Beautiful things happen when you least expect them.

Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue

ELLIE

Chloe had stayed the weekend in Morlea so she had time to do some local sightseeing. She came over that night before dinner to say goodbye and thank Gabriel for the time he’d given her.

I left the room to give them a few minutes to talk, and when I came back into the living room, they were hugging, Chloe facing me so I could see the look of affection and sadness on her face. Her eyes were squeezed tight, and for a moment I just watched them, a streak of jealousy making me feel petty. I looked away as they let go of each other, and when Chloe spotted me, she rushed over and grabbed me in a hug, too.

“We didn’t get to spend enough time together, Ellie. Next time?”

She stood back and took my hands in hers, squeezing them and smiling at me. “Will you be back?” I asked.

“Oh, definitely. I’m going to personally deliver a published copy of this paper when it’s done.” Her smile widened. “I’m going to make Gabriel proud with it.”

I smiled back. “I’m sure you will.”

She hesitated a moment, looking slightly unsure. “I talked to Dominic about what he did. I think he’s really twisted up inside—”

“It’s fine, Chloe, really.”

“It’s not fine. There’s nothing fine about it. I just … I wish I could help.”

I smiled at her. “You have helped by being a friend to me.”

Her smile was big and it was contagious. “Call me if you ever want to talk, okay? If you just need a listening ear? Gabe has my number.” Gabe.

“I will.”

She smiled again. “Okay, good. You take care of yourself.”

“You, too, Chloe.”

She turned back to Gabriel and leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Thank you again,” she whispered. There was so much feeling in her tone it almost embarrassed me to be standing there.

He loves you, Ellie, I reminded myself.

Only because he didn’t end up meeting Chloe first, that small mocking voice inside chided. I blocked it out as best as I could.

I didn’t blame Chloe one bit for the affection she obviously felt for Gabriel, maybe even the love. She knew what I knew—that he had survived six years of hell by surrounding himself with love. With hope. How strong did your mind have to be—how beautiful your heart—to hold on in such a way? To choose love over fear again and again? Of course, he was lucky that he had so much love to draw upon. Not everyone was so blessed. Then again, I had a feeling Gabriel would have used any small glimmer of love—of hope—to stay strong. It was just who he was.

Gabriel, a boy who hadn’t let himself forget what love felt like, and me, a girl who had made sure I did not remember.

We made dinner that night—a precooked lasagna that was really impossible to mess up, though if I’d been left alone, I probably could have managed it—and ate it on the patio. The evenings were getting chilly, so Gabriel turned on a heat lamp and we moved it next to the table.

Once the kitchen was clean, we curled up on the couch and watched a show, but I decided to turn in early since I was starting work at the quarry in the morning and wanted to be well rested. I was slightly nervous, too. What if I couldn’t get the hang of the phone system and humiliated myself?

I had only held two jobs in my life. When I moved out of my dad’s house, I’d worked in a movie theater for a little over a year, but couldn’t afford anything more than to rent a small back room from a woman who’d advertised in the paper. When I’d gotten there I realized why it was still available. She had about twenty-five cats, and the whole place smelled like fish and dirty litter boxes. It was all I could afford, though, and it was better than my dad’s house and so I’d taken it.

The next year, I’d met Kayla through some other people I knew, and she’d told me about the Platinum Pearl. I’d been loath to take my clothes off for anyone, but I’d been able to save up five hundred dollars for a car, a security deposit on my own apartment, and was able to get out of the cat house.

So now, my work experience included sweeping up popcorn and sliding down a pole in the nude.

I went to bed but couldn’t sleep, and after twenty minutes of tossing and turning, I got up and opened the window, breathing in the freshness of the night air. I kneeled down and put my arms on the ledge, gazing upward for several moments at the clear, star-filled sky, trying to take the beauty inside me the way Gabriel seemed to be able to do so easily. Instead the beauty of the night seemed painful somehow and made me feel even more hollow inside.

Sighing, I closed the window and hobbled out of my room and into the garage as quietly as possible. William was there, smooth and white, his laughing face making my heart feel just a bit lighter.

I ran a finger over his head, marveling once again at what this had looked like only a month or so ago. How quickly Gabriel had brought forth life where there had seemingly been none at all. It almost felt like I knew this little guy, as if he might have a personality all his own. I sighed. “What if I don’t do well tomorrow? What if I make a fool of myself?”

William continued only to smile and to stare at me with those encouraging eyes. I let out a breath. “Well, of course you’d say that.”

I heard a small noise and turned around quickly, seeing Gabriel standing in the doorway in a T-shirt and loose sweatpants, leaning one hip on the frame and watching me curiously. I felt the heat rise in my neck and laughed, an embarrassed sound made mostly of breath. Gabriel smiled. I turned back around as the heat rose from my neck to my cheeks.

I felt Gabriel come up behind me, and he ran his hands down my arms, kissing the top of my head. “You’re going to do just fine.”

I turned my head to the side but didn’t look back at him. “How do you know?”

“Because you’re smart and you can learn anything.”

You’re smart and you can learn anything.

You’re such a good, smart girl, Ellie. You don’t forget that, okay? No matter what, you don’t forget that.

I felt a sharp ache in my heart and pushed the words away, not willing to think about them—or who they’d come from—not when I already felt so vulnerable.

I moved my hand back over William’s hard little head, felt Gabriel’s solid strength at my back. The pain inside me rose up so suddenly, the honesty of it rolling off my tongue. “I’ve always pretended I was made of stone, but the truth is, I feel more like I was formed from sand, as if I might crumble at any second.” I’d felt this way for so long, so long, and it hurt.

Gabriel wrapped his arms around me from behind as he’d done that day after I ruined dinner. He reached around me and laid his hand on top of mine on William’s head. “But that’s what solid stone is made from, Eloise. Sand and pressure”—he squeezed me lightly with the arm still holding me—“and time. That’s all it is, my sweet love. Just sand and pressure and time.”

I let the words roll through me, wanting so desperately for the pressure—the love—of his arms around me to help me achieve the confidence in myself that he seemed to have in me. It was the time part that worried me. How long? How much time until I felt solid and competent? How long until I wasn’t pretending?

Gabriel had taught me so many lessons, and they were all important to me because he’d come by them honestly. The words he spoke weren’t just words or platitudes—they were truths he’d earned through his own pain and suffering.

Just sand and pressure and time.

“I tried to look at the stars,” I murmured after a moment, wanting him to know that I listened to every word he said to me. I wanted him to understand that I admired him above all others, even if I couldn’t always manage to live his words the way he did. “I tried to appreciate the beauty around me, but I just don’t think I did it right.”

Gabriel blew out a breath that ended in a sigh. “Gratitude isn’t a Band-Aid, Ellie. You still have to experience your feelings to work through them. Gratitude is meant to make it bearable. Sometimes gratitude gets you through the day, and sometimes it just gets you from one moment to the next. That’s all.”

“I was really looking more for a Band-Aid,” I said, trying to infuse some humor into my tone.

He chuckled and it warmed me.

We were both quiet for a moment. “You probably think I’m crazy out here talking to a statue.”

“No. They’re good listeners. But so am I,” he murmured against my hair, pulling me into him so my body was resting against his. “Why are you so hard on yourself? You don’t have to be.”

I didn’t know how to answer that and so I just smiled, looking up at him. “Thank you.”

He nodded, his eyes moving over my face as if he was trying to read my thoughts. Finally, he simply kissed me and then took my hand, leading me back into the house, where I went to bed and finally fell asleep.

* * *

I started work the next morning. George simply handed me the instruction book for the phone system before walking out the door toward the quarry, where I could already hear the machinery and trucks getting started doing whatever they did.

Gabriel chuckled softly at my look of surprise and said, “No one’s answering the phones now. Even if you only pick up half of the calls that come in, we’ll be better off.” I knew he was only saying it to make me feel better, but it worked, and once he’d left for his workshop, I opened the instruction manual and began figuring things out.

Dominic came in around nine thirty, and my heart leapt with nervousness, but he simply smiled a tight smile at me and went to his office. No apology, nothing.

The day passed quickly as I taught myself the system, answered calls, only missing a few, and only hanging up on a couple, and before I knew it, Gabriel was walking back through the door, asking if I wanted to go to lunch with him, and then several hours later, picking me up to drive home.

He looked over at me in the cab of the truck, smiling broadly. “Did you like it okay?”

I nodded, a sense of accomplishment making me feel happy and at ease.

The week flew by, and although I got better at my job, teaching myself how to operate the fax and copy machines, and becoming adept at scheduling appointments using the online calendar, Dom’s coldness affected my enjoyment of the job. In addition to not speaking to me, he would literally turn his back if I walked into the small break room to get coffee while he was in there, too, or pretend not to hear if I asked him a question. I tried to shrug off his immaturity, but I felt the utter disdain behind it, which made it difficult not to let it affect me. I refused to tell Gabriel, hoping Dominic would grow tired of his schoolyard antics and give it up.

But Gabriel walked the short distance to the office to pick me up every evening, and I escaped to his studio when I could, watching his beautiful hands work a piece of stone, knowing that though it had started out as nothing much, soon it would be something miraculous.

Watching his hands move over a piece of rock made me shiver now, wondering what they would feel like moving over every inch of me.

At night, after we’d eaten dinner, we would make out on the couch like teenagers, and I’d urge him in my mind to put his hand up my shirt, to undress me, to touch my skin, to release the pent-up desire that felt like a burning inferno inside me. But each night he’d pull himself away, and though his arousal was obvious, I told myself he just wasn’t ready.

On Friday that week, Gabriel drove me to a doctor’s appointment after work, where they checked my leg and determined my cast could come off. I laughed out loud when the heavy weight was peeled off me. “Freedom!” I said, and Gabriel grinned from across the room.

“Now you can literally get back on your own two feet,” he said. I smiled, but inside, his words caused a spear of uncertainty and fear to slice through me.

We stopped on the way home and bought champagne to celebrate my reclaimed independence and made plans to order pizza for dinner.

I felt happy not to have to drag around a leg that felt twice as heavy as the other, but I also felt vaguely sad. He was right. I was literally back on my own two feet. There was no real reason for me to be at Gabriel’s house anymore. I pushed the thought away for now. I wanted this weekend with him, even if it was the last one.

As soon as I walked in the door, I told Gabriel I was going to shave my leg. Seeing it in the bright light of the doctor’s office had told me undoubtedly that I was long overdue. As a matter of fact, both legs could use some attention. I hadn’t been overly concerned with my appearance in weeks. It had been a nice vacation from the constant grooming I’d needed to do as a stripper, but I didn’t want to think about that right now, either. I wasn’t shaving for aesthetics. I was shaving because, in all honesty, my legs just felt gross.

“Let me help,” Gabriel said.

I laughed. “Shave my legs?”

He smiled a crooked smile. “Yes.”

I shrugged. “If you want to.”

We lingered over dinner and a couple of glasses of celebratory champagne, Gabriel laughing because I got up a couple of times and did a funny sort of jog/limp in place simply because I could, and because I needed to strengthen my muscles. I swore I was never going to take my body for granted again.

After cleaning the kitchen, he pulled me by my hand. “Come on.” I followed him into his bedroom, glancing around at the simple furniture, the bookshelves overflowing with hardbacks and paperbacks, the small desk with a laptop sitting open on top, the bed made up with a navy comforter and a stack of pillows against the headboard.

Gabriel led me straight to the bathroom, where there was a large tub. He ran the water and I took a seat on the side, rolling up my yoga pants and swinging my legs over. I laughed. “This is definitely something I’ve never done.”

Gabriel grinned as he rolled up his jeans and stepped into the tub, kneeling. I laughed again. “You’re getting your jeans all wet.”

“I don’t care. Sit back. Let me pamper you.”

I leaned against the wall, watching him as he took the cover off a new disposable razor and lathered his hands with soap. I sighed. Just the feel of soaking my feet in the warm water while I relaxed felt so good. He rubbed the soap gently on one leg, and I watched his hands slide over my skin. I couldn’t help thinking of the work he did. This is what the puppies and rabbits and cherubs must feel like. Cared for. Cherished. Brought to life. This is what all those flowers and leaves and twining vines that used to be square lumps of rock must feel like. Set free. Renewed. Made beautiful beneath his capable hands.

I swallowed, the moment suddenly feeling so poignant, so intimate, so erotic as his hands glided down my legs, massaging gently until I moaned. I saw Gabriel’s Adam’s apple move as he, too, swallowed. His expression was so focused, so intent on what he was doing.

He glanced at me as he picked up the razor, and his pupils looked slightly dilated. It occurred to me that this wasn’t only the first time he’d touched my skin with his hands. This was the first time he’d touched any woman. Tenderness exploded in my chest as I watched him drag the razor slowly up my leg. I felt breathless.

The razor moved gently up my skin, and his fingers followed behind it, ensuring he didn’t miss any spots. The knees of his jeans were soaked now, but he didn’t seem to notice. Steam rose in the air, and I realized I’d never been touched this way. Not once. Not ever. Caressed. Loved.

Gabriel rinsed the razor and turned the leg he’d shaved from side to side, assessing his work the way he did when he sculpted. His fingers moved to my anklebones and then down to my feet, where his hands massaged me lovingly. It felt so good I moaned again, longer this time. Gabriel’s eyes shot to mine, looking slightly glassy. “You’re so beautiful, Eloise. Every part of you.” He ran his finger over my anklebone again and up the arch of my foot. “You’re a work of art.”

A work of art.

I’d been told I was beautiful before. I’d been told I was gorgeous, sexy, irresistible, but somehow I’d never allowed those words to penetrate. They’d just been … words. It was as if they’d sat there on the surface of my skin. But I felt Gabriel’s words seep through my pores, into my blood, and deep to my bones. Right into my soul. I felt his words as if they were a benediction. And he’d only been talking about my ankle.

Butterflies fluttered in my tummy, and my clothes felt too tight, my skin too sensitive. With every movement, my T-shirt brushed over my nipples and made them feel tight and achy. A steady drumbeat of arousal was vibrating in my core, and my underwear was wet and too restricting.

“Gabriel,” I whispered. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted him to come up out of the shallow pool of water and lean over me and kiss me and then scoop me up and bring me to bed, but I didn’t know how to ask.

It looked as if he was turned on, too, so why didn’t he? He didn’t have to wonder if I was on birth control. He knew everything about me in that regard after caring for me while I’d been too sick to care for myself. What was it? What was stopping him? Did he worry if I was clean? If I slept with the men from the club? That I was tainted? I had made lots of stupid choices in my life, but I’d never been unsafe. Should I reassure him of that?

Or did he hesitate because of his own inexperience? Was he worried I’d say no? That he wouldn’t know what to do?

He ran his lathered hands up my other leg and then dragged the razor up it as well. I wanted to arch my back with the sensation, suddenly so overstimulated, I thought I might just slide down into the water and kiss him myself. Uncertainty assaulted me, though, and so I sat motionless as he finished the job and then rinsed my legs and my feet, standing and stepping out of the tub where his soaking wet pants dripped on the bathmat.

He grabbed a towel, and when I swung my legs out of the tub and over the side, he blotted them dry.

I watched his face as he did so, and he looked so intense, so focused. I thought for sure he was going to ask me to stay the night with him or that he would make a move of some sort. And so when he leaned up and kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “Good night,” I froze and blinked.

Gabriel stood and walked stiffly out of the bathroom. I followed, whispering, “Good night, Gabriel,” as I passed him at his bedroom door. I hesitated a couple of seconds too long, giving him a chance to ask me to stay, and we both stared at each other for several beats before I turned my head and walked out. I heard him release a shaky breath behind me.

I returned to my room and took a cool shower and then got in bed, still feeling frustrated and confused. As I lay there in the quiet, I realized that I didn’t know what it was like to want like this. I’d never experienced it before. I’d never even known what wanting was, not really, and I was suddenly … amazed. And something warm and tender moved through me. Oh God. Gabriel had given this to me. And though it made me feel slightly crazed, it also made me feel powerful and alive.

I sat up in bed, a slow smile moving over my face as I gathered the sheet to my chest. Was he waiting for me to be ready? Was it another gift Gabriel was trying to give to me? The experience of knowing I wanted a man and offering myself to him, rather than only ever being taken? But wasn’t it the same for him? I groaned. Of course it would be just like Gabriel to have been ready for weeks and to be waiting for me to know I was ready, too.

I got out of bed, nervous and unsure, and yet filled with a yearning so strong I was consumed with it.

I opened the door softly and stepped into the hallway, looking at his closed door. My nerves were like a buzzing in my veins, and I almost turned back, but I gathered my courage and walked quickly to his door, turning the knob and stepping inside.

His room was dim, the only light on next to his bed. He was lying under a sheet, his chest naked, with a book in his hand. When he saw me, a worried frown came over his face. He sat up on one elbow. “Ellie? Are you okay?”

I nodded jerkily, my heart beating so loudly, it seemed to echo in my ears. “You’re reading—”

He laid the book aside. “No.” He shook his head. “I’ve read the same sentence fifteen times now.”

“Oh …” My voice came out in a croaky whisper, and I cleared my throat. Gabriel was so still, waiting. “I want you,” I said in a whispered rush of words. “And I thought maybe you might … want … too.” I swallowed, pressing my palms against the closed door at my back.

A look of such raw tenderness came over Gabriel’s expression that I stopped breathing for a second before my breath resumed in a quick rush of air. I wanted to drink that look in, to make it part of me forever. “I do,” he said. “I do want … too.” His small, crooked smile, filled with love and a glint of teasing, made my shoulders relax.

He threw the sheet back and got out of bed. He was wearing boxers, and my heartbeat quickened when I saw the outline of his arousal through the thin material. I swallowed again, his beauty affecting me twice as much this time as it had the first time I saw him half-naked. This time … oh, this time, I was going to touch him and so much more.

If we see each other naked again, it won’t be a job, or an accident. It will be because we both want it, and because it means something.

Yes.

Oh yes.

He pressed me gently against the door with his hips and brought his hands to my face, kissing me as I melted into him, my body softening everywhere to mold to his hardness.

“We fit so perfectly, don’t we?” he murmured, and a rush of arousal raced through my blood at his words.

He kissed down my neck, feathering his lips over my skin, and I felt something in him that I hadn’t felt before: He was holding nothing back this time. There was no reservation in his touch, no doubt in his kiss. I had offered myself to him, and he meant to give all of himself as well.

He led me to the bed and came over me as I lay back. “You might have to show me how to do this. I’ve never done it before,” he whispered, a small smile on his lips and a hint of vulnerability in his eyes.

I brought a hand to his cheek. “I don’t think I’ve done this before, either. Not like this. Let’s just figure it out as we go.”

He gazed at me so seriously before he kissed me again.

We undressed each other slowly in the soft glow of the reading lamp. I didn’t feel a second of shame as his gaze moved over my naked body, and for a moment the lack of discomfort confused me. But then realization dawned: this was what it should feel like to be a woman. I’d never had any idea at all.

We touched and kissed with loving hands and open hearts, and I’d been right to think I’d never experienced anything like this before. It was tender and generous, and it was everything. Everything I’d never known.

I wanted to touch every part of him, to know his body the way I’d come to know his heart. To willingly explore a man for the first time, to keep my eyes wide open and my mind focused on the moment because there was nowhere else I’d rather be. I wanted to actually feel pleasure, to know the thrill of giving over complete trust to the person I was with.

I started at his feet, and he laughed softly as I ran my hands over his toes and up his calves. I smiled, too, not just because he had, but because I’d never known laughter and joy could be part of sex. Everything was new and wondrous, and I felt a wild sort of reverence in the discovery of my own passion. I could feel this, too. I’d never known. Oh, I’d never known.

Gabriel’s laughter turned into a moan as I continued up his thighs, kneading the muscles there, watching his face so I knew he was okay with my every touch, seeing him swell and harden and feeling the answering rush of wetness between my thighs.

I moved upward, running my hands over the warm hardness of his chest, across his broad shoulders, tracing a finger over the ridges of his stomach until he sucked in a breath and brought his lips to mine.

Gabriel turned me over and moved his hands over my skin as if I were a treasure he had just discovered—those beautiful artist’s hands that held within them the power to bring forth beauty from within. And that’s what I felt: beautiful, adored, loved.

He kissed and touched every part of me, and I had the faraway sense that he was mending me and I was mending him. We explored for what felt like hours, until I was slick and desperate, and the half-pained look on his face told me he felt the same.

When he pushed into my body, we both gasped, our eyes meeting in the dim light of the room, that same connection I’d first been so frightened of still there but now intensified a thousandfold.

I tried to focus only on his face, on the beautiful concentration in his expression, the way his eyes fell shut and his eyelashes formed dark crescents on his cheeks, the way his lips parted in pleasure. I tried to watch him as he rocked slowly at first, finding a rhythm and then increasing the pace, but my own swelling pleasure was so powerful, I was lost as it washed over me and through me, causing me to cry out Gabriel’s name again and again. I fisted the sheets and pressed my head back into the pillow.

“Yes, Eloise,” I heard him say. “Yes.” Right before he groaned and then shuddered, collapsing on top of me, his breath shallow against my neck, a gentle throbbing where we were still connected.

Lying there afterward in his arms, his fingers running lazily down my arm, I wanted to laugh with joy. I’d been right: Every part of his body held a place that felt as if it had been made just for mine.

Later as I stared at the ceiling, listening to Gabriel’s breathing grow deep and slow, I realized he had given me just what he said he would. His breath against my neck was a calming wind, his smile the sunshine, his touch was a thousand rainbows dancing on my skin, and I loved him so much I thought my heart would burst.