Carolina Dreaming: A Dare Island Novel by Virginia Kantra

me.” She handed Leroy the bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
    “So do you babysit the whole island?” Gabe asked when Leroy had left. “Or just everybody who comes in?”
    “Leroy lost his wife right before Thanksgiving,” Jane explained. “Emphysema. He needs a cookie every now and then.”
    Gabe shook his head, smiling. “You’re something, you know that?”
    That’s what Travis used to say.
Jesus, Janey, you are really something.
But the words sounded different coming from Gabe.
    His gaze warmed. “There it is,” he murmured.
    “What?” She swiped self-consciously at her face. Flour? Chocolate?
    “Your smile.”
    “Oh.” She pressed her fingers to her hot cheeks.
    “When you smile . . .” The look in his eyes warmed her all the way through. “You’ve got a great smile.”
    “My dad says I have my mother’s smile,” Jane said before she stopped to think.
    “Your mom must be a real pretty woman, then.”
    Oh
. She just
melted
at the compliment, her insides as gooey as chocolate. Which was exactly the kind of reaction that would get her into trouble. “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen her in years.”
    “How old were you when she . . . ?”
    “Left us? Eight.” Six months older than Aidan.
    “That’s rough.”
    “It’s fine.” She was fine. She was over it. She wasn’t that confused child anymore, so hungry for attention, so desperate to be needed, that she would jump into another reckless relationship with another unsuitable guy.
    “Still . . . Eight years old.” Gabe glanced at Aidan, bent over his spelling words in the corner. “That’s pretty young to be on your own.”
    “I wasn’t on my own. Dad used to make me go to our neighbors’ house after school. I had to beg him to let me stay home alone.”
    She had been so scared, she remembered. So determined to prove to her father that she could be trusted, that she wouldn’t let him down.
    That she wasn’t like her mother.
    “We had rules,” she said, counting them off on her fingers. “No friends over, ever. No going out, no answering the door. Homework first, only one hour of television, and call him in an emergency.”
    His mouth twitched. “Sounds boring.”
    “I wasn’t bored. Lonely sometimes.”
Shoot
. She hadn’t meant to say that.
    “So you taught yourself to bake.”
    She blinked, surprised by his perception. “Yes. Well, not all at once. At first, I just wanted to make dinner.”
    But her efforts had seemed to make her father happy. She, Jane Clark, could make people happy with her food. It was a revelation. After that, she never wanted to do anything else.
    “Ever burn the house down?”
    She shook her head. “I was always careful.” Which made her sound totally dull and meek and unexciting. Not that she was looking for excitement, she told herself. Oh, no.
    “What about you?” she asked.
    “I can heat soup from a can,” Gabe offered.
    “That sounds very . . .” Words failed her.
    “Healthy?”
    “Efficient,” she said.
    He grinned. “That’s nothing. You should see me order pizza.”
    An answering smile tugged her lips, and just like that, his green-and-gold eyes went dark as molasses.
When you smile
 . . .
    Oh, God.
    She tugged the end of her braid, as if she could yank some sense into her head. “Actually, I wasn’t asking about your cooking skills.”
    He looked interested. Like,
interested
interested. “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. I mean, no. I mean . . .” Her tongue tangled. What was she asking? What was she thinking? It wasn’t like they were friends. He was here to work on her enclosure, not swap stories of their childhoods.
    “Go ahead. Ask.” His eyes met hers.
Definite interest
. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
    She gazed at him helplessly, her heart thudding with possibilities.
    Why are you helping me?
    Did you really kill a man in a bar fight?
    Do you want to have sex?
    No, no, no
. She cleared her throat. “Tell me about you.”
    “I