Page 18 of Forever Yours
“But what if you have a family?” she asked without thinking, then could feel her face heat in a deep flush. “I mean…you know, they might not always be guest rooms.”
Gabe studied her for a long moment, his expression inscrutable, before replying, “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
If the silence before was long, it had nothing on the current lonely stretch of highway they were cruising down, the traitorous image of mini-Gabe Atwoods running around a renovated farmhouse filling her mind.
“Back to the tile.” She redirected them to the original subject, pushing out the picture of little boys with wheat-colored hair—and her nose—out of her mind.
“You want to keep as much of the original style as possible. The house has a history, and it would be such a waste to think that history didn’t mean anything anymore, but I’m sure you know all that.” Gabe wondered if she was alluding to their history, as little as they had. “You seem like the kind of guy that would try to hold on to that—isn’t that why you started remodeling the house?
Gabe was surprised by the question. He’d never looked beyond the aesthetics of the project, about why he felt the need to remodel other than the basic fact that the place had to be updated. He wasn’t ready to think about the why, so he kept it to the basics. “The stairs had a runner carpet that was so threadbare it had to come off. I never paid attention to it when my parents lived there—the house wasn’t mine and besides, doesn’t every kid think their childhood home is perfect?”
“Not every kid.” Devlin seemed like she was avoiding Gabe’s searching gaze, answering the question he didn’t have to ask. “My childhood was fine, just not the picture of suburban paradise. So, what about the carpet?”
Gabe hesitated and Devlin moved away, touching another sample. She clearly didn’t want to talk about her childhood right now. “The kitchen has a door that leads to the driveway that I use, but one sunny day after Greyson and I bought it from our parents, I went in the front door and when the light hit the stairs, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed how worn the runner was before.”
Devlin laughed. “It just took a little sunshine for you to see all the imperfections?”
“I find that sunlight is the best light to see anything, imperfections and all.”
He hesitated and Devlin must’ve picked up on the pause.Shecontinued, asking a neutral question. “What did you do then?”
“I spent the rest of the day going through the house just looking and observing, and I saw so many things I’d never noticed. I called Greyson and told him we needed to renovate the house and he wanted nothing to do with it. He was too busy with his career and gave me his half of the house.”
“He just gave it to you?” Devlin seemed skeptical.
“He wouldn’t let me buy him out and said the money I saved would be his contribution to the remodel. He also added that this way I wouldn’t be calling him anymore with boring questions about what crown molding would look best in the foyer and to just make the damned decisions myself. That’s where Pru came in. I didn’t want to second-guess anything.”
“What did your parents say?”
“They said the house looked fine, but that’s what everyone who did a remodel in the eighties thinks. Ultimately, they said the house was ours—mine—and whatever changes I made was my decision.”
Devlin stopped at a thick carpet and ran her fingers through it, giving it a slight scrape with her fingernails.Just like she did to my hair.And there it was—their kiss back in the forefront of his thoughts once again.
“This is the one,” she declared.
Gabe ran his fingers through it also, just brushing hers, and electricity between them ignited. She snatched her hand away, cradling it.
“I’m sorry.” Gabe reached out but she stepped back.
“I’m fine, just a shock. You should get this kind. It’s nice and thick, and with a good pad underneath the cold from the floor won’t seep through. Unless you get water in the basement, then no carpet.”
“No, no water. One of the good upgrades my parents did was drain tile and a sump pump.”
“That’s good,” she murmured, walking over to look at paint colors. “Our basement got water. That’s where my room was, so I could never have carpet. The place was always so cold.”
He knew she was hesitant to share anything of her past, or talk about any oftheirpast, so he kept on going with the most mundane topics, just to keep their conversation alive and to not lapse into yet another silence, awkward or otherwise. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to thank or throttle Prudence for this stunt.
“Where did you live growing up?”
Devlin turned a corner to walk down another aisle and he lost sight of her until her voice came from across the shelf. Most of her was obscured by paint cans but she continued, almost as if not being face-to-face helped her to keep talking.
“Just a neighborhood in South Boston. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Gabe remarked.
Her eyes popped up meeting his through the gap in shades of yellow, then she continued down the aisle, and her voice floated from a few rows over. “I like this color.”
He followed the path she had taken around the corner of the shelf to a section where darker paints were shown on a wall display in different settings.