by Diana Palmer
How sad, she thought as she closed her eyes, that so often what people wanted the most was the last thing that could make them happy. What was the old saying about being careful what you wished for because you might get it? She wished she'd been a little more clearheaded at eighteen. Perhaps if her parents hadn't moved to Austin, perhaps if Gabriel had really been interested in her, if he'd come courting…
She went to sleep and dreamed about that. And woke up warm all over. It seemed the scars weren't quite as deep as she'd thought—or else how could she have that kind of dream about Gabriel?
Chapter Four
Maggie managed to keep Janet from finding out about her disastrous confrontation with Gabe. As for him, his attitude toward her was a little less hostile. He made no more passes at her, and he stopped baiting her. But there was no drastic change in his manner. He was much as he had been before he'd learned the truth. If he felt anything at all except irritation, he hid it well. Perhaps he'd learned over the years to keep his deepest emotions hidden, Maggie thought. Heaven knew he'd had reason to.
His arm was still giving him brief twinges of pain—that was obvious—but a few days later he climbed on a horse despite the discomfort and rode out to help his men. He was kept busy, disability notwithstanding, with the separate herds of cattle, as he and his men worked increasingly long hours. Janet seemed relieved, although she didn't say anything.
The following Thursday night, Maggie was forced to wait up for Gabe. He'd promised to fly down to get Becky the next day. And it was either that or ask Janet to face the long drive into San Antonio on her behalf. Maggie laughed mirthlessly, thinking about the past, when she could easily have chartered a plane to take her. Thanks to Dennis and his spendthrift ways, that was no longer an option. If only she'd had more backbone in the beginning! If only she hadn't knuckled under! But she'd made her own bed by refusing to take action, and now she was paying for it horribly.
When Janet started upstairs about nine o'clock, Gabe still hadn't come home. Maggie was reading a book on the sofa, curled up under a lap blanket in jeans and a multicolored pullover blouse.
“Are you going to stay up for a while?” Janet asked casually.
“I'm waiting for him,” Maggie said, knowing that the older woman would understand she meant Gabe. “He said he'd fly me down to get Becky tomorrow if I'd remind him. I have to see if he meant it.”
“My son never says things he doesn't mean,” Janet said, and actually seemed to relax. “I didn't know you'd told him about Becky, although I had a few suspicions. He's stopped cutting at you so much.”
“Not noticeably.” Maggie sighed. “Yes, I told him. I mentioned getting a bus, and he wouldn't hear of it. But I don't know how he'll manage time.”
“Stand back and watch.” Janet grinned. “Oh, my dear, I'm so glad he offered. I wouldn't have minded driving down with you…”
“But it's a tiring trip,” she reminded the older woman. “It was kind of him to offer.”
“I think he's curious about your daughter,” Janet said suddenly. “He's not an easy man to get along with, but he loves children. It's something of a tragedy that he never married, you know. He would have been a good father.”
That was surprising. He didn't seem the kind of man who would warm to a child, but Maggie knew she was no judge of men—not after the brutal mistake she'd made.
Long after Janet had gone upstairs, Maggie thought over what she'd said about her taciturn son. He was such an enigma. He wasn't handsome; in fact, he was rather plain. And although his mother seemed to think he was unable to attract women, Maggie knew he wasn't an inexperienced man. He'd known exactly what he was doing when he'd made that pass at her in the backyard. If it hadn't been for her unfortunate marriage, it might have been difficult not to respond to his ardor. His mouth had been hard and warm and very, very expert, and something deep inside her had reacted wildly to the taste of him, although she'd kept him from knowing it.
The sound of the front door opening disturbed her thoughts. She let the book lie open in her lap and looked into the hall. The glimpse she got of the real Gabriel Coleman in that instant was fascinating.
He didn't know anyone was around, and all the mocking arrogance was gone. He was quiet and solemn, and he looked every year of his age. Dust covered him from his blue check shirt to his stained jeans and wet boots. His black hair was disheveled and damp as well, and his face was heavily lined. He tossed his hat onto the hall table and dropped the wide leather chaps he'd just discarded onto the floor. He stretched, his hard muscles shuddering a little with the strain they'd been under. Then, as he looked toward the living room and saw Maggie watching him, all the hardness returned to his face, and to his pale, penetrating eyes.
“Couldn't you sleep?” he asked with a mocking smile. “If you're looking for the obvious remedy, sorry, I'm too tired to oblige.”
As she searched his face quietly, it suddenly dawned on her that he didn't really mean half the cutting things he said. They seemed to be a kind of camouflage to keep women from getting close to him, from looking beneath the savage surface. And at that realization, all the hot words poised on the tip of her tongue faded away, forgotten.
“You said you'd fly me down to San Antonio to get Becky tomorrow,” she said gently. “I hate to remind you since you look so tired.”
His face froze, as if the unexpected compassion had off-balanced him. “I remember.”
She got to her feet. Bare feet, because she hated shoes, and hers were under a chair somewhere. “I don't know if you have time now, with things so hectic here,” she continued, facing him beside the couch. “I need to know, so that I can make other arrangements….”
He had just noticed her bare feet, and it seemed as if he were having problems keeping back a grin. “Lost your shoes, Cinderella?”
Her bare toes wiggled. “I hate shoes,” she muttered. “I even got Becky into the habit around the house, and when she went back to school, she got kept in at recess for it.”
“Does she like it at that school?” he asked unexpectedly.
“I suppose so.” Maggie hesitated. “She doesn't talk about it. She's a very shy child.” She frowned. “She's so easily upset. Perhaps it would be better if I just went home now.”
He cocked an eyebrow and slowly lit a cigarette, without once moving his eyes from her face. “What are you afraid of? That I'll upset her? You might be surprised at the way she reacts to my temper, city girl. Most people around here aren't that intimidated by it.”
“Of course not,” she agreed innocently. “That's why your men hide in the bushes every morning until you're out of sight.”
That did produce a smile, of sorts. “Kids see more than adults,” he returned mysteriously. “I'll have to get things organized before I can leave. We'll get away about nine.”
“You're sure you don't mind?” she persisted.
“I don't put myself out for anyone unless it suits me,” he said curtly.
“Then, thank you. I'll be ready.”
She started past him, only to find his strong hand on her upper arm, halting her beside him.
“How old are you now?” he asked, his eyes all too close, too searching. It didn't help that her gaze dropped to his hard mouth and remembered vividly its exciting touch.
“I—I'm twenty-five,” she stammered.
He studied her quietly. “I'm thirty-eight.”
“Yes, I know.”
His eyes probed hers in a silence that began to simmer, until the world narrowed to the space they occupied. He turned, just a little, and the cigarette went careening into a large ashtray so that both lean hands could hold her there.
She flinched, and he shook his head.
“No,” he said softly. Softly! It was the first time she'd heard that slow, tender note in his deep voice. “I won't be rough with you. Not ever again.”
Her body seemed to vibrate as she looked up at him uncomprehendingly.
“I've never deliberately hurt a wo
man before,” he said slowly. “It's just that I've had so damned many prospective brides flung at my head….” His hands slid up her arms, over her shoulders, to cup her face. “I don't like having you flinch from me, Margaret,” he whispered, bending. “So I'm going to show you what it should have been like.”
“But I don't…” she whispered unsteadily.
He poised there, his pale eyes narrow and flashing as they met hers. “Say my name,” he breathed roughly.
“Gabe…”
As the syllable faded, he took it into his mouth. Her eyelids trembled and then closed. It was nothing like before. His lips were hard and warm but softly probing this time, brushing, lifting, savoring in a sweet tasting that was beyond her experience of men.
“That's it,” he whispered against her slowly parting lips. “That's right, let me have your mouth. I won't hurt it this time.”
A tiny, soundless sob broke as he parted her lips tenderly and fit his own to them with a warm, maddening pressure that made her body ache with new and unexpected sensations.
Her hands opened over his shirt, feeling muscle and the soft prickliness of hair underneath their cool palms. His heart was beating slowly, regularly, until her nails contracted, and then his chest began to rise and fall quickly.
His lean fingers stroked gently through her hair, tilting her head back, his mouth insistent as it probed hers in a rhythm that surprised a moan from her.
She felt one of his hands spread against her cheek, and while his mouth was tormenting hers, his thumb rubbed across her lips, sensitizing them, grazing them against her teeth. She made another sound, one she didn't even recognize, and her nails bit into his chest.
“Gabriel.” Was that whimper coming from her lips? She was reaching up without realizing it, trying to get closer, to make him kiss her more ardently, more completely.
He obliged her with lazy indulgence, forcing her head back against his shoulder with the hungry but controlled pressure of his mouth opening on hers. She felt his tongue teasing her lips, tasting their inner softness, and her body seemed to throb where it sought his.
One lean hand moved then, easing down over her shoulder to the soft blouse, finding only softer woman beneath it, and no bra—finding a hard peak that aroused him beyond bearing. His hand slid farther down, over her narrow waist, the curve of her hip, and around to the base of her spine. He drew her hips in slowly until they merged with his, and he gloried in her sudden trembling as she felt the fierce arousal of his body.
“No,” she pleaded, trying feebly to turn her head. “Oh, you mustn't!”
He didn't insist. His hand slid back up to her face, brushing away the damp hair, tilting her chin so that he could look into her misty, dazed eyes above a mouth that was parted and softly swollen from his kisses.
“Was he ever able to make you want him?” he whispered softly.
“No…oh, not ever like this,” she sobbed, hating her inability to lie to him.
His fingers caressed her face gently. “There's nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said, his voice deep and slow as he watched her. “You're pretty much a novice, despite your marriage. An experienced man knows how to make himself acceptable to a woman.”
She was still trying to get her breath back, and his body against hers was warm and hard and welcome. “You've…had women,” she whispered, searching the eyes that weren't so hard after all.
He nodded. He looked down at her yielding body, then back up at her parted lips. “And with very little effort, I could have you,” he said quietly. “But that isn't what I want. This was a nonverbal apology, nothing more. I don't need the practice.”
Before she could react to that, he eased her away, steadying her. “Want something to drink?” he asked then, as casually as if they'd just met.
“A…a brandy.”
“Sit down. I'll get it.”
She curled up in an armchair, her heart beating wildly, her eyes like green saucers in a face flushed with unexpected pleasure.
He dashed brandy into two snifters, passed her one and perched on the arm of her chair while she sipped at it with jerky motions.
“I…should go home,” she burst out, thinking out loud.
“Why?” he asked. “I won't seduce you.” He tilted her chin up and looked into her eyes, noting her scarlet blush, her quickened breathing. “More than likely, I'd get you pregnant,” he said with more amusement than irritation.
“No, you wouldn't,” she replied, her voice still a trifle unsteady. “I'm on the pill. I had a slight female dysfunction, and the doctor put me on it to regulate me. So I'm not…vulnerable that way.”
His eyebrows arched and he smiled slowly. “Then suppose you come up to bed with me.”
“I don't believe in that kind of thing,” she said quietly.
“No wedding ring, no sex?” he taunted. “How old-fashioned of you, Miss Margaret.”
“Anyway,” she countered, staring at her drink, “sex isn't all that fabulous for women.”
“Think so?” Again he tilted her chin to force her eyes up to his. “I've had women claw my back raw, and it wasn't because I was hurting them.”
She flushed to the roots of her hair, barely able to breathe at all.
“I could make you claw me, too,” he breathed at her lips. “I could make you writhe like a wild thing under my body and scream with the need to have me.”
“You shouldn't…say things like that,” she said brokenly.
“You're more a virgin than a divorced woman with a child,” he returned, searching her eyes. “Was there any other man?”
“No,” she whispered. “Only…him.”
“In the ways that count, you're untouched,” he murmured. “A walking green-eyed challenge. Too bad, Margaret, that we didn't ignore the obstacles all those years ago and take what we really wanted from each other. I might have broken your young heart, but I'd have made you whole in every other way. We have an unusually potent chemical reaction to each other. We always did.”
She knew that, but it didn't make her feel particularly good to have it reduced to technical terms.
He threw down the rest of his brandy and stood up, his back to her. “You'd better get some rest, honey. We'll have a long trip ahead of us.”
“Yes. Of course.” She finished her own brandy, put the snifter down and stood up.
He turned, towering over her. “He cowed you, didn't he?” he asked unexpectedly, his eyes narrow, calculating. “You're nothing like the woman I remember. All that sweet wildness I used to watch in you is gone.”
“I got tired of being slapped down,” she replied. “He got his revenge…in bed.”
“Oh, God,” he breathed roughly.
She looked up, searching his eyes. “You'd never be cruel that way,” she said, knowing it. “You might cut a woman with words, but you'd never be physically cruel. Even that day, in the backyard, you didn't really hurt me.”
“Didn't I?” he said curtly. “I cut your mouth.”
It seemed to bother him that he had. She put a finger to his lower lip, where her own teeth had bitten into it in her passion minutes before. He stiffened at the light contact.
“I cut yours,” she whispered.
His jaw clenched and his breathing was audible. “In passion,” he whispered back. “Not in anger.”
She withdrew her hand with a small laugh. “I never suspected that I was capable of passion.”
She turned away, oblivious to the blinding hunger in the pale eyes of the man behind her. “Good night—Oh!”
He'd pulled her around. “Say my name, saucy girl,” he whispered, teasing her. “Come on.”
“I won't,” she said, feeling a rising new excitement.
His lip tugged up. “Say it,” he challenged, pulling her body against his, “or I'll kiss you blind.”
He could have, too. She drew in a jerky breath. “Gabriel,” she said.
He let her go with a faint smile. “Good night.” And he walked away without another
word.
Enigma, she thought confusedly. Enigma. She'd never known anyone like him. And her body was sending out smoke signals, begging for him. She'd never expected complications like this. And now she didn't know what to do.
At precisely nine o'clock the next morning, when Maggie came downstairs dressed in a neat gray suit, Gabe was waiting for her at the front door. He was wearing gray, too, a vested suit that made him look debonair, sophisticated, almost handsome—and every inch a very male man. He smelled of spicy cologne and soap, and Maggie wondered why she couldn't seem to stop staring at him. She gripped her purse as Janet came out to say goodbye.
“I'd go with you,” she told Maggie, “but it's less crowded this way. Have a safe trip.”
“I'll take care of her,” Gabe said carelessly. He spared his mother a glance and walked off without even a smile.
Maggie didn't say a lot on the way to the airstrip. She was curious about him, in so many ways. She wanted to ask questions, to learn new things. And that was dangerous.
“Nervous?” Gabe asked after a minute, glancing at her wickedly as he lifted his cigarette to his lips.
“Not really. I'm not afraid of flying,” she murmured evasively.
“And that wasn't what I meant, either.” He pulled off the main ranch road onto a dirt track with deep ruts that led toward the airstrip and the big hangar where he kept his twin-engine planes. He had two, he explained: one for work, for herding cattle; the other for business trips.
“Don't you ever fly for pleasure?” she asked.
Gabe glanced at her. “I have women for pleasure, when I can't stand the ache any longer. That's about the extent of my recreational activities these days.”
She stared out the window, embarrassed despite her age and experience. “You're very blunt.”
“I don't pull my punches—about anything,” he replied. “I believe in total honesty. I've never yet found a woman who did.”