Naked Edge

  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?

  He didn't want to think about that.

  "I wanted to tell you that yesterday morning, the last time I spoke with Grandpa Red Crow, he asked about you. He told me he thought you were a man I could trust. He was right. Last night, I ..." She seemed to hesitate. "I wanted you so badly that, if you hadn't stopped, I'm not sure what would have happened."

  Suddenly Gabe was no longer thinking about the inipi and how he'd freaked out over things that should no longer bother him. His gaze was fixed on Kat. He wasn't astonished to hear that she'd wanted him. He knew enough about women to have been certain of that himself. And there was no doubt about what would have happened. He'd have fucked her. All. Night. Long.

  What astonished him was that she had admitted it. She'd admitted that she wouldn't have stopped him, admitted that she'd have let him peel off her clothes, admitted that she'd have let him take what she'd told him she wouldn't give away. He hadn't expected her to be quite so honest, painfully honest though she often was. Why was she telling him this?

  She reached up and smoothed a stray lock of hair from his forehead, her cold fingers burning his skin. "What you did proved to me that you care more about me than you care about sex. A man who only cares about sex stops only if a woman asks him to stop. Thank you for caring about me, Gabe Rossiter. And thank you for being here tonight. Grandpa Red Crow was watching."

  With those words, she rose up and kissed his cheek. Before he could think of a single word to say, she'd climbed out the passenger door and walked off through the snow, still barefoot.

  CHAPTER 8

  KAT TURNED OFF her alarm and sank back into bed, wondering how it could possibly be morning already. She'd gotten home from the inipi shortly after midnight but had been too wound up to sleep, her thoughts and emotions running in circles from her investigation to Grandpa Red Crow's death to Gabe and back again. The last time she'd looked at the clock, it had been almost two in the morning--four hours ago.

  She pushed herself up, feeling almost painfully tired. Last night, as she'd lain awake in the darkness, she'd considered calling Tom and asking for the day off. She'd tell him there'd been a death in her family, which from the Native perspective was true. But, as much as she felt she needed the time to herself--and the extra sleep--she had work to do.

  She shuffled into the bathroom, flicked on the light, turned the shower on as hot as she could stand it, then stood under the spray, letting the water revive her. She didn't know how long she stood there--a minute, maybe two. Then she reached blindly for her shampoo and began to wash her hair, which was now about eight inches shorter, hanging to just below her breasts. She'd cut it last night, the custom when one was mourning the death of a loved one. She might not get her blood from Grandpa Red Crow, but he'd been family in every way that mattered.

  As her mind nudged toward wakefulness, her thoughts picked up where they'd left off last night when she'd finally fallen asleep. The big question--the one that had refused to leave her alone even in her dreams--was whether Grandpa Red Crow's death was in some way related to the raid on the inipi. There wasn't a shred of evidence to suggest that one was related to the other. They'd both happened at Mesa Butte, of course, but that might just be coincidence. And yet she couldn't shake the suspicion that the two were somehow connected.

  She rinsed away the shampoo, then worked conditioner through her hair, leaving it to soak in while she shaved her legs.

  She hoped Tom would let her put the solar-energy story on hold again. She needed a couple of days to write a feature story about Grandpa Red Crow--his life and his death. She wanted to tell the world what he'd meant to Indians in the Denver metro area, how he'd created a community for Native people who'd never lived on the reservation and had lost touch with their roots, as well as for those like Kat who'd left their families behind in search of a better life in an unfamiliar world.

  She would need to get a copy of the police report from Saturday, as well as the coroner's report. The coroner's report wouldn't be ready for a few days, depending on how long it took to get the toxicology tests back, but the police report should be on file. She would ask police records to fax one over as soon as she got to work. And then, of course, she needed the files on Mesa Butte that she'd requested last week.

  She rinsed the shaving cream off her legs and the conditioner out of her hair, then turned off the water, grabbed a towel, and stepped out of the shower. She dried her hair first, then her body, and then used the towel to wipe the steam off the mirror, her gaze gliding over her reflection and catching a glimpse of her breasts.

  God, Kat, honey, you've got beautiful breasts. They're so ... Mmm.

  She allowed her gaze to linger, a shiver running through her as she remem
bered the heat in his deep voice, the bliss of his mouth on her nipples, the hard feel of his erection as he'd ground it against her just where she'd needed it. He'd seemed to want her every bit as much as she wanted him. But had his passion been genuine, or was he like that with every woman?

  Oh, Gabe.

  All she had to do was think his name and her heart beat faster. He was everything she'd always wanted in a man and everything she'd always sworn to avoid--a man with a warrior's heart and soul, but also a man who used women for sex. The gap between those two parts of him had seemed too wide to bridge, so she'd tried to put him out of her life, certain that it was best for both of them. But her people hadn't let that happen. They'd brought Gabe deeper into her world.

  Then, in the darkness of the inipi, she'd realized that he hadn't always been the man he was now--a man who thought sex was a sport and love was for fairy tales. He might believe that's who he was, but it wasn't true. And that realization had complicated everything for Kat. If he'd been nothing more than another hot guy who liked to sleep around, she'd have had no problem turning her back on him. But he wasn't.

  She'd seen the anguish in his eyes there in the sweat lodge, had seen it as plainly as if he'd cried out to her for help. He had once loved a woman enough to want to spend the rest of his life with her, and then she'd died, leaving him alone. No wonder he'd been so understanding about Grandpa Red Crow's death. He knew what it felt like to lose someone he loved.

  I know there's nothing I can say that makes this any easier, but I want you to know that I really am sorry.

  She didn't know how she'd found the courage to say what she'd said to him after the inipi. Talking to men about her personal feelings had never been easy for her, especially not Bilagaanaa men. Perhaps the words had come to her because it had seemed more about him in that moment than about her.

  She'd tried to tell him that he wasn't the man he thought he was. She'd tried to show him that there was more to him than he remembered. Somehow, he'd forgotten a part of himself, or hidden it away, but it was still there. If he truly had become a man who only cared about sex, he wouldn't have stopped at kissing her that night. He'd have done anything, said anything, to get her to have sex with him. Then he'd have shrugged his shoulders and showed her the door in the morning.

  Whether he'd understood what she'd clumsily tried to tell him or how he felt about it she didn't know. He'd barely uttered a word, his face expressionless apart from the shadows that lingered in his eyes. But one thing was for certain. He wouldn't be able to love anyone again until he healed from the loss of his fiancee.

  The thought settled behind Kat's breastbone like a dull ache, and she realized that, despite her best intentions, she'd begun to have feelings for Gabe Rossiter.

  Trying to put him out of her mind and focus on the day ahead, she finished drying off, then brushed her teeth and dressed. Fifteen minutes later, she was backing down her driveway, unable to keep her gaze from searching the street for that rogue coyote--or to hold back a sigh of relief when she didn't see it.

  GABE TIED INTO his climbing harness, his fingers flying over the figure-eight retrace, as his gaze picked out his route up the rock wall. It was a damned tough route, opening with crimpers--holds so small that there was only room for the very tips of his fingers or the barest edge of his climbing shoes. It moved up to some long reaches, where he'd be dead-pointing to fingerlocks, then traversed a dihedral, before hitting a bulge that would require some major gription and going uber-vertical for the crux move on the overhang. Yeah, a brutal route.

  Good. That's exactly what Gabe needed--a little physical battering to clear his mind and get him thinking straight again.

  He wasn't sure what the hell had happened to him in that sweat lodge, but he knew it had to do with Kat. He wasn't an open person. He kept his emotions and personal life guarded, but she seemed to read him like a book. She knew something had happened in the inipi. She'd looked into his eyes, and it had felt like she was looking into his soul. Then she'd come to him afterward, as if trying to help him sort it out.

  Something about her got to him, stirring something inside him, and he didn't like it. He needed to get her out of his head--and fast.

  He'd actually gone home from the inipi and pulled out the one thing he'd kept from his life with Jill. A photo album that she'd put together, it held photos dating from the night they'd met at Camp 4 in Yosemite through that last backpacking trip they'd taken in the San Juan Mountains three weeks before she was killed. He hadn't looked at it since the day before her funeral, hadn't even opened it, needing to forget the past. But last night he'd sat there, turning the pages, looking at the photos, feeling ...

  Feeling what? Hell, even he couldn't say.

  God, he'd loved Jill. She'd been the center of his life, the perfect partner, his lover, the woman he'd wanted to spend the rest of his life with--or so he'd thought. Beautiful, funny, smart, and one hell of a climber, she'd known his world, shared it, loved it as much as he had. He'd thought himself the luckiest son of a bitch in the world--until the day he'd found himself staring at her lifeless body in the morgue and the truth had come out. He'd never realized that the human heart could hurt so badly or feel so much rage. As he'd watched her casket being lowered into the ground one hellish week later, he'd tried to bury his pain and rage with her. And until he'd sat in the inipi, he'd thought he'd done just that.

  Nothing happens during the inipi that we don't take in with us.

  Last night, he'd found himself remembering things he'd tried so hard to forget. The warmth of waking up beside Jill every morning, bodies entwined. Her obsession with jalapenos--in omelets, in burgers, in beer. Her uninhibited laughter. The fruity scent of her favorite shampoo. The way she'd loved to fuck anytime and anywhere.

  Three long years had gone by, but he could still remember her taste.

  The old, familiar pain and rage had come rushing back, pushing past the whisky in his gut, fucking with his head. He'd shoved the photo album under the couch, then gone to bed, where he'd stared at his ceiling in the dark, his thoughts tormented by two women--one who'd hurt him more than he'd ever thought he could be hurt and one who seemed to think she was helping. But some shit was better left alone.

  A man who only cares about sex stops only if a woman asks him to stop. Thank you for caring about me, Gabe Rossiter.

  God, Kat scared the shit out of him--Kat with her long dark hair, her hazel eyes, her sweet curves, her feminine strength, her unshakable dignity. He did not care about her--not like that. Never like that. Never again.

  "It's a sick five-thirteen-B," Travis said from behind him, obviously admiring his own handiwork. The kid had worked late last night setting this route and had come back early this morning just to see how Gabe would climb it.

  "Think so?"

  "Dude, I know so."

  Travis was, in Gabe's opinion, the best route setter in the known universe, an artist whose medium was little nubs spread over a vertical surface of artificial rock. The two of them had a symbiotic relationship. Travis tried to come up with moves that would force Gabe to stop and study the route or fall and hangdog, while Gabe tried to redpoint to the finish, climbing without pausing, getting stuck or falling. Each tested the other--which meant that they both kept getting better.

  "On belay?"

  "Belay on."

  "Climbing." Gabe didn't bother to wait for the customary confirmation before edging his shoe against the first button-sized toehold of the new route.

  "Dude, go for it!" Travis called after him, obviously not hung up on etiquette.

  Gabe finessed his way past the crimpers, clipped into protection, then lunged upward for the first fingerlock, using it to draw himself quickly upward again to the next one, willing his mind to clear and his focus to go vertical.

  "Who's the hottie?" a woman asked from below.

  "That's Gabe Rossiter, local demigod," Travis answered.

  "Sounds like you've got a man crush on him, Trav, but I can
see why."

  Their conversation barely registered with Gabe's conscious mind, his muscles already burning, his heart pumping, his lungs sucking wind as he worked his way steadily upward, his gaze a move ahead of the one his body was working through.

  So you slept with her, but she doesn't mean anything to you?

  He didn't need Kat's judgmental bullshit. She'd never even been in a sexual relationship. What the hell did she know about it?

  Gabe dismissed the thoughts with a frustrated gust of breath, clearing his mind as he moved into the traverse. He edged into another toehold, stemmed his way to the right, and clipped into the next piece of protection, using his quads to push himself upward, his gaze sighting on the bulge.

  Last night, I ... I wanted you so badly that, if you hadn't stopped, I'm not sure what would have happened.

  Gabe's hand hit the bulge wrong. He lost friction. His right foot slipped, and it was over. He fell, his weight jerking Travis forward before the kid got his shit together and caught the fall, stopping Gabe five feet short of the floor.

  "Whoa, dude!"

  Gabe bit back a stream of profanity. What the fuck was wrong with him today? He never had problems concentrating when he was climbing. If he'd been free-soloing on Redgarden Wall just now, he would currently be suffering from an incurable case of RDS--Rapid Deceleration Syndrome, the sudden, terminal illness that began at the end of a long fall.

  "Thanks, man," he called down to Travis.

  "No prob." There was a note of triumph in Travis's voice, a grin spreading above his goatee. "You want me to dirt you, or do you want to try again from there?"

  Beyond Travis, Gabe saw Rick and Dave walk through the gym's front doors. In full uniform, they stopped at the front desk, then pointed up at him.

  Not a good sign.

  "Looks like I have company."

  Slowly, Travis belayed him to the floor, still grinning.