“I like mine, too.” He held up a collection of DVDs of shows he particularly liked from Michelle and a black designer turtleneck from Sara.
Sara loved her handmade scarf from Michelle. It was crocheted and had taken an age to finish. It was the softest white knit, with tassels. “I’ll wear it all winter,” she promised Michelle, and kissed her, too.
Michelle had hung mistletoe in strategic places, but she hadn’t counted on Gabriel’s determined reticence. He kissed her on the cheek, smiled and wished her the happiest of Christmases and New Years. She pretended that it didn’t matter that he didn’t drag her into an empty room and kiss her half to death. He was determined not to treat her as an adult. It was painful. But in some sense, she did understand.
* * *
So three years went by, more quickly than Michelle had dreamed they would. She got a job part-time with a daily newspaper in San Antonio and did political pieces for it while she got through her core courses and into serious journalism in college.
She went to class during summer to speed up her degree program, although she came home for the holidays. Gabriel was almost always away now. Sara was there, although she spent most of her time in Wyoming at the ranch she and Gabriel owned. Michelle had gone up there with her one summer for a couple of weeks during her vacation. It was a beautiful place. Sara was different somehow. Something had happened between her and Wofford Patterson. She wouldn’t talk about it, but she knew that it had changed Sara. Gabriel had mentioned something about Sara going back into therapy and there had been an argument in French that Michelle couldn’t follow.
Wofford Patterson had also moved up to Catelow, Wyoming. He bought a huge ranch there near Sara’s. He kept his place in Comanche Wells, but he put in a foreman to manage it for him. He had business interests in Wyoming that took up much of his time, he said, and it was hard to commute. Sara didn’t admit that she was glad to have him as a neighbor. But Michelle suspected that she did.
Sara was still playing her online game with her friend, and they fought battles together late into the night. She still didn’t know who he really was, either. Gabriel had made sure of it.
“He’s such a gentleman,” Sara mused over coffee one morning, her face bright with pleasure. “He wants to meet me in person.” She hesitated. “I’m not sure about that.”
“Why not, if you like him?” Michelle asked innocently, although she didn’t dare let on that she knew exactly who Sara’s friend was, and she knew that Sara would have a stroke if she saw him in person. It would be the end of a lovely online relationship.
“People aren’t what they seem,” Sara replied, and pain was in her eyes. “If it seems too good to be true, it usually is.”
“He might be a knight in shining armor,” Michelle teased. “You should find out.”
“He might be an ogre who lives in a cave with bats, too.” Sara chuckled. “No. I like things the way they are. I really don’t want to try to have a relationship with a man in real life.” Her face tensed. “I never wanted to.”
Michelle grimaced. “Sara, you’re so beautiful...”
“Beautiful!” She laughed coldly. “I wish I’d been born ugly. It would have made my life so much easier. You don’t know...” She drew in a harsh breath. “Well, actually, you do know.” She managed a soft smile. “We’re all prisoners of our childhoods, Michelle. Mine was particularly horrible. It warped me.”
“You should have been in therapy,” Michelle said gently.
“I tried therapy. It only made things worse. I can’t talk to total strangers.”
“Maybe you just talked to the wrong person.”
Sara’s eyes were suddenly soft and dreamy and she flushed. “I think I did. So much has changed,” she added softly.
Michelle, who had a good idea what was going on up in Wyoming, just grinned.
Sara’s eyes took on an odd, shimmering softness. “Life is so much sweeter than I dreamed it could be.” She smiled to herself and looked at her watch. “I have some phone calls to make. I love having you around.” She added, “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For caring,” Sara said simply.
* * *
Michelle was looking forward to her last Christmas in college. She got talked into a blind date with Darla’s boyfriend’s friend. He turned out to be a slightly haughty man who worked as a stockbroker and never stopped talking on his cell phone for five seconds. He was at it all through dinner. Bob, Darla’s boyfriend, looked very uncomfortable and apologetic.
“Bob feels awful,” Darla whispered to Michelle in the restroom after they’d finished eating. “Larry seemed to be a normal guy.”
“He just lives and breathes his job. Besides,” she added, “you know there’s only one man who interests me at all. And it’s never going to be someone like Larry.”
“Having seen your Mr. Brandon, I totally understand.” Darla giggled. She shook her head. “He is a dreamboat.”
“I think so.”
“Well, we’ll stop by the bar for a nightcap and go home. Maybe we can pry Larry away from his phone long enough to say good-night.”
“I wish I was riding with you and Bob,” Michelle sighed. “At least he stops talking while he’s driving.”
“Curious, that he didn’t want to ride with Bob,” Darla said. “Well, that’s just men, I guess.”
* * *
But Larry had an agenda that the girls weren’t aware of. He knew that Bob and Darla were going dancing and wouldn’t be home soon. So when he walked Michelle to the door of the apartment she and Darla shared, he pushed his way in and took off his jacket.
“Finally, alone together,” he enthused, and reached for her. “Now, sweetie, let’s have a little payback for the meal and the drinks...”
“Are you out of your mind?” she gasped, avoiding his grasping arms.
“I paid for the food,” he said, almost snarling. “You owe me!”
“I owe you? Like hell I owe you!” She got to the door and opened it. “I’ll send you a check for my part of the meal! Get out!”
“I’m not leaving. You just want to play hard to get.” He started to push the door closed. And connected with a steely big hand that caught him by the arm, turned him around and booted him out into the night.
“Gabriel!” Michelle gasped.
“You can’t do that to me...!” Larry said angrily, getting to his feet.
Gabriel fell into a fighting stance. “Come on,” he said softly. “I could use the exercise.”
Larry came to his senses. He glanced at Michelle. She went back inside, got his jacket, and threw it at him.
“Dinner doesn’t come with bed,” she told him icily.
Larry started to make a reply, but Gabriel’s expression was a little too unsettling. He muttered something under his breath, turned, slammed into his car and roared away.
Gabriel went inside with Michelle, who was tearing up now that the drama had played itself out.
“Ah, no, ma belle,” he whispered. “There’s no need for tears.” He pulled her into his arms, bent his head, and kissed her so hungrily that she forgot to breathe.
He lifted his head. His black eyes were smoldering, so full of desire that they mesmerized Michelle. She tasted him on her mouth, felt the heavy throb of his heart under her hands.
“Finally,” he breathed, pulling her close. He brushed his lips over her soft mouth. “Finally!”
She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, and the kiss knocked her so off balance that she couldn’t manage a single word in reply. She held on with all her might, clung to him, pushed her body into his so that she could feel every movement of his powerful body against her. He was aroused, very quickly, and even that didn’t intimidate her. She moaned. Which only made matters worse.
He picke
d her up, still kissing her, and laid her out on the couch, easing his body down over hers in a silence that throbbed with frustrated desire.
“Soft,” he whispered. “Soft and sweet. All mine.”
She would have said something, but he was kissing her again, and she couldn’t think at all. She felt his big, rough hands go under her dress, up and up, touching and exploring, testing softness, finding her breasts under the lacy little bra.
“You feel like silk all over,” he murmured. He found the zipper and eased her out of the dress and the half slip under it, then out of the bra, so that all she had left on were her briefs. He kissed his way down her body, lingering on her pert breasts with their tight little crowns, savoring her soft, helpless cries of pleasure.
It excited him to know that she’d never done this. He ate her up like candy, tasting her hungrily. He nuzzled her breasts, kissing their soft contours with a practiced touch that made her rise up in an aching arch to his lips.
Somehow, his jacket and shirt ended up on the floor. She felt the rough, curling hair on his chest against her bare breasts as his body covered hers. His powerful legs eased between her own, so that she could feel with him an intimacy she’d never shared with anyone.
She cried out as he moved against her. Sensations were piling on each other, dragging her under, drowning her in pleasure. She clung to him, pleading for more, not even knowing exactly what she wanted, but so drawn with tension that she was dying for it to ease.
She felt hot tears run down her cheeks as his mouth moved back onto hers. He touched her as he never had before. She shivered. The touch came again. She sobbed, and opened her mouth under his. She felt his tongue go into her mouth, as his hands moved on her more intimately.
Suddenly, like a fall of fire, a flash of agonized pleasure convulsed the soft body under his. He groaned and had to fight the instinctive urge to finish what he started, to go right into her, push inside her, take what was his, what had always been his.
But she was a virgin. His exploration had already told him that. He’d known already, by her reactions. She was very much a virgin. He didn’t want to do this. Not yet. She was his. It must be done properly, in order, in a way that wouldn’t shame her to remember somewhere down the line.
So he forced his shivering body to bear the pain. He held her very close while she recovered from her first ecstasy. He wrapped her up tight, and held her while he endured what he must to spare her innocence.
She wept. He kissed away the tears, so tenderly that they fell even harder, hot and wet on her flushed cheeks.
She was embarrassed and trying not to let him see.
He knew. He smiled and kissed her eyes shut. “It had to be with me,” he whispered. “Only with me. I would rather die than know you had such an experience with any other man.”
She opened her eyes and looked up into his. “Really?”
“Really.” He looked down at her nudity, his eyes hungry again at the sight of her pink-and-peach skin, silky and soft and fragrant. He touched her breasts tenderly. “You are the most beautiful woman I will ever see.”
Her lips parted on a shaky breath.
He bent and kissed her breasts. “And now we have to get up.”
She stared at him.
“Or not get up,” he murmured with a laugh. “Because I can’t continue this much longer.”
“It would be...all right,” she whispered. “If you wanted to,” she added.
“I want to,” he said huskily. “But you won’t be happy afterward. And you know it. Not like this, ma belle. Not our first time together. It has to be done properly.”
“Properly?”
“You graduate from college, get a job, go to work. I come to see you bringing flowers and chocolates,” he mused, tracing her mouth. “And then, eventually, a ring.”
“A ring.”
He nodded.
“An...engagement...ring?”
He smiled.
“People do it all the time, even before they get engaged,” she said.
He got to his feet. “They do. But we won’t.”
“Oh.”
He dressed her, enjoying the act of putting back onto her lovely body the things he’d taken off it. He laughed at her rapt expression. “You have a belief system that isn’t going to allow a more modern approach to sex,” he said blandly. “So we do it your way.”
“I could adjust,” she began, still hungry.
“Your happiness means a lot to me,” he said simply. “I’m not going to spoil something beautiful with a tarnished memory. Not after I’ve waited so long.”
She stared up into his black eyes. “I’ve waited for you, too,” she whispered.
“I know.” He smoothed back her hair just as they heard a car door slam and footsteps approaching.
Michelle looked horrified, thinking what could have happened, what condition they could have been in as Darla put her key into the lock.
Gabriel burst out laughing at her expression. “Now was I right?” he asked.
The door opened. Darla stopped with Bob in tow and just stared at Gabriel. Then she grinned. “Wow,” she said. “Look what Larry changed into!”
And they all burst out laughing.
* * *
Michelle graduated with honors. Gabriel and Sara were both there for the ceremony, applauding when she walked down the aisle to accept her diploma. They went out to eat afterward, but once they were home, Gabriel couldn’t stay. He was preoccupied, and very worried, from the look of things.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Michelle asked.
He shook his head. He bent to kiss her, very gently. “I’m going to have to be out of the country for two or three months.”
“No!” she exclaimed.
“Only that. Then I have a job waiting, one that won’t require so much travel,” he promised. “Bear with me. I’m sorry. I have to do this.”
She drew in a long breath. “Okay. If you have to go.”
“You’ve got a job waiting in San Antonio, anyway,” he reminded her with a smile. “On a daily newspaper. It has a solid reputation for reporting excellence. Make a name for yourself. But don’t get too comfortable there,” he added enigmatically. “Because when I get back, we need to talk.”
“Talk.” She smiled.
“And other things.”
“Oh, yes, especially, other things,” she whispered, dragging his mouth down to hers. She kissed him hungrily. He returned the kiss, but drew back discreetly when Sara came into the room. He hugged her, too.
He paused in the doorway and looked back at them, smiling. “Take care of each other.” He grinned at his sister. “Happy?” he asked, referring to the changes in her life.
Sara laughed, tossing her long hair. “I could die of it,” she sighed.
“I’ll be back before you miss me,” he told Michelle, who was looking sad. He wanted to kiss her, right there in front of the world. But it wasn’t the time. And he wasn’t sure he could stop.
“Impossible,” Michelle said softly. “I miss you already.”
He winked and closed the door.
* * *
Michelle liked the job. She had a desk and three years of solid education behind her to handle the assignments she was given.
A big story broke the second month she’d been with the newspaper. There was a massacre of women and children in a small Middle Eastern nation, perpetrated, it was said, by a group of mercenaries led by a Canadian national named Angel Le Veut. He had ties to an anti-terrorism school run by a man named Eb Scott in, of all places, Jacobsville, Texas.
Michelle went on the offensive at once, digging up everything she could find about the men in the group who had killed the women and children in the small Muslim community that was at odds with a multinat
ional occupation force.
The name of the man accused of leading the assault was ironic. One of the languages she’d studied was French. And if loosely translated, the man’s name came out as “Angel wants it.” It was an odd play on words that was used most notably in the sixteenth century by authorities when certain cases were tried and a guilty verdict was desired. The phrase “Le Roi le Veut” meant that the king wanted the accused found guilty—whether or not he really was, apparently. The mysterious Angel was obviously an educated man with a knowledge of European history. Michelle was puzzled over why such a man would choose a lifestyle that involved violence.
* * *
Her first stop was Jacobsville, Texas, where she arranged an interview with Eb Scott, the counterterrorism expert, whose men had been involved in the massacre. Michelle knew him, from a distance.
Her father had gone to school with him and they were acquaintances. Her father had said there wasn’t a finer man anywhere, that Eb was notorious for backing lost causes and fighting for the underdog. That didn’t sound like a man who would order the murder of helpless women and children.
Eb shook her hand and invited her into his house. His wife and children were gone for the day, shopping in San Antonio for summer clothing. It was late spring already.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Michelle said when they were seated. “Especially under the circumstances.”
“Hiding from the press is never a good idea, but at times, in matters like this, it’s necessary, until the truth can be ferreted out,” Eb said solemnly. His green eyes searched hers. “You’re Alan Godfrey’s daughter.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
“You used to spend summers in Comanche Wells with your grandparents.” He smiled back. “Minette Carson speaks well of you. She did an interview with me yesterday. Hopefully, some of the truth will trickle down to the mass news media before they crucify my squad leader.”
“Yes. This man, Angel,” she began, looking over her notes while Eb Scott grimaced and tried not to reveal what he really knew about the man, “his name is quite odd.”
TEXAS BORN Page 15
