Cait London - Gabriel's Gift

Gabriel damned the weakness of her lover. Holding him blameless, she must still love him. Perhaps she wanted him still, wishing for him to come claim her. Gabriel pushed away that slight, unexpected burn of jealousy; Miranda needed his strength now. “Your mother would want you here, Miranda. Can you feel her?”

“Yes,” she said tiredly. “I can. I hurt, Gabriel. Every part of me and I feel so empty and so cold.”

“You’re badly bruised, Miranda. You must have fallen from the top step, and you were lying in the snow for a time. The cold probably slowed the loss of blood.” Gabriel inhaled sharply. He placed his hand over her forehead, testing its warmth, and then he took her pulse. “I’m going to call the doctor to see what else I can do. Then would you like me to lie with you, to hold you?”

In her pain, she’d lost all sense of modesty and she was feeling too weak, too vulnerable now. Where was the strong controlled woman she’d always been, always—? Now she only felt the need for life. “Just for a little bit. I need to feel—a heartbeat other than mine.”

Miranda gave herself to the warmth of Gabriel’s gentle hands and voice and when he settled beside her, she slid off into a welcoming darkness. Then someone was shaking her lightly, and Gabriel was bending over her, cupping her face with his big, callused hands. His voice was low and urgent. “Miranda, listen to me. The doctor is almost here. Will you trust me? I am only thinking of you now and your baby and of your mother. I want to smooth this road for you.”

She shook her head, unwilling to agree to anything but the truth. Then Gabriel took her hand, wrapping it in his warm, strong one. “It is in my heart to protect you and your baby. Do you trust me?”

His eyes were kind and concerned and she had nowhere else to go, nothing—She gripped his hand, nodded slowly and slid back into sleep.

Gabriel. Through a window in her mother’s house, Miranda watched the birds feed outside, gay in the dazzling midmorning light. Gabriel had been in the ambulance with her, staying in the small room at Freedom’s clinic with her. “She carried my baby,” she’d heard him say. “A fine son…. We had an argument and were working on our problems….”

The elderly nurse, Sarah, had been a friend of Anna’s and hadn’t spared Gabriel in her searing denouncement of “irresponsible males.” He’d nodded solemnly, taking the tongue-lashing without comment. “I see she’s not wearing her ring. She probably only purchased it to prevent gossip about her baby. Women have a sense of honor, even if some men do not,” Sarah had stated pointedly.

Gabriel’s plan was so old-fashioned, Miranda mused, giving his protection to her. Yet just then, she’d needed someone to lean on, the months of struggling with her failure—her misplaced trust in a man frightened so badly by marriage and children—and it was only too easy to let Gabriel handle everything. While the Bennetts were well respected in Freedom, Miranda didn’t feel like explaining her past life, or the reason she was in Freedom now, without a husband. With Gabriel, Tanner and Kylie’s solid fronts, she was well insulated against those who would gossip.

As the birds outside flitted around the feeders, swooping to the snow to pick at the fallen seeds, she pushed away the teardrop on her cheek. She was weak and uncomfortable and grieving and she didn’t like herself now.

How could she have been so wrong about Scott? He’d been the perfect companion, a friend.

Why hadn’t she been more careful that morning?

Miranda traced the window, mid-January’s temperatures icy upon her fingertip. How strange that Tanner and Kylie would agree that Gabriel’s plan was good for her. She shook her head. She was usually so strong and in control and now she seemed without an anchor. Miranda ran her cold fingertip across the tiny fresh scar on her forehead. The doctor’s words of two weeks ago kept running through her mind. “A slight concussion…A premature delivery…”

She scrubbed her hands across her face and knew that she had to do something, anything to reclaim herself. Miranda suddenly closed her eyes. How could she reclaim herself when every time she saw Gwyneth’s softly rounded body, she thought of…?

Her mother’s house seemed so empty now, her crocheting basket just as she left it. A smoothly worn hook was still poised in the loop of white thread and anchored into the large spool. The image seemed symbolic, for Miranda was held in a moment of her life, unable to move on. She placed her hand over the spool of crochet thread, the hook and the half-finished doily. Her hand drifted across her body and she forced it to lift away from the emptiness. She had to go on, to make a life, and stop worrying Tanner and Kylie. Miranda inhaled the scent of her mother’s lemon and beeswax furniture oil, and knew it was time to get to work. Her mother’s pantry was a perfect place to start.

Kylie and Gwyneth could not empty Anna’s canning jars, the green beans lined carefully on the shelf. After the thin years of widowhood and bringing up three children alone, Anna wouldn’t have liked the waste. But she’d kept a tight eye on dated foodstuffs and the labels proved that the filled jars were past due. Tying on Anna’s big work apron over her sweater and jeans, Miranda set out to clean her mother’s pantry.

Tanner and Kylie and she had agreed months after Anna’s accident that they would return to separate her things. Yet everything, except for the absence of Kylie’s hope chest, was the same. Miranda inhaled slowly; the house couldn’t remain as it was forever. Nothing was forever…. Kylie and Tanner were deep in their own lives, in the families that would come. She had to have a purpose—she’d always had goals, living her life by fulfilling them—and now she had nothing but her mother’s pantry.

Gabriel shoveled the new snow in the driveway and then worked his way up Anna’s walkway. He carefully cleaned the front steps and then circled the house, noting the light in the kitchen. After Miranda’s family returned, he had eased away, letting them comfort her. But her eyes filled with pain at the sight of Gwyneth’s rounded belly, and he knew that the healing would be long and painful. From others, he knew that Miranda hadn’t left her mother’s house.

Perhaps she mourned the man who couldn’t bear the shackles of marriage or children. Perhaps she waited for him to come to her. It wasn’t Gabriel’s place to stay with her, but he came down from the mountains every two days, trekking the first bit with his snowshoes to shovel snow and tidy the limbs broken by the snow’s weight. Miranda’s car, a compact hatchback wagon, hadn’t left Anna’s driveway. The only marks were those by the Boat Shop, the building near Anna’s house where Tanner fashioned custom-made wooden boats. Emotionally stripped, Miranda hadn’t changed from the silent shadow of herself, and Gabriel wondered how she would react to his offer.

Was it for her welfare, or his own? Was he being selfish? Wanting to care for her, to be with her a little longer, before she left again?

To be truthful, Gabriel admitted to himself, the offer he would propose to Miranda suited his own needs to be close to her, to cherish her.

She didn’t want to answer the quiet firm knock at the back porch door. One look through the window and she recognized Gabriel’s height and broad shoulders. He’d come to shovel snow before, leaving as silently as he came. Wearily she opened the door to him. He’d seen everything, knew the ugly truth about a man who couldn’t bear to look at her. But courtesy in her mother’s house had always been observed. Those watchful black eyes traced the circles beneath her eyes, her pale coloring, and the large dampened apron. He knew too much for her to deny her mental state; she felt as if he could see into her mind, the storms battering and draining her. “So I’m depressed. It happens. I’ll deal with it. Come in.”