Gabriel's Gift

by London, Cait

  Gabriel took her hands and bent to place his face within them. The tenderness in the gesture was unreserved, for Gabriel was a caring man. She knew he grieved with her, understood her heart. She knew he feared for her passage, for the day when the world challenged her again and she would leave him.

  Sally Jo, the waitress appeared to take their order, pad in hand. “Oh, my goodness. He is just so romantic. I saw him carry you out of the office. I’d love to have a man come for me like that, leaving no doubt to me or anyone else that he wanted me.”

  Gabriel straightened, still holding Miranda’s hands in his. His smile at Sally Jo was devastating. “I am certain that, as lovely as you are, you have many men wanting you.”

  Sally Jo stared blankly at him, then she blurted, “I heard you didn’t like women. That you were a mountain man avoiding female companionship. But how you do sweet-talk.”

  Miranda studied Gabriel’s charming smile, and his dark, contemplative look at her. She didn’t trust that secretive, pleased-with-himself look, or the too-innocent one that followed it.

  That look lasted throughout lunch, and Gabriel didn’t object when she paid the bill as she had expected. He walked her to the bank and her afternoon job, bent to kiss her cheek as though he were a friend, not a lover. She’d expected a kiss to match his tenderness earlier, and yet the brush of his lips was almost impersonal. He strolled off down the street without another look back at her.

  Miranda watched him, her hands on her waist. Gabriel had his edges, his moods and his games. She wasn’t certain she’d forgiven him yet, for all those years they’d lost. Or for not giving her that kiss.

  That night, he came to her again, leaving no doubt of his wildfire passion for her. She met him out there on that naked, hot plane, where every touch seared, every pulse and heartbeat matched, riveting and devouring them. And in the morning, Gabriel was gone.

  Ten

  There comes a time when what was important isn’t any longer, replaced by truth. If love is at the bottom of the barrel, then it must be freed and cleaned and polished and met and brought into the daylight.

  Anna Bennett’s Journal

  Fully dressed for work, wearing a white short sleeve sweater beneath her black pantsuit, Miranda studied the sack of seedlings and packages of bulk garden seeds. Gabriel’s gift said she could choose where to make her life and where to live it, as she wished—planting where she wished, or not. Her tiny tomato seedlings stretched toward morning sunlight, and her mother’s pantry was neatly lined with clean jars.

  It was April now, the earth bursting with promise, sunshine dancing on the newly budded leaves in her mother’s garden. Delicate small white Lily of the Valley blooms would soon appear, leading the way for the scarlet bleeding hearts. It was as if the earth waited for her to move forward, to know herself, and place the past behind her.

  Miranda leaned back into the kitchen filled with memories, tears filling her eyes, her throat tightening with emotion. On the counter, the blackberry starts were no longer dried looking sticks, but had begun to sprout green leaves. Their roots needed to be set in firm, nourishing soil, just as she needed to set the foundation for her life.

  Who courted whom? she asked herself, for Gabriel had come to her every night, the taste of hunger on his lips, the trembling of his hands telling her of his need. During the day, as she punched in numbers, calculated statistics and waited for the night, Miranda caught herself dreaming of him—the way he touched her, that dark closed look that said he had secrets of his own. Miranda placed her hand on her heart, listened to the beat, and knew that her time had come—Until now, she wasn’t ready to read her mother’s journals, too filled with mourning to bear the encounter.

  But now it was time, and she picked up the telephone to call Noah and take the day off. Curling up on her mother’s couch, Miranda opened the worn books, her mother’s handwriting curving through them.

  “Truth, above all, must be met, good or bad. When a woman chooses her path, a good man will wait for her decision. That is hard for the male species—waiting, when their very nature says to stake their claim. But when a woman finds her truth, knows it in her heart, she should hold it dear and meet it full force. She will battle all odds to keep it safe,” Anna had written. “I worry about Miranda, for she is trying too hard to please everyone, but herself. She has a bright, quick mind, and needs challenges. A woman’s battles are not always in business and money, but sometimes she has to listen to her heart.”

  Miranda held the journal close to her heart. She had watched her mother widowed, trying to provide for her family. Miranda studied so hard to achieve, to win those scholarships, to help her mother. She was a girl, fearing failure, pushing too hard. She’d dived into everything the community expected her to be—an honors student, witty, vivacious, filling her life with everything youth had to offer. At seventeen, she wouldn’t have been ready for marriage, and her mother knew. Gabriel knew.

  Two hours later, the midmorning sun slanted through the pine trees lining the road to Gabriel’s ranch. She reached out her free hand and gripped the sack with the blackberry bushes and the seeds. Only Gabriel would understand how she needed to fill herself, just as she would fill her mother’s canning jars. The need to see him, to tell him what she now understood, was urgent, but the eagerness of coming home leaped through her, too. It had been two weeks since she’d seen it, the log cabin nestled in the woods, the huge old weathered barn in the field. She’d been too intent upon getting back into the flow of work, mentally drained when she returned home. The weekends were filled with Gabriel, staying at her house, with family and friends, as she slid back into life in Freedom Valley.

  The garden she had plowed had been tilled; the neat fence around it would keep it safe. In the field, calves played, and twenty of Gabriel’s Appaloosa fed on the huge bales of hay—the new grass not enough yet to support them.

  She had to tell him.

  Miranda glanced at the framework of a new addition onto Gabriel’s simple, but large log home. She parked her pickup and hurried inside, finding the house empty, his camera bag gone. Jessica didn’t move from her couch pillow, eyeing Miranda. “I don’t have time for catering to you now,” Miranda said and stepped outside. In the distance, higher on the mountain, Fletcher’s bark was faint but distinctive. She smiled briefly, recognizing the dog’s sound as he played with his master.

  She had to tell Gabriel.

  The sun, high in the sky, signaled noon. She stripped away her light denim jacket, tying it around her waist and scanned the woods, pine and fir and brush shielding Gabriel from her. She opened the top buttons of her cotton blouse, and picked the briars from her torn jeans. On a high ledge, overlooking his ranch, Miranda placed her hand over her eyes, scanning the thick woods. Fletcher was quiet now, giving her no clues.

  Birds darted over the high mountain meadow, with its yellow-green new grass. Coming up from the valley, warmer in winter than the mountains, a herd of deer bolted into the woods. Gabriel’s tripod and camera were set up near a blanket and she scanned the dark, mysterious woods for him. “Gabriel?”

  Then a tall shadow slid silently into the clearing and Gabriel said, “Why are you here?”

  She should have known he’d watched her; these mountains were his home. She wanted the words to come, willed them to her lips and failed. “I have to talk with you.”

  “Talk.” The order gave no softening encouragement, as if Gabriel braced himself for a hard blow. He crossed his arms over his bare chest, the muscles taut beneath his gleaming dark skin. One hard look took in her blouse, her jeans and the moccasins he had made, a feminine match for the ones he wore.

  She knew he expected her to leave, to find a high-paying job such as the ones she’d had, filled with marvelous challenges to be met. Why were the words so difficult?

  “You’ve waited for me, all this time.” Her statement was breathless with wonder.

  He nodded slowly, his stance wary, his hair gleaming and tossed by the ligh
t April breeze as it crossed the highland meadow. “You were my vision, the woman in the smoke. I could do no less.”

  She scratched Fletcher’s ears when he leaned heavily against her, pressing his need for affection. Miranda met Gabriel’s dark, intense stare, his expression taut, those beautiful lips tightened. “You were right all those years ago, Gabriel. I needed to prove myself against the world. I needed to make the journey, and I needed to come home to you.”

  He inhaled sharply, muscles tightening across his broad chest, the bright sunlight skimming those powerful shoulders. Only the pulse running down his dark throat gave away his deep emotion.

  “I would never have known who I was, the person that I am now, if I hadn’t gone to college, succeeded at my career. Had you not made that decision, all those years ago, we might have married. All that talk from the school counselor and principal, the tests I’d taken to confirm my potential, might have haunted me later. It could have torn us apart. I might have resented what I’d never done or seen. Now I know, without doubt, that my path is with yours. Here, in these mountains with you.”

  He nodded slowly, watching her with that wary expression, those marvelous eyes shielded by his glossy long lashes. She walked those few feet to him. “You are a spiritual man, Gabriel. Your essence is here in these mountains. You gave me time, when you had none, letting me find my own path, leading back to you. Yet nothing has really changed between us since you gave me that wildflower bouquet. You tore away my heart, only to give it back to me stronger than before, more certain of my life.”

  He swallowed roughly, and she knew that he was waiting for her to finish. She placed her palm over his heart, and it leaped, racing into her keeping. “You are my challenge, Gabriel, my excitement that will never end.”

  “You will become my wife?” he asked unevenly, the shiver racking his tall body telling her of his uncertainty.

  “Yes.” She smiled up at him, bursting with joy and loving him. “Your grandmother, White Fawn, told you that long ago, didn’t she?”

  He nodded gravely. “She knew my vision would be true, and that my heart could belong to no other. But she knew that you were headstrong and independent and the pressures were on you to go to college and to succeed. She said a long journey awaited you and I could not influence your passage. I could only wait for you to make it. Then when you were so ill, I could wait no longer to claim you, to care for you. I wished it were true, that the child was mine and that he had lived.”

  She touched his cheek, skimming the rugged contours, those high, gleaming cheekbones, that strong jaw, his incredible tender mouth. “Tell me of the first time you made love to me.”

  Was it only a short time ago? Yet she remembered his trembling touch, the way his body hesitated, then those first still moments within her keeping as if he were uncertain. “Just now, you said White Fawn told you your vision was true. You are not an undiscriminating man, bedding any woman for your body’s needs, and you have said that you tried. Then, I thought you feared for me, for my healing body. Now, I think it was that and something else.”

  Gabriel’s expression closed, and she knew she had hit her mark. “That’s quite some case,” he noted darkly. “Cannot a man keep one secret, or must you have it, too?”

  “Tell me, so that I have everything,” she whispered, loving him even more.

  His hands rose to stroke her hair, lifting the strands to gleam in the sunlight, blue-black as a raven’s wing. Then he bent to her, his lips brushing hers. “I was already married, in my heart. How could I share my body with another woman, when it belonged to you?”

  He kissed the tears shimmering on her lashes, brought by joy and love. “You are my first and only love. That time was my first, and yet, I knew it could never be like that with another woman. I feared so that I would hurt you, that my body would bolt from my keeping. I will never forget that moment we became one.”

  With the truth sweet upon the fresh mountain air, the sunshine dancing around them and in her heart, Miranda eased open the jacket’s sleeves, knotted at her waist. “Love me now,” she whispered, suddenly shy of him, for he was new to her, this Gabriel, the man of her heart.

  His fingertip skimmed the heat of her cheeks, then slid to her throat, and lower to open the buttons of her blouse. He undressed her solemnly, reverently, until she stood proudly before him, the woman that she had become.

  Her hands moved over him, their gazes locked as his clothing fell to the meadow’s new spring grass. His touch trembled, skimming her body, treasuring it as he bent to take her lips carefully, gently with his own. “So long I have waited for you,” he whispered unevenly as she slid her arms around him.

  He swept her up in his arms, carrying her to the blanket he had used earlier, lowering her to it. He was her promise, her dream, her heart, coming to her. There would be other times, when hunger drove them to the crest, eager for the heat and fire. But now with the sunlight warming them, the scent of spring touching them, Gabriel entered her wordlessly, his body telling her of his love, of the truth running between them. Over her, his expression was tender. “The river of my love for you will never stop flowing.”

  She would carry those words with her forever, she thought before giving herself to the sweet taking.

  Gabriel waited for Miranda to come to him. He leaned against his pickup, filled with items from Anna’s house. Michael’s and Tanner’s pickups were also filled. The day had been long for Miranda, working with her brother and sister to separate her mother’s things. It was a task each had placed aside, but the time had come to work together, each considerate of the other. Gabriel scanned Anna’s two-story home, wrapped in the first of May sunlight; some of the contents had been divided among Tanner, Kylie and Miranda. It had been a hard day for each of them, memories swirling through the house, Anna’s presence held close and dear. Anna’s jars and canning necessities, her favorite pots and pans had been divided between the Bennett sisters and the jars would soon be in the addition’s new pantry. Women’s things, Gabriel thought, passed from mother to daughter, would be cherished in the Bennetts’ new homes.

  With the help of their friends and family, the new addition onto his home was more suiting a wife and a family. Miranda had worked beside him, though he disdained her helping, and each night she came softly to his bed.

  She’d turned furiously on him once, when he tried to take a board from her. “My mother worked beside my father. You would expect less from me? Who do you think you are?”

  He could think of no answer, except to tug her close and slant his lips over hers, igniting them both. “That’s who you are,” he’d managed shakily later, and for the sake of modesty took the board and placed it strategically in front of his hips.

  “Okay,” she’d said just as unevenly, her face flushed. “I’m taking a shower and I’m going to bed.”

  His mouth had dried, his body leaping into the fever that she had called forth. “Miranda. It is noon.”

  The air had sizzled between them, and Gabriel had forgotten about everything but carrying her off to his bed.

  As he stood in Anna’s driveway now, Gabriel tucked that memory away to savor later. Gently rounded with Michael’s child, Kylie hugged Miranda. Holding Anna’s patchwork quilt tightly, Gwyneth’s small body was ripe with the baby that would arrive in another month. Tanner paused, carrying a box of Anna’s clothing to be donated to charity. He glanced at Gabriel and at Michael, also caught by the scene.

  Anna’s three children had been through hardships, and had survived, returning to Freedom Valley, where she had found so much peace and love. Now that peace and love would go on in their homes, small memories of her tucked into each piece of furniture, each doily, each quilt.

  Because Tanner had learned carpentry from his father, and as a boy had worked with his father’s tools, they were now his. Gwyneth moved toward Tanner, leaning her head against his shoulder, the gesture said she understood his sadness. They looked so complete.

  Michael’s arm
was now around Kylie, his head bent to hers. She leaned heavily against him, and he swept her up in his arms placing her inside his pickup. Kylie snuggled close to Michael, his arm still around her as they pulled out onto the main road.

  Gwyneth’s hand smoothed Tanner’s back as he carried the tools into the new building where he built custom boats.

  Then Miranda walked toward Gabriel, her head bent. He lifted her face and kissed the tears away. “She’s always going to be with you and Kylie and Tanner.”

  “I think—when it is time, there will be a need for her house.” Miranda’s forehead bent and she came to rest against him in the old way, that told him her grief ran deep. “Take me home, Gabriel.”

  At the ranch, Miranda didn’t go into the house. Instead she walked to the garden they had planted together, a row of bright green lettuce just beginning to sprout. Miranda was placing the past behind her, keeping the good and discarding the ugly, preparing to move on in her life. Gabriel came behind her, folding her tight against him in the setting sunlight.

  “I want our wedding here,” Miranda said quietly, turning to him. “And soon. What do you think?”

  How could he refuse her anything, this woman of his heart? He nodded, meeting her searching gaze. “Are you finished courting me?”

  “I’ve just begun,” she whispered, and stood on tiptoe to brush her lips against his. “I’ve just begun,” she repeated softly. “Your dad is loaning me his best wagon and four-horse team.”

  Gabriel frowned, holding her away to study her impish grin. “You’re not handling his four-horse team.”

  “Your mother does.”

  He shook his head, rummaging for reasons why Miranda should not manage the powerful horses. He decided to retreat; images of Miranda driving a wagon with him sitting beside her nettled. She had paid for the tickets to the Firemen’s Spring Ball and for the dinners at the Wagon Wheel, and for the drinks at the Silver Dollar. “I’d better start unpacking the pickup.”