by Diana Palmer
“I’ll bet he watches it.”
“Not Troy,” she said with a sigh.
He glanced at her as he backed the truck around and started through the open gate. “He’s pretty staid, I guess.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “He has to be. He’s a teacher, you know.”
“Does he like kids?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Not much. But he does say we have to have a son to inherit the ranch when we’re gone.”
He made a rough sound in his throat.
“Something you should be thinking about, too,” she chided. “An heir.”
His breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t let himself think about children. He stared at the road ahead, trying not to react to the words.
“Does Delina like children?” she persisted.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Don’t you talk to her?”
His hand clenched on the steering wheel.
“Sorry,” she said quickly, thinking that she’d put her foot in her mouth. He probably slept with the woman… She closed her eyes on the painful thought.
He saw that, and knew why she’d done it. He let out a long, weary sigh. He couldn’t bear to hurt her, not in any way at all. “I don’t sleep with her, Abby,” he said after a minute. He stared at his hands on the steering wheel instead of at her shocked face. He glanced at her after a minute and his eyes slid all over her as if they were hands. He looked back at the road. “I haven’t slept with anyone. Not for four years.”
He was telling her something utterly profound. She caught her breath. “Oh, Chayce!”
It was more a groan than a whisper. Her face was tormented.
He wasn’t feeling much better himself. The whole damned situation was giving him fits. Abby was going to marry a man she didn’t love, a man who wanted to change every unique thing about her. She didn’t seem to mind that Troy found fault with her, but he did. It wounded him. He kept telling himself that she needed a younger man, but why did it have to be Troy?
He drew in a worried breath. “Where are you going to look for a gown?” he asked.
“In Whitehorn, of course.”
“There’s only one good shop there.”
“I know.”
He didn’t say another word. He turned on the radio and gave every indication of listening to the news. Abby stared out the window and thought of how empty her life had become.
The dress shop was small, but it was the place local brides went to choose their gowns. The owner, a delicate little lady in her sixties, had been a famous couture designer in her youth and had retired to Whitehorn years before. Her name was Madame Lili.
“Yes, I have heard that you were to marry this summer,” the tiny little woman said, with a moue of distaste as she looked at Abby’s current manner of dressing herself. “Would you like to see some samples of the gowns I’ve made recently?”
“Yes, thank you,” Abby said, surprised that Chayce had come into the shop with her. He settled in a chair near the window and just stared, his face hard and impassive.
Abby looked as the smaller woman pulled out gown after gown, but there was no enthusiasm in her. At least, not until the owner produced a sample that she’d been working on. Abby’s gasp brought Chayce out of his chair. He moved close to her, his lean hand going out to touch the delicate lace of the Victorian wedding gown.
It was made of satin, with exquisite lace trim. It had embroidered flowers on the skirt and bodice, overlaid with more lace. Its sleeves were puffed at the shoulder, mutton-leg sleeves that narrowed and came to a point over the back of the hand. The cuff was embroidered, too.
“It is frightfully expensive,” Madame Lili said. “But worth the price, don’t you think?”
“Well worth it,” Chayce said. He looked down at Abby with eyes dark with pain. “It will…suit her.”
She looked back at him with her heart in her face.
Madame glanced from one to the other. “A handsome couple you make,” she murmured with a smile. “You will want a veil, yes?”
Abby started to speak. Chayce caught her hand in his and pressed her fingers.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “She’ll want a veil. Something long and delicate,” he added, searching Abby’s face covetously.
“I have just the thing! One moment…!”
The little woman went into the back of the shop.
“She thinks…we’re marrying each other,” Abby murmured.
He tilted her sad face up to his and searched her eyes. With a long, hungry sigh, he bent his head and touched his lips tenderly to hers. This, she thought, is the way a man would kiss a new bride, with breathless tenderness.
A sob broke from her lips.
He lifted his head and looked at her tormentedly. “God, Abby!” he breathed roughly.
She touched his hard mouth, trying to fight back tears.
Before she could speak, Madame was back, pretending not to notice the tension in the air.
“Here,” she said, proferring a long lace-trimmed veil with the same embroidery that graced the gown, all of it supported by a tiny cap lavishly sewn with seed pearls. “It matches the gown perfectly, yes?”
“Yes,” Abby said. She touched it, her face drawn. “But I don’t think…”
“She’ll have it,” Chayce said curtly. “The dress, too.”
“But, Chayce,” Abby argued.
“She’ll need your measurements,” he told Abby. He turned to Madame Lili. “Will you bill me, or shall I give you my credit card?”
“You are Mr. Derringer, yes?” she asked with a smile at his faint surprise. “I shall bill you. And may I offer my congratulations?”
“I’m not marrying Mr. Derringer,” Abby said without looking at Chayce. “He’s my guardian.”
Madame was visibly taken aback. “Forgive me! I thought…” She laughed nervously. “Of course, there is an affection between you. I was mistaken. Come, my dear, let us take your measurements.”
Chayce went out to the truck with his hands deep in his pockets, morose and anguished. Of course Madame had been mistaken. Abby was fond of him, just as he was fond of her. She’d marry Troy and learn to love him. He was close to her own age, a hard worker and a fine man.
Sure, he thought irritably as he climbed impatiently into the cab of the truck. He was going to remake Abby into Eve Payne, too, and she was going to let him. He hit the steering wheel hard with his hand, furious at the misery his life had become. Four years he’d stayed away, kept his distance, protected Abby from his headlong ardor. And it hadn’t made a difference at all. He looked at her and wanted her. He touched her and she was his, yielded and hungry and full of secret fires.
His eyes closed. He had to stop this. He was too old for her. She’d loved him all her life and she was just confused. It had to be gratitude and affection, along with a natural curiosity about sex. He was kidding himself that it could be anything more, at her age. He excited her, but Troy could probably do that, too, if he approached her in the right way. He couldn’t risk his future and her happiness on some crazy juvenile impulse. Besides, he’d had a taste of love eternal, hadn’t he? Beverly had taken him for a hell of a ride when he was only a few years older than Abby was now, and he’d never recovered.
He tried to picture Abby going from his arms to another man’s and failed miserably. She couldn’t even let her fiancé touch her. His eyes closed. Dear God, when he thought of her in that wedding gown, he felt sick. Troy would probably complain about the expense of the dress and the fact that Chayce had bought it for her. He wouldn’t care how glorious she looked in it, because he didn’t really think much of the way she dressed. He’d keep her in garments suited to elderly ladies and lose his temper if she tried to wear anything that showed her exquisite figure.
She was coming out of the boutique, walking slowly back toward the truck, her face hardly that of a woman expecting to be a bride within a month. She looked more like a condemned prisoner going to the gallows
.
Without even thinking, he got out and went around to open the door for her. It was an act of old-world courtesy that was as much a part of him as his black hair with the silver sprinkled around his temples.
She smiled with pleasant surprise, because Troy didn’t open doors for her, ever, despite his old-fashioned ideas in other ways. But to Abby, it was another indication of Chayce’s affection for her that he did, the protectiveness that denoted his personality. She looked at him and thought how he’d be with a child, gentle and nurturing, and ferocious if it were threatened.
The thought brought tears to her eyes. She lowered them quickly as she went to climb into the truck. He caught her waist, gently holding her back, bending from his great height to look into her misty eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly, wiping the tears away with his forefinger.
She bit her lip, hard. “Nothing…”
His hand lingered on her soft cheek. “Tell me, sweetheart.”
She looked up, anguished. “I was thinking how you’d be with a child…” She averted her eyes from his shocked face and took a steadying breath. “Don’t mind me. I’m crazy from the sun, I guess. We’d better go.”
She sidestepped him and climbed up into the cab. She didn’t look at him as he closed the door or when he got in beside her and started the truck.
He couldn’t talk to her. His mind was spinning, too, and not from the sun. He’d refused to think about having a child. But when Abby had mentioned it, his whole body had gone rigid. It was all too easy to see her with a baby in her arms, and toddlers clinging to her skirts. He could picture her in the kitchen with Becky, making cookies and cakes, or outside in the yard catching baseballs or flying kites. Abby had that sort of personality, and she loved children so much.
He pressed down on the accelerator, only anxious to get home and get away from her. Perhaps he could find something to do out of town. God knew, he’d managed that very well over the long four years since she went away to school and only came home for brief visits.
She watched the fields go past the window and never really saw them. Her future seemed so uncertain, so frightening. She clasped her hands tight in her lap and tried to imagine driving around with Troy and a child or two. He was a teacher—but his pupils were of high school age. She’d only seen him with one of his cousin’s young sons. He hadn’t liked the boy and it showed. He didn’t get along with young children. Chayce, on the other hand, seemed to forever have the cowhands’ children on his heels when he was around the ranch. He attracted them the way honey brings flies.
“You’re very quiet,” he remarked when they were almost home.
She stared at her hands. “There’s not much to say, is there?” she replied. “Except…thank you for the wedding gown.”
He didn’t answer her. He slowed for the turnoff that led to the ranch, easily controlling the big truck, and left a dust trail behind him.
When he pulled up in the yard, it was still deserted. He came around to open the door. Abby stepped out, right into the path of a bumblebee. It hit her cheek and she yelped.
“What is it?” Chayce asked, turning on his heel when he heard her cry out.
“A bee!”
He moved close, tilting her face up to his. “Did it sting you? Where?”
“I…I don’t know!” She had a terror of flying insects, a holdover from childhood. She pushed at her hair, afraid that it might be caught there.
Chayce drew her hands down. “Let me look, sweetheart,” he coaxed, tilting her face up. He studied it, looking for any sign of a sting, but she seemed to be all right, beyond having had a fright. Tears were in her eyes. Her face was flushed. He winced at the lingering traces of fear. “Here, now,” he said softly, brushing away the tears that spilled over her eyelids. “It’s all right. I’m not going to let anything hurt you, not anything at all.” As if he couldn’t help himself, he bent and put his mouth against her wet eyelids, absorbing the tears.
Abby was so stunned, so overwhelmed, by the tenderness, that she almost stopped breathing. Her face lifted to his mouth like a flower to the sun. She could barely get her breath at all.
He drew her into his arms and held her against him while his mouth gently touched her eyes, her wet cheeks, and finally, finally, her parted lips.
She stood in his embrace without a hint of struggle, loving his mouth against hers, loving the breathless sweetness of his touch.
“Couldn’t you pretend to struggle?” he whispered against her warm, eager mouth.
“I don’t know how,” she whispered back. Her eyes were closed. She stood on tiptoe to tempt him into lowering his head again.
His big, lean hands slid into her hair and tilted her head at just the right angle. She didn’t look, but she could feel his eyes on her before he bent again. This time the kiss wasn’t tender. It was hard and rough and deep.
She gasped as his arms tightened, riveting her to his lean body there in the deserted yard. She lifted her arms around him and held on for dear life, so enthralled that she couldn’t think past the moment. He tasted of coffee and his mouth was every dream she’d ever had.
He bit her lower lip and lifted his head, violence in his black eyes as they stared, unblinking, into her yielded gray ones. “Why did you have to start talking about children?” he asked half angrily.
Her gaze fell to his hard mouth. “Is that…why?”
“Does he like children?” he asked.
Her gaze fell once more to his broad chest. “Not much.”
“And you do,” he said huskily. “You love them.”
She leaned her forehead against him with a miserable sigh. “Don’t make it worse than it already is,” she pleaded quietly. “You’ve already said that you don’t want me in any conventional way.”
His hands tightened on her waist. “He won’t like the wedding gown, Abby,” he said grittily. “He won’t like the idea that I bought it for you, either.”
“I don’t care. It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen.”
“Only because you’ll be wearing it,” he said quietly.
She lifted her eyes. His were sad and quiet and intent. “Will you marry Delina?” she asked softly.
His face was like stone. He searched her face slowly, with a kind of deep-buried anguish. “I don’t love her.”
“Is love really necessary?” she asked on a hollow laugh. “Most people make do with what they can get. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Don’t talk like that!” he muttered. “He’s a good man, Abby. He’s young and steady.”
“He could be perfection on a white horse and it wouldn’t matter,” she replied. Her eyes met his accusingly. “And you know why, Chayce.”
He let her go, inch by inch, as if it hurt him to let her go. He stood back. “This is all my fault,” he said. “I should never have come home.” He drew in a long breath. “I’ve got some things to see about. I might as well do them before the wedding. But I’ll be back in time to give you away,” he added firmly.
He was closing doors. He couldn’t have made it plainer. He was going away, to remove temptation from their paths. She’d lose him all over again. But did it matter? She was hurting so badly inside that she thought she might bleed to death in front of him. And she couldn’t say so, or show it. Because he didn’t want her love, or even her. Not for keeps.
She turned away. “As you wish,” she said in a subdued, careless tone.
He watched her walk toward the house with impotent fury in his black eyes. She didn’t want to marry Troy. She was going to do it only because she knew she couldn’t have Chayce, and they both knew it.
For the first time in four years, he wondered if he was doing the right thing by turning his back on the love Abby wanted to give him. If only there were some way that he could be sure of her feelings for him!
But all he could do was step back and let her decide for herself what she wanted to do with her life. His part in all this was something he
didn’t dare think about. He should never have touched her in the first place. He’d had no right! If he’d left her alone, none of this would have happened.
With a rough sigh, he followed her toward the house. He was going to pack a suitcase and do what was best for everyone. He wouldn’t permit himself to think of the consequences.
Chapter Four
It didn’t surprise Abby one bit to find Chayce gone when she came back downstairs an hour later. It only surprised her that he’d waited three days to go. He wasn’t going to give her a chance to change his mind about things. He wanted her to marry Troy and he’d gone away to make sure she didn’t back out.
But after the way he’d been in the boutique that morning, she could no longer bear the thought of spending her life with Troy. It might be the best thing, but she hadn’t the nerve for it. To cold-bloodedly marry a man she didn’t love seemed the worst sort of betrayal of everything those vows meant.
Becky glanced up from the magazine she was reading out in the kitchen when Abby came in.
“I’m baking some cookies,” she said with a smile. “Want some iced tea?”
Abby shook her head. “How’s your sister?” she asked.
“She sprained her ankle. She’s at home propped up in bed with five new romance novels and a box of chocolates,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m thinking about spraining my own ankle…”
“You wicked thing!” Abby teased. She went to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup.
“You don’t like coffee,” Becky said.
“I wish it was arsenic,” Abby replied miserably, sitting down at the kitchen table with the older woman.
“Don’t tell me Chayce is gone again.”
“How did you know?”
“Saw the Mercedes backing out of the garage about an hour ago,” she replied. “He left a fire trail behind him. You two have a fight?”
“No, we didn’t. That’s why he left.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He got funny after he saw the wedding gown,” she replied sadly. “He said I had to have it, despite how expensive it was, and then he started talking about how good Troy was going to be for me. That was just after he’d said that Troy was trying to make me into Eve Payne and I shouldn’t let him change me.”