A Kiss, A Kid And A Mistletoe Bride

Cletis looked up hopefully.

“You’re not taking care of yourself, Pa. I can see that. You look worse than when I came home when you were in the hospital. You haven’t bounced back from your surgery.”

“It was minor surgery, and Doc Padgett says I’m fine. I feel fine. So I’m fine, Gabrielle. This nonsense about selling your business and moving back to Bayou Bend is—” He frowned, twirled the spoon between his fingers. Rice grains speckled the counter. “Honey, I love you. You know that. And I’m pleased as punch you’re home. For a while.”

A sharp pang whipped through her. She went motionless, stunned by the unexpected pain and sense of rejection.

“Now, don’t look at me like that.” He patted her hand. “I’m doing fine. We should have talked over this decision of yours before you leaped headfirst into this kind of change.”

Gabrielle decided to be as blunt as he had been. “Pa, I don’t like the way you look. Your face has all the color of a banker’s suit. I think you’re sick—”

“Damn it, missy. I was in the hospital for three weeks before Thanksgiving. I lost my appetite, that’s all.” He scowled at her. “I was a skinny guy even before my surgery.”

“And I wouldn’t have known you were having surgery if Taylor Padgett hadn’t called me.”

“I’m right annoyed with that boy, too.”

Taylor Padgett was thirty-six years old and had been practicing in Bayou Bend ever since he’d finished medical school. “Why?” she asked with exaggerated patience.

“I didn’t want him bothering you.”

“Bothering me? Bothering me?” Pacing in a circle, she waved her arms in frustration. “Heaven forbid that my aged father should bother me. I certainly wouldn’t want to miss out on my busy social schedule because my father was in the hospital.”

He picked up another shrimp and sliced it down the back. “You’re worrying too much, Gabrielle. And I may be sixty-four years old, but I’m not aged, so don’t get sassy.” Head down, his fists balancing him on the counter, he stopped, sighed. “Somehow you got it in your head that I can’t manage alone since your mama died.”

“Pa, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Gabrielle rested her cheek against his paper-thin one. She remembered too well her panic at the sight of her strong, bullheaded dad surrounded by tubes and IVs. “I want you to get well, to be your old ornery self.”

He snapped his head up and went back to deveining shrimp with a vengeance. “Then don’t worry me any more with this idiotic plan of sacrificing your life to look after me, Gabrielle Marie. You’re a good girl, and you mean well, but, honey, I’m fine. I don’t need you here to baby-sit me.”

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