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At the angry sound of her father's voice, Rosie's face puckered. Cal gathered her up and kissed her, all the time looking like a summer storm cloud.
Gabe was accustomed to his older brother's blustering, and it didn't bother him a bit. "Rachel survives any way she can. It's a quality I'm just starting to learn from her."
Cal hadn't gotten the response he wanted, and, with Rosie tucked into the crook of his arm like a Super Bowl game ball, he gathered his forces for another attack. "How can you forget what she did at the drive-in?"
That sparked Gabe's temper all over again. "Tell me something, big brother. What would you do if you came home one night and found out I'd had Jane thrown into jail?"
Jane regarded him with interest while Cal's face reddened with outrage. "It's not the same thing at all. Jane's my wife!"
"Yeah, well, last week I asked Rachel to marry me."
"You did what?"
"You heard me."
Ethan and Cal stared at her. Earlier at the drive-in, she'd told Cal exactly this, but he hadn't believed her.
Rosie poked her tiny index finger in her father's mouth. Cal studied his brother and slowly withdrew her hand. "You're going to marry her?"
For the first time, Gabe seemed to lose some steam. "I don't know. She's still thinking about it."
This time when Cal confronted her, he seemed more confused than angry. "If he asked you to marry him, why did you trash the drive-in?"
She started to tell him she hadn't done it, but Gabe spoke first.
"Because Rachel's heart is bigger than her brain." He curled his hand around the back of her neck and rubbed the nape with' his thumb. "She knew the drive-in wasn't good for me, but I wouldn't listen to her. Rachel is… She's pretty much a street fighter when it comes to people she cares about, and this was her own peculiar form of warfare."
For a moment she thought Gabe had decided to tell his third lie of the day, and then she realized he wasn't lying. He honestly thought she'd done it. The weasel! But just as she worked up a little righteous indignation, the gentle understanding she saw in his eyes took it right out of her. Even believing this, he was still on her side.
"Gabe! Gabe!" Edward squealed from the next room. "Gabe, you gotta see this!"
He hesitated, and she fully expected him to tell Edward to wait, but he surprised her. Spearing his brothers with another intimidating glare, he said, "Don't either of you go anywhere. I'll be right back." He turned to Jane. "Guard her from them, will you?"
"I'll do my best."
The moment he disappeared into the family room, Rachel rose from her stool. Both brothers watched her, their expressions bewildered. As Cal set Rosie down, Rachel reached inside herself for some well-deserved rage, only to find an uneasy jumble of frustration and a twisted sort of understanding. Love had a lot of faces to it, and she was looking at two of them right now. How wonderful it would be to go through life supported by these men, no matter how misguided they were.
She spoke quietly. "I don't really care whether you believe me or not, but, just to set the record straight, Gabe's wrong. I'm not the one who vandalized the drive-in. That isn't to say I wouldn't have done it just for the reason he mentioned, but the fact is, I didn't think of it." She went on, determined to clean the slate as best she could. "And Odell didn't take my shoes. Gabe threw them out the car window on the way over here."
When Cal spoke, his tone lacked its customary antagonism. "What does Gabe mean that he asked you to marry him, and you're thinking about it?"
"It means I told him no."
Ethan frowned. "You're not going to marry him?" "You know I can't. Gabe's a soft touch. He cares about me, and that makes him protective. I guess it's a Bonner family trait." She cleared her throat, forced out the words. "Getting married is the only way he can think of to keep me out of trouble. But he doesn't love me."
"And you love him, don't you?" Ethan said gently. "Yeah." She nodded. Tried to smile. "A lot." To her dismay, her eyes filled with tears. "He thinks I'm tough, but I'm not tough enough to spend the rest of my life wanting what I can't have, and that's why I can't marry him."
Her toes tickled, and she looked down to see that Rosie had discovered them. Glad of the distraction, she dropped onto the black marble floor and sat cross-legged so the baby could crawl into her lap.
A sound came from Cal that was part sigh, part groan. "We screwed up big-time."
"We!" Ethan retorted, just as Gabe reappeared from the family room. "I wouldn't have had her thrown in jail! And I wouldn't have bribed her, either, Mr. Big Shot Billionaire!"
"I'm not a billionaire!" Cal exclaimed. "And if you had my kind of money, you would have done exactly the same thing!"
"Children, children," Jane admonished. And then, without warning, her hand flew to her mouth and she burst out in laughter. "Oh, my goodness!" They all stared at her.
"I'm sorry, but it just hit me…" She calmed herself, then began laughing again.
