Wolf Creek Homecoming. Penny Richards

He’d meant to come back to Wolf Creek?

      Of course he was coming home. Why else would he have been between Wolf Creek and Antoine?

      “Why? Why now, after all this time?”

      Without thinking, she blurted out the question that leaped into her mind, even though she knew that he was in no condition for the battle she felt brewing.

      “To try to...fix things...with Caleb.”

      No wish to try to make amends with her. “Caleb knows you’re here, and frankly, he wasn’t exactly overjoyed about it.” She started to turn away, and his good hand reached out and grabbed hers.

      “And you, Rachel?” he asked, as she stared down at the fingers that manacled her wrist. “I know how I left was...wrong. I’m sorry.”

      So he did want to make things right with her. The knowledge gave her no satisfaction; it only stoked her anger. “Why should I believe your contrition is genuine, Gabe? You once told me a lot of things, all of them lies. Why should I believe this sudden change of heart is any different? And your behavior wasn’t just wrong. It was contemptible!”

      She knew that her tirade was inappropriate and unprofessional, and that the fury consuming her was no doubt reflected in her face and in her voice, which shook as badly as her hands. He was in pain from numerous injuries. It was neither the time nor the place to confront him, but the dam that had held back her pain for so many years had burst, and she could not seem to stop the words that spewed from her like lava from a volcano.

      “Did you really think you could just waltz into town and expect everyone to welcome you with open arms? Did you think that maybe Caleb would be so overjoyed by the prodigal’s return that he would trot out the fatted calf? Guess what, Gabe, this is real life, not a Bible story, and I don’t see any happy endings in sight!”

      He looked stricken by her outburst. She didn’t care. She wanted him to know he had behaved despicably. Wanted him to know the pain she’d suffered. She even hoped the knowledge of what he’d done added to his own pain.

      His grip relaxed and he allowed her to pull free. She stared at him, but his eyes gave away nothing of what he was feeling.

      “Mama?” Danny spoke from the doorway.

      Trembling as if she had the ague, she turned. “What is it, Danny?” she asked in a far harsher tone than she’d intended and he was accustomed to.

      The child looked from her to the man in the bed, his eyes wide with uncertainty. “Pops wanted me to see if everything is all right.”

      “Tell him everything’s fine,” she said in a softer voice.

      She kept her gaze studiously on her son, who looked shocked by the side of his mother he’d never seen. She wished she could call back her heated words. No. Gabe Gentry deserved her anger. She only wished Danny hadn’t heard. “Mr. Gentry is just in a lot of pain at the moment.”

      “But you were mad at him,” Danny said, sensing there was more than she was saying. Like his grandfather, he was prone to probe until his curiosity was satisfied.

      “Only because he tried to get out of bed,” she fibbed, casting a quick glance at Gabe, whose eyes were now shut. “He might have hurt himself worse.”

      “Oh.”

      Once more, Danny looked from one adult to the other before backing out the door, leaving Rachel alone with her patient, who stared at her with no visible expression. Why didn’t that surprise her? The celebrated Gabriel Gentry would never see his actions as despicable.

      “I’ll get you some medication,” she told him, wanting nothing more than to escape him.

      “I don’t want it,” he said, his jaw set in a stubborn line. “I want...to get up...awhile.”

      “There’s no way you can–”

      “It’s Christmas Eve,” he interrupted, his voice rough with his own anger and something she couldn’t put a name to. “Help me to...a chair. I’ll be...okay for a while.”

      “Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll let you sit up, but only if you let me give you a little something.”

      He looked as if he would like to argue further, but nodded. She turned toward the door. “Where are you going?”

      “To get Pops’s wheelchair.”

      “Rachel,” he said, the sound of his voice stopping her. She turned.

      “I had no idea you had a son.”

      She stiffened but managed a twisted smile. “What did you expect, Gabe? That I would carry a torch for you forever?”

      For once in his life, Gabe had no witty comeback.

      * * *

      After a lot of moaning and groaning, Rachel got Gabe into one of her father’s robes and settled into the wheelchair with a quilt over his legs. Then she rolled him to the kitchen, where he picked at a bowl of beef stew he didn’t want while trying—without much success and despite the small dose of laudanum she’d forced on him—to ignore the various excruciating pains throbbing throughout his body. It irritated him that she’d been right. He should have stayed in bed.

      When the simple meal was finished, he was rolled into the parlor, where he sat watching as the Stones went through their Christmas Eve celebration. His muddled thoughts bounced around from one topic to the next.

      When he’d awakened, he remembered how he’d come to be in so much agony but had no idea where he was. He’d chosen not to call for help, instead enduring long pain-filled moments as he struggled to sit up with a shoulder that felt on fire and a rib cage that felt as if someone had taken a club to it. No. Not a club. Boots.

      When he’d seen Rachel standing beside the bed, he’d thought she was an illusion, and his reaction had been profound pleasure. It hadn’t taken long to realize that she was very real and that she did not share his happiness at being reunited.

      She was right, he thought as he watched her with her family. He’d treated her worse than terribly. He remembered their short few weeks together as good ones even though she was nothing like the women he usually spent time with.

      She was very smart, which was a little intimidating, as was her desire to become a doctor and settle down in Wolf Creek. His greatest goal was to see as much as he could while his money held out. There was plenty of time to worry about what he would do with his life after he finished seeing the world.

      It was years before he’d come to grips with the reality that the lifestyle he’d chosen when he left home had lost its luster and that his interest in aimless pursuits had declined dramatically. He’d begun to feel as if he were living in a world of make-believe, while somewhere out there people led real and meaningful lives.

      Comprehension led to months of reflection and careful examination of his upbringing and the life he’d tried so hard to leave behind. He’d realized that the void he’d felt in his heart since the day his mother abandoned him and his brother could not be filled with laughter and joking, senseless reveling or meaningless relationships. All attempts to do so had been futile, masking, but never filling, the emptiness.

      He’d been left with the sobering realization that his entire life was nothing but an effort to escape the pain that gnawed at him every moment of every day and could not be assuaged by any thrill, pleasure or sinful indulgence known to man. He’d accepted the truth that there was no escaping the past or how it shaped the person you became. At some point you had to come to terms with that, both the good and the bad.

      Then one day in Atlanta almost a year ago, he’d been strolling through a park and heard a woman laugh, laughter filled with such undiluted joy that it triggered an unexpected, long-forgotten memory of Rachel. The moment was sharply poignant. In those few out-of-time seconds, he’d been struck with the sudden conviction that he’d had something rare within his grasp and thrown it away.

      Over