by Janet Dailey
Still, she concluded when she emerged from the theater, it had been an entertaining two hours. It was dark outside, with only the streetlights illuminating the night. She paused outside the movie house to get her bearings and button her coat while the crowd filed out behind her. The night air was brisk, a suggestion of a nip in its winter temperature that made her breath visible.
The ebb and flow of voices was all around her; the slam of car doors as people began to get into their parked vehicles. Layne adjusted her knitted cap to cover her ears, then thrust her hands into her coat pockets and started to walk in the direction of her own car.
When she crossed the street to the next block, she took only passing notice of the car stopped at the crosswalk. As she reached the other side, a long, low wolf whistle came from the vehicle. Ignoring it, Layne kept walking. The car turned the corner and drove slowly alongside her. In her side vision she could see the two young men in the car with the window rolled down, and she kept facing straight ahead.
“Hey there, good-lookin’, wanna ride?” The grinning one on the passenger side had stuck his head out the window to call the invitation. Layne pretended not to hear. “Bob and me will take you wherever you’re going. Won’t we, Bob?”
Some laughing affirmation came from the driver, but Layne still didn’t respond. In her experience, it was better to ignore such overtures. Invariably these types lost interest if they didn’t get a response. It took the fun out of their game.
“Hey, come on, honey. Don’t be so stuck up,” the first one complained, still in a coaxing tone. “We’re nice guys.”
“Yeah, we wear white hats,” the driver, Bob, added with a laugh.
Glancing ahead, Layne saw the café sign on the next block and calmly continued walking. When the car speeded ahead of her, a faint smile of satisfaction edged her mouth at having once again proved her theory about handling such situations.
A second later she realized she was mistaken. Instead of driving on, the car had pulled up to the curb and parked. The front doors were flung open and the two men, in their early twenties, came piling out and jogged to meet her. Layne halted only an instant, then resolutely continued on. Neither of them looked particularly threatening.
“We decided a pretty girl like you shouldn’t be alone.” The wide-smiling one who had made the first remarks to her quickly shifted direction to fall into step beside her.
“Yeah, and since you didn’t want to ride with us, we decided we would walk with you,” the driver, Bob, added.
Layne resisted the urge to walk faster. The public street was well lighted and heavily traveled, and it was just another short block to the café.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” The one called Bob was walking sideways so he could watch her. A cream-colored cowboy hat was pushed to the back of his head and a thatch of dark hair fell across his forehead. “I don’t remember seeing you around before. How long you been here?”
“And where’ve you been hiding all this time?” The first one swung ahead of her to walk backward. He was huskily built with the thick neck of a football player. “We must be slipping up, Bob, to miss noticing this gal around town.”
“How come she won’t talk to us?” Bob questioned his buddy in a mock demand.
“Maybe she don’t talk to strangers” was the suggestion while Layne determinedly tried not to look at either of them, but this innocent harassment was beginning to strain her nerves.
“Then we’ll introduce ourselves. I’m Bob and he’s Mike.” He quickly solved that problem. “Now, what’s your name?”
On a burst of impatience, Layne broke her self-imposed vow of silence. “Look, guys, I’m not interested. Okay?”
The one identified as Mike grabbed at his chest and staggered in an exaggerated reaction. “She talks! This vision actually has a voice.”
Irritated with herself for giving them anything that might be regarded as encouragement, Layne released an exasperated sigh and quickened her steps to walk faster. The café was just ahead.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Bob wanted to know.
“Yeah, we wanna go there too.” Mike was forced to turn around and walk frontward to keep up with her.
Then Bob spotted the lights of the café. “I’ll bet she’s goin’ in there for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie or something. After a movie you always stop and get something to eat, right?” he reasoned to his pal.
“We can’t have a newcomer to town eat alone. We’ll keep you company, won’t we, Bob?” Mike offered generously.
It didn’t seem wise to have these two jokers follow her to her car, so the café was the logical alternative. Sooner or later they’d get the message that they didn’t appeal to her at all. One of them, Mike, hurried ahead to open the door for her and made a low, mocking bow.
“After you, madam,” he insisted with absurd formality.
Layne was weary of their whole childish game. Inside the café she paused to patiently inform them again of her disinterest. “Look, fellas, you’re wasting your time,” she began. It was a sheer stroke of luck that her glance around the café tables happened to catch sight of Creed sitting alone. His presence provided her with the perfect means to send her persistent suitors on their way with the minimum of argument. “You see, I’m meeting someone,” she announced, smiling coolly.
Their surprise showed, a trace of skepticism gleaming. “Oh, yeah? How come you didn’t say that before?”
Not bothering to reply, Layne walked confidently through the restaurant straight to Creed’s table. Without looking, she knew the two men were trailing hesitantly behind her just to see if she was telling the truth.
Chapter 6
When Layne pulled out the empty chair across from him, Creed looked up, his thick brows lifting slightly in a show of mild curiosity. She sat down, depositing her purse and mittens on the seat of the chair next to hers.
“Hi,” she said brightly and reached for the menu propped beside the napkin holder. “The movie just got out. Have you been here long?”
There was a faint narrowing of his gaze; then it darted to a point beyond her. Layne continued to smile in unconcern, guessing that Creed had spied the two men following her. She heard the shuffle of their footsteps approach the table. When Creed’s glance returned to her, it was cynically hard and speculating.
“About an hour.” He lifted the half-filled cup of coffee in front of him and took a drink of it.
Mike and Bob paused by the table, eyeing Creed with skeptical glances. “Is this the guy you’re meeting?” The doubt in Mike’s voice was almost a challenge. “What is he, some relative?”
“Not hardly,” she laughed and flashed a conspiratorial smile at Creed, but his hard, knowing expression never changed. “You guys can stop pestering me now. I’m not in need of your company.” It was a subtle attempt to explain to Creed that this pair had been giving her a hard time and she was using him for cover.
With unhurried ease Creed pushed out of his chair and towered beside the table. Layne assumed he was using his intimidating size to reinforce her position and send the brash pair on their way. They were already sidling away from the table. Instead Creed reached into his pocket and tossed some change on the table.
“She’s not with me,” Creed told the pair, then slid a dry and challenging look at Layne. “Sorry, but I’m not going to be your patsy. If these boys are bothering you, you’ll have to get rid of them by yourself. You’re a big girl. I’m not going to fight your battles for you.”
Her mouth dropped open in shock. Too stunned to speak, Layne watched in numb disbelief as Creed walked away from the table. He was actually leaving.
The clatter of chair legs being dragged across the floor sharply broke her dazed astonishment. She turned to see Mike and Bob preparing to sit down and join her at the table, laughing at the way she’d been abandoned.
“Shame on you for pretending to be meeting him,” Bob mocked. “Why, anyone would think you didn’t want our compa
ny.”
It took a lot to make Layne lose her temper, but once lit, it had a short fuse. And the way Creed had just walked out on her had been the igniting spark. She pushed stiffly from her chair before either of the two could sit down.
“I’ve had it with both of you!” Her low voice trembled with the seething rage of her anger. “I’ve done everything, short of being downright rude, to make you understand that I want you to bug off! I’m not interested in flirting with you! I don’t want your company! And I don’t want you following me!”
They were stung into reacting. “You don’t have to get so uptight about it,” Mike protested with sullen resentment at this public rejection.
Layne was so furious she was vibrating. She was angry with these would-be Romeos for starting this whole thing and angry with herself for creating a scene in the restaurant. But most of all, she was mad at Creed for abandoning her and forcing her to be so brutal when the whole thing could have been handled with a little tact.
“Nothing else seems to get through your thick heads!” she retorted. “If you so much as look at me again, I’ll call the police and have you arrested.”
“We never did anything to you.” The one called Bob scowled at the threat. Both of them were trying to edge away from her, embarrassed by the onlooking witnesses and trying not to show it.
“Then just stay away from me!”
Angrily, Layne grabbed up her purse and gloves and swiftly crossed the restaurant to storm out the door. She didn’t bother to button her jacket. Her blood was running too hot to feel the chilling draft of winter air.
Outside, she paused only a second to scan the lot of parked vehicles. Layne had no trouble spotting the tall, dark shape moving among the shadows toward a pickup. She pushed off the steps and crossed the graveled lot at a running trot, catching up with Creed as he approached the driver’s side of his truck. She stopped next to the left front fender.
“What was the idea of abandoning me like that in there?” Layne demanded. Creed halted short of the driver’s door, angling his body toward her. “Why wouldn’t you help me get rid of those two?”
His glance made a small sweep of the area just beyond her. “I don’t see them around, so you must have managed on your own.”
“No thanks to you.” Her anger was taking on an impatient facet.
“What did you expect me to do? Maybe get into a fight with those two punks over you?” Creed suggested and released a short, audible breath that derided the idea. “No thanks.”
When he reached for the door handle, Layne crossed the last few steps to grab at his arm and stop him from leaving. “What is it with you?” she demanded. “You haven’t liked me from the start. Why? What have I ever done to you?”
“You’ve got all the rest tied around your finger. Why don’t you be content with that?” Creed challenged in a low, harsh voice.
“What are you talking about?” She was impatient with his avoidance of a direct answer.
“You flattered Mattie into hiring you, saying you’d write a story about her. Hoyt grins like a damned puppy anytime you’re around. And you’ve even got Stoney looking after you like a Dutch uncle. But you aren’t going to be happy until you add me to the list,” he muttered roughly.
“Since when is it wrong to want people to like you?” Layne snapped, her hands moving to her hips in a challenging and defiant stance. “Every time I try to be friendly to you, I end up talking to the wind.”
“You want to be my friend? Then take the hint and leave me alone.” The natural huskiness in his voice became more pronounced as its pitch deepened to vibrate through her.
Confused and incredulous, Layne could only protest his unreasoning attitude toward her. “What is it with you? Do I suddenly acquire two heads when you look at me? Is it the way I dress? The way I talk? What is it about me that you can’t stand?”
An exasperated sigh, heavily laced with anger, came from him as Creed briefly looked away, then leveled his gaze at her once more. There was less than a foot between them in this confrontation. A streetlamp threw a harsh light across the blunt, angular features of his unhandsome face.
“Lately you’ve done everything but stand on your head to get me to notice you. If it makes you feel any better, I have noticed you’ve got hair the red-brown color of a newborn calf—and how sweet-smelling your skin is.” A tautness was coming into his voice, a fiercely checked roughness that quivered along her nerve ends.
The tension between them seemed to take on a different quality that electrified her senses. The underlying heat was still there, but it was more sexual in origin. The beat of her pulse became shallow and uneven as a threat of confusion began to weave itself into her emotions.
“And I’ve noticed your lips,” Creed was continuing, his voice dropping lower and lower. “The way they—” His mouth came shut on the incomplete sentence, the angle of his jaw hardening.
His large hands reached out and snared her arms before Layne could jump backward to elude them. She was hauled roughly against him, her arms pinioned to her sides. There wasn’t time to draw more than a breath of surprise before the air was choked off by the bruising crush of his mouth.
Not an inch of maneuverability was allowed her as her head was forced backward by the brutal pressure until she thought her neck would snap. It was all pain, from the scrape of his short, whisker stubble to the grinding of her lips against her teeth.
When the initial shock passed, there was a roar of blood pounding in her ears. The heat of his breath seemed to set fire to her skin. Layne raged at her own impotency, trapped in the bear-grip of his arms with no chance to escape or struggle.
It was not the kind of kiss that had a beginning or an end. It was seizure and release, both in abrupt actions. Layne backed quickly from him, not sure if Creed intended to follow up that attack with another. The back of her hand was instinctively pressed to her sore and throbbing lips while she eyed him with wary revulsion. But he merely stood there, breathing roughly, his arms at his sides.
“Are you happy now?” he snapped at her like a wounded animal, which was crazy. She was the one who’d been so savagely attacked. “I’ve made a pass at you, so now you can stop wondering whether there’s something wrong with you. You can go on to your next conquest now.”
With that, the truck door was jerked open and Creed swung into the cab. The door banged loudly against its metal frame as it was pulled shut. An instant later the motor was gunned to life and the headlights glared across the lot. Layne moved to the side and pressed herself close to the car parked in the adjoining space as the truck pulled out. She had a short glimpse of his blunted profile, lean and ruthless in its stony contours.
Slowly Layne walked to her own car, still shaken by the incident. For a long time she simply sat behind the wheel, mindless of the cold, and tried to figure it out. Despite Creed’s rough looks, what happened seemed out of character. He was an intelligent man, so he must have known how she would react to such sexual abuse. If he did, then that meant it was deliberate on his part.
It was sobering to think he disliked her so much that he was willing to make himself repulsive to her so she would stay away from him. It was obvious that Creed wanted nothing beyond a work relationship. She should have taken the hint when her friendly overtures weren’t reciprocated, Layne decided. If that’s the way he wanted it, then she would oblige him.
The spate of mild weather didn’t last. A winter storm ushered in the month of March, complete with snow and cold north winds. Its arrival coincided with the calving of the first cows, which added a few complications to the natural procedure. A bovine nursery was set up in the kitchen for the odd weak calf that needed the warm shelter from the bad weather for a day or so until it had the strength to return to its mother.
As a child, Layne had been present when a neighbor’s dog had puppies, and had seen films of larger animals giving birth to their young, but she had never attended any other birthing before. No matter how cold and tired she
got, she always felt a tingling sense of awe that she had witnessed a little miracle when a spanking-new white-faced calf made its first wobbling lurch onto its feet.
With all her morning chores finished, including the milking, Layne crossed the yard to the barn area where the tractor was parked. It was already hitched to the loaded hayrack, but Creed wasn’t in sight. Figuring he’d be along directly, she wandered over to the fence and huddled against a post to look out over the cattle in the winter pasture.
The hayrack with its stacks of bales acted as a windbreak to shield her from the blast of the north wind. A bleak, gray cloud cover hung over the land, pressing its gloom onto the morning and making the temperature seem colder. A wool muffler covered her mouth and nose, but her face still felt numb and stiff.
In the pasture the cows were gathering expectantly along the circuitous tracks made by the tractor and hay wagon on the previous morning’s feed. The snow was trampled in that area, stray wisps of dirty hay mixing in with the snow and frozen soil.
Not far from the fence stood a cow with a calf not more than two days old. The little heifer calf eyed Layne curiously while it hugged close to its mother’s side. Its white face seemed whiter even than the snow, and its deep russet-brown coat appeared burnished. But it was the calf’s eyes that fascinated Layne. They were so big and luminously brown, and the lashes were incredibly long and curling.
Behind Layne heavy footsteps crunched on the frozen ground, moving her way. All tightly bundled around the neck, she had to half turn before she was able to see Creed walking toward her. She was reluctant to leave the windbreak of the hayrack, so she let him come to her rather than going to meet him.
Since the incident in the parking lot a certain terseness had existed between them. They rarely spent enough time in each other’s company for it to become an uncomfortable situation. Layne knew she harbored no bitterness on her part, and it appeared that Creed didn’t either. An unspoken agreement seemed to exist that they would keep their distance.