The Kissing Stars (8 page)

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.

Tess whirled around to dash into the lab. Gabe caught her around the waist. “No, darlin’, don’t.”

She clawed at his hands, wriggling in his confining embrace. “Let me go! We’ve got to save him!”

He turned her around and stared down into her face. “We can’t, Tess. It’s too late. We’re too late.”

“No-o-o!” she screamed, fighting harder, fisting her hands and beating at his chest. “Let me go! We can’t be too late. We have to save my brother.”

A part of her knew that hysteria had overtaken her, but she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t stop anything about this nightmare. She yelled and hit and kicked, but Gabe held her tight.

Then a second explosion ripped the night.

Tess’s knees turned to water and she collapsed, sobbing, into Gabe’s embrace. She could deny it no longer. Her brother was gone.

Minutes ticked by, dragging like years, as grief consumed her. Gabe held her gently, tenderly, even as he rattled off a string of ugly epithets. “I’m so sorry, darlin’. God, I’m sorry.” He paused a moment, then added almost to himself. “I should have been here.”

He should have been here.

His words burrowed through her pain like a bullet, leaving a streak of rage in its wake. Tears streamed down her face as she wrenched away from him. “You told him you’d be here. He didn’t know your father’s laboratory. He didn’t know how to work the spectroscope and if he lit the Bunsen burner…” The image of her brother being blown to bits flashed in her mind. “It’s your fault!”

Gabe flinched and closed his eyes.

He didn’t try to deny it and that only increased her rage. “It’s your fault! You were late because you had to ‘stargaze’ some more. That’s all you think about. You should have been here to help him.”

“God, I know.” He looked at her then, the firelight clearly revealing the anguish and misery in his eyes. Tears rolling down his cheeks. “Please, Tess…”

But she was seventeen years old and in terrible pain, so she struck out at the nearest target. “You killed him, Gabe. You killed your best friend. You killed my brother. I hate you.” Her voice broke on a sob. “I hate you!”

With that, and one last glance at the haunting inferno, she ran off into the night.

WHEN TESS’S mind returned to the present, she discovered her cheeks were wet with tears. She brushed away the wetness and gazed up toward the top of the mountain where her husband stood like a statue facing away from her.

She’d been cruel that night. Cruel to someone she loved. Shame washed over her like a cold December rain.

But fete had been cruel, too. Cruel to both of them.

She closed her eyes. She owed her husband an apology for her actions and accusations that night, but what else did she owe him? How much of the truth did he need to know, did he deserve to know?

She’d told him to leave her one time. Once. Once, when she was mindless with grief.

And he’d gone. No argument, no resistance. No fighting for the love she had thought they shared. He’d left her to face her father, face her trials, all alone. “Maybe I don’t owe him anything more than an apology.”

Tess drew a deep breath and resumed her climb. She’d find out how much of Gabe Cameron remained in Gabriel “Whip” Montana.

Then she’d know whether or not to tell him about Doc and Will. And about sweet little Rachel.

CHAPTER 5

AT THE CREST OF Paintbrush Mountain, Gabe dropped the picnic basket, then bent and scooped up a handful of pebbles. One by one, he chucked them, absently aiming toward a cactus some fifteen yards down the hill. He stared out over a West Texas landscape that seemed to go on forever, his thoughts as bleak as the view.

Why had he bothered to make the trip to Aurora Springs anyway? So what if he and Tess were still married? Having answers to the questions tumbling around in his brain wouldn’t change anything. Time couldn’t change anything.

Billy’s death would always divide him and Tess.

The intensity of his reaction to her idle talk about stargazing had caught him by surprise. Funny how a couple of questions or a particular word or two could wipe out a man’s maturity, shooting him right back to boyhood in the blink of an eye. In that moment, all those old emotions came roaring back brand new again. The intervening years might well have never happened. The grief and anguish and shame. That soul-eating sense of loss.

He believed he had dealt with Billy’s death and its aftermath years ago, that he’d put it all behind him and moved on. Now he had to admit he’d lied to himself. He should have realized it. His quirk of avoiding sight of the stars was a hell of a clue, one he’d gone out of his way not to address. When he fessed up to Tess, he’d put his feelings into words for the very first time.

But maybe in his heart, he’d known it all along.

He took the last stone in his hand and pinged it against a ponderosa pine. Maybe some part of him had recognized he had some old ghosts to face. Maybe that had fueled his urgency to follow Tess from Dallas. Maybe it wasn’t answers he searched for, but absolution.

“Gabe, I owe you an apology.”

He stiffened. He hadn’t heard her approach. The way he’d barked at her, he had expected her to run back to town.
Instead she offers me an apology?
”

Slowly, he turned around and faced her. The anguish painted across her face cut him to the quick.

She took a step closer. Earnestly, she said, “I know you’re not responsible for what happened to Billy. It was a dreadful, horrible accident. An
accident
. It was no one’s fault, and it was wrong, terribly wrong of me to blame you.”

Gabe drew a deep breath. Absolution. Well, if that’s what he came here for, she’d laid it right out for him. He waited for a sense of relief. Nothing, nothing at all.

It made him angry.

His gaze followed a sparrow flitting from tree to tree. With a bite to his voice, he challenged, “Figured that out, did you? When? Just now?”

“No, Gabe.” She clutched the brightly colored quilt tightly to her chest and shot him a chastising look. “I’ve known it all along.”

He recalled her hateful accusations the night her brother died. In a tone as dry as the Chihuahuan in July, he observed, “Not quite all along.”

Guilt flashed across the summer sky blue of her eyes. “I was confused at first. Grief does that to people. I was wrong. I’m asking for your forgiveness.”

He scooped up another handful of stones and resumed chucking them one by one at the cactus.
Sonofabitch
. Guess he hadn’t come here for absolution, after all. Here she was offering it up to him on a platter, and instead of easing him, hearing her humble herself like this only made him feel worse. His anger evaporated, leaving weariness behind. “You don’t need to ask, Tess,” he told her honesty. “There’s nothing to forgive. You were grieving, and a person has trouble making sense under those circumstances. I was the same way.”

“You were?” Hope brightened her face.

She’s so beautiful. Looks like an angel
.

Gabe nodded. “I wallowed around in guilt for a good while after the fire, but once my mind cleared and I understood what had happened, I started thinking straight I realized I wasn’t to blame for the accident that took my best friend’s life.”

She licked her lips, then shot the question like a bullet. “Then why didn’t you come home?”

Gabe lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s a complicated question.”

Regally, she drew herself up. “No, I think it’s quite simple. You didn’t want to come home.”

The accusation in her tone pricked his temper. “Damned right I didn’t. You sent me away, Tess. You told me you hated me. I thought you were divorcing me.” Seeing the stricken look on her face, he muttered a curse, then added, “And besides, if I’d have come home I’d have murdered my father. I figured patricide was best left out of the equation.”

She closed her eyes and allowed her head to drop back. “I knew it. You blame him still, don’t you?”

“Of course I blame him,” he replied, furious. “Monty Cameron might as well have killed your brother himself.”

“That’s lunacy,” she scoffed. “It was an accident. You said it yourself not two minutes ago.”

“An accident caused by negligence on that man’s part. Monty ignored the need to repair the faulty valve on the Bunsen burner, and he failed to secure volatile chemicals. Monty and his cursed carelessness did poor Billy in.”

“I knew it,” Tess muttered, whipping the quilt into the wind. It opened and floated to the ground in a vibrant splash of reds, blues, and yellows, the bright colors shocking eyes accustomed to the monotony of West Texas. She dropped to her knees and smoothed away wrinkles in the cloth with a harsh stroke of her hand. “I knew you wouldn’t listen to reason where your father is concerned.”

“There is nothing reasonable about my father’s actions. You and I were young, Tess, and young folks just act stupid. That’s one of nature’s rules.”

He sighed heavily. “Look, I know now that I should have tried harder to see you, especially after you returned my letters unread. But you should have read them. You should have let me know if you wanted me to come home. But my father wasn’t young; he doesn’t have that excuse. He’s the one who truly deserves our wrath.”

“Letters?” She jerked her head up. “What letters?”

Gabe went still. “What do you mean ‘what letters’? I wrote you at least twice a week for a month. All of them came back unopened.”

She sank all the way to the ground. He saw her throat bob as she swallowed hard. Softly, hurtfully, she said, “I never got them. They were never delivered.”

“Oh, they were delivered.” Gabe folded his arms. “A friend of mine laid the three I sent that first week in your daddy’s own hand. They came to me packed inside another envelope along with the letter your father sent about the divorce.”

Tess shut her eyes. “My father never gave them to me. He never told me.” After a moment’s pause, she added, “Oh, Gabe. My father was truly a wicked man.”

Damn Stanford Rawlins
. Bitterness rolled through Gabe like a tumbleweed in the wind. “Fathers,” he said with a sneer. “Reckon you and I were both lucky in that regard.”

“No.” Tess reached irritably for the picnic basket. “Your father isn’t wicked at all. He’s a good man, a loving, caring man who made a mistake. He deserves forgiveness from you, not rancor.”

“Forgive Monty Cameron?” With one, powerful swing of his arm, Gabe threw the pebbles remaining in his fist. “When your pal Rosie flies. The man is a killer and I’m not gonna forget it.”

She rolled back on her heels and gazed up at him, her mouth tightened in a grim line. “Gabe, an accidental explosion killed Billy. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your father’s fault. Monty is—”

Gabe rounded on her, furious. “Remember, Tess, Billy isn’t the only person Monty Cameron killed. My own mother and infant brother died needless deaths because he was too wrapped up in one of his stupid scientific searches to take my laboring mother out of the Florida swamp.”

Her eyes snapped with temper and she shoved to her feet. “Gabe, you’re not being fair!”

“Fair?” He burst out with a laugh. “Darlin’, fair is where you run your pig. It has nothing to do with real life. Why are you defending him anyway?”

Tess braced her hands on her hips and shot him a glare. “Your mother wasn’t due to deliver for two months. There should have been plenty of time to get back to a town. And your father’s searches weren’t stupid. You can’t blame him for seeking the truth. That’s what scientists do.”

“He wasn’t a scientist, he was a reckless adventurer who used science as an excuse.”

Her jaw worked as if she were swallowing her words. Then she drew a deep breath and exhaled it loudly. “I swear, Gabe Cameron, your head is so hard it could etch glass. Maybe it’s best we don’t talk about your father right now.”

“Try ‘ever’ and I’ll agree with you.”

Kneeling, she reached into her basket and pulled out a cardamon roll. She chucked it at him saying, “Stuff this in your mouth. I don’t want to listen to your yammering.”

He caught the roll and held it. Slowly, the anger drained out of him. The girl had always had a backbone, and she hadn’t left it behind when becoming a woman. He took a bite of his roll and flavor exploded in his mouth, washing away the lingering bitterness of his anger.

Damn, but he’d missed this taste. Among others.

Gabe cleared his throat. “So, since we’re not gonna talk about my pa anymore, let’s get on to what brought me here, shall we? I want to understand this divorce-that-wasn’t, Tess. Tell me why you left the Rolling R.”

“Oh, damn.” She sank down onto her seat, folding like a bad poker hand.

Damn?
Out of Tess’s mouth? This explanation must be worse than he’d figured.

He watched silently as she took a moment, obviously gathering her thoughts. It required such an effort that Gabe decided to sit down, too. The seconds ticked slowly by, and he began to wonder why he’d ever asked his cursed question. And he’d bet money on the fact he wouldn’t like the story she had to tell one little bit.

Tess poured herself a cup of milk, took a sip, then said, “As you know, after the funeral I went back to live at the ranch with my father. You also know how he felt about Billy. My father wouldn’t speak to anyone but the ranch foreman, so deeply did he grieve. I think he went a little crazy holed up in that room. When he finally called me to the library to talk with him two weeks after the funeral, he demanded I leave.”

“Why?”

She hesitated, obviously searching for words. Finally, she said, “My last name was Cameron. He demanded I change it, to divorce you. I refused.”

“So he decided to take care of ending the marriage himself,” Gabe replied, drawing the obvious conclusion.

“Maybe he intended to at first, but he never followed through.”

Gabe nodded. “We didn’t sign divorce papers.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have put it past him to sign our names for us.” She gave a small, unamused laugh. “In fact, that’s what I would have expected him to do. But because of a copy of the will I received upon his death, I know that didn’t happen.”

Gabe fastened his gaze on the feather of white smoke rising from the chimney of Aurora Springs’ communal kitchen. He damned sure wouldn’t partake of anything they were cooking up there this morning, and not because Tess had thought to feed him from a picnic basket, either. This story she was telling had curdled his stomach. “So you inherited the Rolling R. Is that how you financed your studies?”

She took a long time to answer. “No, Father left the ranch to his foreman.”

“He what?” Gabe jerked his head around, pinning her with his stare. “He disinherited you?” When she nodded, he clenched his fists. “Damn that man! What happened, Tess? How did you live? How did you support yourself?”

She shut her eyes and a moment later, tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Gabe melted. This woman’s tears had always knocked his legs right out from underneath him. Probably because she so seldom cried.

He took a couple of awkward steps in her direction, uncertain how to respond. When the little whimper escaped her lips, he knew he’d had enough. “Never mind, darlin’. That’s enough. Don’t cry. We can talk about this later. I think we’ve both had all the revelations we need for now.”

She looked at him, then, the film of tears sparkling in the morning sunlight. “Gabe, I—”

Squeal
.

The animal’s pain-filled shriek halted Tess mid-sentence.

Squeal. Squeal. Squeal.

Sounds like the butcher is getting to that hog
, Gabe thought.

“Rosie!” Tess cried, shoving to her feet. Without so much as a word to him, she ran for the path down the hill hollering.

Gabe remained seated, his gaze trailing his wife’s mad dash. “Saved by the pig,” he observed, relief washing through him. It wasn’t like him to run from problems, but this situation was different from any he’d experienced before.

Discussing the past with Tess was like strolling across a desert filled with cactus. One misstep could result in a nasty stick.

Down in town, the pig squealed again and Gabe rolled to his feet to watch the action. Then, to his utter surprise considering recent events, he started to laugh. Soon he found himself laughing so hard he couldn’t have run ten yards to save his soul.

What else was a fellow to do when he watched the citizens of Aurora Springs chase a pair of camels loping after a fleet-footed pig coated in molasses and feathers?

“I’M NOT giving that pig a bath.”

The afternoon sun and Gabe’s indignant voice filtered through the window of the pig-ravaged storeroom In the midst of the cleanup, Tess couldn’t help but smile. God bless Rosie. The pig’s antics had pulled Tess from the nightmare conversation with Gabe up on Paintbrush Mountain and restored Tess’s good humor. She considered the mess that had awaited her in the storeroom a fair price to pay.

After she had managed to catch Rosie, but before Gabe dragged himself howling with laughter down the bluff, she had spoken with her Aurora Springs family and impressed upon them the importance of keeping certain details about their community quiet. Twinkle, who knew more of the details about Tess’s relationship with Gabe, stepped up and declared her intention to take the man beneath her wing—whether he liked it or not.

From the sounds of it, he didn’t care for the job she had in mind for him at the moment.