Gabriel's Angel by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t his usual style, once he’d decided an explanation was called for, to accept a partial one. He couldn’t quite make himself push for the whole when even the portion she’d given him had plainly cost her so much.
    There was still time. The radio continued to squawk about the roads that were closed and the snow that was yet to come. The Rockies could be treacherous in the spring. Gabe estimated it would be two weeks, perhaps three, before a trip could be managed with real safety.
    It was odd, but he would have thought the enforced company would annoy him. Instead, he found himself pleased to have had his self-imposed solitude broken. It had been a long time since he’d done a portrait. Maybe too long. But he hadn’t been able to face flesh and blood, not since Michael.
    In the cabin, cut off from memories and reminders, he’d begun the healing process. In San Francisco he hadn’t been able to pick up a brush. Grief had done more than make him weak. For a time it had made him . . . blank.
    But here, secluded, solitary, he’d painted landscapes, still lifes, half-remembered dreams and seascapes from old sketches. It had been enough. Not until Laura had he felt the need to paint the human face again.
    Once he’d believed in destiny, in a pattern of life that was meant to be even before birth. Michael’s death had changed that. From that point, Gabe had had to blame something, someone. It had been easiest, and most painful, to blame himself. Now, sketching Laura, thinking over the odd set of circumstances that had brought her into his life, he began to wonder again.
    And what, he asked himself yet again, was she thinking?
    â€œAre you tired?”
    â€œNo.” She answered, but she didn’t move. He’d stationed a chair by the window, angling it so that she was facing him but still able to look out. The light fell over her, bringing no shadows. “I like to look at the snow. There are tracks in it now, and I wonder what animals might have passed by without us seeing. And I can see the mountains. They look so old and angry. Back east they’re more tame, more good-natured.”
    He absently murmured his agreement as he studied his sketch. It was good, but it wasn’t right, and he wanted to begin working on canvas soon. He set the pad aside and frowned at her. She stared back, patient and—if he wasn’t reading her incorrectly—amused. “Do you have anything else to wear? Something off-the-shoulder, maybe?”
    The amusement was even more evident now. “Sorry, my wardrobe’s a bit limited at the moment.”
    He rose and began to pace, to the fire, to the window, back to the table. When he strode over to take her face in his hand and turn it this way and that, she sat obligingly. After three days of posing, she was used to it. She might have been an arrangement of flowers, Laura thought, or a bowl of fruit. It was as if that one moment of awareness on the snow-covered porch had never happened. She’d already convinced herself that she’d imagined that look in his eyes—and, more, her response to it.
    He was the artist. She was the clay. And she’d been there before.
    â€œYou have a completely feminine face,” he began, talking more to himself than to her. “Alluring and yet composed, and soft, even with the angular shape and those cheekbones. It’s not threatening, and yet, it’s utterly distracting. This—” his thumb brushed casually over her full lower lip “—says sex, even while your eyes promise love and devotion. And the fact that you’re ripe—”
    â€œRipe?” She laughed, and the hands that had clenched in her lap relaxed again.
    â€œIsn’t that what pregnancy is? It only adds to the fascination. There’s a promise and a fulfillment and—despite education and progress—a compelling mystery to a woman with child. Like an