Scotsman Wore Spurs (36 page)

But the warning was too late. She'd already lost her heart. And the arm around her was cold comfort when she felt the tension of Drew's body, as if he wanted to bolt.

Had he not forgiven her, after all?

Or was he really afraid she might try to trap him into a marriage he didn't want?

Had someone else tried to do that? Had there been women—a woman—he'd cared about in the past? One, perhaps, that he still cared about now?

Gabrielle thought there probably had been many women in Drew's bed over the years. As inexperienced as she was at lovemaking, she sensed his expertise. That knowledge hurt, but not nearly as much as thinking that there might have been one special woman.

Suddenly, she had to know.

“Drew?”

“Hmm?” he mumbled.

“Is there someone else? A woman?”

His arm tightened around her. “No, lass.”

“Was there one?” Her voice sounded very small to her.

“No one. Until an urchin in the worst-looking hat I've ever seen fell into a river.”

Emotion nearly choked her. It wasn't a girl's fondest dream of a compliment, but it was the closest he'd come to an endearment. And she would gladly take what she could get. She snuggled deeper into his arms, listening to the beat of his heart and feeling his chest rise and fall.

“I'm sorry I lied to you,” she said. “And Kirby.”

“Kirby?”

“He told me to call him that. He and my father were friends. Neighbors,” she added shyly. She was still reeling a little from all the revelations of the day—discovering new pieces of her father's past, getting to know him better, and in the process, finding an old friend of his. She felt as if she'd unearthed a treasure. “They grew up together.”

Drew didn't reply, but she went on, hoping to recapture the intimacy between them. “Papa
was
in a robbery with him,” she admitted sadly, realizing she'd once hoped to learn it wasn't true. Now, at least, because of Kirby, she understood her father's reasons—and the pain he'd carried with him all the years of his life. She'd seen it alive in Kirby.

“I know,” Drew said. “Kirby told me. It's the reason he's never married. He was always afraid his past would come back to haunt him.”

“And he was right.”

“Aye. It's been a high price to pay for one foolish mistake.”

Wanting him to keep talking, but wanting to hear about him, not someone else, Gabrielle said quietly, “You never told me why you left Scotland.”

His chest rumbled with a low, ironic sound. “Nearly half of Scotland has left for your western gold fields, and many more for your cities. You have a rich country, lass, and a fine one for a gambler.”

“I once heard you and Kirby discuss ranching.”

“Aye. I'm thinking on it. But it would take a bloody long time and a lot of money. 'Twould be no life for a lass, not for quite a while.”

He'd made himself very clear. And whatever remnants of hope, of satisfaction, of rapture, Gabrielle had tried to cling to turned to ashes. The thought of losing him devastated her.

“Have you thought about where you'd want to go?” she said weakly.

“Colorado, I think,” he said. “If I decide upon it. But I'm not sure I'd want roots. I wouldn't know what to do with them.”

Another warning, even clearer. She bit down on her lower lip, swallowed the stone in her throat, and slowly moved away from him. Drawing the shirt around her, she sat hugging herself.

Drew reached to pull on his trousers, then rose with easy athletic grace. He held out his hand, and she took it, allowing him to lift her to her feet.

“Gabrielle …” he began, sounding uneasy.

She put a finger to his mouth. “No, don't say anything. You don't owe me anything. Far from it. I, on the other hand, owe you my life.” She tried to stem the hot rush of tears, fumbling with the buttons of her shirt and combing her hair with her fingers.

She started almost blindly toward camp, but he grasped her and stopped her progress. “Blast it, Gabrielle.”

She fought his hands. She wanted to get back to the wagon before the tears came. But he whirled her around until she faced him, and when she looked up at him through misted eyes, she saw agony etched on his face.

“Gabrielle,” he said again. “Gabrielle …” And then his lips came down on hers with fierce possession.

Chapter Nineteen

Drew knew he should let Gabrielle go, but he couldn't. Not this way. Not with the tears she tried so desperately to hide glistening in her exquisite blue eyes.

“
You don't owe me anything
,” she had said. But he did owe her. Because of her, he could feel again. True, he felt pain and loneliness as he hadn't since he was a child. But he also felt joy, joy as he had never experienced it. The sun was brighter than it had ever been, the grass greener, the sky bluer. He reveled in the world around him in a new way. And, too, he was tasting of the richer things life had to offer—friendship, loyalty.…

And love. He knew what he felt was love. His heart was bursting with it, even crying with it, as he saw the tears glistening in Gabrielle's eyes and knew he'd put them there. The tightness in his throat made it nearly impossible to breathe as he clasped her to him and, for the first time in his life, put his heart into a kiss.

He loved her. But he couldn't yet speak the words locked inside him. So he tried to tell her without words, tried to say
I love you
with the touch of his fingertips on her cheek, her hair. With a caress of his lips against her eyes, her throat … her lips. With his arms, he sheltered her body, trying desperately and with his entire being to tell her
I
love you, Gabrielle, I love you
.

But then, unforeseen, an insidious thought snaked through his mind. “
I owe you my life
.” Did she truly feel that she owed him something? Was that why she was here with him? Was that why she'd made love with him?

Drew's arms loosened, and his lips left Gabrielle's. He stepped back, taking her chin in his hand until she looked up at him. “You don't owe me anything,” he said. “You never will.”

The clouds chose that moment to dim the moon, and the telltale blue eyes that often revealed so much were obscured in shadow.

“Don't mistake gratitude for … for love,” he continued, his voice harsher than he had intended.

“Is that what you believe I'm doing?” she said, her voice cracking slightly.

“I don't know,” he said honestly. “I don't know much about … good women.”

She touched his chest. His shirt was still unbuttoned, and her fingers lightly grazed his skin, sending tremors racing through him. His groin started aching again.

“I've been an actress—a performer—nearly all my life,” she said. “Most people consider women who make the stage a career to be loose—fallen women—whether we are or not.”

Drew winced, remembering that in his experience, actresses were usually fair game.

“You? A fallen woman?” he said, a finger going up to push back a wayward curl. “I don't think so.”

Her smile penetrated the shadows, breaking through the misery on her face, and he thought about how striking she must be onstage. Her smile alone would captivate a crowd. She hadn't smiled much recently, and he felt himself largely to blame.

“You're beautiful,” he said, touching her cheek.

One of her hands went to her hair, to the short curls, in a self-conscious gesture.

“Don't regret cutting your hair?” he said suddenly.

“I don't,” she said. “Not really. I love the freedom. I only miss it because it reminded me of my mother's hair. Mine was like hers.”

“How long was it?” he asked quietly.

“Nearly to my waist,” she said.

He tried to picture her with long ropes of dark hair, but that woman wouldn't be his Gabrielle. His Gabrielle. When had such possessiveness ever been a part of him?

Never. Yet, suddenly, the very thought of someone else touching her hair, or any part of her, was pure torment.

“Do you miss the stage?” he asked, even as he fought the shocking urge to carry her away to some remote hideaway and keep her there forever.

She shook her head. “I thought I would, but without Papa and my mother …”

“You miss them very much, don't you?” He remembered his own vague sorrow when his mother had died—not so much for what had been but for what he'd always hoped could be—and none at all at his father's passing. But then the earl of Kinloch had not really been his father.

She nodded. “I never spent a day without them until my mother died a few years ago. And then, at least, my father was still there.”

Drew couldn't even imagine her life, her love for her parents, the safety she must have known, that safety suddenly gone with a gunshot.

He wished he could give her that safety again. But he had no security to give, no pledge. No future. Only an empty title that was pure mockery to him. So, he simply held her, her head resting against his heart, and wondered about the price of keeping her there. The price to him. The price to her.

Gabrielle finally eased away from Drew, leaning back to look up at him. Shadows shielded his eyes from her, but she sensed his inner turmoil—his reluctance to leave her warring with his fear of staying or of getting any closer than they already had.

“I have to get back to Ha'penny,” she whispered.

“Aye, and I to the cattle,” he said. “Or Damien will ha' more to fret about.”

“Do you really think anyone cares whether Damien frets?”

“Aye. I do,” Drew said quietly. “He's trying bloody hard to live up to what he thinks Kirby wants. It's not always easy to stand tall in another man's shadow.”

She heard the concern in his voice.

“Kirby cares for Damien, as he does for Terry,” Drew said slowly. “And Damien cares for his uncle. The two simply don't know how to talk to each other.”

It occurred to Gabrielle that Drew and Kirby had become friends because they were very much alike. Neither of them knew how to reveal their thoughts or feelings, and both feared any kind of intimacy. Yet each was capable of bone-deep loyalty and affection.

Still, Drew's understanding for someone whose blanket animosity was clear to all touched her. Again, she was astonished by his quiet insight and his compassion for the very people he tried so hard to keep at arm's length.

“You're smiling,” Drew said, breaking into her reverie.

“At something Kirby said,” Gabrielle replied.

“What?” he asked suspiciously.

“I'm not sure you'd want to hear it.”

“Tell me.”

“He said you try so hard to mind your own business—and you fail so miserably every time.”

Drew scowled and muttered an oath.

She touched his face. “I like that in you. Your caring.”

“I don't,” he said stubbornly, like a small boy.

“Aye, but you do care, and everyone knows it. You're a fraud, Drew Cameron.”

“Talk about frauds,” he said with mock severity.

“I know,” she said. “I'm a terrible one. But at least
I
admit it.”

“Ah, Gabrielle. I wish I could reach up and hand you that moon and a fistful of stars, but I can't. My hand would hold only air. I could pluck a coin from behind your ear, but that's as far as my magic goes. I've never been good at anything but illusion, and it's impossible to live for long on that.”

Not true
, she wanted to cry out. He was good at everything he tried. Kirby himself had called him the best hand he had, and the rancher was a man who rarely paid compliments. And he would be good at trusting, too, if he decided to try—surely as good as he was at erecting fences between him and other people.

In an odd way, though, she loved him all the more that he was cautious. She'd heard declarations of love before that had been as meaningful, and as substantial, as a feather in the wind. When Drew Cameron finally admitted love, it would be forever. With all her heart, Gabrielle wanted to be the one to whom he made the declaration.

She took his hand. “We'd better get back,” she said.

“Or Kirby will send out a posse,” he agreed.

“Damien, at the very least.”

“Most likely Damien,” he said with a chuckle. “He's probably stewing by now.”

Gabrielle nodded. She hurt for Drew, for his loneliness and lack of faith in his fellow man—and woman. But she was certain now that he loved her, and she thought he was coming closer to admitting it. A day? A month? Even a year?

She would wait however long it took.

The drive reached Caldwell two days later. Kirby stopped the herd three miles east of town and sent Drew and Gabrielle in for supplies.

He watched with a mixture of trepidation and amusement as Gabrielle donned her Gabe Lewis garb—a coat borrowed from one of the drovers—not as disreputable as her own had been but large enough to swallow her—and Hank's battered hat drooping over her eyes.

As he'd expected, all of the hands had protested, saying they deserved a drink or two—or three—and a night on the town. But Kirby knew he couldn't afford loose talk. He didn't want anyone to know he was still alive, and he didn't trust any of the hands not to let it slip. A few wrong words and a killer would know he had failed. He figured that only Drew and Gabrielle knew the stakes.

Hank volunteered to look after Ha'Penny, saying he'd raised a passel of younger brothers and sisters. After watching him with the baby, Gabrielle had finally agreed to leave the child in camp. Kirby wasn't sure whether she had more faith in Hank or in her dog; he was only grateful that he'd finally convinced her to accompany Drew, and he watched in relief as the two of them pulled out in the hoodlum wagon.

He never liked to send a drover into a town alone, but in this case, he had ulterior motives. He had watched the Scotsman and Gabrielle return from the river a couple of nights earlier, had seen traces of dried tears on Gabrielle's face and a hint of bleak despair on Drew's. He'd thought of Laura, how he'd lost his chance to love and be loved, and he was damn well determined that the same thing wouldn't happen to his friend and his old friend's daughter.