Falling Angel

by Anne Stuart

  "Only to visit the sites. We need to set up a workshop right here in town, do most of the custom work here and then ship it to the hotels. I'd oversee the installation, but I've always liked the thought of a bit of travel. As long as I have Angel Falls to come home to."

  "Sounds perfect," Gabriel said, disguising his relief. So he'd managed to do one thing right after all. He wondered how Augusta would stack that up against his seduction of Carrie.

  "There's more than enough for you, as well, Gabriel," Maggie said. "Mr. Borodin saw some of your work, and he thinks you're very gifted. Almost as good as my Lars," she said proudly. "He wants you to help."

  Gabriel shook his head. "I can't. I told you, I have a job just after Christmas."

  "You don't know what kind of money this man is offering," Lars said. "It's unbelievable, it's magnificent, it's…"

  "No more than you deserve, " Maggie said sharply. "Can't you get out of your next job, Gabriel? Tell them something more important came up. Something with a future."

  There was no future for him. He shook his head. "Sorry," he said. "I wish I could. But I'm committed."

  "But…" Nils began.

  "Leave the man alone," Lars said, looking at him closely, seeing him more clearly than Gabriel could have wished. "He knows there'll always be a place for him here. He'll always be needed. If he wants to, and he can, he'll be here."

  "There are not quite two weeks till Christmas," Gabriel said. "I've finished out at Carrie's—at least I can help you get started."

  "First of all, I need to find a place to work. We'll have enough to hire at least a dozen men, and I can think of twelve right now who need the work. The sooner we get going, the sooner those men will start bringing in some money," Lars said. And then his eyes narrowed. "You've finished at Carrie's?"

  "Finished," he said flatly. "What about the old mill? Is it still in working shape?"

  "By heavens, you're right. Most of the equipment was sold off, but some of the really big stuff is still there, and the building's sound as a dollar."

  "Not much of a recommendation," Gabriel said dryly.

  "We'll check it out tomorrow. Now why didn't I think of that?" Lars demanded of the company. "There are times, Gabriel, when I think you must be my guardian angel."

  "Not likely," he drawled. "Just someone passing through."

  And outside the old house, the wind began to howl. And it sounded like the hounds of hell, calling to him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  « ^ »

  Carrie stood in the darkened kitchen, watching him drive away, a sense of numb disbelief washing over her. She felt nothing but a vast sense of confusion. The pain would come later, she knew it. Once more she'd been a stupid fool, giving her heart to a man who had no interest in it.

  For now she could bless the numbness that settled around her. She waited until the headlights disappeared into the gathering night, and then walked slowly back into the living room.

  She stared at the sofa, at the rumpled cover and disarranged cushions. She stared at the wood box, filled with a fresh load of firewood, and she wrapped her arms around her body, shivering.

  "Damn him," she said out loud, her voice clear and steady and very far from tears. "Damn his soul to hell."

  The words shocked her. Suddenly, for some reason, they felt very real. Not a traditional curse without meaning, but a deliberate damning. No one deserved that, even someone who ran at the first sight of love.

  "No," she said wearily. "Don't damn him. Just don't let me care."

  She glanced around her living room, the rustic wood-paneled walls, the quilted wall-hangings, the snow-crusted windows. She hadn't done a thing to get ready for Christmas, and it was already nearly there. She needed to decorate her house, she needed to clean it, she needed good hard physical activity with no time to think, no time to brood. She needed to wipe the memory of Gabriel Falconi from her mind, from her body. She'd deal with it later, after he was gone.

  She was usually far from compulsive about the state of the old farmhouse, but that night and the next day she would have done her Scandinavian grandmother proud. She scrubbed anything that held still, she put out candles and Christmas wreaths and hangings and fragrant boughs of fir, she even dragged in her own sizable Christmas tree, stuck it in a corner and decorated it with tiny white lights and all the quilted decorations she'd made over the year.

  On the top of the tree she put the angel she'd made when she heard Emerson MacVey had died. It was a comical sort of angel, with a clownish face, an upturned grin and ineffably sad eyes. While he didn't look the slightest bit like the man she'd once loved, he'd always reminded her of MacVey. For some reason, he reminded her of Gabriel, as well.

  She stepped back and surveyed the tree with a critical eye. Perhaps it was just the fact that she'd been fool enough to love two men who had no use for love, or for her. Or maybe there was something else, something she didn't quite understand, that linked the two men. Other than her own foolishness.

  She heard the click-clacking of the freezing rain outside the window, slapping against the house. Inside, everything was cozy and warm, Christmassy, with the kitchen radio playing carols, the lights from the tree winking at her. Someone had brought her out a chicken pie among all the other goodies, and it was heating in the oven, sending wonderful smells throughout the house, mixing with the cinnamon potpourri she'd put in a bowl on the stove.

  She was still recovering from her bout with pneumonia, she was exhausted from her compulsive housecleaning, and the weather report had gone from winter storm watch to winter storm warning, a full alert for those who understood such things. Carrie knew perfectly well she needed to curl up in front of the stove, eat her chicken pie, read something soothing, and make an early night of it.

  She also knew she had no intention of doing so. Something was nagging at her, and all the house-cleaning and decorating in the world couldn't drive it from her mind. She ought to give up on Gabriel, count him a lesson well learned, and go back to her solitary life, thanking God she'd been spared anything more painful. She kept trying to squash down her feelings, push herself back into a calm, martyred acceptance, when suddenly they burst forth in a great passionate rush, and along with them came knowledge.

  He hadn't run away from her. He'd run away from himself. If he was a cool, heartless womanizer, he would have responded with an easy "I love you, too, babe." Instead, he'd frozen and then run, and she'd curled up like a wounded dog, ready to suffer in silence.

  She wasn't ready to suffer any longer. She was going out on this dreadful icy night, and she was going to confront Gabriel Falconi. She was going to fight for him. And damn it, she was going to win.

  Gabriel straightened up, stretching the kink in his spine, and let out a quiet, miserable groan. He'd spent the day in Lars's workshop, fussing over the details on a newel post, being so finicky that even the perfectionist Lars had teased him. Work wasn't driving her out of his mind. Nothing was.

  He didn't want to be around anyone. The buoyant cheerfulness of the Swensen family, now that security was just around the corner, drove him mad. The silence of the house, when they were gone, was even worse.

  He should have gone with them that night. The whole lot of them had piled into the pickup and the ancient station wagon and started on a caravan up to the old factory to check out its usefulness. Gabriel hadn't needed to go along with them to know it would suit them just fine. He'd done his part, saved his second victim, and everything was going to fall into place quite neatly, thank you. Besides, he didn't want to visit the scene of the crime. Even looking at the outside of the deserted factory brought a depressing wave of guilt over him.

  He wondered how Carrie was doing. He told himself he was only concerned whether she counted as a success or not, and knew he was lying. Maggie had talked to her this morning, and even Gabriel's most careful questioning hadn't been able to elicit anything. Perhaps there was nothing to elicit. Augusta/Gertrude hadn't come to the house, waving thunde
rbolts and threatening the wrath of God. Perhaps he was ready to concentrate on the third person he had to save.

  Not that he had any choice in the matter. The longer he was around Carrie the more he botched things. The deeper he fell, in trouble, in love. He needed to forget his almost unbearable need to see her, he needed to leave bad enough alone.

  He needed to find the third person whose life he'd ruined. He'd considered plain out asking Gertrude, but he already knew it would be a waste of time. She expected the worst from him, and she wasn't about to make things easier.

  Maybe he ought to get out of town. Steve had finished with his pickup track, and Gabriel had found he had enough money to pay him. If he got into the truck and started driving away from Angel Falls, maybe his third task would present itself.

  He didn't think so. Lars and Carrie were no coincidence, neither was Augusta's presence or the name of the town. Christmas Eve was not much more than a week away. He had that long to find the third person, and then he'd be gone.

  He knew where he was going, he'd accepted it. The other place, without question, was the price he had to pay for touching Carrie, for kissing her, for taking what she so sweetly, desperately offered.

  And it was worth every moment of eternity.

  He was still going to do his damnedest to find number three. Maybe he'd get time off for good behavior. Maybe if he did a good enough job with two of them, Augusta would overlook his failing grade with Carrie. Maybe he'd pass the test without the full extra credit.

  Damn it, it wasn't fair! Other people died and didn't have to go through all this crap. Other people lived longer, they weren't cut off in their prime, when they had so much to live for.

  And what did Emerson MacVey have to live for? Money. A cold, upscale apartment, a cold, upscale life. In his thirty-two years he'd done more harm than most people did in lives that lasted twice as long. It was just as well his had come to an abrupt end.

  Hell, he didn't deserve to go to heaven. He accepted that, but he wasn't ready to give up. He'd find the last person and do his best. The one thing he wouldn't do was bring any more pain to Carrie Alexander. He wasn't going near her again.

  The lights in the old kitchen flickered and went out, and Gabriel cursed in the darkness, it took him a few moments to find the matches and candles. In the darkness he could hear the freezing rain rattling against the windows, and he thought of the Swensens, out on such a night.

  As if on cue, the phone rang. It took more than five rings for him to find it in the dark. "Gabriel, we're not getting home tonight," Lars boomed over the other end, jovial as ever. "The police have closed the main road, and the ice is murderous. Gertrude's going to put us up for the night."

  All Gabriel's suspicions were instantly aroused. "Why Gertrude?" he asked.

  "She lives right next to the factory," Lars said patiently. "You'll be all right there, won't you, boy? Don't go out in this stuff. You aren't used to it, and even for someone who knows what they're doing it's damned treacherous."

  "I'll stay put. The power's off."

  Lars sighed. "It does that. I wish you'd come with us tonight."

  "And ended up spending the night at Gertrude's? No thank you. I'll enjoy being alone," he said. "If the lights come on I can get some more work done. Otherwise I'll just go to bed."

  "You do that. Stay warm, Gabriel. We'll see you in the morning."

  Gabriel moved to the window, looking out into the darkness. The white stuff was coating the roads, the cars, the windows, making a little clicking sound. He stared outside for a moment, and then his eyes narrowed. Someone was driving down the road. Or more accurately, someone was sliding down the road, the headlights swinging wildly back and forth as they tried to control their vehicle.

  They'd be fine, he told himself, trying to squash down his sudden panic. The street was relatively flat. If they just had enough sense to slide to a stop, to seek shelter, they wouldn't be hurt. And who in God's name was stupid enough to go out driving on a night like this?

  He watched as the car drifted sideways. Even through the howl of the wind and the thickness of the storm windows, he heard the crunch as the front end of the car collided with one of the trees lining the road. He waited for the driver to move, to try to keep the car going. A moment later the headlights turned off, and the car disappeared into the swirling darkness.

  It had parked three houses down, at the Milsoms' place. Someone obviously coming for the holidays, he told himself, staring bleakly out into the darkness. Someone who should have had the sense to wait for better weather.

  But he knew he was fooling himself. Knew, as he heard the sound of her footsteps climbing up the snow-drifted front porch, knew as he heard her knock on the door, a loud, peremptory knock, knew who it was. He just wasn't sure why she'd come.

  He considered not answering it, then dismissed it. As much as he didn't want to see her, he couldn't let her go out into the storm again. She was seven times a fool to have ventured out already. He wasn't about to let her risk her life again.

  He was halfway to the door, the stub of a candle in his hand, when it opened. Hardly anyone in Angel Falls locked his or her doors, or even waited very long for a knock to be answered. She stood there, ice coating her hair, her coat, stood there in the open doorway looking at him.

  There was no reproach in her pale, beautiful face. No despair, no longing, no heartbreak. There was simple, life-affirming fury.

  She slammed the door behind her and advanced on him. "Who the hell do you think you are?" she demanded in a heated voice.

  He didn't move. "Actually, that's a very good question," he said. "I'm not really sure."

  "Don't give me that," she said, ripping off her coat with trembling fingers, and whether they trembled from rage or the cold he couldn't guess. Or something else, something even more elemental that was flowing between them, blazing between them, like a forest fire out of control. "You have no right to go to bed with me and then run away when I tell you I love you. No right." She dumped the coat onto Maggie's spotless floor and kept moving toward him. "You told me you only wanted sex."

  "I lied," she said flatly. "And you knew it." He was backing away from her. Trying to stall, to give her one last chance to save herself. The fury was the best possible thing for her. He needed to feed that life-affirming fury. "Maybe I didn't care."

  "Maybe," she said, still coming toward him in the darkened hallway of the Swensens' old house. "Or maybe you cared too much. I believe you when you say you have to leave. That you have no choice in the matter. I don't believe you when you say you don't care about me. You aren't a very good liar."

  Emerson MacVey had been a consummate liar. Gabriel reached for that long-lost talent, for anything that would halt Carrie on her determined advance. He needed to convince her he was the worst thing that ever happened to her. Not for his sake—he'd accepted his punishment. For hers.

  "Listen," he said, summoning a cool drawl as he ended up against the wall, no place to retreat to. "It's a simple matter of hormones. You were available, I was horny, we had a good time, as long as emotions didn't enter into it. As soon as they did, I figured it was time to leave. You aren't really in love with me. It's always the way with women—they have a good time in bed and then their puritan upbringing convinces them they have to call it love. They aren't allowed to simply enjoy their bodies. That's all it was, Carrie. Great sex. Believe me."

  He waited to see her fury fade, her face crumple into pained acceptance. She kept on advancing.

  "It doesn't work, Gabriel. Try it again. Tell me it was lust that kept you by my side, spooning tea and soup down my throat, taking care of me."

  "Maybe it was guilt."

  That halted her, at least momentarily. "Guilt?"

  "You're an expert on that, aren't you? You blame yourself for everything bad that ever happened in this town. Just because some yuppie jerk closed the mill doesn't mean you're to blame. You were trying your best, but you were playing with fire. MacVey was out of
your league from the very beginning, and you should have known it. You did your best, and it backfired. The mill was in trouble long before MacVey got his hands on it—it was just a matter of time."

  Her face was pale. "How do you know his name was MacVey?"

  Hell and damnation, he thought. "Maggie said something," he improvised swiftly.

  "Maggie doesn't know about him." Her voice was flat, accusing.

  He could feel himself starting to sweat. "Gertrude…"

  "Gertrude doesn't know, either. I never told anyone about him. Not by name. Who are you, Gabriel? Why do I feel as if I know you?"

  He opened his mouth to tell her, but the words wouldn't come. She deserved no less than the truth, but he couldn't give it to her. "Lars," he said abruptly, the inspiration nothing short of a miracle.

  "I never told Lars…"

  "No, but you told me you were responsible for some coldhearted yuppie buying the factory and then closing it. And Lars knew the name of the man who'd done that. He's negotiating for the use of the building right now."

  "He's not negotiating with MacVey."

  "No," Gabriel said. "MacVey's dead. Burning in hell, most likely."

  She stared up at him. "I don't think so," she said. "But we're not talking about MacVey. We're talking about you and me."

  "There is no you and me."

  "Guess again," she said. "Look at me and tell me that night we spent together was just a one-night stand. A roll in the hay. Tell me you don't feel something for me."

  Damn. She looked brave and strong and alive, the fire of determination burning in her eyes. A woman like Carrie wasn't easily destroyed. A woman like Carrie was ready to fight for what she wanted. He'd warned her, and been damned for it. He could only go to hell once.

  "I don't feel something for you," he said, his voice so flat and uncompromising that the light began to fade from her eyes. "I'm in love with you."

  The expression on her face was worth it. She just looked at him, radiating joy and love, and the sight of her was so beautiful it hurt. He blew out the candle, plunging them into darkness, and pulled her into his arms.