Every time she saw him, she got the same neon flash in her head—of him doing panty play with his assistant. Reggie, though, apparently got a flash of a whole different sort. He flicked an annoyed glance at Gabriel and turned back to her.
“I’m here to ask you to go to the high school reunion with me this weekend,” Reggie threw out there, and he said it with a smile as if she’d never walked in on panty-gate. “And before you say no,” he added, just as she was about to say no, “think of it like this. Being with me will put a stop to all those ugly rumors about Gabriel and you.”
Gabriel took one very slow, very menacing step toward Reggie. “What ugly rumors?” he asked. His tone was menacing, too.
She had to hand it to Reggie—he stood his ground and looked Gabriel straight in the eye. “That Rosalie is on the rebound and nursing a broken heart, and that you’re taking advantage of that to try to get in her pants.”
Rosalie groaned. “And was it you who started that rumor?” she demanded.
“No.” Reggie pulled back his shoulders and looked genuinely offended. “Of course not. I defended you. I said there was no way you’d fall for something like that, not after Gabriel dumped you and broke your heart.”
“Gabriel didn’t dump me,” she snarled, realizing it was true. Well, true-ish, anyway. In large part he’d left because of Hamish’s letter.
Reggie looked at her with overly sympathetic eyes that conveyed he knew the way things had gone down and that he was there for her. “The fastest way to quell the rumor is to be seen at the reunion with me. And, of course, for you not to fall for the fast one Gabriel’s trying to pull.”
Oh, the anger came. It came in one fast, rolling wave that collided into her and had her seeing red. Apparently, it washed away any hesitation in her blurting what leaped from her mouth.
“FYI, what you did was a hell of a lot worse than Gabriel leaving. You. Cheated. On. Me,” she spelled out. Rosalie jabbed her index finger at Reggie. “And I can’t go to the reunion with you because I’m going with Gabriel.”
CHAPTER FOUR
You don’t have to do this, Gabriel read from the text Rosalie had just sent him.
It wasn’t the first time she’d given him that particular option, either. For the last two days, she’d been repeating variations of it through other texts and calls. She’d also added so many apologies that Gabriel had lost count.
However, he hadn’t lost count of just how many times he’d gotten pissed off when Reggie had tried to pressure Rosalie into going to the reunion dance with him by insisting he could stop “ugly rumors.”
Gabriel hadn’t actually heard such rumors with his own ears, but he didn’t doubt they were floating around out there. Also didn’t doubt that Reggie had been fueling them as a way to get Rosalie to come back to him. That had only pissed Gabriel off even more, and if Rosalie hadn’t lied and said she was going with him, he would have asked her on the spot.
Of course, now he had doubts about doing this.
Not doubts about coming to Rosalie’s rescue. She almost certainly could have handled her own rescue, but he’d been glad to help. No, his doubts centered around the fact that this wasn’t a good idea since it could crank up the gossip mill about them. Which would almost certainly happen once they stepped inside the high school gym where the reunion was being held. Still, it was too late to back out now, and that was the reminder running through his head when he knocked on Rosalie’s door to pick her up for their date.
She answered the moment he knocked, an indication she’d been right there, waiting for him. One look at her, and Gabriel’stongue landed in the vicinity of the porch floor. Oh, man. He was toast.
Rosalie was wearing a red dress that hugged every one of her curves, and she’d ditched her ponytail tonight. Her blond hair tumbled over her shoulders in loose curls that made him want to reach out and touch them. Then again, there really wasn’t any part of her that he didn’t want to touch right now.
“You look...” they said at the same moment. Then stopped. Waited a heartbeat. “Amazing,” they finished, again at the same moment.
So, she obviously approved of his “dressy casual” choice of black jeans and white button-down shirt. Probably approved of him, too, judging by the way her gaze skimmed over his body. That wasn’t a good thing. Because this mutual admiration could turn to something scalding hot if they weren’t careful.
Gabriel felt a little foolish when he offered her a wrist corsage, one he’d picked up from Petal Pushers just minutes earlier. He’d originally ordered one with pink roses, but the florist had informed him that he should choose something that would better coordinate with Rosalie’s red dress. Something that was apparently all over town because folks had seen her pick up said dress from the dry cleaner’s. Folks had described it as the color of the apple Eve had sampled in the Garden of Eden and that it fit her like second skin.
They hadn’t been wrong.
She smiled when he slipped the corsage onto her wrist, and maybe she was remembering they’d done something very much like this for their senior prom and then the graduation dance. Memories. No way to rid yourself of them, but they were playing into this because so many of those memories were good. In fact, they had been right up to the very end.
Since he’d figured out that Hamish had written breakup letters to them, Gabriel had been playing the what-if game.Involuntarily playing it, that was, and he had wondered just where Rosalie and he would be now if Hamish hadn’t butted in. It was sort of a small-town Texas version ofIt’s a Wonderful Life, but instead of wondering what it would have been like for them to have never met, he was wondering about the opposite.
Where would they be now if he’d stayed?
What kind of people would they have been had he never put on a military uniform and she’d had to endure daily criticism from her parents about her choice to be with him?
It was a question all right, and he had to admit it was possible Rosalie and he would have stayed together. Just as possible, though, that they’d have split up, but Gabriel knew without a doubt Hamish had been wrong about the inevitable bitterness. It just wasn’t there.
Heck, if Gabriel didn’t feel bitterness over the way his military career had turned out, and he didn’t, then he wouldn’t have those feelings toward this woman who’d been his first love.
And his only.