"Close."
"Then why …" she stopped.
"You're not ready," he said wisely. "I saw how much you don't trust me, too. We have a long way to go."
"And no time to get there," she murmured. Something Darkyn told her returned to the forefront of her thoughts. He'd asked her if she'd take herself out of the equation before she hurt Gabriel. Katie was convinced Gabriel had managed to love past-Deidre; was he therefore in danger of falling for her? Before this talk, she didn't think so. He was too cagey for her to understand what he felt.
Some small part of him cared enough to sit with her tonight. There was much more to Gabriel than what she saw. Darkyn saw it somehow, and Deidre suspected Gabriel's here-gone approach to her was his way of hiding how much he did care.