The Kissing Stars Read online

  Tess whirled around to dash into the lab. Gabe caught her around the waist. “No, darlin’, don’t.”

  She clawed at his hands, wriggling in his confining embrace. “Let me go! We’ve got to save him!”

  He turned her around and stared down into her face. “We can’t, Tess. It’s too late. We’re too late.”

  “No-o-o!” she screamed, fighting harder, fisting her hands and beating at his chest. “Let me go! We can’t be too late. We have to save my brother.”

  A part of her knew that hysteria had overtaken her, but she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t stop anything about this nightmare. She yelled and hit and kicked, but Gabe held her tight.

  Then a second explosion ripped the night.

  Tess’s knees turned to water and she collapsed, sobbing, into Gabe’s embrace. She could deny it no longer. Her brother was gone.

  Minutes ticked by, dragging like years, as grief consumed her. Gabe held her gently, tenderly, even as he rattled off a string of ugly epithets. “I’m so sorry, darlin’. God, I’m sorry.” He paused a moment, then added almost to himself. “I should have been here.”

  He should have been here.

  His words burrowed through her pain like a bullet, leaving a streak of rage in its wake. Tears streamed down her face as she wrenched away from him. “You told him you’d be here. He didn’t know your father’s laboratory. He didn’t know how to work the spectroscope and if he lit the Bunsen burner…” The image of her brother being blown to bits flashed in her mind. “It’s your fault!”

  Gabe flinched and closed his eyes.

  He didn’t try to deny it and that only increased her rage. “It’s your fault! You were late because you had to ‘stargaze’ some more. That’s all you think about. You should have been here to help him.”

  “God, I know.” He looked at her then, the firelight clearly revealing the anguish and misery in his eyes. Tears rolling down his cheeks. “Please, Tess…”

  But she was seventeen years old and in terrible pain, so she struck out at the nearest target. “You killed him, Gabe. You killed your best friend. You killed my brother. I hate you.” Her voice broke on a sob. “I hate you!”

  With that, and one last glance at the haunting inferno, she ran off into the night.

  WHEN TESS’S mind returned to the present, she discovered her cheeks were wet with tears. She brushed away the wetness and gazed up toward the top of the mountain where her husband stood like a statue facing away from her.

  She’d been cruel that night. Cruel to someone she loved. Shame washed over her like a cold December rain.

  But fete had been cruel, too. Cruel to both of them.

  She closed her eyes. She owed her husband an apology for her actions and accusations that night, but what else did she owe him? How much of the truth did he need to know, did he deserve to know?

  She’d told him to leave her one time. Once. Once, when she was mindless with grief.

  And he’d gone. No argument, no resistance. No fighting for the love she had thought they shared. He’d left her to face her father, face her trials, all alone. “Maybe I don’t owe him anything more than an apology.”

  Tess drew a deep breath and resumed her climb. She’d find out how much of Gabe Cameron remained in Gabriel “Whip” Montana.

  Then she’d know whether or not to tell him about Doc and Will. And about sweet little Rachel.

  CHAPTER 5

  AT THE CREST OF Paintbrush Mountain, Gabe dropped the picnic basket, then bent and scooped up a handful of pebbles. One by one, he chucked them, absently aiming toward a cactus some fifteen yards down the hill. He stared out over a West Texas landscape that seemed to go on forever, his thoughts as bleak as the view.

  Why had he bothered to make the trip to Aurora Springs anyway? So what if he and Tess were still married? Having answers to the questions tumbling around in his brain wouldn’t change anything. Time couldn’t change anything.

  Billy’s death would always divide him and Tess.

  The intensity of his reaction to her idle talk about stargazing had caught him by surprise. Funny how a couple of questions or a particular word or two could wipe out a man’s maturity, shooting him right back to boyhood in the blink of an eye. In that moment, all those old emotions came roaring back brand new again. The intervening years might well have never happened. The grief and anguish and shame. That soul-eating sense of loss.

  He believed he had dealt with Billy’s death and its aftermath years ago, that he’d put it all behind him and moved on. Now he had to admit he’d lied to himself. He should have realized it. His quirk of avoiding sight of the stars was a hell of a clue, one he’d gone out of his way not to address. When he fessed up to Tess, he’d put his feelings into words for the very first time.

  But maybe in his heart, he’d known it all along.

  He took the last stone in his hand and pinged it against a ponderosa pine. Maybe some part of him had recognized he had some old ghosts to face. Maybe that had fueled his urgency to follow Tess from Dallas. Maybe it wasn’t answers he searched for, but absolution.

  “Gabe, I owe you an apology.”

  He stiffened. He hadn’t heard her approach. The way he’d barked at her, he had expected her to run back to town. Instead she offers me an apology?”

  Slowly, he turned around and faced her. The anguish painted across her face cut him to the quick.

  She took a step closer. Earnestly, she said, “I know you’re not responsible for what happened to Billy. It was a dreadful, horrible accident. An accident. It was no one’s fault, and it was wrong, terribly wrong of me to blame you.”

  Gabe drew a deep breath. Absolution. Well, if that’s what he came here for, she’d laid it right out for him. He waited for a sense of relief. Nothing, nothing at all.

  It made him angry.

  His gaze followed a sparrow flitting from tree to tree. With a bite to his voice, he challenged, “Figured that out, did you? When? Just now?”

  “No, Gabe.” She clutched the brightly colored quilt tightly to her chest and shot him a chastising look. “I’ve known it all along.”

  He recalled her hateful accusations the night her brother died. In a tone as dry as the Chihuahuan in July, he observed, “Not quite all along.”

  Guilt flashed across the summer sky blue of her eyes. “I was confused at first. Grief does that to people. I was wrong. I’m asking for your forgiveness.”

  He scooped up another handful of stones and resumed chucking them one by one at the cactus. Sonofabitch. Guess he hadn’t come here for absolution, after all. Here she was offering it up to him on a platter, and instead of easing him, hearing her humble herself like this only made him feel worse. His anger evaporated, leaving weariness behind. “You don’t need to ask, Tess,” he told her honesty. “There’s nothing to forgive. You were grieving, and a person has trouble making sense under those circumstances. I was the same way.”

  “You were?” Hope brightened her face.

  She’s so beautiful. Looks like an angel.

  Gabe nodded. “I wallowed around in guilt for a good while after the fire, but once my mind cleared and I understood what had happened, I started thinking straight I realized I wasn’t to blame for the accident that took my best friend’s life.”

  She licked her lips, then shot the question like a bullet. “Then why didn’t you come home?”

  Gabe lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s a complicated question.”

  Regally, she drew herself up. “No, I think it’s quite simple. You didn’t want to come home.”

  The accusation in her tone pricked his temper. “Damned right I didn’t. You sent me away, Tess. You told me you hated me. I thought you were divorcing me.” Seeing the stricken look on her face, he muttered a curse, then added, “And besides, if I’d have come home I’d have murdered my father. I figured patricide was best left out of the equation.”

  She closed her eyes and allowed her head to drop back. “I k
new it. You blame him still, don’t you?”

  “Of course I blame him,” he replied, furious. “Monty Cameron might as well have killed your brother himself.”

  “That’s lunacy,” she scoffed. “It was an accident. You said it yourself not two minutes ago.”

  “An accident caused by negligence on that man’s part. Monty ignored the need to repair the faulty valve on the Bunsen burner, and he failed to secure volatile chemicals. Monty and his cursed carelessness did poor Billy in.”

  “I knew it,” Tess muttered, whipping the quilt into the wind. It opened and floated to the ground in a vibrant splash of reds, blues, and yellows, the bright colors shocking eyes accustomed to the monotony of West Texas. She dropped to her knees and smoothed away wrinkles in the cloth with a harsh stroke of her hand. “I knew you wouldn’t listen to reason where your father is concerned.”

  “There is nothing reasonable about my father’s actions. You and I were young, Tess, and young folks just act stupid. That’s one of nature’s rules.”

  He sighed heavily. “Look, I know now that I should have tried harder to see you, especially after you returned my letters unread. But you should have read them. You should have let me know if you wanted me to come home. But my father wasn’t young; he doesn’t have that excuse. He’s the one who truly deserves our wrath.”

  “Letters?” She jerked her head up. “What letters?”

  Gabe went still. “What do you mean ‘what letters’? I wrote you at least twice a week for a month. All of them came back unopened.”

  She sank all the way to the ground. He saw her throat bob as she swallowed hard. Softly, hurtfully, she said, “I never got them. They were never delivered.”

  “Oh, they were delivered.” Gabe folded his arms. “A friend of mine laid the three I sent that first week in your daddy’s own hand. They came to me packed inside another envelope along with the letter your father sent about the divorce.”

  Tess shut her eyes. “My father never gave them to me. He never told me.” After a moment’s pause, she added, “Oh, Gabe. My father was truly a wicked man.”

  Damn Stanford Rawlins. Bitterness rolled through Gabe like a tumbleweed in the wind. “Fathers,” he said with a sneer. “Reckon you and I were both lucky in that regard.”

  “No.” Tess reached irritably for the picnic basket. “Your father isn’t wicked at all. He’s a good man, a loving, caring man who made a mistake. He deserves forgiveness from you, not rancor.”

  “Forgive Monty Cameron?” With one, powerful swing of his arm, Gabe threw the pebbles remaining in his fist. “When your pal Rosie flies. The man is a killer and I’m not gonna forget it.”

  She rolled back on her heels and gazed up at him, her mouth tightened in a grim line. “Gabe, an accidental explosion killed Billy. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your father’s fault. Monty is—”

  Gabe rounded on her, furious. “Remember, Tess, Billy isn’t the only person Monty Cameron killed. My own mother and infant brother died needless deaths because he was too wrapped up in one of his stupid scientific searches to take my laboring mother out of the Florida swamp.”

  Her eyes snapped with temper and she shoved to her feet. “Gabe, you’re not being fair!”

  “Fair?” He burst out with a laugh. “Darlin’, fair is where you run your pig. It has nothing to do with real life. Why are you defending him anyway?”

  Tess braced her hands on her hips and shot him a glare. “Your mother wasn’t due to deliver for two months. There should have been plenty of time to get back to a town. And your father’s searches weren’t stupid. You can’t blame him for seeking the truth. That’s what scientists do.”

  “He wasn’t a scientist, he was a reckless adventurer who used science as an excuse.”

  Her jaw worked as if she were swallowing her words. Then she drew a deep breath and exhaled it loudly. “I swear, Gabe Cameron, your head is so hard it could etch glass. Maybe it’s best we don’t talk about your father right now.”

  “Try ‘ever’ and I’ll agree with you.”

  Kneeling, she reached into her basket and pulled out a cardamon roll. She chucked it at him saying, “Stuff this in your mouth. I don’t want to listen to your yammering.”

  He caught the roll and held it. Slowly, the anger drained out of him. The girl had always had a backbone, and she hadn’t left it behind when becoming a woman. He took a bite of his roll and flavor exploded in his mouth, washing away the lingering bitterness of his anger.

  Damn, but he’d missed this taste. Among others.

  Gabe cleared his throat. “So, since we’re not gonna talk about my pa anymore, let’s get on to what brought me here, shall we? I want to understand this divorce-that-wasn’t, Tess. Tell me why you left the Rolling R.”

  “Oh, damn.” She sank down onto her seat, folding like a bad poker hand.

  Damn? Out of Tess’s mouth? This explanation must be worse than he’d figured.

  He watched silently as she took a moment, obviously gathering her thoughts. It required such an effort that Gabe decided to sit down, too. The seconds ticked slowly by, and he began to wonder why he’d ever asked his cursed question. And he’d bet money on the fact he wouldn’t like the story she had to tell one little bit.

  Tess poured herself a cup of milk, took a sip, then said, “As you know, after the funeral I went back to live at the ranch with my father. You also know how he felt about Billy. My father wouldn’t speak to anyone but the ranch foreman, so deeply did he grieve. I think he went a little crazy holed up in that room. When he finally called me to the library to talk with him two weeks after the funeral, he demanded I leave.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated, obviously searching for words. Finally, she said, “My last name was Cameron. He demanded I change it, to divorce you. I refused.”

  “So he decided to take care of ending the marriage himself,” Gabe replied, drawing the obvious conclusion.

  “Maybe he intended to at first, but he never followed through.”

  Gabe nodded. “We didn’t sign divorce papers.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have put it past him to sign our names for us.” She gave a small, unamused laugh. “In fact, that’s what I would have expected him to do. But because of a copy of the will I received upon his death, I know that didn’t happen.”

  Gabe fastened his gaze on the feather of white smoke rising from the chimney of Aurora Springs’ communal kitchen. He damned sure wouldn’t partake of anything they were cooking up there this morning, and not because Tess had thought to feed him from a picnic basket, either. This story she was telling had curdled his stomach. “So you inherited the Rolling R. Is that how you financed your studies?”

  She took a long time to answer. “No, Father left the ranch to his foreman.”

  “He what?” Gabe jerked his head around, pinning her with his stare. “He disinherited you?” When she nodded, he clenched his fists. “Damn that man! What happened, Tess? How did you live? How did you support yourself?”

  She shut her eyes and a moment later, tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Gabe melted. This woman’s tears had always knocked his legs right out from underneath him. Probably because she so seldom cried.

  He took a couple of awkward steps in her direction, uncertain how to respond. When the little whimper escaped her lips, he knew he’d had enough. “Never mind, darlin’. That’s enough. Don’t cry. We can talk about this later. I think we’ve both had all the revelations we need for now.”

  She looked at him, then, the film of tears sparkling in the morning sunlight. “Gabe, I—”

  Squeal.

  The animal’s pain-filled shriek halted Tess mid-sentence.

  Squeal. Squeal. Squeal.

  Sounds like the butcher is getting to that hog, Gabe thought.

  “Rosie!” Tess cried, shoving to her feet. Without so much as a word to him, she ran for the path down the hill hollering.

  Gabe remained seated, his gaze trailing his wife’s ma
d dash. “Saved by the pig,” he observed, relief washing through him. It wasn’t like him to run from problems, but this situation was different from any he’d experienced before.

  Discussing the past with Tess was like strolling across a desert filled with cactus. One misstep could result in a nasty stick.

  Down in town, the pig squealed again and Gabe rolled to his feet to watch the action. Then, to his utter surprise considering recent events, he started to laugh. Soon he found himself laughing so hard he couldn’t have run ten yards to save his soul.

  What else was a fellow to do when he watched the citizens of Aurora Springs chase a pair of camels loping after a fleet-footed pig coated in molasses and feathers?

  “I’M NOT giving that pig a bath.”

  The afternoon sun and Gabe’s indignant voice filtered through the window of the pig-ravaged storeroom In the midst of the cleanup, Tess couldn’t help but smile. God bless Rosie. The pig’s antics had pulled Tess from the nightmare conversation with Gabe up on Paintbrush Mountain and restored Tess’s good humor. She considered the mess that had awaited her in the storeroom a fair price to pay.

  After she had managed to catch Rosie, but before Gabe dragged himself howling with laughter down the bluff, she had spoken with her Aurora Springs family and impressed upon them the importance of keeping certain details about their community quiet. Twinkle, who knew more of the details about Tess’s relationship with Gabe, stepped up and declared her intention to take the man beneath her wing—whether he liked it or not.

  From the sounds of it, he didn’t care for the job she had in mind for him at the moment.

  “Now, Gabe-dear,” Twinkle scolded. “One of the few rules we have here in our community is that everyone pitches in to help. I don’t know what’s gotten into Rosie today; she’s normally quite well-behaved. First Tess’s star shed and now our storeroom— we need the extra pair of hands to help.”

  “I don’t mind helping. I’m just not scrubbing down that undercooked roast with lavender soap.”