“Put this on. I think the contrast between the man’s shirt and your face might be the answer.”
“All right.” Laura went into the bedroom and stripped off the big pink sweater. She started to draw an arm through the sleeve and then she caught his scent. It was there, clinging to the heavy cotton. Tough, and unapologetically sexual. Man. Unable to resist, she rubbed her cheek over it. The material was soft. The scent was not, but somehow even the scent of him made her feel safe. And yet, foolish as it seemed, it made her feel a dull, deep tremor of desire.
Wasn’t it wrong to want as a woman, to want Gabe as a man, when she carried such a responsibility? But it didn’t seem wrong when she felt so close to him. He had sorrows, too. She could see them, sense them. Perhaps it was that common ground, and their isolation, that made her feel as though she’d known him, cared about him, for so long.
With a sigh, she slipped into the shirt. What did she know about her own feelings? The first, the only, time she’d trusted them completely had brought misery. Whatever emotions Gabe stirred in her, she would be wise to keep gratitude in the forefront.
When she stepped back into the main cabin, he was going through his sketches, rejecting, considering, accepting. He glanced up and realized that his conception of Laura fell far, far short of the mark.
She looked like the angel he’d spoken of, illusory, golden, yet tied now to the earth. He preferred to think of her as an illusion rather than as a woman, one who stirred him.
“That’s more of the look I want,” he said, managing to keep his voice steady. “The color’s good on you, and the straight-line masculine style is a nice contrast.”
“You may not get it back anytime soon. It’s wonderfully comfortable.”
“Consider it a loan.”
He walked over to the chair as she sat and shifted into the precise pose she’d been in before the break. Not for the first time, Gabe wondered if she’d modeled before. That was another question, for another time.
“Let’s try something else.” He shifted her, mere inches, muttering to himself. Laura nearly smiled. She was back to being a bowl of fruit.
“Damn, I wish we had some flowers. A rose. Just one rose.”
“You could imagine one.”
“I may.” He tilted her head a fraction to the left before he stood back. “This feels right, so I’m going to draw it on canvas. I’ve wasted enough time on rough sketches.”
“Three whole days.”
“I’ve completed paintings in half that time when things clicked.”
She could see it, him sitting on a tall stool at an easel, working feverishly, brows lowered, eyes narrowed, those long, narrow hands creating. “There are some in here you haven’t finished at all.”
“Mood changed.” He was already making broad strokes on canvas with his pencil. “Do you finish everything you start?”
She thought about that. “I suppose not, but people are always saying you should.”
“When something’s not right, why drag it out to the bitter end?”
“Sometimes you promise,” she murmured, thinking of her marriage vows.
Because he was watching her closely, he saw the swift look of regret. As always, though he tried to block it, her emotions touched a chord in him. “Sometimes promises can’t be kept.”
“No. But they should be,” she said quietly. Then she fell silent.
He worked for nearly an hour, defining, refining, perfecting. She was giving him the mood he wanted. Pensive, patient, sensuous. He already knew, even before the first brush stroke, that this would be one of his best. Perhaps his very best. And he knew he would have to paint her again, in other moods, in other poses.
But that was for tomorrow. Today, now, he needed to capture the tone of her, the feel, the simplicity. That was pencil lines and curves. Black against white, and a few shades of gray. Tomorrow he would begin filling in, adding the color, the complexities. When he had finished he would have the whole of her on canvas, and he would know her fully, as no one had ever before or would ever again.
“Will you let me see it as you go along?”
“What?”
“The painting.” Laura kept her head still but shifted her eyes from the window to him. “I know artists are supposed to be temperamental about showing their work before it’s finished.”
“I’m not temperamental.” He lifted his gaze to hers, as if inviting her to disagree.
“Anyone could see that.” Though she kept her expression sober, he could hear the amusement in her voice. “So will you let me see it?”
“Doesn’t matter to me. As long as you realize that if you see something you don’t like I won’t change it.”
This time she did laugh, more freely, more richly than before. His fingers tightened on the pencil. “You mean if I see something that wounds my vanity? You don’t have to worry about that. I’m not vain.”
“All beautiful women are vain. They’re entitled.”
“People are only vain if their looks matter to them.”
This time he laughed, but cynically. He set down his pencil. “And yours don’t matter to you?”
“I didn’t do anything to earn them, did I? An accident of fate, or a stroke of luck. If I were terribly smart or talented somehow I’d probably be annoyed with my looks, because people look at them and nothing else.” She shrugged, then settled with perfect ease into the pose again. “But since I’m neither of those, I’ve learned to accept that looking a certain way is … I don’t know, a gift that makes up for a lack of other things.”
“What would you trade your beauty for?”
“Any number of things. But then, a trade isn’t earning, either, so it wouldn’t count. Will you tell me something?”
“Probably.” He took a rag out of his back pocket and dusted off his hands.
“Which are you more vain about, your looks or your work?”
He tossed the rag aside. It was odd that she could look so sad, so serious, and still make him laugh. “No one’s ever accused me of being beautiful, so there’s no contest.” He started to turn the easel. When she began to rise, he motioned her back. “No, relax. Look from there and tell me what you think.”
Laura settled back and studied. It was only a sketch, less detailed than many of the others he’d done. It was her face and torso, her right hand resting lightly just below her left shoulder. For some reason it seemed a protective pose, not defensive, but cautious.
He’d been right about the shirt, she realized. It made her seem more of a woman than any amount of lace or silks could have. Her hair was long and loose, falling in heavy, disordered curls that contradicted the pose. She hadn’t expected to find any surprises in her face, but as she studied his conception of it, she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“I’m not as sad as you make me look.”
“I’ve already warned you I wouldn’t change anything.”
“You’re free to paint as you please. I’m simply telling you that you have a misconception.”
There was a huffiness in her voice that amused him. He turned the easel around again but didn’t bother to look at his work. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m hardly tragic.”
“Tragic?” He rocked back on his heels as he studied her. “There’s nothing tragic about the woman in the painting. Valiant is the word.”
She smiled at that and pushed herself out of the chair. “I’m not valiant, either, but it’s your painting.”
“We agree on that.”
“Gabe!”
She flung out a hand. The urgency in her voice had him crossing to her quickly and gripping her hand. “What is it?”
“Look, look out there.” She turned to him, using her free hand to point.
Not urgency, Gabe realized. He was tempted to strangle her. Excitement. The excitement of seeing a solitary buck less than two yards from the window. It stood deep in snow, its head lifted, scenting the air. Arrogantly, and without a trace of fear, it
stared at them through the glass.
“Oh, he’s wonderful. I’ve never seen one so big before, or so close.”
It was easy to share the pleasure. A deer, a fox, a hawk circling overhead … those were some of the things that had helped him over his own grief.
“A few weeks ago I hiked down to a stream about a mile south of here. I came across a whole family. I was downwind, and I managed three sketches before the doe spotted me.”
“This whole place belongs to him. Can you imagine it? Acres and acres. He must know it, even enjoy it, or else he wouldn’t look so sure of himself.” She laughed again, and pressed her free hand to the frosted glass. “You know, it’s as if we were exhibits and he’d come to take a quick look around the zoo.”
The deer nosed down in the snow, perhaps looking for the grass that was buried far beneath, perhaps scenting another animal. He moved slowly, confident in his solitude. Around him the trees dripped with ice and snow.
Abruptly he raised his head, his crown of antlers plunging high in the air. In bounds and leaps he raced across the snow and disappeared into the woods beyond.
Laughing, Laura turned, then instantly forgot everything.
She hadn’t realized they had moved so close together. Nor had he. Their hands were still linked. Beside them the sun streamed in, losing power as the afternoon moved toward evening. And the cabin, like the woods beyond, was absolutely silent.
He touched her. He hadn’t known he would, but the moment his fingers grazed her cheek he knew he needed to. She didn’t move away. Perhaps he would have accepted it if she had. He wanted to believe he would have accepted it. But she didn’t move.
There were nerves. He felt them in the hand that trembled in his. He had them, too. Another new experience. How did he approach her, when he knew he had no business approaching her? How did he resist what common sense told him he had to resist?
Yet her skin was warm under his touch. Real. Not a portrait, but a woman. Whatever had happened in her life, whatever had made her into the woman she was, that was yesterday. This was now. Her eyes, wide and more than a little frightened, were on his. She didn’t move. She waited.
He swore at himself even as he slowly, ever so slowly, lowered his lips to hers.
It was madness to allow it. It was more than madness to want it. But even before his lips touched hers she felt herself give in to him. As she gave, she braced herself, not knowing what to expect for herself, or for him.
It might have been the first. That was her one and only thought as his mouth closed over hers. Not just the first with him but the first with anyone. No one had ever kissed her like this. She had known passion, the quick, almost painful desire that came from heat and frenzy. She had known demands, some that she could answer, some that she could not. She had known the anger and the hunger a man could have for a woman, but she had never known, had never imagined, this kind of reverence.
And yet, even with that, there were hints of darker needs, needs held down by chains, that made the embrace more exciting, more involving, than any other. His hands were in her hair, searching, exploring, while his lips moved endlessly over hers. She felt the world tip and knew instinctively that he would be there to right it again.
He had to stop. He couldn’t stop. One taste, just one taste, and he craved more. It seemed he’d been empty, without knowing it, and now—incredibly, swiftly, terrifyingly—he was filled.
Her hands, hesitant, somehow innocent, slipped over his arms to his shoulders. When she parted her lips, there was that same curious shyness in the invitation. He could smell the spring, though it was still buried beneath the snow, could smell it in her hair, on her skin. Even the woodsmoke that always tinted the air in the cabin couldn’t overwhelm it. Logs shifted in the grate, and the wind that came up with evening began to moan against the window. And Laura, her mouth warm and giving under his, sighed.
He wanted to play out the fantasy, to draw her up into his arms and take her to bed. To lie with her, to slip his shirt from her and feel her skin against his own. To have her touch him, hold on to him. Trust him.
The war inside him raged on. She wasn’t merely a woman, she was a woman who was carrying a child. And growing inside her was not merely a child, but the child of another man, one she had loved.
She wasn’t his to love. He wasn’t hers to trust. Still, she pulled at him, her secrets, her eyes, eyes that said much, much more than her words, and her beauty, which she didn’t seem to understand went far beyond the shape and texture of her face.
So he had to stop, until he resolved within himself exactly what he wanted—and until she trusted him enough to tell him the whole truth.
He would have drawn her away from him, but she pressed her face into his shoulder. “Please don’t say anything, just for a minute.”
There were tears in her voice, and they left him more shaken than the kiss had. The tug-of-war increased, and finally he lifted a hand to stroke her hair. The baby turned, moving inside her, against him, and he wondered what in God’s name he was going to do.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was under control again, but she didn’t let go. How could she have known how badly she needed to be held, when there had been so few times in her life when anyone had bothered? “I don’t mean to cling.”
“You’re not.”
“Well.” Drawing herself up straight, she stepped back. There were no tears, but her eyes glimmered with the effort it took to hold them in. “You were going to say that you didn’t mean for that to happen, but it’s all right.”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said evenly. “But that’s not an apology.”
“Oh.” A little nonplussed, she braced a hand on the back of the chair. “I suppose what I meant is that I don’t want you to feel— I don’t want you to think that I— Hell.” With that, she gave in and sat. “I’m trying to say that I’m not upset that you kissed me and that I understand.”
“Good.” He felt better, much better than he’d thought he would. Casually he dragged over another chair and straddled it. “What do you understand, Laura?”
She’d thought he would let it go at that, take the easy way out. She struggled to say what she felt without saying too much. “That you felt a little sorry for me, and involved a bit, because of the situation, and the painting, too.” Why couldn’t she relax again? And why was he looking at her that way? “I don’t want you to think that I misunderstood. I would hardly expect you to be …” The ground was getting shakier by the minute. She was ready to shut up entirely, but he quirked a brow and gestured with his hands, inviting her, almost challenging her, to finish.
“I realize you wouldn’t be attracted to me—physically, that is—under the circumstances. And I don’t want to think that I interpreted what just happened as anything other than a—a sort of kindness.”
“That’s funny.” As if he were considering the idea, Gabe reached up and scratched his chin. “You don’t look stupid. I’m attracted to you, Laura, and there’s a part of that attraction that’s very, very physical. Making love with you may not be possible under the circumstances, but that doesn’t mean that the desire to do so isn’t there.”
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but ended up just lifting her hands and then letting them fall again.
“The fact that you’re carrying a child is only part of the reason I can’t make love with you. The other, though not as obvious, is just as important. I need the story, Laura, your story. All of it.”
“I can’t.”
“Afraid?”
She shook her head. Her eyes glimmered, but her chin lifted. “Ashamed.”
He would have expected almost any other reason than that. “Why? Because you weren’t married to the baby’s father?”
“No. Please don’t ask me.”
He wanted to argue, but he bit the words back. She was looking pale and tired and just too fragile. “All right, for now. But think about this. I have feelings for you, and they’re growing muc
h faster than either of us might like. Right now I’m damned if I know what to do about it.”
When he rose, she reached up and touched his arm. “Gabe, there’s nothing to do. I can’t tell you how much I wish it were otherwise.”
“Life’s what you make it, angel.” He touched her hair then stepped away. “We need more wood.”
Laura sat in the empty cabin and wished more than she had ever wished for anything that she had made a better job of hers.
Chapter Four
More snow had fallen during the night. It was, compared to what had come before, hardly more than a dusting. The fresh inches lay in mounds and drifts over the rest, where the wind had blown them. In places the snow was as high as a man. Miniature mountains of it lay cozily against the windowpanes, shifting constantly in the wind.
Already the sun was melting the fresh fall, and if Laura listened she could hear the water sliding down the gutters from the roof like rain. It was a friendly sound, and it made her think of hot tea by a sizzling fire, a good book read on a lazy afternoon, a nap on the sofa in early evening.
But this was morning, only an hour or two past dawn. As usual, she had the cabin to herself.
Gabe was chopping wood. From the kitchen, where she was optimistically heating milk and a chocolate bar in a pan, she could hear the steady thud of the ax. She knew the woodbox was full, and the stack of logs outside the rear door was still high. Even if the snow lasted into June, they would still have an ample supply. Artist or not, he was a physical man, and she understood his need to do something manual and tiring.
It seemed so … normal, she thought. Her cooking in the kitchen, Gabe splitting logs, icicles growing long and shiny on the eaves outside the window. Their little world was so well tuned, so self-contained. It was like this every morning. She would rise to find him already outdoors, shoveling, chopping, hauling. She would make fresh coffee or warm what he’d left in the pot. The portable radio would bring her news from the outside, but it never seemed terribly important. After a little while he would come in, shake and stomp the snow off, then accept the cup of coffee she offered him. The routine would continue with him taking his place in behind the easel and Laura taking hers by the window.
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