Gabriel's Gift. Cait London
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stared up at him, trying to mentally jump from a man who’d run from responsibility to the man wanting it. What did Gabriel stand to gain? Why would he want to protect her so dramatically, creating a lie that damaged his honor in Freedom Valley? “Tanner put you up to this. He was always—”
“He’s worried. You are only human, Miranda, and dealing with too much all at once. You need a place apart from here to heal. I am offering my home. It is quiet and you would have time to adjust.”
Adjust? How? She shook her head. “No.”
His body stiffened. “Because you do not trust me?”
She met his eyes, fierce and black now with pride, the scowl darkening his hard face, the gleaming skin taut across those sharp, high cheekbones. “I have always trusted you, even when you were such a rat and broke up with me. I could visit you, Gabriel. I would like that. But the Women’s Council is for marriage offers and I see no reason to deceive anyone any longer.”
“I do. Let me share your burden. Let me give you shelter in all ways while you heal. For the most part, Freedom Valley has kind hearts, but there are tongues who would slice and hurt. Anna would not like that.”
Miranda’s head began to throb, part of her wanting to leap into Gabriel’s offer to let someone else deal with her own affairs. But reality said that she was a woman who could and should manage her life. “The idea is tempting, but I couldn’t let you offer for marriage. I have to handle this on my own.”
“But my pride will not let me do less. It is only a temporary means to help us both. The custom allows you my protection and my honor would not allow me to do less. I will only live with a woman under the custom of Freedom Valley—the trial marriage gives me a bit of company until spring, and hopefully, you’ll relax and think and heal.”
Gabriel ruffled her hair slightly, his fingers drawing away a strand before leaving her. A smile lurked around his eyes and lips. “With you in my home, my sister Clarissa would stop nagging me to get married. You’d be my protection.”
“You’re offering me a distraction, Gabriel. I’ll have to face life sometime.” Yet his idea warmed her, a temporary reprieve.
“True. While you’re thinking about it, let’s go down to the Wagon Wheel and eat.”
Three
Even the most levelheaded woman will be shaken by a man’s honorable and sweet intentions to claim her. I long for the day my Miranda sees such a man coming for her in the old traditional ways of my mother and her mother before her. She guards her heart well, now that Gabriel is not in her wedding sights. His ancestor would not court Cynthia Whitehall of the Founding Mothers all those years ago. Though they married others, Cynthia was said never to glow again as she had when she looked at Mr. Deerhorn. I want my Miranda to glow and to dream as is any woman’s right. It seems that now she has sealed her heart away. I wonder what can bring her back to life and love.
Anna Bennett’s Journal
“I’d like to handle my own problems,” Miranda whispered fiercely as she sat across from Gabriel at the Wagon Wheel Café. Her edges were showing now to a man who already knew too much about her. The falsely admitted father of her baby, Gabriel had stoically taken an amount of verbal battering from the traditional community. Though he seemed undisturbed, Miranda felt guilty, another emotion she couldn’t afford. She hated her weakness now, feeling as though one more blow would shatter her like glass. “I know I’m not myself now, but I will be. I don’t need your sympathy. You’re asking me to live with you and let everyone think that we’re trying to work out a nonexistent relationship. This is today, Gabriel, not a century and a half ago. Women have children—and lose them, and tend their own lives. I will…I will when I’m good and ready.”
Gabriel nodded and leaned back in the booth, a tall broad-shouldered man, one long leg stretched outside the enclosure. The rich tone of his weathered skin reflected his Native American ancestry. The rough cut of his hair rested on the collar of his dark red sweater, those jarring fierce features locked into an unreadable mask. He’d dressed carefully, his jeans new and pressed into a sharp crease. His big hands framed the café’s coffee cup, making the thick porcelain appear delicate. “I am not offering you a fancy resort in which to rest, Miranda. I built my home with few luxuries. You eat little. You can’t grow strong without good food. You should eat what Gwyneth and Kylie bring you.”
“I’m not hungry.” Her stomach ached now, unused to the warm, nourishing “blue plate special” of roast beef, mashed potatoes and green beans. In front of her, a wedge of Willa’s famed apple pie stood untouched.
“Are you going to eat that?” he asked and when she shook her head Gabriel ate her serving. “I like to eat with someone,” he said quietly. “Do you?”
She shrugged and glanced at Willa, the owner of the café, who was eyeing Luigi of the Pasta Palace down the street. Luigi had once burst into an emotional Italian song that clearly marked his intentions to court Willa, a seasoned widow of many years. Luigi’s huge drooping moustache was twitching as he smiled at Willa, his teeth gleaming whitely.
Following Miranda’s look, Gabriel noted, “He’s got her on the run.”
“That’s what people will say about you and me, Gabriel.” Miranda’s tone was hushed and fierce. She didn’t want his kindness; she wanted to retreat. “This is all a sham. They’ll think you want me. I don’t feel right about this—my mother believed in the traditional courting customs here. I shouldn’t have agreed to the lie about my life. I’ve managed so far without your protection.”
Bitter? Ungrateful? She was all of that and guilty, too. Gabriel didn’t deserve her harsh tirade. “I’m not exactly a likable person now. I’m sorry.”
“Anna understood a great many things when it came to surviving. She’d understand you need to heal. She’d understand that I am made a certain way and that we have reached a compromise…. Want you?” He lifted an eyebrow, his black eyes challenging her. “We’ll know differently, won’t we?”
She looked away out into the bright January sunlight, to Mr. Collier carefully helping his pregnant forty-year-old wife across street. The child was their first and both were glowing.
Gabriel was right; she wasn’t ready to face life just yet, to see Gwyneth’s body rounding with a baby. At times, Miranda’s grief slipped beyond her tethers and revealed more than she wished. Tanner was too careful not to speak of his joy and hurt her. Michael and Kylie were bursting with excitement, quickly shielded when Miranda was near—she expected that they had their own news of a baby and the ache within her grew. She couldn’t bear casting a shadow upon her brother’s and sister’s happiness. She couldn’t bear living in her mother’s empty house.
“Only for a time, Miranda. Until you feel better.”
She rubbed her throbbing headache. Every part of her now wanted to agree to Gabriel’s offer, to take shelter away from everything. “You’re pushing me, and I don’t like it.”
“The offer is mine. The choice is yours.” Gabriel looked away as if they weren’t discussing the deep traditions of Freedom Valley, where a man declared his intentions in front of the Women’s Council.
Miranda traced the rim of her water glass. “I’m in pieces,” she said finally. “Not at all like myself, and you know it.”
He nodded solemnly, those straight black lashes shielding his gaze. The sunlight passing through the window caught the dark tone of his skin, the angle of his high cheekbones. He seemed timeless as the mountains, his aura that of a man who spent his life outdoors amid the pine and clear water. “I think that your heart is wounded and that you are tired. You will be strong again.”
Long moments passed and then Miranda gave way to the need running within her to escape. “Okay,” she whispered bleakly. “I’d like to get away from everything for a while, and if it’s necessary for you to present this deception—a trial marriage—I