“Gabrielle,” he said again. “Gabrielle …” And then his lips came down on hers with fierce possession.
Chapter Nineteen
Drew knew he should let Gabrielle go, but he couldn’t. Not this way. Not with the tears she tried so desperately to hide glistening in her exquisite blue eyes.
“You don’t owe me anything,” she had said. But he did owe her. Because of her, he could feel again. True, he felt pain and loneliness as he hadn’t since he was a child. But he also felt joy, joy as he had never experienced it. The sun was brighter than it had ever been, the grass greener, the sky bluer. He reveled in the world around him in a new way. And, too, he was tasting of the richer things life had to offer—friendship, loyalty.…
And love. He knew what he felt was love. His heart was bursting with it, even crying with it, as he saw the tears glistening in Gabrielle’s eyes and knew he’d put them there. The tightness in his throat made it nearly impossible to breathe as he clasped her to him and, for the first time in his life, put his heart into a kiss.
He loved her. But he couldn’t yet speak the words locked inside him. So he tried to tell her without words, tried to say I love you with the touch of his fingertips on her cheek, her hair. With a caress of his lips against her eyes, her throat … her lips. With his arms, he sheltered her body, trying desperately and with his entire being to tell her I love you, Gabrielle, I love you.
But then, unforeseen, an insidious thought snaked through his mind. “I owe you my life.” Did she truly feel that she owed him something? Was that why she was here with him? Was that why she’d made love with him?
Drew’s arms loosened, and his lips left Gabrielle’s. He stepped back, taking her chin in his hand until she looked up at him. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “You never will.”
The clouds chose that moment to dim the moon, and the telltale blue eyes that often revealed so much were obscured in shadow.
“Don’t mistake gratitude for … for love,” he continued, his voice harsher than he had intended.
“Is that what you believe I’m doing?” she said, her voice cracking slightly.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I don’t know much about … good women.”
She touched his chest. His shirt was still unbuttoned, and her fingers lightly grazed his skin, sending tremors racing through him. His groin started aching again.
“I’ve been an actress—a performer—nearly all my life,” she said. “Most people consider women who make the stage a career to be loose—fallen women—whether we are or not.”
Drew winced, remembering that in his experience, actresses were usually fair game.
“You? A fallen woman?” he said, a finger going up to push back a wayward curl. “I don’t think so.”
Her smile penetrated the shadows, breaking through the misery on her face, and he thought about how striking she must be onstage. Her smile alone would captivate a crowd. She hadn’t smiled much recently, and he felt himself largely to blame.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, touching her cheek.
One of her hands went to her hair, to the short curls, in a self-conscious gesture.
“Don’t regret cutting your hair?” he said suddenly.
“I don’t,” she said. “Not really. I love the freedom. I only miss it because it reminded me of my mother’s hair. Mine was like hers.”
“How long was it?” he asked quietly.
“Nearly to my waist,” she said.
He tried to picture her with long ropes of dark hair, but that woman wouldn’t be his Gabrielle. His Gabrielle. When had such possessiveness ever been a part of him?
Never. Yet, suddenly, the very thought of someone else touching her hair, or any part of her, was pure torment.
“Do you miss the stage?” he asked, even as he fought the shocking urge to carry her away to some remote hideaway and keep her there forever.
She shook her head. “I thought I would, but without Papa and my mother …”
“You miss them very much, don’t you?” He remembered his own vague sorrow when his mother had died—not so much for what had been but for what he’d always hoped could be—and none at all at his father’s passing. But then the earl of Kinloch had not really been his father.
She nodded. “I never spent a day without them until my mother died a few years ago. And then, at least, my father was still there.”
Drew couldn’t even imagine her life, her love for her parents, the safety she must have known, that safety suddenly gone with a gunshot.
He wished he could give her that safety again. But he had no security to give, no pledge. No future. Only an empty title that was pure mockery to him. So, he simply held her, her head resting against his heart, and wondered about the price of keeping her there. The price to him. The price to her.
Gabrielle finally eased away from Drew, leaning back to look up at him. Shadows shielded his eyes from her, but she sensed his inner turmoil—his reluctance to leave her warring with his fear of staying or of getting any closer than they already had.
“I have to get back to Ha’penny,” she whispered.
“Aye, and I to the cattle,” he said. “Or Damien will ha’ more to fret about.”
“Do you really think anyone cares whether Damien frets?”
“Aye. I do,” Drew said quietly. “He’s trying bloody hard to live up to what he thinks Kirby wants. It’s not always easy to stand tall in another man’s shadow.”
She heard the concern in his voice.
“Kirby cares for Damien, as he does for Terry,” Drew said slowly. “And Damien cares for his uncle. The two simply don’t know how to talk to each other.”
It occurred to Gabrielle that Drew and Kirby had become friends because they were very much alike. Neither of them knew how to reveal their thoughts or feelings, and both feared any kind of intimacy. Yet each was capable of bone-deep loyalty and affection.
Still, Drew’s understanding for someone whose blanket animosity was clear to all touched her. Again, she was astonished by his quiet insight and his compassion for the very people he tried so hard to keep at arm’s length.
“You’re smiling,” Drew said, breaking into her reverie.
“At something Kirby said,” Gabrielle replied.
“What?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’m not sure you’d want to hear it.”
“Tell me.”
“He said you try so hard to mind your own business—and you fail so miserably every time.”
Drew scowled and muttered an oath.
She touched his face. “I like that in you. Your caring.”
“I don’t,” he said stubbornly, like a small boy.
“Aye, but you do care, and everyone knows it. You’re a fraud, Drew Cameron.”
“Talk about frauds,” he said with mock severity.
“I know,” she said. “I’m a terrible one. But at least I admit it.”
“Ah, Gabrielle. I wish I could reach up and hand you that moon and a fistful of stars, but I can’t. My hand would hold only air. I could pluck a coin from behind your ear, but that’s as far as my magic goes. I’ve never been good at anything but illusion, and it’s impossible to live for long on that.”
Not true, she wanted to cry out. He was good at everything he tried. Kirby himself had called him the best hand he had, and the rancher was a man who rarely paid compliments. And he would be good at trusting, too, if he decided to try—surely as good as he was at erecting fences between him and other people.
In an odd way, though, she loved him all the more that he was cautious. She’d heard declarations of love before that had been as meaningful, and as substantial, as a feather in the wind. When Drew Cameron finally admitted love, it would be forever. With all her heart, Gabrielle wanted to be the one to whom he made the declaration.
She took his hand. “We’d better get back,” she said.
“Or Kirby will send out a posse,” he agreed.
“Damien, at the very least.”
“Most likely Damien,” he said with a chuckle. “He’s probably stewing by now.”
Gabrielle nodded. She hurt for Drew, for his loneliness and lack of faith in his fellow man—and woman. But she was certain now that he loved her, and she thought he was coming closer to admitting it. A day? A month? Even a year?
She would wait however long it took.
The drive reached Caldwell two days later. Kirby stopped the herd three miles east of town and sent Drew and Gabrielle in for supplies.
He watched with a mixture of trepidation and amusement as Gabrielle donned her Gabe Lewis garb—a coat borrowed from one of the drovers—not as disreputable as her own had been but large enough to swallow her—and Hank’s battered hat drooping over her eyes.
As he’d expected, all of the hands had protested, saying they deserved a drink or two—or three—and a night on the town. But Kirby knew he couldn’t afford loose talk. He didn’t want anyone to know he was still alive, and he didn’t trust any of the hands not to let it slip. A few wrong words and a killer would know he had failed. He figured that only Drew and Gabrielle knew the stakes.
Hank volunteered to look after Ha’Penny, saying he’d raised a passel of younger brothers and sisters. After watching him with the baby, Gabrielle had finally agreed to leave the child in camp. Kirby wasn’t sure whether she had more faith in Hank or in her dog; he was only grateful that he’d finally convinced her to accompany Drew, and he watched in relief as the two of them pulled out in the hoodlum wagon.
He never liked to send a drover into a town alone, but in this case, he had ulterior motives. He had watched the Scotsman and Gabrielle return from the river a couple of nights earlier, had seen traces of dried tears on Gabrielle’s face and a hint of bleak despair on Drew’s. He’d thought of Laura, how he’d lost his chance to love and be loved, and he was damn well determined that the same thing wouldn’t happen to his friend and his old friend’s daughter.
He caught himself thinking of Laura more and more lately. Maybe if exposure of his past wasn’t so imminent—so likely—he might have tried to court her after all. Watching Gabrielle and Drew together, the way their gazes seldom strayed from each other, made him ache inside for what had never been and never could be.
He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot Gabrielle had prepared before leaving.
Damien, who had just ridden in, joined him. “The men are angry,” he said. “They want to go into town.”
“I know,” Kirby said wearily. “Tell them there will be a bonus at the end of the trail.”
“They’re not thinking about bonuses. They want a reason.”
“You also want a reason, Damien, don’t you?”
His nephew hesitated; then anger flickered in his eyes. “You confide in the Scotsman, don’t you? I know you think he saved your life, but Terry and I are kin, after all.”
“I don’t think Cameron saved my life,” Kirby said sharply. “I know it. And he damn well doesn’t want anything that’s yours, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“No,” Damien said stiffly. “It’s just … It used to be the four of us, dammit. You and Pa and Terry and me. Now it’s always you and Cameron.”
Kirby heard the hurt in Damien’s voice, and he wished he could ease it. But he and his brother had vowed years ago to say nothing about how they’d gotten the money to start the Circle K. Even Jon’s late wife, Sarah Elizabeth, had never known about the bank robbery. And he couldn’t confide in Damien without discussing it first with Jon.
More than that, although he loved Damien like a son, Kirby knew his nephew was still young and a little wild, and he knew all too well that liquor loosened tongues. He just plain didn’t trust Damien with his life. Not yet.
But he did trust Drew Cameron. He might not know the details of the Scotsman’s life, but he knew enough to recognize that, for a man so young, Drew Cameron had more life experience—and little of it good—than Damien ever would want to have. Drew knew how to keep secrets—his own and those entrusted to him by others.
But what was he going to do now, right this minute, about Damien?
In the end, he said only, “Scotty’s been a good friend. A good hand.”
“Better than Terry and me?”
“You’re foreman, Damien, not Scotty.”
“But you make all the decisions—like keeping Two-Bits on the drive.”
Kirby sighed. He’d seen Damien’s attempts to attract Gabrielle. The girl hadn’t rebuffed him as much as she’d simply been totally unaware of anyone but the Scotsman. “You know anyone else who can cook?” he pointed out.
“No, but I still don’t like it,” Damien said. “A woman has no place on a trail drive. And why was she here to begin with? You sure it doesn’t have anything to do with those ambushes?”
Kirby didn’t like the calculating look in Damien’s eyes, the suspicion fed by the boy’s jealousy of Drew.
He wished he could say more, but he couldn’t, not without putting a stick of dynamite in his volatile, if unwitting, nephew’s hands. “Yes, I’m sure,” he said simply. “Now, I’ll check on the watches. You get some food and sleep.”
Damien looked as if he wanted to protest, but he didn’t. Kirby headed for the remuda. Once the drive was over, he would try to repair his relationship with his nephews. If, he qualified, he was alive and free to do so.
Caldwell, Kansas, sat stoically in the blistering heat, a jumble of rickety buildings rising from the prairie.
Gabrielle strained forward on her seat, after weeks on the trail eager for a glimpse of civilization. She wondered whether the town had a theater or a restaurant. Especially a restaurant. She’d never been so tired of anything as she was of beans.
Drew was handling the team of mules. He’d been extraordinarily quiet on the two-hour drive into Caldwell, even though she’d peppered him with questions about Edinburgh and London. He’d been to so many places she’d only read about, and she was hungry to learn more about them—and about him.
His answers, however, had mostly been monosyllabic. His golden eyes had remained fixed on the horizon, and she’d wondered whether he missed those fine cities, whether he missed his homeland.
She pushed back a curl that had fallen alongside her cheek; her hair was growing out, and she had to tuck it under her hat. She longed for a few pins. She really longed for a dress, a fine dress that would make Drew’s eyes light up the way those of the men in her audiences had.
But she didn’t have much money with her, and she planned to use what little she did have on clothes for Ha’Penny. He still had only the deerskin shift his mother had dressed him in.
As they reached the road that ran through the center of town, she searched the signs fronting the wooden buildings. There was one saloon after another: Cowboy’s Rest, The Longhorn, The Maverick, Trail’s End. Then she saw a gunsmith’s, a blacksmith. Another gunsmith.
Drew stopped at a dry-goods store and turned to her. “You have a list?”
She nodded. She’d taken inventory and catalogued everything they would need to reach Abilene. She knew Kirby wanted to avoid towns from now on.
Drew climbed from the wagon seat and turned to offer her his hand. Then he stopped, his hand half-raised, a wry smile on his face. Gabrielle grinned back. In the past few days, they’d almost forgotten their roles as cowhand and louse.
She swaggered into the store behind Drew, effecting the strut she’d seen practiced by young boys playing at being men. A heavyset clerk met them inside, visibly judging their clothes and weighing their ability to pay. He frowned and seemed on the edge of turning his back when he noticed the wagon outside.
“Settlers?” he asked.
Drew shook his head. “We’re with a cattle drive stopped a few miles east of town. We need supplies.” He handed Gabrielle’s list to the storekeeper as she looked around.
Two men standing at the counter muttered angrily. “Where’d you say you left them cattle
, mister?” one asked.
“East,” Drew replied calmly.
“My farm’s that way,” the other man said. “Last herd that went through trampled my crops. We’re damned tired of you Texans riding roughshod over our land.”
“You tell me where your farm is,” Drew said politely, “and we’ll be sure to stay clear of it. We don’t want any trouble.”
“Who’s bossing the outfit?” asked the first farmer, his jaw set at a belligerent angle.
Drew hesitated fractionally, and Gabrielle held her breath. They had already discussed the question with Kirby when he’d given Drew the cash for their purchases, and they’d agreed on the best response. Still, she was certain Drew was finding it hard to lie.
“Damien Kingsley,” came Drew’s reply, uttered in perfectly normal tones.
Gabrielle breathed a little easier.
“Heard of them Kingsleys,” the second farmer said. “Nothing good, either.”
He was obviously spoiling for a fight, and Gabrielle watched the scene unfold with apprehension.
But Drew merely shrugged, saying, “He’s no better or worse than most.”
“You got cash money?” the storekeeper asked.
“Aye, I do.”
“You ain’t no Texan,” the first farmer observed.
“Astute of you to notice,” Drew said, straight-faced, and Gabrielle had to pretend to wipe her nose with her hand to hide a grin.
“What did you call me?” The man stepped forward, his face mottled with anger.
“I said you were observant,” Drew replied seriously. “And now we would like to get our goods and be on our way.”
The storekeeper looked at his other customers and shrugged. “Let me see your money first.”
Drew reached into his shirt pocket and took out a roll of bills. “Will this be sufficient, do you think?”
The storekeeper nodded, took the list from his hand, and looked it over. “You’ll have to get them oats at the feed store, next to the livery,” he said as he started to search his shelves for the other supplies. The two farmers headed for the door without further comment.
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