Best of My Love (Fool's Gold, #20)

Gabriel put down his cards. “I went through that with Noelle,” he admitted. “Not being sure. She was so happy and positive all the time. I could only see the darkness.”


Shelby had heard a little of his story. How he’d been a doctor in the army for several years, serving the front line. He’d been the first doctor the most seriously injured had seen. It had been his job to patch them up enough to get them to a real facility.

When he’d come to Fool’s Gold to visit his brother for the holidays, he’d been exhausted. Both physically and emotionally. She supposed it was impossible to see what he’d seen, day after day, and not be affected.

“She got me through,” Gabriel continued. “She was there, in my face, pulling me along.”

“How much did you resist?” Kipling asked.

“As much as I could. Every step of the way. But she never gave up on me.” He grimaced. “I could have lost her. Sometimes at night, I wake up in a cold sweat, thinking about that. I could have lost her.”

“But you didn’t,” Shelby told him. “You’re together now.”

“We are.”

They were lucky, she thought ruefully. Able to break through whatever their problems had been. They also weren’t the least bit subtle.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said, giving in to the inevitable and putting her cards down on the table as well. “But it’s not going to work.”

“Why is that?” her brother asked.

“Because I don’t want what you have. Any of you.”

Angel smiled at her. “You’re not a very good liar, Shelby.”

“I’m not lying,” she insisted. “I thought I did. I thought I wanted to have a husband and a family, but I don’t. It’s too hard. I wanted to learn to trust a man. So I did. I trust Aidan. But it doesn’t matter, because in the end, love means giving over too much of myself. I’m not willing to do that.”

Angel studied her. His pale gray eyes were a little unnerving. It was as if he could see into her soul.

“Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. I know they say the best things in life are free, but every now and then the good stuff has to be earned.”

“I know what you want,” Kipling told her. “You want us to say that relationships don’t matter. But we won’t, because it’s not true.”

Gabriel nodded. “The people we love and who love us back are all that matter.”

She wanted to cover her ears and not hear what they were saying. “Can’t we just play cards?”

“No,” Angel said easily. “Sorry, kid. This is an intervention.”

“My second one in a month,” she grumbled. “The last one was my girlfriends telling me I was a duck.”

“What?” Kipling asked.

“Never mind.” She folded her arms on the table. “Go ahead. Say what you have to say.”

She would surrender to the process because it was the only way to get through the moment. Then they would move on and she would be fine.

“For what it’s worth,” her brother said, “you got most of it right. You can trust Aidan. He’s not the problem.”

“You are,” Angel told her. “It was never about trusting someone else. It was always about trusting yourself.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. “You’re wrong.”

“He’s not.” Kipling’s gaze was steady. “You’re not freaked out because Aidan has feelings for you, but because you have feelings for him. You don’t believe you can give your heart to him and survive. You don’t believe you’re strong.” He leaned toward her. “You are, Shelby. You’ve been through so much already. Look where you are—with your friends, your business and with Aidan.”

She didn’t want to look. She wanted to cover her eyes and not see anything. She wanted to have things go back the way they’d been before she and Aidan had been friends.

Only she didn’t want that. But if she couldn’t go back and couldn’t go forward, where did that leave her?

“You’re trying to control your way to feeling safe,” Angel said. “It doesn’t work that way. We don’t have control. All we can do is know we’re strong enough to survive whatever happens. That the love makes it worthwhile.”

Her eyes burned. She blinked away tears.

“You’re not your mother,” her brother said softly. “You’ll never do what she did. But you have to believe it in your heart. You have to accept that you’re going to screw up. We all do.”

“Every day,” Gabriel told her with a wry smile. “But we keep trying to do better.”

Kipling got up and walked around the table. He pulled her to her feet and hugged her. “You think you have to be strong enough to always take care of yourself and that’s a daunting task. The secret is, with love in your life, someone has your back. On the days you’re not strong, he is. And you’ll be there for him.”

Despite her determination not to give in, the tears came. Pain and confusion and loneliness filled her until she thought she would drown from all the emotion.