Chapter 17

"Does she even know how pretty she is?"

"She doesn't have a clue, Rose," Gabe said. Together they watched Bailey talking and laughing with Teri. The young woman was glowing; it probably had something to do with all the sex she and Gabriel had earlier in the day, but she truly was a beautiful girl.

"And you say her sister is prettier?"

"Drop dead gorgeous." Gabe took a long pull of his margarita. "It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy for Bailey. Her sister doesn't have to try; April can wake up and put on a sack cloth and still turn heads. So Bailey never got noticed. Low self-esteem led to body image issues and that led to some weight gain and then she was in that vicious cycle."

"Kind of like you."

"Very much like me," he said thoughtfully. "They're built differently and it takes a while to understand that just because she doesn't look like Jessica Alba, that doesn't mean she's not pretty."

"Maybe a change of scenery would be good for her," Rose suggested.

Gabe started to respond, but stopped. "I don't know that she'd leave her family."

"Not even to be with you? Or get away from her sister?"

"Getting her to split up with her sister would be like pulling teeth," Gabe said. "It was hard enough to get her to come up for this weekend by herself."

"You'd think they'd have sibling issues."

"Not those two," Gabe shook his head. "April and Bailey are inseparable. If it were me and Michael, we'd be at each others's throats twenty-four/seven, but they still share a room at Mom's house. I've got two empty bedrooms and they're both sleeping a queen-sized bed in the upstairs bedroom. It must be a twin thing."

"So what are you going to do?" Rose finished off her drink.

"I have no idea. Ask me on Monday."

Gabriel topped off Rose's glass of wine and went back to where Bailey and Teri were sitting. A dozen or so other people mingled around the deck. Some more people were inside the house. The party was Teri's idea. Ostensibly, the purpose was to celebrate Gabe's return to the show, but really she wanted to introduce Bailey to Gabe's friends and let her see a little bit of the world he lived in.

It meant a lot to Gabe that his friends liked Bailey. In hindsight, he realised that they had been trying to warn him about Jeannie for years; he was just too boneheaded to see the light until it was too late.

They all seemed to come away impressed with his new girlfriend. She was smart without being arrogant. She was friendly in a way that was refreshing to the brusque and hardened New Yorkers. They also liked that she didn't seem to be awed by Gabe's celebrity, nor was she obsessed with his money.

He knew she was afraid of what they would think of her. After all, she was seventeen years his junior and fresh out of high school. She was also—in her mind—overweight and pudgy, from a family that was poor and unsophisticated, and she thought of herself as a little too country for these "city" folks.

Gabe knew she didn't have to worry. People are people, and the ones from New York went to work to make a living just like the ones from Washington County. It helped that many of them were transplants who moved from Iowa or West Virginia or Mississippi to the big city following their dreams. Like Teri and some of Gabe's other close friends, they were from small towns just like her. Heck, even he wasn't a native New Yorker. Gabe called a bunch of places "home" during his lifetime. Some were small towns, some were big cities and the rest were in between.

Sitting down next to Bailey, he listened to the tail end of another embarrassing story about himself.

"—so there we are, covered in mud and Gabe says, 'I wanted doughnuts ... not the whole chicken'!"

The people around them erupted into laughter. Bailey giggled and looked lovingly at him.

"I see my 'friends' are doing everything they can to embarrass me," Gabe grinned.

"I just want her to know what she's getting in to," Teri said with mock defensiveness. "She thinks the sun rises and sets around you and we just have to correct that."

"You let her worship me, Teri—"

"You mean the way my kids do?"

"—Because the sooner she finds out the ugly truth, the sooner she'll take off with half my stuff," Gabe snorted.

"The only way I'm leaving you is if you cheat on me," Bailey shot him a wicked smirk. "And then I'm taking all your stuff."