by Anne Stuart
He was a hell of a good driver. He realized that later on, but for the moment he'd been too intent on keeping Carrie alive to even think about it. Just as well. Emerson MacVey had been a clumsy, careless driver, treating his Mercedes with a singular lack of respect. If Gabriel had taken the time to consider it they might have ended up wrapped around a tree.
Carrie hadn't said a word as he wrestled with the speeding momentum of the car as it careened toward the bottom of the last hill before her old farmhouse, and he hadn't taken the time to do more than glance at her. Her face was pale, her hands were tightly clasped, but she looked serene, damn it. As if she were waiting for death.
The thought infuriated him enough to make him stomp on the gas just as they slid into a curve. It provided enough momentum to avoid a lethal clump of trees, but then the car went spinning, spinning, across the ice-covered road, finally coming to a shuddering halt. They sat in complete silence for a moment, and then he turned to look at her.
"Are you okay?" His voice was harsh, angry, and he didn't bother to disguise it.
She reached down for her seat belt, and he noticed with fury that her hands weren't even shaking. "Fine. You're a very good driver."
"Don't you even care?" he exploded.
She stared at him in blank surprise. "About what?"
"You could have died. It was a damned close call—we were headed straight for that clump of trees."
"But we didn't," she pointed out with maddening calm.
"But we might have."
She climbed out of the car. "The house is just over the next rise. We might as well start walking."
He tried to follow her, forgetting that he'd put his seat belt on. His own hands were shaking, a fact that infuriated him even further, and then he was following her as she trudged determinedly up the snowy hill.
He didn't say another word as they made their way the quarter mile or so to the house. He didn't worry about her getting too cold in the threadbare coat she was wearing—he was so damned mad it was lucky the entire state of Minnesota didn't melt under the heat of his fury. He followed her into the kitchen, slammed the door behind him, and caught her by the arm as she was starting to pull off her snow-covered coat.
"Do you have a death wish?" he demanded harshly.
She held very still, looking up at him. The snow had melted in her silky blond hair, dampened her long eyelashes, and he couldn't mistake the heated flicker of sexual awareness before she did her best to tamp it down, to give him that maternal, wise look that only increased his fury.
"I'm pragmatic enough to know that when it's my time, there's not much I can do about it. I'm not afraid of death."
"No," he said. "You're afraid of life."
Her face whitened, and she yanked at her arm, trying to free herself. He had no intention of letting her go. "What I'm afraid of is none of your business."
"You're afraid of life, of getting hurt, of making mistakes. You set yourself up as the saint of Angel Falls, ministering to the poor, soothing the weary, healing the sick. Too bad the lake's frozen over or you could show me how you walk on water."
She yanked again, and it only brought her up closer against his body. She was hot, he was hot, and he wondered that the kitchen didn't ignite. "Maybe I have a reason," she said furiously. "Maybe I need to make up to these people for the harm I've done them. Maybe I need to atone…"
"Atone for what? I can't imagine anything you might have done that would be so terrible."
"Then you haven't got a very good imagination."
He stared down at her for a long meditative moment. Her lips were soft, trembling now from anger and emotion, whereas her brush with death had left her unmoved. "I wouldn't say that," he murmured. "When I look at you I can imagine all sorts of things."
For the third time she tried to pull away. She backed up against the basement door, but he was with her, his body pressed up against her, and he wanted to see if he remembered the taste of her mouth, the feel of her body. He wanted to taste the life she was so blasé about losing.
He expected more resistance from her. He put his hand beneath her chin, tilting her face up, and took her mouth with a deep, searing kiss. Her hands were on his shoulders, but instead of pushing him away she was clinging to him. Her lips parted beneath his and she let him kiss her.
He tore his mouth away and stared down at her. "More charity, Carrie?" he said. "How far does your saintliness extend? Passive kisses? Or are you willing to take off your clothes and lie down for the poor itinerant stranger in need of comfort?"
He'd managed to reach behind that calm maternal facade, and her fingers dug into his shoulders as she tried to push him away. "You're disgusting," she said.
"No, I'm not. I'm human. At least for now. And I want you more than I've ever wanted anyone in my life. But I don't want a passive saint sacrificing her virtue. I want someone who wants me in return. I want a woman, not a martyr."
"Damn you," she began furiously.
"That's better," he murmured, and kissed her again.
This time there was no passivity about her. There was fury, passion, everything he'd ever wanted from her. She slid her arms around his neck, slanted her mouth beneath his, and kissed him back.
She was awkward, endearingly, erotically awkward at it, as if she hadn't been kissed enough lately. He remembered that about her. He cupped her face, his long fingers soothing her hair back away from her cheeks, and gentled the kiss, coaxing her, and the soft moan from the back of her throat rewarded him. He could feel her small breasts against his chest. Even through the thick layers of flannel he could feel her nipples harden in undeniable response, and he pulled her more tightly against him, wanting to drown in the physical sensations that were his only for a few short weeks. The heat, the touch, the sounds whirled around in his head, and he knew if he didn't stop there'd be no chance of saving her, or anyone else. Least of all, the very least of all, his own worthless soul.
He didn't pull away from her. He stroked her gently, softening the kiss, moving his mouth to her delicate ear, feeling her shudder in response. He tasted the delicate texture of her skin, breathed in her scent and told himself he had to stop. He held her, his head resting on hers, and waited for her breathing to slow, waited for his own heartbeat to steady, reveling in the fact that he had a heartbeat at all.
When the moment, the fever, seemed to have passed, he pulled away gently and looked down at her. She had a dazed expression in her wonderful blue eyes, and her mouth was soft and damp, and he would have given ten years of his life to kiss her again. But he had no years to give, so he released her, stepping back.
"Sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have done that."
"Why not?" Her voice was so quiet he could hardly hear her words, but he knew them in his soul.
"Because you didn't want it."
She looked up at him, her vision clearing. "Yes, I did." She moved across the room, heading for the telephone. "I'd better call Steve and see what he can do about the car."
She'd ended the subject, which was just as well. If they'd continued it he would have touched her again, and if he had touched her again, he wouldn't have been able to let her go.
The whole thing was damnable, he thought, watching as she spoke into the telephone, running a hand through her sheaf of silvery blond hair. At least this time her hands were shaking. A near brush with death had left her calm and unmoved. A brush with passion, with life, had shaken her to her roots.
"He'll be out as soon as he can," she said, hanging up the phone.
"Why do you need to atone?" he asked abruptly.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You said you had crimes you needed to atone for. Sins committed against this town that you needed to make up for. What were they?"
"None of your business." She put the kettle on the stove, busying herself, refusing to meet his eyes.
"You're right. But I don't pay proper attention to what is and isn't my business, and I fully intend to hound you until you
confess your terrible sins. I imagine once you speak them out loud you'll find they aren't nearly so bad as you imagine."
She leaned back against the counter, staring at him. "This is a small town, Gabriel," she said flatly. "The people here relied on two things to survive. The tourist industry, which doesn't account for more than a few dozen families who spend the summer by the lake in makeshift cabins. And the factory. Precision Industries wasn't anything special, the work wasn't state-of-the-art woodcraft, but it provided a living for most of the people in town. With the factory closed down, no one has the money for houses, for food, for medicines, for gasoline. You've heard of infrastructures? Ours collapsed when the factory did."
"And where is your blame in all this? Did you firebomb the mill?"
She shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes. "You've already accused me of thinking I'm a saint. God-like delusions is a little more accurate. I thought I could save the mill, and instead I brought about its ruin."
He didn't want to hear this after all. He knew what was coming, knew with an instinct that transcended common sense, and he wondered if he walked out of the kitchen, climbed into Lars Swensen's beat-up old truck and just kept driving, whether he might live out his remaining three weeks in sybaritic pleasure.
Emerson MacVey would have done just that. But he was finding that he wasn't MacVey any longer. Neither was he Gabriel Falconi. He was some odd, uncomfortable mix of the two.
So he waited. Calmly, implacably, knowing she'd have to tell him. Which she did, her back to him as she stared out into the wintry landscape.
"I used to be a dancer, you know," she said in a dreamy voice. "Not a very good one, unfortunately. How was I to know that the best dancer Angel Falls, Minnesota, had ever seen was no more than adequate in New York City? I couldn't find work, but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was knowing and accepting the fact that I was mediocre." She glanced over her shoulder at him, and there was a rueful, accepting expression on her face.
"So I took a clerical job in an office. Unfortunately I wasn't very good at that, either. I'd spent so much of my lifetime concentrating on being a dancer that I hadn't applied myself to much else. I managed to get a job working for a private investor in New York. A cold, ruthless bastard, if I do say so. And I made the dire mistake of falling in love with him."
It was like a knife in his heart. It hurt more than the heart attack that had taken his life, it twisted inside him so that he wanted to scream in pain. In reality, he couldn't make a sound.
"Emerson made his money investing in small companies. Time after time he'd buy them and appear to bring them back to financial health, making a tidy profit as he did so. The problem was, I didn't realize how he did it. He cannibalized everything he could, selling off equipment, selling off smaller parts of larger conglomerates. He was utterly ruthless, and I'd fooled myself into thinking he was caring."
"How could you have done that?" Gabriel managed to say, amazed that his voice sounded no more than casually interested in the story she was telling.
"I thought he was a wounded soul, a good man hidden beneath his unfeeling manner. I thought he needed a good woman's love, I thought he would do the right thing when he was presented with the option."
"And did you? Present him with the option?"
She tried to smile once more, but her expression was bleak. "I told him about Precision Industries. Showed him what an excellent investment opportunity it was, for a man of his organizational skills. Unfortunately, he found it an even better investment opportunity as a tax loss. He sold off the equipment, fired all the workers, and sold the empty factory to the town for one dollar."
"Then the town could sell the place…"
"It's falling into ruin. They've tried. No one's even remotely interested."
"Did you tell him what you thought of him for doing that? Maybe he would have listened if you'd explained to him…"
"I doubt it. You see, he'd already committed the cardinal sin of having sex with me one night, and after that he wasn't ready to even see my face, much less hold a discussion."
"If the two of you made love…"
"We didn't make love. He had sex with me. I made love with him. A subtle difference, I grant you, but enough to matter. He fired me the next day, rather than have to see me."
"Carrie," he said, ready to tell her. Ready to confess his own sins, promise to make things better, to tell her he had cared about her, only he'd been cold and angry and frightened of needing anyone. "Carrie," he said, but the words refused to come.
Augusta had warned him. He could perform miracles, three of them, he could right the wrongs he'd done. But he couldn't tell anyone the truth about why he was here. Even when Carrie needed to hear.
She turned to look at him, and she managed a wry smile. "You're right," she said. "Confession is good for the soul."
"You weren't to blame," he said, wondering how much he'd be allowed to say. "That bastard was."
"Well, he's paid for his sins. He's dead, and has been for almost two years. I have to make up to Angel Falls for the harm I did."
"The harm he did."
She shrugged. "Nevertheless. There's nothing that can be done."
"You could sue his estate. He must have left a bundle…"
"No."
He didn't want to ask. He thought he'd heard more than he could bear; for some reason this would be the worst of all. He tried to move toward the door, but his feet were rooted to the floor. "You couldn't force yourself to bring suit…" he suggested in a hoarse voice.
She shook her head. "For this town, I would have done anything. After all, Emerson MacVey was beyond hurting. But his estate was worthless."
"Worthless?" he choked.
"Everything was delicately balanced. With his death, it all collapsed, like a house of cards. There was barely enough for a decent burial."
"How do you know?"
"I used to work for him, remember? One of my coworkers called and told me about it. She was very bitter. She said she'd put up with the arrogant bastard for eight years only to have him keel over and die on her, leaving her with absolutely nothing."
Megan, Gabriel thought, with one of those unexpected flashes of memory. "So it's up to you to rescue the town that he destroyed?"
She shook her head. "I don't think I'm God anymore. It's up to me to make things better, when and where I can. It's that simple."
" Punishing yourself while you do it."
"I'm not punishing myself."
He didn't want to argue with her anymore. She'd told him more things than he was ready to hear. He felt like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, watching the hags argue over his bedclothes after he was dead. He'd died penniless. A worthy end for someone who had only cared about money and power.
"I'll go back and get the food out of the car," he said. "It's getting colder, and we don't want things freezing."
"You don't need to…"
"I do," he said irritably. "You curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea and I'll be back in a few minutes."
She glanced out the window. "It's snowing."
"It's always snowing. Go sit."
She waited until she saw him trudge down the driveway through the blowing snow, and then she let out a deep breath, one she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Her eyes were stinging, her heart ached, and she told herself she was coming down with the flu. And she told herself that Gabriel Falconi had far too unsettling an effect on her.
The kettle shrieked, just as she was about to succumb to an absolute orgy of self-pity. She stiffened her shoulders, made herself a cup of orange-spice tea, stirred in more honey than she usually allowed herself and went to curl up on the lumpy sofa in the living room.
He'd done a good job with the wood stove—the heat was still filling the room, but she pulled the quilt around her anyway, for protection as much as warmth. She needed something to hug around her, something to keep her safe.
She was going to send Gabriel Falconi away. Surely Lars could
find work for him, or Steve. She couldn't have him in her house, looking at her out of those dark, haunted eyes. She couldn't let him put those elegant, beautiful hands on her, kiss her with that wide, hard mouth. She couldn't let herself be folded in his arms so that she could feel his heart beat, feel his need, a need that matched her own.
She'd loved one man in her life, in a moment of rash stupidity that had ruined not only her own future but that of an entire town. Now she stood on the edge of falling in love again, with a man who would leave in the new year, and for some reason it still felt like the same man. Gabriel Falconi and Emerson MacVey couldn't have been more different. One a glorious Renaissance angel, the other an overbred yuppie. One tall and strong and graceful, the other spare and slender and precise. One the child of immigrants, the other the child of privilege. One who worked with his hands and body, the other who'd never done a day's honest labor in his life.
So different and yet the same. The same lost soul, hidden behind disparate eyes. The same longing calling out to her, a longing that resonated in her heart.
A longing she had every intention of denying. She took a sip of the scalding tea, listening to the wind howl around her tiny house, rattling the windows that needed fresh caulk, knocking against the foundations that still needed banking. She'd have to do it herself.
She heard him come back, stomping into the kitchen, dumping the bags of groceries on her round oak table. She knew she should get up and help him, get up and confront him, but for the time being she stayed where she was, too weary, too comfortable to move.
She must have drifted off. She heard Steve's voice in the kitchen, making disparaging noises about her beloved station wagon. "Second accident in less than a week, Gabriel," he drawled. "You got a death wish or something?"
"Not particularly," he replied. "Her brakes failed. Think you can fix them?"
"Shouldn't be a problem. I'll tow it into town and get right on it. You're not in any hurry for your truck, are you?"
There was a pause, and Carrie found she had enough energy to wonder how he'd respond to that. He wanted to leave, she knew with sudden certainty. He wanted to get out of Angel Falls as much as she wanted him to go. "No hurry," he said finally, his voice resigned.
