Taking the Heat (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 3)

“I’m not sure. I’d better go.” Still, he didn’t move; he just held tight to her, heart thundering against her ear.

“He’s going to be okay,” she said, wishing out loud for him.

She felt the movement of his muscles as he nodded. “You’re right. He’ll be okay.”

She kissed his shaking heart and whispered his name before he took a deep breath and let her go. “I’ll let you know when I’m leaving and when I can...” His words trailed away as he looked down at the shirt he’d picked up.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said.

His forehead creased and he shook his head, but he couldn’t seem to speak.

“It’s okay, Gabe. Just go tell your sister and get back to New York.”

He nodded and finished getting dressed, then gave her a quick kiss before leaving.

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sp; It was only 3:00 a.m., but Veronica knew she’d never get back to sleep now. She pulled on warm clothes and made herself tea to try to shake off the chill that had settled beneath her skin. Poor Gabe. And his poor family. It was so awful that this had happened while Naomi was away, too.

She hoped Gabe’s mother wasn’t all alone. Surely they had more family there? Everyone she’d ever met from New York had had cousins stretched throughout the boroughs.

She wanted to call Gabe and see what was happening, but she was in a very strange position. She wasn’t his girlfriend. They’d barely started dating. She had no right to insert herself into this tragedy or distract him while he was worried. She didn’t even know his parents’ names.

Feeling awful about that, she curled up in bed with her cup of tea and looked up MacKenzie’s.

She immediately recognized the pictures of Gabe’s dad. He looked like a bigger, bulkier version of Gabe. The man was clean shaven, but the kind brown eyes and sturdy nose were the same. He smiled in every single picture she found. A fantastic smile that said he loved the world and everyone in it.

Blinking back tears, she found a history of the business. Gabe’s dad was named James, and he’d taken over the business from his father, who’d started the first MacKenzie’s in 1970. The family’s love for the place was evident in the stories on the website. And right there in the About Us section was a picture of Gabe’s whole family. It must have been taken years ago, because Gabe was a teenager, gangly and thin faced. His two sisters framed him, both of them tall and beautiful. His dad had one big arm around Gabe’s mom, a woman in her late forties who wore her hair in a ponytail and her sunglasses perched on top of her head.

They looked so happy. Veronica crossed her fingers and hoped hard that everything would be okay. It wasn’t fair that a family like that could be broken up so early.

This kind of family had been Veronica’s fantasy her whole life. Even when her mom had been alive, she’d watched other kids’ fathers and wondered what it would be like to have a big laughing dad who was willing to take off work to come to the school musical performances.

After her mom had died, Veronica hadn’t really dreamed much about family at all, until the day her dad had announced that he was remarrying. His courtship had taken place entirely out of Veronica’s sight, so she’d had no picture of who this new woman would be. But her mind had formed someone a lot like that picture of Gabe’s mom. Pretty and funny and a little no-nonsense. A woman who would come in and organize their sterile little household into a real family.

Veronica had been utterly off base. Her stepmother had swept into Veronica’s life and reorganized the household, all right, but her main goal had been resetting the flow of the home so that it all revolved around her and her son. If Veronica had had a stepbrother like Gabe, everything would have been different.

Okay, maybe not like Gabe. That would have been an awful made-for-TV movie. My Brother, My Lover. So someone just as kind as Gabe but without Gabe’s lust-inducing pheromones. That would’ve been perfect.

She did a load of laundry and made herself breakfast, checking her phone about five times a minute to be sure Gabe hadn’t texted.

At 6:00 a.m. just as she was dozing off on her couch, there was a quiet knock on the door. She raced over and jerked it open.

Gabe’s heavy eyes widened for a moment. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She opened the door wide and pulled him in out of the predawn cold. His fingers felt chilled. “How is he?”

“The same. Still stable, though. They think it was a pretty minor heart attack as far as damage, but he’ll still be in the hospital for a few days.”

“Thank God.” She put her arms around him and tried to absorb some of the cold from his body.

He kissed the top of her head. “Veronica, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to be sorry for. Did you get a flight?”

His chin rubbed her head when he nodded.

“What time?”