When he looked up he saw Fish watching him with speculation in his shrewd eyes.
Gabe turned away and went to Joy’s darkened cottage to wait for her. Through the window he saw Susan’s car drive out into the desert, leaving the cottages behind. Beneath the full moon Joy crossed the dusty yard toward the cottage. Her hair shifted and shimmered with subdued light, making her look unreal, ethereal, as impossible as the Dreamer singing among transparent pools.
The sight of Joy coming to him through the moon-silvered darkness made him ache with emotions he couldn’t name, except one. Passion. He’d always felt that with Joy.
As the screen door snapped shut behind her, he pulled her into his arms. His voice was husky when he spoke, and his caresses had a lifetime of hunger burning in them. Tonight he wanted to seduce more from her than physical hunger. He wanted the words that he heard in his dreams and memories.
I love you, Gabe.
Then he could ask to share her life. Then he would know that she wanted him as well as a father for her daughter.
He bent and kissed Joy hotly, sweetly.
“I miss Kati when she’s gone,” he said, “but I sure as hell don’t miss sleeping alone.”
Joy smiled and pulled him closer.
“I love falling asleep with you curled in my arms,” he said, “and waking up to feel your breath on my skin. I love looking at you, talking to you, exploring with you. Ah, God,” he said huskily, lowering his mouth to her neck, “how I love exploring you. You’re different each time. Like the Voices and the Dreamer singing in my blood, in my soul.”
She felt the passion beating in Gabe’s veins, an urgency that made his hands tremble when he began to undress her. She sensed there was something more than simple desire driving him. This was deeper, wilder.
Then she understood that he was feeling time rushing toward them, the future coming down on them like eternity, bringing the end of passion and the beginning of haunted dreams. It was all she could do not to cry out her protest aloud. She’d believed she was giving Gabe no more than her body and her professional knowledge.
Now she wasn’t sure.
Don’t be stupid, she told herself savagely. Sex and a caving partner is all I can afford. It’s all I’ll get. It’s all I want.
She couldn’t go through what she had seven years ago. She simply wouldn’t. Memories of Gabe were all she could afford emotionally. Not love.
So she would see that the memories were as perfect as the Dreamer veiled in water, singing within stone.
With a sigh that was Gabriel’s name, Joy threaded her fingers into his thick, soft hair and held his mouth against the pulse racing at the base of her throat. His lips moved down, retracing the path of his fingers as he brushed aside her clothes, baring her to the silver moonlight.
The tip of her breast was another shade of velvet darkness crowning soft, luminous flesh. When his tongue touched her, she tightened into a shining peak that tempted his tongue again and again.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and his breath caressed the taut, hungry nipples he’d called from her softness.
She watched the dark planes of his face and the glistening tip of his tongue caressing her. “No, you’re the beautiful one.”
Smiling, he shook his head, and with every movement his lips sipped at her breasts.
Her finger traced his dark eyebrows, his lean cheeks, his sensual lips, and finally the hot and teasing tongue that was making her shiver with anticipation.
“You touch me so perfectly,” she said.
“Do I?” His teeth closed with exquisite care over one nipple.
Heat uncurled low in her body, a pulsing rush of longing that was echoed in her low moan. “Yes.”
She gasped as his hand slipped inside her unfastened jeans to discover her hot, layered softness.
“I want you inside me,” she said urgently. “Don’t tease me anymore. I want—”
Her words scattered in a burst of sensation as he caressed her intimately, deeply, melting even her bones. Dizzy, her breath ragged, she clung to him and moved her hips against him, telling him without words how much she wanted him to be a part of her.
She’d done the same thing seven years ago.
He’d responded in the same way then as he did now, a groan of discovery and need.
Her hips moved intimately, knowingly, promising both a welcome and a release for the hunger stretching rigidly beneath his jeans. Her hand slid inside the fly, found the hard rise of his need, traced it, and rubbed over it with a hot, searching intent that equaled his exploration of her softness.
He saw the passion tightening her face, making her eyes a midnight darkness, flushing her lips and her breasts with heat. With a rough sound of need he took her mouth, holding her straining hips against him with one hand and with the other caressing her until her response pulsed over him, a hot promise of the deeper union to come.
With a shudder, he forced himself to step back from Joy.
“Gabe?”
“If I touch you now, I’ll take you now,” he said hoarsely. “It’s always been like that. You fill me to overflowing and yet I can’t get enough of you.”
She swayed toward him and whispered against his lips, “It’s like that for me. Never enough. Take me. Let me take you. Fill me to overflowing and then hold me, hold me hard. Give me enough memories for a lifetime.”
A chill went through him. She doesn’t want me in any lasting way. She just wants sex and memories.
Yet he was helpless to do anything except give them to her in the hope that this time, this time, she would recognize his love.
And return it.
“Yes,” he said thickly.
His arms closed around Joy, lifting her. He carried her to her single bed and lowered her into the shaft of silver light that gleamed on the cover. With slow, caressing motions they undressed each other. When they both wore only moonlight, when she lay open and hungry for him, he simply looked at her.
She started to speak but the sight of his tight, almost tormented expression froze the words in her throat. He’d looked at her like that seven years ago, just before they made love for the first time.
Is this the last time? Is that why he looks like a man being torn apart?
“Gabriel, what—”
She abandoned words as he took the invitation of her body and pressed deep inside her. The sensation of fullness was so exquisite that she shivered and made tiny sounds at the back of her throat.
It was the same for him, tightly sheathed in her sleek body, able only to make a deep sound of pleasure. He wanted to burst with the hot perfection of their joining, but he knew that even more levels of ecstasy waited to be explored.
He moved slowly, powerfully, and she was with him, moving as he did. He saw the first level of pleasure break over her, felt the ripples hot and sweet around him, and arched hard against her, increasing the intensity of her climax even as he withheld his own.
When Joy no longer cried out and clung to him fiercely, Gabe moved again, deeply, calling to her with words as well as the potent sensual pressure of his body deep in hers. Her eyes were half opened, dazed with the aftershocks of ecstasy still coursing through her. At each sliding caress of his potent flesh, desire shot hotly through her, tightening her around him.
He took her mouth as completely as he had taken the rest of her sultry softness. He incited her with teeth and tongue, movements and words that made her arch wildly against him.
Then her hand slid down the gleaming muscles of his back and buttocks, seeking the tight male flesh, caressing him until he could go no higher.
“No,” he said hoarsely, biting her lips, burying himself deeply in her straining softness. “Don’t let me leave you behind. Come with me, sweetheart. Come with me.”
The words and caresses burst within her even as he did—and she was with him, ecstasy racing wildly through their joined bodies until nothing existed, neither memories nor dreams nor even time itself. Moonligh
t lay softly over them, making their joined bodies shimmer like the Dreamer bathed in silver water.
Gabe kissed Joy’s forehead and cheeks, her lips and the curve of her throat, her sweet-smelling hair and the quivering lashes veiling her eyes. And he waited to hear the words she’d once given him.
He heard murmurs of pleasure and contentment.
“Joy, sweetheart, I—”
“You’re leaving,” she cut in swiftly, eyes still closed. “Yes. I know. I’ve always known.”
“That’s not—”
She opened her eyes and kept talking. “I’ll make it right with Kati. You trust me to do that, don’t you?”
He looked into her eyes; they were desperate and wary at once. “I love Kati. She’ll hear it from both of us.”
“She already knows.”
A corner of his mouth turned down in a sad smile. “Feminine intuition, huh?”
Joy made a choked sound that could have been agreement. “When are you leaving?”
“Sweetheart—”
“When.”
“I’m supposed to leave tomorrow but I’m trying to stay until the cave closes.”
His words poured over Joy like cold, black water, drowning out everything else.
“I’ll come back to you as soon as I can. Give me a chance, Joy. I want to be part of your life, not just your memories.”
Tomorrow.
She felt like she had seven years ago, when she’d pleaded with him to stay for just another day, an hour, a minute, anything. For a wild instant she thought that she was pleading still, that time had turned around on itself, making a full circle of anguish and regret, destroying her.
No. Not this time. This time he won’t destroy me. This time I don’t love him.
I can’t.
Fear froze her, driving every bit of heat out of her body. She looked desperately for a place to hide, a place to pull darkness around her, a place where she would never again know the threat of light. It was the past repeating itself, time eating itself, eating her.
Seven years ago all over again. Only this time she wasn’t pregnant, and she desperately wanted to be.
Tomorrow.
It wasn’t quite the past after all.
It was worse.
Gently Gabe turned Joy’s face toward him. “Did you hear me, sweetheart?”
His words ended in a hoarse sound as he saw her face. There was nothing of joy there, no light, no laughter, no hope.
“I won’t be gone long,” he said quickly. “It won’t be the Orinoco all over again. I swear it.”
She heard nothing beyond the fact of his leaving and her own echoing emptiness. She gave herself to tears as passionately as she had given herself to him and blurted, “But I’m not pregnant.”
The words ran together, almost strangled by her sobs as anger and despair overwhelmed her.
For an instant Gabe was frozen, watching Joy shudder with her wild grief—and then elation shook him. She was pregnant! He pulled her fiercely against his body. She didn’t protect herself after all. She gave herself to me as completely this time as she did seven years ago.
She must love me, even though she won’t admit it.
“Sweetheart, that’s wonderful.” He buried his face in the curve of her neck. “It’s all right, love,” he said fiercely. “I’ll stay with you, hold you, care for you. I love you so much. Our baby will be born into my hands, not some stranger’s. I won’t leave you alone again.”
A few of Gabe’s words penetrated Joy’s sobs, enough so that she knew he’d misunderstood her words. She lifted her head and spoke as clearly as she could between broken breaths.
“I’m not pregnant and I want to be. I don’t want Kati to be a lonely-only all her life and having your b-baby was the perfect solution, just the kind of relationship for you. No strings, total freedom to go wherever you want whenever the chance came. But it came too soon. You’re leaving and I’m not pregnant.”
The words went into his soul like a steel piton into stone, anchoring him forever to pain and betrayal. “That’s why you slept with me? To get another baby? You didn’t forgive me after all, did you—much less love me. Christ, what a fool I’ve been. I loved you. I would have given up everything to stay with you, and all you wanted was a ready source of sperm.”
Joy couldn’t hear anything except the sound of her own crying, but even through her tears she could see betrayal set its bleak stamp on Gabe’s features.
He rolled out of bed with a swift, powerful movement and began dressing in a silence that seethed with fury. Like his mind. Seething.
She used me like a goddamned stud.
Fully dressed, he turned at the bedroom door and raked her naked body with a stranger’s glance. “If you’ve made a mistake and you’re pregnant, give my brother a call. You two can talk about old times. Then you can talk with my lawyer about financial support and visitation rights for both my children.”
Seconds later the front door slammed.
Gabe went to his cabin just long enough to throw his notes and a change of clothes into his suitcase. The rest could be forwarded to wherever he went next—Tibet or Timbuktu, it was all the same.
He dumped everything in the Explorer and scattered sand and gravel in a wild rooster tail as he accelerated out of Cottonwood Wells. The engine sounds rose in a series of screams while he slammed through the gears as though his life depended on outrunning the past, the present, the future.
Himself.
But he couldn’t go fast enough. Wherever the road turned he was already there, waiting for himself.
Fool.
Thirty-two
LONG AFTER THE SOUND OF GABE’S VEHICLE FADED INTO deep silence, Joy lay motionless in the bed. She felt like she was sinking endlessly, helplessly through time, layers of loss and regret closing over her until she couldn’t breathe.
She hadn’t felt like this in years—used up, spent, unable even to cry. Yet at the same time her body seethed to be free, to move, to do something besides lie here waiting for the sound of a car coming back over the desert toward her, Gabe’s beloved arms closing around her, his voice telling her that he would never leave her again.
But he would.
He had.
As she’d done years ago, she dragged herself out of bed and stood beneath the stinging needles of a cold shower. She dressed mechanically, pulling on layer after layer of caving gear, turning to the only comfort she knew, Lost River Cave’s unearthly beauty.
Silently she closed the back door of the cottage behind her.
“Going caving?” Fish asked, his voice casual, his eyes penetrating.
Joy was too intent on her own needs even to be startled by Fish’s unexpected appearance.
“Yes,” she said.
It was a stranger’s voice, remote and lifeless. She didn’t care enough to change the tone. The stranger was also herself, a self she thought had died seven years ago.
“Was that Gabe tearing out of camp?” Fish asked.
“Yes.”
With a swift movement he plucked the Jeep keys from her hand. His shrill whistle split the night.
“Yo, Davy! Shag your butt out here. We’re going caving.”
Davy appeared in the door of his cabin, his face flushed. Maggie was right behind him, looking breathless. “Dr. Joyce said we weren’t—”
“Now,” Fish snarled.
“Well, shit. Gimme a minute.” The door slammed.
“No, it’s not necessary for—” Joy began.
“I’ll meet you right here in five minutes,” Fish cut in. He hoisted her into the Jeep. “Now you just sit there before you fall on your face.”
With that he headed for the cabin where he stored his caving gear. The Jeep keys left with him.
She sat and tried not to think. It was a trick she’d per-fected seven years ago. Or thought she had. Gabe’s angry, hurting face haunted her. Even with her eyes closed she still saw him.
Davy and Fish arrived at Jeep at the same
time.
“All right, I’m here,” Davy said. “Now what’s the flaming . . .” His words died as he saw Joy’s face. He looked at Fish.
Fish shook his head and jerked a thumb toward the backseat.
Davy wasn’t entirely dense. He looked at Fish’s grim face and Joy’s pallor and decided that shutting his mouth was a really good idea right now.
In silence the three of them drove over the rough road to the parking place. Fish led the way to the entrance of Lost River Cave. Joy came second. Davy brought up the rear and wondered—silently—what the hell was going on.
“I’m belaying you tonight, Dr. Anderson,” Fish said, settling into the anchor sling.
She didn’t argue. She simply snapped herself to the rope and let herself down into the cave’s seamless, welcoming embrace. She went quickly, automatically through the routine of rappelling. Or almost all of it. Once she got to the bottom, she set off into the cave without waiting for a partner to join her.
“Off rope.”
Her words were so faint they almost didn’t reach the top. Davy heard and reached for the slack rope.
“Nope,” Fish said as he released himself from anchor position. “I’m going down. You’re staying up here to belay Gabe.”
“Huh? When is he getting here?”
“Maybe never,” Fish said, “but it’d be a damn shame to lose him to an accident if he came back to her. Never met two more headstrong, stubborn, proud sons of bitches in my life.”
“All right, what the hell is going on?” Davy asked as he settled in to belay Fish. “Why should I wait around for Gabe if you don’t even know if he’s coming in the first place? And why does Dr. Joyce look like death warmed over?”
“Gabe left her again.”
“Again?”
“He’s Kati’s father.”
With that Fish dropped swiftly into the cave. He knew Joy wouldn’t be waiting around at the bottom for anyone. He would have to move fast to catch up with her.
Even though he hurried, Joy retreated in front of him in a ghostly aura of light, pausing only to be belayed down the steep slide leading to Gotcha. Neither of them said a word as they went deeper and deeper into the cave.
This Time Love Page 27
