Page 32 of Gabriel's Angel

“You’re Michael now,” she murmured as the baby began to doze at her breast.

Later she laid him on the bed, surrounding him with pillows though she knew he couldn’t roll yet. Going to her suitcase, she took out her hairbrush. It was silly, of course, to feel compelled to leave some mark of herself on the room. But she set the brush on Gabe’s bureau before she left.

She found him downstairs, in a dark-paneled library with soft gray carpet. Because he was on the phone, she started to back out, but he waved her in and continued to talk.

“The paintings should be here by the end of the week. Yes, I’m back in harness again. I haven’t decided. You take a look first. No, I’m going to be tied up here for a few days, thanks anyway. I’ll let you know.” He hung up, then glanced at Laura. “Michael?”

“He’s asleep. I know there hasn’t been time, but he’s going to need his own bed. I thought I could run out and buy something if you could watch him for a little while.”

“Don’t worry about it. My parents are coming over soon.”

“Oh.”

He sat on the edge of the desk and frowned at her. “They’re not monsters, Laura.”

“Of course not, it’s just that... It seems we’re so out in the open,” she blurted out. “The more people who know about Michael, the more dangerous it is.”

“You can’t keep him in a glass bubble. I thought you trusted me.”

“I did. I do,” she amended quickly, but not quickly enough.

“Did,” Gabe repeated. It wasn’t anger he felt so much as pressing regret. “You made a decision, Laura. On the day he was born, you gave him to me. Are you taking him back?”

“No. But things are different here. The cabin was—”

“An excellent place to hide. For both of us. Now it’s time to deal with what happens next.”

“What does happen?”

He picked up a paperweight, an amber ball with darker gold streaks in the center. He set it down again, then crossed to her. She’d shed weight quickly. Her stomach was close to flat, her breasts were high and full, her hips were impossibly narrow. He wondered how it would feel to hold her now, now that the waiting was over.

“We might start with this.”

He kissed her, gently at first, until he felt her first nerves fade into warmth. That was what he’d been desperate for, that promise, that comfort. When he gathered her close, she fitted against him as he’d once imagined she would. Her hair, bound up, was easily set free with a sweep of his hand. She made a small sound—a murmur of surprise or acceptance—and then her arms went around him.

And the kiss was no longer gentle.

Passion, barely restrained, and hunger, far from sated, rippled from him into her. An ache, long buried, grew in her until she was straining against him, whispering his name.

Then his lips were roaming over her face, raking over her throat, searing her skin, then cooling it, then searing it again, while his hands stroked and explored with a new freedom.

Too soon. Some sane part of him knew it was too soon for anything more than a touch, a taste. But the more he indulged in her, the more his impatience grew. Taking her by the shoulders, he drew her away and fought to catch his breath.

“You may not trust me as you once did, angel, but trust this. I want you.”

Giving in to the need, she held on to him, pressing her face into his shoulder. “Gabe, is it so wrong of me to wish it was just the three of us?”

“Not wrong.” He stared over the top of her head as he stroked her hair. “Just not possible, and less than fair to Michael.”

“You’re right.” Drawing a breath, she stepped back. “I want to go check on him.”

Shaken by the emotions he pulled out of her, she started back up the stairs. Halfway up, she stopped, stunned.

She was in love with him. It wasn’t the love she’d come to accept, the kind that came from gratitude and dependence. It wasn’t even the strong, beautiful bond that had been forged when they’d brought Michael into the world. It was more basic than that, the most elemental love of woman for man. And it was terrifying.

She had loved once before, briefly, painfully. That love had kept her chained down. All her life she’d been a victim, and her marriage had both accented that and ultimately freed her. She’d learned through necessity how to be strong, how to take the right steps.

She couldn’t be that woman again, she thought as her fingers gripped the banister. She wouldn’t. That was what had bothered her most about the house, about the things in it. She had stepped into a house like this before, a house in which she had been out of place and continually helpless.

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