At the time, Gabe hadn’t been able to recall a single time when his heart had spoken to him, but it was definitely speaking to him now. He sank back in the chair, studied Laney soberly for a long moment, and finally decided that having the little imp in his corner sure as hell couldn’t hurt, and might very well help him to accomplish his goals. “If you want to hear the truth—the real truth—it’s a long story, and it’s one Nan must never hear. If I tell it to you, will you give me your word that you will repeat nothing I say to her?”
Laney didn’t hesitate. “No. You’ve herded my sister into a marriage she doesn’t want, and for all I know, you’re up to a heap of no good. My first loyalty is to her, not to you.”
Gabe admired her for her honesty. Yep, she was a straight shooter if ever he’d met one. “What if, by telling you the story, I convince you that I mean Nan no harm? That I am, in fact, here to do exactly the opposite and try to help her?”
Laney swallowed the bite of cookie. Her gray eyes darkened with shadows. “Nan doesn’t need help.”
Gabe shook his head. “Ah, Laney, don’t lie to yourself after being so brutally honest with me. Look me in the eye and tell me, without blinking, that Nan is completely happy with her life, that there’s nothing more that she yearns for, nothing else that she once dreamed of but has now given up on ever having. Can you do that?”
Laney searched the depths of her untouched hot cocoa, her shimmery lashes feathering over her cheeks. “Well . . . she did tell me once that there was a time when she was still young and stupid that she believed she’d find her one true love.” Looking up again, the girl shrugged. “She doesn’t believe in all that nonsense anymore.”
“Do you think it’s all nonsense?” Gabe asked softly.
He listened to the clock tick while she struggled for an answer. “I don’t know. No, I guess I don’t think it’s nonsense.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I love Nan with my whole heart, and if I can love her that way, it only makes sense to me that I could love someone else just as much, maybe someday even a man.”
Gabe was relieved to hear that. Being raised by a woman who disliked men and feared the institution of marriage could have affected Laney’s view of the world, its male population in particular.
“And babies,” Gabe ventured. “Don’t you think Nan’s ever wished she could have her very own baby? I know how much she loves you, and I’m not trying to take anything away from that, but having your own child—well, I think that’s something most women want, even if they never say so.”
Laney narrowed her eyes. “Are you saying you’re here to help Nan fall in love with somebody and have babies of her own before she gets too old?”
Gabe stood and carried his cup and saucer to the sink. “If you want to hear my story, cupcake, it isn’t going to happen here.” Ignoring her mean look at his use of the nickname again, he went on. “Nan will be coming back up any minute, and it’s very important that she never hears a word of this.” As Gabe rinsed his cup, he sent up a silent prayer that confiding in Laney wasn’t a huge mistake. Listen to your heart, Gabriel had told him. Well, Gabe sorely feared that his heart might be so rusty from disuse that it was talking nonsense. “Where’s your cloak?” he asked the child.
“Hanging on the hook downstairs by the door.”
Gabe turned from the counter. “Good. You can grab it as you go out with me to help get wood.”
Gabe went to collect the leather firewood sling that he’d seen lying by the sitting room hearth. Laney grabbed the sling near the woodstove. When they met again in the kitchen, she lifted her fair brows at him in question. “You don’t act like you’re any too happy about telling me this tale.”
Gabe saw no reason to deny the truth. “I’m afraid it may be a huge mistake, and if it is, I’m going to pay dearly.”
Laney considered that for a second and then nodded. “I won’t repeat to Nan any of what you tell me if you can convince me you’re actually here to help her.”
Not good enough, he realized. This tale was too far-fetched to gamble on the understanding of someone so young, however well-intentioned. “Look,” he said. “Let me put this another way. Will you promise to keep quiet about what I tell you, even if you don’t believe it, if I can convince you that I mean your sister no harm?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she studied him like she might a curious bug in a display case. He had a feeling she was looking clear into the depths of his mind and heart. After what seemed a minor eternity, she nodded slowly. “Okay. Deal.”
Gabe figured that was about as much as he could hope for and led the way downstairs, braced with every step to catch Laney from falling if she tripped. If he did nothing else useful around here, he’d get some sturdy handrails installed.
Nan had nearly finished emptying the merchandise crate that she’d collapsed upon that morning. She stopped arranging items on a shelf to turn and give them a surprised look.
“We’re going out to bring in some wood,” Gabe told her. “You’re out upstairs, and it’s liable to get real cold tonight.”
He saw Nan’s shoulders stiffen. “Laney and I can do that. We always have.”
“I know, but now that I’m here I may as well make myself useful.”
She shrugged, as if it made her no never mind, but Gabe knew it bothered her to accept any kind of help from him. “While you’re about that, I’ll get supper started then.” She glanced at her sister. “Be sure to wear your cloak, Laney. I don’t want you catching a chill.” When Gabe reached the door, she added, “If you’re bent on bringing in wood, Gabriel, I’ll need a load down here in the shop come morning as well.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the woodstove, which occupied the left rear corner of the room. “No problem. I’ll make sure you have plenty to last you the day.”
• • •
After they filled the wood slings, Gabe braced a boot on a half-empty layer of the long woodpile and slipped his pack of Marquis of Lorne cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Laney hugged her cloak close, watching as he tapped out a smoke, struck a match on the outer thigh seam of his jeans, and lighted up.
“You’ll be getting phossy jaw if you aren’t careful,” Laney warned him as he drew on the Marquis to get it burning well. “That phosphorous is dangerous. It puts off fumes, you know, and people get sick from them.”
Gabe grinned. “How do you light your lanterns at night, with your finger?”
“Mama always lights them, and she’s very careful not to breathe the fumes.”
Gabe shrugged. “I mostly only smoke outside, and even then only occasionally. I doubt I inhale enough phosphorous fumes to bother me.”
Laney looked unconvinced, but she apparently put the concern behind her to ask, “You going to tell me that tale, or are you just going to stand there, puffing the whole time?”
Gabe exhaled a waft of smoke, glad for the calming effect. “I’m working my way up to it. I’m just not sure where to start.”
“At the beginning,” Laney told him.
A fine suggestion, but what was the beginning? Gabe couldn’t quite determine when it had all started—as far back as his childhood, maybe?—so he settled on beginning when he found the boy under the stairway on Christmas morning, being careful not to mention that it had been the stairway leading up to the prostitute quarters. He didn’t figure Laney needed to know about such places until she grew older.
When he got to the part where Pete Raintree shot him in the chest, Laney’s eyes went as round as pennies. “Praise God he didn’t kill you!” she cried. Her gaze sharpened, and he saw her eyes narrow. She was adding two plus two and getting seven. “You don’t look shot to me. Even after almost a year to heal, you’d still show some sign of having been that seriously injured.”
Gabe tossed away his cigarette and ground it out under his heel. “That’s where this story gets real stra
nge, cupcake, because Pete Raintree did kill me. He came out of the shadows, yelling that Pete Raintree had shot Gabriel Valance, still unaware that I’d gotten him dead in the chest. When he reached me where I lay in the street, he looked down at the blood, all bewildered, and then he fell dead just a few feet away from me.”
“But you didn’t die—not really—because you’re still here, almost a year later.”
Gabe chose not to correct her chronology. That could come later. Instead he told her about seeing Nan standing at the window. “She stood there, with evergreen boughs framing her person, almost like a picture frame, and the light of the candle shone in her hair, making it radiant, almost like a halo. I knew I was dying—I felt cold, really cold, and it was getting hard to breathe. Nan was so damned beautiful I thought maybe I’d already died and was seeing an angel.”
“Nan is pretty,” Laney agreed, “especially with her hair down.”
“Yep, pretty as an angel. I stared at her as long as I could, trying my best to hang on, but black spots started blocking my vision, and pretty soon everything went black, like when all the lantern wicks are turned down at once, and a room goes so dark you can’t see. Only difference was, I wasn’t thinking anymore, or even feeling anything. That was it. I just died. It happened really fast.”
“And then Doc Peterson came and saved you. Right?”
“Nope. I woke up standing in front of a rickety old shack. It was eerie, I can tell you that, but I didn’t get any too scared until I looked down.”
Laney leaned closer. “What did you see that frightened you?”
“I was standing on nothing but a cloud—walking on air, I guess you could say.”
Laney rolled her eyes. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. Nobody can walk on air.”
“You can if you’re dead,” Gabe replied. Then he glanced back over his shoulder at the narrow opening between the two buildings, which provided passage to the shop’s backyard. “We’d better take in a load of wood before I continue. Otherwise Nan’s going to get worried and come searching for us. If we go in, she’ll get busy in the kitchen cooking, and maybe she won’t keep track of time.”
“You can’t stop the story there!” Laney cried. He had a strong feeling that was just what she thought his tale was—a story he’d invented. But a good one.
Gabe laughed. “It’s what they call a cliff-hanger, keeping your audience in suspense.”
“It isn’t fair to use a cliff-hanger right this minute. Tell me just a little bit more before we take the wood in.”
“Nope,” Gabe said. “Top off your sling, sweetheart. Otherwise Nan will soon be tracking us down to find out what’s taking so long.”
With a huff, Laney began collecting split lengths of wood and stacking them on what she’d already deposited on the unfurled sling. “It’s a stupid story, anyway,” she grumped. “And I don’t care what happens next.”
“Fine, then. If you don’t want to hear it, I won’t bother myself with finishing.”
The searing glare the child arced toward him set Gabe to laughing again.
• • •
Thirty minutes later, when they returned to the backyard woodpile, Gabe resumed telling his story. He left out the identities of the other two lost souls in Random whom he might have chosen to save and focused on his decision to pick Nan. “Those angels, they’re clever fellows,” he told Laney. “They parted the clouds so I could look down and see Nan during certain moments of her life. Your father, Martin Sullivan—do you remember him at all? You were pretty little when Nan got you out of his house and ran away with you.”
Dark shadows shifted in the girl’s eyes. “No, I don’t remember him,” she said without a trace of doubt in her voice. Then she met Gabe’s gaze and added, “But sometimes I think maybe—” She broke off and shook her head.
“Sometimes you think what?” Gabe pressed.
She shrugged and gazed off at the backyard of a house facing the next street over. “I have bad dreams,” she said, her voice pitched so low it was almost a whisper. “Really awful dreams, and sometimes I think the man in them who’s being so mean to Nan might be my father.”
Gabe sighed. “As much as I hate to say it, Laney, I think you’re probably right. Your father . . . well, he was very mean to Nan, and if you saw some of that going on when you were really little, it may come back to you in nightmares, even though you can’t remember any of it when you’re awake.”
She gave him a questioning look. “I’m not sure I believe this story, Mr. Valance. Talking to archangels and looking through holes in the clouds to see Nan doing things years ago?” She wrinkled her nose. “It smells to me of imagination and trickery.”
“Then how do I know the things I know?” Gabe challenged.
“You could have discovered Nan’s identity, done some digging, and learned things about her past. It was in the newspapers in New York that she murdered Horace Barclay, I’m sure. Nobody needs a couple of angels to tell him that.”
Gabe knew he was losing his audience. He could see it in Laney’s eyes. Ah, well, he thought grimly, I knew making her believe me would be difficult—and risky. “Okay, fine,” he told the child. “I know it all sounds pretty far-fetched.”
“Finish anyway,” Laney replied. “It really is a good story.”
Gabe cocked his head. “You are going to be some man’s undoing one day, Laney Hoffman, sweet as sugar on the one hand and as difficult as a mathematical equation on the other.”
She dimpled a cheek. “If refusing to suffer nonsense gladly makes me difficult, I’ll happily accept the judgment.”
Gabe almost told her to go pick wildflowers—which, during a Colorado winter, were nonexistent. But then he decided that finishing the tale might sway her in his direction.
“Well, you’re definitely difficult, and now that I’ve got that said, let me entertain you with this little bit of information. Nan didn’t mean to murder Horace Barclay. When he tried to force himself on her, she got away from him long enough to grab a knitting needle. She meant only to hold him off by threatening him, but he just laughed and lunged at her. Big and fat like he was, he was too clumsy by half, and he tripped on the rug, fell on top of Nan, and skewered himself. She never meant to stab him.”
Laney nibbled the inside of her lower lip. “Nan could have told you that this morning when you were threatening to turn her in. Your knowing that she didn’t mean to hurt him means nothing.”
She had him there, Gabe decided, because Nan had, in fact, tried to convince him of her innocence that morning. Careful, Gabe. He had only three aces left in his hand: the knowledge that Horace Barclay wasn’t dead; that the fat old bugger had been too embarrassed about the incident to report his injury to the authorities; and that Nan had no murder charge hanging over her head. Over his lifetime, Gabe had made some pretty stupid mistakes, but he’d learned from experience and wasn’t about to make another. If he gave Laney even one of those tidbits of information, she’d go running to Nan with the news. If that happened, Gabe would no longer have any leverage in this situation, and Nan would make fast tracks to Hamm’s office first thing in the morning to file for that annulment.
No way was Gabe going to let that happen. Laney would believe what she chose to believe, and if the two of them remained at loggerheads because of it, he’d simply tough it out for the next month. After all he’d gone through as a kid, living for thirty days with two sharp-tongued females taking shots at him every chance they got . . . Well, Gabe had survived far worse.
“There has to be more to your story,” Laney observed. “You claim you’re here to save Nan. There’s no way you can clear her name, not unless you’ve left out something important.”
Gabe smiled grimly. Laney Hoffman had a mind like a steel trap, and he wasn’t about to stick his foot on the spring release. “You’re right. There’s more to the story, but I’m no lon
ger in the mood to finish. You don’t believe me anyway, so why waste my breath?” When all she did was shrug, Gabe hit her with another question. “Do I strike you as being a stupid man?”
“No, you seem smart enough to me.”
“Then why, if I was going to make up a story, would I choose to make one up that nobody in his right mind would ever believe? Hell, no. If I were lying, I’d come up with something a lot better, believe me.”
“I don’t understand why you chose to tell me in the first place.”
“To get you on my side, of course. If I can get you to come around, you might help ease my way with Nan.”
Laney huffed. She had a way of rolling her eyes that Gabe might have found adorable under other circumstances. “I’ll only ever be on Nan’s side, never on yours.”
“It’s one and the same. Whether you believe me or not, I’m here to help the woman.”
Once again hugging her cloak against the cold, Laney peered at him through the deepening twilight. “You know what I think, Mr. Valance?”
“No, but I’ve got a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“I think maybe you did get shot, and maybe you did almost die, and maybe sometime during your recovery, you grew delirious and dreamed about meeting those angels.”
Gabe bent to throw some more wood into both slings. “Well, thank you for that much. At least you aren’t out and out calling me a liar.”
Laney watched him work, tapping the toe of her patent-leather slipper on the sparse winter yellow grass. “No, I think it’s more likely that you’re simply very confused, Mr. Valance, and that worries me, because if you’re that confused, hearing angels talking to you and all, you may believe you’re here to help my sister, but instead you might somehow do her harm.”
Gabe straightened with a sling of wood in both hands. “Rest assured, I’ll try my darnedest to keep my confused self under control.”
Laney shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. That’s not good enough. I want you out of our house.”