by Diana Palmer
“Where are you going?” Calla demanded, elbowing in with a platter of scrambled eggs.
“To put on some clothes,” Abby said in a subdued tone, and didn’t look back.
“Now what have you done?” Calla was demanding, but Abby didn’t wait around to hear the answer. She rushed up to her room and slammed the door with tears boiling down her flushed cheeks.
She cried for what seemed hours before she dragged herself up and put on her blue jeans and a short-sleeved blue blouse. She put on a vest over that, a fringed leather one, and put her hair up in a bun. Before she went back downstairs, she scrubbed off every trace of makeup, as well.
When she walked back into the room, pale and silent, Cade barely glanced at her.
“If you’d like to call the picnic off, I can finish Melly’s wedding dress instead,” she said as she sipped her coffee, ignoring the eggs and sausage and fresh, hot biscuits.
“I’d like to call everything off, if you want to know,” he said shortly.
“That’s fine with me. I have plenty to keep me busy.” She finished her coffee and, trying not to let him see how hurt she really was, smiled in his general direction and got up.
“Abby.”
She stopped, keeping her back to him. “What?”
He drew in a slow breath. “Let’s talk.”
“I can’t think what we have to talk about,” she said with a careless laugh, turning to face him with fearless eyes. “I’ll be leaving as soon as Melly comes back after her honeymoon, you know. But I can go right now, if you like. I’ve had an interesting offer from a boutique owner—”
His eyes flashed fire, and he cut her off sharply before she could tell him the rest. “And you’ll be off to another landmark in your career, I suppose?” he asked with a mocking smile. “It’s just as well, honey—I plan to do some traveling on my own in the next few months. There’s only one job here, and Melly’s got it.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t particularly enjoy keeping records on cattle,” she replied with a cool smile.
He stood up and lit a cigarette, leaving his second cup of coffee untouched on the table. “Calla’s got the picnic basket packed. We might as well spend today together. It’ll sure as hell be the last time we have, because starting tomorrow I’ll be out with the boys constantly.”
“Why don’t you take Calla on a picnic?” she asked coldly. “You like her.”
His nostrils flared as he stared down at her from his superior height. “I used to like you pretty well,” he reminded her.
“Sure, as long as I stayed away.” She moved about restlessly. “I should have stayed in New York. I didn’t think I’d be welcomed here with open arms....”
“You might have been, once,” he said enigmatically, “if you hadn’t decided that the world of fashion meant more to you than a home and family.”
She glanced up at him narrowly. “Pull the other one.” She laughed. “If I’d stayed here, I would have withered away and become just another old maid dotting the landscape, and you know it. Or are you going to try and tell me that you were dying for love of me?” she added mockingly.
His dark eyes went quietly over her face. “Why would I waste time telling you something you wouldn’t believe in the first place?” he asked. “If we’re going, let’s go. I don’t have time to stand around talking.”
“Oh, by all means, the ranch might fall apart!” she replied, and walked into the kitchen.
Calla glanced at her and scowled, a scowl that grew even fiercer when she saw Cade. “There’s the basket,” she grumbled at him.
“Thanks a hell of a lot,” Cade snapped back, grabbing the picnic basket. “If you need extra help here, hire it. Or quit. But don’t bother me with it. I’m slam out of patience, Calla.”
And he slammed his hat over his brow and stormed out the back door ahead of Abby.
“Watch out,” the housekeeper said sympathetically. “Something’s eating him today.”
“If he keeps that up, I’ll find something that really will eat him!” Abby promised. “A wandering cannibal...” she muttered as she followed him out the door.
Cade drove them through pastures where there were little more than ruts for the truck to follow, and Abby held on to the seat for dear life, afraid to say a word. His face was grim, eyes doggedly on the ruts, and he looked as if the slightest sound would set him off.
But later, after he’d stripped off his shirt and rewired two or three strands of barbed wire in a pasture near the river, he seemed to have worked off some of his irritation.
Abby, who’d already spread out the picnic lunch under the cottonwoods near the river, wandered through the towering break of pines and spruce to find him.
He was leaning back against the truck smoking a cigarette, his eyes on the distant mountains across the rolling grasslands. His hat was off, his gloves were still in place and he looked as much a part of the land as the tall grasses that grew there. With his shirt gone, his chest was revealed, the thick wedge of hair damp with sweat, his tanned shoulders gleaming with moisture. Abby almost closed her eyes at the sight of all that provocative masculinity so close and tempting. She wanted desperately to touch him, to run her hands over those broad shoulders and feel the texture of the thick hair that covered the bronzed muscles of his chest. But she didn’t dare.
“Lunch is ready, when you are,” she said quietly.
He glanced at her solemnly. “I’ve patched the fence,” he said. His eyes went back to the mountains. “God, I love this country,” he added in a tone deep and soft with reverence. “I could stand and look over it for hours and never tire of the sight.”
“It wouldn’t have been much different in the old days, when trappers and fur traders and explorers like William Clark came here,” she remarked, going to stand beside him. The wind was tearing at the tight bun of her hair, but she pinned it back relentlessly.
“It’s different,” Cade said shortly, his eyes straight ahead. “It’s damned hard balancing between environmental protection and progress, Abby.”
“Between mining and ranching, agriculture and industry?” she asked gently, because it was a subject that could set him off like a time bomb.
“Exactly.” He glanced toward one of the grassy ridges that faced away from the mountains. There was mining a few miles beyond that ridge, on land Cade had leased for the purpose. It had been a struggle, that decision, but in the end he’d bowed to the nation’s struggle for fuel independence.
“I wanted to keep the ranch exactly as it was, for my sons to inherit,” he said, his voice strangely intense. His eyes searched hers for a long moment. “Do you want children, Abby?”
The question knocked her sideways. She hadn’t thought much about children, except when she was around Cade. Now she looked at him and pictured him with a child on his knee, and something inside her burst into wild bloom.
“Yes,” she murmured involuntarily.
His gaze dropped lower, to her slender body. “Aren’t you afraid of losing your figure?” he asked carelessly, and averted his head while he finished the cigarette.
She didn’t dare answer, afraid that her longing for his children would be evident in her voice. Instead, she changed the subject. “Where do you plan to get those sons to leave Painted Ridge to? Are you adopting?”
His dark eyebrows shot up. “I’ll get them in the usual way. You do know how people make babies?” he added, a mocking smile shadowing his hard face.
She flushed and turned away. “You always say marriage isn’t in your book, Cade. I just wondered, that’s all.”
“Maybe I’ll be forced to change my mind eventually,” he remarked, tossing his gloves in the open window of the truck as he followed her back through the trees to the river.
She knelt on one side of the red-checked tablecloth, where she’
d laid out foil-covered plates of food and the jug of coffee Calla had packed in the basket.
“Are you going to taste it first?” he asked, moving to the river to slosh water over his face and chest while she dished up the food.
“I think I’ll let you, after what you said to her,” Abby replied. “She might have put arsenic in it.”
“She didn’t have time.” He came back to the cloth, grabbing up one of several linen towels in the basket. He dabbed at his face and chest, and Abby watched him helplessly, hungrily, as his hands drew the cloth over the warm muscles with their furry covering.
He happened to look up, and his eyes flashed violently at her intense scrutiny.
She couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so intimidated by him or so attracted to him, all at once. She dropped her eyes back to the cloth and dished up the fried chicken, potato salad and rolls, with hands she could barely keep steady.
“Nervous of me, Abby?” he asked quietly, easing his formidable bulk down beside her, far too close, to take the plate she handed him.
“Should I be?” she countered. She poured him a cup of black coffee and automatically added cream before she handed him the foam cup. “After all, you’re the one who should be worrying. I seem to make a habit of throwing myself at you,” she added with bitter humor.
“And if you don’t get off my ranch pretty quick, Abigail Shane, you may do it once too often,” he said flatly. His eyes were dark and full of secrets as he nibbled at a piece of chicken.
“I have utter trust in your remarkable self-control, Mr. McLaren,” she muttered, picking at her own food while he put his away like a last meal.
He made a strange sound, a laugh that died away too quickly, and finished his food before he spoke again. He swallowed his coffee and stretched out lazily on the ground while Abby gathered up the remnants of the picnic and put everything except the red-checkered cloth back in the hamper and set it aside.
“You’ll be busy with roundup from now on, I guess,” she commented after a long silence. Her eyes went to the distant grassy ridges, green and lonely, with pale blue mountains beyond them. The only trees in sight were the ones they were under, and the small thicket of pines nearby. It was like paradise, all clean air and open land and fluffy clouds drifting overhead.
“It’s spring,” he remarked. “Calves won’t brand themselves.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
“I reckon I won’t die,” he muttered. He was smoking another cigarette, something he seemed to be doing constantly these days. He had once said it was something he did a lot when he was nervous. That almost made her laugh. He would never be nervous around her.
She drew up her jean-clad legs and rested her chin on her updrawn knees, sighing as she watched the river flow lazily by. “Remember when we came fishing up here the summer I graduated from high school?” she said. “You and me and Melly and a couple of the hands? You caught the biggest crappie I’d ever seen, and Melly got her hook caught in one of the cowboy’s jeans....” She laughed, remembering the incident as if it were yesterday.
She stared at the river, lost in memory. It had been a day much like this one. Green and full of sun and laughter. Hank had been along; so had a cowboy whose name she couldn’t remember—one Melly had a crush on. But Abby had somehow wandered close to Cade and stayed there while they fished in the river.
It was just a few weeks after he’d taken her to his room, and she’d been much too shy to approach him, but she’d eased as close as she could get.
“Cold?” he’d teased, glancing down at her.
And she’d blushed, looking away. “Oh, maybe a little,” she’d lied. But they both knew the truth, although it didn’t seem to bother him a bit.
“Jesse said you’d been thinking about going to New York,” he’d mentioned.
“One of my teachers said I had the right carriage and figure and face for it,” Abby had said enthusiastically, dreaming how it would be to have Cade and a career all at once.
“New York is a long way from Painted Ridge,” he’d murmured, scowling at his fishing rod. “And full of disappointment.”
That had pricked her temper, as if he didn’t think she were pretty enough or poised enough for such a career in a big city.
“You don’t think I can do it?” she’d asked with deceptive softness.
He’d laughed. “You’re just a kid, Abby.”
“I was eighteen last month. I’m a woman,” she’d argued.
His head had turned. His dark eyes had gone over every inch of the shorts and tank top she wore, darkening at the sight of her slender, well-proportioned body.
“You’re a woman, all right,” he’d said, and looked up.
Her eyes had met his at point-blank range. Even now, she could remember the wild feelings that look had stirred, the hot pleasure of his eyes holding hers. Oblivious to everything around them, she’d actually moved toward him.
And Melly had said something to break the delicate spell. For the rest of the afternoon, they’d fished, and Cade’s manner had relaxed a little. She’d tossed a worm at him out of pique when he caught the fish she’d been trying to land for several hours. And he’d picked her up bodily and thrown her in the river....
“You threw me in the river,” she remarked suddenly, glaring at him.
His eyebrows arched. “I what?”
“That day we went fishing, the month before I left for New York,” she reminded him. “You threw me in the river.”
He chuckled softly. “So I did. But you started it, honey. That damned worm hit me right between the eyes.”
“It was my fish you caught,” she muttered. “My big crappie. I’d half hooked him and he’d gotten away three times. And you just sat there and hauled him out of circulation forever.”
“I let you have half of him when Calla cooked him,” he reminded her. “That should have made up for it a little.”
Her full lips pouted. “I don’t know about your half, but mine tasted bitter.”
“Sour grapes,” he said, grinning. “If you’d caught him, your half would have been twice as good as mine, wouldn’t it?”
She shrugged. “Well, I guess so.” Her eyes gazed over the river dreamily. “I used to love fishing. Now I don’t have time for anything except work. Or didn’t have, until I came back here. Funny how time seems to stop in a place like this,” she added quietly. “Not another soul in sight, and you can drive for miles without seeing a ranch house or a store. It must have looked like this when the first settlers came and put down roots. The winter killed a lot of them didn’t it?”
He nodded. “Montana winters are rough. I know. I lose cattle every year, and once we lost a man in a line cabin. He froze to death sitting up.”
She shivered. “I remember. That was when I was just out of grammar school. When Melly and I went riding, we wouldn’t go near that cabin, thinking it was haunted.”
He shook his head. “Well, I’ve got a couple of old hands now who feel the same way. Hank’s one.”
“I didn’t think Hank was afraid of anything.”
He lifted an amused eyebrow. “Do you ever miss this, in New York?”
She searched his face, thinking how she missed him every waking moment. She looked away. “I miss it a lot. There’s so much history here. So much privacy and peace.” She remembered the role she had to play, almost too late. “But, of course, New York has its good points, as well. There’s always a new play to see. Sometimes I go to the opera or the ballet. And there are nightclubs and little coffeehouses, and museums....”
“None of which you find around here,” he said harshly. “There’s not much place for sophistication in the middle of a cattle spread, is there?”
He was watching her with narrowed, calculating eyes, and a dark kind of pain washed over his face
before she saw it. Deliberately he crushed out the cigarette on the ground beside him.
She turned, glancing down at him. He was lying on his back with his hands under his head, and his eyes were closed. His powerful legs were crossed, stretching the denim sensuously over their muscular contours. Her eyes took in every detail, from head to broad chest to quiet face, and she felt suddenly reckless.
She picked up a long blade of grass and moved close enough to draw it lightly over his chest.
He grabbed it. “Courting trouble, Abby?” he asked curtly.
There was a wildness in her that sprang from looking at his impassive face. He wouldn’t let her close—he spent his life pushing her away. Today would be the last day she’d ever have with him to remember, and today she was going to make him feel something. Even if it was only rage.
“Oh, I just live for it, Cade,” she murmured, edging closer. She bent over him before he could stop her, and pressed her lips down on his broad, warm chest.
“God!” he burst out, catching the back of her head. But his hands hesitated, as if he couldn’t decide whether to push or pull.
Her nostrils tickled where the thick, curling hair brushed them and she smelled the faint traces of soap and cologne that clung to him. His chest rose and fell with ragged irregularity and she felt the powerful muscles stiffen as she drew her mouth across them, acting on pure instinct alone.
“You sweet little fool,” he rasped. “Oh, God, I’m only human, and I want you until I can hardly stand up straight...!”
He jerked her alongside him and bent over her with hands that trembled as his mouth homed in on hers.
Hungry as she’d never imagined she could be, she turned in his big arms and pressed close, half shocked to find his body blatantly aroused as it touched hers. For an instant she tried to draw away, but one lean, steely hand slid quickly to the base of her spine and gathered her hips back against his.
“You wanted it,” he ground out against her mouth. “Don’t start fighting me now.”
Her hands were tangled in the hair over his chest, but she was still rational enough to realize just how involved he already was. “Cade, I only wanted—” she began, only to have the words crushed under his devouring mouth.
