The Kissing Stars (9 page)

“Now, Gabe-dear,” Twinkle scolded. “One of the few rules we have here in our community is that everyone pitches in to help. I don’t know what’s gotten into Rosie today; she’s normally quite well-behaved. First Tess’s star shed and now our storeroom— we need the extra pair of hands to help.”

“I don’t mind helping. I’m just not scrubbing down that undercooked roast with lavender soap.”

“It’s honeysuckle soap, not lavender. I alternate fragrances on a weekly basis. I think variety in a soap adds a touch of excitement, a little allure to one’s life. And everyone else has other chores that need doing. You’re the only one here with extra time on your hands.”

“Better time than a sudsy porker,” Gabe grumbled.

“Would you rather see to Castor and Pollux? The dromedaries. I’ll warn you, they do like to spit.”

Gabe muttered something Tess couldn’t make out. Wanting to hear better, she deposited glass from a broken jar of canned peaches into her box of trash and moved a little closer to the window.

“Ma’am,” Gabe said. “This ham-on-the-hoof stinks. A little scent in the soap isn’t going to make it any nicer to be around. The only thing that will make the animal smell alluring is a frying pan and a fire.”

Tess scowled. Twinkle inquired, “Frying pan and a fire?”

“Bacon, ma’am.”

Tess heard a gasp, then a grunt.

“Ouch!” said Gabe. “You kicked me.”

“You deserved it, saying such a thing in front of Rosie. Now pick up the scrub brush, Gabe-dear, and get to work before I change my mind about you.”

Tess listened intently for his response as she stooped to right an overturned basket of sewing supplies. It might be better for her in the long run if her friend did change her opinion of the man. Romantic that she was, Twinkle had decided Gabe’s trip to Aurora Springs was the work of Billy Rawlins’s ghost in a beyond-this-world matchmaking effort. In fact, she intended to conduct a star-séance this very evening to personally offer her thanks.

“I don’t even want to think of how Gabe will react to that,” Tess murmured, going down on her hands and knees to retrieve a jar of canned peas that had rolled behind a barrel.

She heard him ask, “Why don’t I help Tess clean up the storeroom? She’ll likely need some help with the heavy stuff.”

Accusation gave Twinkle’s voice a razor’s edge. “Your wife has made do without a man around to help for years, hasn’t she? The girl has learned to adapt. She doesn’t need you.”

Tess rolled her eyes and made room on the shelf for the jar of peas next to the canned beets. Twinkle was lying like a rug. She constantly harped at Tess about how she needed a man in her life, and when Tess discussed her connection to Gabe during the train trip back from Dallas, the woman had all but done somersaults up and down the aisle.

“Now, here’s the brush,” Twinkle continued. “Have at it. I need to look in on Andrew, and I’ll check back with you in a little while. Make sure you scrub the folds of her skin good. That molasses will attract ants and we don’t want that.”

“I don’t know,” Gabe said. “Seems I heard somewhere that ant stings tenderize meat.”

Twinkle’s outraged gasp nearly rattled the walls, and Tess made a mental note to explain to the woman how Gabe liked to focus in on a sore spot to tease a person. Obviously that hadn’t changed over the years.

She waited for her husband to argue with Twinkle some more, but apparently he’d ceded the battle. From outside the window, she heard the unmistakable sound of a scrub brush rasping across Rosie’s hide. Twinkle had talked Gabe into washing Rosie. This Tess had to see.

She paid for her curiosity. The man had stripped off his shirt for the wet and messy work.

Peeking through the window at him, Tess felt a stirring of desire. He rolled his shoulders and her breath caught. Hunger cut like a knife. “Pisces, Pegasus, and Polaris,” she grumbled softly. So much for not needing her husband.

She couldn’t believe she reacted this way, especially on the heels of that scene this morning. Maybe all that emotion had stirred up her juices.

Actually, she’d been fighting these feelings ever since seeing him at the state fair. That’s when her womanly needs had reasserted themselves. She sometimes felt as though she were rousing from a twelve-year hibernation.

Gabe wore the years well, his body hard and handsome and corded with muscle. His biceps flexed and bunched as he worked, and the sight of his wet, soapy hands stroking over Rosie made Tess think of other times and other baths.

Apparently anger didn’t interfere with a woman’s feminine cravings. She pushed the shutters open wider for a better view.

Sunshine sparkled in droplets of water that had splashed across his skin. Tess’s gaze skimmed across his broad shoulders, paused on the contours of his chest, then continued down to where ridged muscles kept his stomach flat. Visually tracing the arrow of dark hair down to where it disappeared into his pants, she sucked in a breath, then sighed at the sheer beauty of the man.

Despite all that divided them, Tess imagined herself marching out to where he stood and demanding he fulfill his husbandly duties.

She groaned and turned away from the window. She’d finished her work in the storeroom but for the sweeping, so she reached for the broom and tried to banish the picture of a soap-splattered Gabe from her mind. The task was more difficult than sweeping up talcum powder. Sometimes—like when she couldn’t reach the highest shelf in the storeroom—a woman needed a man. Other times she
needed
a man, whether she had a storeroom or not. This was one of those other times.

“Dear heaven, I am losing my mind.”

From outside came a squeal, a clunk then a splash, followed by a stream of profanity hot enough to singe the hair off Rosie’s hide. Twinkle must have forgotten to warn Gabe about Rosie’s predilection for dust. The sweetheart could only stand being so clean, and once she’d reached that point, well, it was best to get out of her way.

Tess hoped Gabe managed to get most of the molasses off. Chances were neither her husband nor her pet pig would be up for another bath today.

She started to check, but stopped herself in time. Rosie might have drenched Gabe’s pants. Wet, they would He plastered against him. She didn’t need that particular torture.

She held out for an entire thirty seconds. “Tess Cameron, you’re a brazen woman,” she muttered, going to the window.

His pants were dry. More or less. He lay flat on his back—still cursing—while Rosie rolled in the dirt nearby. Tess had a sudden memory of a time when he’d started a mud fight that led to slick, slippery lovemaking.

Gabe broke off his cursing abruptly when he spied her watching from the window. Their gazes locked. He levered himself to a sitting position and Tess’s world ground to a halt.
Dear Lord, I’ve missed him so
.

Some of what she was feeling must have shown in her expression because after a long, lovely minute, his lips spread in a slow, seductive grin. He lifted his hand and he gave her a muddy, two-fingered salute.

Tess actually licked her lips.

Mortified, she whirled away from the window, propped the broom against the wall, and fled the storeroom. She hurried across the compound, seeking the comfort of her own house. Chores could wait for a little while. At the moment, her mental health needed tending.

Hurrying up her front steps, she wondered what in the world was happening to her. Since awakening this morning her emotions had run the gamut from joy to lust, anger to lust, embarrassment to lust, fear to lust, and…

It had to stop.

She made a beeline for her favorite chair, a teak-wood rocker Doc had sent to her while on his trip to South America a couple of years ago. Curling up in the seat, she pulled an afghan around her and closed her eyes.

And pictured her half-naked husband.

Her eyes flew open once again. With her blood thrumming through her veins, and a hollow ache consuming her feminine parts, she allowed herself a little whine. She’d gotten along fine without much of a sexual drive for the past dozen years. Why did it have to kick in now?

Gabe, of course.

It was understandable she’d feel an attraction. She’d loved him desperately back then, and she wasn’t certain she didn’t love him still. But with the hurts and betrayals and secrets still lying between them, nothing could or should come of this. At least, not anytime soon.

“Isn’t that right?” she murmured.

Maybe. But maybe not.

She sat up straight and stared unseeing at the mantle clock. They
were
still married, after all. What would it hurt? Judging by his actions, she doubted Gabe would raise any objections.

She shifted in her seat. Was it just this morning she’d awakened in his arms? The day had lasted as long as a month and it wasn’t even suppertime yet.

Maybe I could sleep in his arms tonight
.

“No.” Indulging would only complicate an already complex situation. Besides, she couldn’t ignore the very real risk one took with such activity. She’d learned that particular lesson once already, and although she didn’t regret it, the experience liked to have killed her.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said with a sigh.

The line between the passion of anger and the passion of lust must be thinner than she’d thought.

Desperate for a distraction, she rose from the comfort of her chair and crossed the room to her desk. She pulled out a star journal and picked up a pencil, her intention to bury herself in work. She needed to not think about Gabe for a little while, or for a long while if that’s what it took to get her wayward desires under control. In fact, now that she thought about it, rather than work, she just might take a nap.

She was worn out. The rush home from Dallas, taking care of Andrew, fretting about Doc, missing Will. Dealing with Gabe and all the memories and all the emotions he inspired. She needed a few hours’ rest from it. She needed a little oblivion.

But when she crawled between the sheets and shut her eyes, sleep refused to come. She lay in her bed and ached, wishing her husband lay beside her.

Just when she started to cry, she couldn’t say. All Tess knew was that at some point, the aching turned to grief, and tears overflowed her eyes. She wept for her husband, for the dreams the two of them had lost, for the family stolen from them.

Tess wept for the loss of a love that had once burned brighter than the Kissing Stars that danced in the West Texas sky.

CHAPTER 6

SUNSET TEASED THE WESTERN horizon as Gabe pounded the hammer down on the head of a nail, driving it through a shingle and into the decking on Twinkle Starbright’s roof. An overnight rain had revealed a leak, so earlier this afternoon Twinkle had set Gabe and Jack Baker to task. He didn’t mind the work. Sharing a house but not a bed with Tess for the past five nights wore on a man, made him need an outlet for his frustrations. Hammering helped. So, taking the place of convalescing Andrew Ross, Gabe had partnered with Jack to tackle the projects requiring brute strength—and hammering—around the community.

Community was a good word to describe Aurora Springs, he thought. This place wasn’t a town or a ranch headquarters or even a railroad water stop. Gabe figured Aurora Springs was as close to a commune as Texas had seen since the La Reunion society disbanded back in the fifties. The folks who lived here shared their meals, their efforts, and even their wealth in an effort to further the cause that appeared to unite them. From what Gabe had discovered, everyone who lived here had a stake of one sort or another in these spooklights or Kissing Stars, to use Tess’s term.

He wondered why she used that name. He decided he didn’t want to ask.

Jack interrupted his reverie by asking, “Toss me another shingle, would you?”

Gabe did as requested, then puzzled as the young man eyed the sunset with what was best described as a wistful expression.

Young and with a gentle, almost innocent manner about him, Jack was the only member of Tess’s little clan who didn’t strike Gabe as three-quarters tetched. Of course, Gabe had yet to pry from Jack his reasons for living in Aurora Springs, so that opinion could always change.

The Ranger had been right on the mark about the Aurorians. These people were as strange as a tail on a tree. Why, in the short time he’d been here, he’d already witnessed more examples of peculiar beliefs and behaviors than a man would see in a month of saloon-spent Saturday nights. Take Colonel Wilhoit, for instance. Every day at noon he loaded up one of the camels and, armed with his divining rods, headed up into the mountains to look for diamonds. One day he came back with a strongbox filled with gold. Now the typical man would do handsprings over finding a cache of what was obviously stolen loot, especially since he mentioned more gold sat waiting to be retrieved. But the colonel wasn’t happy. He went witchin’ for diamonds in the hills each day because he believed the spooklights were mineral markers. Stashed outlaw gold wasn’t good enough for Jasper Wilhoit. He wanted a vein of riches to dig out of the ground.

It worried Gabe a bit that he almost understood how the colonel and the other Aurorians felt.

Handing Jack the requested shingle, Gabe observed, “I haven’t seen your wife this afternoon. Is she helping Twinkle in the vegetable garden?”

Jack took a nail from his pocket and positioned it on the cedar shake. “No. Amy has starwatch this evening.”

“Starwatch?”

Jack nodded. “We take weekly shifts.”

Gabe debated taking the matter any further. He didn’t want to discover that Jack was as cockle-minded as the others, but his curiosity got the better of him. “And what is it exactly you’re watching for? The spooklights I’ve been hearing about? Have you seen them, too?”

“Not recently,” Jack grumbled, his expression dipping in a scowl. He brought his hammer down extra hard and muttered something beneath his breath that sounded like “too damned long.”

Gabe rolled back on his knees. “But you have seen them?”

“Yeah. Three weeks ago yesterday was the last time they showed up. It’s a longer dry spell than usual, and I don’t like it.” He pounded another nail all the way into the roof with a single stroke.

“Why not? Are you here to study the lights like Tess?” Gabe asked hopefully. “Bet the delay frustrates your research, huh?”

“I’m not here for research,” Jack admitted. “But I’m sure as hell frustrated. However, I want the best for my family and Amy is certain this is it. I can be a man about it. I just don’t have to like it.”

Now that didn’t make a lick of sense. “I don’t follow you.”

A bashful smile accompanied the ruddy flush of Jack’s cheeks. Rather than answer Gabe’s questions, he gestured toward the stack of shingles. “Hand me another one, would you?”

Gabe chose to let the matter drop, a reaction that had become somewhat of a habit of late. Despite having traveled hundreds of miles to ask questions about the past, he’d quit pestering Tess for more answers ever since their exchange up on Paintbrush Mountain. In feet since then they’d hardly spoken at all.

It didn’t mean that Gabe hadn’t learned a thing or two. Twinkle had provided the information he’d wanted about the mysterious Doc and Will. Getting that had turned out to be easy. All he’d had to do was ask. She’d told him right out that Will was her grandson and Doc her beau, and that their trip down to the Big Bend area had something to do with a search for ancient cave paintings that portrayed the spooklights. The woman had hedged when he tried to get her to talk to him about the railroad vandalism accusation, but Gabe hadn’t pressed the issue. He was too busy being glad he’d been right that Tess and this Doc weren’t lovers, after all.

With that question settled, and on the heels of that rugged first day in Aurora Springs, Gabe had decided to slow down a bit. He’d had a lot to mull over in the wake of his chat with Tess up on Paintbrush Mountain. He still had a few questions, but he figured they’d get around to talking their way through in time.

Gabe was in no particular hurry to head home. Except for the sparseness of trees, he liked it here in Aurora Springs. He was glad to have left his notoriety back on the other side of the Pecos, and since he’d taken a leave of absence from his job with the railroad, he had plenty of time to kill. And ever since a certain blistering look they’d shared after that ham-bath, he’d been mulling over the notion of spending that free time courting his wife.

The idea had a certain appeal. Tess had a definite appeal. She made him randy as a goat in springtime, and from what he’d observed, she wasn’t immune to him either. Since it looked like their knot was still tied, he didn’t see why they couldn’t take advantage of the fact. He’d more than welcome a little—or a lot—of relief in that area, and he reckoned she could use some, too. The physical part of their marriage had always been spectacular. He didn’t doubt Tess had missed it as much as Gabe had. Why, it’d be doing them both a favor.

Of course, before he could get her to
bed
him he needed to get her to
talk
to him again. Tess had always liked being seduced with words, and chances were that hadn’t changed. Still, he’d take this slow, too. He’d start off with general topics of conversation, then work his way up to the good stuff.
Maybe when I go home tonight I’ll pay a compliment to the pig. She’d like that
.”

Gabe rolled back on his heels and swiped his bandanna across his sweaty brow, his gaze across the landscape in search of the porcine princess. He finally spied her plopped in a sunny spot in Twinkle’s flowerbed. He gestured toward the pig. “Look at ol’ Rosie. She’s just bacon in the sun.”

It got a laugh out of Jack Baker, but Gabe didn’t figure it was quite the right kind of compliment to impress Tess. For the next five minutes he mentally examined possible pig praises. Then, while he and Jack worked together to hammer on the last shingle, the faraway call of a musical instrument—French horn, he believed—was acknowledged by the blare of a trumpet coming from right below Gabe. The shock of it damn near knocked him off the roof. “What the hell?” he muttered, his sliding feet finally finding purchase on the rooftop. Glancing down, he saw Colonel Wilhoit draw a breath to blow again.

Weoooeeeoooee
.

The sound grated on Gabe’s ears. He opened his mouth to complain, but the look on Jack Baker’s face stopped him short.

Joy. Pure, unadulterated joy with a sprinkling of anticipation and relief.

“What’s going on?” Gabe asked as Jack tossed down his hammer and scrambled toward the ladder.

“That was Amy. It’s the signal.”

“Signal?”

“The stars are out.”

The sudden bustle of activity below told Gabe the young man probably wasn’t talking about the evening star or something else that mundane. For the first time in years, Gabe was tempted to lift his gaze to the heavens to investigate the matter himself. He couldn’t do it.

He followed the younger man to the ground, wincing when the colonel trumpeted right next to his ear. “All right, already,” he said “I think everyone has heard your signal.”

For the next few minutes he watched the Aurorians’ bizarre behavior in wonder. The colonel shoved the trumpet into Gabe’s hands then dashed for his cabin. Seconds later he reappeared carrying a pair of divining rods. Twinkle and Tess ran from the communal kitchen to their houses. In a few short minutes, Twinkle reappeared wearing a purple and green gypsy skirt, white blouse, a turquoise turban, and enough jewelry to open a shop. In her hands she cradled a crystal ball.

Tess emerged right after Twinkle. She hadn’t changed her clothes, but she now carried a small leather valise. “She packed?” Gabe muttered. “What? Does she think these stars are taking her to study Saturn’s rings in person or something?”

Considering the company she kept, she might be eating a little loco weed mixed with her oatmeal after all.

Without a word to him, they hurried toward the trail leading up out of the canyon toward the hill they called Lookout Peak which rose higher than Paintbrush Mountain. Gabe propped the trumpet against the wall of Tess’s cabin and headed out after them. A few steps down the path, he heard footsteps coming up fast behind him. Simultaneously, he caught a strong whiff of bay rum.

“Hey!” he hollered as Jack barreled into him.

“Sorry. Didn’t see you.”

He tried to dart around, but Gabe caught his arm. “Hold on, there, Jack. Real quick now before the toilet water fumes knock me out, care to tell me what has you in such an all-fired hurry? I thought you were one of the sensible ones in this crowd.”

Jack wasn’t putting up with any delay. He shrugged off Gabe’s hold. “I told you. It’s been three weeks.”

“So?”

“So I finally get to be with my wife again.”

“Be with your wife?”

“Sex, Montana! I’m not like you. I don’t go a decade without making love with my wife.” With that, he was gone.

And not a moment too soon, to Gabe’s way of thinking. Scowling, he shoved his hands in his pockets and continued up the trail. What did these spooklights have to do with sex? Just how did the colonel use those divining rods of his with stars? What would he find when he reached the top of the hill? An orgy?

He wouldn’t put it past Twinkle, but not Tess. She hadn’t changed that much. Of course, he wouldn’t have expected her to share intimate details about their marriage with her friends, either. The Tess he’d known a dozen years ago would never have spilled those particular celibacy beans.

This Tess apparently didn’t think twice about it. At the end of his first day in Aurora Springs when he went looking for a place to sleep, she’d made sure everyone knew he’d be staying in her spare bedroom, not her own. The men of the village had offered him sympathetic looks. Twinkle’s and Amy’s expressions had told him he deserved what he had coming.

Small town life. Where everyone knew your business better than you did. “Hell.”

Gabe followed the sound of excited voices to the top of the hill. Instead of an orgy he found his wife standing behind a telescope making notations in a notebook. Jack and Amy were headed back down the hill by a different path, walking hand in hand. Jack held a quilt tucked under one arm. The colonel held his rods to the sky. Twinkle appeared to be conjuring, her crystal ball set atop a makeshift table, her hands outstretched over it as she gazed out over the West Texas plain.

Then he heard a sound that stopped him in his tracks. Tess was laughing, that delighted, delightful music she’d once shared with him. Back then, it made him feel ten feet tall. Now it twisted his heart. He’d never thought to hear that particular song again.

As always, her laughter cast a spell over him, drew him like the sparkle of moonlight on water. “What is it?” he asked.

She turned. Her blue eyes glowed. Her smile shined like a sun in the gathering dusk. “Look at the colors. Look at them dance!”

“What colors?”

“The lights, Gabe. The Kissing Stars.” Tess laughed again and reached for his hand. “Look. You have to look at them.”

His heart seemed to stop as a bittersweet yearning filled him. Her laughter, the music. Happiness lost long ago. His mouth went dry as sandpaper.

Maybe he could do it. Maybe now was the time, here with Tess at his side. Maybe now was the moment to lay the ghosts to rest.

Gabe drew a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. Then, swallowing the sudden lump in his throat, he tightened his grip on Tess’s hand and slowly lifted his eyes above the horizon.

“Do you see them?” Tess asked. “Aren’t they beautiful? Tonight they’re blue and green. Some nights they’re red, and other times yellow. I think blue is my favorite, though. What do you think?”

He stared at the sly for a long minute without speaking. Then abruptly he released her hand and turned away, headed for the path leading down to Aurora Springs. “What do I think? I think you’re all lunatics, that’s what.”

Emotion churned like sour milk in his gut. Gabe had faced an old ghost and look what it had got him. Nothing. He’d looked into the sky. He’d searched for Tess’s Kissing Stars.

And he hadn’t seen a damned thing.

A MULTITUDE of stars pulsed in a black velvet sky, aiding the yellow glow of the lantern lighting Tess’s way down Lookout Peak. She made the trip alone at half past two in the morning, the others having sought their beds hours earlier. The chilled night air nipped at her skin, but the excitement thrumming through her blood helped keep her warm.
It has been
, she thought an
exhilarating night
.