His Unlikely Lover (Unwanted #3) (8 page)

Starting an auto repair shop wasn’t cheap and if not for Gabe’s emotional support and encouragement back when the idea was just a nascent seed floundering beneath mounds of crushing self-doubt, Bobbi would probably not even have tried to get it off the ground. Gabe had always made her feel like what she wanted was equally as important as her brothers’ lofty ambitions. The costs of her state-of-the-art equipment, building rental, and employee payrolls were immense and Bobbi would swallow her pride and live at home if it meant saving money on rent and food. She’d had a lot more privacy since her brothers had all moved out anyway and usually only saw her father at mealtimes. The man was a workaholic and was always closeted away in his office running the multimillion dollar family business that none of his children had wanted to take over. Instead, Gabe was the one who was being groomed to succeed him as Richcorp’s chairman.

Gabe had been Mike Richmond’s first, last, and only choice as successor once it had become clear that none of his children were interested in learning anything about his huge multimedia conglomerate, which owned five local newspapers around the country, three national radio stations, four glossy multilingual magazines, and a premium cable television that serviced most of the country and a large portion of the continent as well. Gabe had been the one who had asked the intelligent questions on career day when Mike Richmond had graced his classroom—which he shared with his twin, Chase, and her brother Billy—with his formidable presence. Gabe had been the one to dog the older man’s footsteps and beg for a summer job when he was fifteen. While Chase and Billy had flirted with girls and been typical adolescents, Gabe had worked his butt off in the stuffy mailroom of the Cape Town branch of the company. He had eventually obtained his MBA—all the while working his way up through the ranks until he had reached his current status as the CEO of GNT, Richcorp’s most prolific subsidiary. Now he was poised to take over the whole kit and caboodle.

“Hey.” As if she had unconsciously summoned Gabe with her thoughts, his glossy, expensive shoes suddenly materialized at her feet. Startled, she lost focus and raised her head, hitting it on the underside of the car with a bang.
Damn it!

She swore roundly and he chuckled in response to her colorful curses. He went down on his haunches and she felt his hands wrap around her ankles. Before she could question him, he dragged her out from under the car. The creeper that she was lying on eased his task significantly. He didn’t budge as he pulled her closer and she had no choice but to part and bend her knees so that they were splayed on either side of his thighs. He halted her progress before the creeper—which was long enough only to support her from shoulder to backside—could whack him on the ankles.

Disgruntled, she sat up but then immediately realized that the move hadn’t been well thought out on her part. It brought her chest within a hairs’ breath of his much broader one and she could feel the heat poring off him. He also smelled delicious—hints of green forest mixed with his own earthy scent—while she was self-consciously aware of the fact that she reeked of Eau de Grease. Still she was so hyperaware of his proximity that her breath shortened into ragged gasps, and her nipples tightened into hard ingots of excruciating sensation. She was grateful for the fact that she wore her loose gray overalls since they hid the embarrassing development from his all-encompassing scrutiny. After the night before she would rather not have it known that it was a pretty typical reaction to his presence. Once could be written off as a fluke. Twice and he’d be onto her longest-kept secret in no time.

She licked her lips nervously and his eyes dropped down to her mouth to track the movement. His rapt gaze traveled over her face and his eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he raised his hand to cup one of her cheeks. He leaned in and Bobbi swallowed painfully. Oh dear God, he was going to kiss her . . .

Of course he was going to kiss her
!

It was inevitable. He had confused her so much over the past couple of days but perhaps he was ready to acknowledge he was attracted to her as well? Her lips parted, her eyes slid shut, and his thumb brushed over her cheekbone before his hand abruptly left her face. She was startled into opening her eyes just in time to see him raise his thumb into her line of vision.

“Grease,” he said, wrinkling his nose. She gasped and humiliated color flooded into her cheeks as she caught the mixture of laughter and distaste in his eyes.

She was mortified that she had once again allowed herself to entertain the notion that Gabe could possibly be attracted to her. Her inability to separate reality from her crazy fantasies was one of the reasons she simply
had
to keep him at a physical distance. That meant no more ill-advised movie nights. She would start being firmer and saying no to him more often. It was mortifying how very little backbone she had when it came to this man. Bobbi reached for a rag that she kept tucked into her pocket and scrubbed self-consciously at her face.

“I’m surprised to see you here.” Her voice was muffled as she continued to wipe her face. “I mean, aren’t you afraid of getting grime on your lovely suit? Grease is impossible to get out, you know.” She eyed the expensive tailor-made three-piece iron-gray suit disdainfully, desperate to get back into familiar territory with him. She didn’t ask him what he was doing in a suit on a Sunday afternoon; Gabe was a real workaholic and since he’d taken Saturday off it was inevitable that he’d go to the office on Sunday.

Knowing him, he’d probably swum a few laps this morning, headed out to the office afterward, had a few high-powered business meetings—achieving more in a few hours than most people achieved in a full day at work. Just a typical morning for the industrious Gabriel Braddock, and now he was here with nary a hair out of place and enough time left in his day to torment her.

He merely grinned in response to her words before leaping nimbly to his feet. She felt a profound sense of loss when he moved away and ducked her head to disguise her reaction. When she looked up again only after carefully cultivating a blank expression, it was to see him holding out a hand to her. She hesitated before reluctantly taking the outstretched hand. His long, elegant fingers curled around her grubby paw and the muscles in his thighs tensed as he leaned back to tug her up.

He overestimated her weight—using a smidgen too much strength—and Bobbi lost her balance. For a few awkward seconds she found herself plastered against his hard body before—after a seemingly interminable amount of time had passed—he grabbed her upper arms and shifted her away.

Dazed, she peered up at him for a moment while she tried to force herself to forget about the burning imprint of his chest against her cheek, his torso against her breasts, and most startling of all—the firm masculine bulge between his thighs against her stomach. For a brief moment, she allowed herself to speculate about that substantial bulge. She had easily felt it through the fabric of their clothing, even though he wasn’t aroused and it made her—
very
inappropriately—wonder about the size of him when he was erect. She remembered Friday night, in his room, when she had touched him. He had seemed . . . affected then, but she hadn’t considered
how
affected he might have been until now. Had be been turned on? Hard?
The thought sent her face up in flames.

She lifted the rag and pretended to rub off the grease on her face again in an effort to disguise her inexplicable blush.

“Hey,” his hand reached out to halt hers. “You got it all. You’ll scour the skin off your face if you keep that up.”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked him sullenly, determined to regain her equilibrium.

“Taking you to lunch,” he informed authoritatively, elbowing his jacket aside to shove his hands into his trouser pockets. Naturally her eyes fell to where the expensive fabric strained across his muscled thighs and crotch. She cleared her throat nervously and averted her eyes.

Jesus! Pull yourself together, Richmond,
she lectured herself sternly. This was beyond ridiculous. She could get past this; she’d done it before and she’d undoubtedly have to do it again—even though it was becoming increasingly and devastatingly painful for her to deal with Gabe’s affectionate disinterest.

“I’m busy today . . . and I had a big breakfast,” she lied, and he rolled his eyes at her.

“A slice of toast isn’t anybody’s idea of a big breakfast,” he said.

“Faye?” she asked with a resigned sigh. Faye tended to jump at every opportunity to get Bobbi to eat more. The woman often said that Bobbi’s skinny frame served as a very poor testimonial to Faye’s cooking skills.

“Um-hmm,” Gabe confirmed with a sexy hum that immediately had her stupid nipples standing to attention again. God, this was ridiculous . . . why did she have to be so
aware
of him?

“It doesn’t matter, I snacked throughout the morning.”

Gabe raised a questioning brow at Sean and Craig. The other men had their lunch bags in hand and were obviously getting ready to take a break.

“If you call a half-eaten apple a snack,” Craig said with a jovial shrug, ignoring Bobbi’s glare before he and the other two men waved and traipsed off to enjoy their lunch in the park opposite her shop.

“I guess that settles it,” he said with a charming grin that set her teeth on edge and made her want to slap him and kiss him at the same time. It was the latter impulse that made her snap at him defensively.

“It settles
nothing
! You’re not my keeper, Gabe, and if I choose to have a working lunch it’s nothing to you.” Okay, she sounded like a total bitch and immediately felt awful about it—especially when she saw the flash of confusion in his eyes.

“You’re angry with me,” he observed. “Why?”

“No. I’m not.” She sighed. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t see her as anything other than a surrogate sister, while she wanted so much more than just friendship from him. “I’m sorry, Gabe, I’m just tired. Let me get cleaned up and we can grab something to eat.”

Gabe watched as Bobbi prowled off to the tiny glass cubicle that served as her office. He didn’t know how to deal with her or talk to her anymore.

He’d thought that coming to her shop and seeing her in her element, with grease on her face and hands, would help him get over whatever was going on with him. But when he had dragged her out from beneath that car and she had spread her legs around his thighs, his thoughts had been so X-rated that if anybody had been able to read his mind at that moment, he would have been arrested for obscenity right on the spot. He had quite frantically searched for a way to get himself back under control and had found it in the speck of grease on her cheek. He had imagined her at any of the social events that he was regularly required to go to as the CEO of GNT, and Bobbi was hardly the type of female he’d want gracing his arm. But then he had tugged her up, she had fallen against him, and all rational thought had fled his mind again.

He watched, a reluctant smile tugging at the corners of his lips, as she headed over to a sink in her office and rinsed her hands and face before sticking her entire head under the faucet to wet her short black hair. There was really no artifice about her. What you saw was what you got with Bobbi. She reached for a towel and draped it over her head before tugging at the zipper of her overalls and dragging it down. Gabe found himself riveted and took an inadvertent step closer to the office as she revealed a seemingly endless expanse of pale, naked skin to his eyes. What the hell was she wearing under that damned thing? The heavy material eventually parted enough to reveal a tight blue tank top and she dragged her arms out of the sleeves in quick, practiced movements. The top half of her overalls was now bunched at her waist with the sleeves dangling down the backs of her legs.

Twin rivulets of water streamed from her wet hair and followed the path of her delicate clavicles down over the slight swell of her breasts to merge into a single stream just before disappearing into the shallow crevice of her cleavage and dampening the light cotton of her tank. His eyes widened as he watched her nipples bead in response to the cold trickle of water. She obviously wasn’t wearing a bra,
again
! And again that knowledge made his mouth go completely dry. For God’s sake, didn’t the damned woman own a bra?

Her hands went to her hips as she pushed the material of her overalls further down, her slight shimmy as she wriggled her way out of it, making her pert breasts bounce slightly. At last, the overalls dropped to the floor, and his eyes trekked down from her chest over the flat expanse of her stomach to her silky, naked legs as she stepped clear of the discarded pile of cloth. She was wearing another pair of tiny cut-off denim shorts that made her slender legs look impossibly long, which was crazy for a woman whose height barely scraped in past five foot. She turned and bent at the waist to pick up the discarded overalls and Gabe swallowed painfully as he watched the denim go taut over the curve of her butt. The material rode up just enough to give him a tantalizing glimpse of the pouty curve where thigh met arse.