Kelton's Rules (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Nicholson, Peggy

  No bus. Only Whitey’s old feed truck, pulled off to one side.

  She’s gone.

  The Jeep rolled to a halt as he shook his head to clear it. Couldn’t be, not without Sky.

  Gone for a test drive, he realized.

  Testing her wings.

  With the transmission in place, Abby was ready to fly.

  “IT’S ONLY HALF FINISHED, but I thought you might like to see it.” Abby pulled a stencil sheet from her folder and set it on Michelle’s kitchen table.

  “Looks good so far.” The blonde glanced up from the half-cut picture of Tripp McGraw riding a hard-charging horse while he spun a lariat over his head. “Looks better than you do, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “I haven’t slept much these past few nights,” Abby admitted. “In fact, I guess I really came over for some tea and sympathy. I can’t make up my mind what to do.”

  “Forget tea.” Michelle turned to her fridge, pulled out a bottle of Chardonnay. “Hard choices call for the hard stuff.” Filling two wineglasses, she set one in front of Abby and sat across from her. “So…you’re reconsidering? Thinking about staying?”

  “Oh, no.” Abby shook her head mournfully. “There’s no choice there. I’ve finished painting the living room and finished Kat’s portrait. We’re just about packed, except for the cat and our toothbrushes. Sky flys off on his adventure tomorrow. He’ll be back late Friday. Then Saturday…” Her eyes slowly filled with tears. “Oh, damn!” She snatched up her glass and gulped.

  “Sounds like you’re just dyin’ to leave Trueheart,” Michelle said dryly.

  “It’s the right decision. I thought my heart was broken when Steve told me about Chelsea, but this… This is…” Abby shrugged helplessly. “Jack Kelton could hurt me so much worse, if I let him. If I got seriously involved with him.”

  “Seems like you might be there already.”

  “No-oo…not really. Just…wishing. But all he wants is a fling, and if I stayed, I’d want more. Give more. More than he wants or would take. He’s been very frank about that from the start.” She sniffed, rubbed her nose, smiled through her tears. “So I don’t know what all the confusion is about. Gotta go.”

  “Girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do,” Michelle agreed, refilling her glass. “Then if that’s all decided, why are you sitting up nights worrying?”

  “I just…” Abby turned her glass around and around on the table. “Call me idiotic, but I can’t stand leaving unfinished business behind. I’m so afraid Jack’ll be like one of those songs, you know, the one you can’t stop singing? It drives you absolutely crazy, but it just keeps spinning around and around in your brain.

  “Now…if that’s bad, then imagine—what if I didn’t know the end of the song?”

  Michelle made a face.

  “What if I get stuck on him—on his memory—before the song’s finished? Maybe get stuck all the worse because it isn’t complete?”

  Michelle smiled and sipped. “So you’re saying the cure for all this is…?”

  “I’m not saying anything! I’m just…wondering. Worrying.” Abby tugged on a lock of hair till it hurt. Took in a breath and let it go. “And I feel like such a scaredy-cat, running away. My goal for this year was to become a strong woman. I got so burned, playing faithful little wife to Steven. I decided if I didn’t want to be hurt again, it was time I learned how to stand alone. Make my own life. Find my own satisfactions. Depend on nobody but myself. Like you.”

  Michelle let out a yelp of amusement. “Yeah, right! Don’t underrate yourself, Abby. You’re plenty strong.”

  “I wish. But what if this—if Jack—is some sort of test? What if he’s a stepping stone on my way to becoming my own woman? A truly strong woman should be able to take sex where and when she needs it, shouldn’t she? Choose her own pleasures without apology?”

  Michelle lifted her glass. “Bliss on her own terms!”

  “Or…then again, maybe not,” Abby said dejectedly, and drank.

  “Mmm. Or maybe so.”

  “And then I think, well, he’d be so…sexy.”

  “Oh, ye-e-ah, he’d be that, for sure.”

  “So what if Jack’s right? What if this is precisely what I need after my divorce—to get back on the horse and ride?”

  “And here’s a ready and willing stallion, just rarin’ to go?”

  Abby giggled as she brushed a tear away. “Something like that.”

  “Then why not go for it? Yippie-yiii-cowgirl!”

  “Well, aside from my own cowardice, there’s Skyler. He’d never forgive me.”

  “You’re planning to be an old maid all your life to please your son?”

  “No, of course not. But this is too soon… Isn’t it?”

  “Far as I can tell, happiness follows its own schedule. You either hop on the train as it passes—or you don’t.”

  “Yes, but. Sky’s called his father four times this week. I’m afraid he still hasn’t accepted our divorce.”

  “Maybe your taking a lover would help him see that it’s over. That there’s no going back.”

  “Or maybe he’d flip out.” Abby shook her head. “See what I mean? Around and around and around? Where do I get off?”

  “Someplace that makes you smile,” Michelle advised, picking up their empty glasses and placing them in the sink, a signal that it was time for the restaurateur to start her supper prep. They walked down the stairs together. “Or look at it this way,” she said as they parted. “What would you do if you were single?”

  “But I’m not,” Abby pointed out, looking back over her shoulder.

  “Well…” Michelle gave her a wide, wicked grin. “You are tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “YOU DID REMEMBER to write down Jack’s home phone number, didn’t you? And his office number?” Abby fretted on Thursday morning as she and Skyler drove west out of Trueheart toward the airfield. “Just in case?”

  “I know ’em by heart,” Sky said patiently, and recited them both.

  “You won’t forget them? Maybe you should—”

  “Mo-om!”

  “Right. And you have our phone?” She hadn’t realized it would be this hard to let him go.

  “Arrrr.” He unzipped the top of his backpack, pulled the phone out for her to see, then shoved it back.

  “Be sure to zip that so it doesn’t fall—”

  “Mom! It’s just overnight. Will you calm down?”

  “I’m perfectly calm,” she said with dignity, and managed to hold her tongue for almost a mile. All the while her panicked thoughts scurried and darted. What if the plane Steve rented isn’t safe. It’s not as if he’s maintained it himself. Or if the weather turns bad—a twin-engine plane in a thunderstorm?

  But if there was one thing she could still trust about Steven, it was his flying skill. Sky would be as safe flying with his father as he was driving with her in a car. Not that she wouldn’t worry.

  And even if she could’ve let go of her flying concerns, below them prowled the deeper, darker fears that had haunted her sleep last night. What if Sky decides he’d rather live with Steven, and Steve decides he wants him? What if Sky never comes back to me?

  “Don’t forget to feed DC tonight,” Sky reminded her, and for a moment she was comforted. DC. He’d have to come back for his cat.

  But if he decides he loves Steven more than me?

  Her hands tightened on the wheel. Get a grip. He’s right. It’s only one night away from home.

  His first, since the divorce. And his first with his father. “I won’t forget. Or if I do, he’ll sit by his bowl and yell.”

  Sky straightened in his seat and pointed. “There it is!”

  As Jack had promised, the small airfield couldn’t be missed. Far off to the left of the highway, its two runways made a gigantic X, oriented toward the prevailing winds. A few private planes were parked along the edge of the field and inside the open hangar. Abby turned down a long dirt road. Only mi
nutes now. She should put a brave face on it. “Well, you’ve got a lovely day for flying. Kat and I will think about you while we’re poking around Trueheart. I thought I might take her shop—”

  “Kat’s gone.”

  “What?” Abby parked in one of the four designated spaces in front of the tiny terminal, its jaunty little glassed-in control tower flying a windsock. She turned to frown at him. “Gone?” Jack had said nothing last night when the four of them had eaten supper together.

  “She’s gonna hang around her dad’s office all day. She stopped by and told me while you were upstairs. Anyway…” Sky paused, gripping his door handle. “Are you gonna be okay?”

  All alone. All day and tonight, too. For a ridiculous moment Abby wanted to cry, “No!” But who was the grown-up here and what was her alternative? Even if she’d been invited along, she had no desire to see Steve. If there was a great echoing hole in her heart these days, he wasn’t the man to fill it.

  And the man who could wasn’t interested in filling any woman’s heart for long. Because a fling, by definition, was finite. Limited. With the end in sight even as you entered it.

  She gulped and smiled. “I’ll be okay. Probably work on my book. Or maybe that cookie stencil for Michelle. And I’ll go to her place for lunch.”

  But she could tell that Sky didn’t care about the details, he just wanted her off his conscience. “Great.” He scrambled out of the car. “See you tomorrow!”

  “Oh, no, not so fast! I’m coming, too.” Despite his groans, she followed him into the terminal. Steve wasn’t due to fly in for another twenty minutes, but Abby really didn’t want to risk meeting him if he was early. Jack had assured her last night that Bret Halliday, the pilot who owned and ran the airport, would be happy to keep an eye on Sky, and that he was entirely trustworthy to do so.

  Quickly she introduced herself and her son, explained that Steve would be arriving to collect him at any moment, then pulled Skyler aside.

  “Have a wonderful time, sweetie. Be sure to call me tonight. I’ll be waiting by Jack’s phone till you do. And say hi to your father for me, okay?”

  “He’s gonna visit you tomorrow,” Sky pointed out. “We’ll be back about suppertime. I was thinking maybe we could have barbecue chicken? And corn bread and coleslaw. And chocolate ice cream.”

  Steve’s favorite meal. Oh, sweetie, the old times are gone. Abby sighed. “We’ll see.” She was thinking more along the lines of taking her ex to a loud and neutral spot, like Mo’s Truckstop. “Well, goodbye, sweetheart.” She reached for his shoulders.

  “Mo-om!” Sky glanced frantically across the room to where Halliday stood talking with a tall, weatherbeaten cowboy.

  But moms had a right to the mushy stuff. She gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek and let him go. “Be good.” Her eyes were tearing up—he’d be mortified if he realized she was crying. She turned and hurried out of the building, back to her car. Drove toward Trueheart as if forty devils were on her tail. Come back to me, sweetie. Oh, you’ve got to come back!

  Without even Kat for company, it was going to be a long, long, lonely day.

  WITH ALL THE TIME in the world to fill, what was a woman to do?

  Abby took a bubble bath, sunk down amid citrus-scented fizzy islands of foam, while DC crouched in the bathroom doorway, surveying this unusual event with round-eyed disdain.

  After that she considered doing a second session of yoga—she’d done her first at dawn—but settled instead for sitting on the back steps in the sunshine while her hair dried, trying to be as focused on the moment as the cat, who sat grooming himself beside her. Don’t think about Sky, flying away from me. Don’t think about Jack, who’ll be out of my life the day after tomorrow.

  Almost unthinkable.

  So she wouldn’t think it. Be mindless as a cat, watching the leaves blow, the clouds move across a blue sky.

  Listen to your heart beating, like a slow drum in the desert. A-lone… A-lone… A-lone.

  Abby bolted to her feet and into the kitchen. Carbohydrates and something creative, that would shake these blues! She laid out her latest cookie stencil on the table, then set two cups of Michelle’s icing to warm on the stove in a double boiler.

  By the time the icing was heated to its proper consistency, she’d finished cutting the last few gaps into the stencil. She placed one of the cookies Michelle had given her on a paper towel and set to work, dabbing the glaze carefully into the openings of the design.

  “Whatcha doing?” Jack inquired behind her.

  “Aaaah!” Luckily she’d just raised her brush, so it wasn’t a repeat of the ceiling disaster. She released her breath and stared straight up, since he was standing directly behind her chair, leaning over. “What are you doing here?”

  “Ran out of clients, so I came home.”

  Even upside down he looked wonderful. And just like that, the day had gone from empty and aching blue to shimmering gold. If laughter had a color… “I see.” She glanced down, dipped her brush into the icing, twirled off the excess. “Where’s Kat?”

  “Stayed in Durango. I thought she needed a consolation prize to make up for Disneyland. So I asked Emma, my paralegal, to take her to a movie matinee, do some mall crawling, then out to supper. Girls’ night out.”

  Her brush had paused in midair. So here we are, alone at last. And hardly by accident! “That was nice of you,” she said, biting her bottom lip to stop the smile.

  “Wasn’t it just?” He pulled out the chair beside her and sat. Their eyes met. Danced together.

  What if you were single? Michelle had asked her.

  And here she was. Single for a day. Feeling shy and terrified—and utterly happy. Without any idea how to get from here to where they were going.

  But Jack would know the way. She looked at her cookie. Dipped her brush and daubed in more icing.

  “New design?” he asked idly, apparently in no hurry at all, content to bask in her company.

  She could feel his gaze celebrating her bare arms. Under that caress, the pale fine hairs rose on tiny goose bumps. Her breasts came alive. Excitement feathered down her spine. “Mmm,” she agreed. “A roper.” She set the brush back in her bowl of icing and lifted the stencil. “See?”

  He leaned so close, his shaggy hair brushed her temple. “Dynamite!” He turned so that his lips hovered not an inch from the corner of her smile. “Downright…irresistible. Can I make one?”

  “Well, I dunno,” she teased, shifting back half an inch. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Try me.”

  I will. All in good time. She knew it. He knew it. She was done running, for this one special day.

  She swallowed, nodded, set a cookie in front of him. Wiped off the stencil. Then, standing behind him, resting one hand on his broad, hard shoulder, she showed him how to lay in the icing. “Just a little at a time. Like that. Very good.” His hands were steady and deliberate. She sat again and watched, ripples of anticipation sliding up from her bare feet, along the backs of her thighs. She crossed her legs, rubbed one calf sensuously along the other, uncrossed them.

  “Don’t distract me,” he growled, eyes on the cookie. “This is a delicate procedure.”

  “Oh, sorry.” She arched her spine and stretched, this time on purpose, glad she’d shaved her legs, glad she was wearing her favorite pair of cutoffs—ragged, but somehow they always made her feel sexy. So very, very glad that she had the power to distract him. Her outstretched foot brushed across the top of his. She sighed with pure pleasure.

  “You…are asking for it,” he warned, setting his brush back in the bowl. “But that’s okay, because I’ve got it rii-iiight here.” His voice had dropped to a dangerous purr. He lifted the stencil aside.

  “By gosh, you did it!”

  “I’m a talented man,” he agreed, eyes filled with laughter. “And now, could I offer you a bite?”

  He picked up the cookie as she cried, “Wait!”

  And it broke in two. He’d bent it
slightly as he’d lifted.

  For an instant he looked not a day older than Skyler as his jaw dropped in dismay. Crushed, mid-seduction. “Well, blast! Shoot. And it was a masterpiece!” Ruefully laughing, he looked up and, as Abby laughed with him, the realization hit her, clear and perfect as a dewdrop fallen on her hand: whatever happened, she’d love this man forever.

  “My fault. I forgot to tell you they’re perforated.” She ran a soothing finger down his arm, glorying in his hardness, the crisply curling golden hairs. “It’ll taste just as good.”

  “No way. I’m aiming for perfection here. Can I try again?” He wiped off the stencil and looked around the table.

  “Sorry.” She shook her head. “That was my last cookie.”

  “Oh? Then I’ll just have to improvise.” He scanned the kitchen with a frown, glanced back at her—and grinned. “Ah.” Lifting the stencil, he laid it on her bare thigh. “This’ll do.”

  “Jack!” If he’d plugged her toes into a socket, she couldn’t have felt a stronger jolt. Crackling heat sizzled up her leg from where his hand moulded the stencil to her curves. “You’re out of your mind!”

  “Certifiable,” he agreed, moving the icing bowl between them on the table. “Round the bend and headed for home.” He picked up the brush, dripped off the excess, dabbed it onto her skin. “And loving every minute of it. Sanity is sadly overrated, I’m finding.”

  That she could believe as he brushed hot icing delicately across her thigh. Beneath her skin, the blood surged like a moon-drawn tide. Her hips lifted in a slow wave, yearning toward his touch.

  His fingers tightened on her leg and the stencil. “Easy there.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she protested in a voice gone breathy and low. Giggles danced inside her like champagne bubbles. “Ow, that tickles!”

  “If you wiggle, I’m gonna smear it. Then I’d just have to start all over,” he warned. Raising his head for a moment, Jack considered her T-shirt. “Though curves are a problem. Maybe I chose the wrong canvas? You have such a nice…flat…stomach.”

  “Don’t even think about it!”