She felt dazed and a little disoriented, like after the time she'd tried to meditate hanging upside down and had ended up falling out of her gravity boots. "I'm meeting with the Silver Winds rep today, so I won't be here from noon until probably two. You'll be on your own."
He shrugged. "I can handle it."
"Fantastic!" she said with just a little too much enthusiasm. She reached for the first catalog on top of a stack and opened it to the middle. She had no idea what she was looking at; her mind was too busy replaying the last few humiliating moments. He'd kissed her to shut her up in front of Kevin, and she'd melted like butter beneath his lips. Her hands shook, and she pulled them into her lap.
"Gabrielle."
"Yes?"
"Look at me."
She forced her gaze to his and wasn't surprised to find a scowl on his dark brooding face.
"You're not all bent out of shape over that kiss, are you?" he asked low enough that his voice wouldn't be heard outside the room.
She shook her head and pushed one side of her hair behind her ear. "I knew why you were doing it."
"How? Your back was to him." He bent to pick up the toolbox and drill, then looked at her once again. "Oh, yeah, I forgot. You're psychic."
"No, I'm not."
"Now, there's a relief."
"But my mother is."
His scowl deepened, then he turned toward the door and muttered something under his breath that sounded like "Sweet baby Jesus save me."
As he walked from the room, her gaze traveled from the short comma curls touching the back of his neck, past his wide shoulders, and down the back of the soft gray T-shirt he'd tucked inside the waistband of his Levi's. A wallet bulged the right pocket of his jeans, and the heels of his work boots thudded across the linoleum.
Gabrielle placed her elbows on her desk and rested her face in her hands. She wasn't a huge believer of chakras, but she absolutely believed in a harmonious relationship of body, mind, and spirit. And right now all three were in total chaos. Her mind was appalled at her physical reaction to the detective, and her spirit was just plain confused by the dichotomic division.
"I guess it's safe to come in here now."
Gabrielle dropped her hands and looked at Kevin as he entered the room. "Sorry," she said.
"Why? You didn't know I'd be coming into work early." He set a briefcase on his desk and added unwittingly to her guilt. "Joe's a studly guy, I understand."
Not only had she betrayed her friendship with Kevin but now he had also unwittingly made everything so much worse by excusing her behavior with the man who'd bugged the telephone hoping to discover something incriminating. Kevin, of course, didn't know about the bug, and she couldn't warn him.
"Oh, geez," she sighed and once again rested her cheek in her hand. By the time the police eliminated her and Kevin from their list of suspects, she feared she was going to be as crazy as the detective already accused her of being.
"What's the matter?" Kevin asked as he walked around his desk and reached for the telephone.
"You can't use that right now," she said, stopping him, saving him from the bug.
He pulled his hand back. "Do you need to use it first?"
What was she doing? He wasn't guilty. The police would hear nothing but Kevin's business calls, which were about as exciting as watching paint dry. His calls were so boring that it would serve them right. But… Kevin did have several girlfriends, and sometimes when Gabrielle walked into the office, he'd turn his back and cover the receiver with his hand as if she'd caught him discussing intimate details of his love life. "No, I don't need to use it right now, but just don't…" She paused, wondering how to save him without sounding too vague or getting too specific. How could she save him without telling him that the police were eavesdropping on his calls? "Just don't get too personal," she began again. "If you have something really private to say to a girlfriend, maybe you should wait until you get home."
He looked at her the way Joe looked at her- as if she were demented. "What did you think I was going to do? Make an obscene phone call?"
"No, but I don't think you should talk about private things with your girlfriends. I mean, this is a business."
"Me?" He folded his arms across the front of his suit jacket, and his blue eyes narrowed. "What about you? A few minutes ago, your face was glued to your handyman."
He was angry now, but someday soon he would thank her. "I'm having lunch with the Silver Winds rep this afternoon," she said, purposely changing the subject. "I'll be gone about two hours."
Kevin sat and booted up his computer, but he didn't say anything. He didn't talk to her while she checked shipping receipts, or when- in an effort to appease him-she tidied her side of the room.
The three hours until her lunch appointment seemed to take forever. She filled the porcelain vaporizer with lavender and sage, made some sales, and always kept a covert eye on the detective dismantling the shelves on the wall to her right.
She watched to make sure he didn't plant any more bugs or pull a revolver out of his boot and shoot someone. She watched the strain of his biceps beneath his T-shirt as he removed heavy glass shelving, and she watched his broad, muscular shoulders as he carried it to the back room. He'd slung his tool belt low on his hips like a gunfighter, and his hand slid smoothly into the front pouch, depositing wood screws.
Even when Gabrielle wasn't watching him, she knew when he walked from the room and when he entered it again. She could feel him like the invisible pull of a black hole. When she wasn't helping customers, she busied herself with the never-ending chore of dusting, and she avoided talking to him as much as possible, answering only his direct questions.
By ten o'clock, tension tightened the base of her skull, and at eleven-thirty, she developed a tic in the outside corner of her right eye. Finally, at a quarter to twelve, she grabbed her small leather backpack and walked out of the stress-filled shop into the bright sunshine, feeling like she'd just been granted parole after a ten-year stint.
She met the Silver Winds representative at a restaurant in the heart of downtown, and they sat outside on the balcony and discussed dainty silver necklaces and earrings. A slight breeze fluttered the green umbrellas overhead as traffic passed on the street below. She ordered her favorite chicken stir-fry and a glass of iced tea and waited for the morning's tension to leave her skull.
The tic in her eye went away, but she couldn't seem to completely relax. No matter how she tried, she couldn't find her center or reharmonize her spirit. No matter how she fought it, her mind returned to Joe Shanahan, and the many ways the detective might trick an erroneous confession from Kevin while she was away. She didn't believe there was a subtle bone in Detective Joseph Shanahan's big muscular body, and she half expected to return and find poor Kevin cuffed to a chair.
What greeted her when she reentered her shop two hours later was about the last thing she expected. Laughter. Kevin's laughter mixed with Mara's as they both stood next to a ladder, grinning up at Joe Shanahan as if they were all great buddies.
Her business partner was laughing it up with the cop determined to put him in prison. And Gabrielle knew Kevin would hate prison more than most men. He'd hate the clothes and the haircuts and not having a cellphone.
Her gaze moved from poor Kevin's smiling face to the eight new mounting standards that ran from floor to ceiling on the back wall. Joe stood at the top of the ladder with a drill in one hand, a level in the other, and a tape measure attached to the back of his tool belt.
She hadn't really expected him to know enough about carpentry to do the job right, but the metal shelving system looked straight to her; so he apparently knew more than she'd thought. Mara knelt next to the wall and held the bottom of the last standard. The expression in her big brown eyes was a little too awestruck as she gazed up at the detective. Mara was inexperienced and, Gabrielle supposed, susceptible to the musky pheromones Joe exuded.