by Jenna Mills
He twisted toward her, all rumpled six foot two of him, but this time he didn’t frown. He smiled. It was one of those slow, easy, classic Gabe smiles, the kind that could touch without even a flicker of physical contact. “I told you I wasn’t leaving you.”
The hoarse words did cruel things to her heart. It strummed low and hard and deep, carrying with it a hope she never would have imagined possible only twenty-four hours ago.
“That’s what you said last week,” she pointed out as cool air rushed against her bare legs.
Gabe’s eyes met hers. “What is it they say about history repeating itself?”
It was impossible to look at him and not remember his touch, the feel of his hands and his mouth, of his body moving against hers. The way it had felt to lie in his arms after making love, to hear his heart and his breath, to feel the warmth of his body.
The way he’d stood there with the screen door held open, his eyes fixed on the pecan tree as she’d walked barefoot from his house.
“I’m ready for it to stop,” she said. There’d been enough repeating, enough mistakes. And for all that she’d planned her infiltration into Gabe’s life, she had no contingency plan for this. No idea what to say to the man who knew her secrets, but who’d risked his life for hers, anyway, who’d been willing to forfeit the goal that had stripped him of his childhood and shaped him into the man he’d become, who’d stayed with her and held her, who’d insisted on watching over her.
Who watched her now.
Only the day before, the dark blue of his eyes had glittered. In them she’d seen the impact of her lies and from them she’d felt a slow bleed of cold.
His eyes didn’t glitter now. And in those cobalt depths she saw no lies, but a truth that made her throat tighten—and a warmth she’d never expected. Glancing from her to the baseball, he returned it to the curio cabinet—then stunned her by destroying the distance between them. His hand came next, slow and steady up to her face. His touch, excruciatingly gentle. “Dizzy?”
She swallowed. “No.”
His fingers feathered against a tender spot at her temple. “This hurt?”
Not there. “I’m fine really,” she said, trying to pull away, to put the distance back between them. Because what hurt was his touch. What hurt was the memory.
But then he spoke again, three little words, and everything just stopped, “So is Jimmy.”
Almost a week had passed since her concussion, but the room tilted, anyway. “Jimmy?”
Gabe eased the hair from her face, tucking it behind her ears. “I’ve been on the phone with the warden,” he said, and though it was the attorney’s voice, full of conviction and authority, it was also the man’s voice, the tender voice, the one with warmth…the one that came with absolution and acquittal. “And a federal judge. And the governor.”
It took a heartbeat for it all to register. “My God—”
“He was roughed up pretty bad, but he’s going to be fine.”
Evangeline closed her eyes, said a silent prayer of thanks.
“He’s going to be free, too,” Gabe said, and then her eyes were wide-open and staring into his.
Vaguely it came back to her, what Gabe had told her as he’d held her hand en route to the hospital. Marcel Lambert was the one who’d arranged her brother’s conviction. He was the one who’d tampered with the jury—who’d tampered with her and with Gabe.
All this time, he’d been quietly manipulating them all. “He killed your father,” she whispered, and with the words her heart hurt. Gabe had known. All along he’d known, but there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do. “And stole Jimmy’s future. And Darci…he put us on a collision course—”
The blue of Gabe’s eyes darkened. “I don’t want to talk about Lambert,” he said, taking her hands.
Warmth. It bled into her and through her. “Gabe—”
But he shook his head before she could finish, threaded his fingers through hers. “All my life it’s been black-and-white, a choice is right or wrong, a person is guilty or innocent.”
He stood there so tall and strong, but in his words she heard the boy he’d been.
“And then you came along,” he said, and this time she saw it in his eyes, too, the boy who’d built forts and caught crawdads, who’d terrorized his sister.
Until the night his father was executed.
“And held up a mirror, made me see what I’d never let myself see; that I’m a hypocrite.”
The words went through her like a knife to the gut. “No—” That word was strong, sure “—you’re not a hypocrite.”
But she wasn’t even sure he heard her. “You were right,” he said, “about everything. Nothing is that simple—not my father’s murder or your brother’s conviction, your need for justice—”
“Or yours,” she whispered.
“Or mine.” On a hard sound from low in his throat he released her hands and brought his to her face, touched with a sense of discovery so raw, it hurt to breathe. “I was wrong to shut you out,” he stunned her by saying. “I was wrong to turn my back on you, to not think what it must have been like for you, knowing your brother was rotting in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and thinking, believing—”
“Gabe.” She could see what this was doing to him. “You don’t have to do this.”
But he kept going. “After Val—” his voice thickened and she knew what it cost him to talk about Val “—I didn’t trust myself. My God,” he ground out. “Even after I found out about the Internal Affairs investigation, even after I knew everything was just a lie—”
“No—” with a hard slam of her heart she reached for him “—no—that’s just it, we were never a lie….”
“I still wanted you.” He rolled right on. Then, so quiet she barely heard him, “I still wanted you.”
Regret stabbed in from all directions, bringing with it a darker truth. “And then history repeated itself.”
But Gabe shook his head. “No,” he said. “Only in a black-and-white world. You came after me for the same reason I went after Lambert. Because you thought I hurt someone you loved.”
She stilled.
“You were right,” he said, and the rushing started again, deep inside. “Last week, when you said I would have gone after someone just like you did…Christ, I did, Evie. I did the exact same thing. For twenty years I’ve been on a crusade that has nothing to do with due process. I’ve broken rules and laws—and I would’ve done more.”
Slowly, she lifted her hands to his face. “Gabe, that man killed your father.”
“And if I’d killed him? He’d still be dead and I’d still be a murderer. In a court of law—”
“You didn’t kill him.”
His eyes glittered. “I can hardly remember a day when I didn’t want to see Lambert fall. But there in that warehouse, when I realized that in trying to lure him into a trap, he’d lured me into one, that he had you there, that he wanted me to choose between him and you—” Something hard and dark and sharp flashed through his eyes. He squeezed them shut, opened them a long second later. “There was no choice.”
Her heart kicked hard. “Gabe.”
“There was no choice!” he said again, and this time the words were rough and raw. “You, Evie. You’re all that matters.”
The words humbled her. She looked away, looked at the coffee table where the lockbox she’d given him sat, open now, its contents in neat little stacks. “I should have told you the truth as soon as I’d realized how wrong I was.”
With his hands, he eased her face back to his. And with his words, he shattered. “Before you walked out the door,” he said, sliding his thumb along her lower lip, “you asked me if I’d ever loved anything so much that the consequences didn’t matter.”
She wasn’t sure why she stepped back.
“The answer is yes.” He moved toward her even as she took another step back. “I would have let him walk—I would have let him get away with everything, as long as I d
idn’t lose you again.”
Her breath caught. “You’re not going to lose me.”
“That’s how much I love you,” he said, and then he was there, reaching for her again, and this time she didn’t back away…knew she would never back away from him. Not ever, ever again. “You.”
Epilogue
N ight bled through the window overlooking the backyard. Soon heavy brocade curtains would frame the gaping darkness, but not tonight. There hadn’t been enough time.
The paint was still wet.
Evangeline lowered the roller and surveyed her handiwork. The muted olive lent the room a warmth the white walls had not.
But she’d seen the potential. From the moment she and Gabe had stepped into the hundred-year-old Acadian-style house in the Garden district, they’d known they were home. There was work to be done, lots of it. But it was work they both embraced.
Gabriel Fontenot was a man of many talents; that was something she’d always known. But not even that knowledge had prepared her for the way he’d rolled up his sleeves and gotten to work, tearing out run-down cabinetry in the kitchen and installing new cabinets, even an island and breakfast bar. He’d added crown molding in the living and dining room. He’d torn up the old carpet and put down hardwood floors.
But the bedroom was her domain.
At least for now.
Spying a few speckles of white, Evangeline picked up a smaller roller and dipped it in paint, stepped toward the wall and finished what she’d started five hours before, when she’d shooed Gabe out of the house. D’Ambrosia and Cain had conspired with her. Savannah had stopped by with a bottle of wine earlier, but Saura had not been with her. She was out of town again, still working some big secret case that she wasn’t yet allowed to talk about.
Above the classic rock jangling from the iPod Gabe had surprised her with, Evangeline never heard the double beep of the security system. But her heart kicked the second the bedroom door pushed open and she spun.
He stood there without moving, looking at her as if she wore some kind of skimpy little negligee, rather than an oversized paint-splattered New Orleans Saints T-shirt. The cobalt of his eyes gleamed and his mouth, shadowed by a few days’ worth of whiskers, curved into a smile.
And for a moment, it was all Evangeline could to do breathe.
After so many months of doubt and deceit, of lies and betrayals and secret agendas, sometimes it was still hard to believe that they’d found the other side—and each other. Five weeks had passed since the morning Gabe had found her in the warehouse—and the night they’d both given each other the gift of their love. Since then…a lot had happened. Marcel Lambert was awaiting trial. And Jimmy was free. It had all happened so fast, a matter of days, and then she and Gabe had been standing in the warm sunshine outside Angola, holding hands as the warden led Jimmy toward them and the media crowded in, shouting questions and flashing cameras.
Gabe had ordered them all back as she’d stepped toward her big brother, now so much thinner than before, with the same wounded look in his eyes that she’d seen from the dogs at the shelter. She’d wanted to take them all, give them all homes. In the end, they’d chosen only three. Or rather, the three—a scrawny female yellow Lab with two equally scrawny pups, all Katrina victims—had chosen them.
Simon had gone home with Jimmy.
Now she looked at Gabe and felt the warmth in her heart tug at the corners of her mouth. “You’re early.” She’d wanted to have everything cleaned up before he got home.
The gleam in his eyes turned into a wicked little twinkle. “Funny…I’m thinking I’m just in time.”
She realized his intent too late, not that she would have done anything to stop him. He crossed the wrinkled plastic tarps she’d used to cover the floors and stopped a few inches from her. There, he streaked his finger along her cheek, pulled it back to reveal a smear of paint. “You look good in green.”
His voice was warm and thick and turned everything inside of her liquid. “It’s not green,” she said indignantly. “It’s olive.”
“Olive, then,” he said, tapping his finger to her chin. “It suits you.”
She wasn’t sure what came over her, what made her do it, but before she could stop herself, she lifted the small roller to his face and…well, rolled. “You, too.”
Before, when she’d tried so hard to hate this man, to believe him corrupt, she’d never let herself imagine a playful side to him. She’d never imagined the naughty light that could come into his eyes, or that he would join his hand to hers for control of the paint roller and slant his mouth across hers. “You sure you want to do that?”
The slow dare washed through her. “Oh, yes,” she said.
“You know what they say about starting something you don’t want someone else to finish,” he warned.
“Who said I don’t want you to finish it?”
And then he was there, pulling her into his arms as they both surrendered the paint roller. His mouth came next, taking hers with a hunger that heated her blood. She urged him backward, toward the one part of the room she’d not covered with plastic—the big new mattress in the center. The headboard was still on order.
But then, they didn’t need it for what she had in mind. And as she dragged him down with her, she shot out her foot and pulled the lamp cord from the wall, killing the light.
Because those courthouse rumors were most definitely true.
Gabriel Fontenot was at his absolute best…in the dark.
ISBN: 9781426802317
A LITTLE BIT GUILTY
Copyright © 2007 by Jennifer Miller
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