“She seems okay.”
“Are you sure? Things are going well now that you and your brothers claimed guardianship?” Wyatt asked him as he rolled his Stetson in his hands, playing with the rim.
“We’ve done more than claim guardianship. We’re making her our woman. We expect her to be moved in before Halloween.”
“That’s great to hear. She’s very sweet. Young, but real smart. You ever find out where she came from?”
Gabriele looked at Wyatt.
“South Carolina. You know, Maxwell was going to talk to you.”
“I figured as much.”
“Figured she had some trouble with her?”
“I wondered why would such a young, attractive, educated woman like Lucia be out on her own and wind up in our town of Pearl?”
“Because this is the place to come to when you’re in trouble and need help even if you don’t even know it is.”
Wyatt smiled. “Tell Max I’m available whenever he wants to catch me up to speed. Just tell me, do you think we’ll need some safety measures in place to handle these troubles of hers?”
Gabriele looked at Lucia.
“We don’t plan on letting her out of our sight. From what we know, no one even knows that she’s here.”
“Good. I’ll talk to you soon.” Wyatt shook his hand good-bye, waved at Lucia, and then waved to Anna before he left the town hall. He couldn’t help but to worry. His gut instinct was always on target. He had been concerned for Lucia since the first time he noticed her in town. He hoped the Walterses had things under control and that Maxwell would talk to him. Otherwise, there were no guarantees of protecting her when their guards were down.
* * * *
Lucia smiled at Gabriele as Abigail tried talking Gabriele into running one of the event tables.
“How about at the craft table where kids make witches out of brown paper sandwich bags? There will be instructions,” Abigail told him, and he shook his head.
“The candy corn toss? It’s pretty simple, just toss candy corn into a sand bucket from behind the line and win some candy.”
“No thank you, Ma’am,” he mumbled.
Lucia chuckled. There stood Gabriele, over six feet tall, filled with muscles, and not appearing as the type that liked to socialize.
Abigail exhaled with her hands on her hips and stared up at Gabriele in disbelief.
“How about judging the pumpkin carving contest, either for the children or the adults? You won’t be alone, so your decisi
on won’t be a deciding factor. What do you say?” she pushed.
Lucia snuck under his arm and wrapped her arms around his waist. “He’ll do it. I’ll make sure, Mrs. Jones,” Lucia chimed in.
“Lucia?”
“Wonderful. I’ll put you down on the list and let you know what time you need to be there.” Abigail wrote his name down on the piece of paper on the clipboard and then walked away.
Lucia started walking with Gabriele’s arm around her shoulders.
“You didn’t get away with this.”
She chuckled.
They walked down the sidewalk and over toward the back parking lot. Gabriele pressed her against the truck as he held her hips.