by Anne Stuart
He knew what she was doing. She was trying to prove to him, and to herself, that she was immune to his presence. That she could treat him with the same friendly distance she used for everyone.
"Do you think that's a wise idea?" he asked, more for her reaction than real hesitation. Wise or not, nothing was going to stop him from working on her ramshackle old house. Or on her.
"Why wouldn't it be?" She raised her chin defiantly.
"You tell me." He glanced over at the door. Lars was standing there, his brood surrounding him. "It looks like my ride's leaving. When do you want me out there?"
"Whenever's convenient for you. Tomorrow morning?"
"Assuming the Swensens will lend me a vehicle. Steve says my truck's going to be out of commission for a while."
Carrie made a face. "I don't think that will be a problem. If it is, I'll come and get you. I need to show you what needs work, and we can discuss how much I can afford to have done. And we need to make a few things clear."
He couldn't help it. He grinned, a slow, lazy grin that made the pale pink of her cheeks darken. "You mean like Friday night?" he murmured.
"Aren't you looking pretty?" One of the Hansens or Larsens came up and gave the flustered Carrie a big hug. "And aren't we lucky to have someone new in town? The way all the young people have been leaving, we've been afraid we'll turn into a ghost town."
"Why have all the young people been leaving?" Gabriel asked.
"When the mill closed down there was no work, outside the tourist trade," the elderly lady said. "I hear it's been happening all over the country, big corporations buy up little companies, and then they sell them off for a profit. It doesn't matter to some wheeler-dealer in New York that our lives are depending on them. It doesn't matter that's it's people they're dealing with. They just see it as numbers on a paper."
He wasn't enjoying this morning at all, he decided. There were only so many revelations he could handle at one time. Finding Augusta lurking behind a thick pair of glasses was bad enough. The fate of Angel Falls's mill was worse.
"What was the name of the factory?" he asked, not bothering to hide the strain in his voice.
For some reason Carrie was looking acutely miserable. "Precision Industries. Not a very distinctive name, was it? They made furniture, not very distinctive furniture, either, but good solid work."
He remembered Precision Industries, but just vaguely. There were so many companies along the way, bought up on a whim, disposed of just as lightly. He had made money on Precision's dissolution, but then, he always had made money. How much had it been—half a million dollars? Less? And where was it now? Beyond his reach.
"It happens," he said. "That's the way the system works."
"We don't think it works too well around here," the old lady said tartly, and he was reminded of Gertrude. And Augusta. "And considering the rest of the country, I wouldn't be too optimistic about how the system works."
There was nothing he could say to that. Fortunately he was spared trying to defend a system that had effectively destroyed the entire town of Angel Falls by the timely arrival of Lars.
"We're ready to go. Maggie's got some julekage rising and she needs to get back before it goes over the top. Why don't you get a ride back with Carrie?"
"No!" Carrie said with what he might have considered unflattering haste. Except that her nervousness around him was one of the deepest compliments he'd ever received. "I mean, I've got a million things to do," she floundered, looking miserable. Saint Carrie, who spent so much time trying to take care of others, was making a botch of it as for once she tried to protect herself.
"I'll come now," Gabriel said easily. "What time do you want me tomorrow?"
It was an innocent question, blandly stated. It shouldn't have caused that darkening in her eyes, the awareness she was fighting so hard. "Anytime in the later morning. Can he borrow a vehicle from you, Lars, or should I come get him?"
"Take the truck," Lars said with something dangerously close to a wink. "Take all the time you want."
Time was the one thing he didn't have. "Tomorrow morning," he said. A threat and a promise.
The aging American sedan that had held all six Swensens and his own lanky body was waiting out front. From a distance he could hear baby Carrie crying, Nils and Kirsten fighting, Harald whining, and Maggie's voice rising in the age-old sound of a mother driven to temporary distraction. He opened the front passenger door and took the baby from Maggie's arms without even considering what he was doing. In a moment the deafening howls had ceased to damp, shuddery sighs, and then she managed a small beatific smile up at him.
He stared down at the baby in his arms in utter astonishment. It had amazed him last night, when he'd had no choice but to take her, it amazed him this morning, when he'd willingly gone to her.
"You've got the touch, Gabe, my boy," Lars said cheerfully.
Gabriel met his gaze over the hood of the car. "You mean with children?" he asked, still dazed.
"Possibly. Definitely with women. Maybe just women named Carrie." He was grinning, obviously pleased with himself, and Gabriel wished he could respond. With a joke. With a moment of male camaraderie. But the fact remained that whatever had been born, was growing, between him and Carrie Alexander was doomed from the start. He needed to right the wrongs, save the souls he'd wounded. He couldn't leave Carrie in a worse place than the one where he'd found her three short days ago. Not if he wanted to end up in heaven.
So he said nothing, handing the now-cheerful baby back to her mother to strap into the car seat before cramming himself into the back seat with the three other Swensens.
"Gertrude left this for you," Harald said, handing him a heavy hardcover book.
"Thanks," Gabriel said absently, turning the book over with a sense of foreboding.
At least it wasn't Dante's Inferno. Not a religious tract, or a description of after-death experiences. It was something much more subtle, a message from Augusta, loud and clear. A novel, with the unsubtle title, Fools Rush In. And he remembered the rest of the quote. "Where angels fear to tread."
Was she calling him a coward or a fool? He really didn't give a damn. All he could think about was Carrie. At least for the time being. For now, the town of Angel Falls and the other lost souls could wait their turn.
Carrie drove too fast on the slush-covered roads, cursing herself all the way. Why in heaven's name had she been so foolish? She'd survive the winter if the house wasn't banked. She simply wouldn't leave on the very cold days, staying close to the fires to make sure they were putting out enough heat to keep the pipes from freezing. If they did freeze, she was capable enough to thaw them with the hair dryer.
She could take care of herself. She ought to eat more. Think about herself every now and then. When she'd come down with pneumonia last year, she'd ignored it until only Lars and Maggie's round-the-clock nursing kept her out of the hospital she couldn't afford. She mustn't let that happen again.
When it came right down to it, what was more important? Her uneasy awareness of Gabriel Falconi? Or the debt she owed the town of Angel Falls?
Never in her life had she been at the mercy of her libido. No, scratch that. Once, just once in her life had she made a complete fool of herself over a man. And it hadn't been as simple a matter as unexpected desire. She had loved Emerson MacVey. It had made no sense, but beneath those chilly blue eyes, that cool, heartless elegance she had glimpsed a lost soul.
She'd paid for her foolishness, paid in spades. She wouldn't make that mistake again. She could resist Gabriel, resist that faint trace of desire that flared up at unexpected moments.
"Liar," she said out loud, turning into her driveway. It wasn't a faint trace of desire. It wasn't an uneasy awareness. It was more powerful every time she saw him, fast becoming an obsession. That brief, tantalizing kiss had left her shaken, confused and longing for things she thought she'd given up and wouldn't even miss.
But she could fight it. She knew perfectly well
he had the same sort of awareness of her, that kiss had been more than a hint. But they were in far different positions. He was self-reliant, a loner, on his way to a new life. She had the weight of the world on her shoulders. And there was no room in her life, even temporarily, for Gabriel Falconi.
She could do it. She was strong, determined. She could make things clear, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, that there could be nothing between them. And he'd accept it, turn his beautiful gaze toward someone else.
It was the least she could do. She needed help to make it through the winter, she had to face it. And she could either do what was painful, almost impossibly difficult, and have Gabriel Falconi around her house, working, and keep him at a distance. Or she could ask the Swensens, or someone else in Angel Falls, for help.
And she'd die before she'd do that. For one simple reason. The town was dying, turning into a ghost town because of the loss of the mill. Families were splitting apart, people moving away from a place where their grandparents had lived, and Lars Swensen was going to have to go into the woods and risk his life on a dangerous logging site.
No one would accept money from her if she offered them work. They foolishly thought she sacrificed too much for the people of the town as it was. Little did they know she had hardly begun. And that she owed so much more than she could ever repay.
There was one person to blame for all the catastrophes that had hit Angel Falls, and that was Caroline Alexander. If Gabriel Falconi was part of her penance, it was a small enough price to pay.
Chapter Eight
« ^ »
The tiny house was warm when Carrie walked in. She'd loaded the fires, tossed a few sticks of cinnamon into the bowl of water she kept on top of the stove, and the house smelled of Christmas. She hung her coat on the hook in the hallway and sank down at the kitchen table, folding her hands in front of her.
Something was nagging at the back of her mind, driving her crazy, and she couldn't figure out what it was. It was there, just out of reach of her conscious mind, and she wouldn't be able to concentrate on a thing until she remembered.
At least it had nothing to do with Gabriel Falconi, she knew that instinctively. It had been his presence that had sent the thought skittering away from her, and it would take her sternest self-discipline to call it back. Not to think about strong, work-worn hands, a tall, rangy body and the face of a fallen angel.
Angel, that was it! The angels that Gabriel had carved were beautiful and, oddly, eerily familiar. Lars had recognized Gertrude's expression in that stern old lady angel, as well, but none of them knew the golden-haired boy. No one in Angel Falls had ever seen the man who bore an uncanny resemblance to that innocent angel.
Only Carrie, who'd looked at that youthful face and seen the man she'd once been crazy enough to love.
Indeed, it should have come as no surprise to her that she'd made a fool of herself over Emerson Wyatt MacVey III. In truth, she'd been an accident waiting to happen, an emotional bundle of female ready to fall in love with the first unlikely prospect.
She couldn't dance. What had been astonishingly gifted in Angel Falls, Minnesota, was stunningly mediocre in New York. Her gift was a dime a dozen, her love of the dance worth nothing. She'd left the small dance company where she'd finally managed to land a job, left before they fired her. Accepting failure, accepting the loss of her lifelong dream with what she'd foolishly assumed was a Scandinavian stoicism. Instead, she found she was simply numb.
The pursuit of that dream had taken most of her life. She'd never had time for more than friendships in her adolescent years, too caught up in pursuing her dream of becoming a great dancer, somewhere along the lines of Martha Graham crossed with Twyla Tharp. If it hadn't been for a particularly determined young man in college she would have reached the advanced age of twenty-three still a virgin. As it was, her sexual experience was minimal and not all that exciting when she went to work for Emerson Wyatt MacVey and found herself falling, illogically, head over heels in love with him.
It wasn't as if there were much to recommend him, apart from his rather conventional blond good looks. The women she worked with despised him, he seemed to have no friends, and his prevailing attitude was one of icy condescension toward all and sundry. He was utterly, completely alone.
It was that very aloneness that called to her. She thought she saw vulnerability beneath his remoteness, she thought she saw a wounded child who needed love and compassion. She thought she saw someone she could heal, and in doing so she would heal herself.
She'd been a fool, she knew that now. But back then, three seemingly endless years ago, he'd seemed to be everything she wanted. And the cooler, more foul tempered he was, the more she managed to convince herself that he needed her.
At first it had been subtle enough, her attraction to him. It might have stayed an unfocused maternal feeling if she hadn't seen him with his current girlfriend, seen the remoteness vanish into uncompromising sensuality, in the way he touched the striking young woman, in the way he looked at her. There was no warmth, but there was heat, and Carrie absorbed it, unobserved, shocked to find she wanted that heat directed at her.
She wanted him to notice her. She wanted to please him. In addition to that, she wanted to do something for her friends in Angel Falls, where the only viable industry, the mill, was running into deep trouble.
Emerson MacVey knew how to bring fresh life to failing businesses. He bought and sold them, invested in them, made them profitable. She'd thought if he directed even a fraction of his steel-trap mind toward Precision Industries of Angel Falls, Minnesota, then there would be no more layoffs, no more hard times.
She'd been subtle, knowing he wasn't a man who responded to pressure tactics, simply mentioning it in passing. The morning, early in December, when he'd stopped by her desk and asked her to get him all the information about Precision Industries had been a triumphant one. It was the beginning of the Christmas season, and she was going to secure for her hometown the greatest Christmas gift of all.
He wasn't a man who had affairs with his underlings. He wasn't a man who was prey to any weakness whatsoever. But the night of December twenty-third Carrie had come back to the office late, to pick up a present she'd left behind. MacVey was due at a fundraiser with his polished girlfriend, and the place would be deserted.
It wasn't. She used her key, letting herself into the tastefully decorated suite of offices, and began rummaging through her desk for the present she'd bought earlier that day, when she heard a sound from the inner office.
Music. Christmas music, but not the cheery kind. Something classical and Gregorian, more like a dirge than a carol. And she heard the clink of ice in a glass.
She stood motionless, feeling absurdly guilty. Wondering if he was alone behind that partially closed door. Wondering what he was doing.
Emerson Wyatt MacVey wouldn't be doing anything undignified, inappropriate or impulsive. She pushed the door open just slightly, thinking she'd ask if he needed anything.
He was sitting behind his glass-and-chrome desk, a bleak, cold expression on his handsome face. His blue eyes were distant, his Armani suit jacket had been discarded, his Egyptian-cotton shirt unbuttoned. She'd never seen him without a tie. With his blond hair ruffled. She'd never seen him with any emotion other than faint contempt.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
He never swore, either. His voice was rough, and she knew he'd been drinking. His eyes were red, but she didn't think that came from the amber-colored liquid in the glass beside his elegant hand.
"I left something."
"Go away."
She knew she should. MacVey was a private man—he wouldn't want her seeing him vulnerable. And vulnerable he was right now. Her heart cried out for him, and she stepped inside the room, closing the heavy door behind her. "Let me get you some coffee," she said gently.
He glared at her. "I don't need coffee. I've gone to a great deal of trouble to get drunk tonight, and I'm certainly not
going to ruin the effect by drinking coffee. I'm not nearly drunk enough. You can go out and buy me more Scotch."
She shook her head, crossing the room to stand in front of the desk. "What happened?"
" 'What happened?' " he mimicked, his voice savage. "Do you want to soothe my fevered brow, Carrie? Nothing happened, nothing whatsoever. It's Christmas, and I hate Christmas. The only suitable response was to get drunk."
"Where's Ms. Barrow?"
"Left me for another man."
"I see."
"No, you don't," he shot back. "You think I'm here drowning my sorrows because she left me. She was good in bed. Period. She was elegant to look at, and she didn't ask me stupid questions. But she wanted 'commitment.' " His voice was mocking. "She wanted 'intimacy.' She wanted me to bleed all over her, and I bleed for no woman."
"So why are you getting drunk?"
"A tribute to the season. Goodwill toward men, and all that crap."
She reached out for his half-filled glass of whisky, but his hand shot out and caught her wrist, stopping her. He hurt her, but she knew he didn't mean to. He just didn't realize how strong he was. They stayed that way for a moment, unmoving, as he sat there watching her, her wrist imprisoned in his hand.
And then his eyes narrowed, and a faint, mocking smile began to form on his thin mouth. And his thumb caressed her wrist. "You have a crush on me, don't you?"
Color flooded her face, and she tried to pull away. "Don't be ridiculous."
"I know the signs. It happens often enough, God knows why. It's usually the younger ones, who think I just need a good woman to make me happy. I don't need a good woman, Carrie."
"I'm sure you don't," she said stiffly. He released her finally, and she could still feel the warmth of his skin where he'd held her. "I'll be going now."
He rose, circling his desk, coming after her. Stalking her, though that notion was absurd in such a civilized man. "I just need a woman," he said, his voice low and cool and undeniably beguiling. "Do you want to be that woman, Carrie? Do you want to see whether you can save me?"