THIS PERFECT STRANGER

by Barbara Ankrum

  He looked down at his hands. "And then what? Wait until the next time? My past won't go away. It's gonna follow me wherever I go."

  She didn't like what she saw in his eyes. It sent a shiver of dread through her. "You're not going anywhere. Don't talk like that. You're scaring me."

  He took her by the arms, his blue, blue eyes searing into hers. "He could've killed you."

  "But he didn't." She searched his eyes, and pulled his mouth down to hers. "He didn't."

  She infused the kiss with every ounce of conviction she had. His mouth moved against hers in bittersweet reply and his hands curled around her shoulders—as much to hold her away as to keep her near. And suddenly, she knew.

  He would leave her.

  The sound of sirens coming up the road rent the still summer night. Red lights flashing, the sheriff's cars that had been at the accident site were only seconds away from Donnelly's.

  Maggie watched Cain watch them come. After all he'd been through, there was no surprise in the bleakness she saw in his eyes. He'd spent the better part of the last four years behind bars for a crime he hadn't committed. He'd almost killed a man tonight, and she could still feel the reality of that vibrating through him. It was enough to shake any man. Even Cain who seemed so strong and so good. But he was wrestling with something else as well. Something she had no more control over than she did the stars overhead. She could beg and plead, but in the end, it was his choice. And she was afraid no amount of begging would change his mind.

  * * *

  Morning spilled into Maggie's room through the large windows across from her bed. She rolled over and sighed, unwilling to face the day yet. It took her a moment to remember that last night hadn't been a dream. It was finally behind them. Donnelly had been arrested, and this morning would be arraigned on two counts of felony conspiracy, attempted murder and murder charges. By noon, the state papers would pick it up and bench warrants would be issued for the other men involved in Brent's death and Cain's assault. Charges against Cain would be formally dropped this morning, but informally, he was already a free man.

  Only Maggie knew how patently untrue that statement was.

  She rolled onto her back to find Cain lying beside her, still asleep. It had been days since he'd had any real rest but when he'd crawled into bed last night, he'd fallen asleep nearly before his head hit the pillow. For her part, sleep had been elusive. She'd spent half the night watching him, and the other half, staring at the moon as it arched a path across the sky and disappeared into morning.

  She wished he could make love to her, but it would be weeks before his fractured ribs allowed it. Instead, she contented herself with the fact that he'd slept beside her at all.

  She reached out with a finger and traced the strong muscle of his forearm and the soft, dark hair there. Her finger moved down the curve of his wrist and along the bones of his hand to his bruised knuckles. Her exploration ended as his fingers curled around hers.

  She looked up. "Hi."

  "Hi," he said back, his voice rough with sleep.

  "Did I wake you?" she asked, knowing she had. He blinked languidly. She lifted his hand against her mouth and kissed his damaged knuckles. "I meant to."

  "Did you sleep?"

  "Yes," she lied. "You?"

  "I must have. I don't actually remember getting into bed."

  "That's because you were practically dead on your feet by the time we got home from the sheriff's office."

  On a sigh, he disengaged his fingers from hers and rolled onto his back, propping one hand beneath his head. Maggie curled toward him, resting her head on the smooth muscle of his shoulder and her hand on the flat of his abdomen. The silence between them grew long and awkward. He was staring off at the mountains that circled her valley and probably somewhere beyond.

  "Say something," she whispered.

  After a minute, he did. "I'm leaving today."

  Her heart sank. "Not that."

  "It's the best thing, Maggie. We both know it."

  "Do we?"

  "When you've had a little time to think about it—"

  "I've had time. I know what I want."

  He rolled away from her and sat up on the edge of the bed. "You think you do. But this will all be headline news by tonight. Everybody in Montana will know about me and my past by tomorrow. I thought I could protect you from it. But I can't."

  "So you're going to run away again? Is that your answer?"

  He bent his head. "Don't make this harder than it is."

  "Hard?" She sat up, tugging the sheets with her. "I'll tell you what's hard, Cain. Loving you and knowing your heart still belongs to a ghost—that's hard. Holding you and knowing you can't imagine a future for yourself or for us. That's hard. I'm in love with you. The past few days haven't changed that. If you run away, I'll survive. It'll be damned hard, but I will survive because it's what I do.

  "So if you have to go, then go. But don't lie to either of us by saying you're doing it for me. Because you're not. You're leaving because you're afraid that you might actually have to feel alive again if you stay with me and that scares the hell out of you."

  "Annie has nothing to do with you and me." He reached for the jeans he'd left on the floor by the bed and pulled them on. Maggie watched the bruised muscles in his back ripple and flex and she wanted him back beside her again, holding her. But leaving was something he'd have to do on his own. She wouldn't help him. She pulled her bathrobe on and got up.

  "I didn't know your wife," she said softly, tying the belt around her waist. Cain stalled, reaching for his shirt, then straightened slowly, pulling it on. "I imagine she must have loved you terribly. But you know what I think?"

  He didn't answer. He didn't even turn back to her. "I think she would've hated that what she loved about you died along with her."

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  « ^

  The hot August sun beat down on the back of Cain's neck as he forked the hay out of the pickup truck along the center of his father's pasture. The black Angus cows, torpid in the humid heat of summer, ambled over to the spot, lulled into compliance by the ordinary rhythm of their days. They would do this, Cain thought, until the day they were loaded onto a cattle truck and shipped to the meat factories, never knowing a moment of rebellion or contemplating what might have been if they'd only questioned their lot.

  Cain shook his head at the philosophical bent his thoughts had taken. He'd been working with cattle most of his life and had never before contemplated the possibilities of a bovine revolution or, for that matter, the anthropomorphic potential of any animal destined for his dinner plate. But for some reason today, their blind complacency just seemed wrong.

  He forked the last of the hay off as Miguel Rios, his father's oldest and most trusted hand, edged the truck forward. When he'd finished, Cain tapped the top of the cab and tossed the pitchfork into the truck bed.

  "All done?" Miguel asked, leaning out the driver's window.

  "That's it," Cain said, hopping down to jump into the cab of the truck. "They're fat, happy and idiotically grateful."

  Miguel nodded with a wizened grin. His skin was brown as old leather and his teeth, yellow from years of chewing tobacco. "They should be. They get food, water, shelter from the storms. Their life is good. Cattle," he said, "their needs are few. People on the other hand, they're harder to please. Take you, for instance…"

  Miguel had worked on the ranch since Cain was a kid and knew him better than most. Most days, he kept his own counsel, but today was apparently not going to be one of those days.

  "You been home … what? Six weeks?"

  Cain stared out the side window. "Five weeks." Four days, seventeen hours.

  "Sí, and in all that time, you been off the ranch once?"

  "Your point?" he asked.

  Miguel shrugged as he pulled onto the paved road that led back to the house. "I'm just saying… A young man like you should be out living. Not feeding cows. Señor MacCallister,
he is worried about you."

  He turned in surprise. "My father talks to you about me?"

  "You think he doesn't notice how you mope around?"

  "I'm not moping. I don't mope," Cain said with a scowl. Just because he'd been biting off heads lately at every turn. Or working until the sun went down until he fell into bed exhausted—only to turn around and do it again. That had nothing to do with … anything. "Besides," he said, "I'm doing my job. Earning my keep. Isn't that enough?"

  Miguel swivelled a look at him. "Is it enough for you?"

  He turned back to stare out at the pasture land as it sped by his window. The fields were burned gold by the late summer heat and herds of Angus dotted the landscape. This was his father's land, land he'd never imagined working again. But it had become a harbor for him for a while.

  When he'd left Maggie, he'd flown home with his father. He'd needed a place to heal and Judd had provided it. They'd managed to put the past mostly behind them and Cain had come to know his father not as Judd MacCallister, the dynasty builder who had constructed this little empire, but Judd MacCallister the man. Human. Frail. Just like him.

  Sorting through all that had been necessary. Important. Even though every day the restless discontent inside him grew. He'd lost count of how many times he'd relived seeing Maggie in Donnelly's arms with a gun against her ribs. That feeling … that gut wrench was something he'd promised himself he'd never risk feeling again. But there it was, part of him again. Because no matter how much distance he'd put between the two of them, he couldn't shut down the feelings. It was too late for that.

  "It's enough," he said at last. A lie, but it would do.

  Miguel turned down the road to the house. "You are a lot like him, you know? Stubborn. Certain you are right." A grin tugged at the old man's mouth. "I am old. But life? It is short. Why you don't go and talk to her, mijo?"

  The question was like a sharp right to the gut. Talk to her? Hell, not a day went by that he didn't think about doing just that—wondering what she was doing, how she was doing. But nothing had changed, except now there were a thousand miles and as many reasons between them. "I can't go back there, Miguel," he said, staring out the window.

  "I don't mean your wife," Miguel said. "I mean Annie."

  The look Cain swivelled on him would have cowed any man who didn't know him so well. "Annie?"

  "When was the last time you took her flowers?"

  The day he'd been released from prison. He'd gone to tell her about the man he'd killed. To tell her he'd keep her with him. Always.

  "In my country," Miguel went on, "there is a holiday for it. El Día de los Muertos. The Day of the Dead. It celebrates the lives of the ones we lose. People dance and eat sugar candy and leave sweet pan de los muertos for the spirits. In my country, we believe our dead should know that in our grief, is also our joy. It is part of the journey. Death, a part of life. And we celebrate our memories."

  The old man pulled up in front of the house and stopped the truck. Cain pulled open the door and got out, then leaned back into the window.

  "Go and talk to her, mijo," Miguel said. "Tell her your heart."

  Cain sighed, grinding his fingers into a fist. "Anybody ever tell you that you were damned nosy for an old cow-puncher?"

  "Only your father," he said with a grin. "But he doesn't mind."

  A smile curved Cain's mouth. "Neither do I, my friend."

  * * *

  Someone had put fresh flowers on her grave. Roses in a vase full of water. Judd, he thought, surprised again. Cain knelt down beside it, tucking his handful of sunflowers, Annie's favorites, in beside them.

  He stared down at the shiny granite headstone. It read Annie Marie MacCallister, Beloved Wife, Lover, Friend. b. June 1, 1968 d. July 18, 1996.

  He brushed a hand against the stone, wiped away a bit of dust and cleared his throat.

  "Hey Annie," he said softly. "Sorry I haven't been by for a while." He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed past the lump in my throat. "Old Miguel, you remember him? He said I should have a talk with you and I … I guess he was right."

  Cain studied the dappled shadow the huge cottonwood nearby threw on Annie's grave. "See, the thing is … I know I promised you that I'd always keep you with me, that there would never be anyone else. But … there is someone, Annie. Her name is Maggie. And you know what? I think you would've liked her. She's brave and sweet and strong. And she needed me. But I walked right out of her life. I thought I could do that and come away in one piece, but it's tearing me up inside, Annie."

  His eyes stung and he blinked hard. "Before I left, she said you would've hated what's become of me since you died. And she's right. You would'a kicked my ass."

  He stroked the short, clipped grass under his hand. "So I can't keep my promise to you. I gotta start living again, Annie. I've got to let you go. And I hope that's okay with you. Because I need to go back and see if there's anything left to salvage with Maggie. I kind of made a mess of things and I need to try to straighten them out."

  He reached into his pocket and pulled a gold band from it, rolling the smooth warmth of it between his fingers. Finally, he placed it on top of the headstone where it glinted in the sun.

  He swallowed thickly and stood, brushing a knuckle across his cheek. This moment had been years in coming and now that it was here, he felt suddenly a hundred pounds lighter.

  Cain looked up at the rustle of wind past the cottonwood tree. A wind eddy moved across the cemetery, swirling leaves and bits of dust in its wake, meandering toward him like a woman. He waited, transfixed, as it came to the spot where he stood and swirled around him for a handful of moments before it lifted away into the trees and was gone.

  He watched it go and smiled. "G'bye, Annie-girl. You take good care."

  * * *

  Maggie moved through the thigh-high hay in the field north of her house, plucking a stem now and then to check the maturity of the golden alfalfa. Behind her, Jigger and Geronimo tagged along like shadows, with the horse stopping every few feet to nibble.

  His progress had been remarkable and the scars his accident had left were healing well. He would never be a show horse again, but Maggie had already decided he would never leave her ranch either. He'd grown attached to her and she to him. And Jigger had adopted him. He nipped at his heels, herding him toward her and Geronimo playfully nipped back, prancing around him.

  Healing him had filled her days since Cain left and now that he was almost well, she wondered what she would do to keep from going crazy. Not that she didn't have plenty to keep her busy. The training and the work would keep her occupied from morning to night. But it was night that was the hardest. Alone in the house, wishing he was there with his arms around her.

  But she'd resigned herself. He was gone. And no amount of wishing would change that. She'd almost gotten on a plane one day. She'd actually made it as far at the boarding gate, but she'd changed her mind. It wasn't enough, she decided, to want him or even to need him. She wouldn't settle again for a man who didn't, couldn't, love her completely. If that meant she had to go it alone, then so be it. Somehow, she'd do what it took.

  Jigger pranced up to her with a stick in his mouth, wagging his tail. She reached down and took it from him and threw it. The dog took off like a shot, barking happily. Geronimo thundered after him in a game they'd invented between them. Maggie grinned. Maybe this was enough, she thought, crumbling the head of an alfalfa stalk between her fingers and turning back to her task.

  Jigger's barking grew more insistent. And distant. At first, she didn't pay attention. But the longer it went on, the more curious she got. She turned to find dog and horse nearly to the house. A yellow cab was parked in her yard and a man was walking toward her, past Jigger and Geronimo through the thigh-high golden hay.

  Maggie blinked. It couldn't be. He kept walking and she knew it was. No one moved like him.

  For a long moment, her heart stopped and she wondered if he'd just come back for the motorcycl
e he'd left behind. Or perhaps to settle the annulment. But both of those things could have been done long distance. And now, she could see his face, even beneath the brim of his hat. He was smiling.

  The yellow cab pulled away and headed down the road. Maggie moved toward him. Hesitantly at first, then faster. Cain's long strides covered the ground between them in a few more seconds. They both stopped a few feet apart. Maggie's breath was coming fast. He looked good. So damned good. All remnants of his beating were gone. Still there was the smile that stalled her pulse and the look that made her knees go soft. "Cain."

  "Maggie. How are you?"

  His deep voice vibrated through her. "Fine. You?"

  "Better. Now." His gaze traveled over her face until she felt it flush with heat.

  "Your … um, ribs?"

  "Good as new," he said as Jigger bounced around him like a windup toy, hungry for a pat. He reached down and ruffled the dog's fur. "It's my heart that isn't doing so well."

  "Your heart?" she asked worriedly. Had the beating he took done damage they hadn't recognized?

  "Yeah," he said. "I've been having this pain—" he fisted his hand just beneath his chest. "Right here. Started the day I left and just kept getting worse."

  Maggie frowned, not sure what to think. "Have you seen a doctor?"

  He shook his head slowly, the smile disappearing. "Nah. I knew what it was. See, I'd left a piece of it here. And I knew the only thing to do was to come back for it."

  Maggie's lips parted and she stared at him. He took a step closer to her as she drank him in.

  "Took me awhile, because I'm thickheaded. I had some thinking I had to do. Some things I had to sort through. Know what I found?"

  She shook her head.

  "That you were right," he said. "I was afraid of letting go of the past, of imagining a future. But see, even the present wasn't workin' for me anymore. Not since I met you, Maggie. Day, night, in the shower, herding cattle—all I could see was your face. The way you always could make me smile. All I could imagine was having you in my arms again, holding you, feeling your mouth on mine."