The Kissing Stars

by Geralyn Dawson

  Tess knew she was a married woman.

  Gabe dragged a hand along his stubbled jaw and considered the willful beauty engaged in hammering out a concession from the enamored Texas Ranger. He’d known her inside and out twelve years ago, and he simply couldn’t picture her character undergoing that enormous a change. Nope, Gabe would bet his favorite pair of boots that ol’ Doc wasn’t his wife’s lover. Tess wouldn’t commit adultery.

  However, twelve years was a long time to do without.

  Nagged by doubts, he raked her with his gaze. Tess and another man. The idea made him want to puke.

  Then she glanced in his direction and the doubts faded away. Nah, Tess was true blue. He’d still put his money on her faithfulness.

  Honesty was something else. It hadn’t escaped his notice that she wouldn’t look him good in the eyes. He tuned into the conversation. “… pay you for your effort. The pictographs are in the caves up in the mountains.”

  The captain nodded reluctantly. Tess flashed a beautiful smile and leaned over to kiss his cheek. Gabe’s grip tightened on his coffee cup.

  His wife stood and crossed to a shelf in one comer of the room. She took down a jar and removed a wad of cash. Slipping a sealed envelope from her pocket, she handed both the note and the money to the Ranger. Robards slid them into his pocket.

  Gabe was disgusted. The man took money for doing his job? What a pig. Just another example of the depths to which some outfits in the Ranger corps had sunk.

  “I’ll ride back to Eagle Gulch and outfit myself and a few of my men for the trip. I’ll deliver your note, honey. And when I get back…well…we’ll talk.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “You know my feelings for you. You know how much I care. Say yes this time. Let me take care of you, watch over you. You know you need a man.”

  Gabe had had enough. “Isn’t it handy that she already has one, then?”

  Tess fired a warning glare. “Yes, I have Andrew and the colonel and Jack to watch over matters here.”

  “And me,” he shot back not quite ready to give up.

  “Temporarily,” Tess assured Lionel Robards. “Mr. Montana is just passing through.”

  Gabe just about chewed a hole in his tongue trying to keep quiet. Then when his wife stood on her tiptoes and kissed the Ranger full on the mouth, his hand automatically went for the whip he often carried coiled on his hip. It wasn’t there, of course, because he’d quit carrying it after that last tangle with Bodine. Rage had gotten the better of Gabe then, and afterwards he’d decided a clean gunshot to the head would have been better for everyone all around. The Ranger doesn’t know how lucky he is, Gabe thought. He wouldn’t kill a man for kissing his wife, but a whipping wasn’t out of the question.

  Then, not a second too soon, Captain Robards took his leave. Tess heaved a sigh, turned, and made a beeline for the coffee pot. Gabe slowly shook his head. “I must say you’ve surprised me, honey. He’s not the type I’d have figured you’d want courting you.”

  “I don’t invite him here, Gabe.”

  “Good,” he replied, satisfaction washing through him. “I’m glad to know you have better sense than that. The man is a Texas Ranger. I can’t believe he took money from you to play pony express. And what message was so all-fired important anyway that you felt you had to pay the man to deliver it, anyway? Who is this Doc person, Tess? What is he to you?” And then, because he wanted to hear her denial, he couldn’t help but add, “Are the two of you more than friends?”

  She slammed the coffee pot down onto the stove, then whirled to face him. “Don’t you try to make this something dirty. Doc is…”

  She broke off abruptly. The flames of anger burning in her eyes died, replaced by something that made Gabe’s stomach take another sinking dip. Guilt again.

  Sonofabitch. He should have stopped while he was ahead. He didn’t like this one little bit.

  Distrust nagged at him. Resentment coiled in his gut. Dammit, she’d run him off once, ran off from him once, but this time they would have it out. They had unfinished business and she owed him answers. Gabe set down his coffee. “Tess, you’re not putting me off any longer. We’ve gotta talk.”

  TESS HEARD the steel in his voice and knew her moment of truth was upon her. On the train home from Dallas, she’d spent some time debating how to face this man and his questions if and when this moment ever arrived, so she was prepared. More or less.

  At least she’d had a good night’s sleep. She was in control of herself. She could face the questions he would throw at her, and hopefully toss a few back at him herself. First, however, she needed to determine just how much of the truth to reveal.

  Whip Montana wasn’t Gabe Cameron. The years had changed him. The tragedy of Billy’s death had changed him. How would he respond to the tales she had to tell? Despite the grief he’d caused her, Tess didn’t want to cause Gabe needless pain. He had been hurt enough.

  True, but your world had been rocked, also. Tess had been forced to deal with matters no woman should endure.

  Recalling those months that followed her brother’s death still made her shudder. Looking back, she recognized the trials had made her stronger, but while she lived it—during that awful, horrible time—she’d sometimes wanted to lie down and die.

  Tess didn’t want to put Gabe through that, not if she didn’t have to. So she’d decided to pace her revelations. She’d start at the beginning, but rather than throw everything at him at once, she’d dribble out the story and use his reaction to judge just how far to go.

  She cleared her throat. “Yes, Gabe, you’re right. I’ll be happy to address your questions, but first I need to check on Andrew and make some arrangements with the others.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think so. The last time you put off talking to me I had to travel to the end of nowhere to find you again.”

  “You have my word I won’t run this time,” she promised. “Look, I’m hungry. Let me speak with my friends, then I’ll pack up a cold breakfast and we can hike up Paintbrush Mountain. The view is peaceful up there, and we won’t be interrupted.”

  Gabe studied her for a moment, then abruptly nodded. “That sounds good. The biscuits took the edge off my appetite, but I could stand something more substantial. How about a sandwich? Ham and cheese sure sounds good.”

  Tess chided him with a look. “We don’t eat pork here in Aurora Springs.”

  “No pork?”

  “No pork.”

  He glanced around the kitchen, his brows arched. “No ham or bacon or chops?”

  “Not even any drippings to flavor the beans or fry the eggs.”

  He reared back, appalled. “Why?”

  Tess rolled her eyes. “In a word, Rosie. It wouldn’t do to offend her sensibilities.” When her husband’s chin dropped in shock, she hastened to add, “I can’t give you ham, but I can offer something else I think you might like better. I made cardamom rolls day before yesterday.”

  Gabe’s dark eyes sparked with interest. “Two-day-old cardamom rolls? That means today they’re at their prime.”

  Tess nodded. He’d always loved the bread she baked, and the cardamom rolls had been his particular favorite.

  He strode toward the door. “The day’s a-wastin’. Let’s gig this horse to a trot, shall we?”

  Twenty minutes later they were headed up out of the canyon. Gabe carried a basket filled with bread and cheese and a jug of fresh milk. Tess toted along a quilt and a good dose of nervousness.

  Halfway up the hill Gabe paused and gazed out over the flats. “That has to be the most desolate, lifeless place on earth.”

  Tess lived just beyond the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert. The majority of the land was rocky and sparsely vegetated, with little water and almost no trees out on the flats. Her canyon was fertile, however, fed as it was by the springs, and in the higher elevations, piñon and ponderosa pines covered the mountains.

  She followed the path of Gabe’s stare out across the desert wh
ere visibility stretched for miles on end. Where he saw desolation, she spied a wild, rugged beauty.

  “Actually if you look closely you’ll see this part of Texas is teeming with life. I can’t count all the varieties of cactus and succulents, and we have plenty of animals Jackrabbits and coyotes. Antelope. And don’t forget the scorpions, snakes, and horned toads.”

  “Desert critters,” he replied, dismissing her argument with a shake of his head. “You grew up on the edge of the Big Thicket. Don’t you miss the trees?”

  “Some. But the sky makes up for it. Day and night there’s not a prettier sky anywhere in the world.” She glanced at him, and spoke in a voice animated by the topic under discussion. “You must have noticed. Have you ever seen the stars appear so close? Some nights it feels like you could reach out and touch them.”

  For just a moment, she forgot his purpose for being here, recalling only the shared passion of their past. “Wait till you get a peek through my new telescope. Thank goodness Rosie didn’t hurt it. I’m so anxious to get it all set up. You’ll be amazed, Gabe. The view I get of Saturn even with the smaller mirror is superb. Dr. Pierce said the clarity is due to the quality of air here.”

  Gabe jerked as if something had poked him, and a peculiar, almost bitter look seeped across his face. “Don’t, Tess. I don’t want to hear it.” He resumed the climb up the hill.

  Taken aback, she scrambled after him, wincing when she slipped on a pile of pebbles and twisted her ankle. “Ouch. That hurt.”

  He stopped and turned. “You all right?”

  “Yes.” She pushed the hair that had spilled over her shoulder out of her face. “What is it you don’t want to hear? I don’t understand.”

  Frustration flowed across his features before he resumed the upward trek, batting harshly at a tree branch hanging low across the path. “I came to this godforsaken place for answers, not to stargaze,” he snapped. “So don’t talk about it. It’s not going to happen.”

  “Leo, Lynx, and Lyra,” Tess grumbled. “The man is acting strange.” If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was running away rather than climbing Paintbrush Mountain.

  Under other circumstances, she probably would have let the subject drop, but she was nervous about the upcoming conversation, and Gabe’s unusual reaction offered a timely distraction. Calling up to him, she asked, “Why would looking through a telescope put a burr beneath your saddle?”

  “Forget it, Tess.”

  “No. I don’t want to forget it. What’s going on, Gabe?”

  “Would you let it go?”

  “What’s wrong with stargazing?”

  He halted abruptly. Frustration rolled off him in waves and he wrenched off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair. “God, I’d forgotten what a nag you can be. All right, Tess, you want the story? Here it is. I don’t look at the stars anymore. It’s a quirk of mine. One I developed a dozen years ago. Now do you see?”

  “No.” She’d forgotten her bonnet, so she shielded the sun from her eyes with her hand and stared hard at him. He looked so handsome, so powerful. So miserable. “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t connect the two in your head?”

  “The two of what?”

  “You don’t look at the stars and remember that damned night?” he asked, his tone sharp and a little wild. “You can look at the night sky without being haunted by what you were doing when the lab exploded and turned our lives to hell?”

  “Oh, Gabe.” Tess’s heart seemed to freeze. “Are you telling me—”

  “I’m saying that just the thought of studying the stars makes my blood curdle. Frankly, I’m surprised you’ve made a life of it. I make it a practice never to look above the treeline at night. When I’m not careful and catch an occasional glimpse, it plunges me right back into that nightmare all over again.”

  Tess’s stomach hung somewhere around her knees. “You mean Billy.”

  Gabe visibly shuddered. “Yeah, I mean Billy.”

  He stalked off up the mountain then, but Tess remained where she stood, her breathing labored as if she’d run for miles. Troubled thoughts stung her mind like a swarm of wasps as Gabe’s words cast her back to that night, that awful, horrible night.

  “LOOK, BRIDE-OF-MINE,” Tess’s young husband said, pointing toward the sparkling night sky. “It’s a shooting star. You know what that means. Time for a little more stargazing.”

  Gabe caught her around the waist and lifted her feet from the ground. He nuzzled her neck as he carried her over to the quilt spread across the ground. “Gabe,” she protested weakly as he lay her on her back. “We can’t. We don’t have time. Don’t forget you promised to show Billy how to use the spectroscope.”

  Gabe glanced toward the sky as he stripped off his shirt, revealing a muscled torso that still took her breath away after two months of marriage. “He’ll just have to wait,” Gabe said. “Look, there’s another. Two more. I think we’re fixin’ to have a full-blown meteor shower. And you know what shooting stars do to me.”

  When he turned his wicked gaze her way, she dismissed her feeling of apprehension and laughed. “Everything makes you randy, Gabe Cameron. You got frisky watching me peel a yam yesterday.”

  “It was the way you were holding it, darlin’. It got to me.”

  As he reached for her bodice buttons, Tess said, “You have the dirtiest mind.”

  “Aren’t you glad?”

  When he successfully bared her breasts, Tess silently admitted that, yes, she was glad. These past two months had been the most wonderful time of her life. Happier, in feet, than she ever would have dreamed considering their rocky start.

  Though Gabe had never said it, Tess knew he hadn’t wanted to get married quite so soon. The choice had been taken from their hands the morning her father discovered them in the barn at the Rolling R. They lay naked in each other’s arms, Tess having offered up her virginity a week earlier when Gabe finally lost his ability to resist her seduction.

  Her father and brother had a preacher to the house by noon, and relations between the three men she loved most in the world had been strained ever since. In feet, this meeting tonight was the first friendly overture Billy had made toward Gabe since the wedding.

  “I love you, Gabe.”

  He trailed his tongue up between the cleft of her breasts then murmured. “I love you, too.”

  “You don’t mind being married anymore?”

  His hands stopped tugging at her skirts. “Ah, Tess. Don’t. That’s not how I felt. I decided to marry you when you were fifteen years old.”

  “But Billy and my daddy made you do it now.”

  “Darlin’, don’t insult my manly pride. Had I not wanted to marry you, your brother and your pa would have needed the ghosts of every brave hero who died at the Alamo to wring the words out of my mouth. And I’m not entirely certain they’d have managed it then.”

  She brushed a hand down his bare chest desperately needing reassurance, and finally brave enough to ask for it. “But that day…I seduced you, Gabe. It was all my fault.”

  He rolled onto his back giving a hoot of laughter. “You were a hussy that night weren’t you? And I was so danged easy.”

  She punched him in the side, recognizing well when Gabe was teasing. “There wasn’t anything easy about it. As I remember, you were very hard.”

  “Mrs. Cameron!” he exclaimed in a falsely scandalized voice. “You wicked woman, you.”

  “I’m a wicked wife.”

  “That you are,” he said. He flashed her a pirate’s grin. “And thankful I am for it.” Then he rose up on one elbow and his gaze captured hers. Slowly, the teasing light died, replaced with a solemn, serious look. “Sweetheart I want you to listen to me.”

  She thought she could drown in the dark pool of his eyes.

  He grazed a thumb across her cheek. “I love you. I’m very, very happy to be your husband. You are in my blood, Tess. You’re my home. I wish I’d married you a year ago, two years ago
.”

  “Oh, Gabe. Stop it or I’ll cry.”

  Then he delved beneath her skirt, and Tess lost all ability to think, she could only feel. He made love to her with his hands, his mouth, his words, driving her higher and higher and higher. When finally he joined his body with hers, she thought she’d hitched a ride on the shower of stars shooting through the sky.

  When her tremors subsided, he smoothly reversed their positions until Tess lay atop him. Gabe urged her hips closer, and she held him deep within her body. “Let me fly the stars with you, baby. Take me there.”

  She rode him, her eyes opened, their gazes locked, until he thrust with his hips and threw his head back with a groan. She felt the pulse as he erupted inside her. She watched the starlight glimmer in his eyes.

  They drifted back to earth slowly, together. Like one.

  And then the night exploded.

  A thunderous boom ripped the sky as bright light burst above the trees. Fire. An explosion.

  Oh, God.

  She knew. Somehow, she simply knew.

  The lab. Billy.

  “Gabe!”

  He was already scrambling from beneath her. “Where are my clothes, dammit! My clothes!”

  Precious seconds ticked by before he located his pants and yanked them on. He took off running barefoot and shirtless. Tess paused long enough to pull on her dress and shoes, then followed her husband as fast as she possibly could.

  Heat hit her like a fist as she arrived. Flames roared from the pile of rubble that once had been Gabe’s father’s laboratory. The whooshing, crackling, crashing noise screamed in her head. She ran forward, horror consuming her. “Billy?” she shouted. “Billy!”

  She gazed frantically around the gathered crowd. “Billy, where are you? Where’s my brother?” She spied Gabe. He stood facing the burning ruin, his hands clenched at his sides. His shoulders heaved with the force of his labored breaths.

  She dashed toward her husband and grabbed his arms. The tears slipping down his cheeks shot another arrow of fear through her already wounded heart. “Gabe, where’s Billy?”

  His voice was strained and raspy. “They saw him earlier. He’s inside. Oh, God.” His entire body shuddered.