Chapter Eleven

I t took several days for Abby to adjust to city life again after the wide-open country of Montana. Accustomed to staying up late at the ranch, she now had to go to bed early, watch her diet, be concerned with shadows and lines of weariness, add to her wardrobe and pack her huge handbag with the dozens of items she might need for an assignment. And every night she soaked her aching feet and smothered herself in cold cream and longed for Cade McLaren with every cell in her body.

She did Jessica’s sketches in the weeks that followed and mailed them to Wyoming. Jessica phoned her shortly afterward and invited her out to see the boutique, but Abby had to put her off. She was working feverishly, and the lie she’d told Melly about the bottling company commercials had been amazingly prophetic. She was offered a television commercial for a soft drink company, which she immediately accepted. Her career was skyrocketing. And it was as empty as her life.

She didn’t even bother dating other men. What was the use, when all she could do was compare them to Cade. So she worked and grieved for him, and before very long the toll of loneliness began to show on her.

All the years before, she’d had that sweet memory of him to sustain her, and the hope that someday things might change. But now there was no hope left. There was nothing to cling to, only a future that was empty and lonely. Even if she accepted Jessica’s offer and went to live in Wyoming, she might be near Cade but she’d still be alone. She didn’t know how she was going to bear it.

Late on Friday night, she was halfheartedly watching television when the phone rang. She couldn’t imagine who it could be at that hour, and she was frowning when she picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” she murmured.

“Hello, honey,” came a deep, painfully familiar voice. She sat down, paling. It had been almost four months since she’d last heard that particular voice, but she would have known it on her deathbed.

“Cade?” she whispered shakily.

“Yes.” There was a pause. “How are you, Abby?”

She drew in a slow breath. Don’t panic, she told herself, don’t give yourself away. “I’m just fine, Cade,” she said brightly.

“No date on a Friday night?” he murmured.

She drew her gold caftan closer around her, as if he could see her all the way from Montana. “I was tired,” she replied. “Is everything all right? Melly…?”

“Melly’s fine. She and Jerry are down at Yellowstone for the weekend.”

“Oh.” She gripped the receiver tightly. “Then nothing’s wrong?”

“Everything’s wrong,” he said after a minute. “Hank’s quitting.”

“Hank!” She sat straight up. “Why?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “He says I’m too damned mean to stay around.”

“Are you?” she asked softly. There was something strange about his voice, different. “Cade, are you all right?” she asked, and the concern seeped through.

“I’m…fine.” He laughed again. “I’ll be finer when I get through this bottle.”

“You’re drinking!” It was the only thing that could explain the way he sounded.

“Are you shocked? I’m human, Abby, although you sure as hell never thought I was, did you?” There was a thud and a muffled curse. “Damn, why does furniture have to sprout legs when you try to go around it?”

She wrapped the telephone cord around her fingers. “Cade, is someone there with you? Calla?”

“Calla’s gone to a movie with Jeb. Any day now I expect to be asked to the wedding.” He sighed. “Abby, before long you and I are going to be the only two single people on earth.”

“Why are you drinking?” she asked, worried. “You haven’t gotten hurt, have you?”

“You’re a hell of a person to ask me that,” he growled. “You cut the heart out of me when you got on that damned plane. Just the way you cut it out when you got on the bus four years ago. Oh, God, Abby, I miss you!” he ground out, his voice throbbing with emotion. “I miss you!”

Tears burst from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “I miss you, too,” she whispered. Her eyes closed and she bit her lip. “Every hour of every day.”

There was a long, deep sigh from the other end of the line. “We should have made love that day by the river,” he said achingly. “Maybe we would have gotten each other out of our systems. I’ve got a picture of you by my bed, Abby. I sit here and look at it and ache all over.”

Her fingers clenched until the blood went out of them. She had one of him, too, that she’d carried to New York with her four years before. It was wrinkled from being hugged against her heart.

“You’re the one who told me sex was a bad foundation to build on,” she reminded him wearily.

“It wasn’t just sex,” he said. “It’s never been that. Four years ago, I couldn’t risk getting you pregnant, don’t you see? I couldn’t take the choice away from you. To hell with how I felt, I couldn’t force you to stay here, Abby.”

Her breath caught in her throat. She caught the receiver with both hands and sat as still as a poker. Did he even realize what he was admitting?

“You…you thought that given the choice between you and modeling…”

“You showed me which was more important, didn’t you, honey?” he asked with a bitter laugh. He sighed heavily. “You got on that bus, laughing like a freed prisoner, and you never even looked at me. I told your father I’d marry you, if you’d have me, and we fought it out half the night. He said you were too young and you wanted a chance to get away from the ranch, to be somebody. I argued with him then, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t make you stay with me.” His voice was faintly slurred, but just as beautiful as ever, and Abby was hurting in ways she’d never dreamed she could. “You see, I’d already realized how vulnerable you were with me. And I was just as vulnerable with you. I had to be careful not to come too close, Abby, because we could have gotten in over our heads. I figured you’d go to New York and get tired of the city and come back to me. But you didn’t.”

There was a world of emotion in those words. Bitterness. Hopelessness. Hurt.

“You never asked me to stay,” she whispered. “You said you didn’t want a commitment to any woman, a…a leash on your freedom.”

He laughed. “I haven’t been free since you were fifteen years old. I’ve never wanted anyone else. I never will.”

“You let me go!” she burst out, suddenly hating him. “Damn you, you let me go! I was only eighteen, but there was nothing New York had to offer that could have torn me away from you if you’d just told me to stay! One lousy word, just one word—stay. And you let me go, Cade!”

There was a shocked pause on the other end of the line, a silence like darkness in a graveyard.

But she didn’t notice. The words were tumbling out of her, while tears burned down her cheeks. “I loved the glamour, you said, I couldn’t live without the city! And all I’ve done for four years is stare at this picture of you and cry my eyes out! You put me on a bus four years ago, and you put me on a plane four months ago…damn you, what do you care? You push me away, you accuse me of teasing you, you…Cade? Cade!”

But the line was dead. She slammed the receiver down and burst into tears. If he called back, she wasn’t even going to answer. Let him sit and drown in his whiskey. She didn’t care! She turned off the lights and went to bed in a fit of furious temper.

Several hours later, she sat straight up in bed as the doorbell rang and rang and rang. Maybe she was dreaming it. It had taken her forever to get to sleep, and she was still drowsy. She laid her head back on the pillow, but there it came again, even more insistently.

Frowning sleepily, she padded to the front door of her apartment with her gold caftan swirling around her.

“Who is it?” she grumbled.

“Who the hell do you think? Open the door, or do I have to break it down?”

“Cade?” Her heart jumped wildly and she fumbled the catch and the safety latch off and opened the door. And it was no dream.

He came into the apartment with a scowl as black as thunder on his dark face, looking sleepy and tired and worn-out. He was wearing jeans and a half-open denim shirt, and old boots and the battered brown ranch hat he wore to work cattle. His boots were dusty, his face needed a shave and he was altogether the most beautiful sight Abby had seen in her life.

“Cade!” she breathed, blinking up at him out of sleepy eyes, her tangled hair glorious in its disarray, the caftan clinging lovingly and quite revealingly to every line of her body.

“I’ve had half a bottle of whiskey,” he said, towering over her with the locked door behind him. “And I’m not quite sober yet, despite the three cups of black coffee I had on the plane. But you said something to me that I’m sure I really heard and didn’t dream, and I flew up here to let you say it again. Just to make sure.”

She stared at him unblinkingly, loving every unshaven plane of his face.

“You hung up the phone and got on a plane in the middle of the night…?” she began nervously.

His eyes roamed down her body and one dark eyebrow arched curiously. “You’ve lost weight, Abigail,” he murmured, studying her. “A lot of it, and you look like pure hell.”

“Have you seen yourself in a mirror?” she countered, noticing new lines, new shadows under his dark eyes.

He shook his head. “Couldn’t stand the sight of myself,” he admitted. “Come on, Abby, let’s hear it.”

She swallowed. “It was easier when you were still in Montana,” she began nervously.

“I guess it was.” He took off his hat and tossed it onto a chair. His big hands framed her face and he looked down at it like a starving man. “Suppose I take you to bed, Abby?” he asked softly. “And after we’ve made love for three or four hours, I’ll ask you again.”