Naked Edge (13 page)

They've come to kick your ass, buddy. And guess what? You deserve it.

Yeah, he deserved it. He'd listened to her virginity speech at the South Side Cafe and had understood clearly that she would only give it up for Mr. Right, whom he most certainly was not. He'd known she was upset and tipsy and not herself last night. And he'd gone ahead and gotten beneath her lacy bra anyway.

If that hadn't been enough, he'd opened the door and given Samantha the chance to spew her jealous bullshit at Kat, then tried to explain Samantha away, shoving both feet in his mouth in the process.

I'm sorry you saw that. She's a ... She's just a ...

A failed chemistry experiment?

He'd seen the disappointment in Kat's eyes, those eyes that seemed to see right through him. So he'd gone and made it worse by telling her that Samantha hadn't meant anything to him. And wasn't that just the way to impress a woman?

Yeah, he deserved it.

Be happy it isn't Marc Hunter.

Yes, Gabe was happy about that, all right. If he remembered correctly--and he was pretty sure he did--Hunter had served in Special Forces, fighting in Afghanistan before honing his ass-kicking skills over six years in prison. Gabe would hate to go up against Hunter, for damned sure.

"Tell them I'll be there in about a half hour if they feel like waiting."

He was pretty sure they'd wait.

And they did.

Gabe pulled into the parking lot at Boulder Mountain Parks to find them leaning up against a battered blue Ford F-150 four-by-four. He parked beside them, got out of his service truck, and walked around to meet them. They were both shorter than he was, and he had them in weight, too. But there were two of them.

He held out his hand, testing the waters. "Gabe Rossiter."

The older of the two men studied him through eyes that gave away nothing, then took his hand and shook it, pressing something into his palm.

A pouch of tobacco.

"I'm Allen Lemieux, Old Man Red Crow's cousin. This is Nathan Spotted Eagle. We came to thank you for watching over our sister Kat James and for tending to my cousin's body last night. We'd like you to join us tonight at an
inipi
in his memory."

Gabe stared at the tobacco in his palm, recognized it as the sign of respect that it was. Well, he'd be damned.

He met Lemieux's gaze. "I'd be honored."

KAT STOOD WITH the other women outside the sweat lodge, her towel wrapped around her shoulders, waiting for Uncle Allen to enter first. She was barely aware of the cold wind that whipped her skirt about her legs or the icy snow beneath her bare feet, her gaze fixed on the man who stood on the other side of the altar beside Nathan. Like the other men, Gabe wore a towel low around his hips, his legs and feet bare, shorts or swim trunks presumably hidden beneath the towel. The tallest man present, he towered over Nathan. Golden firelight played off his body, emphasizing the ridges and valleys of his chest and abdomen.

Kat looked away, alarmed to find that she responded even to the sight of him. He wasn't touching her, wasn't even looking her direction, and yet her heart was beating faster, memories of last night playing through her mind, his lips all over her, his hard body pressing her down into the cushions, his thumb teasing her nipples.

"Ranger Easy-on-the-Eyes," Pauline whispered in her ear.

Yes, he was that.

Then it was time for the
inipi
to begin.

Kat followed Allen out of the wind and inside the lodge, her position beside him a mark of honor. She kept her eyes downcast, resolved to keep her mind on Grandpa Red Crow and the ceremony and not the man who'd just crawled through the door and now sat directly across from her.

Hot stones. Sage. Cedar. Sweetgrass. Smoke.

Then the door went down, and darkness enveloped them.

She gave herself over to the familiar rhythm of the
inipi,
her prayers and tears mingling with those of her friends, scalding steam, songs and prayers purging their sorrow, cleansing away their grief, voices raised in unison for a man who had done so much for each and every one of them, a man they had all loved--and lost.

GABE HAD DONE a sweat lodge once during his ranger training. He'd known to expect the pitch black, the blistering heat, the thick, steamy air. It hadn't bothered him before. So why was his heart pounding now? Why had his mouth gone dry the moment the door had come down? And why was it taking all of his strength to keep himself from crawling over the other men in a panicked rush to get the hell out? He wasn't claustrophobic or afraid of the dark.

Get a fucking grip, Rossiter!

He tried to focus on his breathing, on the cool, solid earth beneath him, and still he couldn't make the panic recede. He forced his mind onto other things--the beating of a drum, the hiss of water against heated stones, the sound of both men and women weeping as they sang. Their grief tugged at him through the darkness, permeating him, threatening to open that abyss inside him that he'd fought so hard to close off, to ignore, to forget, every moment drawing him nearer to that perilous emotional edge until there was simply no escaping it.

Jill. God, Jill!

No! No!

He wouldn't go there. He couldn't go there. Not now. Not ever.

Heart thrumming, adrenaline shooting through his veins, he reached out for the reassuring sound of Kat's voice and held on to it with all of his might.

SINGING WORDS SHE knew by heart, Kat let her tears flow, her thoughts drifting like clouds across the sky as they often did during the
inipi.
But now that sky was clouded by unwanted images, memories made more vivid by the darkness of the lodge. Grandpa Red Crow dragged from the sweat lodge, eagle bone whistle in his hand. Grandpa Red Crow lying on his back at the base of the butte. Grandpa Red Crow staring sightless at the sky as the zipper closed over his face.

A loud hiss. A burst of steam against hot stone. Scorching heat.

Like Kat, Grandpa Red Crow had fallen. Had he known he would die? Had he gotten the same terrible free-fall feeling in the pit of his stomach as she had when she'd fallen? Had he seen her weeping over his body? Did he see her now?

One song ended. Another began.

Drums beating, beating like a heartbeat.

Gabe Rossiter. Gabe. Gabriel. One of the archangels from the Judeo-Christian tradition. And hadn't he been her angel?

He'd saved her life when she'd been caught in the rockslide. He'd protected her and the rest of the women when Officer Daniels had dragged her by her hair. And he'd been there for her yesterday, shielding her as best he could from the horror of Grandpa Red Crow's death, watching over her, caring for Grandpa Red Crow's body.

Then later, when she'd kissed him, he'd tried to warn her, tried to stop her, but she'd done it anyway. That had been too much for him, and he'd given in and kissed her back, touching her in ways no man had ever touched her, the pleasure of it more than she'd imagined. And when she hadn't found the strength to stop, he had.

He was a good man. He'd proved that to her more than once. The wind knew it. Grandpa Red Crow had known it.

Another hiss. More steam.

But Gabe had his dark side, too, and the woman at his door had shown that he was as capable of hurting women as he was of saving them. Kat pitied that woman. She knew that, had Gabe not stopped last night, she might have become that woman--discarded, desperate, and beyond dignity.

And then Kat remembered what the woman had revealed about Gabe, its significance now clear to her. She hadn't been able to sort through it at the time, but here in the dark she understood.

He'd once been engaged. The man who'd told her that love and marriage were just for fairy tales had once been engaged. He had once proposed to a woman named Jill, had been ready and willing to bind himself to her, to throw his future together with hers. But she had died somehow, and now he lived his life as if he no longer believed in love at all, as if one woman met his needs as well as the next.

People fall in and out of love faster than the wind changes. There's no such thing as "happily ever after." Love, romance, sex
--
it'snothing more than chemistry.

What had happened? What could shut down a man's heart like that?

His fiancee had died and...

The last song came to an end. The door went up, firelight flooding the lodge, steam billowing out, cold night air rushing in. Kat found herself looking across the lodge into Gabe's eyes. And the shadows she saw there made her heart ache.

GABE CHANGED AS quickly as he could, needing desperately to get away from here, to get home and get his hands on that bottle of whisky. Barely remembering to thank Allen and Nathan for inviting him, he tucked his soggy towel under his arm and headed straight for his SUV. But Kat was already waiting for him.

So much for a clean getaway, Rossiter.

Dammit!

She hadn't changed yet, her hair damp, the wet folds of her skirt stiff as they froze in the night air, her teeth chattering. "I w-wanted to talk to y-you. I have s-something I n-need to say."

Gabe could only imagine what that was. "Say it inside the Jeep, or you're going to become hypothermic."

He jerked open the door, let her climb in first, then followed her. He stuck the key in the ignition and, leaving the headlights off, turned on the engine, cranking the heater. Then he reached behind his seat, grabbed an emergency blanket, unfolded it, and wrapped it around her. "Why didn't you change into something dry?"

"Y-you seemed in a h-hurry."

Yeah, he had been. He'd been desperate as all hell to get away from whatever had happened in that lodge. "So what is it?"

She didn't answer but sat there shivering. He gave her a moment to warm up, then when it was clear that wasn't going to happen quickly, took her ice-cold hands and rubbed them between his.

"What did you think of the
inipi?"
she asked at last.

"It wasn't my first. I knew what to expect." An answer that wasn't an answer.

"When I came to my first lodge, I panicked. The only thing that kept me from begging to be let out was knowing how disappointed Grandpa Red Crow would be."

Why was she saying this? Had she somehow read his mind in there? Or had his heart been pounding so hard that she'd heard it?

"He told me that the darkness of the lodge is a darkness that reveals things, rather than hiding them. He told me that nothing happens during the
inipi
that we don't take in with us. Sweat lodge helps to make us right with ourselves and with Creator." She watched him through those big eyes of hers, looking beautiful and vulnerable and intimidating as hell.

"Hmm," he said, trying to sound mildly interested.

What did this inipi just reveal about you, Rossiter?