She nodded. “He is severely prejudiced against people from other planets. You should just hear him talk about how aliens are going to invade us one day to get their hands on our cows. He thinks they have a milk addiction, and that’s why you hear about cattle mutilations... You’re laughing again.”
He wiped his eyes. She couldn’t know that he rarely laughed. His life had been a series of tragedies. Humor had never been part of it. She made him feel light inside, almost happy.
“I can see the chief’s point,” he managed.
“Cow bigot,” she accused, and he almost fell on the floor.
She wrapped her cold hands around her mug. “I guess I shouldn’t be cracking jokes, with Roberta dead...” Her eyes burned with tears. “I still can’t believe it. Roberta’s gone. She’s gone.” She drew in a breath and sipped coffee. “We’ve done nothing but argue since Daddy died. But she wanted me to hold her hand and she was scared. She said she was sorry.” She looked at him. “She said it was Bert’s fault. Do you think she was delirious?”
“Not really,” he replied quietly.
“Why?”
“That can wait a bit.” He grew somber. “You don’t have any other family?”
She shook her head. She looked around. “But surely I can stay here by myself? I mean, I’m eighteen now...”
He frowned. “I thought you were seventeen.”
She hesitated. Her eyes went to the calendar and she grimaced. “I just turned eighteen. Today is my birthday,” she said. She hadn’t even realized it, she’d been so busy. Tears ran down her cheeks. “What an awful one this is.”
He caught her hand in his and held it tight. “No cousins?”
She shook her head. “I have nobody.”
“Not quite true. You have me,” he said firmly. “And Sara’s on her way down here.”
“Sara. Your sister?”
He nodded.
“She’ll stay with me?” she asked.
He smiled. “Not exactly. “You’ll stay with us, in my house. I won’t risk your reputation by having you move in with just me.”
“But...we’re strangers,” she pointed out.
“No, we’re not,” he said, and he smiled. “I told you about my stepfather. That’s a memory I’ve never shared with anyone. And you won’t mention it to Sara, right?”
“Of course not.” She searched his black eyes. “Why would you do this for me?”
“Who else is there?” he asked.
She searched her mind for a logical answer and couldn’t find one. She had nobody. Her best friend, Amy, had moved to New York City with her parents during the summer. They corresponded, and they were still friends, but Michelle didn’t want to live in New York, even if Amy’s parents, with their five children, were to offer her a home.
“If you’re thinking of the local orphanage,” he said, tongue in cheek, “they draw the line at cow partisans.”
She managed a laugh. “Oh. Okay.”
“You can stay with us until you graduate and start college.”
“I can’t get in until fall semester, even if they accept me,” she began.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Marist College in San Antonio. There’s an excellent journalism program.”
He pulled out his cell phone, punched a few buttons and made a phone call. Michelle listened with stark shock. He was nodding, laughing, talking. Then he thanked the man and hung up.
“You called the governor,” she said, dumbfounded.
“Yes. We were in the same fraternity in college. He’s on the board of trustees at Marist. You’re officially accepted. They’ll send a letter soon.”
“But they don’t have my grades...!”
“They will have, by the time you go. What’s on the agenda for summer?” he continued.
“I... Well, I have a job. Minette Carson hired me for the rest of the school year, after school and on Saturdays. And I’m sure she’ll let me work this summer, so I can save for college.”
“You won’t need to do that.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “I drive a truck here because it helps me fit in. But I have an apartment in San Antonio with a garage. In the garage, there’s a brand-new Jaguar XKE.” He raised an eyebrow. “Does that give you a hint about my finances?”
She had no idea what an XKE was, but she knew what a Jaguar was. She’d priced them once, just for fun. If it was new...gosh, people could buy houses around here for less, she thought, but she didn’t say it.
“But, I’m a stranger,” she persisted.
“Not for long. I’m going to petition the court to become your temporary legal guardian. Sara will go with us to court. You can wear a dress and look helpless and tragic and in desperate need of assistance.” He pursed his lips. “I know, it will be a stretch, but you can manage it.”
She laughed helplessly.
“Then we’ll get you through school.”
“I’ll find a way to pay you back,” she promised.
He smiled. “No need for that. Just don’t ever write about me,” he added. It sounded facetious, but he didn’t smile when he said it.
“I’d have to make up something in order to do that.” She laughed.
She didn’t know, and he didn’t tell her, that there was more to his life than she’d seen, or would ever see. Sara knew, but he kept his private life exactly that—private.
Just for an instant, he worried about putting her in the line of fire. He had enemies. Dangerous enemies, who wouldn’t hesitate to threaten anyone close to him. Of course, there was Sara, but she’d lived in Wyoming for the past few years, away from him, on a ranch they co-owned. Now he was putting her in jeopardy along with Michelle.
But what could he do? The child had nobody. Now that her idiot stepmother was dead, she was truly on her own. It was dangerous for a young woman to live alone, even in a small community. And there was Roberta’s boyfriend, Bert.
Gabriel knew things about the man that he wasn’t eager to share with Michelle. The man was part of a criminal organization, and he knew Michelle’s habits. He also had a yen for her, if what Michelle had blurted out to him once was true—and he had no indication that she would lie about it. He might decide to come and try his luck with her now that her stepmother was out of the picture. That couldn’t be allowed.
He was surprised by his own affection for Michelle. It wasn’t paternal. She was, of course, far too young for anything heavy, being eighteen to his twenty-four. She was a beauty, kind and generous and sweet. She was the sort of woman he usually ran from. No, strike that, she was no woman. She was still unfledged, a dove without flight feathers. He had to keep his interest hidden. At least, until she was grown up enough that it wouldn’t hurt his conscience to pursue her. Afterward...well, who knew the future?
At the moment, however, his primary concern was to make sure she had whatever she needed to get through high school and, then, through college. Whatever it took.
* * *
Sara called him back. She wouldn’t be able to get a flight to Texas for two days, which meant that Michelle would be on her own at night. Gabriel wasn’t about to leave her, not with Bert Sims still out there. But he couldn’t risk her reputation by having her stay alone with him.
“You don’t want to be alone with me,” Michelle guessed when he mentioned Sara’s dilemma and frowned.
“It wouldn’t look right,” he said. “You have a spotless reputation here. I’m not going to be the first to put a blemish on it.”
She smiled gently. “You’re a very nice man.”
He shrugged. “Character is important, regardless of the mess some people make of theirs in public and brag about it.”
“My dad used to say that civilization rested on the bedrock of morality, and that when morality went, destruction followed,” she recalled.
“A student of history,” he said approvingly.
“Yes. He told me that first go the arts, then goes religion, then goes morality. After that, you count down the days until the society fails. Ancient Egypt. Rome. A hundred other governments, some more recently than others,” she said.
“Who’s right? I don’t know. I like the middle of the road, myself. We should live the way that suits us and leave others to do the same.”
She grinned. “I knew I liked you.”
He chuckled. He finished his coffee. “We should stop discussing history and decide what to do with you tonight.”
She stared at her own cooling coffee in the thick mug. “I could stay here by myself.”
“Never,” he said shortly. “Bert Sims might show up, looking for Roberta’s leftovers, like Zack said.”
She managed a smile. “Thanks. You could sleep in Roberta’s room,” she offered.
“Only if there’s someone else in the house, too.” He pursed his lips. “I have an idea.” He pulled out his cell phone.
* * *
Carlie Blair walked in the door with her overnight bag and hugged Michelle close. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know you and your stepmother didn’t get along, but it’s got to be a shock, to have it happen like that.”
“It was.” Michelle dashed away tears. “She apologized when she was dying. She said one other thing,” she added, frowning, as she turned to Gabriel. “She said don’t let Bert get away with it. You never told me what you thought that meant.”
Gabriel’s liquid black eyes narrowed. “Did she say anything else?”
She nodded slowly, recalling the odd statement. “She said he told her it wasn’t pure and he lied. What in the world did that mean?”
Gabriel was solemn. “That white powder in the vial was cocaine,” he explained. “Dealers usually cut it with something else, dilute it. But if it’s pure and a user doesn’t know, it can be lethal if they don’t adjust the dose.” He searched Michelle’s eyes. “I’m betting that Bert gave her pure cocaine and she didn’t know.”
Carlie was surprised. “Your stepmother was using drugs?” she asked her friend.
“That’s what they think,” Michelle replied. She turned back to Gabriel. “Did he know it was pure? Was he trying to kill her?”
“That’s something Zack will have to find out.”
“I thought he cared about her. In his way,” she faltered.
“He might have, even if it was only because she was a customer.”
Michelle bit her lower lip. “That would explain why she was so desperate for money. I did wonder, you know, because she didn’t buy new clothes or expensive cosmetics or things like she used to when Daddy was alive.” She frowned. “She never bought anything, but she never had any money and she was always desperate for more. Like when she tried to sell my father’s stamp collection.”
“It’s a very expensive habit,” Gabriel said quietly.
“But...Bert might have meant to kill her...?”
“It’s possible. Maybe she made threats, maybe she tried to quit or argued over the price. But, whether he meant to kill her or not, he’s going to find himself in a lot of hot water pretty soon.”
“Why?” Michelle asked curiously
He grimaced. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. This is more complicated than it seems.”
She sighed. “Okay. I won’t pry. Keep your secrets.” She managed a smile. “But don’t you forget that I’m a reporter in training,” she added. “One day, I’ll have learned how to find out anything I want to know.” She grinned.
“Now you’re scaring me,” he teased.
“Good.”
He just shook his head. “I have to go back to my place and get a razor. I’ll be right back. Lock the door,” he told Michelle, “and don’t open it for anybody. If Bert Sims shows up, you call me at once. Got that?”
“Got it,” she said.
“Okay.”
He left. Carlie got up from the sofa, where she’d been perched on the arm, and hugged Michelle. “I know this is hard for you. I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too.” Michelle gave way to tears. “Thanks for coming over. I hope I’m not putting you in any danger.”
“Not me,” Carlie said. “And neither of us is going to be in danger with that tall, dark, handsome man around. He is so good-looking, isn’t he?” she added with a theatrical sigh.
Michelle dried her tears. “He really is. My guardian angel.”
“Some angel.”
She tried to think of something that might restore a little normalcy into her routine. Roberta was lying heavily on her mind. “I have to do dishes. Want to dry?”
“You bet!”
Five
C
arlie and Michelle shared the double bed in Michelle’s room, while Gabriel slept in Roberta’s room. Michelle had insisted on changing the bed linen first. She put Roberta’s clothes in the washing machine, the ones that had been scattered all over the room. When she’d washed them, she planned to donate them to charity. Michelle couldn’t have worn them even if she’d liked Roberta’s flamboyant style, which she didn’t.
The next morning, Gabriel went to the local funeral home and made the arrangements for Roberta. She had an older sister in Virginia. The funeral home contacted her, but the woman wanted nothing to do with any arrangements. She and Roberta had never gotten along, and she couldn’t care less, she said, whether they cremated her or buried her or what. Gabriel arranged for her to be cremated, and Reverend Blair offered a plot in the cemetery of his church for her to be interred. There would be no funeral service, just a graveside one. Michelle thought they owed her that much, at least.
Reverend Blair had invited Michelle to come and stay at his house with Carlie, but Michelle wanted familiar things around her. She also wanted Gabriel, on whom she had come to rely heavily. But she couldn’t stay with Gabriel alone. It would not look right in the tiny community of Comanche Wells, where time hadn’t moved into the twenty-first century yet.
“Sara will be here tomorrow,” Gabriel told the girls as they sat down to supper, which Michelle and Carlie had prepared together. He smiled as he savored hash browns with onions, perfectly cooked, alongside a tender cut of beef and a salad. “You two can cook,” he said with admiration. “Hash browns are hard to cook properly. These are wonderful.”
“Thanks,” they said in unison, and laughed.
“She did the hash browns,” Carlie remarked, grinning at Michelle. “I never could get the hang of them. Mine just fall apart and get soggy.”
“My mother used to make them,” Michelle said with a sad smile. “She was a wonderful cook. I do my best, but I’m not in her league.”
“Where do your parents live, Gabriel?” Carlie asked innocently.
Gabriel’s expression went hard.
“I made a cherry pie for dessert,” Michelle said, quickly and neatly deflecting Carlie’s question. “And we have vanilla ice cream to go on it.”
Carlie flushed, realizing belatedly that she’d made a slight faux pas with her query. “Michelle makes the best cherry pie around,” she said with enthusiasm.
Gabriel took a breath. “Don’t look so guilty,” he told Carlie, and smiled at her. “I’m touchy about my past, that’s all. It was a perfectly normal question.”
“I’m sorry, just the same,” Carlie told him. “I get nervous around people and I babble.” She flushed again. “I don’t...mix well.”
Gabriel laughed softly. “Neither do I,” he confessed.
Michelle raised her hand. “That makes three of us,” she remarked.
“I feel better,” Carlie said. “Thanks,” she added, intent on her food. “I have a knack for putting my foot into my mouth.”
“Who doesn’t?” Gabriel mused.
“I myself never put my foot into my mouth,” Michelle said, affecting a haughty air. “I have never made a single statement that offended, irritated, shocked or bothered a single person.”
The other two occupants of the table looked at her with pursed lips.
“Being perfect,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes, “I am unable to understand how anyone could make such a mistake.”
Carlie picked up her glass of milk. “One more word...” she threatened.
Michelle grinned at her. “Okay. Just so you remember that I don’t make mistakes.”
Carlie rolled her eyes.
* * *
It was chilly outside. Michelle sat on the porch steps, looking up at the stars. They were so bright, so perfectly clear in cold weather. She knew it had something to do with the atmosphere, but it was rather magical. There was a dim comet barely visible in the sky. Michelle had looked at it through a pair of binoculars her father had given her. It had been winter, and most hadn’t been visible to the naked eye.
The door opened and closed behind her. “School is going to be difficult on Monday,” she said. “I dread it. Everyone will know...you sure you don’t mind giving me rides home after work?” she added.
“That depends on where you want to go,” came a deep, amused masculine voice from behind her.
She turned quickly, shocked. “Sorry,” she stammered. “I thought you were Carlie.”
“She found a game show she can’t live without. She’s sorry.” He chuckled.
“Do you like game shows?” she wondered.
He shrugged. He came and sat down beside her on the step. He was wearing a thick black leather jacket with exquisite beadwork. She’d been fascinated with it when he retrieved it from his truck earlier.
“That’s so beautiful,” she remarked, lightly touching the colorful trim above the long fringes with her fingertips. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Souvenir from Canada,” he said. “I’ve had it for a long time.”
“The beadwork is gorgeous.”
“A Blackfoot woman made it for me,” he said.
“Oh.” She didn’t want to pursue that. The woman he mentioned might have been a lover. She didn’t want to think of Gabriel with a woman. It was intensely disturbing.
“My cousin,” he said, without looking down at her. “She’s sixty.”
“Oh.” She sounded embarrassed now.
He glanced at her with hidden amusement. She was so young. He could almost see the thoughts in her mind. “You need somebody young to cut your teeth on, kid. They’d break on my thick hide.”
She flushed and started to jump up, but he caught her hand in his big, warm one, and pulled her gently back down.
“Don’t run,” he said softly. “No problem was ever solved by retreat. I’m just telling you how it is. I’m not involved with anyone. I haven’t been for years. You’re a bud, just opening on a rosebush, testing the air and the sunlight. I like my roses in full bloom.”
“Oh.”
He sighed. His fingers locked into hers. “These one syllable answers are disturbing,” he mused.
She swallowed. The touch of his big, warm hand was causing some odd sensations in her young body. “I see.”
“Two syllables. Better.” He drew in a long breath. “Until you graduate, we’re going to be living in close proximity, even with Sara in the house. I’ll be away some of the time. My job takes me all over the world. But there are going to have to be some strict ground rules when I’m home.”
“Okay,” she faltered. “What?”
“No pajamas or nightgowns when you walk around the house. You put them on when you go to bed, in your room. No staying up late alone. Stuff like that.”
She blinked. “I feel like Mata Hari.”
“You feel like a spy? An old one, at that.” He chuckled.
“A femme fatale, then,” she amended. “Gosh, I don’t even own pajamas or a gown...”
“You don’t wear clothes in bed?” He sounded shocked.
“Oh, get real,” she muttered, glad he couldn’t see her face. “I wear sweats.”
“To bed?” he exclaimed.
“They’re comfortable,” she said. “Nobody who wanted a good night’s sleep ever wore a long gown, they just twist you up and constrict you. And pajamas usually have lace or thick embroidery. It’s irritating to my skin.”
“Sweats.” Of all the things he’d pictured his young companion in at night, that was the last thing.
She looked down at his big hand in the light from the living room. It burned out onto the porch like yellow sun in the darkness, making shadows of the chairs behind them on the dusty boards of the porch. He had good hands, big and strong-looking, with square nails that were immaculate. “I guess the women you know like frilly stuff.”
They did, but he wasn’t walking into that land mine. He turned her hand in his. “Do you date?”
Her heart jumped. “Not since the almost-broken-nose thing.”
He laughed softly. “Sorry. I forgot about that.”
“There aren’t a lot of eligible boys in my school who live in the dark ages like I do,” she explained. “At least two of the ones who go to my church are wild as bucks and go to strip parties with drugs.” She grimaced. “I don’t fit in. Anywhere. My parents raised me with certain expectations of what life was all about.” She turned to look at him. “Is it wrong, to have a belief system? Is it wrong to think morality is worth something?”
“Those are questions you should be asking Carlie’s dad,” he pointed out.
“Do you believe in...in a higher power?”
His fingers contracted around hers. “I used to.”
“But not anymore?”
His drawn breath was audible. “I don’t know what I believe anymore,
ma belle,
” he said softly. “I live in a world you wouldn’t understand, I go to places where you couldn’t survive.”
“What kind of work do you do?” she asked.
He laughed without humor. “That’s a discussion we may have in a few years.”
“Oh, I see.” She nodded. “You’re a cannibal.”
He stilled. “I’m...a what?”
“Your work embarrasses you,” she continued, unabashed, “which means you don’t work in a bank or drive trucks. If I had a job that embarrassed me, it would be involved with cannibalism.”
He burst out laughing. “Pest,” he muttered.
She grinned.
His big thumb rubbed her soft fingers. “I haven’t laughed so much in years, as I do with you.”
She chuckled. “I might go on the stage. If I can make a hardcase like you laugh, I should be able to do it for a living.”
“And here I thought you wanted to be a reporter.”
“I do,” she said. She smiled. “More than anything. I can’t believe I’m actually going to work for a newspaper starting Monday,” she said. “Minette is getting me my own cell phone and she’s going to teach me to use a camera...it’s like a dream come true. I only asked her for a reference for college. And she offered me a job.” She shook her head. “It’s like a dream.”
“I gather you’ll be riding with Carlie.”
“Yes. I’m going to help with gas.”
He was silent for a minute. “You keep your eyes open on the road, when you’re coming home from work.”
“I always do. But why?”
“I don’t trust Roberta’s boyfriend. He’s dangerous. Even Carlie is in jeopardy because of what happened to her father, so you both have to be careful.”
“I don’t understand why someone would want to harm a minister,” she said, shaking her head. “It makes no sense.”
He turned his head toward her. “Michelle, most ministers started out as something else.”
“Something else?”
“Yes. In other words, Reverend Blair wasn’t always a reverend.”
She hesitated, listening to make sure Carlie wasn’t at the door. “What did he do before?” she asked.
“Sorry. That’s a confidence. I never share them.”
She curled her hand around his. “That’s reassuring. If I ever tell you something dreadful in secret, you won’t go blabbing it to everyone you know.”
He laughed. “That’s a given.” His hand contracted. “The reverse is also applicable,” he added quietly. “If you overhear anything while you’re under my roof, it’s privileged information. Not that you’ll hear much that you can understand.”
“You mean, like when you were talking to Sara in French,” she began.
“Something like that.” His eyes narrowed. “Did you understand what I said?”
“I can say, where’s the library and my brother has a brown suit,” she mused. “Actually, I don’t have a brother, but that was in the first-year French book. And it’s about the scope of my understanding. I love languages, but I have to study very hard to learn anything.”
He relaxed a little. He’d said some things about Michelle’s recent problems to Sara that he didn’t want her to know. Not yet, anyway. It would sound as if he were gossiping about her to his sister.
“The graveside service is tomorrow,” she said. “Will Sara be here in time, do you think?”
“She might. I’m having a car pick her up at the airport and drive her down here.”
“A car?”
“A limo.”
Her lips parted. “A limousine? Like those long, black cars you see politicians riding around in on television? I’ve only seen one maybe once or twice, on the highway when I was on the bus!”
He laughed softly at her excitement. “They also have sedans that you can hire to transport people,” he told her. “I use them a lot when I travel.”
He was talking about another world. In Michelle’s world, most cars were old and had plenty of mechanical problems. She’d never even looked inside a limousine. She’d seen them on the highway in San Antonio. Her father told her that important businessmen and politicians and rich people and movie stars rode around in them. Not ordinary people. Of course, Gabriel wasn’t ordinary. He’d said he owned a new Jaguar. Certainly he could afford to ride in a limousine.
“Do you think they’d let me look inside, when it brings her here?” she asked.
Gabriel was amused at her innocence. She knew nothing of the world at large. He couldn’t remember being that young, or that naive about life. He hoped she wouldn’t grow up too quickly. She made him feel more masculine, more capable, more intriguing than he really was. He liked her influence. She made him laugh. She made him want to be all the things she thought he was.
“Yes,” he said after a minute. “Certainly you can look inside.”
“Something to put in my diary,” she mused.
“You keep a diary?” he asked, with some amusement.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I note all the cows I’ve seen abducted, and the strange little men who come out of the pasture at night...”
“Oh, cool it.” He chuckled.
“Actually, it’s things like how I did on tests, and memories I have of my father and mother,” she confessed. “And how I feel about things. There’s a lot about Roberta and Bert in there, and how disgusting I thought they were,” she added.
“Well, Roberta’s where she can’t hurt you. And Bert is probably trying to find a way out of the country, if he’s smart.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He stood up and pulled her up beside him. “That’s a conversation for another time. Let’s go see if Carlie’s game show is off.”
“Don’t you like game shows?” she wondered aloud.
“I like the History Channel, the Nature Channel, the Military Channel, and the Science Channel.”