As they had the previous year, the Stones had planned to have their Christmas meal with the Gentrys and Caleb’s former in-laws, the Emersons. “Why don’t I stay here with Gabe and you and Danny go to Abby and Caleb’s?”
“Absolutely not!” Edward told her. “You and Danny go, and I’ll stay here with Gabe. You can bring me back a plate.”
“It will be stone cold in this weather,” she argued.
“Then we’ll warm it up in the oven. Really, Rachel, you go. It’s a special day for Danny, and it’s seldom you get much uninterrupted time with him. Besides, it will give you the opportunity to check on Abby and the baby.”
He had a point. Rachel put the first two eggs onto a plate and set it in front of him. The hot biscuits and a bowl of fresh-churned butter were placed on the table next to a platter of bacon. She looked from the determination in her father’s eyes to the hopeful expression in Danny’s. “If you’re sure...” she said. “We’ll be gone most of the day.”
“I’m sure. Gabe is stable, and I think I can handle anything that comes up during that short time. Besides—” he shot a smile toward Danny “—I can read that new book on Italy you’re giving me for Christmas.”
“Edward Stone!” Rachel cried, her eyes widening in disbelief. “How do you know you got a book about Italy?”
Edward’s eyes twinkled. “Never tell an eight-year-old anything you don’t want repeated.”
Rachel pinned her son with a familiar, narrow-eyed look. “You little rascal!” she said. “Christmas presents are supposed to be a secret.”
“I didn’t exactly tell him,” Danny hedged, slathering a biscuit with butter. “He just asked me a buncha questions and sorta guessed.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Rachel said, trying to fix her father with that same stern look and failing as her mouth began to twitch with the beginnings of a smile. It was no secret that when it came to Christmas and secrecy, Edward Stone was a total failure.
“You’re as bad as he is,” she charged. “Worse. At least he’s just a child.”
Stifling a smile, Edward said, “It’s settled, then. You and Danny are going. Now don’t you need to see to those eggs?”
* * *
With the cookies all baked, Rachel spent the day stirring up pumpkin pies and an apple cake liberally laced with raisins and the black walnuts she and Edward had cracked and painstakingly picked out.
Finished with the baking, she and Danny loaded up their goodies and made deliveries to the Carruthers family and a widow or two who had a hard time making ends meet.
By the time their visits were over and they’d finished the evening meal, she was pleasantly weary. The day had been so busy that at times she was able to forget the man lying in the bedroom down the way. Danny helped with the dishes, and they were getting ready to begin their yearly Christmas Eve ritual when an agonized cry came from Gabe’s room.
Tossing her dish towel onto the table, Rachel ran toward the sound, throwing the door open against the wall in her haste.
Gabe lay on his back, just as he had been, but as she neared the bed she realized that he was fully awake. His eyes were shadowed with pain that became stunned disbelief as he struggled to raise himself up to his uninjured elbow.
“Rachel?” His voice was deep and husky, as if he were getting over a bad sore throat. Looking to blame him for everything, she’d often thought that his voice was the first weapon he’d used in his insidious assault on her senses. Now, even in her concern, she imagined she heard a hint of wonder in his voice.
“Lie still,” she commanded, placing a restraining hand against his shoulder. Offering him no time to formulate a reply, she continued, “What on earth were you thinking trying to get up? You might have injured yourself worse than you already are.”
Ever professional even in her irritation, she placed gentle, questing fingers against his bound ribs. “Does it hurt?” she asked, unaware that the question was somewhat silly under the circumstances. She just wanted to get him easy again and steer clear of the feelings churning inside her now that they were face-to-face.
Despite the pain and grogginess reflected in his eyes, he attempted a smile that more resembled a grimace. “Only when I breathe.”
Nothing had changed, she thought. Still quick with a smile and a glib reply.
“Do you remember what happened?”
A spasm of pain crossed his features. “A couple of guys jumped me between here and Antoine. How did I get here?”
All business, she leaned over him to check the bandage on his head. “Simon Teasdale found you and brought you to me.”
She stepped back and allowed her gaze to roam his face. As she had, he’d aged and looked older than the twenty-nine she knew him to be. But, as it seemed with most men, he’d done it better. Maturity had firmed the boyish softness of his jaw and chin as she knew it would Danny’s, making it more sharply defined and making his resemblance to Caleb more pronounced, though Gabe would always be the handsomer of the two.
He, too, had a tanned face with crinkly lines at the corners of his eyes, but she knew from past experience that these lines would not have come from worry or the elements but laughter as he pursued countless pleasures. He was still disturbingly handsome and she suspected the inevitable scar he would carry would only add to his aura of mystery and danger. That thought awakened her slumbering anger.
“Did you know them?”
He gave a slight shake of his head. “They had bandannas. I won a lotta...money from a couple guys in a poker game...Little Rock.” He made another pitiful attempt to smile. “Guess they wanted it back.”
She dabbed at the still-seeping gash on his head with a piece of cotton wool saturated with peroxide. His hiss of pain gave her far more satisfaction than it should have.
“Simon did find your wallet nearby, and it was empty, but if it was someone from Little Rock, why would they wait so long to attack you?”
His eyes looked troubled. “Guess I’m not...thinking straight. Feel like...death warmed over.”
“As well you should. You have broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder, which will be pretty painful while it heals. You have a possible concussion. There’s a cut on your scalp and another on your cheek that will probably leave a nasty scar.”
He attempted a shrug that elicited another grunt of pain.
“You need to go back to sleep,” she told him, feeling a sudden, unexpected and annoying rush of sympathy.
“How long have I been here?” he asked, once more speaking through clenched teeth.
“Since yesterday morning.”
She could almost see his fuzzy mind trying to calculate what day it was. “So it’s...”
“Christmas Eve.”
“I’d hoped to be home for Christmas.”
The confession surprised her. Home? He’d meant to come back to Wolf Creek?
Of course he was coming home. Why else would he have been between Wolf Creek and Antoine?
“Why? Why now, after all this time?”
Without thinking, she blurted out the question that leaped into her mind, even though she knew that he was in no condition for the battle she felt brewing.
“To try to...fix things...with Caleb.”
No wish to try to make amends with her. “Caleb knows you’re here, and frankly, he wasn’t exactly overjoyed about it.” She started to turn away, and his good hand reached out and grabbed hers.
“And you, Rachel?” he asked, as she stared down at the fingers that manacled her wrist. “I know how I left was...wrong. I’m sorry.”
So he did want to make things right with her. The knowledge gave her no satisfaction; it only stoked her anger. “Why should I believe your contrition is genuine, Gabe? You once told me a lot of things, all of them lies. Why should I believe this sudden change of heart is any diff
erent? And your behavior wasn’t just wrong. It was contemptible!”
She knew that her tirade was inappropriate and unprofessional, and that the fury consuming her was no doubt reflected in her face and in her voice, which shook as badly as her hands. He was in pain from numerous injuries. It was neither the time nor the place to confront him, but the dam that had held back her pain for so many years had burst, and she could not seem to stop the words that spewed from her like lava from a volcano.
“Did you really think you could just waltz into town and expect everyone to welcome you with open arms? Did you think that maybe Caleb would be so overjoyed by the prodigal’s return that he would trot out the fatted calf? Guess what, Gabe, this is real life, not a Bible story, and I don’t see any happy endings in sight!”
He looked stricken by her outburst. She didn’t care. She wanted him to know he had behaved despicably. Wanted him to know the pain she’d suffered. She even hoped the knowledge of what he’d done added to his own pain.
His grip relaxed and he allowed her to pull free. She stared at him, but his eyes gave away nothing of what he was feeling.
“Mama?” Danny spoke from the doorway.
Trembling as if she had the ague, she turned. “What is it, Danny?” she asked in a far harsher tone than she’d intended and he was accustomed to.
The child looked from her to the man in the bed, his eyes wide with uncertainty. “Pops wanted me to see if everything is all right.”
“Tell him everything’s fine,” she said in a softer voice.
She kept her gaze studiously on her son, who looked shocked by the side of his mother he’d never seen. She wished she could call back her heated words. No. Gabe Gentry deserved her anger. She only wished Danny hadn’t heard. “Mr. Gentry is just in a lot of pain at the moment.”
“But you were mad at him,” Danny said, sensing there was more than she was saying. Like his grandfather, he was prone to probe until his curiosity was satisfied.
“Only because he tried to get out of bed,” she fibbed, casting a quick glance at Gabe, whose eyes were now shut. “He might have hurt himself worse.”
“Oh.”
Once more, Danny looked from one adult to the other before backing out the door, leaving Rachel alone with her patient, who stared at her with no visible expression. Why didn’t that surprise her? The celebrated Gabriel Gentry would never see his actions as despicable.
“I’ll get you some medication,” she told him, wanting nothing more than to escape him.
“I don’t want it,” he said, his jaw set in a stubborn line. “I want...to get up...awhile.”
“There’s no way you can–”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” he interrupted, his voice rough with his own anger and something she couldn’t put a name to. “Help me to...a chair. I’ll be...okay for a while.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll let you sit up, but only if you let me give you a little something.”
He looked as if he would like to argue further, but nodded. She turned toward the door. “Where are you going?”
“To get Pops’s wheelchair.”
“Rachel,” he said, the sound of his voice stopping her. She turned.
“I had no idea you had a son.”
She stiffened but managed a twisted smile. “What did you expect, Gabe? That I would carry a torch for you forever?”
For once in his life, Gabe had no witty comeback.
* * *
After a lot of moaning and groaning, Rachel got Gabe into one of her father’s robes and settled into the wheelchair with a quilt over his legs. Then she rolled him to the kitchen, where he picked at a bowl of beef stew he didn’t want while trying—without much success and despite the small dose of laudanum she’d forced on him—to ignore the various excruciating pains throbbing throughout his body. It irritated him that she’d been right. He should have stayed in bed.
When the simple meal was finished, he was rolled into the parlor, where he sat watching as the Stones went through their Christmas Eve celebration. His muddled thoughts bounced around from one topic to the next.
When he’d awakened, he remembered how he’d come to be in so much agony but had no idea where he was. He’d chosen not to call for help, instead enduring long pain-filled moments as he struggled to sit up with a shoulder that felt on fire and a rib cage that felt as if someone had taken a club to it. No. Not a club. Boots.
When he’d seen Rachel standing beside the bed, he’d thought she was an illusion, and his reaction had been profound pleasure. It hadn’t taken long to realize that she was very real and that she did not share his happiness at being reunited.
She was right, he thought as he watched her with her family. He’d treated her worse than terribly. He remembered their short few weeks together as good ones even though she was nothing like the women he usually spent time with.
She was very smart, which was a little intimidating, as was her desire to become a doctor and settle down in Wolf Creek. His greatest goal was to see as much as he could while his money held out. There was plenty of time to worry about what he would do with his life after he finished seeing the world.
It was years before he’d come to grips with the reality that the lifestyle he’d chosen when he left home had lost its luster and that his interest in aimless pursuits had declined dramatically. He’d begun to feel as if he were living in a world of make-believe, while somewhere out there people led real and meaningful lives.
Comprehension led to months of reflection and careful examination of his upbringing and the life he’d tried so hard to leave behind. He’d realized that the void he’d felt in his heart since the day his mother abandoned him and his brother could not be filled with laughter and joking, senseless reveling or meaningless relationships. All attempts to do so had been futile, masking, but never filling, the emptiness.
He’d been left with the sobering realization that his entire life was nothing but an effort to escape the pain that gnawed at him every moment of every day and could not be assuaged by any thrill, pleasure or sinful indulgence known to man. He’d accepted the truth that there was no escaping the past or how it shaped the person you became. At some point you had to come to terms with that, both the good and the bad.
Then one day in Atlanta almost a year ago, he’d been strolling through a park and heard a woman laugh, laughter filled with such undiluted joy that it triggered an unexpected, long-forgotten memory of Rachel. The moment was sharply poignant. In those few out-of-time seconds, he’d been struck with the sudden conviction that he’d had something rare within his grasp and thrown it away.
Over the next few weeks, memories of their time together drifted through his mind with the sweetness of springtime scents on a subtle breeze: Her affirmation that money was not the important thing for happiness, which he’d scoffed at and now knew was true. Her serious, unwavering dedication when mocked for daring to brave entrance to a profession dominated by men. Her willingness to dedicate herself to a life that was not necessarily conducive to her own well-being, but to the well-being of others.
Longing for something he couldn’t put into words, he’d begun to wonder if there was redemption for him out there somewhere. If so, he knew he’d have to start in Wolf Creek, the place where his life had first begun to unravel. There, he’d hoped to find new direction and a new purpose for his life, though he had no idea what that might be or how to go about finding it.
Now, sitting in the Stones’ parlor while Edward read the story of baby Jesus from the Bible, he wanted to ask Rachel if he could sit in the parlor the next morning and watch the gift opening. Thanks to his mother’s leaving and his father’s indifference, he and Caleb had never known what these three people shared. Christmas was just another day. Lucas’s only concession to the holiday had been a traditional meal because he liked showing off to some o
f his friends.
Gabe longed just once to experience what a real Christmas should be, but Rachel had made it clear that the less she had to do with him the better, and he had no wish to disrupt their day. The solemn sounds of their prayer, and their happy, laughing voices as they joked and teased each other, brought about a pang of regret so painful that his heart hurt almost as badly as his physical injuries.
The desire to have that kind of love and the knowledge that he had willfully ruined any chance of experiencing it with Rachel was overwhelming in its intensity. The woman he now knew was the most important person to come into his life had made it clear that she had not forgiven him and was not likely to.
He couldn’t blame her. She was right. He had used her—not deliberately, perhaps—but she’d been there and they’d both been willing. In his mind she was no different from other girls he’d spent time with. Except, of course, she was very different.
Filled with an incredible sorrow for what he’d tossed away, Gabe blinked back the unmanly sting of tears. Tears were a luxury he had not allowed himself since the day he’d come home and been told that his mother had left for a new life in Boston...a life that was more important to her than her husband or her sons.
Funny how history repeated itself. For all intents and purposes, he’d done to Rachel exactly what his mother had done to him and his brother.
* * *
Christmas morning dawned bright and cold. Rachel slipped into Gabe’s room to stoke the fire in his fireplace, stunned to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, as upright as possible. A blanket covered his legs. He clutched a shirt in his fists. He was trembling and sweat dripped down his face despite the chill of the room. A basin of soapy water sat on the stand next to the bed. He’d given himself a sponge bath and was trying to get dressed. He looked near to passing out from the effort.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She shook her head. Stubborn, stubborn man.
“Getting dressed,” he told her in a terse tone. Knowing how she felt about him, he couldn’t bear being near her any longer than was absolutely necessary, so he’d forced himself to the limit to make her believe he was feeling better than he really was.
Wolf Creek Homecoming Page 4
