by Janet Dailey
JANET DAILEY CAPTURES THE HEART OF AMERICA! LOOK FOR:
The Four Volume Calder Saga:
This Calder Range
Stands a Calder Man
This Calder Sky
Calder Born, Calder Bred
The Best Way to Lose
For the Love of God
Foxfire Light
The Glory Game
The Great Alone
The Hostage Bride
The Lancaster Men
Leftover Love
Mistletoe and Holly
Night Way
The Pride of Hannah Wade
Ride the Thunder
The Rogue
The Second Time
Separate Cabins
Silver Wings, Santiago Blue
Terms of Surrender
Touch the Wind
Western Man
PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS
A Quiver of Longing Trembled through Her
His head bent toward her, and she knew that he was going to kiss her. The tips of his fingers rested lightly along her jaw and the curve of her throat, holding her motionless without any pressure.
The first brush of his lips was soft and teasing, but they came back to claim her mouth with warm ease.
Her lips were clinging to his by the time he finally drew back a few inches to study the result. Slowly her lashes lifted to show the dazed uncertainty in her eyes. She glanced at his face, then lowered her gaze …
“Good night, Rev … Seth,” Abbie murmured.
Books by Janet Daily
Calder Born, Calder Bred
Stands a Calder Man
This Calder Range
This Calder Sky
The Best Way to Lose
Touch The Wind
The Glory Game
The Pride of Hannah Wade
Silver Wings, Santiago Blue
For the Love of God
Foxfire Light
The Hostage Bride
The Lancaster Men
Leftover Love
Mistletoe & Holly
The Second Time
Separate Cabins
Terms of Surrender
Western Man
Nightway
Ride the Thunder
The Rogue
For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected]
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 1981 by Janet Dailey
Cover art copyright © 1981 Scott Gladden
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Originally published by Silhouette Books.
ISBN: 0-671-87501-9
eISBN: 978-0-6718-7501-5
First Pocket Books printing March 1985
10 9 8
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Printed in the U.S.A.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
Chapter One
The wind blowing through the opened car window held all the heat and humidity of a July day. It lifted the auburn-gold hair that lay thickly about Abbie Scott’s neck, creating a cooling effect. A pair of sunglasses sat on the dashboard, looking at her with their wide, oval lenses. She had removed them earlier, not wanting the view artificially tinted.
A morning shower had brought a sharpness and clarity to the landscape of the Arkansas Ozarks. There was a vividness to the many shades of green in the trees and bushes crowding close to the highway. The air was washed clean of its dust, intensifying the lushness of the Ozark Mountain greenery.
Her hazel eyes kept stealing glances away from the winding roadway to admire the ever-changing vista of rock and tree-covered hills. The flecks of green in her eyes almost seemed like a reflection of the verdant countryside.
There was a time when Abbie hadn’t appreciated the beauty around her, when she had complained about the twisting, turning double-lane roads that snaked through the Ozark hills and the lack of entertainment and shopping facilities found in cities, and the limited job opportunities in an area where the major industry was tourism.
Out of high school, Abbie had left the serenity of the rugged hills for the excitement of Kansas City. She thought she’d found it in the beginning, but the glitter had eventually faded. A year ago, Abbie had returned to her hometown of Eureka Springs after four years away.
A lot of people, her parents included, hadn’t understood why she had given up a promising career with Trans World Airlines, headquartered in Kansas City, with its many travel and fringe benefits. Abbie’s response, if anyone asked, and few did, was a declaration of homesickness. But that was only partially true.
She guessed that her mother suspected a man was at the root of her decision to return, but Abbie had too much pride to admit the romance she thought would lead to the altar had ended up going nowhere. Initially she had come home to lick her wounds, but a year’s distance had enabled her to see it had only been the final straw and not the ultimate cause.
Now, instead of a lucrative job with a large corporation, she was her father’s legal secretary, paid only a small salary compared to her previous wages. By watching her pennies, Abbie managed fairly well with some adjustments from her prior life-style. She “semilived” with her parents, which meant that she had taken her savings and fixed up the loft above the garage, once a carriage house, into a small efficiency apartment. It provided privacy, as well as low rent.
And there was Mabel—her car. She had traded in her speedy little Porsche sports car for a cheaper and older automobile. Mabel, as Abbie had dubbed the car, wasn’t much to look at. Her body was showing signs of rust and dented fenders. She was accidentally two-toned blue, since the hood and the passenger door didn’t match the sun-faded robin color of the rest of the car. If it was possible for vehicles to have a personality, Mabel certainly did. She was grumpy, did a lot of coughing and complaining like an old woman, but there wasn’t a sick piston or plug in her body.
As the road began an uphill climb, Abbie shifted the standard-transmission car into second gear. The motor made a small grunting sound of protest but Mabel didn’t hesitate. Abbie’s lips curved with a faint smile.
Although July marked the height of the Ozark tourist season, there was relatively little traffic on the state highway leading into Eureka Springs. Most of the tourists used the major highways, so Abbie only had local traffic to contend with. Plus, it was the middle of a Saturday afternoon, which meant most of the tourists were at the various area attractions and few were on the road.
After experiencing city rush-hour traffic, Abbie didn’t let crowded Ozark roads stop her from visiting her grandmother on the weekends. Grandmother Klein continued to live on the rocky farm she and her late husband had worked, although the acreage itself was now leased to a neighbor.
Abbie’s grandmother on her mother’s side still raised chickens, had a milk cow and a big garden, and canned more food than she could eat, totally ignoring the fact she was seventy years old and should slow down. No one ever visited Grandmother Klein without being loaded down with foodstuffs when they left, and no amount of protesting changed that.
On the floorboard in front of the passenger seat, Abbie had jars of pickles—sweet, dill, bread-and-butter, and cherry—as well as an assortment of homemade preserves and jellies. Plus there were two sacks on the seat. One contained tomatoes, cucumbers, and sweet corn from Grandmother Klein’s garden; the other was filled
with ripe peaches freshly picked from the tree, their fruity smell filling the car.
The temptation was too much to resist and Abbie reached into the sack for just one more peach as the car neared the crest of the hill. The fruit was still warm from the sun, its juice spurting with the first bite Abbie took. She had to use the side of her hand to keep it from running down her chin.
When she started to sink her teeth into the fuzzy skin for another bite, she saw the red warning light gleaming on the dashboard panel. She lowered the peach from her mouth and frowned slightly. It was rare for Mabel to overheat on these up-and-down roads.
“Don’t lose your cool now, Mabel,” she murmured to the car. “We’re nearly to the top.”
But the light stayed on even after they started the downhill run. When Abbie saw the wisps of steam rising from the hood, she knew there was trouble, and started looking for a place to pull off the road. It was another half-mile before she found a shoulder wide enough to accommodate Mabel. By then, there were more than wisps of steam coming from the hood.
Once the car was parked, Abbie made a quick glance to be sure her lane of the highway was clear of traffic before climbing out to check under Mabel’s hood. She forgot she had the peach in her hand until she needed both of them to unlatch the hood. She held it in her mouth, ignoring the juice that dripped onto her blue plaid blouse.
The tails of her blouse were tied at the midriff in an attempt to beat the summer heat. When Abbie started to lift the hood, drops of scalding hot water were sprayed over the band of bare stomach between her blouse and faded Levi’s. She jumped back, nearly dropping the peach, and just managing to save it while she wiped the hot water from her stomach with her other hand.
“How could you spit on me like that, Mabel?” she unconsciously scolded the car.
The upraised hood unleashed a billow of steam that quickly dissipated. Abbie moved cautiously closer to peer inside and find the cause of the spitting hot water. There was a hole in the radiator hose. Her shoulders sagged with dismay.
Abbie turned to look up the road, trying to remember how far it was to the nearest farmhouse. It was another four miles yet to the edge of town, she knew. She wasn’t enthused about walking even half a mile in this heat.
A semi tractor-trailer rig zoomed by, its draft sucking at her. Abbie looked hopefully at the oncoming traffic. She knew nearly everyone in the area. Maybe someone would drive by that she knew and she could get a ride into town. Not under any circumstances would she accept a lift from a stranger.
More than a dozen vehicles passed but Abbie didn’t recognize any of the drivers. A small handful slowed down when they went by her stalled car, but none stopped. And Abbie made no attempt to flag anyone down either. She took an absent bite of the peach while she debated whether to start walking until she reached the nearest house, where she could telephone her parents, or to wait a little longer.
A low-slung, dark green sports car came zipping around the curve in the road, approaching her parked car from the rear. It immediately slowed down at the sight of the upraised hood. The convertible model car had its top down, but its windshield prevented Abbie from getting a clear view of the man behind the wheel. As it edged onto the shoulder to park behind her car, she noticed the out-of-state license plates and tensed a little. Four years of living in a city had made her slightly leery of strangers.
The driver didn’t bother to open the door. Instead, he lightly vaulted over the low side to walk toward Abbie’s car. The man was tall, easily reaching the six-foot mark. In this land of the summer tourist, there was nothing unusual about the way he was dressed—a mottled gray T-shirt and faded cutoffs with white sneakers. It exposed an awful lot of hard, sinewy flesh, tanned to a golden brown. His hair was a toasty gold color, attractively rumpled by the wind.
Abbie couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirror-like finish of his sunglasses, but she liked the strong angles and planes of his male features. She felt that instant pull of attraction to the opposite sex and experienced a twinge of regret that the man was no more than a passing stranger. There wasn’t exactly a surfeit of good-looking, single men in Eureka Springs.
“Hello.” His lips parted in a brief but friendly smile that showed an even row of strong white teeth. “It looks like you have some car trouble.”
“‘Fraid so,” Abbie admitted.
In spite of the futility of it, her interest in the man mounted as he lifted a hand to remove the sunglasses. She found herself gazing into a pair of arresting blue eyes. Their depths held a warm gleam that had a dancing charm all its own. Awareness of his sexual magnetism quivered pleasantly along her nerve ends. It had been a long time since any man had fully aroused her mating interests. The few times she had gone out on a date since her return, the desire had been mainly for companionship.
“What seems to be the problem?” As the stranger bent to look under the hood, Abbie observed the flexing muscles in his tanned arms.
Even though the busted hose had stopped spitting hot water, Abbie still advised, “Be careful. Mabel sprang a leak.” The curious glance he slanted at her made Abbie realize she had referred to the car by its pet name. “That’s what I call her,” she explained lamely, and felt slightly foolish about it.
An interest that had not been present before entered his look as he briefly skimmed Abbie from head to foot. She was tall, nearly five foot seven, with a model’s slimness—except she had curves in all the right places, although no one would ever describe her as voluptuous. Her light red hair had a gold sheen to it—strawberry blond her mother called it. Abbie would have been less than honest if she didn’t acknowledge she was more than reasonably attractive. A country freshness kept her from being striking.
The stranger seemed to like what he saw without being offensive about it. Then his attention was swinging easily back to the split in the radiator hose. He tested the hose, bending it a little to discover the extent of the rupture.
“I might be able to patch ‘Mabel’ up.” He used her pet name for the car. The faint smile that edged the corners of his mouth seemed to share—or at least understand—her personification of the car. “Would you happen to have a rag—or an old towel?”
“Sure. I have one under the front seat,” Abbie admitted. “Just a second and I’ll get it for you.”
Rather than use the driver’s side with the road traffic to watch for, Abbie walked through the tall grass along the shoulder of the highway and opened the passenger door. It was a long stretch to reach the piece of old flannel tucked under the drivers’ seat. Her elbow bumped some of the jars on the floor, rattling them together. Like a row of dominoes, they began toppling over just as her groping fingers found the rag under the seat. Abbie closed her eyes, expecting to hear one of the jars break and bracing herself for the sound, but it didn’t come.
The rag was in her hand and she was half lying on the seat, preparing to push out of the car when Abbie heard the swish of footsteps in the grass. There wasn’t much room on the seat for maneuvering with the two sacks of vegetables and peaches. Abbie was forced to crane her neck around in an effort to see behind her.
“Are you all right?” The man was standing on the inside of the opened car door, eyeing her with concern.
She was conscious of being in a vulnerable and ungainly position with no graceful way to alter it. “Yes. I just knocked over some jars.” She pushed backward off the seat and out of the car. Her face felt red but it could have been caused by the blood rushing to her head when she had been half hanging over the seat to reach the rag.
When Abbie turned to give him the old cloth, she discovered how close she was standing to him. The cotton fabric of the mottled gray T-shirt was cleaved to his wide shoulders and lean, muscled chest. His maleness became a potent force Abbie had to reckon with, especially since she was standing nearly eye level with his mouth. Her pulse just wouldn’t behave at all.
“Did you break anything?”
She watched his lips form the words but it was
a full second before his question registered. Abbie pulled herself up sharply. What was the matter with her? She was reacting like a love-starved old maid who hadn’t been near a man in years. A little voice argued that she hadn’t—at least not with a man the caliber of this one.
Her hazel-green eyes darted a guilty look upward to meet his gaze. There seemed to be an awareness in his blue eyes of what she was thinking and feeling. It really wasn’t so surprising. Experience with life—and women—was etched into the male lines in his face.
“Nothing was broken.” Abbie remembered to answer his question. Her crooked smile held a measure of resignation. “Grandmother Klein loaded me down with her homemade jams and pickles before I left.”
His shoulder brushed her forearm as he bent to set the jars upright. With his large hand, he was able to right them two at a time, sometimes with a thumb on the third to push it up. In next to no time, all the jars were standing again.
“Thank you. You really didn’t have to do that,” Abbie said when he had finished.
He raised his eyebrows in a kind of shrugging gesture. “I remember my grandmother used to make the best wild-raspberry jam. She knew it was my favorite and always made sure to have a couple of jars for me whenever I visited her. Grandmothers are like that. They either try to fatten you up or marry you off.”
“That’s true,” Abbie agreed dryly, and resisted the impulse to look at his left hand to see if his grandmother had succeeded in the latter. “Here’s the rag you wanted.” She gave it to him and followed when he walked around the opened passenger door to the front of the car. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Wrap the rag around the hose and use it as a bandage?”
“No.” He appeared amused by her suggestion, but not in a ridiculing way. “I doubt if it would hold. I have some electrical tape in my car. Once I get the hose dried off, I’ll wrap a few lengths of that around it. It’s only a few miles to Eureka Springs, and the tape should hold until you get that far.”
Abbie bit her lower lip, remembering. “Except most of the water boiled out of the radiator.”
