Palomino

by Danielle Steel

  “You like to ride, don't you?” She nodded. “Well, it's a beautiful place and it's about as different and as far from Madison Avenue as you can get. Maybe what you need is to park your fancy business wardrobe and pour that sexy body of yours into some jeans and chase cowboys for a while.”

  “Very funny, that's all I need.” But the idea had struck some kind of chord. She hadn't seen Caroline in years. She and John had stopped to visit her once, it had been a three-hour drive north and east from L.A. and John had hated it. He didn't like the horses, thought the ranch was uncomfortable, and Caroline and her foreman had looked askance at him for his prissy city ways. A horseman he wasn't, but Samantha was an elegant horsewoman. She had been since she was a child. There had been a wild pinto pony on the ranch when they visited and she had ridden it, to Caroline's dismay. But she hadn't gotten hurt in spite of the horse throwing her half a dozen times as she tried to help break him to the saddle, and John had been instantly impressed by her skill. It had been a happy time in Sam's life and seemed a long time in the past as she looked up at Charlie now. “I'm not even sure she'd have me. I don't know, Charlie. It's a crazy idea. Why don't you guys just leave me alone to finish my work?”

  “Because we love you, and you're going to destroy yourself like this.”

  “No, I'm not.” She smiled valiantly at him, and slowly he shook his head.

  “It doesn't matter what you say to me now, Sam. It was Harvey's decision.”

  “What was?”

  “Your leave of absence.”

  “It's definite, then?” Once again she looked shocked and again he nodded his head.

  “As of today. Three and a half months leave, and you can extend it to six if you want.” They had called the station to ascertain Liz's due date, and tacked two more weeks on from there.

  “And I won't lose my job?”

  “No.” He slowly pulled a letter out of his pocket and gave it to Samantha to read. It was from Harvey and guaranteed her job even if she stayed away for six months. It was unheard of in their business, but as Harvey had put it, Samantha Taylor was “a fairly extraordinary girl.”

  Sam looked up sadly at Charlie. “Does this mean I'm off as of today?” Her lower lip trembled.

  “That's what it means, lady. You're on vacation as of right now. Hell, I wish I were.”

  “Oh, my God.” She sank into a chair and covered her face with one hand. “Now what am I going to do, Charlie?”

  He gently touched her shoulder. “Do what I told you, baby. Call your old friend on that ranch.”

  It was a mad suggestion, but after he left, she began to think about what she was going to do. She went to bed still in a state of shock. For the next three and a half months, she was out of a job. She had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing she wanted to see, and no one to see it with. For the first time in her adult life she was totally without plans. All she had to do was have one meeting with Harvey the next morning to explain everything on her desk and after that she was free. As she lay there in the dark, feeling frightened, suddenly she began to giggle. It was crazy really, what the hell was she going to do with herself until April 1? April fool… the joke's on you… Europe? Australia? A visit to her mother in Atlanta? For an instant she felt freer than she ever had before. When she had left Yale, she had had John to think of, and now she had no one at all. And then, on an impulse, she reached for her address book in the darkness and decided to follow Charlie's advice. She flicked on the light and found the number easily under L. It would be nine thirty in California, and she hoped that it wasn't too late to call.

  The phone was answered on the second ring by the familiar smoky voice of Caroline Lord. There followed a lengthy explanation on Sam's part, friendly silences from Caroline as she spoke, and then a strange, anguished sob as Samlet herself go at last. Then it was like coming home to an old friend. The older woman listened, really listened. She gave Sam a kind of comfort she had forgotten over the years. And when Sam hung up the phone half an hour later, she lay staring at the canopy above her, wondering if maybe she really was going crazy after all. She had just promised to fly to California the following afternoon.

  It was a frenzied morning for Samantha, she packed two suitcases, called the airlines, left a note and a check for the cleaning woman, and attempted to close up the apartment as best she could. Then, with her two suitcases, she took a cab to the office, where she gave Charlie the key to the apartment and promised to send Christmas presents for the boys from the coast. Then she met with Harvey for more than two hours, explaining everything he wanted to know.

  “You know, you don't have to do this for me, Harvey. It isn't what I want.” Her eyes reached out toward him as they concluded the meeting that would send her on her way.

  He eyed her quietly from across his vast marble and chrome desk. “It isn't what you want, Sam, but it's what you need, whether you know it or not. Are you getting out of town?” He was a tall, spare man with iron-gray hair that he wore as closely cropped as any Marine. He wore white Brooks Brothers shirts, striped suits, looked like a banker, and smoked a pipe, but behind the steely gray eyes was a brilliant mind, a creative spirit, and a rare and beautiful soul. He had been, in a sense, like a father to Samantha, and now that she thought it over, it didn't really surprise her that he was sending her away. But they hadn't spoken of her plans all morning. All they had talked about were the accounts.

  “Yes, I'm going away.” She smiled at him from across the forbidding desk. It was easy to remember how frightened she had been of him at first, and how much she had come to respect him over the years. But the respect was mutual, as she knew. “In fact”—she looked at her watch—“my plane leaves in two hours.”

  “Then get the hell out of my office.” He put his pipe down and grinned, but Sam hesitated for a moment in her chair.

  “You're sure I'll get my job back, Harvey?”

  “I swear it. You have the letter?” She nodded. “Good. Then if you don't get your job back, you can sue me.”

  “That's not what I want. I want the job.”

  “You'll get it, and probably mine eventually too.”

  “I could come back in a few weeks, you know.” She said it tentatively, but he shook his head and the smile faded quickly from his eyes.

  “No, Sam, you can't. April first, and that's it.”

  “For any special reason?” He didn't want to tell her, so again he shook his head.

  “No, that was the date we picked. I'll send you plenty of memos to keep you abreast of what's happening here, and you can call me anytime you want. Does my secretary know where to find you?”

  “Not yet, but she will.”

  “Good.” He came around the desk then and pulled her toward him without saying another word. He held her close for a long moment and then kissed the top of her head. “Take it easy, Sam. We'll miss you.” His voice was gruff and there were tears in her eyes as she held him close for one more moment and then strode rapidly toward the door. For just one tiny instant she felt as though she were being banished from her home, and she felt panic wash over her as she considered begging him not to make her leave.

  But when she left his office, Charlie was waiting for her outside in the hallway, and he smiled gently at her, slung an arm over her shoulders, and gave her a squeeze. “Ready to go, kiddo?”

  “No.” She smiled damply at him and then-sniffed, burrowing closely into his side.

  “You will be.”

  “Yeah? What makes you so sure?” They were walking slowly back to her office, and more than ever she wanted to stay. “This is crazy. You know that, don't you, Charlie? I mean, I have work to do, campaigns to coordinate, I have no right to—”

  “You can keep talking if you want to, Sam, but it won't make any difference.” He looked at his watch. “Two hours from now I'm putting you on that plane.”

  Samantha suddenly stopped walking and turned to look at him belligerently, and he couldn't resist smiling at her. She looked like a v
ery beautiful and totally impossible child. “What if I won't get on it? What if I just won't go?”

  “Then I'll drug you and take you out there myself.”

  “Mellie wouldn't like that.”

  “She'd love it. She's been begging me to get out of her hair all week.” He stopped, eyeing Samantha.

  Slowly she smiled. “I'm not going to talk you out of it, am I?”

  “Nope. Nor Harvey. It really doesn't matter where you go, Sam, but you've got to get the hell out of here, for your own sake. Don't you want to? Don't you want to get away from all the questions, from the memories, from the chance of running into … them?” The word had a painful ring to it, and she shrugged.

  “What difference does it make? When I turn on the news in California, they'll still be there. The two of them. Looking …” Her eyes filled with tears just thinking of those two faces that she was magnetically drawn to every night. She always watched them, and then hated herself for it, wanting to turn the knob to another channel but unable to move her hand. “I don't know, dammit, they just look like they belong together, don't they?” Suddenly her face pulled into a mask of sadness and the tears began to roll down her face. “We never looked like that, did we? I mean—”

  But Charlie said nothing, he only pulled her into his arms. “It's okay, Sam. It's okay.” And then as she cried softly into his shoulder, oblivious of the glances of secretaries hurrying past her, he swept a long strand of the blond hair off her forehead and smiled down at her again. “This is why you need a vacation. I think it's called emotional exhaustion, or hadn't you noticed?”

  She grunted disapproval and then chuckled softly through her tears. “Is that what they call it? Yeah …” She pulled away from him, sighed, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Maybe I do need a vacation.” And then, valiantly swinging her hair back over her shoulders, she attempted to glare at her friend. “But not for the reasons you think. You bastards have just worn me out.”

  “You're damn right we have. And we have every intention of doing so again when you return. So enjoy yourself while you're out there. Horse freak.” A hand on both their shoulders suddenly made them both turn.

  “Haven't you left yet, Samantha?” It was Harvey, pipe clenched in his teeth and a bright light in his eyes. “I thought you had a plane to catch.”

  “She does.” Charlie grinned at her.

  “Then put her on it, for chrissake. Get her out of here. We have work to do.” He smiled gruffly, waved the pipe, and disappeared down another hallway as Charlie looked at her again and saw the sheepish smile.

  “You don't really have to put me on the plane, you know.”

  “Don't I?” She shook her head in answer, but she wasn't paying attention to the art director, she was looking at her office as though for the last time. Charlie caught her expression and he grabbed her coat and bags. “Come on, before you get maudlin on me. Let's catch that plane.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He crossed the threshold and waited, and with two hesitant steps she followed him. With a deep breath and one last glance behind her she softly closed the door.

  The plane ride across the country was uneventful. The country drifted below her like bits and pieces of a patchwork quilt. The rough brown nubby textures of winter fields drifted into snowy white velvets, and as they reached the West Coast there were signs of deep satiny greens and rich shiny blues, as lakes and forests and fields ran beneath them. At last, with a fiery sunset to welcome them, the plane touched down in L.A.

  Samantha stretched her long legs out in front of her, and then her arms as she looked out the window once again. She had dozed most of the way across the country, and now she looked out and wondered why she had come. What point was there in running all the way to California? What would she possibly find there? She knew as she stood up, tossing her long blond mane behind her, that she had been wrong to come all this way. She wasn't nineteen years old anymore. It didn't make any sense to come and hang out on a ranch and play cowgirl. She was a woman with responsibilities and a life to lead, all of which centered around New York. But what did she have there really? Nothing—nothing at all.

  With a sigh she watched the rest of the passengers begin to deplane, and she buttoned her coat, picked up her tote bag, and fell in line. She had worn a dark brown suede coat with a sheepskin lining, jeans, and her chocolate leather boots from Celine. The tote bag she had brought was in the same color and tied around the handle was a red silk scarf, which she took off and knotted loosely around her neck. Even with the worried frown between her eyebrows, and the casual clothes she had worn on the trip, she was still a strikingly beautiful woman, and heads turned as men noticed her making her way slowly out of the giant plane. None of them had seen her during the five-hour trip because she had only left her seat once and that to wash her face and hands before the late lunch that was served. But the rest of the time she had just sat there, numb, tired, dozing, trying to reason out once again why she had let them do this, why she had allowed herself to be talked into coming west.

  “Enjoy your stay. Thank you for flying…” The phalanx of stewardesses spoke the familiar words like a chorus of Rockettes, and Samantha smiled at them in return.

  A moment later Samantha was standing in the Los Angeles airport, looking around with a sense of disorientation, wondering where to go, who would find her, not sure suddenly if they would even meet her at all. Caroline had said that the foreman, Bill King, would probably meet her, and if he wasn't available, one of the other ranch hands would be there. “Just look for them, you can't miss 'em, not in that airport.” And then the old woman had laughed softly, and so had Sam. In an airport filled with Vuitton and Gucci and gold lame sandals and mink and chinchilla and little bikini tops and shirts left open to the navel, it would be easy to spot a ranch hand, in Stetson and cowboy boots and jeans. More than the costume, it would be easy to spot the way they moved and walked, the deep tan of their skin, their wholesome aura as they moved uneasily in the showily decked-out, decadent crowd. Sam already knew from her other visits to the ranch that there would be nothing decadent about the ranch hands. They were tough, kind, hardworking people who loved what they did and had an almost mystical tie to the land that they worked on, the people they worked with, and the livestock they tended with such care. They were a breed Samantha had always respected, but certainly a very different breed than she was accustomed to in New York. For a moment, as she stood there, watching the typical airport chaos, she suddenly realized that once she got to the ranch she would be glad she had come. Maybe this was what she needed after all.

  As she looked around for the sign that said BAGGAGE CLAIM, she felt a hand on her arm. She turned, looking startled, and then she saw him, the tall, broad-shouldered, leathery old cowboy that she remembered instantly from ten years before. He stood towering over her, his blue eyes like bits of summer sky, his face marked like a landscape, his smile as wide as she remembered it; a feeling of great warmth exuded from him as he touched his hat and then enfolded her into a great big bear hug. It was Bill King, the man who had been the foreman on the Lord Ranch since Caroline had bought it some thirty years before. He was a man in his early sixties, a man of slight education, but with vast knowledge, great wisdom, and even greater warmth. She had been drawn to him the first time she'd seen him, and she and Barbara had looked up to him like a wise uncle, and he had championed their every cause. He had come with Caroline to Barbara's funeral and had stood discreetly behind the family with a floodtide of tears coursing down his face. But there were no tears now, there were only smiles for Samantha as the huge hand on her shoulder squeezed her still harder and he gave a small shout of glee.

  “Damn, I'm happy to see you, Sam! How long has it been? Five, six years?”

  “More like eight or nine.” She grinned up at him, equally happy to see him and suddenly delighted that she had come. Maybe Charlie hadn't been so wrong after all. The tall, weathered man looked down at her with a look that told her she h
ad come home.

  “Ready?” He crooked an arm and with a nod and a smile she took it, and they went in search of her baggage, which was already spinning lazily on the turntable when they got downstairs. “This it?” He looked at her questioningly, holding the large black leather suitcase with the red and green Gucci stripe. He held the heavy case easily in one hand, her tote slung over his shoulder.

  “That's it, Bill.”

  He frowned at her briefly. “Then you can't be meaning to stay long. I remember the last time you came out here with your husband. You must have had seven bags between the two of you.”

  She chuckled at the memory. John had brought enough clothes with him for a month at Saint-Moritz. “Most of that was my husband's. We had just been to Palm Springs.”

  He nodded, saying nothing, and then led the way to the garage. He was a man of few words but rich emotions. She had seen that often during her early visits to the ranch. Five minutes later they had reached the large red pickup, stowed her suitcase in the back, and were driving slowly out of the parking lot of the Los Angeles International Airport, and Sam suddenly felt as though she were about to be set free. After the confinement of her life in New York, her job, her marriage, and now the confusion of bodies pressing around her on the plane and then in the airport terminal after the trip, finally she was about to go out to open places, to be alone, to think, to see mountains and trees and cattle, and to rediscover a life she had almost forgotten. As she thought of it, a long, slow smile lit up her face.

  “You look good, Sam.” He cast an eye at her as they left the airport, and he shifted into fourth gear as they reached the freeway beyond.

  But she only smiled and shook her head at him. “Not as good as all that. It's been a long time.” Her voice softened on the words, remembering the last time she had seen him and Caroline Lord. It had been a strange trip, an awkward mingling of past and present. The ranch hadn't been much fun for John. And as they drove along the highway, Sam's mind filled with memories of the last trip. It seemed a thousand years later when she felt the old foreman's hand on her arm, and when she looked around, she realized that the countryside around them had altered radically. There was no evidence of the plastic ugliness of the L.A. suburbs, in fact there were no houses in sight at all, only acres and acres of rolling farmland, the far reaches of large ranches, and uninhabited government preserves. It was beautiful country all around her, and Sam rolled down the window and sniffed the air. “God, it even smells different, doesn't it?”