,” Sierra changed the subject, “when’s she coming in?”

Gib shrugged. “I told her we started at nine. So we’ll see if she actually shows up. Maybe by today she’s come to her senses. Maybe,” he said hopefully, “she got to thinking about it and went home this morning.”

The door opened. “Who? Me?” Chloe said.

Gib groaned. Partly because she was still there—and partly because she looked every bit as sweet and innocent and delectable as she had the day before. He’d told himself he was imagining it.

He hadn’t been.

She also looked fresh and bright and well-rested—a whole lot better rested than he was. And though her cheeks were rosy, if it was from mortification over yesterday’s disaster, she didn’t look nearly as mortified as he might have hoped.

Actually the blush on her cheeks looked more like brimming good health than lingering embarrassment. She looked like she could hardly wait to get to work.

“I haven’t found you a place to stay,” he told her flatly.

“My sister needs a house sitter,” Sierra said.

Both Gib and Chloe jerked around to stare at her.

Sierra shrugged. “If you need a place to stay,” she said to Chloe, “you can probably stay at my sister’s. She’s having her apartment redecorated this summer. They’re doing a lot of work on it and she’s going out to the Hamptons while they’re working, but she was saying just the other day that she’d like someone to keep an eye on things, be there when the plasterers showed up, that sort of thing.”

Chloe’s eyes lit up. “Fantastic.”

“Hang on a minute,” Gib objected.

They all looked at him. He opened his mouth again, then closed it. What was he going to say? That he didn’t think that the apartment of the sister of a purple-haired stylist was appropriate lodging for a former Iowa kindergarten teacher no more worldly than her students?

“She doesn’t look like me,” Sierra said with a grin, as if she could read his mind. “Mariah is...normal.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Gib began, then stopped. What did he care? As he’d been at pains to point out to both Gina and Chloe, he wasn’t going to be anyone’s keeper. He shrugged irritably. “Fine. Ask your sister.” He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, then turned away. “Save me the trouble. I’ve got work to do,” he said and stalked off toward the studio.

Footsteps hurried after him. “Wait for me,” Chloe said a little breathlessly.

But Gib didn’t want Chloe underfoot right now. He was entirely too aware of her at the moment. “Go help Edith,” he said. “When Misty gets here she can help me.”