by Diana Palmer
Just like old times. The phrase leapt into her mind as she saw Cy Harden standing there, his dark head bare, a black Stetson in one big, lean hand. He was dressed for work, in a dark suit and a conservative patterned tie. He looked successful. Enjoy it while you can, Meredith thought to herself.
She opened the door, her face giving nothing away. "Got lost, did we?" she asked without expression. "The restaurant is that way." She pointed down the street.
"I know where it is," he said curtly. "What I want to know is where you were the whole damned weekend."
Her heart jumped. She might have guessed that he'd discover her absence. "You mean you actually had time to wonder about me? I would have thought your current flame would have kept you too busy for that."
The muscles in his jaw pulled taut. "She did."
Meredith forced a smile. "Good. To answer your question, I went to see Mr. Smith."
His dark eyes flashed fire. "I thought you were just friends."
"We are. We do visit occasionally. The bus is very nice on long trips, don't you think?" she added.
"I wouldn't know," he said, his eyes narrowing. "I fly."
"Without wings? Amazing!"
"Don't be cute. Have you made coffee?"
He eased in past her and got a cup, pausing to pour coffee in it before he pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sat down, tossing his Stetson carelessly onto a nearby chair.
"Make yourself at home," she invited sarcastically.
"I already have." His dark eyes studied her. "You're hiding things."
She thanked God for her poker face. "Am I really? What kind of things?"
"I don't know. But I'll find out." He sipped coffee while she poured her own. "Going to fix breakfast?"
"This is breakfast," she said, putting a saucer of cinnamon toast on the table.
"No wonder you're so thin."
She shrugged. "I run it all off anyway."
"Just like you used to," he mused, and for an instant his face softened. "You were bristling with nervous energy back then. I could hardly keep you still five minutes."
"I'm too restless to sit around," she said. She nibbled on the toast, tasting none of it.
"One of your neighbors saw a brunette leave here. A very ritzy one," he added, "wearing a fancy coat. She took a cab."
Her smile widened, and not one thing showed in her face. "Yes. That was Mr. Smith's sister. She was on her way to Chicago and stopped by for the night."
He glared at her, falling for the lie. "Thick with his family, are you?"
"Thicker than I ever was with yours," she said with faint hauteur.
"My mother saw through you, didn't she?" he asked, his voice deep and mocking. "You were a two-timing little thief, after my money all along."
"I got more than your money," she said, her eyes reminiscent as she thought of Blake.
But Cy was thinking of something entirely different. "Yes. My body, my self-respect, and plenty of expensive presents."
She'd sent those back to Myrna Harden after she left Billings. Myrna, of course, had never told him.
"You've really given up on the stolen money?" she drawled.
"I told you Tony returned the money," he said stiffly, and couldn't help feeling uncomfortable at the look on her face. Well, damn it, he'd tried to find her, hadn't he? "He never would tell me who his other accomplice was."
She laughed oddly. "He wouldn't have dared."
"You never wrote, not even to try and make me see the truth one last time," he said, his voice accusing.
"I thought I might be prosecuted for theft if I let you know where I was," she replied. "I had no way of knowing that Tony had confessed and given the money back."
His face went hard, his eyes bitter. "Of course. I never thought about that."
"As it happened, leaving here was the best thing that ever happened to me," she said. "I found plenty of friends in Chicago."
"I looked in Chicago," he said surprisingly. "Along with most other major cities. I never found you."
"You didn't look in Nassau, though, did you?" she returned, her eyes full of secrets. His puzzled expression gave him away. "Why should you have? I was young and poor and stupid. Hardly the kind of woman to end up living in luxury."
"As what? Some rich man's companion? That's all you were fit for, with your background," he said, stung by her attitude and wanting to hit back.
She gave him an icy smile. "However did you guess?"
"Mr. Smith's companion?" he fished.
"Mr. Smith is not a wealthy man," she said without thinking.
He studied her narrowly, leaning on his elbows with his coffee cup in both hands. "You've learned that money can't buy happiness, I gather."
"I've known that for a long time." Her eyes searched his handsome face and she grimaced. "Oh, go away, will you?" she said wearily. "I've had a long weekend and I have to be at the restaurant in thirty minutes."
He finished his coffee. "You've got a half day Thursday," he said. "I'll take you out to the Custer battlefield and buy you a pair of earrings."
She could have flinched. He'd done that once, when they were engaged. The earrings were northern Cheyenne, yellow-and-orange-and-black-beaded circles with long trails of beads. She had them still, tucked away in her jewelry box along with her diamonds and emeralds. She never wore them.
"I don't want any earrings."
"Come anyway," he replied. His eyes searched hers and they were suddenly as weary as her own, as bitter and sad. "You can't go back, they say. But just for one day, Meredith."
She hesitated. She didn't trust him. "Won't your girlfriend mind?" she asked, and without sarcasm.
His eyes darkened. "She was, like all the others, a passing attraction. None of them was you," he said.
"Don't," she said with quiet dignity. "I didn't come back to Billings to fan old embers. I'm just taking a rest. I have a life in Chicago that will be waiting for me when I'm through here."
"Taking a rest? Working in a restaurant for minimum wage?" he taunted softly.
She didn't speak for a minute. She'd almost given the game away. "Compared to working in a garment factory, it's a vacation," she said, without actually telling a lie. Probably it was easier than working in a garment factory, after all.
His eyes were assessing, but after a minute they lost their suspicious gleam. He got to his feet with easy grace and reached for his hat. He twirled it in his hands, hesitating.
"I won't back you into a corner again, if that's what's stopping you," he said after a minute: "Dragging up the past won't help. I should never have let things get physical again." He stared at her levelly, uncomfortable at the look that flared in her eyes. "I know you can't help how you react to me, Meredith," he said with resigned humor. "You might not believe it, but neither can I. I still want you. I imagine I always will."
"Wanting was all it ever was between us," she said proudly. "I don't have room in my life for that particular physical addiction again."
"I had less room for it when we were together," he replied. "I could never control what I felt. At times, I couldn't, even hold back long enough to satisfy you. My God, it went beyond obsession. I thought of nothing except being with you!"
"It was the same for me," she confessed. "Whole books have been written on that kind of thing. I was much too young to be able to handle it, and you resented me more and more."
"You bewitched me," he said quietly. "I couldn't have denied you anything."
"I didn't ask for anything," she reminded him.
He hated remembering that. He'd accused her of theft, made her run away, destroyed her youth. He couldn't even blame her for keeping the presents he'd given her. She'd had nothing. These days she had every reason to mistrust and resent him. But it was his own obsession that had motivated him even then. He'd grasped at any excuse to get her out of his life, to break the engagement. He'd been terrified of finding himself nothing more than a helpless slave to his passion for her.
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"I gave you nothing, Meredith," he said, his voice deep and haunted. "Except grief."
She wanted to tell him, then. She wanted to dig out her wallet and show him the little boy who was his image. He'd given her Blake. But that way lay disaster. She had to remember the pain.
"Don't tell me you feel guilty at this late date." She laughed.
He didn't smile. "I've felt guilt every day of my life since you left Billings. I expect to feel it on my deathbed. You were innocent. I even robbed you of that."
Her heart wasn't hard enough to ignore his look of pain. She moved close to him, reaching out hesitantly to touch his cheek. He caught it, holding it there, his eyes steady and dark as they met hers.
"You robbed me of nothing," she said gently. "I couldn't help what happened any more than you could. I wanted you so badly, Cy."
His broad chest rose and fell heavily. "Do you now?"
Her fingers moved down to his hard mouth and pressed there. "I can't afford to want you," she said, remembering her responsibilities and what she had to do to carry them out. Her eyes fell to his square jaw. "Oh, Cy, it's too late"
His hands slid to her shoulders and he drew her, unresisting, against him. He didn't try to kiss her or even to hold her intimately. His arms enfolded her and he laid his cheek against her soft hair, closing his eyes.
"Don't pull away, sweetheart," he whispered into her ear when he felt her stir. "Just give me this."
She stiffened when she felt his slow, hot arousal pressing against her belly.
"All right," he said quietly, moving back. "You don't like feeling that, but there's nothing I can do about it. The poor damned thing can't think."
She laughed in spite of herself and pulled away. "Go to work," she murmured.
"I might as well," he said with a rueful smile. He slanted his Stetson over one eye, so rakishly handsome that she had to bite her tongue to keep from throwing herself at him.
"Cy."
He turned at the door, with his hand on the knob.
"I'll go out to the battlefield with you Thursday," she said reluctantly.
His eyes brightened for an instant. But he only nodded, without speaking, and let himself out.
She didn't move for a few seconds, drinking in the lingering scent of him. Finally she finished her coffee and went to dress.
It was a long week. Mrs. Dade was openly curious about her "lost weekend," but she was kind enough not to ask leading questions. Meredith worked longer hours than she had the week before, but what tired her most was what she did after she left the restaurant. She stayed up until one and two o'clock in the morning faxing mail out, replying to proposals and memos, studying statistics. Twice, she had to sneak out of the restaurant long enough to phone Don when questions came up about the foreign operation and she didn't have the answers. The pressure was telling on her. By Thursday she was dragged out and almost asleep on her feet.
Cy picked her up at the restaurant, frowning at her listlessness. "You're tired to death," he muttered as he pulled away from the curb. "Do you want to go home and change?"
She glanced down at her jeans and sneakers and red-striped blouse which she wore with a white sweatshirt. At work, she wore a white uniform, which she left in her locker. "This will do," she said. "Can we stop in Hardin and get something hot to drink? I didn't get my coffee before I left."
"Have you eaten?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No time."
"I didn't mean to starve you," he murmured. "We can stop at a restaurant"
"No, please, I'm really not that hungry. A bag of chips or some beef jerky will do me fine."
"Okay, then."
The road to Hardin was long, and there wasn't a lot to see on the way except rolling grassland and wheat fields and buttes, with the monotony occasionally broken by a herd of cattle or oil pumper wells. The horizon reached to the sky, and with hardly any trees there, it was truly big sky country. Meredith loved the vastness of it, the lack of crowding, the sparseness.
"Elbow room," she remarked absently.
He glanced at her. "That's why I stay here. I hate crowds."
She nodded, but she didn't speak.
"What does Mr . Smith do for a living?" he asked with quiet malice.
"He's a professional bodyguard." That much was gospel, and she smiled a little.
"Since he obviously wouldn't need to work for you, who employs him?"
Meredith had to fight laughter. The secrecy was all the more delicious because, inevitably, Cy was going to find out whom Mr. Smith worked for. "He has various employers," she replied. "He travels a great deal."
"If he works for the jet set, I don't doubt it." He didn't like the thought of Mr. Smith. He fumbled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit it. He was wearing jeans today with a blue-striped western shirt and his heavy shepherd's coat. It was pretty cold, and the heater in the car felt good.
"You still smoke," Meredith mused.
"I did quit, for a while," he replied, not mentioning that he'd only started back when Meredith reappeared in his life. He cracked a window and blew out a gray cloud of smoke.
"How's business these days?" she asked carelessly, though her eyes were wary.
"Successful," he murmured.
"It's nice to have no shadows on your horizon, I guess."
He gave a curt laugh. "I didn't say that. There are always problems, in any large company. Lately we seem to spend most of our time fighting takeover bids."
Her heart jumped. "What?" she asked, pretending ignorance.
"Rival companies see potential in us and try to absorb us," he explained patiently.
"They can't just take you over, surely," she said.
"No. But they buy up stock and then try to sway our stockholders to side with them."
He frowned as he thought about the rumors he'd heard just lately about a new threat from Tennison International. Old Henry Tennison was dead, but his brother, Don, was very much alive, and there was a widow who was said to have extensive business acumen and nerves of steel. Odd, he thought, that there was never a photo of her in the Annual Report. Rumor said she refused to let her picture ever be used. He had one of his directors, Bill Marson, checking on that rumor. Bill had assured him there was no truth to it, but lately Bill had been fighting every decision he brought before the board. He sighed roughly. He was probably overreacting, he thought, glancing sideways at Meredith. Lately his business had taken a back seat to her, again. He spent far too much time brooding over her presence in his life.
"You haven't been back, have you?" he asked suddenly. "Not since you left here."
She shook her head, staring blankly out the window. The pain was still there, just under the surface. "I wanted to," she replied. "I missed Great-Aunt Mary. Phone calls and letters aren't the same."
"You never told her why you stayed away."
"No," she said. "It would have served no purpose, except to upset her."
"That wouldn't have stopped most women from crying all over her."
She looked at him, her eyes steady. "I'm not most women. I don't need to punish other people for my own problems."
His face hardened. "Is that a dig?"
"You tell me, Cy," she replied. "You were never happy about the way you were with me. You hated the hold I had on you, and you wanted no part of commitment. I think you were looking for an excuse to push me out the door. Tony gave it to you on a platter. With a little help."
"From whom?" he asked.
"That's not for me to say," she replied. She leaned back against the seat, wondering if Myrna Harden had done any more thinking about the proposition Meredith had made her. Probably not, she decided. Myrna would hide her head in the sand as long as possible, hoping that Meredith would have to leave eventually. Certainly she hadn't heard from the woman again.
"My mother doesn't like having you in Billings," Cy said after a minute.
"I'm not surprised," she told him. "But she can't get me out. Not this time."
>
"What do you mean, this time?"
She smiled at him and didn't answer. "Have you been out to the battlefield since the archaeological team was here?"
"Yes. The fire that swept the area served a useful purpose. The excavation that followed it cast a lot of new light on the actual battle. As you know already, Custer sent a message back to Benteen to bring the pack mules with the extra ammunition. That was the last anyone heard from him until a couple of days after the fight, when the bodies were found."
"Which is why nobody knows exactly how Custer deployed his men or what his original position was when he mounted the attack on the combined Sioux and Cheyenne forces," she added. Great-Uncle Raven-Walking had been a storehouse of information on the battle. One of his ancestors had been a scout for the Seventh Cavalry at the time of the Little Bighorn battle. He'd often walked Meredith over the battlefield when she was small, holding her spellbound with his stories of the old days. But it was the time she'd been here with Cy that she remembered so vividly.
"That's right," Cy told her. "The surviving accounts from Crow scouts indicate that at one point Custer was warned that there was a big encampment of Sioux and Cheyenne on the Little Bighorn, but apparently he didn't heed them. Even when he saw the camp, he might have only noticed women and children. He might have thought the warriors were far away hunting and that he had the element of surprise."
"The Indians certainly had it, from all accounts," she returned.
"Yes. His Crow and Arikara scouts later said that Custer's men were overwhelmed by sheer numbers."
"Didn't a lot of officers employ two translators when they spoke to Indians, to make sure there were no mistakes when they were trying to decipher the sign language the Indians used?" she asked.
"Yes, they did. But Custer was known to be fairly proficient with sign language."
"Fascinating."
"I find the whole history fascinating. I never tire of going through the museum or wandering over the battlefield."
They turned off the main highway outside Hardin and onto the small paved road that led past the guard station, where they paid the fee that allowed them a day pass into the historical site. They parked in the museum lot and walked up the long paved path to the last stand. A number of graves were marked by white crosses in a large square area bounded by a black wrought-iron fence.