by Diana Palmer
Cade finished his meal before the rest of them and lit a cigarette over his second cup of coffee.
“I’ve got those reports printed out whenever you want them, Cade,” Melly ventured.
He nodded. “I’ll look them over now. Jerry, come on in when you finish,” he added, rising. “We’ll have to make a decision pretty quick about those cows we’re going to sell off. Jake White wants a few dozen head for embryo transplants.”
“Wants them cheap, too.” Jerry laughed. “I reckon he thinks our culls will be the very thing to carry his purebred Angus.”
Melly grinned at them, aware of Abby sitting rigidly at her side. “Oh, the advances in cattle breeding. Herefords throwing Angus calves, without even the joys of natural conception.”
Cade gave her a hard glare and walked out of the room.
“Shame on you,” Jerry muttered as he started to join the boss. “Embarrassing him that way.”
“I’m just helping him lose some of his inhibitions, darling,” Melly whispered back, blowing him a kiss before he winked and left the room.
“He’ll get even,” Abby said solemnly, picking at her food. “He always does.”
“You could help him with those inhibitions, too,” her sister said, tongue in cheek.
“Not me, sis,” came the instant reply. She glared toward the doorway. “He can keep his hang-ups for all I care.”
Melly stared at her hard. “Why don’t you and Cade start kissing and stop fighting?”
“Ask him,” she grumbled, getting up. “It’s one and the same thing with Cade, if you want to know. I’ve got a frightful headache, Melly. Say good-night to the others for me, will you?” And she rushed upstairs without another word before Melly could ask the questions that were forming on her lips.
Abby hadn’t had a nightmare since she arrived at the ranch, but after the confrontation with Cade, it was almost inevitable that it would recur. And sure enough, it did.
She woke up in the early hours of the morning, screaming. Even as the sounds were dying away, her door burst open and Cade came storming into her room, flashing on the overhead light, with Melly at his heels.
6
Abby sat there in the plain cotton gown that concealed every inch of her body, her hair wild, her eyes raining tears down her pale cheeks, and gaped at them on the tail of terror.
Cade was in his pajama trousers and nothing else. They rode low on his lean hips, and the sheer masculinity of his big body with its generous black curling hair and bronzed muscle was enough to frighten her even more.
“How about making some coffee?” Cade asked Melly, although his tone made it an order, not a request.
“But...” Melly began, nervously looking from her sister to her employer.
“You heard me.”
Melly hesitated for just an instant before she left them alone, her footsteps dying away down the hall.
Cade put his hands on his hips and stared down at Abby. With his hair tousled and his face hard, he looked as threatening as any storm.
“Get up and put on a robe,” he said after a minute, turning away, “while I get dressed.”
“You don’t have to,” she managed weakly.
He half turned, his eyes glittering. “Don’t I?” he growled. “You’re looking at me as if I were a rapist.”
Her face blanched and he nodded. “That’s how you feel, too, isn’t it, baby? Put on a robe and come into the living room. And stop looking at me like that. I’m not going to touch you. But you’re going to tell me the truth, one way or the other.”
He left her sitting there, his back as stiff as a poker.
Melly brought the coffee in just as Abby came out of her room, wrapped to the throat in a heavy navy terry-cloth robe.
Cade was dressed, barely, in jeans and an open-throated blue shirt that he hadn’t tucked in. He was barefoot, sitting forward in an armchair, worrying his hair with his hands. He looked up as Abby came in.
“Sit down,” he said quietly. “Melly, thank you for the coffee. Good night.”
“Cade...” Melly began.
“Good night,” he repeated.
The younger woman sighed as she looked over at Abby, her whole expression one of regret and apology.
“It’s all right,” Abby said gently. “You and I both know that Cade would never hurt me.”
Cade looked faintly shocked by the words, but he busied himself with lighting a cigarette while Melly said good-night and left them alone.
“Fix me a cup, will you, honey?” he asked.
Abby automatically poured cream in it and handed it to him.
He took it, cup and saucer balanced on his big palm, and smiled at her. “You remembered, didn’t you?”
She flushed. Yes, she had, just the way he liked it. She remembered almost everything she’d learned over the years—that he didn’t take sugar, that he hated rhubarb, that he loved a thick steak and cottage potatoes to go with it, that he could go for forty-eight hours without sleep but not one hour without a cigarette....
“Tit for tat?” he murmured, and reached out to put two sugars and cream in the second cup and hand it to her, smiling when she raised astonished eyes to his.
She took it, sitting back on the sofa to study the creamy liquid, turning the cup nervously back and forth in its saucer.
“Little things,” she murmured, finally lifting her eyes to his. “Isn’t it amazing how we remember them after so many years?”
“I remember a lot about you,” he said quietly, studying her. “Especially,” he added on a rueful sigh, “how you look without clothes.”
She flushed, dropping her eyes. “It was a long time ago.”
“Four years,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t seem that long to me.” He took a gulp of his coffee, ignoring the fact that it was hot enough to blister a normal throat, stubbed out his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me what happened, Abby.”
She felt the cup tremble in her hand and only just righted it in time. “I can’t, Cade.”
He took another sip of coffee and leaned forward suddenly, resting his hands on his knees. “Look up. That’s right, look at me. Do you remember when you ran over your father’s dog with my old jeep?”
She swallowed and nodded.
“You couldn’t face him, but you came running to me bawling your heart out, and I held you while you cried.” He shifted his hands, studying her drawn face. “When Vennie Walden called you a tomboy and said you looked like a stick with bumps, you came crying to me then.”
She nodded again, managing a smile for him. “I always cried on you, didn’t I?”
“Always. Why not now?” He reached out a big hand and waited, patiently, until she could put her own, hesitantly, into it and feel its warmth and strength. “From now on, it’s going to be just like this. I won’t touch you unless you want me to. Now tell me what happened. Did you find out he was married?”
“He?” she asked, studying him blankly.
“The man you had an affair with,” he said quietly. “The one you wake up screaming over in the middle of the night.”
She swallowed down the urge to get up and run. How in the world was she going to be able to tell him the truth. How?
“Come on, Abby, tell me,” he coaxed with a faint smile. “I’m not going to sit in judgment on you.”
“You’ve got it wrong, Cade,” she said after a minute. “It...wasn’t an affair.”
His heavy brows came together. He searched her face. “No? I understood Melly to say there was a man....”
“There was.” Her eyes opened and closed, and the pain of admission was in them suddenly. She tried to speak, and her mouth trembled on the words.
He was beginning to sense something. His face seemed to darken, his eye
s glittered. His hand, on hers, tightened promptingly. “Abby, tell me!” he ground out, his patience exhausted.
Her eyes closed, because she couldn’t bear to see what would be in his when she told him. “I was assaulted, Cade.”
The silence seemed to go on forever. Forever! The hand around her own stilled, and withdrew. Somewhere a clock was ticking with comical loudness; she could hear it above the tortured pounding of her own heart....
At first, she wondered if he’d heard her. Until she looked up and saw his lean hands, tough from years of ranch work, contract slowly around the cup until it shattered and coffee went in a half-dozen directions onto the deep gray pile carpet.
Her eyes shot up to his face, reading the aching compassion and murderous rage that passed across it in wild succession.
“Who?” he asked, the word dangerously soft.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly.
“Surely to God there was a suspect!” he burst out, oblivious to the shards of pottery and the coffee that was staining his jeans, the carpet.
“Not yet,” she told him. “Cade, the carpet...look, you’ve cut your hand!” she exclaimed, seeing blood.
“Oh, to hell with that,” he growled. He glanced at his hand and tugged a handkerchief from his jeans pocket to wind haphazardly around it. “What do you mean, not yet?”
“Just what I said. It’s a big city.” She got up, kneeling beside him. “Let me see. Come on, let me see!” she grumbled, forcing him to give her the big warm hand. She unwrapped the handkerchief gently; there was a shallow cut on the ball of his thumb. “We’d better put something on it.”
“Is that why you backed away from me earlier?” he asked, his eyes on her bent head. “Why you were afraid when I was rough with you earlier, outside?”
Her eyes clouded. “Yes.”
He started to touch her hair and froze, withdrawing his hand before it could make contact. He laid it back on the arm of the chair with a wistful sigh. “What can I say, Abby?” he asked gently. “What in hell can I say?”
Her fingers let go of his hand and she got to her feet. “There’s some antiseptic in the guest bathroom, isn’t there?” she asked.
“I suppose so.” He got up and followed her down the hall, sitting uncomfortably on the little vanity bench, which swayed precariously while she rifled through the medicine cabinet for antiseptic and a bandage.
He sat quietly while she dressed the cut, but his eyes watched her intently.
“Please don’t watch me like that,” she asked tightly.
His eyes fell to his hand. “It’s an old habit.” His chiseled mouth made a half smile when she looked down at him, startled. “You didn’t know that, I suppose.” The smile faded. “Can you talk about it?”
She studied him quietly and lowered her eyes. “I was coming home from an assignment, at night. It was a nice night, just a little nippy, and I had a coat on over my dress. I only lived a few blocks away, so I walked.” She laughed bitterly. “The streets were deserted, and before I realized it, a man started following me. I ran, and he caught up with me and dragged me into an alley.” She shuddered at the memory. “I tried so hard to get away, but he was big and terribly strong....” Her eyes closed. “He pushed me down and started kissing me, touching me... I screamed then, just as loud as I could, and there were three men coming out of a nearby bar who heard me. They came running and he took off.” She drew in a steadying breath, oblivious to Cade’s white, strained face. “Thank God they heard me. People talk about cities being cold and heartless places, but it didn’t happen that way for me. The people at the emergency room told me I’d been damned lucky.”
“Was there someone to take care of you?” he asked as if it mattered, really mattered.
“Yes. There was a Rape Crisis Center. All women,” she said with a faint smile, recalling the gentle treatment, the care she’d received. “They sent me over there, despite the fact that I hadn’t been raped. It’s still a mentally scarring thing, to be handled that way, mauled. Thinking about the way it might have been... But I felt dirty, you know. Soiled. I still think about it constantly....”
His face hardened as he watched her quietly. “If I’d made love to you that night, kept you here with me, none of this would ever have happened.”
“Did you want to, really?” she wondered softly.
He drew in a long, steady breath. “I wanted to,” he admitted after a minute, and his eyes darkened. He got to his feet, towering over her. “But it would have been a slap in the face to your father. He trusted me to look after you. And God knows, it would have been a mistake, a bad one.” He studied her intently. “I’d never touched a virgin until that night.”
She felt a surge of pride at that confession, and it showed in her eyes.
“I’ve never touched one since, either,” he added with a quiet smile.
“Learned your lesson, huh?” she murmured with a feeble attempt at humor.
He nodded. “Can you sleep now?”
The thought of the dark room was disquieting, but she erased the nervousness from her eyes. “Yes. I think so.”
“You can sleep with me if you want to,” he said quietly, and she knew exactly what he meant—that he’d die before he’d touch her, unless she wanted it.
Hesitantly, her hand went out to touch his arm, a light touch that was quickly removed. “Thank you,” she said softly. “But I’ll be all right now.”
His eyes searched hers for a long moment. “You trust me, don’t you?” he asked gently.
“Yes,” she said simply. “More than anyone else in the world, Cade, if it means anything.”
“Yes,” he bit off, “it means something.”
“The carpet!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Oh, Cade, I’ll bet the carpet’s ruined....”
“I’ll buy a new one. Go to bed.”
“Thank you,” she said as he turned to go out into the hall. “I...I... Melly said I should have told you about it, but I didn’t...I wasn’t sure....”
“You didn’t think that I’d blame you?” he asked softly.
She stared down at the carpeted floor, embarrassed now that he knew.
“Stop it, for God’s sake,” he said bluntly. “So you got mauled. You’ve had a terrible experience, and I’m sorry as hell, but it doesn’t change who you are!”
Her lips trembled. “I feel unclean,” she whispered, shaken. “As if I’d been robbed of something I had the right to give to a man I chose. He touched me in ways no man ever did, not even you...”
He drew in a ragged breath. “Yes, you were robbed, but not of your chastity. Even if he’d raped you, you’d still have that.”
She stared up at him numbly. “What?”
He lit a cigarette with unsteady fingers. “Oh, hell, I’m putting this badly.” He blew out a cloud of smoke and stared down at her with narrowed eyes. “Abby, how long ago did it happen?”
“Week before last,” she confessed.
“Okay, and you’re still raw, that makes sense. But you’ll get over it. And it will be different, with a man you care about.”
Her lips pouted. “It wasn’t any different this afternoon. You scared me to death.”
His face paled, but he didn’t look away. “My fault. I’ve been without a woman for a while, and the feel of you went to my head. I was rougher than I ever meant to be. But you’ve got to help yourself a little by not dwelling on what happened to you.”
“How can I help it? It makes me sick just remembering...!” she burst out.
“Put it in perspective, honey,” he said curtly, jamming his bandaged hand in his pocket as if he were afraid he might try to touch her with it. “Has it occurred to you that by letting the experience warp your mind, you’re giving that piece of scum who attacked you more rights over you than you’d give a husb
and?”
She stared at him, stunned.
He took another long draw from the cigarette. “You’re giving him the right to dominate your life, by dwelling on what happened, by blowing up what he did to you and letting it lock you up emotionally and physically.”
“I...hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“Suppose you start.”
She wrapped her arms around her trembling body. “You can’t know how it is for a woman,” she murmured. “Against a man’s strength...”
“I can remember a time in your life when you very much liked being helpless against mine,” he said under his breath.
“That was different. I knew you’d never hurt me.”
“You knew that this afternoon, but you fought me like a wildcat.”
She flushed. “You hurt me!”
His jaw tightened. “Do you think because I have to be hard with my men that I’m that hard inside? You get under my skin like no other woman ever has. You deliberately needle me and then take offense when I defend myself. It’s always been that way.”
“I never thought you could be hurt,” she murmured, avoiding his piercing gaze. “Least of all by me.”
“Why talk about it?” he asked wearily. “It’s all water under the bridge now.”
“Thanks for the therapy session,” she said softly and smiled, because she meant it.
He smiled back. “Did it help?”
She nodded. Her eyes searched his. “Cade, I’m sorry I screamed this afternoon.”
He reached down and smoothed a lock of hair from her face. “I didn’t know. Now I do. Give it time—you’ll be fine. I’ll help.”
“Thanks for letting me come.”
He looked strange for a minute. “When Melly said you wanted to get here early for the wedding, so you could spend some time on the ranch, I didn’t know the real reason. I thought...” He dropped his hand with a gruff laugh. “You can still sleep with me, if you want. I wouldn’t touch you.”
Her soft eyes searched his, and he looked back as if it were beyond his power to remove his eyes from hers. “Calla and Melly would be shocked to the back teeth,” she whispered, trying to joke about it and failing. It would have been heaven to lie in his arms all night. “But thank you for the offer.”
