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She looked up at him, concern in those blue-green eyes he’d come to love. “What’s on your mind?”
“I don’t know. Everything is... good.”
“Ah.” She nodded knowingly. “ ‘The other shoe’ syndrome.”
Gabe laughed. “The other Choux? Like my restaurant?”
She poked him lightly in the gut. “No, the s-h-o-e, and not your dog. I mean you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it might. Then again, it might not.” She shrugged. “Either way, you’re not alone.”
As always, she knew exactly what to say, and it loosened the thing he’d needed to say. “Tobin was supposed to go on trial next week.” But the bastard had just cut a deal. Twenty-five years in prison without the possibility of parole. He deserved life behind bars. He deserved death.
It was hard to be okay with that kind of a deal.
She sighed. “I thought you might be bothered by that. The way I look at it is that his testimony, along with your father’s evidence and the murder of Ducote, put Cresswell away for life. And when Tobin gets out of prison, he’ll be eligible for social security.”
“It’s not long enough.”
“No, but he might not live that long anyway. He’ll be meeting a lot of people inside those prison walls that he helped his daddy put there. And Cresswell? I don’t give him much time at all.”
Gabe frowned. “Is it bad that this makes me feel better?”
“Nope. Makes you human.” She leaned up and pressed a kiss to his jaw. “Makes me love you.”
He settled again, her words the balm he’d needed. “I love you, too.”
The words were new. They’d exchanged them for the first time only a few weeks before. It had been a relief to say them out loud.
A clearing throat had them looking to where Willa Mae stood, her brows arched and a smug smile on her face. “I want an invitation to the wedding.”
“Wedding?” Cicely all but squealed.
“Shh,” Molly said. “Hush, y’all. He hasn’t asked me yet.”
“But he will,” Willa Mae said with a hard nod.
Gabe was unable to hold back his grin. This was a happiness that he’d never expected to feel, and the anxiety he’d felt about Tobin’s deal was already a bad memory. “If it happens”—he so wanted it to happen, but he was trying not to rush—“how about we record the askin’ and the yessin’ and send it over to you?”
“You’d better, young man,” Willa Mae said, then surprised him with a hug that nearly crushed his ribs. “Thank you for closing your restaurant to give us this wonderful day.”
“It’s my pleasure,” he said sincerely. “Maybe we’ll make it a yearly thing.”
Cicely looked over at Manny, who was lifting Harper so that she could reach the éclairs on the top tier of the pastry stand. “I’m so happy that he’s found his place.”
“Me, too,” Gabe said. “He’s really an excellent cook.” And one day would make an excellent assistant manager. One who Gabe could trust.
“Ah, who have we here?” Aunt Gigi stopped next to the two Houston women. “We have not yet met. I am Gabriel’s tante Gigi. I couldn’t help but overhear something about a wedding?”
“I’m Willa Mae Collins, and this is Cicely Morrow,” Willa Mae said.
Gigi bobbed her head. “The ladies from Houston. I’ve heard so much about you. What’s this about a wedding?”
“We’ll fill you in,” Cicely promised.
And, just like that, the three became co-conspirators in his and Molly’s love life. The women walked away, discussing all kinds of wedding things.
“Sorry,” he said to Molly with a wince, but she was grinning.
“For what? Promising to propose to me on video someday?”
He rolled his eyes. “We’re going to have no peace at all. You know that, right?”
Molly bumped his hip with hers. “Peace is highly overrated. I’ll take this life we’ve made any day of the week.”
