Gabriel's Gift

She was angry now, with herself, with Scott, with Gabriel, with life. Her emotions swung from grief, to frustration, to self-pity, and back to anger. “I’ve always managed. I want to return something to you. Your mother made it for me years ago.”

Hurrying upstairs, Miranda tore into her old hope chest, retrieving the baby blanket Juanita had made. She returned and handed it to Gabriel. She wanted him and everything about him stripped from her. “You should have this.”

“Is it so hard to give yourself into the care of another?” he asked quietly, smoothing his large, strong fingers across the delicate stitching.

“She isn’t here, Gabriel. My mother was always here, and now she isn’t.” Illogical and grieving and emotional, Miranda served him the truth.

“She has done her work. Let her rest.” Gabriel’s voice was deep and soothing, that slight lilt unique and magical. “Have you eaten?”

“Does it matter?” She was bitter and alone and detested herself now, for lashing out at a man who had helped her.

“Come with me to the café, Miranda. Eat with me. Let people see you are a woman of pride and strength, for Anna.”

“That would only reinforce your lie, that you were the father of my baby, trying to reclaim me.”

“You can tell them it is a lie, if you wish. I wanted to protect you then. I still do.” He smiled softly, his hand smoothing her rumpled hair. She moved away, wary of Gabriel, who overpowered her mother’s sunlit kitchen. “Because if you will allow me, I would like to ask for you at the Women’s Council.”

Miranda closed her eyes, his offer echoing in her head. She gripped the kitchen counter for an anchor. “I didn’t hear that.”

He placed his hand on her head and shook it lightly. The gesture was familiar, one her brother and his friends had used for a younger sister. “Open your eyes, little Miranda. It is a logical plan.”

Little Miranda. He’d called her that so long ago….

She 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 guess that’s okay.”

The smile lurking around his lips matched the tone of his deep voice. “Ah, the gracious acceptance of the doomed. Do you think you can ride in another week?”

“I don’t feel like—” Then she caught that hard, straight look. The Deerhorns obeyed their own traditions. “You’re coming for me in the old way, aren’t you?”

“Yes. It is important to me. But if you prefer—”

“What am I worth?” she couldn’t help asking, slightly surprised by her own humor.

He shrugged, a gesture that said little and yet everything. That black gaze slid down her gray sweater, woolen slacks and boots. “You’re scrawny. Two horses maybe. Not my best ones.”

She smiled at that. Gabriel used to tease her in the same way. “You’ll get them back. This is only for a time.”

He was trying to help her, but there were concessions to Gabriel’s traditional-based honor. “I’ll manage. Thank you, Gabriel.”

At the cash register, Willa glared at him and stared pointedly at a jar filled with wrapped roses. Gabriel nodded and selected a tiny perfect yellow bloom. While Willa watched approvingly, he tore off the long stem and slid the rose into Miranda’s hair.

His hand rested warm and hard and callused against her cheek. She wondered why his gaze was so soft and seeking on her; she wondered why it called forth a tenderness she hadn’t expected.

She wondered why, at times, he spoke to her in that careful, proper way, his deep voice curling intimately around her.

Later, she would see that Gabriel had not taken the baby blanket, and her senses told her that he was uneasy with returned gifts, especially gifts between women.

In his way, Gabriel was a very traditional man. He was also known to be very private, and Miranda knew it was no light matter for him to open his home to her.

A week later, the blinding morning sun danced across the crust of the snow. Tethered behind him, Gabriel’s six best Appaloosa snorted steam into the frigid air. Three horses were his offering for Miranda; the one with the saddle was for her, one was to act as a pack horse, and another for him to ride on the return journey. He glanced at his four-wheeler, parked and ready for use, but today he was bringing Miranda to his home and nothing but the old-fashioned way would settle his heart. He’d cleared the narrow winding road to his home with the blade attached to his vehicle, because he wanted Miranda’s journey to be safe. “As the crow flies,” his home was not far from Anna’s, yet it was over ten road miles. Intermittent horseback trails, passing through woods that a vehicle could not maneuver, closed the distance to five. Clumps of snow fell from the pines bordering the road to his mountain home, making muffled sounds as it hit. Branches cracked beneath the snow’s weight and Gabriel’s experienced eyes traced the paw prints of a big wolf, running alone and free. The wolves would mate for life and perhaps that was his nature, too, because he’d never wanted another woman. Chiding himself for the traditional ways that had always been within him, springing now to life, Gabriel led his best Appaloosa to Tanner and Gwyneth’s ranch.

Miranda was right—he was pushing her. He was hungry for the sight of her, for the sound of her voice. When the wind stirred her hair, sending the blue-black silk swirling around her too pale face, Gabriel wondered about shaman’s spells, for he was so enchanted. His hand gripped the saddlehorn and he realized that he had never been nervous of a woman before, except teenage Miranda.

Two days ago, Fidelity Moore’s cane had hit the floor at the Women’s Council meeting. Her high-pitched voice had run above the women’s gossiping. “I want to hear what the boy has to say for himself. You’ve come here with Tanner Bennett, Miranda’s brother, at your side. He approves of the situation? That you’ve finally decided to do right by Miranda? Well, speak, Mr. Gabriel Deerhorn. It is no light matter to ask for a bride before this Council. We want assurances that you are a rightful candidate for Miranda’s future husband. Speak.”

In the bright January morning, Gabriel glanced at the cows mulling around the huge round bail of hay in the field. Freedom Valley was warmer than his mountain ranch, and his horses—except for the six with him—were staying at his father’s place.

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