Perfect Fit - Brenda Jackson [57]
Gabe suddenly sat up straight in his chair. “She wouldn’t.”
Parnell shook his head as he grinned at Gabe’s incredulous expression. “You ought to know your mother well enough to know that she would.”
Gabe closed his eyes briefly. Yes, she would. He reopened them, knowing he had to have a very serious conversation with her. She was getting too out of hand. The next thing he knew he would be instructed to pick up a plane load of Bible-toting single women from the airport who’d been sent by his mother to provide him good food, the good gospel and a good reason why one of them should become Mrs. Gabriel Blackwell.
“I feel a headache coming on,” he said miserably, placing a hand to his forehead.
“I’m glad it’s you and not me, Gabe.”
“Don’t consider yourself immune to Joella Black-well’s shenanigans. Once she thinks I’m taken care of, she’ll quickly switch her attention to you.”
Parnell appeared taken aback. “To me?”
“Yes, to you. She won’t rest until she’s found a mother for your girls.”
Parnell dropped his head into his hands. “Heaven help me.”
Gabe started laughing. “Forget it. Heaven won’t help you. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my mother has special connections up there. You’ll be on your own, buddy.”
Later that night after talking to his mother on the phone, Gabe sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace and tried to relax. His conversation with Joella Blackwell had been taxing at best. He knew that everything he’d said to her had gone into one ear and out the other. According to her, there was no good reason a thirty-two year-old man should still be single when there were so many good Christian women out there.
When he had pointed out that it seemed to him that it was the Christian women with all of the issues, she had calmly replied that there had to be a little rain in your life to appreciate the sunshine.
He rolled his eyes, looking at the ceiling. A little rain he could handle, but a full-blown storm he could not, nor did he want to. And when he had told her that he didn’t appreciate her getting Christopher and Parnell involved in his love life, she had been quick to point out to him that as far as she was concerned, he didn’t have one.
Gabe shook his head after taking a sip of the drink he held in his hand. Before hanging up, she had reminded him of his grandparents’ sixtieth anniversary party that was only two months away, and nothing would make her happier than for him to show up with a woman by his side. And, if he couldn’t find one on his own, she would be glad to help him out. He’d said, “Thanks, but no, thanks,” and had quickly ended their conversation.
A few minutes later as Gabe continued to sit in the quiet room with the shifting of the fiery logs in the fireplace making the only sound, his thoughts went somewhere he’d tried avoiding all day.
Sage Dunbar.
His conversation with Parnell had brought her to the forefront of his mind, and there she had stayed for the rest of the day. More than once he’d been tempted to pick up the phone and invite her to dinner. But the more he’d thought about it, the more he’d decided that to do so wouldn’t be such a good idea.
He leaned back to rest his head against the sofa as he pondered just what there was about Sage that caused him to continue breaking the rules. Rules he’d established after Lindsey, rules that had been fairly easy to follow until now.
What was there about her smile, and her laughter, that made him want to make sure one or the other became a permanent fixture on her face? What was there about her that had him not thinking straight?
After the ordeal he’d suffered through with Lindsey, the last thing he needed was to become involved with a woman on the rebound. Yet Sage was so deeply embedded in his thoughts that it wasn’t funny. He was the last one who wanted to be amused, but he couldn’t help the smile that appeared on his face anyway. Ahh … Sage was temptation at its finest. Just looking into her whiskey-colored eyes could make even the strongest man fall to his knees. Her fiancé had