Caleb's Bride. Wendy Warren

for him, too, because she understood the significance of his earning a master’s degree. No one else in his family had completed high school. Alcoholism had taken its toll on his relatives, diminishing their ability to work or parent in anything more than spurts of sobriety. Cal had spent most of his teen years trying to establish a clear difference between himself and the rest of the Wells clan, and it looked as if he’d accomplished his goal. “What’s your field?”

      “Environmental engineering.”

      Okay, she was really impressed. “Sounds like a good fit. You always loved the outdoors.”

      Cal shrugged his broad shoulders. “I got a great job offer. The kind a kid who never had two nickels to rub together couldn’t pass up. As for being a good fit, I worked in a high rise, as a corporate consultant.”

      Which explained the expensive suit, she supposed.

      Setting the spray bottle down, she picked up her comb and scissors. Lifting the first hank of hair she planned to snip, feeling the thick silkiness, her fingers buzzed with the sudden, unexpected memory of the last time she had touched his hair.

      Back then, her touch had been tentative, her fingers clumsy. Definitely more fuzzy worm than graceful butterfly. When he’d touched her, however, there had been an undeniable moment of exhilarating flight….

      “So—” she cleared her throat, trying to change the channel in her mind “—you said, ‘worked.’ Past tense?”

      “Very past tense.”

      Forcing herself to focus on the actions that gave her confidence, Gabby took the first cut. Keep talking. Talking relaxes the client…and the barber. “You’re changing fields, then?”

      As she began to work in earnest, snips of shiny brown hair floated to the cape like confetti. “Positions,” he responded. “I found a job that pays less, but I’ll be working on the land.”

      “Where will you be—”

      “Nope.”

      “What?”

      He looked up through the hair she’d pushed over his forehead. “How long have I known you?”

      Gabby blinked at the unexpected question. “Well, technically we haven’t seen each other for—”

      “Forget ‘technically.’” His gaze toughened. “Here are the stats. Years we’ve known each other—twenty. Times you’ve allowed conversations deeper than a puddle—fewer than a handful. Why is that, Gabby? I never noticed you skirting meaningful conversations with anyone else.”

      Gabby faltered, blindsided, and loathing the feeling of being transparent. Yes, she had avoided deeper conversations with Cal. She’d put on a pretty good front with others, but Cal had read her too easily for her own comfort.

      Sending her scissors skimming across the ends of his hair, she murmured, “I’m happy to have a conversation on any topic you like, but I want to finish your trim before my morning rush starts, so—”

      “Let’s start with the topic of this barbershop,” he interrupted. “Why you’re selling it, for example. And whether it has anything at all to do with Dean Kingsley.”

       Chapter Two

      The scissors slipped, knicking Gabby’s knuckle. “Damn,” she swore, shaking the pained hand. After checking for blood (hardly any), she gaped at Cal in the mirror. “How do you know I’m—”

      The answer came to her before she completed the sentence. She glanced toward the coat tree, where she’d told him to hang his jacket, then to the desk sitting right beside it, and her gape turned into a glare. “You snooped around my desk? When I went in the back? You read my private papers!”

      “I glanced over,” he admitted. “Your ‘private papers’ are sitting out where anyone can see them, Gabrielle.”

      “Anyone who leans over to read the fine print,” she snapped. Leaving him, she rushed to the desk to conceal the real-estate document. Good gravy, she didn’t need any of her other customers to walk in, read the papers and realize she was selling the shop—before she broke the news to her own family! Shoving the papers into a drawer, she slammed it shut…along with the scissors and comb she’d brought with her. Realizing her mistake, she yanked the drawer open, pulled out her tools and rounded on Caleb. “You couldn’t have known what those papers were about at a glance. You were snooping.”

      As cool as ever, he shrugged. “I spent the morning at Honeyford Realty. I recognized their paperwork. Are you selling because of Kingsley?”

      Resentment, hot and humid, filled Gabby from the stomach up.

      Even though she’d tried to keep her infatuation for Dean under wraps, she knew Cal had figured out her secret.

      Now his supernatural eyes pinned her to the spot. He looked like a boa constrictor laughing at a mouse.

      “News still travels fast in Honeyford,” he said. “I bet I wasn’t downtown more than an hour before I heard that Kingsley got married a couple of months ago.” Cal’s head tsk-tsked slowly from side to side. “You’re not just selling the shop, are you? You’re running away.”

      “Beep, beep! Comin’ through!”

      Before Gabby could respond to Cal, Henry Berns, owner of Honey Bea’s Bakery across the street, opened the barbershop door. Pressing one scrawny shoulder against the glass, he bustled over the threshold, his knobby hands occupied with a pink pastry box. “Gotta set this down before I drop it. Don’t have the muscle strength I used to.”

      Gabby watched Henry as if she were standing outside herself, a tight band of emotion constricting her breath so that she felt incapable of heaving a single word into her mouth.

      Nearly a foot shorter than Cal, Henry nodded at the much younger man, whom he gave no indication of recognizing, then placed the string-wrapped box on the desk and winked at Gabby. “It’s a Dobish Torte. Two pounds of dark chocolate for my best girl.” Toddling happily to the vacant chair, he told Gabby, “You go ahead and finish up. I’ll grab a seat before the morning rush.” With a spryness that belied his seventy-five years (and the claim that he lacked muscle strength), Henry hopped into the chair next to Cal’s, helped himself to a comb and worked it through the gray waves he kept stiffly pomaded.

      By sheer force of will, Gabby managed to murmur her thanks for the cake.

      “Why, sure. Sweets for my sweetheart!” The old man winked into the mirror.

      A knowing smile spread across Cal’s face, and Gabby blushed.

      All her life she had felt a little more awkward, a little less beautiful than the girls around her, which was probably why the thought of Dean Kingsley had filled her with such joy. Dean had seemed so golden, so rich with gentlemanly grace, an innate country suave that had afforded Gabby countless hours of pleasure fantasizing about becoming Mrs. Country Suave.

      In the barber chair to Cal’s right, Henry Berns hummed happily while perusing the latest copy of The Honeyford Buzz. All her most serious suitors were over seventy. Nothing had changed, and Cal knew it. As the curve of his lips bloomed into a full grin, Gabby felt once again that uncomfortable, haunting sense of déjà vu.

      Reaching into his back pocket, Cal withdrew an expensive-looking leather wallet as he crossed toward her. Withdrawing a bill for the trim she hadn’t completed, he laid it on her desk. “See you around, Gabrielle.”

      The door clicked softly shut behind him, and suddenly Gabby remembered exactly when she’d last seen his grin—full of enjoyment and humor and mischief—prior to today.

      It had happened fourteen years, ten months and three weeks ago. The summer they’d graduated from high school.

      Dean had come home from college to work in his father’s pharmacy, and Gabby had decided the time