“Sit down. Have some coffee with me while I try to get some breakfast into the little one.”
She nodded in the direction of a little girl of about six, who stared silently at Abby with wide cornflower-blue eyes. Abby sat down opposite her and smiled. “Are you Penny?”
The child continued to stare, and Abby looked to Jacinta for help.
“The little one does not speak.”
“Why not?”
“She could speak once, but she has not said a word since her mother died two years ago. So perhaps it is from sadness.” She looked at Abby for confirmation. “Do you think so?”
“If it isn’t, we have a strange sort of coincidence.”
Penny lowered her head to eat her cereal. A shaft of light from the window illuminated the golden blond curls that fell to her shoulders.
“What beautiful hair you have,” Abby murmured. “Like sunshine.”
Penny looked up with a strange expression that Abby couldn’t read. Then she picked up a piece of biscuit from her plate and offered it to Abby, who took it.
“Thank you. How did you know I was hungry?”
Penny picked up her glass of milk and offered that, too. Abby looked down at the cup filled with steaming black coffee that Jacinta had placed before her. “May I have some of your milk for my coffee?”
The child handed her the glass. Abby stirred some milk into her cup, then took a spoonful of the lightened coffee and added it to Penny’s glass, again stirring carefully.
“I’ll wait while you finish the cereal Jacinta made for you, and then we’ll have our biscuits and coffee together.”
Abby turned away and smiled at Jacinta, who nodded in response. “I am happy to see you, but why have you come?”
“To see Hank.”
Jacinta gave her a knowing look. “I am glad you are as impressed with Senor Matthews as he is with you.”
Abby held up a hand. “Hold on, now. Don’t get the wrong idea about this visit.”
“You are not interested in the senor?”
“He’s very nice, Jacinta, but no, I’m not interested in him. At least, not in the way you hope.”
“If you’re not here to see me, why did you come?”
Abby turned with a start to find Hank lounging against the doorframe. “I did come to see you,” she said with a smile. “I just didn’t come a-courting.”
He laughed heartily, then took a cup from the sideboard and seated himself between Abby and Penny. “Mornin’, little one. How are you today?” He bent down and kissed the top of his daughter’s head.
His eyes shone as the child reached for him; he slid her onto his lap and folded his arms about her little body. Abby felt her own eyes fill with moisture as she watched them embrace, awed by the gentleness of the man. A woman could count herself lucky to be loved by him. Some woman...
Penny started to wriggle, and when he loosened his hold, she slid to the floor and went to Jacinta.
Hank took a sip from his cup, then asked, “What’s up?”
“The kids at the school told me that they have permission to visit the ranch whenever they like. If you think you could handle the whole bunch at once, I’d like to bring them out for a day.”
“How come?”
“Yesterday I took them on an outing to the Buttes. They seemed to relax around me for the first time, a feeling I’m hoping will carry over into the classroom. But whether it helps or not, I did promise one more trip--out here--if you agree. What do you think?”
“I don’t see any problem with that. How about Friday? Things are slow right now, so I can get some of my hands to help out. The only real hitch I can see would be bad weather. Barring that, I’d say come ahead.”
He turned to Jacinta, who had been brushing Penny’s hair while listening to the conversation and was now weaving the strands into a single thick golden braid. “Would you mind preparing a barbecue for the children?”
“Of course not. It will be my pleasure.”
Penny walked over to Abby and timidly took her hand. Abby looked down at the girl, who waited expectantly. “Would you like to take a walk?” Penny nodded her head. “Well then, get your coat. You can give me a tour.”
Penny held Abby’s hand as she led her to the stables, to the nearest pasture and to her tree house, which they explored thoroughly. By the time they were back on the ground once more Penny was exhausted. Abby lifted the child on her shoulders and carried her to her room, where she gently lowered her to the bed and covered her with an afghan. Penny’s eyelids were heavy with fatigue, but she struggled to stay awake. Abby sat on the edge of the bed and took a tiny hand in hers.
“Don’t fight sleep, love. Let it come, so you’ll have energy to play again when you wake up.” The child’s bottom lip began to tremble. “Now, now,” Abby crooned. “Don’t be sad. I’ll come and visit again. I promise.”
Abby leaned down to place a kiss on Penny’s forehead and felt the girl’s arms slip around her neck. Abby lifted her and held her tightly for a moment, then lowered her once more.
“I’ll be back, Penny.”
Penny sighed and closed her eyes; in seconds she was asleep. Abby slipped out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. She paused in the hallway, leaning against the wall for a moment and closing her eyes to a sudden, stinging rush of tears. The sleeping child seemed to tug at her, and she fought the impulse to reenter the darkened room.
“Damn you, Colton,” she whispered viciously. “You can’t take them all on. Leave this one alone.”
She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and went down to the kitchen, where Hank and Jacinta waited.
“So, it’s okay for Friday?” Abby asked as Hank helped her into her jacket.
“Sure,” he answered. “You bring ’em on out. We’ll make it a good day for them.”
Cat mentioned the trip at dinner that evening. “I hear you’re taking the kids out to Hank’s place on Friday.”
“How did you hear that?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.
He shrugged. “Sources.”
“Your sources are correct. I can count on you to help, can’t I?”
“I don’t think so.” His face was hidden behind a cloud of cigarette smoke; his tone was cold.
Abby found it impossible to conceal her disappointment. “What’s the problem?”
He could feel her eyes on him as he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and took his dishes to the sink. She was waiting for an answer, and he didn’t have one. At least, not one that he could voice. He ran his fingers through his hair, then lit another cigarette. The truth is, he thought, you just don’t want her to go out there. And it doesn’t matter that she’ll have twenty--excuse me, eighteen--assorted children with her, God knows how many ranch hands and dear Jacinta between her and him. He’ll be there and she’ll be there, and that’s driving you crazy. But it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t matter a damn what she does or doesn’t do, or who she’s with...
He looked at her for a moment, and with his heart thudding heavily beneath his ribs, brushed past her. He grabbed his jacket from its peg and left. She called out to him, but he kept going, out the back door and along the side of the house, heading nowhere in particular. Once he reached the open air he felt calmer and merely perched on the front porch rail. He grimaced in the dark; he didn’t have to go far to regain his equilibrium, just anywhere she wasn’t. Not a good sign, that. And he was in no mood to speculate why.
He groaned deep in his throat as he heard the screen door open. He traced her footsteps as she came around the corner and stopped to call his name. Fighting the impulse to hightail it out of there, he answered, “I’m over here.” Abby saw a cigarette glowing in the shadows of the porch overhang. She climbed the steps to join him at the rail, where he sat with one leg propped against the newel post and his back against an upright. She stood silently, trying to sort out her feelings, trying to find a way to communicate without violating the distance he always maintained.
&nb
sp; “What are you doing out here?” He spoke in a tired, throaty whisper.
“I came to find out why you’re angry with me.”
“I’m not... angry,” he growled.
“Oh, no,” she chided. “Not much.”
Just then a gust of wind tore through her, and she realized that she’d left the house without a coat. She shivered. “God, it’s cold.”
He stirred in his place. “Come here.”
When she was close enough he opened his jacket and wrapped it around her, adding her body heat to his own and sending his senses into turmoil. They huddled silently for a long time, until finally she spoke.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Ajustan, Abby.”
“What does that mean?”
“Let it lay,” he translated impatiently. “Just leave it alone.”
“Okay.”
He responded with a grunt, but made no move to turn her loose, for fear of ending his sweet torment. For her part, Abby was content to stay put, tucked inside his jacket, sheltered in his arms, with her head on his shoulder. Time passed, and neither noticed or cared how much. But gradually Abby became aware of Cat’s quickening heartbeat thrumming against her arm where it was caught between them. Her own pulse responded, sending the blood coursing hotly through her body.
As a warning sounded in her brain she leaned back against his arm, trying to see his expression in the darkness. “What are you thinking?” she asked quietly.
He pulled her close for a moment, then spoke in a voice husky with feeling. “I’m thinking we’d better go inside.”
She nodded silently against his shoulder, her hair brushing the side of his face. He pressed a kiss onto the crown of her head, and they went into the house, which was dark except for the glow of a fire in the hearth.
Abby stood with her back against the door, looking up at his face, willing her heart to cease its erratic pounding and getting no cooperation. Cat removed his jacket and tossed it on the hall table. Then he leaned forward, with a hand against the wall to either side of her head, and seemed to examine her as she waited for the kiss she both feared and craved.
He took her face in his hands, brushing the hair back from her forehead, passing his thumbs gently across her eyebrows and down her cheeks, and touching her lips lightly, outlining them from corner to corner. He lifted her chin, studying her again: her mouth, her eyes, her mouth once more.
She slipped her hands to his waist and moved closer, knowing his body would be rock-hard and warm, then reached up and locked her fingers behind his neck. The movement molded them together from breast to belly to thigh in heart-stopping discovery, and with a soft moan he wrapped his strong arms around her and lowered his mouth to hers.
Abby felt his lips soft and cool as he moved from her mouth to her closed eyelids, her cheek, the corner of her mouth and then to her lips once more. But behind his control she sensed an aching passion that struggled to break free. That thought set the blood searing in her veins and started a liquid fire spreading through her. She tangled her fingers in the thick mass of his heavy, black hair and held on as her body trembled with need for him; her lips parted beneath his gently probing tongue and answered its quest with her own. And because it was all new to her, and because he was new to her, she let herself feel every wonderful, joyous sensation he aroused.
His hands were on her back, fingers splayed out across her spine, with his head beside hers and his lips against her ear, when he suddenly took a ragged breath and whispered desperately, “No more!”
He pushed her away, his features hard and distorted with emotion. His hands on her shoulders trembled; his chest rose and fell rapidly as he fought for control. Confused, Abby reached out and put a hand on his arm, but his torment was so obvious that she found it impossible to speak more than his name, softly, tentatively, with a question in her voice.
The eyes that looked at her were filled with denial of what they had just shared, and he whispered fiercely, “Go on up to bed!”
She would have challenged his right to order her around, but found herself biting back her words. The flames flickering just beyond his right shoulder seemed to find an echo in his eyes, eyes that burned with a great inner fire--but whether of passion or anger she could no longer tell. She only knew that the hard lines at the corners of his mouth and the set of his jaw were warning signs to be heeded.
She inclined her head and silently brushed past him. At the foot of the stairs she turned to look at him. His eyes were on her, black and unfathomable. She would have returned to his side, but he seemed to know that and held his arm out, palm extended toward her, as if to warn her off. Then he moved into the living room, and she heard the faint sigh of seat cushions as he lowered himself to the couch. Stunned, shaking with a newly aroused desire that could not be assuaged, Abby climbed the stairs to her room and softly closed the door behind her, certain she would get no sleep. She was right.
Cat was not at breakfast the next morning. He’d gone into the hills, Martha said, to do some thinking. When questioned about his return, he’d said, “When I’m in control again.”
“Funny thing,” Martha added. “He didn’t eat, not anything at all.” She hesitated as she watched Abby push away the plate holding her own breakfast and merely reach for her coffee cup. “Don’t seem like anyone’s got much appetite today.”
Abby stood by the window of the school board office, looking out at a perfect late-spring day. The color of the sky had deepened to cobalt-blue; the clouds were fluffy white and scudded across in a freshening breeze. New-green grass and leafy buds shimmered in the sunlight, and the air through the open window smelled clean and rich with new life. I wonder if Cat is seeing this beauty, she thought, and from what vantage point? He’d been away for three weeks, and no one knew where.
The members of the board filed in and took their seats. Abby moved to the center of the room and they exchanged greetings.
“You have a problem?” John Hunter asked.
“You know, of course, that I took the children out to the Matthews ranch a few weeks ago. We’re still discussing their experiences, and they refer back to that day repeatedly, so I’d like to schedule a series of such trips to places where they can see people working at various types of jobs. It’s important that they know what’s out there, and that they begin to think about what might be right for each of them.”
“Those options you talked about when you first came here?”
“Exactly,” she replied.
“What about their schoolwork?” someone asked.
“This may provide a special incentive,” Emma interjected, “to work hard in order to spend time away from the classroom.” She looked from John to Abby and smiled. “I know you’ve taken that into consideration.”
“I have. I would rearrange our classroom schedules, rework my study plans to incorporate the things they’ll be learning on these trips, and make sure to have supplementary reading material on hand.”
“This will make a lot of extra work for you, won’t it?” Abby nodded. “Yes, but I think it will be worth it.” “You gonna expect extra pay?”
Abby turned to examine the man who had asked the question. In his forties, dressed in a blue denim work shirt and worn jeans, his belligerence plain on his weathered face, Claude Schiller lounged arrogantly against the back of his chair and waited for Abby to respond to his challenge. Her face went hot with anger and embarrassment, and for a moment she found herself without words. Then she walked over to stand directly in front of him. She leaned forward and looked into his eyes, bracing herself against the table with her outstretched arms.
“I hadn’t planned on it,” she replied with exaggerated sweetness, “but now that you were kind enough to mention it. Instead of completing her sentence she gave him a smile to match her tone of voice and pulled back.
Emma chuckled. “Put away your knife, Claude.”
Abby looked at him pointedly. “Are there any more questions?”
/>
He grinned and held up a hand in denial. “I never make the same mistake twice in the same day.”
Abby laughed. “You can have another shot at me next time.”
Without the formality of a vote, the board agreed that Abby’s plan deserved a test.
Their trips into the “world of work” proved to be a great success. A driver was recruited, and the school bus that had once transported children to school in Crossroads was overhauled for their use. In one of a series of letters to Arthur, designed to keep him up-to-date on developments in the school, Abby wrote with amazement that her relationship with the children was “better than I could have imagined--with such an exchange of ideas and feelings that I’m learning as much as I’m teaching. Glorious!”
During their correspondence she asked Arthur for funds to purchase equipment and supplies, noting that the school board probably had no money left for such things after paying her salary. Arthur came through for her, writing that the money would soon be on its way and to expect to hear from the board. And hear from them she did, although not in the way she’d expected.
Cat came to the school late one afternoon as she was going over the next day’s study plan. He stood in the doorway watching her work, reliving the last time they’d been together and their passionate response to each other. The mere thought of those moments stirred him. His dark eyes traced her profile, lingering on the curve of her cheek and the lips he remembered as both sweetly soft and demanding beneath his. Damn! He thought angrily. I came here to do a job, not gawk like a schoolboy. But he stood and watched.
Sensing his presence, Abby turned and saw him lounging against the door frame, his arms folded across his chest and one ankle crossed casually over the other. She remembered the feel of those strong arms around her and the muscled hardness of his chest beneath her cheek, and was glad to see him. Then she looked at his eyes, which by now had become the barometers of his anger, and at his mouth as it narrowed into a grim line, and knew that his coming to see her was bad news.
Colton's Folly (Native American contemporary romance) Page 7