How many chances did one man deserve from a woman before she decided he wasn’t worth the bother? He had to be getting close to wearing out his welcome with Ella. Except he kept hearing her tell him she loved him. She’d loved him as recently as yesterday. Hopefully he hadn’t killed all that love with his ham-handed reaction to her gift.
Gavin was still sitting in his truck in Ella’s driveway when a stretch limo pulled up to the curb. Ella got out and then got right back into the car when she saw his truck.
He jumped out of the truck. “Ella, wait. We need to talk.”
Hannah got out and came over to him. Nolan was right behind her. “Leave her alone, Gavin,” Hannah said. “She doesn’t want to talk to you. Not now. We’ve got a plane to catch, and we’re going to get her suitcase. You need to leave.”
“Not until I talk to her.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Hunter said, emerging from the limo with Will in tow.
“Come on, you guys. Are you being serious right now? This is me.” He’d been friends with Hunter and Will Abbott for most of his life. Were they really going to pull this shit on him now of all times?
“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Gavin, so it’s not going to happen,” Will said.
Gavin took a step toward the limo.
Will and Hunter took a step toward him.
“Don’t do this, Gav,” Hunter said softly. “If you want to talk to her in the next week, you know where to find her.”
“So that’s the plan? Blackmail me into doing something I don’t want to do?”
“There’s no plan,” Will said. “Or at least there isn’t anymore. You saw to that, didn’t you?”
“Please ask her to give me five minutes.”
“We don’t have five minutes.” Hannah returned with Nolan, who carried Ella’s bag. “We’re due at your parents’ house right now. We’ve got a plane to catch and a friend’s wedding to get to. We’ll miss you, Gavin, but then we always do at Sultan stuff.” Hannah went up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek and patted his shoulder on her way by.
The show of affection didn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated. Even after he’d broken her sister’s heart, Hannah still loved him. Thank God for small favors. He stood there and watched them put the suitcase in the trunk. The driver held the door for them as they got back in the car. It took off a minute later in the direction of his parents’ home.
Left alone in the cold early-morning darkness, Gavin knew a moment of pure, unadulterated panic. Ella had reached her limit. She had nothing left to say to him. It was a miracle it hadn’t happened before now. As he got back into his truck and threw it into reverse, he decided it didn’t matter if she had nothing left to say to him. He had stuff to say to her, and somehow he was going to find a way to make her listen.
* * *
The subdued group of travelers picked up Gavin’s parents and headed out of town, only to be stopped just outside downtown Butler by an obstruction in the road.
“Seriously?” Hannah said, reaching for the door handle.
“Don’t even think about it,” Nolan said sternly.
“We’re going to miss our flight!”
“We’ve got hours until our flight,” Nolan said. “Stay put.” He got out of the car and went around to the front, where the driver was trying to move Fred along.
“He’s not going to budge until he gets what he came for,” Hannah the moose whisperer said. “Get on out there and talk to him, Cam.”
“No way,” Will said. “Enough already with his crush on Cam.”
“He just wants to say good-bye before she leaves town for a week,” Hannah said.
“And how do you know that?” Hunter asked his twin.
“I thought we’d concluded a while ago that I speak Fred.”
Bent at the waist, Cameron climbed over the others to get to the door.
“Cam, wait for me,” Will said, following her.
“What the devil is the deal with that moose?” Amelia asked.
“He’s got a thing for Cameron,” Hunter said. “A bit of a crush, if you will.”
“But wasn’t she the one who hit him that time?” Amelia asked.
“He’s decided not to hold it against her,” Megan replied.
Though her heart was broken into a million pieces by the confrontation with Gavin at her house, Ella watched the goings-on with a detached sense of amusement. How could you not be amused by a moose that had a crush on your sister-in-law? With the doors and windows open, they could hear Cameron and Hannah speaking with Fred, asking him to move along and let them by.
Ella kept thinking about Gavin and his desperate pleas to talk to her. Her heart had nearly leaped from her chest when she saw him in her driveway waiting for her and looking as if he’d been there all night. She’d sent her brothers out to tell him she wasn’t interested in what he had to say, but that wasn’t exactly true. She was very interested, but after her siblings had been good enough to offer her a ride to Boston, she wasn’t about to make them all late.
What she and Gavin had to say to each other couldn’t be said in a minute or two. And it was going to have to wait until she got home. With Fred blocking their path out of town, Ella wondered if the moose was trying to help her—and Gavin—by keeping her from leaving with things unsettled between them.
That’s giving a moose an awful lot of credit, Ella thought.
After a loud “moo” that made Amelia jolt in her seat, Fred ambled off into the woods. Will, Cameron, Nolan and Hannah got back into the car.
“Can we please go now?” Nolan said.
“Yes, dear,” Hannah said. “We’re all set. Fred knows when Cameron will be back, and he’s promised to keep an eye on things around here while we’re gone.”
“You’re all tapped,” Nolan said. “Seriously tapped in the head.”
Megan laughed. “I think so, too. For the record.”
“Thank you,” Nolan said to her. “I feel like I’m surrounded by lunatics who actually think a moose, a wild animal, cares what they have to say.”
“You can’t really argue with our success, though, can you?” Hannah asked him.
“Spoken by the chief lunatic.”
“Awww, he loves me so much.”
Ella loved the banter between her sister and her husband, who had the patience of a saint when it came to his wife and the moose she seemed to understand so well. But seeing them so happy together, expecting their first baby and overcoming the obstacles life—and moose—put in their way made her doubly sad for the way things had ended up with Gavin. All she’d ever wanted was what Hannah and Nolan had, what her other siblings had found with their life partners.
And she wanted it with him. Was it too much to ask to spend forever with the man she loved? It was beginning to seem that way.
“How’d you manage to get free of the diner for a week?” Hannah asked Megan.
“Butch of all people. He heard us talking about the trip and how I couldn’t possibly make it work, and he told me to shut up and go, that he was more than capable of keeping the place from burning down while I’m gone. We’ll see if that’s true.”
“And Gramps is going to check in every day,” Hunter added. “As the proprietor, of course.”
“He’ll be more trouble than he’s worth,” Will said with a chuckle.
“I think that’s his goal. He’s afraid Butch might put him to work.”
“We’ll see who causes the greatest disaster,” Nolan said. “Butch or Skeeter, who’s in charge of the garage against my better judgment.”
Ella remained silent as the conversation swirled around her. Gavin’s parents had hugged her when they got in the car, but they hadn’t said anything more. She figured they’d find a chance to talk later. Right now, she was grateful for the others, whose presence made it impossible for them to talk about it while she was still feeling so raw.
How long would it take this time before she could take a deep breath without excruciating pain? How long would it take to get over him after sharing such extraordinary closeness with him over the last couple of weeks? Every minute they spent together was imprinted on her heart in permanent ink. She would never forget a second of it.