Read Online Deliver the Moon by Rebecca J. Clark - Free Book Online Page A

feet were bare. Gabe forced his eyes away. Seeing her like that made it easy to imagine time had taken them back. He remembered many a time he’d been scrounging through his clothes and the laundry for a certain T-shirt, only to find it in one of her drawers. She’d loved to borrow his clothes. Jeans and white T-shirts had always been her mainstay when she was at home. He was glad to see she hadn’t changed, at least in that sense.
    “You want to help me pick the salad?” she asked suddenly, slipping her feet into white canvas tennis shoes.
    “Pick the salad?”
    “I have a little garden out back, just big enough for salad stuff,” she explained.
    As they headed outside, Louisa motioned for him to be quiet. “My mother would have a fit if she knew I’d planted a vegetable garden in her yard,” she whispered, leading him around the corner of her little apartment. “I told the gardener I’d sabotage his shrubs if he ratted on me.”
    Gabe grinned, strangely pleased she was doing something behind her mother’s back. Together, they harvested lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes from the weedless garden. Louisa plucked some strawberries for dessert. He chuckled as they reentered her house.
    “What’s so funny?” She tossed their pickings into the sink and poured water over them.
    Still smirking, he said, “The fact you have to sneak around your own house just amuses me.”
    She smiled. “Well, you know how fanatical my mother is with her yard and gardens, but I figure what she doesn’t know…”
    ****
    She should have known better than to worry about having Gabe here, Louisa mused as they sat down at her small table a little while later. He was the perfect gentleman, obviously not reading anything into the evening that wasn’t there. She was glad Gram invited him. It was good to see him. She sighed with a small smile and dug into her salad.
    “It’s good to see you again, Lou.”
    She licked a speck of dressing from the corner of her lips. His mind always seemed to be on the same wavelength as hers. It was unnerving, to say the least.
    “It’s been a long time since we’ve sat across a table from each other,” he went on when she didn’t respond.
    Since before you left me . In fact, she couldn’t even remember the last time. That final year of their marriage, they’d been strangers at best. They’d rarely eaten dinner with each other, let alone do much of anything else together. Louisa’s lips thinned. The pleasant evening disappeared with the bad memories.
    “I imagine Evan wouldn’t be too happy if he knew I was here,” Gabe said after the silence had stretched on a while.
    She cut the spaghetti into manageable pieces with the edge of her fork. “Probably not,” she finally agreed, putting a small bite into her mouth.
    “That’s quite a ring he got you.”
    She dropped her left hand to her lap, for some reason wanting her engagement ring out of sight.
    “It’s a far cry from the one I gave you, isn’t it?” Gabe’s tone was light, but she knew his expression wasn’t, even without looking at him.
    She shrugged off his question, not telling him that the ring he’d given her, although inexpensive and small, was just as priceless as Evan’s was spendy. She also didn’t tell him that his ring was still inside her jewelry box, tucked carefully into a velvet compartment in the back.
    After a few minutes of eating in silence, Gabe said, “Tell me about you and Evan.”
    She paused in her chewing. After swallowing, she asked, “What do you mean?”
    “How did you two meet?”
    She blinked a couple of times, and heat flooded her face. “My boss is his sister. She introduced us.”
    “Your boss? Are she and Evan close?”
    “Extremely.”
    “Doesn’t that get kind of dicey sometimes? I mean, if you and Evan get into a fight?”
    Louisa twisted her napkin in her lap. “Evan and I don’t fight.”
    “Well. That’s…good.” He cleared his throat. “Does he live here in Seattle?”
    She