Page 28 of Family Bonds- Gabriela & Luca

“Do you think he’s cute?”

“No,” she said. “He’s smoking. Like should have been a fireman to put himself out kind of smoking. The teenage girls are probably all giddy around him, the boys think he’s some cool dude.”

“Maybe that is what the office needs right now.”

“Doesn’t matter either way since he’s here. Like I said, I saw him at the gym. He’s running some errands and then going totext me. We’ll meet for lunch and I’ll let him know some things about the island that is his new home.”

“Are you thinking there could be more there?”

“I don’t think that way anymore,” she said. “It never works out. I kind of feel for him in a way and maybe he’s just funny and it’d be nice to have a friend on the island I can chat with who understands my job along with me.”

“That is always nice too. Well, have a good day. I’ll catch up with you later.”

She hung up and wondered why she volunteered so much with her mother, but then reminded herself that she rarely kept anything from them. There was no reason to.

And that also meant letting them know she thought her new colleague was hot.

9

MORE CONFIDENCE

Luca was trying to figure out why the hell he’d agreed to this lunch.

Why he put himself out there when he hadn’t in years.

Not the two years he’d been single.

Not the years prior to Zoe.

Hell, his wife had approached him.

In a gym, just like today.

He scrubbed his hand across his face.

Why hadn’t that occurred to him before?

It was too late now. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

He needed to know more about the place he was calling home anyway.

He threw his dirty gym clothes in his bag, grabbed it, headed out to his car, then drove the few minutes to the grocery store.

It didn’t take him long to get food, then bring it home to put away. He looked at his watch, saw it was close to eleven, and went back to the town square where he’d seen a barbershop. Might as well try it.

He wasn’t the least bit surprised when he walked in and saw mostly retired men in there getting a cut, but there was one person who was at least in his thirties or thereabout.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a trim,” he said. Might as well start out that way than a full-on cut when he let his hair get away from him in the past.

Those days of forgetting the simple, normal routines of life had to be long gone.

He had to move on. He had to put one foot in front of the other and not just do it in his job.

His mother was right. He was too young to lock himself away from the world.

“If you’re not waiting for Patrick, I can take you now.”