Naked Edge (34 page)

Oh, he was angry all right--but not with her. He was angry with the goddamned son of a bitch who'd packed his flue with leaves and almost killed her, angry enough to want to hunt the fucker down and blow his head off. And he was angry with himself for having hurt her. "Yeah, I'm sure."

Tell her!

She seemed to relax, her guileless eyes still wide and searching. Then she reached up to run a hand over his jaw, her fingers sliding through the hair at his temple. "You shaved. And your hair is damp."

He nodded. "I went home and took a shower. They gave me a police escort. It's strange taking a shower when your house is full of cops."

Why not talk about the weather while you're at it, dumbshit?

She looked away from him, a troubled expression on her face. "Gabe, I... I'm sorry I looked through your photo album. I didn't mean--"

He pressed his fingers against her lips. "Shhh. Don't. I'm the one who needs to apologize, not you."

She met his gaze, confusion in her eyes.

"I said things I shouldn't have said, things I didn't mean, and I'm sorry. I was way out of line. I left the damned photo album under the couch. I know you weren't snooping. If I tripped over a photo album with pictures of your life growing up on the rez, I'd probably look through it, too."

Find your balls and tell her, Rossiter.

"I'm sorry you lost her."

It was now or never. "You asked about Jill. You asked how she died."

Kat shook her head, her fingers closing around his. "You don't need to--"

"Yes. I do." He drew his hand away, stood, and turned back toward the window, unable to take the sympathy in Kat's eyes, hating how exposed it made him feel. "We met on a climbing trip to Yosemite. She'd driven from Moab with a couple of girlfriends. I'd come with my best friend from high school. His name was ... Wade."

How long had it been since he'd spoken that name aloud?

"Jill was funny and sexy and one hell of a climber. Wade and I ended up hanging at Camp Four with them and a bunch of other Yosemite regulars that first night. He hooked up with one of her friends and went off to fuck in the forest, and I headed back to our camp alone. I was almost asleep when Jill crawled into my tent and, well ..."

Jill had blown his mind, shimmying out of her jeans and hoodie, unzipping his sleeping bag and going down on him without a word. She'd climbed on top of him as soon as he was hard, getting them both off in under two minutes. It had been animal sex at its best. But Kat didn't need the details.

"She moved to Boulder a month later, and soon we were living together."

That had been a wild time, every day an adventure. Everything had seemed perfect. He'd had a job he loved, a woman he loved, a group of close friends--and all of the action he could handle, both outdoors and in the sack. But it had all been a lie.

"You must have loved her very much."

Gabe nodded. "Every guy who climbs fantasizes about meeting a woman who loves the sport as much as he does. Rock climbing, alpine climbing, ice climbing, rafting, mountain biking, skiing--Jill loved it all, and she was good at it."

Somehow he'd reached the window again. He stared out at the darkness, willing himself to stay numb. He hadn't talked to anyone about Jill since her funeral, and he wasn't sure he could handle losing it again like he'd done in the sweat lodge.

"We'd been living together for a couple years when I asked her to marry me. I took her to her favorite rooftop restaurant, surprised her with a one-carat diamond ring, got down on one knee--the whole thing. She said yes. I was on top of the world."

He could still remember how the setting sun had turned the sky over the Foothills pink, how Jill's eyes had misted up, how everyone in the restaurant had applauded when she'd said yes. It had been another perfect moment in his perfect life.

"She wanted a fall wedding in the mountains when the aspens were gold. I liked that idea. She wanted a honeymoon in the Himalayas the following spring. That was cool with me, too. She wanted me to get a vasectomy so that she could go off the pill. I wasn't too excited about that. Putting my nuts to the knife had never been part of my plan, but when you love someone ... She didn't want kids because pregnancy would interfere with climbing."

"About six weeks before the wedding ...' Suddenly he found it all but impossible to speak, his control cracking, the abyss inside him yawning wide, three years of pain, of grief, of rage roiling inside his chest, threatening to tear a hole right through him. He'd known where telling this story would lead him, but still the raw hurt astonished him. He forced breath into constricted lungs, willed himself to go on. "About six weeks ..."

Kat heard Gabe's voice break, saw his hands clench into fists, and her throat grew tight. Ignoring her dizziness and the soreness in her chest, she slid out of bed and wrapped the extra blanket the nurse had given her around her shoulders for modesty's sake, then crossed the cold tile floor one unsteady step at a time, pulling her IV pole along with her. She stopped behind him, hesitated for a moment, then rested her palm against the middle of his back, offering what little support she could.

He stiffened, but he didn't draw away. Then he turned his head and looked back at her, his brows drawn together in a frown. "You shouldn't be out of bed."

"Don't worry about me."

"You almost died, Kat. Don't be ridiculous." He sounded irritated, but his actions were gentle as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her back to bed, holding her IV line clear while she settled beneath the sheets. "There you go."

He sat down in the chair beside her, his gaze fixed faraway. And for a long moment, there was silence. When he spoke again, his voice was stripped of emotion, flat. "About six weeks before the wedding, she said she needed ... to get away. A camping trip with her bridesmaids. I was working."

A muscle clenched in his jaw, some kind of battle raging beneath his skin, and Kat wished she knew what to say or do to make this easier for him.

"She was late getting home. I'd made dinner. The doorbell rang. It was a state patrolman. He said ..." Gabe's voice broke again. "He said ... Jill was dead. Car accident in Boulder Canyon. A drunk driver had crossed the yellow line. Her car had rolled into the canyon. The coroner needed me to ID the body."

Kat tried to imagine what it would be like to be asked to identify the dead body of someone she loved--and remembered how hard it had been to see Grandpa Red Crow lying broken on the ground. But what Gabe had gone through had been much worse. Jill had been his fiancee, the woman he loved. "Oh, Gabe! I'm so sorry."

But he didn't seem to hear her. "The officer drove me down. I thought there must be some kind of mistake. It couldn't be her. It couldn't be. But it was. Her face ... Her face was bruised, bloodied. I touched her cheek, kissed her. She was so cold. I stood there, looking down at her. I didn't ... I didn't want to leave her there ...
alone."

His voice dropped to a whisper on that last word, his eyes squeezed shut, the sight of his anguish making it impossible for Kat to hold back her own tears. She reached out, took his hand.

"I asked about her friends, the other women who'd been with her, but ..." He drew a deep breath, as if trying to steady himself. "The coroner told me there hadn't been other women in the car. The passenger ... had been a man."

CHAPTER 23

THE PASSENGER HAD
been a man.

It took Kat a moment to understand what this meant, the truth dawning slowly. If Jill hadn't been with her bridesmaids, then ...

She'd lied to Gabe. She'd been unfaithful. She'd betrayed him.

"That's when I noticed the other gurney, the other body. Wade was draped with a sheet, but part of his arm was exposed. I recognized his tats. My fiancee and my best friend. Killed in a car accident together."

To lose the woman he loved and his best friend on the same day would have been bad enough. But to lose them like this ...

Tears gliding down her cheeks, Kat held tighter to Gabe's hand. "I-I'm so sorry!"

"At first, I thought there must have been some explanation. Maybe her girlfriends had driven separately. Maybe she'd run into Wade and given him a ride back into town." Gabe shook his head, gave a little laugh, his gaze hard. "God, I was an idiot."

"No! Don't say that!" Kat sat upright, her words coming out with a ferocity that surprised her. "You weren't an idiot. You were grieving and in shock. You loved them, trusted them, and wanted to believe the best of them."

It isn't easy being let down by someone you loved and trusted.

Words he'd spoken just the other day came back to her, and she understood he'd been speaking from painful experience. No wonder it had been easy for him to believe that Grandpa Red Crow had been hiding a drinking problem or looting artifacts. After a betrayal like that, Gabe would find it terribly hard to trust anyone again.

Especially women.

"I spent the next couple of days half crazed, trying to uncover the truth. I went through her e-mail, her cell phone messages, her credit card receipts, and found shit I wish to God I hadn't. I confronted her girlfriends. They'd known she was going away with him and had been ready to cover for her. Then one of my climbing buddies came by. He told me Jill had been fucking Wade off and on ever since she'd moved to Colorado. Their trip together was supposed to be one last pre-wedding fling before she settled down."

"He knew? Your friend knew--and he didn't tell you?"

"He said it wasn't his business. He said Jill loved me but couldn't give up the single lifestyle. He called her a sex addict, and I wondered how many of my other friends she'd fucked." Gabe spoke through clenched teeth, his voice shaking with barely suppressed rage. "I told him to get the fuck out. I work with him, but we're no longer friends. As for the rest of them-I haven't spoken to any of them since."

"I don't blame you." What kind of friends would let a buddy marry a woman they knew had already been unfaithful ? No friend worth keeping, that much was certain.

"I didn't go to Wade's funeral, but I went to Jill's. I left the engagement ring I'd bought her on her finger to remind her of the promise she'd broken and watched as they lowered her casket into the ground, not knowing whether to hate her or..."

Kat swallowed a sob, finished for him. "Or whether to grieve for her."

He nodded. "My life with her was a lie. The woman I loved, my circle of close friends. None of it was real. I believed in something that never really existed."

And Kat understood. He hadn't just lost Jill and Wade. He'd lost all of it--the people he loved and the life he'd lived.

"The autopsy came out the day after her funeral. She'd died almost instantly of a broken neck and massive internal injuries. The coroner found semen inside her--live sperm, still moving. She and Wade were both dead, but his sperm were still alive inside her. Kind of funny when you think about it."

"I don't think it's funny at all." Kat could only imagine how hurtful it had been for him to read through the report, proof of Jill's infidelity and Wade's betrayal spilled across the pages of a public document, a document anyone could read.

"We were going to get married, but she fucked my best friend." Gabe met Kat's gaze, anger sharp in his eyes. But behind the rage, she saw hurt, torment, desolation. "She said she loved me, but she fucked my best friend."

Unable to speak, Kat drew him into her arms.

Gabe allowed himself to sink into Kat's arms, the comfort she offered a refuge from the turmoil inside him, her embrace holding the pieces of him together. He felt shattered, empty, a gaping hole in his chest where his heart should have been, the edges torn and still bleeding. He wrapped his arms around her and held on, hating himself for needing her, but needing her just the same.

It was only then he realized she was crying, her slender body shaking with the effort to contain her tears, her breath coming in shudders. Something twisted in his chest to know she cared. But he hadn't put himself through this to provoke her sympathy, no matter how deeply it touched him. He'd done it so she'd understand.

He drew back, looked down at her face, her cheeks wet with tears, her eyes glistening. "I'm telling you all of this so you'll understand that it's not you, it's me. I can't be the man you want me to be. I'm broken. Inside, I'm broken. Don't waste your time hoping for things that can't happen."

She looked up at him through her tears, her gaze soft with compassion. "You're not broken, Gabe Rossiter. You're just afraid to let yourself feel because feeling hurts so much. But feeling is part of living. You can't escape it. If you try, you'll hurt yourself worse than Jill ever could."

Gabe opened his mouth to object, but nothing came out, her words knocking the breath out of him. Then she leaned forward--and kissed him.

Her lips brushed over his, petal-soft touches that shocked his system, made his mind go blank. Surprised, he watched, eyes open, as she leaned into him, deepening the kiss, her arms sliding behind his neck. Then her tongue flicked his, and he couldn't help but respond, her touch calling him back from the edge of the abyss, the storm inside him igniting into something even more elemental.

He took control of the kiss, his tongue subduing hers, his body shaking with the sudden force of his craving for her. She felt warm and alive in his arms, her heart beating hard against his. He rained kisses over her face, her tears salty on his tongue, the scent of her skin making him want to devour her. "God, Kat, what have you done to me?"