by Diana Palmer
“Whew,” Becky whistled. “Sounds like a midlife crisis for sure.”
Abby glowered at her. “He isn’t middle-aged!”
Becky’s eyebrows lifted. She grinned.
Abby sighed and sipped her coffee. “I want to run away, too. You can come with me.”
“You could turn another bull loose.”
Abby glowered at her. “That’s not a lot of help.”
Becky crossed her arms on the table and stared at Abby with affection and worry. “Do you love Troy?”
“No.”
“Do you really want to marry him?”
“No.”
“Then why do it?”
Abby ran a hand through her short hair. “Because Chayce says he’s too old for me and I have to marry somebody younger. Troy’s the only person who wants to marry me.”
“That’s a shameful reason to put on an engagement ring.”
Abby actually blushed. “It didn’t seem like a bad reason at the time. I hadn’t seen Chayce for four years and he’d already made it clear that he…that he…” She hesitated.
Becky smiled. “I may be old, but I’m not blind,” she murmured dryly. “I know how you feel about Chayce, Abby. I’ve always known.”
Abby shrugged. “It doesn’t matter how I feel, though,” she said miserably. “He says he’s too old for me and he’s determined that he isn’t going to get married at all.”
“You know why he’s that way.”
“She was a fool, and she never loved him,” Abby said shortly. “I do. I’d never play around with other men.”
“He knows.”
She lowered her eyes and picked at a fingernail. “Anyway, he said I should marry Troy.” She looked up belligerently. “He said he’d give me away. He can’t wait, in fact. That is, if he can force himself to stay here long enough for the ceremony!”
She burst into tears unexpectedly as the reality of her situation crashed down on her. Becky got up and comforted her, smoothing her hair while she cried.
“Oh, Becky, I can’t marry Troy! I can’t! Not when I feel this way about Chayce. It would cheat Troy and me both!”
“I know that, baby,” she said gently. “I know.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Give Troy back the ring.”
She sniffed. “Chayce will go through the roof when he finds out.”
Becky had a faraway, amused look in her eyes that Abby didn’t see. “Think so? I wonder.”
“He didn’t say where he was going, did he?”
“No.”
“He’s probably on his way to see Delina,” she muttered, wiping her eyes with the tissue Becky brought her. “She doesn’t want to get married.”
“I’ll bet she does,” came the dry reply. “No woman in her right mind could look at Chayce Derringer without seeing him at the end of a wedding aisle.”
Abby leaned forward, red-eyed and fatigued. “She may be hoping for a wedding, at that,” Abby said. “She doesn’t sleep with him.”
The older woman’s eyes widened. “And how do you know that?”
“He told me,” Abby said absently. “He said he hadn’t slept with anyone in four years.”
There was a shocked silence from the other side of the table. When she looked up, Becky was still all eyes.
“Maybe he was lying,” Abby said, hoping to erase the shock.
Becky shook her head. “We both know he doesn’t lie.” She let out a breath. “Well, well,” she said, and even sounded amused. “And he’s gone away, has he?”
“So I’ll marry Troy and leave his house. Then he can come home again, and he won’t have to leave every time I cross the property line,” Abby grumbled. She pushed up from the chair. “Maybe I’ll go away myself. I’ve got a degree and it’s a big state. I can arrange that he’ll never have to see me again, ever, and I won’t have to marry Troy to do it!”
“Don’t do anything rash,” Becky cautioned.
“It won’t be rash,” she promised. “But I’m going to go see Troy right now.”
Becky didn’t say a word. But she’d have loved to be a fly on the wall.
“You what?” Troy exploded when Abby told him what she’d run him to ground at the corral to say.
She caught his hand and put the engagement ring into it firmly. “I said I don’t want to be made over into Eve Payne,” she repeated quietly.
Troy’s expression was indescribable. “Abby, I swear, I never…!”
“Listen,” she interrupted wearily, “you don’t like the way I am. That’s basic, and I’m not going to change. You can’t turn me into someone I’m not.”
“But I’m not trying to change you,” he protested weakly.
“What would you call it? Troy, you don’t like the way I dress, the way I behave, or the way I look.”
He drew in an angry breath. His freckles stood out even more. “I can get used to it.”
“You can’t,” she said.
“What brought this on?” he asked suspiciously. “Are you still mooning over Chayce?”
Her heart skipped, but she only smiled. “Chayce has Delina,” she said with forced indifference. “He’ll marry her one day, and I’ll be very happy for him. But one thing he said was right on the money. I’m not ready to get married and settle down just yet.”
“You want us to be engaged for a few months longer?”
“I don’t want us to be engaged at all,” she said flatly. “I’m sorry. I don’t love you. Without love, marriage is a piece of paper.”
He clenched the ring in his hand. “You need to think about this, Abby. Give it a little time. You’ve had a lot of turmoil lately—graduation, our engagement and Chayce coming back after four years of avoiding you. It’s too much for you, that’s all. You take a week or two and just think about it. We’ve got a lot in common. You may not love me right now, but you like me. Love will come later.”
It wouldn’t, but she could see that she might as well talk to the fence as to Troy in that mood.
“I won’t change my mind. I’m sorry.”
He made a rough sound. “Well, what am I going to tell my folks?” he exclaimed, voicing his real objection to canceling the wedding. “What am I going to tell all the people who know we’re engaged? For God’s sake…!”
“Tell them I ran away to join the circus,” she replied. “Or that I got kidnapped by aliens and brainwashed. Tell them whatever you please, I don’t care.”
“You can’t jilt me at the altar!”
She didn’t dare laugh. It wasn’t funny. “We’re nowhere near an altar. And I’m not jilting you, Troy. You’re jilting me.”
“I am?” He waited, brightening. “Okay, I am.” He frowned. “But why am I?”
She thought for a minute and then smiled. “Because Chayce bought me a very expensive wedding gown and you realized that you’d be taking on Chayce as well as me if we got married and he’d run both our lives.” She nodded. “How’s that?”
He pursed his lips. “Not bad,” he murmured lightly.
“Fine. You have my permission to use it.”
“Did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Buy you an expensive wedding gown?”
“Yes,” she replied. “But I won’t need it now, you understand.”
He stared at her quietly. “Are you really sure you want it this way?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. I can’t marry you.” She turned toward her little foreign car and paused to glance over her shoulder. “Why don’t you tell Eve we’re not engaged anymore?” she asked, and went to her car before he could reply.
The broken engagement was a gossip-fest for two weeks in and around Whitehorn, but it didn’t really raise eyebrows all that much. Most people who knew Troy and Abby had wondered from the beginning why two such different souls would want to get married. Especially when Troy went all red-faced around Eve Payne.
That wasn’t all, either. Ever since Chayce had taken Abby to Madame Lili’s and
he’d bought that glorious wedding gown for her, gossip had run rampant about the two of them. Madame Lili had told people that it seemed very odd for Mr. Derringer to be buying a gown for Abby to wear for some other man, when he looked at her as if he would die to have her wear it for him.
Whitehorn held its breath and waited for new developments. Meanwhile, Abby discarded her Troy-inspired image and went back to body-hugging clothes that flattered her lovely figure. She let her hair grow, too, and allowed it to wave and curl outrageously, as it naturally did. Last of all, she canceled the beautiful wedding gown. It broke her heart, but she had no need for it. She told Madame Lili that she hoped some other lucky girl would get to wear it, when she heard the sadness in the little old woman’s voice even over the telephone.
The Fourth of July came and went without a word from Chayce. Becky and Abby went to the town celebration and watched the fireworks. Troy was there, and so was Eve Payne. They hadn’t come together, but they sat together. He was friendly to Abby and she was friendly to him, and the gossips just shrugged and walked off without remarking on the broken engagement.
A week later, Abby gave up hope that Chayce might come back, and she started checking through the want ads of the Butte and Billings daily newspapers to look for work. She found several promising jobs for someone with her business education and started sending off résumés. It was the only thing to do, she decided, since Chayce quite obviously wasn’t coming home until she left one way or another.
“You aren’t really serious about this, are you?” Becky asked worriedly a few weeks later. “I mean, you won’t know anybody in these places.”
“It isn’t as if I’ll be going to L.A. or New York City,” Abby murmured. “Butte and Billings aren’t that big, really.”
“You’ll be alone,” came the morose reply.
“I’ll be alone here,” Abby said heavily.
“He phoned last night.”
Abby’s heart leapt. “You didn’t say anything.”
“Not much to say. He asked were you all right, I said yes, he asked if you had everything set for the wedding.”
“And?” Abby prompted, all eyes.
Becky shrugged. “I didn’t know what to tell him,” she said worriedly. “I said you hadn’t picked a date. Well, that was true enough. He said it was already July, and why hadn’t you? I said I didn’t know. Before I could say anything else, he hung up.”
“He didn’t say where he was?”
Becky hesitated. “Yes.”
“Where?”
Becky grimaced. “He was at Delina’s house.”
Abby turned away, her gray eyes full of dead dreams. “I’ll carry that cake you made for the boys out to the bunkhouse for you, if it’s ready,” she said in a deceptively cheerful tone.
“It’s ready. I’m sorry, baby.”
Abby smiled lifelessly. “I’m going to be all right,” she said. “I’m just about to find my own two feet. Don’t you worry. I’ll be fine.”
“I know that.”
Abby picked up the cake in its neat carrier and wandered down to the bunkhouse to give it to Billy Cates, who did the cooking for Chayce’s outfit.
Billy grinned toothlessly from ear to ear. “Bless me, that was sweet of our Becky! The boys love her apple cake. So do I.”
“You’ve all worked extra hard lately,” she said. “We both thought you deserved a treat.” She glanced around at the empty living room, where the boys usually sprawled in front of the satellite-fed television when they weren’t working. “Where is everybody?”
“Out rounding up stray calves,” Billy told her. “Mr. Conroy was afraid we might lose some in this drought if we didn’t get them all in. Weather’s been frightful. Sure wish we had some rain.”
“We’re not likely to get much this time of year, but we can hope.”
“Plenty of thunder and lightning,” Billy remarked. “But no rain to go with it.”
“Par for the course.”
He relayed his thanks to Becky again and Abby wandered back toward the house, her mind far away.
She wasn’t watching for a car, which was why she didn’t see the black Mercedes coming pell-mell up the driveway until she was at the back door.
Chayce swung the car right up to the steps, snapped the key out of the ignition, and reached her in two long strides.
He was wearing a vested gray suit with a white shirt and patterned tie and highly polished gray boots. But his face didn’t match the elegance of his clothing. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days and he needed a shave.
Abby stared at him from dead eyes. “Why are you back?” she asked.
“What do you mean, you aren’t marrying Troy?” he demanded without preamble.
Her eyebrows arched. “I haven’t told you anything about it.”
“You’re the only one who hasn’t! Troy’s father phoned me in Hollywood and asked why you’d broken off the engagement. He said it was the talk of the community, along with that damned wedding dress I bought you!”
“You didn’t buy me a wedding dress,” she said solemnly. “I phoned Madame Lili the very next day and canceled it. Someone else will wear it to the altar,” she added coldly. “Someone who’s loved and wanted and appreciated.” She laughed harshly. “That description certainly doesn’t fit me!”
“Troy loves you!”
“The devil he does!” she flashed back, furious at her situation and his sudden interest in it after a month’s absence. “He’s crazy for Eve Payne. Once he realizes that he loves her, they’ll get married and live happily ever after. She’s been eating her heart out for him for years!” Which was the truth, even if Abby had only just found it out from a mutual acquaintance, anxious to know if that was why Abby and Troy had canceled their wedding.
“And what about you?” he asked curtly.
“I have job interviews in Helena next Monday,” she said, turning to go into the house.
“Helena?”
She paused with her hand on the screen door handle. “Yes, Helena! I’m going to work there. Aren’t you glad?” she asked with flashing gray eyes. “You’ll be able to come back and live in your own house. You won’t even have to go to such great lengths to avoid me anymore!”
She went into the house, ignoring the hot, furious curses that followed her.
She didn’t stop. She went straight up the stairs to her room, ignoring Becky’s quick call as well. Once inside the door, she locked it, and went to her chair by the window. She was shaking all over. Chayce had come home at last, but only to demand to know why she’d canceled her wedding. She really wondered why she’d expected anything more from him. If he’d wanted her at all, he’d never have left four years ago.
A few minutes later, there was a sharp knock at her door. She got up from the chair to answer it, expecting Becky to be standing there, concerned.
It wasn’t Becky. It was Chayce. He’d changed into jeans and a patterned brown shirt, and he was wearing boots and his beige working Stetson and worn leather chaps.
“Well?” she asked belligerently.
His eyes went over her exquisite figure in tight jeans and tank top. “Put on your boots and grab a hat.”
“Am I going somewhere?” she asked.
“Put a long-sleeved shirt over that,” he added, nodding toward the tank top that hinted of the sweet curves underneath. “So you don’t get sunburned.”
“I have to…”
He put his thumb squarely over her mouth. “You have to change clothes.”
She didn’t know how to take this sudden change of attitude. She almost refused. But even a few stolen minutes in Chayce’s company was such a tempting thought that she didn’t have the will to refuse him.
She nodded and turned back into the room. Surprisingly he followed her, closing it behind him.
She pulled out a long-sleeved shirt from her closet, glanced at him and started to put it over the tank top.
“You’ll burn up. It’s hot out there.”
<
br /> She hesitated and then turned toward the bathroom, since it was evident that he didn’t plan to leave.
But even as she took a step in that direction, he moved in front of her. He tossed the shirt onto the bed and with a deft motion, he whipped the tank top over her head and tossed it aside. She was wearing the briefest kind of lacy bra. She stood there in it, her mouth half-open, her eyes like saucers.
“The first time I touched you, I did that,” he recalled, his black eyes narrowing on the generous view of her breasts that the lacy garment afforded him. “Neither of us was expecting it. You were soaked to the skin and we’d argued about something. You refused to change into anything dry, despite the fact that you were shivering from the cold. I herded you into the study and closed the door. We argued. You refused to take off your wet clothes. And that’s exactly what I did. Except,” he added in a husky, deep tone, “that you weren’t wearing anything under that top. And I didn’t realize it until it was too late.”
She felt his eyes like brands on her soft skin as he looked at her.
“Do you remember what I did next, Abby?” he asked, still staring at her bare shoulders and throat. “I put my mouth on your breasts and you cried out. I thought I’d frightened you until I lifted my head and looked at your face.” His chest rose and fell heavily. “Dear God, I’d never dreamed of passion like that. I pushed you onto the couch and followed you down,” he continued quietly, holding her spellbound. “I never even realized what I was doing to you. Every soft little cry, every bite of your nails into my back only made it more urgent. It took every bit of willpower I had to draw back in time.” He touched her breasts where they rose above the lacy cups, and she trembled with memories and sensation. His eyes met hers, seeing the embarrassment she couldn’t hide even after four years. “I managed it, just. But I damned near satisfied you right through your clothing,” he whispered. “You, and myself. And that’s why I couldn’t come home again. It was such a near miss that I was afraid it might happen twice. Except that I knew I’d never be able to pull back a second time. I wanted you too much.”
