Page 48 of Cowboy SEAL Christmas

Gabe frowned. “You changed your mind awfully fast.”

“Rose would be far angrier with me if I didn’t find out the secret than if I kept it from her.”

Sounded about right. Gabe grabbed the pitchfork, hit it against the ground a few times. “Kissed her.”

“That so?” Jack rubbed his chin. “That all you did?”

“Yeah.”

“And you wanted to tell me because?”

Hell if he knew. Or if he knew anything he was doing. It had just been sitting there, and he’d needed to say it out loud for some unknown reason he wished he could poke to death with his pitchfork.

“Didn’t end well,” he muttered.

“Why not?”

“She started talking about shrink shit, and I wasn’t too keen on it, and I let her know.”

“You got a real hang-up about thatshrink shit.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So maybe you should tell her why,” Jack said as if that was some reasonable answer.

Tell Monica why he thought shrinks were full of it? Gabe snorted. “No.” He already knew what she’d say. She’d have to defend her precious profession. She’d throw every damn excuse at him, and he didn’t want to hear it.

“Why not? You’re not a liar, Gabe. I don’t know why you couldn’t just tell her the truth,” Jack said so reasonably. But Jack didn’t know the truth. No one did, and no one needed to.

“Because it’s none of her business.”

“So you don’t like her. You’re just attracted to her?”

He thumped the pitchfork against the ground again, but it did nothing to ease this band of discomfort. “I didn’t say that.”

“Well, if you like her on top of sharing a kiss or more, I don’t see why explaining to her why you hate therapists isn’t her business. Sounds like a lot of her business.”

“Rose knows everything you ever went through?” Gabe demanded.

“Maybe not everything, but anything that’s come up. I don’t lie to her. I don’t keep things from her, though I’ll honor my promise not to tell her you kissed Monica. Luckily, we aren’t in high school.”

Gabe flipped him off, but he couldn’t let it all go like he knew he should. “Why do you tell her everything?”

“Because that’s how you build a life.”

Gabe turned, ready to load up the pitchfork and head out to do some more hard work in the bitter cold. “I’m not building shit.”

“But you’re telling me about a kiss,” Jack pointed out, still so equitable and reasonable.

“And it was a mistake. As was that kiss. A bunch of mistakes I won’t be repeating.”

“If you say so.”

He did. He definitely said so. Because the alternative was facing up to the fact Jack was probably right. The only way past this was explaining to Monica why he couldn’t trust her job or people like her.

No way in hell.

* * *

---