Before he could say anything more to her, she went skipping out the door. As he watched her go, he heard Janna move behind him and slide into a chair next to him.
"I guess you still haven't found her."
He shook his head, staring out the window at the girls as they played. "It's like she vanished off the face of the earth. Are you sure she didn't say anything to you?"
"She hasn't said a thing. She does call regularly, just like Casey said, but she won't say where she is or why she left. And when I tell her you're looking for her, she doesn't say a thing."
"I don't understand." The words felt like they were torn out of his throat. "She told me she loved me. I told her I would see her after Porter was caught. Why would she just disappear like that?"
"We talked a lot while we were in that house in Minnesota. You know she told me about what happened to your wife and son. Maybe she decided she just couldn't handle it."
"That wouldn't have made her run," he said fiercely. "Abby would have faced me and told me how she felt."
"Maybe she changed her mind after we got back to Las Vegas. The last couple of times I saw her, I thought she looked real worn down. Like she hadn't gotten enough sleep. Maybe she just decided that she didn't love you after all."
"Then why quit her job? Why disappear? All she would have had to do was tell me so." He tightened his mouth and looked out the window again. "And she knew I would have let her go. I told her so, the last time I saw her."
Janna got up and poured him another cup of coffee. "I don't know, Damien. I have no idea why she would run away or where she would have gone. But if you were willing to let her go three mouths ago, why are you so determined to find her now?"
"I've had three months to do a lot of thinking. And a lot of time to realize what my life would be like without her, Janna. I'm going to find her if it takes the rest of my life."
She stared at him over the coffee cup, and slowly she smiled. "I think you will, Damien. And I'm glad. Going to that little town in Utah with you was the best thing that ever happened to my sister."
Cameron! Why hadn't he thought to look there? Because Abby had only been there a few days. But she had loved the town and hadn't wanted to leave.
Jumping up from the table, he leaned over and brushed a kiss over Janna's cheek. "Say goodbye to the urchins for me. You've given me an idea."
* * *
Damien drove down the driveway to the Red Rock Ranch, hoping that Shea or Devlin was around. The leaves on the aspen trees were golden yellow, and the October sky was a bright, brilliant blue, but he ignored the beauty. He was right; he felt it in his bones. Abby had fled to Cameron, and he would find her here.
But Shea was uncooperative when he found her a few minutes later. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
He studied her eyes, then shook his head. "Forget it, Shea. I've known you for too long. I know when you're hiding something."
Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you looking for Abby, anyway?"
"Isn't it obvious? I love her."
"Does she know that?" Shea demanded.
Slowly he shook his head. "No. The last thing I said to her was that I didn't know if I could ever give her what she wanted."
"So what made you change your mind?"
"What is this, Shea, the third degree?"
She eyed him steadily. "If I did know where Abby was, and I'm not saying that I do, I'd have to have a pretty good reason for breaking a confidence."
"I just gave you one! I told you I love her. What more can I say?"
Unexpectedly she smiled. "You can grovel, but I guess you should do that to Abby." Her smile disappeared. "If you hurt her, Damien, you're going to answer to me and Laura Weston and Becca Johnson. And it won't be pretty. Do you understand?"
"She's here, then?"
"She's here."
"Is she at your cabin?"
Shea shook her head, and for a moment he thought she looked nervous. "The cabin wasn't available. And I didn't want her to be so isolated." Then she gave him an impish grin, and the nerves were gone. "She's staying at your house. Laura has a key, and I figured that was the one place in the world you wouldn't think to look."
Damien planted a kiss on her cheek and loped back to his car. "You're a devious, dangerous woman, Shea McAllister, and one of these days you're going to get what you deserve."
He saw Shea laughing behind him as he drove away. He flew over the asphalt to Cameron, and in a few minutes he pulled into the driveway next to his house.
There was no answer to his knock. Walking around the side of the house, he stepped down to the lower level. The patio and yard were deserted, too. But she was still here. An empty mug of coffee sat on the kitchen table, next to an open newspaper.
He could let himself in with his key, but he was reluctant to invade Abby's privacy that way. Lowering himself into a chair on the patio, he settled back to wait for her.
His yard looked better than it had since his wife died. Abby had been busy, he thought, and his heart contracted as he pictured her working in his garden. It felt so right. As he gazed over the neat shrubs and the brilliant flowers, he heard a sound in front of him and Angus jumped onto his knees. The enormous black cat stared at him solemnly for a moment, then plopped himself down in his lap.
Damien reached out a tentative hand to stroke the cat. When Angus didn't object, Damien petted him again. "How's it going, buddy? Are you taking good care of her?" he murmured in a low voice, feeling faintly foolish talking to a cat.
Angus gave him a bored look, then closed his eyes and laid his head on his paws. Damien stroked him absently for a while, looking out at the red mountains behind the house as his hand lingered over the cat's sun-warmed fur.
He had no idea how long he'd been there when he saw Abby walking toward him, coming from the direction of Laura Weston's house. Damien sat up quickly. Angus jumped off his lap, gave him a disgruntled look and stalked away to groom himself.
Damien stood and watched Abby as she walked, his heart beginning to pound. What if she really didn't want to see him? What if she told him to get lost? What if she wanted nothing to do with him?
He'd make her change her mind, he vowed fiercely. He wasn't going to leave Cameron without Abby.
* * *
Abby edged through the shrub border, looking at the thriving plants with satisfaction. If she could give Damien nothing else, she had made his garden come alive again.
Preoccupied with her plans for the afternoon, when the Weston children and Cassie Johnson were coming over to make cookies with her, she didn't notice the man on her patio until he stepped into her path. She jumped back with a startled cry.
"I'm sorry, Abby, I didn't mean to scare you."
Damien stood in front of her, his hands jammed into the pockets of his black jeans, his hair lifted by the wind, and an expression of uncertainty on his face.
Ignoring the excited leap of her heart, she dug her hands into the pockets of her jacket and pulled it around her. She tried to school her face to an expressionless mask. "What are you doing here, Damien?"
The uncertainty disappeared, replaced by a serenity she'd never seen in him. He said simply, "Looking for you. Like I've been doing for the past three months."
Her heart twisted in her chest as she looked away. She couldn't bear the tenderness she saw in his eyes. It would make her break all her resolutions, make her throw herself into his arms and beg him to stay with her. "How did you find me?" she managed to ask.
"I'd looked everywhere but Cameron. When I remembered how much you loved this town, and how badly you wanted to stay, I came back."
"I'm sorry I borrowed your house. When Shea, Laura and Becca suggested it, I only planned to stay for a few days, until I found something else. I'll leave today." She had felt close to him here, and hadn't been able to tear herself away from a place with so many memories of Damien.
"I don't want you to leave, unless it's with me."
Abby clutched her jac
ket around her more tightly. Oh, God, if that was only possible. "You don't have to do this, Damien. You told me that stress and danger sometimes make us do things we wouldn't otherwise do. I'm not going to hold you to some promise you think you might have made at a very stressful time in your life."
He didn't move, just stood and watched her. "Are you angry with me, Abby?"
"Angry? Why would I be angry? You never told me anything less than the truth. And you never did anything that wasn't meant to protect the girls and I. How could I be angry with you?"
"Then why did you run away? I told you I would come to see you after Porter was caught. That did take a few weeks, but I went to your house the next day and you were gone. Why did you disappear?"
Abby took a deep breath. She had rehearsed this speech over and over, hoping she would be able to get through it. She needed to convince him now, before he began probing for other, deeper reasons. "I know you, Damien. You're an honorable man. We had made love and I told you that I loved you, and I knew you would do the honorable thing. I didn't want you to sacrifice yourself for me."
For the first time a smile curved his lips. It wasn't the cynical one she had expected, but a smile full of tenderness. "Why didn't you just stay and face me? Why did you quit your job and run away? Why did you cut yourself off from your sister and your nieces?"
That's the one thing I can't tell you, she thought in desperation. Fighting to hold back the tears, she dug her fingers into the lining of her jacket. "I needed a new beginning." She smiled shakily. "Being chased by killers was a life-altering experience. I realized that I had let myself become too stuffy, too stuck in a rut. I wanted to see more of the world."
"So you came to an isolated little town in Utah, where the most exciting thing to do is dinner at Heaven on Seventh?" He narrowed his eyes at her. "What's going on, Abby?"
He stood in front of her, blocking her escape route. His eyes were calm and steady as he watched her, as if he would wait forever for her answer.
But she didn't have forever, she thought with a rising bubble of panic. Damien needed to leave, before he found out the truth. She said the first thing that came to her mind. "How do you know I quit my job?"
"I've been looking for you, Abby. That's all I've been doing since Harry Porter was caught. When I realized you'd left your house, the first place I checked was at your school."
Abby grabbed for the control of the situation that was rapidly slipping away from her. "I didn't quit. I just took a leave of absence. So you see, Damien, I'm fine. Now, will you please leave?"
"I'm not going anywhere. Why don't we go inside so we can talk?"
Abby remembered that implacable voice. Despair washed over her as he gently took her hand and led her toward the house. Once inside, she wrapped her arms around herself and stood in the middle of the kitchen, waiting to see what he would say.
"I was wrong, Abby," he said softly. "The last time I saw you, I sent you away to the safe house without telling you how I felt about you. I've regretted that almost from the moment your car disappeared that day."
"No, Damien, you were right. It was the wrong place and the wrong time to make promises. We both needed some space to decide what we wanted."
"And you decided you needed to run away."
It was time to change the subject. "Thank you for being so good to Janna and Maggie and Casey the last few months. They've told me all the things you've done for them."
She heard the wistful sound of her voice and stopped abruptly. She could never let him know how much she missed her sister and her nieces. It would bring up more questions she had no intention of answering.
"I enjoy spending time with them." His face softened and he smiled. "Maggie and Casey are very special. And so is your sister. She's done a great job with them. It couldn't have been easy, raising them on her own."
Abby's heart broke a little more. "No, it hasn't been. But Janna is strong. She can do it."
"I adore your family, but that's not why I'm here." Damien put his hands on her shoulders. His heat warmed her to the depths of her soul, but she fought to ignore it. "Sit down with me. We need to talk, Abby."
"There's nothing to talk about," she said, backing away from his touch. "I'm sorry I borrowed your house. I'll leave right away."
"Neither of us is going anywhere until we talk."
He stood in front of her, and she could see the truth of his words in his eyes. Taking a trembling breath, she raised her head and said, "We can talk all you want, but it's not going to change anything."
"Take off your coat and relax, Abby." His voice was surprisingly gentle. "I'm not going to hurt you."
Of course he wasn't. But if he stayed, she'd deal him a mortal blow, she thought wildly. She huddled deeper into the jacket. "I'm still cold. Go ahead and talk."
He pulled her closer. "I can't talk to you while you're standing there in the middle of the room, stiff as a board. If you're cold, I'll keep you warm." He slid the jacket off her shoulders and down her arms, tossing it away from her body. "Relax, Abby, I'm not going to…"
His words trailed away as the jacket dropped to the floor. Seeing the shock in his eyes, her heart crumbled into tiny bits as she stood up straighter and laid her hands over her gently protruding abdomen.
"Now you know. This is why I ran away, Damien." Now that she didn't have to hide anymore, the calm of utter despair settled over her. "I couldn't face you and tell you I was pregnant. I couldn't bear to inflict that kind of pain on you. I know very well how you feel about children, about ever having children of your own again. I'm sorry," she whispered. "I never intended for you to know. I won't make any demands on you, Damien. You'll never have to know anything about this child."
Slowly he dragged his gaze from her abdomen up to her face. "Dear God, is that what you think, Abby? Is that really what you think of me?" he whispered. "That I wouldn't want to know you were having my child, that I wouldn't want you to come to me for help? That I wouldn't want to know about my child?" The shock in his eyes had turned to pain, and she looked away.
"I saw how hard it was for you to be around Maggie and Casey. I felt your pain every time you looked at them. And after what you told me about your wife and your son, I understood very well why you didn't ever want to have children again." She closed her eyes and swallowed. "The last thing you said to me was you didn't want any more children. I didn't want to hurt you again."
He gripped her shoulders, forcing her to turn to face him again. "You kept this from me to protect me?" He sounded dumb-struck. "You didn't intend to tell me because you didn't want to hurt me? There are laws about child support, you know. At the very least you could force me to support our baby."
Her heart surged painfully at the words our baby. Then she pushed his hands away. "I don't want money from you," she said, her words whipping at him. "All I want to do is protect you. I don't want you to be hurt anymore."
"You're doing it again, Abby." Instead of the anger she expected, his words were a gentle sigh of reproach, and she looked up at him, startled. "Don't you remember that you don't have to be strong all the time? Once in a while you can lean on someone else."
Abby bit her lip before she could tell him that the only person she wanted to lean on was him. Her hand hovered protectively on her abdomen as she watched him.
He cupped her face in his hands and looked down at her, and she drew in her breath. Instead of the pain she'd expected to see, there was only understanding in his eyes. "A few months ago I would have been appalled at the idea of having another child. I would have fought the idea with everything inside me. But that was before I met you."
He slid his hands down her arms and curled his fingers around hers, holding on tightly. "You made me come alive again, Abby. I was living in the darkness of my own hell, and you made me come out into the sunshine, let it burn all my bitterness away." His grip on her hands tightened, became more desperate. "I'll always feel the pain of Tyler's loss, and that of my unborn child. I'll never fo
rget them, but now I have the sun in my life again and I never want to let it go. I want you, Abby, and I want our child. I love you."
Abby turned her hands in his, gripped him until her knuckles turned white. "I love you, too, Damien. That's why I couldn't tell you about the baby." Letting go of him, she smoothed one hand over the hardness of her belly. "I wouldn't have been able to bear seeing the pain in your eyes every time you looked at me, knowing that I was the one responsible for it."
A small smile crept into his eyes as he looked down at her belly. "The way I remember it, you weren't completely responsible for that."
"You know what I mean," she cried, trying to pull away. "I know what kind of person you are, Damien. You would do the right thing, even though it would kill you in the process. And I couldn't do that to you. I couldn't bear to watch you die, piece by piece, as I got bigger and bigger with your baby." She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let her go. "And I didn't even want to think about what it would be like after our baby was born. I couldn't do that to you."
Her expression softened. "But as soon as I knew I was pregnant, I wanted this baby more than anything in the world. It's a part of you, Damien. Even if I couldn't have you, I wanted your baby."
"You can have me, Abby." He took her hands again, brought them to his chest. "Please take me. I love you. Marry me, Abby. I want to share my life with you, grow old with you, die with you in my arms. I want everything we can have together, including children." He laid his hand on the swell of her abdomen, and she felt warmth move through her. "Especially this baby."
She searched his face. "Are you sure, Damien?"
"I'm sure." Slowly he drew her close and wrapped his arms around her. "I had a lot of time to think during those three months I spent looking for you. During the night, when there wasn't anything except my thoughts to keep me company, I faced a lot of things. You were right. I was using my regrets about my marriage and my guilt at Carol and Tyler's deaths as a shield to protect myself from being hurt again. If I told myself I didn't deserve any happiness, then I didn't have to worry about losing it. Once I realized that, it changed the way I thought about a lot of things."
FOR THE CHILDREN Page 24
