He spent the first half of the week with her—and her parents. Milly was helping her dad build a garage, and Cash offered to help. He was good with a hammer and nails. Besides, he got to put his arms around her while they were putting up wall braces, and he got to feel her jean-clad rear end brush against him while she laughed and talked, and her old man didn't even seem to notice.
Cash felt smug—as if he was getting away with something. Trouble was, he wasn't getting away with what he wanted. These days with Milly were part heaven—and part hell.
Milly thought it was heaven. She said so.
She said he was marvelous, and even the old man grudgingly agreed that Cash could be useful now and again. "When he isn't ogling you," Milly's father said to her.
"Cash doesn't ogle, Dad," Milly said, then favored him with such a particularly wonderful smile that Cash, ogling, whacked his thumb with the hammer.
"Sheeee—!"
"Aw, Cash. Poor baby," she crooned, hurrying over to take his hand in hers. "Let me." She kissed it and made it better.
Or if it wasn't better—at least it was distracted. Now he ached somewhere else.
"What the hell happened to you?" Pete asked when they picked him up on their way to San Francisco.
Cash mumbled something about a hammer. Pete and Rod exchanged knowing looks.
"She's gonna get you," Pete said again.
"No, she ain't." The season was coming to a close. After the finals he would take a few weeks off, go see his folks in Texas—he guessed they were still in Texas—maybe do a little fishing with his brothers Mac and Joe. Forget all about Milly Malone.
Trouble was, he had a stake in her old man's garage now. He had to stop and see how it was. The whole west wall was his doing. It wouldn't be there—not as sturdy, not as straight—if it hadn't been for him.
And Milly—well, Milly wasn't so easy to forget, after all.
He missed her when he didn't see her every few weeks. He looked forward to her smiling face, her eager greeting. He even welcomed the chance to help her wallpaper the dining room for her mother. Paste fights were pretty interesting—as long as you got into them when no one else was home.
He thought about the garage and the dining room—and Milly—pretty often. Sometimes he got lonely enough that he actually called her on the phone.
She was always thrilled to hear from him. She wanted to hear all about where he was, what horses he had ridden, what he was planning to do. He liked telling her. It made things sort of … well, more meaningful … having somebody to share them with.
She was the one he called every time he won. His "good luck girl."
Rod and Pete kept their mouths shut about his phone calls. They watched, and maybe between themselves they speculated. But they never said much to Cash.
Only once as he stopped to pick Cash up after a three-day visit with Milly the next spring, did Rod ask, "You're really gettin' serious, aren'tcha?"
Cash said no. "She's my friend, that's all." He was watching her in the rearview as Rod pulled away. He could see her waving, waving, waving … until the truck was out of sight.
"Friend?" Rod echoed quietly.
Cash shrugged. "Aw, well, you know."
Rod slanted him a glance. "No, I don't know."
Cash stared at the window, watched his reflection in the glass. He ran his tongue over his lips, lips that still tasted Milly Malone. "I don't, either," he mumbled.
And that was the long and short of it, right there.
There had never been another girl like Milly in his life. And there didn't seem to be words to describe how he felt about her. God knew he still wanted her—and had still never even had her—but sometimes he actually forgot about that.
Sometimes he was so taken with just talking to her or listening to her or going hiking or horseback riding or, heaven help him, canoeing with her, that he didn't dwell on those long lonely nights on the sofa in her parents' house.
He learned to live with them.
And still—someday, he promised himself—he hoped. But serious?
He wasn't really serious about her, was he?
Hell, he was a kid. He'd just turned twenty-five a couple of months ago. Well, make that eight months ago. But twenty-five wasn't old. Not old enough to be serious about anybody at least.
Sure, some of his buddies were getting married. Some of them were even fathers. Some were going on two. Frankly, the whole idea scared Cash to death.
He liked reading to Jake, who was better about sitting still and listening this year. He liked giving the little boy horsey rides and playing hide-and-go-seek with him. But he damned sure wasn't ready to put a little critter of his own to bed every night and get up with him in the morning.
He'd take a lot of lonely nights on the sofa to prevent that!
He told Milly as much.
"I ain't ready for this sort of thing," he said whenever they baby-sat her nephew. "Or that sort of thing," he said once, when he found her leafing through the new bride magazines when she shelved them at her dad's store.
"I know," she always said promptly and turned to him with a smile and a hug. "I'm not, either. I've got college to finish."
"An' I gotta win the world."
Cash had made it to the NFR the last three years in a row. He'd finished fourteenth the first year, seventh the second and fifth last year. He was getting closer. And hadn't his daddy always said, "Fourth time's a charm"?
Surely he'd win it this year.
But when December rolled around, and he went to Vegas again, he couldn't find the rhythm. Not the winner's rhythm. He finished sixth.
"Sixth!" he told Milly angrily on the phone afterward.
"I know," she said soothingly. "I know."
She didn't know. Nobody knew, damn it. Not unless they'd been there themselves.
"Can I help?" she asked him softly.
Cash wished she was there to put her arms around him. Sometimes a fellow needed a friend. He dragged in a deep breath. "Naw. I'm just bummed. I'll be all right in a couple weeks." He forced a grin. "Right and ready to go again."
"Of course you will," Milly said. "Of course you will."
He went to Texas after the finals. He helped his old man build a fence. It reminded him of Milly's dad's garage. He helped his mother wallpaper the bathroom.
"Where did you get to be so domestic?" she asked him.
"Oh, I helped a friend once," he said vaguely.
His mother raised her brows. His brothers exchanged looks.
"So are we goin' fishin' or not?" he asked them. They spent a week in Oklahoma, caught their limit of large-mouth bass and a passel of catfish. They cooked them outdoors over the campfire and Joe said it was the best outdoor meal he'd ever had.
Cash remembered Milly's fried chicken and thought the fish came second. He wondered if she'd like to try her hand at fishing the next time he got up that way. They'd never gone fishing. He started making plans.
"Cash?" she yelped, throwing herself at him when he turned up on her doorstep at the end of March. Then, "Fishing?" she said when he broached the subject. There was still a foot of snow on the ground. "Ice fishing?"
"What's the matter?" he teased. "Chicken? Too old for a little fun?"
"I am not," Milly said stoutly. "I'll come."
That was the year they did a lot of fishing. Every time he came through Livingston, he took her out to one of the nearby rivers. She always came with him. She never complained.
Cash was the one who was complaining. He couldn't seem to get farther up the standings than tenth. He worried about it, fumed about it, talked about it. How was he going to win the world if he didn't have a good slot going in?
"Any one of the top fifteen riders could win," Milly pointed out again and again. "You've told me that yourself."
"Yeah." But it was easier to believe if you were sitting fifth or sixth—or better yet, second or third.
Last year he'd been further out than before. And he wasn't getting any young
er. He was twenty-seven now. This year he'd better finish higher. Maybe, he told himself, last year was the dip before the win.
"I'm gonna do it," he told Milly.
"I gotta do it," he told himself.
But when December rolled around, it turned out not to be the dip before the win. It turned out to be the dip before an even bigger dip. He dropped from tenth to twelfth.
He began to get scared, remembering something his mother used to say: something about being always a bridesmaid and never a bride.
Or maybe that was Milly.
It wasn't bad enough he was crashing in the standings, but when he came back to Montana for his first visit of the spring, his best friend seemed only to have weddings on the brain!
Every time he wanted to talk about broncs, Milly wanted to talk about bridal gowns. Every time he brought up the standings, she told him who just got engaged.
Her friend Alexis, no candidate for forever as far as Cash could see, was tying the knot the first part of May. Milly was going to be maid of honor.
"In blue jeans, believe it or not," she giggled.
A high school friend, whose name was Gina or Tina or Lena or something, was getting married three weeks later. "Formal," Milly said.
Even Pete was getting hitched to a little barrel racer he'd met in Laramie last summer. They were getting married in the local rodeo arena, Milly told him.
She wanted to drag him to them all.
"Can't," Cash said flatly. "They get married on Tuesday night, I can be there. Weekends are out. You know that. I gotta ride."
"You could take one weekend off," Milly said. They were sitting side by side on the bank of Brackett Creek. They hadn't caught a thing.
"I am takin' a weekend off. I'm comin' to see you graduate, aren't I?" Cash slanted a grin her way. That was what she ought to be thinking about—not getting married, for heaven's sake.
And not just because she was finally going to have her degree, which was great in itself, but because she had a job lined up in Denver once she did.
Denver.
Milly was moving to Denver. In a matter of weeks. She was going to be an accountant. An accountant with an apartment. An apartment with a bed.
Cash was determined that there was going to be a bed.
She loved him.
Had loved him for three years. Probably she'd fallen a little bit in love with him that very first night she'd slept with him—even if slept had been the operative word.
For sure she'd fallen deeply, madly, totally in love with Cash Callahan as time went on—and she stayed where she was.
And Cash kept coming back. She'd never thought he would.
She'd been amazed that first time he'd turned up in the grocery store. She'd been almost as surprised and as gratified the second time, a few weeks later, when he'd appeared on her parents' front porch.
After that, even though Milly had told herself she wasn't counting on him, she knew she was.
Cash was the bright spot in her life. The little bit of "fast-lane glitz" in her otherwise humdrum existence.
He brought fun and laughter and excitement, deep powerful kisses and long warm hugs into her life. He brought 1:00 a.m. phone calls from places she'd never heard of, and stuffed alligators from Florida when he missed her birthday because he was riding in Kissimmee and tales of cowboy high jinks here and there and everywhere that made her laugh until she thought she'd wet her pants.
Knowing that Cash was "out there" and would again sometime be "right here" made the boring sameness of her days bearable. He made her stuffy professors tolerable, her father's petty irritations endurable. He gave her hope and laughter and the courage to look beyond them all.
She loved him.
And when she graduated…
As soon as she graduated…
Once she graduated…
She would have a life of her own.
And she would have Cash.
Having Cash made the promise of graduation mean more than she ever thought it would. He gave her the courage to move out, to determine to say goodbye to Livingston, to face the big wide world.
It was Cash who had got her a subscription to the Denver Post. It was Cash who'd sent her giveaways from the Denver Chamber of Commerce every time he passed through. It was Cash who found accountancy firms for her to apply to, banks that could use her services, CPAs who were advertising for help.
"You're a regular one-man placement service," she told him.
He glanced up from where he was circling want ads in the paper and muttered something about having "a vested interest."
Milly raised her brows. "What?"
"Never mind."
But she couldn't help thinking about it … dreaming about it. A vested interest? Did he mean what she hoped he meant?
Did he mean marriage?
Milly, even though she told herself not to, dared to hope. Especially when he told her, laughing, that he wasn't about to do this job hunting for anyone else. "I'm only doing this for us."
Us.
It was the most beautiful word in the English language. Next to Cash, of course.
Cash was counting the days.
Milly had a job in Denver. The last time he'd driven through, he'd found her an apartment. Furnished. With a bed.
Just what the cowboy ordered.
He spent a lot of long nights going down the road thinking about it. About her.
"You oughta just marry her," Pete had said a few months back. He was going to quit rodeoing after his wedding. "She's prettier than you two," was the way Pete had put it at first. Then he'd sobered and said, "Naw, it's time. That's all. Time to grow up."
"No," Cash said. He wasn't ready for that.
Rod was slowing down, though, too. He'd broken his leg bad at Calgary last year and had had a hard time coming back. He'd planned to jump in with both feet, but it wasn't happening. Cash wasn't surprised when Rod told him he'd better start looking for somebody else.
"You're givin' up?" Cash couldn't believe it.
"Gettin' realistic," Rod said.
"Well, fine. Suit yourself." Cash would go on alone. Or with a couple of other guys. It wasn't hard to find cowboys to chase the rainbow with. There was no shortage of dreamers on the rodeo circuit.
Cash remembered Shane Nichols. He hadn't won the world, either, and he wanted it just as bad.
When he asked Shane if he'd like a traveling partner, Shane had been pleased. "I'll take the bull riding. You take the broncs. We'll knock 'em dead."
And sure enough, they seemed to be doing it.
By the week of Milly's graduation both of them were in the top five, only a couple of thousand dollars off the leader. The horses were good 'uns. The rhythm was there. Every body part Cash had was in prime working order.
One part, of course, damned well ought to be—as rested as it was!
But that, he promised himself, was going to change.
As soon as Milly moved to Denver.
There were twenty days left; he had just jumped four places in the standings; and he was close to the top of the world when he called her that Sunday from a pay phone in Tulsa.
"Milly? Hey, babe, how ya doin'?" He was grinning from ear to ear, eager to share the news.
"Oh, Cash, thank God!"
"What's wrong?"
"My father's had a heart attack."
She knew he'd come.
Of course he'd come. He was her best friend in all the world. More than that—he was the man she loved.
And she was sure Cash loved her.
He may not have come right out and said so, but she knew Cash wasn't the sort of guy to wear his heart on his sleeve. He showed his love, so he didn't have to say it.
"Don't count on it," Dori said darkly.
The look on her mother's face said much the same. If even a solid, responsible man like John Malone could have a heart attack and be barely hanging on to life by a thread, how could you trust any man?
"He'll come," Milly said fir
mly to them both. "I need him to," she added in a whisper only she could hear.
He came. He was coming up the steps to the hospital Tuesday morning as Milly was coming down them. She didn't even see him at first. She wasn't seeing much, not having slept in almost three days.
She actually felt him first, before she saw him. Strong familiar arms came around her when she stumbled, trying to sidestep whoever was in her way, and she started, then looked up to see Cash's beloved face searching hers. "God, Mil, you look like hell."
A smile flickered on her lips. It was the first smile she'd managed since her father had collapsed Saturday afternoon. It made her face feel as if it were cracking. "Ah, Cash, you always were a flatterer." She blinked back tears.
He turned her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, hugging her close as they walked back up the hospital steps. "I saw your mother. I know how your dad is. How are you?"
She told him. After they went to see her father, they stopped for a cup of coffee, then they went down and walked by the river. He still held her hand, and that was the most important thing. There wasn't much to say. She didn't want to talk, anyway. She just wanted him to hold her.
She didn't tell him that, either, though, but he seemed to understand. He took her gently in his arms and kissed her cheek. Then they simply stood there, locked together, supporting each other.
That was the wonderful thing about Cash. He understood.
And she knew he'd understand when she told him what else she'd decided. "Cash?"
"Mmm?" His lips were in her hair.
"I can't go to Denver."
* * *
Seven
« ^ »
It was the right thing to do.
It was the only thing she could do.
Milly knew that. She'd known it since the moment it happened. At first she'd hoped for a miracle: that her father would bounce back and be his old self in a matter of days, that he'd come home and be able to plunge right back into the insanity of working fourteen hour days seven days a week.
But of course he didn't.
If there was a miracle, it was that John Malone had lived at all.
He had. But the road back was going to be long and hard. And if there was going to be anything to come back to, it would be up to Milly to preserve it.
THE COWBOY CRASHES A WEDDING Page 9
