A wound he’d helped to inflict and had done nothing to soothe.
A wound that had now, too late, become his.
If only . . . began the familiar thought.
If nothing, fool, came the equally familiar response. Time only runs one way.
Tired of his thoughts, Gabe walked through Joy’s cottage to the back porch, opened the door of the washing machine, and pulled out a rope. He looked at it critically before deciding that it would benefit from another rinse and a second dose of fabric softener.
When the rope was awash again, he checked the clothesline to see if anything had come off in the desert’s playful wind. Nothing had.
After that there were no more excuses to delay going to the cottage next door and getting some scrubbing done. The fact that he had to haul water in a bucket because the plumbing was dead didn’t excuse sloppy housekeeping.
On the other hand there wasn’t much reason to straighten out a sleeping bag that only he would see and knock mud off boots that would only get muddy again in a few hours. Now, if he was going to be sharing his sleeping bag . . .
With a muttered word Gabe reeled in his thoughts. It was bad enough to have Joy haunt his dreams as relentlessly as water haunted the Voices. If he allowed her into his waking thoughts, he would walk around in a permanent state of sexual arousal.
Which was pretty much how he felt anyway.
The more he was with Joy, the more his memories welled up, overflowing the barriers of his will, filling him with hunger.
He could remember all too vividly the contrast of her pale hands against the dark hair of his body, the pleasure of her touch so great that it was nearly agony, the incredible feeling when she caressed him as intimately as he caressed her, the soft heat of her lips and mouth teasing him, and the sleek fire of locking himself within her.
The worst of it was that he knew she was remembering too, and the memories were a fire burning beneath her calm surface. He could see it in her eyes, in her expression, in the fact that she avoided touching him in even the most casual way. He’d told himself that it was hatred that made her pull away from him.
Then he’d found himself doing the same thing, drawing back rather than touching her, because if he touched her once he didn’t think he could stop. She filled his dreams the way whispers filled the Voices, completely, irrevocably, part of the very fabric of reality itself.
I know why she’s drawing back, but why am I?
Gabe had asked himself that question many times before. Usually a whisper of fear answered him, a clenching in his gut that warned of danger.
This time what he felt was anticipation, not apprehension.
She might not like me worth a damn, but she wants me. I want her. We’re both adults in a way we weren’t seven years ago. There’s no reason to pull back.
And some excellent reasons to go forward.
He needed to feel the incredible satisfaction of her response to him, to hear again her wild cries as he brought ecstasy to her. He would let her set the pace of talking about the past, but he would no longer allow her to slide away from the physical need they both felt. The next time she looked up at a man’s naked shoulders, it would be Gabe bending over her, not Davy Graham.
Whistling softly to himself, Gabe went to Joy’s living room and looked out over the sun-drenched brilliance of the unpaved driveway that joined the ramshackle cottages of Cottonwood Wells to the rest of the world. A car had just pulled up in a whirl of dust in front of Joy’s cottage. She was standing on the front steps, laughing, her face alive with pleasure.
It was a face out of Gabe’s dreams, a happiness that he hadn’t seen in her since he’d come back to Lost River Cave. He felt a slicing instant of envy for the person who was able to transform the cool, contained Dr. Anderson into the laughing Joy of his memories.
Two children climbed out of the car and ran toward Joy’s cottage. The first girl was dark-haired, quick, unremarkable.
The second girl sent the ceiling of reality crashing down around Gabe, changing everything in one explosive instant.
He made the hoarse, harsh sound of a man who had been hit from behind. He felt paralyzed. He forced himself to take a deep breath, to control his wild thoughts, to look rationally at the little girl who was taking the front steps two at a time despite her short legs.
Red hair. Slanting eyes. High cheekbones. Triangular chin. Dimple on the left side. A way of looking over her shoulder with her right hand on her hip.
He knew her.
Stunned, he watched the girl romp up onto the open front porch and call gaily over her shoulder to her friend.
The closer the redheaded girl got, the more certain he was. He didn’t know her name, but he had a picture that looked just like her, a photo more than a half-century old, a snapshot of his mother celebrating her seventh birthday with a cocker spaniel panting at her feet and a new doll under her arm.
The driver of the car called out, breaking Gabe’s trance.
“Laura! Get back here, honey. You promised to help me with dinner, remember?”
The dark-haired child stopped, pouted, and turned to go back to the car.
The redhead skidded to a stop and turned to follow. Joy stopped the child’s headlong rush with a few words. “Kati, say goodbye and then help me bring in your stuff.”
“Aw, Mom, I—”
“Kati.” It was all Joy said.
It was enough.
Kati raced back, stood on tiptoe at the driver’s side of the car, kissed the woman who was driving, and grabbed a sleeping bag and a ratty stuffed animal. Overflowing with energy, Kati danced back around the car toward Joy.
“Coming, Mom. See?”
Motionless, feeling like he was in the center of a cyclone, Gabe could only watch while reality took new shape around him.
Joy had loved him.
She had loved him enough to bear his child with no one to help her, no one to advise her, no one to comfort her, no one to share the burdens and the rewards and the responsibility of raising a child.
She’d loved him more than he had believed possible, more than he’d deserved.
And then she’d hated him enough to tell him that she’d an abortion.
She’d hated him enough to raise his child in silence, telling him nothing, not even that his daughter was alive. Love might have dulled with time, but hatred hadn’t.
Even when they worked alone in the cave, Joy hadn’t given a single hint of his daughter’s existence.
If we talk about the past, Gabe, it won’t work.
Joy’s words came from the violent darkness of his emotions, whispers that had new meaning.
Hatred.
She hated him more than he believed possible, more than any man deserved. It was a miracle she hadn’t dropped him down one of Lost River Cave’s deepest pits and tossed the rope in after him.
It would be a miracle if he didn’t do the same to her.
Sixteen
THE FRONT SCREEN SLAMMED AND THE LITTLE GIRL RACED into the house. She skidded to a stop as soon as she saw Gabe standing motionless in the living room.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He searched Kati’s face with a hunger he wasn’t aware of, an intensity born of years of rage and grief. Nothing he saw made him believe that his first impression was wrong. Kati was the image of his mother all those lost years ago. The eyes were gray rather than green, but the rest was like seeing a picture come to life.
He sat on his heels to bring himself closer to eye level with the little red-haired miracle.
“I’m Gabriel Venture.” His voice was rich with emotions held in check. “My friends call me Gabe. Would you like to?”
“Sure,” she said easily. Arms full, she trotted past him toward a small closed room that was down a short hall off the main room. “I’m Kati. Are you a caver?”
He closed his eyes, caught by too many emotions to trust himself to speak.
Kati doesn’t know her father’s name.
>
“I’m a writer,” he managed finally.
She opened the door and disappeared in the tiny room. “Oh, you’re the one Mommy told me about.”
“What did she tell you?”
His voice was too sharp, too demanding, but he could no more control it than he could the adrenaline that had slammed through his veins when the ceiling of reality caved in and he recognized his own daughter dancing toward him through the rubble.
Kati ran back to the main room and grabbed a sock that had jumped out of her armload of overnight gear.
“You’re gonna write about the cave and then maybe we can come back here someday,” she said, throwing the sock into the small room and shutting the door behind her.
“Back?” He held his voice carefully, as if it was too fragile to be trusted. “Are you going somewhere?”
Kati shrugged with a maturity older than her years. “Sure. When the cave closes, Mommy’s got to get a job somewhere or we won’t have any money.”
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He didn’t know what to say. Joy hadn’t mentioned anything about what would happen after the grant ran out, so he’d assumed she would be staying on at the university.
To assume makes an ass out of you and me, he told himself sardonically. Again.
When it comes to Joy, all assumptions are wrong.
But then it’s goddamn easy to be wrong when you’re blindfolded and turned loose to stumble through a minefield.
Anger curled through Gabe, hot and eager. Before he could ask any more questions, the car out in front of the cottage honked twice and drove away in a wash of dust.
Kati ran past Gabe to the back porch. The screen door slammed and the girl’s high, excited voice rang out.
“Gravy-bear, I’m back! Catch me!”
Gabe got to the kitchen window just in time to see Kati throw herself into Davy’s arms. Laughing, shrieking, she was lifted and whirled over his head in a game that was obviously familiar and much enjoyed by both of them. Maggie stood at the sidelines, laughing as hard as Kati and calling instructions on dive-bombing with a live bomb.
Joy walked into the kitchen, expecting it to be empty. The house rules were simple: everyone shared the one working shower and no one hung around afterward except Joy.
But there was Gabe, leaning against her kitchen counter, staring out of the window with hunger in his eyes, in his face, in the very tension of his body.
She glanced outside. At first she thought it was Maggie that had called such depth of feeling out of Gabe. With that thought came a tearing emotion that Joy was forced to acknowledge as jealousy even while she told herself that her reaction was totally irrational. She had no hold on Gabe.
More important, she didn’t want one.
He turned when she thumped a bag of groceries on the counter. She saw the fury in his eyes.
“Tell me, Dr. Smith-Anderson,” he said, giving a sardonic emphasis to Joy’s maiden name, “was yours a long marriage?”
In that instant she knew that somehow he’d discovered that Kati was his child. A storm of emotions swept through her—relief and anger and fear.
And curiosity.
She was the only living person who knew the truth of Kati’s parentage. She didn’t understand how he could have known so quickly. Kati didn’t look anything like her father. She was fair where Gabe was dark. Her eyes were gray rather than green. She had a dimple and he had none. Her hair was red and she had golden freckles where Gabe tanned darkly, smoothly.
Kati didn’t resemble her father at all, except in subtle ways that tore at Joy’s heart at odd moments: Kati’s wide-ranging curiosity, her physical courage, the way she had of looking over her shoulder with her hand on one hip and one eyebrow half-raised.
“No,” Joy said, her voice husky.
“No what?” Then, in a low voice that vibrated with warning, Gabe said, “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“Like hell you haven’t. Who is Kati’s father?”
“No marriage. No father.” Joy’s voice was under control again, as cold as Gabe’s was hot.
“That’s not what I meant and you damn well know it!”
“Do I?” Carefully she began putting away the groceries that Susan had picked up for the camp. “Then what did you mean?”
“Kati’s my daughter.”
Joy shrugged. “Biologically, yes. In any meaningful way, no.”
“Meaningful? Bullshit! It’s damned hard to have a meaningful relationship with a child I thought you’d flushed as soon as you found out I wouldn’t be supporting you.”
It was Joy’s turn to be shocked and furious. “What are you talking about? I never asked for a penny from—”
“I’m talking about abortion,” he cut in. “I’m talking about a lying little bitch who told my brother she’d an abortion, then went and had my baby and never told me about it. For six years I thought my baby was dead—but she was alive and growing and I didn’t even suspect it. Sweet Jesus Christ, I didn’t know you had that much hate in you.”
Joy felt the searing pleasure of anger sliding beyond her control. She didn’t even try to call it back. A vicious sweep of her hand scattered groceries across the counter.
“You didn’t know a goddamn thing about me except that I was hot for you,” she said. “All you cared about was a sweaty time in the backseat and no strings attached. I gave you just what you wanted, everything you asked for. Don’t come whining to me if you don’t like what you got. I paid the price of your precious freedom, not you.”
“You didn’t even tell Kati about me.” His voice was controlled, savage, like a whip curling out, hungry for flesh to tear.
Joy’s voice was the same. “What should I have told her? That her dear daddy didn’t even want her to be born? That he gave me $3,744 for an abortion?” For an instant her voice cracked. “I wanted—oh, God, how much I wanted!—to tell you to take that blood money and shove it right up. But I couldn’t. It would pay for vitamins and doctors and hospital costs. So I took the money and told your messenger he could tell you to go to hell, I was doing what was best for me, not for him.”
Gabe remembered his brother’s relayed message, so like Joy’s—and the conclusion so opposite: I’m doing what’s best for me and to hell with your brother.
Your new Mexican cutie took the $3,744 and had an abortion.
“So what should I have told Kati, sweetheart?” Joy asked acidly. “That the son of a bitch who was her daddy never even bothered to write and find out whether it was a boy or girl?”
Gabe made a husky sound as he realized the extent of the broken communications. And the cost.
His shoulder muscles bunched as his fist crashed onto the counter with enough force to make dishes in the cupboard leap. In the charged silence the sound was like an explosion.
“You never wrote to me about money or anything else,” he said finally, his voice flat.
“Where would I have sent the letter—to Mr. Soon-to-Be-Famous Gabriel Venture, care of the Orinoco River?”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed to jade slits. “Dan had my address.”
“Your darling brother wouldn’t give it to me. He told me what I saw was what I got, that I should take the check and forget about you and your money.” Her smile was like a knife sliding out of a sheath. “It was good advice. I took it.”
The gray blaze of Joy’s eyes told Gabe more than her words. She was telling the truth. She’d been telling the truth seven years ago. She’d wanted him, not his supposed wealth.
“Christ Jesus, what a mess,” Gabe said in a low voice, thinking of how hard it must have been for Joy with no parents, no money, nothing, not even a hope that he would come back. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? That I didn’t have the abortion?”
“You know I didn’t want—” he began furiously.
But she was still talking, years of rage honing her voice until it was as cutting as her smile had been. “You made your c
hoice, Mr. World Traveler. You seduced a twenty-year-old virgin who was dumb enough to fall in love with you. You knew when you left that I might be pregnant, and you left anyway. But before you left you made arrangements for me to have an abortion, just in case I might need one. Any rights you might have had to Kati ended that instant. You’re not her father. You’re nothing.”
“That’s bullshit, sweetheart. I didn’t want you to have an abortion. I left money so if you were pregnant you’d have something to pay the bills until I could send you more. When I found out that you’d flushed my baby I wanted to—”
Abruptly Gabe realized that his fists were clenched so hard that his knuckles were white. Rage was a bitter taste in his mouth, a wild flush across his cheeks. He took a deep, shaking breath, appalled at the depth of his fury. It had lived within him for six years, eating away at him in unexpected ways—and then it had exploded.
Leaving him empty.
“It was eleven months before I got Dan’s letter telling me about you and the money and the abortion he thought you’d had,” Gabe said hoarsely. “After that, there wasn’t much point in writing to ask you about the sex of our baby, was there?”
She saw through the aftermath of his rage to the weary exhaustion beneath, and felt her own fury slipping away. He hadn’t wanted her to have an abortion. He hadn’t wanted to kill the only thing she had left to remind her of how it had felt to be alive and in love and at peace within his arms.
He hadn’t wanted to destroy her.
But he hadn’t wanted to stay with her either.
When Joy spoke, her voice was as hollow and husky as his. “Let’s be honest with ourselves this time around. Neither of us wanted an abortion. Neither of us was prepared for a child. You chose your course. I chose mine.”
“I didn’t know you were pregnant,” he said fiercely, pulling Joy into his arms. “Sweetheart,” he whispered against her hair, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, “I didn’t know.”
He kissed Joy with consuming tenderness, his lips trembling as they brushed over hers, his whole body quivering when he felt her hands frame his face. Then he lifted his head and her sad smile sliced through him, telling him that he was only beginning to measure what he’d lost, what he would yet lose.
This Time Love Page 15
