Dori was willing to help, which actually surprised Milly a little. Dori and her father had not been on good terms for years. It had only partly to do with the wandering Chris and the out-of-wedlock child. The real rift had begun years before when John Malone had thrown his only son, Deke, out of the house.
Dori had taken her brother's part—and afterward she'd been even more rebellious than her brother. The difference was that she was his daughter. John Malone had different standards for girls.
His standards didn't include sleeping with unreliable men and having their children, however. Milly had always thought that part of the reason Dori had taken up with Chris was that he was so "unsuitable." If it was the reason she'd got pregnant, Milly had never asked. Still, she wouldn't have been surprised.
The surprise was that, once Jake was born, John Malone seemed to dote on this child whose very existence he had rued from the day he'd known of it.
Maybe that was why Dori was so willing to do what she could. When Milly asked, Dori said simply, "He needs it. What else would I do?"
And then Milly did understand. When Dori had needed him, even when—especially when—she hadn't wanted to, John Malone had come through. He'd always been there for them when they needed him, supporting, striving, bolstering.
Save Deke, of course. Milly couldn't help but feel sad about the unresolved bitterness between her father and brother. But that wasn't something she could do anything about.
This she could. And did.
It was a good thing, too. When he came home from the hospital three weeks later, John Malone could barely walk from the bedroom to the living room. He couldn't get to the kitchen without pausing to rest. He couldn't go down to the basement at all.
It was all too clear that he wasn't going to be opening the store on Monday—or on any day in the foreseeable future.
No, if Milly hadn't realized it before, she did now—her commitment to the Malone grocery store was going to be for the long haul.
There would be no going to Denver in the foreseeable future. No new job. No wonderful apartment.
And Cash?
Of course there would be Cash, she assured herself.
He loved her. He had been there for her for three years. He was disappointed about Denver, of course. They both were. But he understood. She was sure he did.
He'd gone quite still, wooden almost, when she'd told him. He'd almost seemed to stop breathing. Startled, Milly had stepped back in his embrace to look up at him. He was staring down at her, a stunned expression on his face.
"You know I have to stay," she'd said earnestly. Her fingers tightened against his back. "Don't you?"
He seemed to be gathering himself together. Then, at last, he nodded. "I know." His voice was colorless, flat. Distant, almost.
"It isn't that I wouldn't like to go to Denver," she went on, worried now.
"I know," he said again. But already he seemed more remote, as if he was pulling away even though he didn't move.
Milly knew how much Cash had been looking forward to her move—even more than she had. She remembered again his words, "I'm doing this for us." It was a thought she'd hugged to herself for months.
There would still be an "us," she wanted to tell him. But she couldn't tell him when. She knew there was a limit to Cash's patience. She tried not to believe that this was it.
"Denver will still be there," she'd said a little desperately.
"Sure."
"And I'll have a lot more experience when I go."
"Right."
"It isn't forever, Cash."
"No." He'd smiled at her then, but for the first time his smile didn't reach his eyes.
And though he gave her a thumbs-up and a bone-crushing Cash Callahan hug when he left later that afternoon, for the first time in three years, she wondered if she would ever see him again.
She wasn't going to Denver!
He couldn't believe it. He'd been counting the weeks, the days—hell, he'd practically been counting the hours—and now she wasn't going to go. She was going to stay in Livingston, work at the blasted grocery store, waste her whole damn life.
It wasn't fair to think that. Cash knew it wasn't fair to think that. He knew her father needed her, and that Milly was only doing what she believed she had to do. But it still annoyed the hell out of him.
He'd been counting on her!
Then he realized with a jolt that he had no right to. Milly wasn't his.
He turned that over in his mind. The awareness came as something of a shock. Over the past three years, he'd grown used to counting on her. He'd sure as hell been counting on Denver!
Milly had heard that saying about life being what happened to you while you were making other plans. She'd always thought it wasn't such a bad idea. Life had always seemed more exciting than her plans.
Not lately. Lately Milly's life had been reduced to tin cans, cardboard boxes, purchase orders, ledger sheets and frequent, reassuring phone calls to her father to convince him that no, the grocery store hadn't gone under. Yet.
There was always a yet as far as John Malone was concerned. No one, he was fond of saying, worked as hard as he had. No one could do the job that he had done for forty years. No one could live up to his standards. No one could get it quite right.
But, damn it all, Milly tried.
She shouldn't have been surprised. Her father had always been a hard taskmaster. For as long as she could remember, he'd demanded perfection—his notion of perfection. He set standards that left little room for breathing, let alone errors.
She wanted to say, "You think you could do better? Get in here and do it yourself!"
But of course, she didn't. He wasn't well enough to come back. Wasn't that why she was here, after all? He was her father. She loved him. And she knew how much the store meant to him. He'd given his life to it.
The least she could do was give it a few months.
Or years, a dismayed little voice said deep inside her head.
Milly tried not to think about that.
It wouldn't be years, she assured herself. She wouldn't be stuck here forever. Someday she would be free again to live her own life, have her own hopes, follow her own dreams.
Someday.
But no time soon, that was for sure. It was all Milly's fault.
Cash broke his leg in Las Vegas, and it was all Milly's fault.
If she'd moved to Denver the way she was supposed to, he wouldn't have even been in Vegas competing. He'd have been helping her move.
But she hadn't gone to Denver. She'd stayed home to mind the store. And he'd thought, fine, if that's the way she's going to be about it, he could find a lucrative way to spend the weekend.
"I thought you'd come here, anyway," she'd said when he'd called to tell her his change of plans.
"Can't," he'd replied rather more abruptly than was necessary. "I'd have helped you move, but since you're not going to … well, I'm in fifth place now. If I win in Vegas I'll be sitting good goin' into summer."
"If that's what you want," Milly had said quietly.
It wasn't what he wanted. He wanted her to move to Denver, damn it! But he wasn't getting that. So she wasn't getting him to go to Livingston and spend the night on the couch!
"I'll see you later in the summer."
"Right." He thought she sounded a little sad. Good. Maybe she'd miss him—maybe she'd miss what they could have had if she'd gone to Denver!
"Well," she added, "good luck."
She probably should have said, "Break a leg." That was what they said before people went on stage to wish people luck, wasn't it? A sort of reverse psychology.
But she hadn't. She'd said, "Good luck," and here he was sitting in the damned emergency room with a broken leg and a doctor saying, "I wouldn't plan on riding again before the first of August. How'd you say you did it?"
Cash explained. It had been a freak accident. The horse he'd drawn had spooked in the chute, smashing him back. His spur caught between the
rail and the standard. When the horse jerked up again, the spur stayed where it was. His leg snapped.
"Couldn't happen again in a million years," the doctor told him cheerfully. "You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all. You should have been somewhere else."
No kidding, Cash thought. He tipped his head back and shut his eyes, in the blackness seeing his entire season go down the drain.
The doc was right. He should damned well have been in Denver!
He didn't tell Milly.
His mama had always said, "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all."
Cash figured the chances of him saying something not very nice were pretty high. He didn't blame her exactly … well, yes, he did … exactly. But it wasn't nice of him to do so. It wasn't even right of him to do so. He knew it. He couldn't help it.
A part of him wanted to call and rail at her. A part of him wanted to call and say, "I'm hurt. I'm comin' home."
But the rational part knew better. He couldn't call and rail at her because it wasn't really her fault no matter what he thought. And he couldn't call and say, "I'm hurt. Take care of me," because she had enough to take care of at the moment.
Milly had her father. She had his store. She had more commitments and responsibilities than she could handle right now. She wouldn't need him, too.
So when the doc let him out, he caught a ride to Texas. Home, after all, was where, if you went there, they had to take you in.
She thought he'd come.
At least she thought he'd call to talk, to tell her how things were going, to see how she was doing here. She knew he'd been upset that she couldn't leave her family, but she was sure he'd get over it before too long.
But days turned into weeks, and the weeks became a month and then two. The Livingston Fourth of July rodeo came and went, so did the Wilsall and the Wolf Point and even Glasgow, which he usually fit in between runs down to Cheyenne. But the entire months of June and July came and went and Cash Callahan never came to call.
Which meant what? she asked herself.
That he had given up on her? That they were no longer friends? That he no longer cared?
She didn't want to believe it. But she didn't know what else to think.
"Where's Cash?" her nephew, Jake, asked her at least a dozen times over the summer. Jake was five now and fixated on cowboys. Whenever Cash came, Jake followed him everywhere. "Do you think he's like my dad?" he'd ask her.
"The best parts of him," Milly always said. She hadn't really known Chris, but she was feeling more charitable toward him at the moment than toward Cash.
"Wish he'd come again," Jake said mournfully.
Milly knew how he felt.
She could have paged him. She had his pager number. But she didn't want to do it—not after the way they'd left things. If he didn't want her anymore, she didn't want to go chasing him. If he came back, well … then she would know.
"Either way, you'll know," Dori reminded her.
Yes, but ever the optimist—albeit a fading one at the moment—Milly didn't want to think about that.
She thought, instead, about how she was going to cope with her father. Never the easiest man to get along with, John Malone hated the inactivity his heart attack had forced on him. He didn't believe that anyone could do anything as well as he did it—and as long as he'd had plenty to do himself, he was only a minor irritant in Milly's life.
But once he sat idle all day and thought about how Milly ought to do things—how he'd do them if only he could—well, it didn't take long until she was ready to scream. She discovered very quickly that she couldn't work for him full-time and live with him, too.
She didn't want to talk about shelving string beans over a nine-o'clock dinner after she'd spent fourteen hours at the store. She didn't want to think about string beans at all. She didn't want to know what he would have said to get the tortilla chip people to stop giving them bags that looked more like they held corn flakes than corn chips. She didn't want to think about tortilla chips, either.
She didn't have a life anymore. She'd accepted that.
But she did need some space. In August she found an apartment over an outfitter's shop downtown and announced she was moving out.
"Are you sure, dear?" her mother said. "I mean, you don't have time to cook as it is."
"I'll buy microwave dinners." It would be a small price to pay.
It was a very small price indeed. Her father came back to work for a couple of hours every afternoon that month. He had more ideas. More directions. More suggestions. More criticisms. Bossing. Grumbling. Do this. Do that. Do it faster. Stack it straighter. Do it my way.
Milly bit her tongue and did what he said, then went home and determinedly forgot him and the store.
Her mother called her nightly on the telephone. "Aren't you lonely?" she asked.
"No," Milly had replied. "I'm not."
But she was.
For Cash.
It had been months and there had been no word. That said it all, just as Dori had told her it would.
"You need a life," Dori told her. "You work too hard."
"There's the pot calling the kettle black," Milly retorted.
"I have Jake."
Milly nodded. Sometimes she envied Dori for having Jake. He was a warm, cheerful presence to come home to at night. He was an endless supply of questions, a never-ending demand for cowboy stories, a perennially inquisitive little person who took his mother's mind off her troubles. And he was also the sign of a once-upon-a-time connection between Dori and a man she'd loved.
It was for that Milly envied Dori most.
As she shelved her macaroni and stacked her brussels sprouts and fought with the computer that didn't want to enter the shipment of eggs, she could think she was getting by, that she was doing okay. Not great, maybe … but at least all right. But at night when she went back to her little apartment over the outfitter's shop and curled up in her solitary bed, she remembered never having had that connection with Cash.
She wondered over and over what would have happened if he'd stayed awake longer that night, if instead of falling asleep in her arms, he'd fallen asleep in her body—after they'd made love.
What would it have been like to make love with Cash Callahan?
She'd said she never wanted "just sex," that she'd always wanted to "make love." She'd believed that then. Maybe she still believed it now. But the nights were long—and her arms and heart were lonely.
She dreamed about Cash. She dreamed about loving him.
Dreams were all she had now.
"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes." Carole Malone beamed when she opened the door and found Cash on the porch. "Milly and John are still at the store, but they'll be home in a few minutes. Did you go there first? No, of course you didn't, or you'd be with Milly. Come in. Sit down. Have a beer?"
Cash came in. He wasn't exactly sure of his welcome. He hadn't been to see them since John had had his heart attack. At first he'd been disgruntled and aware of how selfish that was. Then he'd broken his leg. By the time he was up and hobbling, he couldn't afford to go to see them—and it had been so long he wasn't sure what to say.
He could have called, of course. But he didn't know how Milly would react. There was always the chance that she would hang up on him. He thought it would be a damn sight harder for her to bodily throw him out of the house.
He sipped the beer while Carole made coleslaw and talked. "It's been so long. Milly will be delighted. Did you tell her you were coming?"
Cash shook his head. "We haven't … talked. Is John…?"
"He's doing much better." Carole shot him a quick smile and kept chopping cabbage. "He goes in to work a couple of hours each day. It isn't much, but it's a start. I don't know what we'd have done without Milly." She glanced out the window. "Oh! Here they come now. On time for once."
Cash stood up as the back door opened and Milly came in.
She was carrying a bag of
groceries. Her cheeks were flushed from the wind, her long dark hair was tangled. He thought he remembered how pretty she was, but his memories hadn't even come close. Just looking at her, he felt his heart seem to catch in his throat.
He didn't speak, but he must have made a sound because at that very moment she saw him.
"Cash!" Milly blinked, her jaw dropped, then she flung the grocery bag on the table and flung herself into his arms.
He caught her, hauling her close, hugging her hard, then kissing her—right there in front of her mother and ol' Shotgun John Malone—because he couldn't help himself. It had been so long—too long!
A loud throat clearing sounded behind her, and Cash looked up to see John Malone in the doorway. He looked as if he'd aged ten years—but even that was better than the last time Cash had seen him.
"See how much better he is," Milly said eagerly to Cash.
Cash saw. He smiled. "Lookin' good," he said.
John made a harrumphing sound and went to get himself a beer. "Sit down," he commanded Cash.
"What's wrong with your leg?" Milly demanded when Cash moved to do just that.
Trust Milly to notice right off the bat. "Broke it," Cash said.
Milly's eyes got wide. "What? When?"
"In Vegas. Last week in May." He had to say that much. He didn't know whether she'd make the connection or not.
The look on her face told him that she had. "Oh, Cash!" She looked stricken.
"I'm all right," he said. "Now."
But she knew about rodeo. She knew that when he was hurt bad enough not to ride, he didn't make any money. "The standings?" she whispered.
Cash shook his head. "You don't want to know."
"Oh, Cash!" She hugged him. "Are you all right now?"
"Gettin' better. Gettin' back to it. Not full strength yet, but I'm tryin'. I've only been goin' down the road the last couple of weeks. I was in Texas before that."
"I thought—" Milly broke off. She shook her head. "Never mind. Is dinner about ready?" she asked her mother. "I'm starved."
THE COWBOY CRASHES A WEDDING Page 10
