Cowboys and Cocoa (Cowboys and Chocolate) Page 2

  She put her own plate down and sat across from him. “I know you would have, Gabe,” she said, licking mayonnaise off her finger. “I think, that is… I think I didn’t want you to understand. I guess, in a way, I wanted to hurt you, to make a clean break so I could start fresh, start… on my own.”

  She’d expected him to be hurt, to lash out like he had over twenty years ago.

  Instead, this time, he just let go and sat back in his chair. “I’d have understood that, too.” She could tell it was a lie, a gentle lie.

  “No, you wouldn’t have, Gabe. Not back then. Not as close as we were .”

  He smirked. “You’re probably right.” He looked down at his sandwich, as if seeing it for the first time. “But I understand now.”

  The look on his face, the scar on his chin, the set of his jaw, and the haunted look in his eyes, he probably did understand. A little too late, but at least it was a start.

  They ate quietly as they had a hundred times before, in what seemed like a hundred years ago.

  The Christmas music was soft in the other room, but nice to have on just the same. June Christy sang “That Time of Year,” as Gabe helped her wash the dishes.

  She made coffee, hot and strong, and they took it back by the fire. She was about to sit when he touched her, gently, on the shoulder. It had been so long since a man had done that, touched her period, that she reflexively closed her eyes.

  “I thought,” he said, standing close. “We could dance, for old time’s sake.”

  She laughed softly, looking up into his blue eyes. “I don’t remember us ever being big-time dancers.”

  It was his turn to laugh, a flush rising to his face. “Okay, for… new time’s sake, then.”

  She put her coffee down on the hearth. “Ah, Gabe…Why didn’t you say so?”

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