* * *
Carlie came to visit occasionally. She was happily married, and expecting her first child. They weren’t as close as they had been, but it made Michelle feel good to know that her friend was settled and secure.
She only wished that she could be, settled and secure. But as months went by with no word of or from the Brandons, she gave up all hope that she might one day be forgiven for the things she’d written.
She knew that Sara had a whole new life in Wyoming from the cashier at the grocery store who had known her. Michelle didn’t blame her for not wanting to come back to Texas. After all, she’d only lived in Comanche Wells as a favor to Gabriel, so that he could be Michelle’s guardian.
Guardian no more, obviously. He’d given up that before, of course, when she turned twenty-one. But sometimes Michelle wished that she still had at least a relationship with him. She mourned what could have been, before she lost her way. Gabriel had assured her that they had a future. But that was before.
* * *
She was hanging out sheets in the yard, fighting the fierce autumn breeze to keep them from blowing away, when she heard a vehicle coming down the long road. It was odd, because nobody lived out this way except Michelle. It was Saturday. The next morning, she’d planned to go to church. She’d missed it for a couple of Sundays while she worked on a hot political story.
These days, not even the Reverend Blair came visiting much. She didn’t visit other people, either. Her job occupied much of her time, because a reporter was always on call. But Michelle still attended services most Sundays.
So she stared at the truck as it went past the house. Its windows were tinted, and rolled up. It was a new truck, a very fancy one. Perhaps someone had bought the old Brandon place, she concluded, and went back to hanging up clothes. It made her sad to think that Gabriel would sell the ranch. But, after all, what would he need it for? He only had a manager there to care for it, so it wasn’t as if he needed to keep it. He had other things to do.
She’d heard from Minette that Gabriel was part of an international police force now, one that Eb Scott had contracted with to provide security for those Middle Eastern oilmen who had played such a part in Gabriel’s close call.
She wondered if he would ever come back to Comanche Wells. But she was fairly certain he wouldn’t. Too many bad memories.
Twelve
M
ichelle finished hanging up her sheets in the cool breeze and went back into the house to fix herself a sandwich.
There were rumors at work that a big story was about to break involving an oil corporation and a terrorist group in the Middle East, one that might have local ties. Michelle, now her editor’s favorite reporter for having mentioned him on TV, was given the assignment. It might, he hinted, involve some overseas travel. Not to worry, the paper would gladly pay her expenses.
She wondered what sort of mess she might get herself into this time, poking her nose into things she didn’t understand. Well, it was a job, and she was lucky to even have one in this horrible economy.
She finished her sandwich and drank a cup of black coffee. For some reason she thought of Gabriel, and how much he’d enjoyed her coffee. She had to stop thinking about him. She’d almost cost him his life. She’d destroyed his peace of mind and Sara’s, subjected them both to cameras and reporters and harassment. It was not really a surprise that they weren’t speaking to her anymore. Even if she’d gone the last mile defending them, trying to make up for her lack of foresight, it didn’t erase the damage she’d already done.
She was bored to death. The house was pretty. She’d made improvements—she’d redecorated Roberta’s old room and had the whole place repainted. She’d put up new curtains and bought new furniture. But the house was cold and empty.
Back when her father was alive, it still held echoes of his parents, of him. Now, it was a reminder of old tragedies, most especially her father’s death and Roberta’s.
She carried her coffee into the living room and looked around her. She ought to sell it and move into an apartment in San Antonio. She didn’t have a pet, not even a dog or cat, and the livestock her father had owned were long gone. She had nothing to hold her here except a sad attachment to the past, to dead people.
But there was something that kept her from letting go. She knew what it was, although she didn’t want to remember. It was Gabriel. He’d eaten here, slept here, comforted her here. It was warm with memories that no other dwelling place would ever hold.
She wondered if she couldn’t just photograph the rooms and blow up the photos, make posters of them, and sacrifice the house.
Sure, she thought hollowly. Of course she could.
She finished her coffee and turned on the television. Same old stories. Same programs with five minutes of commercials for every one minute of programming. She switched it off. These days she only watched DVDs or streamed movies from internet websites. She was too antsy to sit through a hundred commercials every half hour.
She wondered why people put up with it. If everyone stopped watching television, wouldn’t the advertisers be forced to come up with alternatives that compromised a bit more? Sure. And cows would start flying any day.
That reminded her of the standing joke she’d had with Grier and Gabriel about cows being abducted by aliens, and it made her sad.
Outside, she heard the truck go flying past her house. It didn’t even slow down. Must be somebody looking at Gabriel’s house. She wondered if he’d put it on the market without bothering to put a for-sale sign out front. Why not? He had no real ties here. He’d probably moved up to Wyoming to live near Sara.
She went into the kitchen, put her coffee cup in the sink, and went back to her washing.
* * *
She wore a simple beige skirt and a short-sleeved beige sweater to church with pretty high heels and a purse to match. She left her hair long, down her back, and used only a trace of makeup on her face.
She’d had ample opportunities for romance, but all those years she’d waited for Gabriel, certain that he was going to love her one day, that she had a future with him. Now that future was gone. She knew that one day, she’d have to decide if she really wanted to be nothing more than a career woman with notoriety and money taking the place of a husband and children and a settled life.
There was nothing wrong with ambition. But the few career women she’d known seemed empty somehow, as if they presented a happy face to the world but that it was like a mask, hiding the insecurities and loneliness that accompanied a demanding lifestyle. What would it be like to grow old, with no family around you, with only friends and acquaintances and business associates to mark the holidays? Would it make up for the continuity of the next generation and the generation after that, of seeing your features reproduced down through your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren? Would it make up for laughing little voices and busy little hands, and soft kisses on your cheek at bedtime?
That thought made her want to cry. She’d never thought too much about kids during her school days, but when Gabriel had kissed her and talked about a future, she’d dreamed of having his children. It had been a hunger unlike anything she’d ever known.
She had to stop tormenting herself. She had to come to grips with the world the way it was, not the way she wanted it to be. She was a grown woman with a promising career. She had to look ahead, not behind her.
* * *
She slid into her usual pew, listened to Reverend Blair’s sermon and sang along with the choir as they repeated the chorus of a well-loved old hymn. Sometime during the offering, she was aware of a tingling sensation, as if someone were watching her. She laughed silently. Now she was getting paranoid.
As the service ended, and they finished singing the final hymn, as the benediction sounded in Reverend Blair’s clear, deep voice, she continued to have the sensation that someone was watching her.
Slowly, as her pew filed out into the aisle, she glanced toward the back of the church. But there was no one there, no one looking at her. What a strange sensation.
* * *
Reverend Blair shook her hand and smiled at her. “It’s nice to have you back, Miss Godfrey,” he teased.
She smiled back. “Rub it in. I had a nightmare of a political story to follow. I spent so much time on it that I’m thinking I may run for public office myself. By now, I know exactly what not to do to get elected,” she confided with a chuckle.
“I know what you mean. It was a good story.”
“Thanks.”
“See you next week.”
“I hope.” She crossed her fingers. He just smiled.
* * *
She walked to her car and clicked the smart key to unlock it when she felt, rather than saw, someone behind her.
She turned and her heart stopped in her chest. She looked up into liquid black eyes in a tanned, hard face that looked as if it had never known a smile.
She swallowed. She wanted to say so many things. She wanted to apologize. She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and beg him to hold her, comfort her, forgive her. But she did none of those things. She just looked up at him hopelessly, with dead eyes that looked as if they had never held joy.
His square chin lifted. His eyes narrowed on her face. “You’ve lost weight.”
She shrugged. “One of the better consequences of my profession,” she said quietly. “How are you, Gabriel?”
“I’ve been better.”
She searched his eyes. “How’s Sara?”
“Getting back to normal.”
She nodded. She swallowed again and dropped her eyes to his chest. It was hard to find something to say that didn’t involve apologies or explanations or pleas for forgiveness.
The silence went on for so long that she could hear pieces of conversation from other churchgoers. She could hear the traffic on the highway, the sound of children playing in some yard nearby. She could hear the sound of her own heartbeat.
This was destroying her. She clicked the key fob again deliberately. “I have to go,” she said softly.
“Sure.”
He moved back so that she could open the door and get inside. She glanced at him with sorrow in her face, but she averted her eyes so that it didn’t embarrass him. She didn’t want him to feel guilty. She was the one who should feel that emotion. In the end she couldn’t meet his eyes or even wave. She just started the car and drove away.
* * *
Well, at least the first meeting was over with, she told herself later. It hadn’t been quite as bad as she’d expected. But it had been rough. She felt like crying, but her eyes were dry. Some pain was too deep to be eased by tears, she thought sadly.
She changed into jeans and a red T-shirt and went out on the front porch to water her flowers while a TV dinner microwaved itself to perfection in the kitchen.
Her flowers were going to be beautiful when they bloomed, she decided, smiling as they poked their little heads up through the dirt in an assortment of ceramic pots all over the wooden floor.
She had three pots of chrysanthemums and one little bonsai tree named Fred. Gabriel had given it to her when she first moved in with them, a sort of welcome present. It was a tiny fir tree with a beautiful curving trunk and feathery limbs. She babied it, bought it expensive fertilizer, read books on how to keep it healthy and worried herself to death that it might accidentally die if she forgot to water it. That hadn’t happened, of course, but she loved it dearly. Of all the things Gabriel had given her, and there had been a lot, this was her favorite. She left it outside until the weather grew too cold, then she carried it inside protectively.
The Jaguar had been wonderful. But she’d still been driving it when she did the story that almost destroyed Gabriel’s life and after that, she could no longer bear to sit in it. The memories had been killing her.
She missed the Jag. She missed Gabriel more. She wondered why he’d come back. Probably to sell the house, she decided, to cut his last tie with Comanche Wells. If he was working for an international concern, it wasn’t likely that he’d plan to come back here. He’d see the Jag in the driveway, she thought, and understand why she’d given it back. At least, she hoped he would.
That thought, that he might leave Comanche Wells forever, was really depressing. She watered Fred, put down the can, and went back into the house. It didn’t occur to her to wonder what he’d been doing at her church.
* * *
When she went into the kitchen to take her dinner out of the microwave, a dark-haired man was sitting at the table sipping coffee. There were two cups, one for him and one for her. The dinner was sitting on a plate with a napkin and silverware beside it.
He glanced up as she came into the room. “It’s getting cold,” he said simply.
She stood behind her chair, just staring at him, frowning.
He raised an eyebrow as he studied her shirt. “You know, most people who wore red shirts on the original
Star Trek
ended up dead.”
She cocked her head. “And you came all this way to give me fashion advice?”
He managed a faint smile. “Not really.” He sipped coffee. He let out a long breath. “It’s been a long time, Michelle.”
She nodded. Slowly, she pulled out the chair and sat down. The TV dinner had the appeal of mothballs. She pushed it aside and sipped the black coffee he’d put at her place. He still remembered how she took it, after all this time.
She ran her finger around the rim. “I learned a hard lesson,” she said after a minute. “Reporting isn’t just about presenting the majority point of view.”
He lifted his eyes to hers. “Life teaches very hard lessons.”
“Yes, it does.” She drew in a breath. “I guess you’re selling the house.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”
“I saw a truck go out there yesterday. And I read that you’re working with some international police force now. So since Sara’s living in Wyoming, I assumed you’d probably be moving up there near her. For when you’re home in the States, I mean.”
“I’d considered it,” he said after a minute. He sipped more coffee.
She wondered if her heart could fall any deeper into her chest. She wondered how in the world he’d gotten into the house so silently. She wondered why he was there in the first place. Was he saying goodbye?
“Did you find the keys to the Jag?” she asked.
“Yes. You didn’t want to keep it?”
She swallowed hard. “Too many bad memories, of what I did to you and Sara,” she confessed heavily.
He shook his head. After a minute, he stared at her bent head. “I don’t think you’ve really looked at me once,” he said finally.
She managed a tight smile. “It’s very hard to do that, after all the trouble I caused you,” she said. “I rehearsed it, you know. Saying I was sorry. Working up all sorts of ways to apologize. But there really isn’t a good way to say it.”
“People make mistakes.”
“The kind I made could have buried you.” She said it tautly, fighting tears. It was harder than she’d imagined. She forced down the rest of the coffee. “Look, I’ve got things to do,” she began, standing, averting her face so he couldn’t see her eyes.
“Ma belle,”
he whispered, in a voice so tender that her control broke the instant she heard it. She burst into tears.
He scooped her up in his arms and kissed her so hungrily that she just went limp, arching up to him, so completely his that she wouldn’t have protested anything he wanted to do to her.
“So it’s like that, is it?” he whispered against her soft, trembling mouth. “Anything I want? Anything at all?”
“Anything,” she wept.
“Out of guilt?” he asked, and there was an edge to his tone now.
She opened her wet eyes and looked into his. “Out of...love,” she choked.
“Love.”
“Go ahead. Laugh...”
He buried his face in her throat. “I thought I’d lost you for good,” he breathed huskily. “Standing there at your car, looking so defeated, so depressed that you couldn’t even meet my eyes. I thought, I’ll have to leave, there’s nothing left, nothing there except guilt and sorrow. And then I decided to have one last try, to come here and talk to you. You walked into the room and every single thing you felt was there, right there, in your eyes when you looked at me. And I knew, then, that it wasn’t over at all. It was only beginning.”
Her arms tightened around his neck. Her eyes were pouring with hot tears. “I loved you...so much,” she choked. “Sara said you never wanted to see me again. She hated me. I knew you must hate me, too...!”