Page 67 of Gabriel's Angel

“If you’re asking for my approval, you don’t need to.”

“I’d still like to have it.”

“Then you do, unless I see this wearing you down.”

She had to smile. He still saw her as more fragile than she was or could ever have afforded to be. “You know, I’ve been thinking... with everything that’s happened, and everything we’ve had to think and worry about, we haven’t had much time to really get to know a lot about each other.”

“I know you take entirely too long in the bathtub and like to sleep with the window open.”

She took the stuffed rabbit Michael liked to chew on and passed it from hand to hand. “There are other things.”

“Such as?”

“The other night, I said that you could ask me anything and I’d tell you the truth, and then I’d ask you something. Do you remember?”

“I remember.”

“I never had my turn.”

He shifted so that he could rest his back against the daybed. They were avoiding speaking of the phone call they were both waiting for. And they both knew it. Perhaps that was best, Gabe mused as the baby continued to rub his sore gums against his knuckles.

“Do you want to hear about my misspent youth?”

Though she was plucking nervously at the rabbit’s ears, she smiled. “Is there time?”

“You flatter me.”

“Actually, I’d like to ask you about something else. A few days ago, when it rained, I went into your studio to close the windows. I looked through some of your paintings. Perhaps I shouldn’t have.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“There was one in particular. The one of Michael. Your brother. I’d like you to tell me about him.”

He was silent for so long that she had to fight back the urge to tell him that it didn’t matter. But it mattered too much. She was certain it was his brother’s death that had sent him to Colorado, that was preventing him, even after all these months, from having a showing of his work.

“Gabe.” She laid a tentative hand on his arm. “You asked me to marry you so that you could take on my problems. You wanted me to trust you, and I have. Until you can do the same, we’re still strangers.”

“We haven’t been strangers since the first time we laid eyes on each other, Laura. I would have asked you to marry me with or without your problems.”

Now she fell silent, as surprise ran through her, chased frantically by hope. “Do you mean that?”

He shifted the baby onto his shoulder. “I don’t always say everything I mean, but I do mean what I say.” When Michael began to whimper, Gabe stood to walk him. “You needed someone, I wanted to be that someone. And I, though I didn’t know it until you were already part of my life, needed someone, too.”

She wanted to ask him how he needed her, and why, and if love—the kind she’d always hoped for—was somehow mixed up with that need. But they needed to go back further than that if they were ever to move forward.

“Please tell me about him.”

He wasn’t certain he could, that he wouldn’t trip over the pain, and then the words. It had been so long since he’d spoken of Michael. “He was three years younger than I,” he began. “We got along fairly well growing up because Michael tended to be even-tempered unless backed into a corner. We didn’t have many of the same interests. Baseball was about it. It used to infuriate me that I couldn’t outhit him. As we grew older, I turned to art, and Michael to law. The law fascinated him.”

“I remember,” she murmured, as some vague recollection stirred. “There was something about him in an article I read about you. He was working in Washington.”

“As a public defender. He set a lot of tongues clucking over that decision. He wasn’t interested in corporate law or big fees. Of course, a lot of people said he didn’t need the money, anyway. What they didn’t understand was that he would have done the same thing with or without his stock portfolio behind him. He wasn’t a saint.” Gabe set Michael in the crib and wound up the mobile. “But he was the best of us. The best and the brightest, my father used to say.”

She had risen, but she wasn’t certain he wanted her to go to him. “I could see that in the portrait. You must have loved him very much.”

“It’s not something you think about, one brother loving another. Either it’s there or it isn’t. It isn’t something you say, because you don’t think it needs to be said. Then all you have is time to regret.”

“He had to know you loved him. He only had to see the portrait.”

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