by Nora Roberts
She rode on the temper, the unfamiliar and exciting kick of it all the way to the main house, up the stairs, and into the office, where Willa was arguing with Tess.
“If you don’t like the way I’m setting things up, why the hell did you dump the job on me? I’ve got enough to do without fussing with this reception.”
“I’m dealing with the flowers,” Tess shot back. “I’m dealing with the caterer—if you can call some bucktoothed jerk whose specialty is pigs in a blanket a caterer.” She threw up her hands, then fisted them on her hips. “All you have to do is arrange for tables and chairs for the alfresco buffet. And if I want striped umbrellas, then the least you can do is find me striped umbrellas.”
Now Willa’s fists rode her hips as well, and she went nose to nose with Tess. “And where in God’s name am I supposed to come up with fifty blue-and-white-striped umbrellas—much less this canopy thing you’re so hot for. If you’d just . . . Lily, aren’t you supposed to be resting?”
“No. No, I am not supposed to be resting.” She was surprised sparks didn’t fly from her fingertips as she marched to the desk and swept all the lists and folders and invoices onto the floor in an avalanche of paper. “You can toss every bit of paper that has to do with the wedding in the trash. Because there’s not going to be any wedding.”
“Honey.” Tess broke out of her shock, slid an arm around Lily’s shoulder, and tried to nudge her into a chair. “If you’re having second thoughts—”
“Don’t ‘honey’ me.” Lily wrenched away, fuming. “And don’t pretend you give me credit for having second thoughts when no one gives me credit for having the first ones. It’s my wedding, damn it. Mine. And you’ve all just taken it over. If you want to plan a wedding so badly, then you get married.”
“I’ll get Bess,” Tess murmured, and sent Lily into a fresh tantrum.
“Don’t you dare get Bess and have her up here clucking over me. The next person, the very next person who clucks over me, I’m slapping them. I mean it. You.” She jabbed a finger at Tess. “You planted my garden. And you.” She spun on Willa. “You addressed my wedding invitations. Between the two of you, you’ve taken everything. And what slips through your fingers, Adam snaps up so quickly I can’t even grab for it.”
“Well, fine.” Willa threw up her hands. “Excuse us for trying to help you through a difficult time. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed getting writer’s cramp with this one here breathing down my neck.”
“I was not breathing down your neck,” Tess said between her teeth. “I was supervising.”
“Supervising, my butt. You’ve got your nose in everything and sooner or later someone’s going to pop you in it.”
“Oh, and that would be you, I suppose.”
“Shut up, both of you. Just shut the hell up.”
They did, though their mouths hung open when Lily lifted a vase and sent it flying. “The two of you can argue till your tongues fall out, but not over my business. Not over me. Do you understand? I’m not going to be used anymore. I’m not going to be controlled. I’m not going to be brushed aside. I want everyone to stop looking at me as if I’m going to fall to pieces at any moment. Because I’m not. I’m not!”
“Lily.” Adam stepped into the doorway. He wasn’t sure how to approach her now, so he stood back and hoped a soothing tone would work. “I didn’t mean to upset you. If you need time to—”
“Oh, don’t you start on me.” Vibrating with fury, she kicked at the papers scattered at her feet. “That’s just what I’m talking about. Don’t anyone upset Lily. Don’t anyone treat Lily like a normal woman. Poor thing, poor Lily. She might shatter.”
She spun around so she could fire a stream of frustrated rage at all of them. “Well, I’m the one Jesse abused. He held a gun to my head. I’m the one he dragged into the hills and kicked into the snow and pulled along on a rope like a dog. And I got through it. I survived it. It’s about time you did too.”
It was Adam who shattered, at the image that flashed into his brain. “What do you want me to do? Forget it? Pretend it never happened?”
“Live with it. I am. You haven’t asked any questions.” Her voice hitched, but she steadied it. No, she promised herself, she wasn’t going to shatter. And she wasn’t going to cry. “Maybe you don’t want the answers. Maybe you don’t want me the way things are.”
“How can you say that?”
Now she drew herself up, made her voice as cool and reasonable as she could with her heart pounding so hard it hurt her ribs. “You haven’t touched me, Adam. Not once since it happened have you touched me.” She shook her head as Willa and Tess started to leave the room. “No, stay. This isn’t just between Adam and me. That’s only part of it. You haven’t talked about it either, so let’s talk about it now. Right now.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek. Damn it, that would be the last one that fell. “Why haven’t you touched me, Adam? Is it because you think he did, and you don’t want me now?”
“I don’t know how.” He stepped forward, stopped. His hands felt clumsy, outsized, as they had for weeks. “I didn’t stop him. I didn’t protect you. I didn’t do what I promised you. And I don’t know how to touch you, or why you’d want me to.”
She closed her eyes a moment. Why hadn’t she seen that before? He was the fragile one now. He was the lost one. “You came for me.” She said it softly, hoping he could understand just how much that mattered. “Yours was the first face I saw when I stumbled out of that cave, away from . . . away from it. You were the first thing I saw, and that’s one of the reasons I can live with it.”
She took one unsteady breath, tried again, and found that the next one came more easily. “And all the time he had me, I knew you’d come. That’s one of the reasons I got through it. And I fought back.”
She looked at her sisters. They, too, had to know how much it mattered. “I fought back and I held on just as you would have done. He had the gun, and he was stronger, but he didn’t have control. Not really. Because I didn’t give up. I drove into that tree. To slow him down, to make it harder for him.”
“Oh, Lily.” Undone, Tess sat down and began to weep. “Oh, God.”
“And when he tied my hands, I kept falling down.” A calm settled over her now, a calm that came from surviving the worst. “Because that would slow him down too. I knew he wouldn’t kill me. He’d hurt me, but he wouldn’t kill me. But then it was so cold, and I couldn’t fight back anymore. But I held on.”
Saying nothing, Willa walked over, poured a glass of water, and brought it to Tess. Lily took a deep breath. She would finish now, say it all, everything that hadn’t been said.
“I thought he might rape me, and I could survive that. He’d done it before. But he wasn’t in control this time, and he was afraid. Every bit as much as I was, maybe more. When we got to the cave, I was so tired, and I knew I was sick. Nothing he did to me then would have mattered because all I had to do was get through it. And get back here.”
She walked to the window, looked out. And gathering her strength because she had gotten back, she had made it through, she turned around once more. “He had whiskey, and I took some because I thought it might help. He drank a lot. I fell asleep, or passed out, listening to him drinking and boasting, just like he used to. I listened to the whiskey sloshing in the bottle, and in part of my mind I thought he might get drunk enough, just drunk enough, and I might be strong enough, just strong enough, to get away. Then someone came.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, hugged her elbows. “It’s not clear.” If any part of the ordeal still frightened her, it was this. The nebulous, fever-soaked memories. “I must have had a fever by then and I suppose I was delirious. I thought it was you,” she told Adam. “I thought I was home, in bed, and you were coming in, sliding in next to me. I could almost feel it. And feeling it, I fell asleep again, and slept while whoever was there killed Jesse and cut the rope on my hands. I was only a few feet away, but—”
Th
at quick, high-pitched scream that had snapped off. She could still hear it if she let herself. “When I woke up,” she continued, steadily, “Jesse’s coat was over me. There was blood on it, all over it. So much blood. I saw him. The light was just coming in through the opening of the cave, and I could see him. Seeing Jesse like that was worse somehow than when he’d held the gun to my head. The need to get away from him was worse. Every time I took a breath, I breathed in the smell of him, and what had been done to him while I’d been a few feet away, sleeping. And I was more frightened in those few moments than I’d been through all the rest of it.”
She stepped forward, just one step, toward Adam. “But then I crawled out into the sunlight, and you were there. You were there when I needed you most. And I knew you would be.”
Purged, she walked over, poured a glass of water for herself. “I’m sorry I shouted at all of you. I know everything you’ve done was out of concern. But I need to take my life back now. I need to go on.”
“You should’ve yelled sooner.” Composed again, Tess rose. “You’re right, Lily. You’re absolutely right about all of it. I got carried away planning things for you. I’m sorry. I’d have hated being shoved to the background this way.”
“It’s all right. It’s been a bad habit of mine to let myself be shoved. And I might ask for help planting the rest of the garden.”
“Maybe I should plant my own. I didn’t know I’d like it so much. I’ll be downstairs.” She started out, shot a telling glance at Willa.
“If you want to start taking things back,” Willa said, nudging the papers with her foot. “You can start by picking these up and getting them out of here.” She smiled. “I don’t like hunting up printed cocktail napkins.”
Taking a chance, she grasped Lily’s shoulders, leaned in close so that her whisper could be heard. “He’d have crawled through hell if that’s what it took to get you back. Don’t punish him for loving you too much.”
Easing back, she glanced at Adam. “You’ve got a couple hours off,” she told him, “to get your life straightened out.” Walking out, she closed the door behind her.
“I must seem ungrateful,” Lily began, but he only shook his head, so she crouched down and began to gather the papers. “I threw a vase. I’ve never done anything like that before. I didn’t know I’d want to. It was difficult to go back to feeling unnecessary.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel that way.” He crossed to her, gathered papers himself. He picked up the list of acceptances for the wedding, then lifted his eyes to hers. “Nothing in my life is more necessary than you, or more precious. If you want to call off the wedding . . .” No, he couldn’t be patient or reasonable about this. All he could say was “Don’t.”
And nothing he could have said, Lily realized, could have been more perfect. “After Tess and Will have gone to all this trouble? That would be rude.” She started to smile, nearly did, but he covered his face with his hands. Covered it, but not before she’d seen the stricken look in his eyes, and the hurt she’d put there.
“I let him take you.”
“No.”
“I thought he would kill you.”
“Adam.”
“I thought if I touched you it would make you think of it, of him.”
“No, no, Adam. Never.” So it was she who held him. “Never. Never. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just so angry, so frustrated. I love you, I love you, I love you. Oh, hold me, Adam. I won’t break.”
But he might. Even as his arms came around her, his grip tightened convulsively, he thought he might shatter like thin glass. “I wanted to kill him.” His voice was muffled against her throat. “I would have. And living with the wanting isn’t nearly as hard as living with the fact that I didn’t. And worse is living with the thought that I nearly lost you.”
“I’m here. And it’s over.” When his mouth found hers, she poured herself into it, her hands soothing him as he had always soothed her. “I need you so much. And I need you to need me back.”
He framed her face. “I do. I always will.”
“I want to plant gardens with you, Adam, and raise horses, paint porches.” Cupping his face in turn, she drew his head back and said what was trembling in her heart. “I want to make children. I want to make a child with you, Adam. Today.”
Staggered, he lowered his brow to hers. “Lily.”
“It’s the right time.” She lifted his hand, pressed it to her lips. “Take me home, Adam, to our bed. Make a child with me today.”
F ROM THE SIDE WINDOW. TESS WATCHED LILY AND ADAM walk toward the white house. It made her think of the first time she’d seen them walk together, on the day of the funeral. “Check it out,” she called to Willa.
“What?” A little impatient, Willa joined her at the window, then smiled. “That’s a relief.” Moments later, the shades on the bedroom windows of the white house came down, and she grinned. “Looks like we’ve still got a wedding going.”
“I still want those striped umbrellas.”
“You’re such a bitch.”
“Ah, that’s what they all say. Will.” In a surprising move, she laid a hand on Willa’s shoulder. “Are you still driving cattle up to high country tomorrow?”
“That’s right.”
“I want to come.”
“Very funny.”
“No, I mean it. I can ride, and I think it might be an interesting experience, one I can use in my work. And since Adam’s going, Lily should too. It’s important that we stick together. It’s safer that way.”
“I was going to have Adam stay behind.”
Tess shook her head. “You need people you can trust. Adam won’t stay behind even if you ask him. So Lily and I go too.”
“Just what I need. A couple of greenhorns.” But she’d already thought of it herself, and had weighed the pros and cons. “The McKinnons will be moving their herd up as well. We’ll take one man with us, leave Ham in charge of the rest. Better get your beauty sleep tonight, Hollywood. We ride out at dawn.”
T HE ONLY THING MISSING, TESS THOUGHT AS SHE YAWNED in the saddle at daybreak, was the theme from Rawhide. So she hummed it to herself, struggled to remember the words that were vaguely familiar only because of the bar scene in The Blues Brothers.
Was it “Cut ’em in” or “Head ’em out”?
“Head ’em out” was the obvious winner, as that was exactly what Willa called into the misty morning air.
It was rather magnificent, Tess mused. The sea of cattle swarming forward, the riders skimming the edges of the herd on horses fresh and eager. All of them surged through the curtain of mists, the low-lying river of fog, tearing it into delicate fingers while the sun glinted off dewy grass.
And westward, the mountains rose like gods, all silver and white.
Then Willa turned in the saddle, shouted out for Tess to move her ass. Why, Tess thought with a grin, that just completed a perfect picture. Belatedly she kicked her horse forward to catch up as the drive began.
No, something was still missing, she realized as the noise of hooves on hard-packed dirt, of braying moos, of riders clucking and calling filled the air. Nate. For once she wished he had cattle as well as horses; then maybe she’d be riding along with him.
“Don’t just ride,” Willa called out as she trolled up alongside. “Keep ’em in line. You lose one, you go after it.”
“Like I could lose a big fat cow,” Tess muttered, but she tried to mimic Willa’s herding whistle and the way her sister slapped her looped rope on the saddle.
Not that Tess had been given a rope, or would know what to do with one, but she used her hand, then as the hundreds of marching hooves kicked up dust, her bandanna.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Rolling her eyes, Willa circled back. “Not like that, you idiot. You may need that hand.” She took the bandanna from Tess, who was holding it over her nose, and after a few quick trips, leaned over to tie it on. “That’s an improvement,” she decided when it
was secured and hung down over half of her sister’s face. “Never seen you look better.”
“Just go play trail boss.”
“I am trail boss.” With that Willa kicked Moon into a gallop and rode to the rear of the herd to check for stragglers.
It was an experience, Tess decided. Maybe not quite like driving longhorns north from Texas or whatever cowboys had once done. But there was a kind of majesty in it, she supposed. A handful of riders controlling so many animals, driving them along past pastures where other cattle watched the procession with bored eyes, nipping potential strays back in with a quick movement of horse.
Season after season, she mused, year after year and decade after decade, in a manner that changed little. The horse was the tool here, as it had always been. A four-wheeler couldn’t travel the forests, over the rivers, up and down the rocky ravines.
The pastures of the high country were rich, and so the cattle were taken up to graze on thick meadow grass, to laze through the summer and into the early fall under the wide sky with eagle and mountain sheep and each other for company.
And summer was coming, like a gift. The trees grew greener, the pines lusher, and she could hear the cheerful bubble of water moving quick and cool. Wildflowers dotted a near meadow, a surprising shower of color, teased out by the strong sun. Birds darted through the trees like arrows, over the hills like kites. And the mountains rose, creamy white at the peaks, with the deep green belt of trees darkening, and the ridges and folds that were valleys and canyons shimmering shadowlike.
“How you holding up?” Jim paced his horse beside her and made her grin. He looked as cocky and raw as anything that had ridden out of the Wild West.
“Holding. Actually it’s fun.”
He winked. “Be sure to tell that to your back end at the end of the day.”