Reckless Promise

by Jenny Andersen

  "About an hour." After a pause, Alice added, "There are several interesting galleries and boutiques. Are you looking for anything in particular?"

  "No, just browsing."

  "Well, you've been with us for a day and a half. I suppose being on the ranch gets pretty dull when you're used to the city." Alice managed to make the insult sound almost like polite conversation.

  Poppy hadn't had a dull moment since she'd first seen Mac. She wanted to tell Alice just how not-dull she found the ranch, but that would mean breaking her promise to Tom. Damned if she did, and damned if she didn't.

  Alice didn't say another word the whole time they bumped down the miles of gravel road to the highway, and Poppy settled in for a long, grim afternoon.

  Or—maybe her impetuous action had landed her in rose petals this time. She had just been gifted with about four hours that she could spend making Alice jealous. She wouldn't even need Tom. And when Alice and Tom were straightened out, she'd be free of this Other Woman nonsense. Free to concentrate on Mac.

  "How long have you and Tom had the ranch?" she asked, feeling her way through this new territory. In the whole month she'd been practicing the other woman business, she'd only had to be seen having a drink or lunch with her 'client'. Smile. Put a suggestive hand on his arm. She'd never had to write dialogue for the part. But it couldn't be too hard. Sound innocent but admiring, that's what she'd do. Just leave no doubt that she thought Tom burned hotter than the marshmallow-roasting fire Moses built for the kids every night. Hotter even than Mac, although how anyone could believe she'd think that—

  "Five years," Alice said.

  "It's so nice you have something you can do together. It must be wonderful to get to be with him every day." She made her eyes wide and admiring, just in case Alice glanced over at her. "I'd just lo-o-ve to be able to work with a husband. You're so lucky."

  "We don't really—well, yes. It is nice to work together." It looked like Alice had almost added something else but censored the comment with clamped lips.

  "Oh, I know you always have guests around."

  "Not always. We close for a couple of months in the early spring. After the skiing is over and before the weather is nice enough to enjoy riding and camping."

  "Ooo, how wonderful," Poppy cooed. "Just like a fabulous honeymoon every year. How lucky you are. I'd just die for something like that." Good Lord, she sounded like bimbo to the tenth power. "With a man like Tom," she added, just in case Alice didn't get the message.

  Alice got it. "We always enjoy our guests." She sounded like a kid saying 'I like spinach.' "But yes, we also enjoy our vacation."

  Well, that sounded tepid. But then, she couldn't expect Alice to wax ecstatic over private things to a stranger, especially one she didn't like much. She had to push a little more. "You must enjoy having Tom all to yourself. Or is Mac here then?" No. Wrong. Mustn't talk about Mac. "It must be awfully hard to share Tom. And he's so-o-o good looking. I think every woman dreams about cowboys."

  "That's for sure." Alice took her eyes off the road long enough to slide a sideways glance at Poppy. "He's wonderful with guests. He makes everyone feel so special. Whether they are or not."

  Score one for Alice. Poppy plowed on. "So you're here all alone. Unless Mac..." Darn it, there stood Mac, pushing his way into the conversation again.

  "Mm-hmm."

  "It must be wonderful, just the two of you together in that beautiful house. I can see it now, a bottle of wine and a big fire. That bearskin in front of the fireplace in your private parlor...mmm." She could imagine what she and Mac could do with it. But from what Tom said, the good moments were few and far between, what with Alice's deep-freeze act.

  A grimace that looked like pain flash across Alice's face, Poppy saw when she peeked through her lashes. She must be doing a good, if reprehensible, job of half-swooning bliss.

  "You're so lucky to have Tom," she murmured, just loudly enough to be heard over the noise of the car. Her mental picture didn't include Tom, of course.

  Alice flicked a look at her that could have stopped a charging bull in mid-stride.

  Poppy closed her eyes and leaned back, bracing herself against the jolting of the SUV. The road might be terrible, but her performance had been great. She should feel satisfied instead of sick, because she'd done a good job and maybe now the whole thing would be over. But she could only think about the pain on Alice's face. Why couldn't Tom just talk to his wife? Bringing in an outsider only made things worse.

  Screeching brakes brought her upright, eyes wide. A boulder bounced across the road and Alice swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid it. A horn blared and Poppy stared straight into the radiator grill of a speeding eighteen-wheeler. The shoulder harness cut into her as they shot off the road and lurched through the sagebrush. Alice's head slammed into the side window with an unpleasant dropped-melon sound and her hands fell away from the wheel. Poppy saw with horror that they were heading straight for the edge of nothing.

  She ripped off her seat belt and lunged for the steering wheel. With a wild contortion, she smashed her foot down on the brake. The Suburban slewed wildly and stopped a yard from the cliff.

  Deafening silence spread like a pool of oil. The scent of crushed sagebrush vied with the haze of scorched rubber. Only Alice's deep sobbing breaths and the ting of cooling metal diluted the unnatural quiet.

  Alice held one arm to her chest. Her eyes were open and unfocused.

  "Don't move," Poppy said as she threw the transmission into park and set the emergency brake. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, rusty and unused, and she cleared her throat. "I'm going to go check—" To see if they were about to fall over the edge, but that wasn't the most tactful thing to say.

  "Rock." Alice's voice shook. "It almost hit us."

  Yeah. And did you notice the semi? "I know." Poppy, clearly the designated adult, eased out of the car. Slowly. Carefully. Her head swam and her knees wobbled. Sort of the way Mac made her feel, only not good.

  The Suburban sat closer to the cliff edge than she liked, and listed to one side on a flat tire. The truck that had so nearly been their undoing must be halfway to Denver by now. And she'd heard westerners were helpful.

  "Alice." She made her voice sharp, that I'm-the-teacher-and-you'd-better-pay-attention tone. "Where's your phone?"

  "In the office," Alice mumbled. She sounded dazed.

  "I mean cell phone."

  "Don't have one. They don't work out here."

  So much for calling for help. Poppy stared at the miles and miles and miles of sagebrush and mountains that surrounded them, dwarfing her into helpless insignificance. Mac tugged at her mind, big and strong and dependable, and she sighed. Modern women didn't lean, darn it. She didn't.

  No doubt about who had to change the tire and get Alice to a doctor. Preferably soon, because the wrist looked terrible, already puffy and discolored. Poppy straightened her spine.

  A first aid kit turned up under one of the back seats. She saw with relief that it held an Instant Ice pack that she squeezed and bound around Alice's swollen wrist. Alice leaned back in the seat, eyes closed.

  Now for the tire. So not her field of expertise. Driver's Ed taught how to change tires, but that had been high school and she'd never had to do it since. After all, she lived in a city with decent public transportation. Well, she'd once figured out how to run a gas chromatograph from the instruction manual. Surely cars came with instruction manuals, too. She rummaged in the glove compartment. Eureka.

  "Just sit still. I'm going to change the tire," she told Alice optimistically.

  No response.

  Poppy swallowed her sense of urgency and started reading. Except for the need to hurry, it sounded simple enough, even for an urban non-car owner. As long as she ignored the cliff edge that put a distressingly few feet of ground between her and hundreds of feet of empty space, she'd be fine.

  With the book in one hand, she assembled all the parts and managed to detach the spare
from its hiding place under the car—who would ever have looked for it there? Ignoring the way it hurt to move, she wrestled the jack in place and started cranking, muttering thanks to Kate for deviling her into spending hours at the gym. Someone had tightened the lug nuts far more than seemed necessary. Mac could probably have loosened them with one hand.

  Once she'd cinched the spare in place, she lowered the car, tossed the flat in the back, and checked Alice, who sat glassy-eyed and unresponsive. Time to get to a doctor.

  At least she knew how to drive. That would be a lot harder to do by the book. She'd never driven anything this size before, but the deserted highway and power steering made it—not easy, but possible. By the time she had wrestled the big vehicle into town, her muscles trembled and sweat drenched her shirt. A sign at the edge of town directed her to the clinic and she pulled up in front of the door with relief and complete disregard for assigned parking.

  When Poppy helped Alice into the empty waiting room, a nurse rushed over, calling over her shoulder for the doctor. "Mrs. Bailey. What happened?"

  "A rock came down and almost hit us, and there was a truck. We ran off the road," Poppy explained, since Alice didn't seem to be answering. "I guess her arm got caught in the steering wheel. And she hit her head."

  The nurse spared a glance at Poppy. "You hurt?"

  When she shook her head, the doctor and nurse whisked Alice into another room. This must be one of the blessings of a small town. They would have waited for a couple of hours for attention at Massachusetts General. Poppy had been through that with Jase the time he'd broken his arm trying to learn to skateboard for a new play.

  She sank into an uncomfortable turquoise plastic chair and rested her head against the wall. Someone should call Tom, but she didn't have the number, didn't want to think responsible things right now. She wanted someone to tell her she was brave and wonderful.

  She wanted Mac. In her imagination, he cuddled her close and— The bell on the door jingled and two women came into the waiting room. From the worn jeans and cowboy boots on the taller one, and the housedress on the plump one carrying a baby, she assumed they were locals, and they looked so much alike they must be sisters. "Hey there," Boots-and-Jeans said. "Is Doc in?"

  Poppy nodded, the motion making her aware of the stiffness in her neck. In a few more hours she'd feel like that truck had hit her instead of scaring her out of a dozen lives. "He's with a patient."

  The nurse poked her head in to see who had arrived. "Hello, Grace, Karen. You come to show Doc the new baby? Have a seat, he'll be out in a bit. I know he wants to see that sweetie pie." She went back down the hall.

  "You're new here," Grace said.

  Poppy swallowed a sigh at Grace's expression, the usual pokered-up one that most women got when they saw her. "Just visiting. I'm staying at Bailey's Ranch." She grimaced at the twin looks of relief. But she had no reason to be rude, so she explained about Alice, assured them she would recover, and admired the baby, at first dutifully, and then with pleasure.

  About a century later, the doctor pushed a groggy-looking Alice into the room in a wheelchair. Her glance passed over Karen and Grace and she closed her eyes.

  "A nasty sprain," the doctor told Poppy. "And a bump on the head. Nothing serious according to the x-rays, but we'll keep her overnight for observation. I've called Tom, and he's on his way. At about two hundred miles an hour, would be my guess." He smiled. "Since there's no hospital here in town, I keep a room for times like this." He gestured at a partly open door on the other side of the waiting room, and Poppy saw the corner of a hospital bed. "Tom can stay with her."

  Poppy nodded, and winced at the protest from her neck.

  His gaze sharpened. "Let's take a look at you while you're here."

  She tried to protest, but he handed her over to the nurse. "I'll be right with you," he said, and turned to admire Karen's baby.

  "Alice, you poor thing," Karen said.

  "I'll be okay," Alice said, her voice slurred and indistinct. "But I don't think I'll be holding the baby today." She almost managed a smile.

  "I was going to call you this afternoon. Doc just told me yesterday and I couldn't wait to tell you." Grace paused, swelling with the importance of her news. "I'm pregnant!"

  Poppy stopped in the doorway and turned just in time to catch a flash of utter desolation on Alice's face as her gaze lingered on her friend's flat stomach. She followed the nurse to an examining room wondering what that meant.

  "You're going to be pretty sore for a few days," the doctor told Poppy after he'd given her a thorough check over. "You can go home. I recommend ibuprofen, hot packs, and a lot of relaxing."

  She lay back on the examining table and closed her eyes. Relaxing sounded good. No acting. She'd make a pathetic bombshell...black and blue and zonked on painkillers couldn't be very seductive.

  "Here you go." The nurse returned with a couple of pills, a glass of water, and blanket.

  Poppy raised herself on one elbow, wincing as sore muscles protested, and swallowed obediently.

  "Now you just lie back and rest. You can leave whenever you feel up to it, but you might want to nap a bit first. I'm going to make sure Alice is all settled."

  Poppy didn't want to think about having to drive that monster car back to the ranch, so she didn't argue. The slamming of a car door wakened her, and she glanced out the window to see Tom jump out of the big black ranch truck. She tottered out into the hall in time to see Tom at Alice's bedside, wild-eyed and panicky, and looked away, feeling like a voyeur. A slightly battered, very lonely voyeur. She staggered back to the hard bed and slept.

  A few hours of napping later, full dark had blanketed the countryside. She climbed into Tom's pickup. Once the doctor had assured him she wasn't hurt, Tom had had no hesitation in letting her drive herself back to the ranch. "I'll keep the Suburban. It'll be more comfortable for Alice going home," he said. "I'm glad it's you instead of a regular guest. I know you'll be okay."

  She wished she had the same faith in the truck, in her driving, in that killer road. She crept along the rocky stretch, alternately watching for trucks and attack rocks.

  Finally she pulled up in front of the ranch house and went about the problem of getting her stiff, bruised self down out of the mile-high-off-the-ground truck. Before she'd done more than get her seat belt unfastened, Mac burst out of the ranch house and jerked the truck door open. "Where's Alice? What the hell have you done now?"

  Groggy with fatigue and adrenalin aftermath, she tried to focus on his face. "What?"

  "Tom said Alice got hurt." Mac reached up and grabbed her arm. She swallowed a cry of pain. "What did you do to her?"

  "She's all right." Poppy looked down at him, bleary and aching and miserable. Of course, he must be half out of his mind with worry, but that didn't give him any right to assign blame to her. Her face felt like stone as she gave a police-blotter summary.

  His face went white.

  "Now please let go of me," she said.

  He didn't.

  "Take your hand off me." She let her anger flood her, using it to stifle the hurt and give her the energy to move. "Haven't you figured it out yet, you jerk? You've had to come slinking back with an apology every damned time you’ve blamed me for something."

  "I know. I—"

  "Didn't you hear me? I saved Alice. Blaming me because she's hurt is the last, ultimate, absolutely final insult of a rotten day. If you have one grain of sense, you'll step away from the truck and leave me alone tonight."

  He stepped back. "Are you hurt?"

  "Nice of you to ask. No." She inched to the edge of the seat and eased her feet toward the ground, which looked to be about ten feet away. She paused to gather her courage, anticipating the pain of landing.

  He put his hands on her waist and lifted her down. "Poppy—"

  "Not now." She ignored the way his hands turned her blood to warm honey. "Go away."

  "I had no right to assume—"

  "No, you
didn't." She took a few stiff, hobbling steps toward her cabin. It seemed very far away but she'd make it. An hour or two in a hot shower ought to help.

  "You are hurt. I'm sorry," he said.

  "Fine. Very noble of you. Now leave me alone. Don't look. Don't touch. And especially, don't talk. Not tonight, dear, I have a headache." And a backache and a leg ache and an arm ache and a chest ache. But worst of all, a heartache.

  "That's probably not all that hurts," he said, and gathered her up in his arms. "And I know just what to do." He carried her up the stairs, through the house, and out toward the pool.

  She should protest such cavalier treatment. Instead, she leaned her head against his shoulder.

  He set her on her feet and switched on the jets in the hot tub, sending the water frothing. Moist heat enveloped her, and her whole body clamored to be in that lovely water.

  Deftly, he unbuttoned her shirt.

  Chapter 8

  Poppy swatted at his hands. He'd just accused her of attacking his sister and he thought she'd fall into his arms? He'd better think again. "Stop that. This is a public place."

  "Everyone's gone to bed. Anyway, I didn't turn on the lights. No one could see you even if they were here." He unfastened her jeans and pushed them down over her hips. "Sit."

  "No."

  He pushed, and she folded into a chair. "That's better."

  "Didn't you hear me? I'm not in the mood."

  "I'm helping you. You need this. Relax and let me take care of you." His hands were gentle, soothing, and curiously impersonal as he stripped off her boots, socks, and jeans.

  She wanted to melt into the comfort he offered. She made one last stab at being strong. "You can't just take over and—"

  "Hush." He pulled off his own boots and jeans, picked her up as gently as if she were a new-born baby, and carried her into the hot, foaming water.

  Okay. He could just take over. She lay back against him, dizzy and floating into the warmth. Bubbles tickled along her skin, soothing nerve endings she hadn't realized were complaining. She'd go along with anything that felt this good.