This Time Love

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The words were as stiff as her back. She stepped away from Gabe without looking at him. She couldn’t bear to look at him. He was standing too close and she was too tired, too frayed to control her conflicting emotions much longer.

  Hate him. Hug him.

  Scream at him. Soothe the lines of exhaustion from his face.

  Take a piece of muddy rope and strangle him. Kiss him like the world was burning down around her.

  The tug-of-war was endless. The result was an emotional limbo of neutrality, an unstable calm in the center of a hellish storm. It was where she’d lived for seven years.

  With luck Gabe would be out of her life again before the storm tore loose. At the very least she had to be alone with the storm, nothing but the walls and the unspeaking night to witness the emotions raging beneath Dr. Anderson’s calm exterior.

  Joy noticed that Davy was still hovering at the edge of the porch. She controlled her irritation at his protectiveness by reminding herself that Davy had no way of knowing who this strange man was, much less what intimate strangers she and Gabe were.

  “Davy, this is Mr. Venture.” As Joy spoke, she stripped out of her mud-encrusted coveralls, revealing almost equally muddy layers of cloth beneath. “He’ll be with us for a few days while he updates an old magazine piece on Lost River Cave.”

  “Gabe, not Mr. Venture,” Gabe corrected as he held out his hand to the younger man. “And I’ll be here several weeks, not a few days. I hope to find enough material to do a book on the art and science of caving. There hasn’t been a virgin cave like this to study since Lechugilla.”

  Davy looked at his muddy palm and hesitated before offering to shake the other man’s hand.

  “I’ve done my share of miles on hands and knees,” Gabe said, smiling. “A little dirt won’t offend me.”

  Davy shook hands. “Mr. Venture, Gabe, pleased to—” The automatic flow of polite words stopped abruptly. “Are you Gabriel Venture, the writer?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Son of a bitch! I can’t believe it!” Davy’s smile widened into a big grin as he shook Gabe’s hand. “I’m a real fan. You’re the only natural history writer I’ve ever found who was as accurate as he was exciting to read. The story you did on the discrepancies between aerial and foot surveys of that peak in the Andes was nothing short of brilliant.”

  “Thanks. It nearly killed me.”

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “Landslide hammered us right off a cliff face. I was lucky. My guides weren’t.”

  Davy winced in unspoken sympathy.

  It went deeper than sympathy with Joy. Eyes closed, she fought against remembering the cold, spinning nausea that had hit her when she heard over the radio that the famous adventurer and writer, Gabriel Venture, had barely escaped death in the Andes and might be crippled for life. She’d been shaken by an irrational pain, a helpless sharing of what it must have been for someone like Gabe to lie in a hospital bed in a foreign country, wondering if he would ever walk again.

  She’d forgotten the incident until now. She’d shoved it into the Dead Issues file under Gabriel Venture, hated lover. Her connection with him was like her parents’ sudden death—an experience she’d finally, painfully, learned to accept without understanding it at all.

  So she’d stopped asking questions, stopped trying to cope in any way at all except to get through one second, one minute, one hour, one day at a time; and if the Dead Issues file bulged and churned like two pigs fighting in a sack, well, too bad. She had a life to lead and she couldn’t do it with her eyes fixed on the past.

  “You okay, Dr. Joyce?” Davy’s concern was clear in his voice. “Maybe you better let me see your arm before I go.”

  Gabe turned swiftly, looking at Joy with searching green eyes. She was very pale beneath the rich cave mud streaking her face. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

  “Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”

  She bent over, sending blood back into her face as she unlaced her boots and stacked them to one side. She stepped out of her coveralls and stuffed them into a washtub to be rinsed off with Davy’s discarded caving clothes.

  Davy hesitated by the door, obviously wanting to help Joy but not knowing how.

  “Shower,” she reminded him. “Solar heating doesn’t work worth a damn by moonlight.”

  “Right you are.” He half saluted, relieved to return to their normal kind of conversation, a combination of scientific exchanges and wry jokes. “I’ll get my towel and be right back.”

  “Your towel is behind you in the bin,” she said as she unzipped her damp, long pants. “Right where you left it last night. Good thing the desert is dry, or your towel would have mold on it thick enough to shave.”

  Gabe stood very still, literally frozen by the emotions slicing through him as he confronted the fact that Joy and this muscular young man were . . . close. Rationally, Gabe knew that he’d forfeited any rights to Joy years ago, when he’d gone out on assignment without knowing if she was pregnant. The irrational part of his mind—the primitive, deepest, strongest part of him—raged that she had no right to stand around on her porch at night with a brawny, nearly naked, potently masculine student.

  After a few minutes of rummaging around in the bin filled with odds and ends of clothing, Davy found his towel and trotted off into Joy’s cottage. Within seconds the sound of the shower filtered out into the back porch.

  “Does he live with you?” Gabe asked, his voice as coolly neutral as the moonlight pouring over the empty land.

  Ruthlessly Joy clamped down on her first impulse, which was to tell Gabe to go to hell and take his questions with him. But doing that would invite an argument. Right now her emotions were too wild, too reckless, for her to risk a fight.

  “No more than the rest of my graduate assistants,” she said.

  “The professor and students that play together stay together?” he asked sardonically.

  “Davy’s shower is plugged solid.” She glanced up at Gabe. Her eyes were like Lost River Cave’s deepest pools. Cold. “Why don’t you go use your caustic tongue on it?”

  “Joy—”

  “Dr. Anderson or Dr. Joyce. Take your pick.” Then, despite her effort not to speak, more words tumbled out. “No one calls me Joy anymore.”

  Gabe tried to bite back the angry words he wanted to say, but he wasn’t completely successful. He was desperate for sleep and cut to his soul by the contempt that seethed just beneath the neutral surface of Joy’s voice.

  He should have been prepared for the possibility that she’d still be at Lost River Cave.

  He wasn’t.

  “I can see why no one calls you Joy. You’ve turned into a sharp-tongued, flat-lipped woman who has about as much joy in her as a squeezed lemon.”

  His words cut her like razors, a pain more intense than any she’d known since he’d left her.

  “Thank you,” she said huskily, hating him, wanting to hurt him as badly as he’d once hurt her, as badly as he still was hurting her.

  “Don’t thank me—”

  “Oh, but I must,” she cut in, her voice vibrating with emotion. “You made me everything I am today.”

  For a few instants her eyes were no longer veiled. Gabe looked into their transparent depths—and for the second time that night felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach.

  He’d wondered many times what might happen if he saw Joy again. He’d imagined anger, laughter, shock, sensuality, tears, elation. He’d imagined every emotion but the one he saw staring out of her eyes right now.

  Hatred.

  Eight

  EMOTION SHOOK GABE, A FURY HE HADN’T FELT SINCE HE’D discovered that Joy had aborted their baby. He took a swift step forward and opened his mouth to tell her what he thought of a lying bitch who had pleaded with him to stay with her because she loved him so much, and then she got rid of his baby as soon as she found out he wasn’t rich.

  Joy stepped away from Gabe so quickly that
she stumbled, hitting her bruised arm against a shelf. A stifled cry tore from her throat. The room spun around her in a dark haze of pain. She would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her by her upper arms.

  “My arm,” she said raggedly.

  Instantly he shifted his grip to her waist. She sagged against him and fought past the nausea that had come on the heels of agony.

  “Joy, sweetheart,” he said against her hair, cradling her in his arms, rocking her gently against his chest. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She couldn’t answer. She just leaned dizzily against his chest for a few moments until the room stopped spinning. When she breathed in deeply, his scent went through her like a shock wave, dragging widening rings of memories in its wake.

  He’d made love to her so gently, so wildly, so perfectly. That was the way she had loved him, gentle and wild, everything she had to give.

  Then he’d walked away without a backward look, never calling, never writing, tearing out her heart and leaving her to bleed in silence.

  Weakly Joy pushed away from Gabe.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “You’re white as salt.”

  “Let go of me.”

  His hands hesitated for a moment before they relaxed. But he watched her carefully, ready to catch her if she looked dizzy again.

  “What happened to your arm?”

  “I tripped.”

  With that she turned away from him, reaching for her familiar routine, pulling it around her like darkness around a cave, concealing everything inside a perfect, timeless midnight. Her fingers plucked at the waistband of her long leggings. She had the cloth partway down over her hips before she realized what she was doing.

  She was accustomed to stripping down to her muddy underwear with anywhere from one to a dozen other people crowding around, jostling and cracking jokes about the state of their clothes and their aching muscles, making bets on whether the washer would quit on the first or third cycle. When Gabe had gone caving with her, it had been the same—no hesitation, no useless modesty, nothing but the camaraderie that was unique to cavers.

  It was different now.

  But to show that would be like announcing to Gabe that his mere presence disturbed her in ways that had nothing to do with hatred. Like his voice calling Joy, sweetheart. Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.

  Once she would have sold her soul to hear those words from his lips. That was years ago, centuries ago, when she was young and believed in life and love. Now she believed only in what she could touch—Lost River Cave’s unearthly beauty and Kati’s small arms wrapped around her in a big hug.

  With numb fingers Joy peeled off her muddy pants and went to work unzipping the equally damp, gritty pullover. She worked her right arm out without difficulty, but not the left. She couldn’t control a wince of pain.

  Instantly Gabe reached for her, wanting to help.

  “No.” She pushed away his hands with cold fingers, her voice as exhausted as her eyes.

  “Let me help you.” Then he added softly, “I won’t hurt you, sweetheart.”

  The words echoed in Joy’s mind, returning to her slightly changed, a voice from seven years in the past reassuring a shivering, demanding, passionate virgin. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you, sweetheart.

  She looked into Gabe’s pale green eyes, saw them darken, heard his sudden intake of breath, and knew that he was remembering the same words and the same wild afternoon when he and she had burned together as hotly as the sun.

  “No,” she repeated, and she met his eyes without flinching.

  “Joy—”

  “Don’t touch me.” Her voice was low, raw.

  The sound of Davy bumping into a piece of furniture in the living room and swearing roundly reminded Joy and Gabe that they weren’t alone. Moments later, wrapped in a blue bath towel that was as oversized as he was, Davy walked into the screened porch.

  “Arm stiffen up?” he asked, seeing that Joy wasn’t out of her wet clothes yet.

  She nodded.

  “Need some help?” Davy asked.

  “Please,” she said, turning toward Davy with obvious relief. “If you could just peel off the top layers, I can handle the rest.”

  With a feeling halfway between helplessness and anger, Gabe watched Davy’s big hands reach for Joy.

  “No point in you getting all muddy again,” Gabe said roughly, stepping between Joy and Davy. “Which arm hurts, Dr. Anderson?”

  Joy looked into her former lover’s hard green eyes and knew that she could let him undress her or she could start an argument that would end up telling Davy exactly why she didn’t want Gabriel Venture’s hands anywhere near her.

  “My left.” Joy’s voice was as expressionless as her face.

  “Will you be able to handle cooking dinner?” Davy asked, looking anxiously at her pale skin.

  “I’ll take care of it for her,” Gabe said.

  Davy heard the intensity beneath the simple words and looked uneasy.

  “Don’t worry,” Gabe added, forcing himself to smile easily at Davy. “I’ll take good care of her. Joy—Dr. Anderson—and I go back a long way. She was closer than my right hand when I did the first Planet Earth article on Lost River Cave. Couldn’t have done it without her.”

  “No shit—I mean, no kidding?” Davy whistled softly. “She never said a word to us about that, and your article on Lost River Cave is required reading for anyone who wants to get into that cave.”

  “Mr. Venture is making a mountain out of a molehill,” Joy said with forced casualness. “Many people helped him with that article.”

  “You’re too modest,” Gabe said dryly.

  Before she could answer, he was deftly removing her muddy pullover.

  “She sure is,” Davy said, opening the back door and letting it slam behind him. “Thanks for the help tonight, Dr. Joyce. I get three times as much done when you’re along.”

  “Any time.”

  Davy’s hopeful voice floated back from the darkness. “Tomorrow?”

  “We’ll both go with you,” Gabe answered.

  “Great!”

  Whatever Joy might have tried to say was muffled as he deftly eased her head through the opening of her pullover without disturbing her left arm, which was still covered in clinging, muddy cloth. Before she could brace herself for the pain that would inevitably come when she pulled her bruised arm free, she realized that it was already done.

  “There, that wasn’t too bad, was it?” Gabe’s voice was subtly challenging.

  “It didn’t hurt at all,” she said through stiff lips. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He dumped the outer layers on the floor and eyed the mesh underwear that was every bit as damp and almost as muddy as the rest had been. No zippers. No buttons. Just a stretchy fabric and a tight fit. “The next part won’t be so easy. In fact, unless you let me cut it off you, it will hurt like hell.”

  “Cut it? No way!” Her tone said she thought he was crazy. “For a broken arm, maybe. For a bruise, never.” With a grimace she bent at the waist and held both arms out over her head. “Do you know how much this high-tech gear costs?”

  His answer was lost in Joy’s gasp as he peeled off the undershirt in a single smooth motion, leaving her standing in the cool air wearing nothing more than the practical black cotton underwear she’d discovered was perfect for caving.

  In the instant before she turned away, Gabe saw the graceful curves of the woman who had haunted his dreams for thousands of nights. Like her eyes and her voice, her body was the same and yet different from his memories. The swell of breasts and waist and hips was still firm, still begging to be caressed by a man’s hands. Yet there was a difference. She was no longer a girl. Nothing of her body was unfinished, nothing was in transition. All past promises had been fulfilled. She was every inch a woman.

  And she couldn’t turn her back on him fast enough, couldn’t pull on a cotton shift quickly enough. She was ac
ting like he was no more than a rude stranger who had wandered in off the desert.

  It really pissed him off.

  “You can stuff the blushing maiden act. I’ve already seen what’s under the muddy bra and pants.”

  Joy’s only answer was a stiffening of her body that made him regret that he hadn’t waited until morning to meet “Dr. Anderson.” Jet lag and exhaustion had reduced his normal self-control to little more than impulse and apology. Yet worse than any physical weariness was something deeper, much more painful.

  After seven years all that remained of his haunting love affair with Joy was hatred.

  What did you expect, fool? She’s the one who flushed your child. Remember?

  Joy turned around in time to see the contempt on Gabe’s face. It confirmed the fear that had burned in her for seven years. He’d never cared for her at all, not really. For him she’d been just a passing amusement, an unsophisticated native of New Mexico’s desert boondocks.

  And easy, so easy, falling into his arms like sunlight.

  Yet was that any reason for him to hate her? The only crime she’d committed was being naive enough to fall in love with a man who was completely out of her league—the great Gabriel Venture.

  Joy didn’t realize that she’d spoken the last four words aloud until she heard the echoes of her own contempt and outrage quivering in the small porch.

  “What did you expect?” she asked.

  Before Gabe could answer, she smiled with a cynicism that surprised him.

  “No, don’t bother to tell me,” she said. “You expected the green little native to fall all over herself again on the way to your bed. April Fool, big shot. The little girl grew up.”

  “Little girl? Bullshit. You were twenty, just three years younger than me.”

  Joy didn’t answer. It was the truth. It just wasn’t a truth that she spent a lot of time remembering. Just as she didn’t like to remember how she’d begged him to take her when he’d hesitated.

  “I didn’t even know you were still at Lost River Cave,” Gabe continued, “so how the hell could I expect anything from you? As for being in my bed, when I want a female viper I’ll go out in the desert and get one.”