Before Harold, she'd dated Rick Hattaway, a nice, average-looking man who made Zen alarm clocks for a living. Neither man had made her pulse race or her stomach flutter, or made her skin flush from the heat of his gaze. Her attraction to both Harold and Rick hadn't been sexual, and neither relationship had progressed beyond kissing.
It had been years since she'd judged a man by his looks and not the quality of his soul. It had been before her conservationist conversion, when she'd hated washing dishes so much she'd only used paper plates. The guys she'd dated in those days probably wouldn't have even noticed the difference between Wedgwood and Chinet. At that time in her life she'd considered herself a serious artist, and she'd chosen men for purely aesthetic reasons. None of them had been enlightened, some hadn't been very smart, but really, intellect hadn't been the point. Muscles. Muscles and tight buns and stamina had been the point.
Gabrielle's gaze moved up Joe's spine, and she begrudgingly admitted that she'd missed looking across a dinner table at a handsome, hormone-enriched he-man. Joe certainly didn't seem concerned with his own enlightenment, but he did seem more intelligent than the average muscle neck. Then he raised his arm, bent his head, and sniffed his pit.
Gabrielle looked at the plates in her hands. She should have used paper.
Chapter Seven
Gabrielle was surprised at his table manners. Surprised he didn't chew with his mouth open, scratch himself, or belch like a frat boy with a sixer of Old Milwaukee. He'd actually placed his napkin on his lap and was entertaining her with outrageous stories about his parrot, Sam. If she didn't know better, she might think he was trying to charm her or that perhaps he had a decent soul buried somewhere deep within that solid body.
"Sam has a weight problem," he told her in between bites of stroganoff. "He loves pizza and Cheetos."
"You feed your bird pizza and Cheetos?"
"Not so much anymore. I had to build him a gym. Now I make him work out when I do."
Gabrielle didn't know whether to believe him or not. "How do you make a bird work out? Won't he just fly away?"
"I trick him into thinking he's having fun." Joe broke off a piece of bread and ate it. "I put the gym next to my weight bench," he continued after he'd swallowed. "And as long as I stay in the room with him, he'll climb his ladders and chains."
Gabrielle took a bite of her own bread and watched him over the top of the beeswax candle. Muted light from the dining room windows poured through the sheer curtains, bathing the room and Detective Joe Shanahan in soft light. His strong, masculine features appeared relaxed and subdued. Gabrielle figured it had to be a trick of the light, because despite his present charm, she knew from very recent experience that there was nothing subdued about the man across from her. Nothing soft, but she supposed that a man who loved his bird couldn't be totally without redeeming qualities. "How long have you had Sam?"
"Not quite a year now, but it seems like I've always had him. My sister Debby bought him for me."
"You have a sister?"
"I have four."
"Wow." Growing up, Gabrielle had always wanted a sister or brother. "Are you the oldest?"
"Youngest."
"The baby," she said, although she couldn't envision Joe as anything other than a grown man. He had too much testosterone for her to think of him as a nice little boy with shiny cheeks. "I bet growing up with four big sisters was fun."
"Mostly it was hell." He twirled a bite of pasta onto his fork.
"Why?"
He shoved the noodles into his mouth and watched her as he chewed. He didn't look like he would answer, but then he swallowed and confessed, "They made me wear their clothes and pretend I was the fifth sister."
She tried not to laugh, but her bottom lip trembled.
"It's not funny. They wouldn't even let me pretend to be the dog. Tanya always got to be the dog."
She did laugh this time and even thought about reaching out to pat his hand and telling him he would be okay, but she didn't. "Sounds like your sister made up for it. She bought you a bird for your birthday."
"Debby gave me Sam when I was laid up at home for a while. She thought a bird would keep me company until I was back on my feet and would be less trouble than a puppy." He smiled now. "She was wrong about that."
"Why were you laid up at home?"
His smile fell, and he shrugged his big shoulders. "I was shot in a drug bust that went wrong from the very beginning."
"You were shot?" Gabrielle felt her brows raise up her forehead. "Where?"
"In my right thigh," he said and abruptly changed the subject. "I met your friend when I knocked on your door earlier."
Gabrielle would have loved to know the details of the shooting, but he obviously wanted the subject dropped. "Francis?"
"She didn't give me her name, but she did say you told her I was your boyfriend. What else did you tell her?" he asked before he stuck the last bite of pasta in his mouth.
"That's about it," Gabrielle prevaricated as she reached for her iced tea. "She knew I thought a stalker was following me, so she asked me about it today. I told her we're dating now."
He swallowed slowly, and his gaze studied her across the slight distance that separated them. "You told her you're dating the guy you thought was stalking you?"
Gabrielle took a drink and nodded. "Mmm-hmm."
"And she didn't think that was weird?"
Gabrielle shook her head and set her tea back down. "Francis has relationship issues. She knows that sometimes a woman has to take a chance. And being pursued by a man can be very romantic."
"By a stalker?"
"Yeah well, in life you have to kiss a few toads."
"Have you kissed a lot of toads?"
She speared salad with her fork and pointedly directed her attention to his lips. "Just one," she said and shoved the lettuce in her mouth.
He reached for his own glass, and his quiet laughter filled the room. They both knew she hadn't responded as if he were a toad. "Besides kissing toads, tell me more about yourself." A bead of condensation slid down the glass, then dripped onto his T-shirt, making a tiny wet circle on his right pectoral.
"Are you interrogating me?"
"Absolutely not."
"Don't you have a file on me somewhere filled with information, like how many cavities or speeding tickets I've had?"
His eyes met hers over the top of the glass, and he watched her as he took a long drink. Then he set the glass back down and told her, "I didn't check your dental record, but you got a ticket last May for doing thirty-five in a twenty. When you were nineteen you wrapped your Volkswagen around a telephone pole and were lucky enough to walk away with minor bruises and three stitches in the top of your head."
She wasn't surprised he knew her driving record, but it was a little disconcerting that he knew things about her life when she knew next to nothing about him. "Fascinating stuff. What else do you know?"
"I know you get your name from your grandfather."
Not another big surprise. "We're one of those families that name children after their grandparents. My grandmothers were Eunuch Beryl Paugh and Thelma Dorita Cox Breedlove. I consider myself lucky." She shrugged. "What else?"
"I know that you attended two universities but didn't receive a degree from either."
Obviously he didn't know anything of substance. He knew nothing about her. "I didn't go to get a degree," she began as she placed her near empty salad bowl on her plate and pushed them aside. She hadn't eaten much of her stroganoff, but with Joe sitting across the table, she suddenly wasn't very hungry. "I went to learn about things that interested me. When I'd learned what I wanted, I moved on to what interested me next." She placed her arm on the table and rested her cheek in her hand. "Anyone can get a degree or a certificate in something. Big deal. A piece of paper from a university somewhere doesn't define a person. It won't tell you who I am."