She shot him a teasing look. ‘How many lives do you save, Gabe? You’re a sports specialist.’
‘I save a lot of lives, actually,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘Think about it. You’re a dancer, right? So you know something of what it’s like to spend every minute of every day training for that one goal. Of making all kinds of sacrifices to try to meet that goal. So what happens if you get an injury and it threatens to snatch it all from you in a second? Don’t you want a doctor on hand then?’
Okay, so she could give him that. ‘Didn’t your family want you to do medicine?’
He shook his head. ‘The firstborn son must grow up and take over the farming empire. It’s written in stone. That archaic belief in primogeniture.’
Oh, her curiosity was piqued. ‘You’re the firstborn son?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Of how many?’ Yes, totally curious now.
‘Just my sister and me.’
She wondered what his sister was like. What his parents were like. Wondered a ton of things she had no real business wondering. That didn’t stop her asking. ‘And you didn’t want to farm?’
‘Do I look like a farmer?’ he joked.
In his on-trend jeans, tee and trainers, she had to admit he didn’t. ‘Is it too much hard work for you?’ She couldn’t resist teasing him some more.
‘It’s too far out in the country for me.’ He matched her tone. ‘I love to visit but don’t want to live there. I like the city.’
‘Because you like to be near a high-density female population? I’m guessing there aren’t nearly enough women in the countryside for you.’
‘Exactly.’ He grinned. ‘I need the variety. But of course the family doesn’t approve.’
‘Of all the women or the lack of farming interest?’
‘Both.’ He winked. ‘I’m a wayward terror.’
Roxie shook her head. The guy was over-egging it. ‘You’re not that much of a terror. Look how hard I had to push you to take me to bed. I don’t think there’s much substance to your rogue reputation.’
‘Ah, but that was because I was trying to reform my wicked ways.’
He had her absolute attention now. ‘And why was that?’ She watched him close, curious to see if he’d answer.
It seemed he’d decided to give the nearest tomato plant a thorough inspection, bending down to see if the cherry-sized reds were ripe for picking. ‘I get the feeling you might already know about it.’
‘Diana,’ she confirmed softly.
He snapped off the first fruit. ‘What did they tell you?’
Roxie decided to be completely honest. ‘I’m a new dancer for the Blades—first thing they did was warn me away from you.’
He swivelled to look at her, his brows impossibly high. ‘But you ignored them.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m not as vulnerable as it seemed she’d been.’
He looked uncomfortable and turned back to the plant, started a picking frenzy. ‘She wasn’t exactly healthy, no. I didn’t know that when we started dating.’
‘So what happened?’ She moved up beside him and held her hands out so he could put his growing collection of tomatoes into them.
He avoided answering by popping a tomato into his mouth—putting one into her mouth too. She ignored the sweet sensation that flared deep inside—not just from the sun-warmed sweet fruit, but from the feeling of intimacy in him having fed it to her. Determinedly she kept looking at him—her brows raised as she waited for him to spill it.
‘Okay, we dated,’ he said after finally swallowing. ‘Just normal dating—which for me is usually fairly short term, right?’ He gave her a keen look.
Roxie grinned. ‘Yeah, but I’m guessing she didn’t take that on board?’
‘I ended it—way soon even for me. But she’d got it into her head that we were supposed to be soul mates or something. It got very awkward and she became increasingly hysterical. She was on my doorstep, she’d turn up at events I attended. I went away with the team and when I got back she’d actually moved into my apartment. All her stuff, everything, and was acting like … I don’t know. It had gone from awkward to ugly to dangerous. She threatened all kinds of things. I called a friend who’s a psych. We called her family. But it was bad, it was really bad. And after that I decided to take a break from dating altogether.’
Which was why he’d been so grumpy? Because a dating break wasn’t his natural style. Yeah, she knew he wasn’t entirely the heartless playboy he had the rep for, but he did like to have some fun. She moved to put the tomatoes on the outdoor table, pleased he’d been honest enough to tell her about it. She liked that he’d been bothered someone had been hurt—even if it wasn’t really his fault. She guessed Diana had other issues too, it had all just come to a head with Gabe. Poor guy, she didn’t think he’d deserved to put himself into penance for months like that. She smiled at him as he followed her and added yet more tomatoes to the collection.
‘You do know I’m not going to go stalker on you, right?’ He had nothing to fear from her.
‘Yes, I do know that.’ He broke eye contact—staring across the garden instead.
There was an oddly fixed silence.
‘So what does your family think of your career now?’ she asked, just to break it. ‘You can’t be a disappointment, you’re a doctor.’
That brought a slight smile back. ‘Even just a sports doctor?’
‘You know I was only teasing.’ She’d seen for herself how highly regarded he was at the stadium—the team totally relied on him.
‘Yeah, well. You’re not the first to make an issue of it. No, my dad didn’t want me to do medicine. You’re looking at Andrew G. Hollingsworth the sixth and the first to betray the family and walk off the land.’
‘Andrew?’ That threw her—Andrew didn’t suit him at all.
‘Andrew Gabriel,’ he explained. ‘Gabe.’
Gabe was so much better, with those heavenly connotations and all—she knew just how heavenly he felt. ‘Did that go down badly too?’
‘Unbelievably,’ he answered briefly, picking up another tomato and munching on it.
‘Were you written out of the will?’ she joked.
‘For a while.’ He nodded and answered out of the side of his mouth. ‘But I wasn’t going to back down. I’m not having my entire life dictated by other people’s expectations.’
Freedom was important to him too, huh? Roxie walked over to the tap at the back of the garage so she could rinse the plant scent from her fingers. ‘So how did you break free?’ she asked when he came beside her, waiting for his turn under the tap.
‘I ran away to the city, which wasn’t the smartest move, but at the time it was all I had. It’s not that easy to go against the wishes of your whole family when you’ve been groomed from the moment of conception—”one day this will all be yours, your responsibility” blah, blah, blah.’
‘Did they come after you?’
He shook his head. ‘I was seventeen and we didn’t communicate for over a year.’
‘That’s awful.’ How could they do that to a son who was everything any sane parent would want? Not just fit and healthy but bright and super successful and everything.
‘It wasn’t so bad.’ He smiled when he saw the expression on her face. ‘I had friends. Studied, played rugby. And I kept in touch with my sister because she was at boarding school. Honestly, the things I missed most were the lambs I’d reared and my dog.’
‘You had lambs?’ She was momentarily diverted by that cute mental image. Was even more diverted when Gabe cupped his hand under the still running water and then sipped from it.
‘Took the orphans in each season,’ he explained after he swallowed.
She refused to ask if they’d had them for Christmas dinner.
‘No, I didn’t eat them, they were pets.’ He read her mind as he turned off the tap. ‘Anyway, Mum got steadily madder and madder with Dad. In the end they had a massive blow-up.’
‘Hoora
y for your mum.’ Roxie really hoped she’d withheld conjugal rights and everything.
‘She insisted Dad and I get together. I told him what I was going to do with my life and if he wanted to be a part of it, he had to accept it.’
Take-no-prisoners Gabe—the man was tough—but then it seemed he’d had to be to get free. That was something she could understand. And admire. ‘And he did?’
‘Eventually.’
Wow. Roxie knew how conflict within families could change people. That lack of support must have affected him—and his ability to trust.