Breathless (20 page)

“I didn’t want you all to know I killed them.” Emma spoke into his shoulder, her voice muffled. “I was driving. I was responsible for getting them where we were going safely, but I was too busy arguing with Alex.

“It started about the car, then I told him I knew he’d been cheating. He had a girlfriend. The whole time I was pregnant, he was seeing someone else. He said I was ugly. That he would never have gotten me pregnant if he knew how fat I’d get. I told him to move out. I-I didn’t see the truck run the r-red light.”

Emma heaved in a shuddering breath. “It hit us on his side and mangled the car. A metal pole went through my side.”

Holy Mother of God. That was what the scar was from.

Gabe tightened his arms around Emma, holding her close, trying to ease some of the pain. He didn’t know if he was helping or not, but it was the only thing he could do.

“I’m so sorry, Emma. I know that doesn’t help, but I am sorry. No wonder you freaked out. You said you had a daughter?” he asked gently. He wouldn’t mention the scum husband, a man who obviously had no idea what he was giving up by cheating on her.

She nodded into his chest, settling more comfortably against him. “Sasha. She was only one and a bit. She was everything to me. I have a photo I keep in a locket on my key chain.”

Gabe kissed the top of her head and pressed his cheek to her hair. He’d seen the locket. Had never thought to ask what was in it.

“I’d like to see it. When you’re ready to show me.”

Emma nodded again. “I wish I’d done what he’d said and gotten the car he wanted. If I’d been paying attention, I would’ve seen the truck. Now I have to live with the fact that I killed my own family.”

Anger at the truck driver swelled in Gabe. “It wasn’t your fault. How could it be? The truck hit
you
,
not the other way around. Okay, so you weren’t paying attention. We’re all guilty of that at some point. You certainly didn’t expect a truck to come from nowhere and plow into you. You’re not responsible for other people’s bad choices, no matter how it affected you,” Gabe said, his soft words muffled against her hair.

Gabe sucked in a gasp.

She wasn’t responsible. And neither was he
.

Realization hit him hard. He
wasn’t
responsible for Sami. She had made her own choice, and now he needed to let it go.

He looked down at Emma. Seeing her pain and self-blame for something she could never have controlled had opened his eyes to the truth. It was something people had been telling him for years, but he couldn’t see it. Until now.

“Emma?” Gabe said quietly. She’d finally settled down in his arms, her sobs having faded to the odd sniffle. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“What?” she asked.

Where to start?

“I want to apologize for leaving the other morning. I don’t know if you can forgive me. It was heartless, but I did have a reason. At least, I thought I did,” he added.

She shook her head against him. “You don’t need to. I understand. It was a mistake, and you didn’t want to say so. I get it.”

She thinks I don’t want her.

Shock made his voice tight. “No, that’s not it at all. That was the most amazing night I’ve ever spent with anyone. I didn’t want it to end.”

Emma slowly sat up and turned around to face him, confusion plain in her teary eyes. “Then what happened? Why did you leave and not call? You even turned your phone off.”

Gabe closed his eyes briefly. How was he going to explain this without looking like a complete and utter fool? He opened them to look at her, willing Emma to understand.

“I was lying there with you, early, and I kissed you.” He took a breath. “You called me Alex.”

Emma’s eyes widened into huge orbs.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean—”

Gabe shook his head. “It’s okay, that wasn’t the problem. I figured he’d been someone important, and your subconscious associated me with him. I’ve read about it. It happens quite a lot apparently. But I got curious and asked you who he was. You said your husband.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no. And you thought…”

He nodded. “I thought you were married. I thought… I didn’t know what to think. Darby probably told you I went through a bad breakup?” At her nod, he continued. “Two years ago, I was engaged. We fought. A lot. I’d been thinking for a while that it wasn’t going to work. Anyway, she came home one day and told me she was pregnant.”

Emma’s hand slowly moved from her mouth to rest on his chest. “What happened?”

Gabe sighed. “We argued. I told her that bringing a baby into our relationship, as it was, was a big mistake. I wanted to know how it could’ve happened because we always used protection. Neither of us was ready for kids. She accused me of being a coldhearted bastard.” He shrugged. “I probably was. I just couldn’t see how a baby could be a good thing when we couldn’t even get along. I never meant for her to do anything about it. As far as I was concerned, it was there, whether right or wrong. It never occurred to me…”

Emma gasped, her eyes filling with tears again, but this time for him. “Oh, Gabe. No.”

He sent her a twisted smile. “Yeah. She came home the next day and told me she’d had an abortion. Threw the information packet at me and stormed out.” Gabe looked down at the floor, unable to handle the compassion in Emma’s eyes. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d caused her to kill our baby. I
thought
it was my fault. I called my parents, and they came around. Then there was a knock at the door.”

Gabe looked back at Emma. “It was Sami’s lover. He hit me—hard. He’d come from Pueblo to confront me for making Sami get rid of
their
baby. It wasn’t even mine. She’d gotten herself pregnant by this guy and tried to pass it off as mine. She thought that since I had my own business and more money than he did, I would be the better choice.”

Emma didn’t speak. Just leaned forward and put her arms around his shoulders and held him. Gabe brought his arms up around her and buried his face in her neck. How could he ever have thought that she was like Sami? She felt so right in his arms, so good. He’d never felt like that before.

Gabe turned his head to kiss her jaw, his lips grazing across her warm skin. He breathed deeply, drawing her scent into his lungs. He pulled back and touched a hand to his face, surprised to feel moisture on his fingers.

Emma rubbed her thumb over his cheek, wiping it away.

“You poor thing. No wonder you reacted like that. Leaving, I mean. It must have brought back some awful memories. You must have thought I was just like her,” she whispered, her eyes sorrowful.

Gabe stared at Emma in awe. “You’re amazing, you know that? I spent the night with you, then disappeared, and you’re concerned about me? What I experienced is nothing compared to what you went through. I had a failed engagement. With a cheat, mind you. You lost your
family
. It doesn’t even come close.”

Emma smiled sadly at him. “It’s all relative. To you, it was everything, because that’s where you were in your life. It must have been horrible. To find out the woman you loved not only had cheated, consistently, but was pregnant and killed something so important, so precious, over an argument. Your whole world must have turned upside down. It gave you an insight that must have shocked the hell out of you.” She shrugged. “I wish you’d told me or confronted me so I could have explained.”

“I panicked. I wanted what happened so badly. Then, when I thought you’d been lying to me, I had to get away. To try and sort out my feelings. You must have been pretty confused when you woke up,” he said, his eyes seeking hers. He wanted to explain himself, to give her a reason to believe in him.

“That’s an understatement. I was upset and angry. If I’d known what you’d been through, I would have been less so, but it still would’ve hurt. Especially since I didn’t know what sent you running. At least it’s out in the open now. I actually feel better not having to hide it anymore.” Emma’s eyes turned sad.

Gabe shook his head. “No one would’ve thought badly about you. They all like you too much.”

“I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me either. Pity would’ve been worse than accusations.” She stared at a point on his chest. Her fingers played with the material of his shirt, nervousness conveyed through her touch.

“I moved here to get away from everything. My memories. The whole town was too familiar. It felt claustrophobic. Like I would never be able to breathe properly again. I grew up there and, even though it was much bigger than here, I was always running into people I knew.”

Gabe pulled her closer, resting her head against his shoulder.

“I can’t even imagine. Everyone here was so supportive. But it got to be too much there for a while. After about a month or so, some of the girls started coming around, just to ‘see if I was okay’.”

Emma gave a wry chuckle. “Hunting you already? Not very polite of them.”

“Mmm.” Gabe’s cheek pressed against the top of her head. “Something like that.”

Emma sighed and relaxed into his body. “So why didn’t you date any of them later on? It’s been years. Millie would jump at the chance.”

Gabe couldn’t help the slow smile spilling onto his mouth. “Would it help to say I was waiting for the right girl?”

Emma sat back and pinned him with a cynical stare. “That’s a little too cheesy. Try again.”

“Don’t believe me? Fine.” His grin faded, and he held her denim-blue gaze with his own. “I didn’t want to ever be in that position again. I blamed myself—for all of it. I thought I’d failed her somehow. That it was my fault a child had been killed. It’s taken me this long to realize that simply wasn’t true. I was too scared to let anyone close.”

Gabe reached up a hand to twist a curl around his finger. It coiled around his hand, just like she’d wrapped around his heart. “Until I met you. Then I was scared I would lose you, so it was easier to pretend I didn’t want you. If I didn’t want you in the first place, how could it matter either way whether you gave a damn?”

Emma laid her head on his shoulder, her face pressed into his neck. Her hand stroked the hair at his nape, her fingers twisting in the strands.

Gabe closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the scent of her shampoo rushing into his lungs and down inside him.

How had he lived without this for so long? His body cried out for her touch, even a touch as innocent as this. Placing a kiss on the top of her head, he glanced up. The local sheriff stood in the doorway, hat in hand.

Gabe’s soft voice broke the silence. “I think we need to take care of your pickup.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The keys rattled in Emma’s hand as she slid one into the front door. Her hand shook so much that she couldn’t turn the key in the lock. Gabe covered her hand with his own and turned the knob. The door yawned wide in front of them. “You don’t have to be nervous.”

She threw him a tentative smile over her shoulder. She looked like she was getting cold feet.

Gabe turned her around by the shoulders. “I don’t have to come in if it’s too much. We can go as slowly as you want. I can come back another time.”

Desire, equally mixed with patience, washed through him. Resolve brightened her eyes, followed by trust. That simple look drew him in and sucked him under.

“I don’t want slow. I want you.”

She stepped backward over the threshold and turned. She walked down the hall, turning toward her bedroom at the end of hallway. She glanced at him, still standing in the doorway, and disappeared from sight.

That was all the encouragement he needed. Gabe shut the door and hurried down the hall after her, his shirt unbuttoned and in his hands by the time he reached her bedroom doorway. He stopped dead, all air sucked from his lungs, from the room, at the sight before him. Emma knelt in the middle of her king-sized bed, upright, with her back to him. Naked.

Gabe grabbed hold of the doorjamb, certain that if he didn’t he’d fall to his knees and have to crawl to her. He made no sound as he moved toward the bed, his hands busy removing his shoes and jeans.

He knelt on the bed behind her and reached out a hand, stopping just shy of the creamy-white skin of her back, hesitant now that he had her in his grasp.

His knuckles grazed the ridges of her spine, following them from her neck down to the dip above her ass. Goose bumps erupted and spread outwards from the path his hand took, encompassing her entire body. Unable to help himself, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to the velvet skin of her shoulder.

A shudder racked her frame. Muscles twitched beneath his touch, clenching, anticipating.

Gabe closed his eyes, needing a moment to calm himself, worried that if he didn’t, he would lose all control. The scent of her bare skin tightened his body to the point of release in the space of one heartbeat.

Calm, Gabriel. Calm.

He wanted this woman so much.
Needed
her.

He kissed up over her shoulder to the curve of her neck. Emma turned her head, her hair sliding and falling to the side, giving him access to the soft, tender skin there.

His hand slipped under her arm and trailed over her ribs to cup the weight of her breast, resting it in his palm. He traced his thumb over her nipple. She thrust the rigid peak against his skin.