The Nine-Month Marriage

by Christine Rimmer

  “You ever heard the old story about how Cash got his name?”

  She looked at Redbone. “I’ve heard it.”

  “One too many times, I’ll bet.”

  Abby shrugged. She was more interested in finding her husband than in discussing what an amusing child he had been.

  Redbone asked, with a gleam in his eye, “You goin’ to answer my question?”

  She confessed, “The truth is, he’ll probably be mad at you if you tell me where he’s gone.”

  Redbone laughed, a deep, belly-shaking sound. “Well, that’s just fine. Let ’im steam. I can take it.”

  She leaned toward Redbone again. “Tell me, then.”

  “Fair enough. Got a pen?”

  It was a sixty-mile trip from the Reno-Sparks area to Redbone’s hideaway in the pines on the shore of Lake Tahoe. Abby took a cab. Darkness had fallen by the time the cab pulled into the clear space in front of the cabin.

  Abby, in the back seat, looked out the side window at the tall, shadowy trees. In the distance, far across the black water, she could see snow-tipped mountains, as rough and craggy as the mountains of home. A sliver of moon hung over the highest peak, a bright star above it, so it seemed as if the moon swung from that star.

  “This is it, lady,” the cabdriver said. “And it looks to me like nobody’s home.”

  Abby stared out the other window, toward the dark cabin, which appeared shut up tight. There was no sign of another vehicle anywhere, either.

  “Could you wait here for a minute?”

  “No problem.”

  Abby got out of the car and pulled her coat close around her against the night chill. She mounted the rustic steps and pounded on the heavy door. And then she waited.

  No lights came on. And there was no sound from inside.

  She went down the steps and around to the back, which turned out to be just as dark and deserted as the front of the place. With the key Redbone had given her, she let herself in the back door.

  The cabin was as rustic inside as out, with unfinished furniture and a set of deer antlers over the potbellied stove in the main room. It didn’t take long to look through the whole place. And to find that there was no one there.

  “Where to now, lady?” the cabbie asked wearily when Abby climbed into the back seat once more.

  “Back to the Nugget,” she said.

  When she trudged into the Nugget again, Abby went straight to the front desk and asked for a room.

  Once she’d checked in, she tried Cash’s cell phone again and again and got no answer. Once she’d hung up, she considered calling her mother. But she felt too depressed to pick up the phone another time. And besides, she’d be talking to Edna soon enough. Because she would be on the first flight she could get tomorrow, headed for home.

  It had been a crazy idea anyway to go chasing after Cash. Clearly, he didn’t want to be found.

  The trip home took forever. As on the flight to Reno, she had to go to Denver and then board a puddle jumper for Sheridan. The sun had long ago disappeared behind the Big Horns when she finally got off the highway in Medicine Creek.

  She drove straight to her mother’s. “Mom, I just want my baby,” she said when Edna opened the door.

  “Then go on home,” Edna replied. “Your baby’s there. With your husband, where he belongs.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Abby dropped her coat, purse and suitcase inside the front door and went looking for her husband and her son. She found them in the baby’s room. Cash was sitting in the rocker, feeding Tyler his bottle.

  He looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. He whispered roughly, “Where’ve you been?”

  She felt so many emotions her body could hardly contain them all. Joy. Rage. Hurt. Relief. Hopeless, incurable love most of all, flooding through her, warming her flesh and weakening her knees. She swallowed and replied in a whisper as rough as his had been, “Looking for you.”

  He scanned her face. Then he glanced down at the child in his arms. “He’s almost done.”

  She leaned in the doorway, waiting. Tyler finished his meal. Cash set the bottle aside and carefully lifted the small body to his broad shoulder. He rose from the rocker and came to stand before her. “Here.” Gently, he held out their son.

  She took his small, warm weight in her arms, brought him close to her heart. She snuggled his wobbly head beneath her chin and he burped against her neck.

  Cash whispered. “He’s ready to go down.”

  She looked into her husband’s face—and felt anger rising. Without a word, she turned from him and went to sit in the rocker.

  Cash stayed in the doorway. She could feel him there, watching her. But she didn’t look at him. She closed her eyes and rocked her baby. And when she opened her eyes again, Cash had gone.

  Tyler needed changing, so she performed the task. His sleepy eyes kept drooping as she cleaned him up. Once the job was done, she laid him in his bed and kissed the back of his warm little head. Already off in dreamland somewhere, he made no sound when she turned off the light.

  She found Cash in their bedroom, sitting in one of the two big chairs beneath the window that faced the side yard. He looked at her when she appeared from the short hall off the living room, but he didn’t say anything. Feeling nervous and wary—and more angry as each moment passed—Abby entered the room. She went straight to the bed, dropped to the end of it and kicked off her shoes.

  She could feel Cash’s eyes on her, though he remained silent. Leaning defiantly back on her hands, she looked at him. “Well?”

  Still he said nothing, only shifted in the chair.

  She waited, daring him to speak.

  Finally, he did. “I’m scared to death.”

  She knew that—had known it all along, deep in her heart. And she had ached for him, that love frightened him so. But right then, she was dealing with her own pain—pain he had caused her. And she just couldn’t drum up much sympathy for him.

  “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?”

  She let several grim seconds go by before answering, “Furious.”

  He shifted in the chair again, but he still looked far from comfortable.

  And that was just fine with her. She didn’t want him comfortable.

  “Abby, come on. Talk to me. Please.”

  She let out a low, rageful sound and sat up straight. “I begged you,” she said, the words tight, brimming with her fury and love and pain. “Begged you.”

  “Abby…”

  All at once, she couldn’t just sit there. She jumped to her feet and turned on him, clenching her hands at her sides to keep them from reaching out and closing around his neck. “I am not someone who begs.”

  “I know.”

  Slowly and deliberately, she said the words: “I love you.”

  He had the grace not to wince or turn away. “I know.”

  She held her head high and she told him with pride, “I have always loved you.”

  “Abby, I—”

  “No. Let me say it.”

  “But I—”

  “I want you to just sit there and listen to me. Really listen. For once.”

  His blue gaze moved over her face, heartbreakingly intent. “All right.”

  She needed to move. So she paced the floor, back and forth from the bureau to the bed. Finally, she had her thoughts in order. She stopped, turned to face him.

  “Since I was a little girl, I’ve loved you. Do you know that?”

  He closed his eyes, breathed deeply—and nodded.

  She went on, “But I knew so much about you, knew you were afraid of loving. So I tried, for years and years, to pretend that the love I felt for you was an innocent love. But it wasn’t.”

  She paused, daring him to interrupt. He didn’t, so she made herself continue. “Finally, the time came when I couldn’t pretend anymore. I…” She swallowed convulsively. “I reached for you. As a woman, I reached for you…the night they buried my dad. And you reached for m
e. As a man.”

  Suddenly she couldn’t look into those knowing blue eyes for one second longer. She turned, spoke to the far wall. “We…made Tyler. And we married. But still, you held back.” She whirled to face him again, forced herself to confess, “Oh, I did, too, I know. I held back, too. I suggested that stupid agreement. I told you I wanted a temporary marriage, instead of admitting from the first that, as far as I was concerned, there was never anything temporary about you and me. I was afraid to say my love out loud. And I never did. For all those years I was growing up—and right into our married life together. I never, ever said my love out loud. Because I knew I would lose you if I did.”

  She looked toward the dark window behind his head. “And I was right. When I tried to get you to throw out the agreement, you wouldn’t. You told me to wait. Until the baby came. Until I was—” she paused, then sneered “—more myself.” She grimaced at him. “That was how you put it, wasn’t it?”

  His lips thinned; he coughed. Then he muttered, “Yes.”

  She went on, “And then the baby did come. And it all happened just the way I always knew it would. The night Tyler was born, I did it. I said my love out loud. And from that night, you started to leave me.” She stared right at him, hard and long. “That is what happened, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “And in the end, when you said you were going, I threw out the one thing I had always kept for myself when it came to you—my pride. I begged you to stay. But you wouldn’t.” A chill shook her body. She wrapped her arms around her middle. “And that was it, the final straw. I told myself I wouldn’t take any more. That I was through with you.

  “But then my mother started in on me. And Tess, too. Both of them telling me how you loved me. I could brush my mother off. But not Tess. She was so…convincing. She insisted that you would never leave me unless you thought it was best for me. And that, well, it kind of made sense.”

  She shivered some more, hugged herself harder. “So I chased you. All the way to Reno and Lake Tahoe, I chased you. But I couldn’t find you.”

  “Because I came home.”

  She stared at him, loving him so, almost wishing she didn’t.

  He must have known he had some explaining to do.

  Grimly, he admitted, “Tess was right, up to a point.”

  “How?”

  “I told myself that I was doing the best thing for you.”

  “To leave me?”

  “Yes. I told myself it was the right thing to do, to use that stupid agreement we’d made to set you free.”

  “The right thing?”

  “Yeah. Because you’re so young. You have so much ahead of you. And I…I took the choices away from you. I made love to you and got you pregnant. And I pushed you to go back to school. It was all too much for you. Because of the choices I made, you nearly died.”

  She felt totally exhausted, suddenly. She dropped to the edge of the bed once more. “Oh, Cash, when will you give me credit for being part of those choices, too?”

  “I will. I do now. Just let me finish.”

  She cast him a glance, then looked down at the floor. “Okay. Fine. Finish.”

  “I know you were there, too. That we made those choices. But I wouldn’t admit it to myself or to you. I was too busy being noble, the way you always said. Out saving the damn world. Saving you. From me. So I wouldn’t have to deal with how scared I am…to love you.”

  Abby closed her eyes. He had said it. He had as good as said it. She asked in a voice that was torn at the edges, “And do you, then? Do you love me?”

  “More than I’ve loved anything or anyone ever. I swear to you.”

  Those words meant so much. Abby felt her hurt and anger fading, melting away like snow in the path of a chinook.

  They stood at the same time.

  “You were right,” he said. “I was happy when I was a little kid. And I’ve hated my father for turning away from me when he lost my mother. I didn’t want to get hurt that way again. But when you almost died, I saw it happening to me. Just as it happened to me when I was a kid. Just like it happened to my father, losing the one who mattered most. And I thought…I could escape it. By turning away from you. But I didn’t escape it. I only…lost you.” He made a low, anguished sound. “You hadn’t died, after all. And still I’d lost you….”

  “Oh, Cash…”

  “And I was setting myself up to lose Tyler, too. Doing the same thing my father did to me. Turning away, cutting him out. I don’t want to be like that. Help me, Abby. Help me not to be like that…” He took a step toward her.

  She took one toward him.

  He held out his arms.

  And then she was flying—straight to where she wanted to be. He crushed her close, his whole body trembling. She held on tight.

  He let out a long, shuddering breath. And then he took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I love you, Abby. You can’t know how much.”

  She wondered if it could be legal to feel happiness like this.

  “Abby, we never should have made that crazy agreement.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to throw it out. I want you to be my wife. For real. Forever. Will you do that? Will you stay with me?”

  She reached up, laid her hand on his cheek. “It seems I’ve waited my whole life for you to ask me that.”

  “Are you saying you will?”

  She pulled his head down so his mouth hovered just above hers, on the brink of a kiss. “Oh, Cash. Yes. I will.”

  He whispered her name as his lips met hers.

  Epilogue

  Meggie May Kane stood at the edge of the dance floor that had been set up under the stars for the Fourth of July dance. It was just like old times, she thought, with the lanterns strung overhead, the bandstand, the dance floor—and the red, white and blue bunting looped everywhere. When Meggie was growing up, the Community Club used to put on a dance every Fourth. But lately, the custom had been lost. Then, this year, the Medicine Creek Merchant’s Society had decided to revive the tradition. They’d done a beautiful job of it.

  The band struck up a slow number. The lines of dancers broke, milled and re-formed into pairs. Embracing couples swayed and turned across the floor. Meggie watched Cash and Abby Bravo. They’d been married about a year now. And they looked so happy it almost hurt to watch them.

  Once, Meggie had dreamed of happiness like that….

  Swallowing down pointless tears, Meggie turned from the dance floor. There were a few rows of chairs set up in front of the bandstand. Meggie sank into one of them. As the music played, neighbors and family friends approached her.

  “Meggie, I’m so sorry about your dad.”

  “How are you doin’ there, Meggie?”

  “Meggie, we’re thinking of you. Our hearts go out…”

  Meggie murmured her thanks for their kind words and tried not to show her pain and fury. Her father’s funeral had taken place just the day before. She had loved him so much. And yet right now, she was so angry with him she couldn’t even think of him without wanting to throw back her head and scream in rage.

  But what good would that do? Jason Kane was far beyond anybody’s wrath now.

  “Meggie?”

  She looked up—and smiled when she saw who it was. “Zach. How are you?”

  “I think the question is, how are you?”

  “Getting by.”

  “Meggie, if there’s anything—” he began.

  She didn’t know what gave her the courage. But she heard herself saying, “There is.”

  Zach leaned closer. “Name it.”

  And she did. “I have to speak with Nate.”

  Zach blinked—and retreated from her a little in his chair.

  She refused to drop her gaze as she asked carefully, “If I were to fly to L.A., would I find him in the phone book, do you think?”

  Zach frowned. “Meggie…”

  “You asked me if there was anything you could do. And
there is—you can answer my question. Can I find Nate’s number in the L.A. phone book?”

  Zach was still frowning, but he told her what she needed to know. “Bravo Investigative Services. It’s in the Yellow Pages.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged, then held out a hand. “Come on. Put your worries behind you for a while and let’s have a dance.”

  “Oh, Zach. You’re kind. But I just don’t feel much like dancing.”

  He dropped his hand. “I understand.” He glanced away, off toward the dance floor—and then beyond it, to where Edna Heller and Tess DeMarley stood on the sidelines together.

  Meggie saw the way his gaze lingered on Tess. She suggested lightly, “I see Tess DeMarley over there. You might ask her.”

  Zach looked at Meggie again and grinned. He had a charming grin—but then, all the Bravos did. “I’m working up the nerve.”

  Meggie stood to go. “Good luck,” she said softly.

  He stared up at her for a long, slow time before he replied, “Same to you.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-8153-0

  THE NINE-MONTH MARRIAGE

  Copyright © 1998 by Christine Rimmer

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York. NY 10017 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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