by Janet Dailey
"Dobie, I. . . I'm sorry." She was miserably ashamed of the way she'd unjustly lashed out at him. Feeling incredibly tired and defeated, she ran a gloved hand over her face, wondering why she'd said those terrible things. "There was no excuse for what I said."
"You're tired. This isn't work for you to be doing. Those bales are heavy even for a man to lift." He waved his hat in the direction of the flatbed. "Let alone a gal as little as you."
"I'm stronger than I look," she flared.
"I know you are, but it still isn't work you should be doing."
What other choice did she have? How else were all these horses to be fed? Was she supposed to let Ben do it all? What if he suffered a heart attack? What was she supposed to do then? Somehow Abbie managed to keep all those angry questions to herself. No matter how illogical and chauvinistic Dobie's statements were, she recognized that he was merely trying to be thoughtful.
"We appreciate your offer, Dobie. Thanks."
"That's what neighbors are for." He shrugged. "I only wish you had let me know that you were shorthanded. I would have been over to help sooner."
"You will stay for dinner."
"There's no need in that."
"I insist." She didn't want him or anyone else to think they didn't have enough food in the house to eat. Their present straitened circumstances were temporary, and she didn't want anyone imagining otherwise. "I'll tell Momma to put another plate on the table." And she'd make that phone call she'd forgotten earlier.
As she started for the house, Dobie climbed back into his pickup and moved it out of the way. Abbie listened to the sound of its engine, wondering how she could have mistaken its clattering roar for MacCrea's. She guessed she'd simply wanted it to be his, even though she'd known when she'd left his trailer that night that he probably wouldn't come around again. Why should he? After all, she hadn't made that a condition for going to bed with him.
MacCrea was a wildcatter, a gambler, hardly the type she could expect to have an ongoing relationship with. He was the kind who was here one day and gone the next. It wasn't as if she'd lost anything that she hadn't expected to lose, so why was she still thinking about him? But the answer to that was easy. With him she had felt alive and whole, possibly for the first time in her life. It wasn't a feeling she could easily forget.
She entered the house through the back door and stepped into the kitchen. Her mother turned toward the door, a slightly panicked expression on her face, and quickly placed her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver she held.
"Abbie. I'm so glad you're here," she rushed. "It's a Mr. Fisher on the phone. Long distance from Ohio or Iowa—I can't remember which. He's calling about some horses he sold to your father last year, but he says he never got paid for them. Abbie, I don't know what to say to him. You talk to him." She pushed the receiver at her.
"Just give him Lane Canfield's number and have him call there. Lane knows more than we do," she insisted wearily.
"I can't. You tell him, Abbie."
Stifling her irritation at her mother's inability to cope with something so simple, Abbie took the telephone and barely listened to the story the man recited. Her response was the same as the one she gave to all the recent callers: a referral to the man handling the settlement of the estate. Afterward, she hung up the phone and stood facing the wall, feeling mentally, physically, and emotionally drained.
"It's all so upsetting when they call like that, Abbie," her mother declared. "I never know what to say to them."
"I told you to leave the telephone off the hook," Abbie said tiredly, wondering why she had to deal with everything.
"But what if our friends tried to call and couldn't get through?"
What friends? Abbie thought, wondering if her mother had noticed how few had called since word had gotten out about their present financial straits. Maybe she should have expected it, but it still rankled. After all, they weren't broke. This was just a temporary situation.
She picked up the telephone and dialed the home number of the owner of the local feed-and-grain company. As soon as she identified herself as a Lawson, she had no difficulty convincing him to send out another load of grain, despite their outstanding account. She sighed as she hung up, relieved that the Lawson name still carried some weight.
"Before I forget, Momma. . ." Abbie turned and saw her mother standing at the sink, peeling potatoes—a sight that still seemed foreign. In the past when her mother had puttered in the kitchen, it had usually been to supervise the meal preparation, adding a touch here and changing something there, but never to cook herself. Now, she had no kitchen help to supervise. No one except Jackson, and cooking and cleaning were two things he assisted with only grudgingly, considering both to be beneath him. The brunt of the housework and meal preparation had fallen on her mother. ". . . we're having company for dinner tonight. Dobie Hix came by to help with the horses, so I invited him to eat with us."
"In that case I'd better peel more potatoes, and maybe fix another vegetable. Perhaps some broccoli. . . with cheese sauce."
Abbie left her still mulling over ways to stretch the evening meal to feed four and returned to the stables. With Dobie lending Ben a hand to feed the horses, Abbie set out to clean some of the stalls.
All the doors and windows in the stable stood open to allow cross-ventilation, but little of the evening breeze reached the interior. Abbie paused to wipe the sweat from her face, then laid the pitchfork across the wheelbarrow and gripped the handles to roll it to the next stall.
"Let me do that for you, Abbie." Dobie came up behind her just as she lifted up on the handles.
"I can manage." Once she got it balanced and rolling, it practically pushed itself. It was just a matter of getting it started. She strained forward, pushing with all her weight. It moved an inch, then Dobie's hands were gripping the wheelbarrow as he shouldered her out of the way.
"It's too heavy for you to be pushing." He rolled it effortlessly to the next stall.
"How do you think it got this far, Dobie?" Abbie muttered, but she really didn't object to letting him push it. It was heavy and she was tired.
She swatted absently at a fly that buzzed around her face, then reached for the pitchfork. She didn't dare stop to rest. She was afraid if she did, she wouldn't be able to get herself moving again, like the wheelbarrow.
"I'll get another pitchfork and give you a hand. We'll have these stalls cleaned in half the time."
"Thanks, but Ben wondered if you could lend him a hand over at the stallion barn when you were finished with the hay. The stallion kicked out a couple boards in his stall. Ben thinks one or two others might be weak." She would gladly have traded places and let Dobie finish cleaning the stalls. Unfortunately carpentry wasn't one of her talents. Abbie knew she was more apt to smash a thumb than pound a nail.
"I'll get that fixed and come back to help you."
"Thanks." She smiled absently in his direction and scooped up a pile of manure from the stall's straw bed, then swung the pitchfork over to the wheelbarrow to dump it.
The rhythm took over: scoop, lift, pitch, scoop, lift, pitch. Abbie didn't even hear Dobie leave the stall. In the background, the radio played some twangy country tune. A radio was always going in the barns, tuned to a music station to soothe the horses and keep them company. But Abbie had stopped listening, thinking, feeling, and smelling a long time ago. Like a robot, she simply scooped, lifted, and pitched.
As she swung another forkful of manure and soiled straw into the wheelbarrow, out of the corner of her eye she saw a man leaning against the stall door. She stuck the pitchfork under another pile, then realized the man was MacCrea. She froze, her heart suddenly lurching against her ribs. She turned and looked again to make sure she wasn't seeing things.
"Hello, Abbie." His deep voice felt almost like a caress.
"MacCrea." She was flustered. Her heart was pounding as hard as a galloping horse. She felt all shaky inside, and she didn't like it. She didn't like wantin
g anyone this much. It left her too exposed. She shifted her grip on the pitchfork handle and bent again to her task, but this time she slowed her rhythm way down, making a project out of sifting the horse apples from the straw.
MacCrea watched her, the way he'd been watching her for the last several minutes, stimulated by the sight of her lissome body, remembering the way it looked without clothes, the way it had taken him and drained him. All week she'd haunted his trailer. Everywhere he'd looked, he'd seen her—on the sofa, by the door, in front of the sink, and most of all, in his bed. Each phone call, each rumble of a car, he'd expected to be her.
"It's been a week since I've seen you," he said.
There was the smallest break in her action as she swung the pitchfork over to the wheelbarrow. With a practiced twist of the handle, she dumped the manure onto the growing pile, then let the tines rest on the top and glanced in his direction, her look guarded. "You knew where to find me."
He wanted to walk over to her and pluck the wisps of straw from her dark hair, but MacCrea knew he wouldn't stop there. "I finally realized that you weren't going to get in touch with me."
"It was your move." The straw rustled as she once again turned and searched for more waste. "If you only wanted a one-night stand, I wasn't about to make any demands on you, MacCrea."
Too damned much pride, MacCrea suspected and wondered why her back wasn't bowed by the weight of it. But he knew he admired it. Abbie was different from other women he'd known. It had been his move, but none had ever let him make it. They'd always arranged to bump into him accidentally or made up an excuse to see him or call him. Abbie had a ready-made excuse to do that. She could have gotten in touch with him to give him more names. But she hadn't. And here he was.
"I never had any intention of seeing you again." That's what he'd told himself when Abbie left that night. He'd enjoyed her, but it was over, and that was the end of it. How many times had he said that this past week? Every time he remembered her, and that was too often.
"So why are you here?" She paused, her back still to him, both gloved hands gripping the pitchfork, then she laughed, a short, hollow sound. "That's right. I forgot. You wanted names from me."
"Yes, I wanted that." He didn't like talking to her back, and he didn't like not having her full attention. He pushed away from the frame of the stall door and crossed the space between them in two long strides. Startled, she didn't try to resist when he took the pitchfork from her hands and tossed it aside. He dug his fingers into her arms, feeling the heat of her body flow through them, and turned her to face him. Everything seemed to go still inside him as he stared down at her, taking in the glistening sheen of her complexion, the parted softness of her lips, and the boundless blue of her eyes. "But that's not why I'm here and you damned well know it.
"I do?" It sounded as if she breathed the words, as her expression became all soft and warm.
For a split second, he was furious with himself for not staying away. He had no business getting involved with her. He couldn't afford the distraction of an affair just now. Between running his drilling company, trying to get this lease locked up and the capital raised to drill a well on it, and getting this new computerized testing process of his off the ground, he didn't have the time to devote. Hell, in his line of work, he was never in one place that long. And he wasn't in a position yet to settle down and run his operation from behind a desk. He'd learned by experience that long distance invariably killed a relationship. But he just couldn't get Abbie out of his head. She'd meant more than a one-night stand, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
"Don't play dumb, Abbie. You knew I'd come."
"I knew. . . if you felt anything at all, you would."
He was taken aback by her candor. He had expected a denial, not a frank admission of tactics. But when hadn't she been full of surprises? He felt the touch of her hands on his stomach and his control snapped. Raising her the necessary few inches, he covered her lips with his mouth, tasting, drinking, and eating their softness, driven by a hunger that hadn't been fed for a week.
But a kiss didn't come anywhere close to satisfying his hunger. He broke it off, aware of how rough and labored his breathing had become, and how hard he'd grown. He started to rub his cheek against her hair, but a straw poked him. Impatiently, he plucked it from her tousled hair.
Her arms tightened around him as she pressed her head closer against his chest. "I'm a mess," she said, her voice partially muffled by his shirt.
"Funny, you don't feel like a mess." He ran his hands over her, remembering the feel of her body and the way she'd fit him as snugly as a glove. He molded her to him, pressing her against his hips, trying to ease the aching in his loins.
She moaned softly, "Oh, MacCrea, I want you, too." Shifting in his arms, she drew him down to her lips and arched her body even closer to him.
He'd heard all he needed to hear. Neither the time nor the place meant anything to him as he loosened the tail of her blouse to touch the heat of her flesh. She turned her lips away from his mouth, murmuring, "Not here," but he ignored her faint protest and nibbled at her throat. She pushed away from his chest in forceful resistance. "No." This time her voice was stronger.
A man's angry, drawling voice came out of nowhere. "Take your hands off of her!"
The warning had barely made an impression on MacCrea when someone grabbed his arm and jerked him around. He had a split second to focus on his assailant before a fist filled his vision. A long-ingrained fighting instinct took over as MacCrea jerked his head back to avoid the blow and it glanced off his jaw.
The sandy-haired man in the battered straw cowboy hat swung wildly at him and yelled, "Run, Abbie!"
MacCrea blocked the fist with an upraised arm and quickly jabbed the man in the stomach, but not before his head was snapped back by a third swing that found its target. But the jarring contact didn't stop him; it only made his heart pump faster and speed the flow of adrenaline through his system. His blurred vision saw only his opponent. He slammed his fist into the man's midsection again and followed it with a left to the jaw and another right to the head that threw the man backward against the wall, knocking his hat off. Bareheaded, he slumped against it, his legs buckling as he tried to shake off the blow.
MacCrea went after him. He'd been in too many brawls to quit when his opponent went down. This was the time to finish him off and make sure he didn't get up again. Suddenly Abbie was in his way.
"Stop it, MacCrea!" she shouted angrily. "Can't you see you've beaten him?" He paused, dragging in a breath to fill his laboring lungs, just starting to get his wind and to feel good. Abbie turned to the other man and crouched beside him. "Dobie, are you all right?"
"Yeah." But the man didn't sound at all certain of that. MacCrea started to smile in satisfaction, then winced instead, for the first time feeling the cut on the inside of his lip. That stinging sensation was followed instantly by the ache in his hands, his knuckles sore from their jarring contact with the man's face. MacCrea flexed them and tried to shake out the stiffness.
It irritated him the way Abbie was fussing over the other guy. "Just who the hell is this character?" He pressed his fingers against his split lip and explored the extent of the cut with his tongue, tasting a trace of blood.
The man looked at him as if realizing just that second that MacCrea was still there. He made a move toward him, but Abbie pushed him back. "It's all right, Dobie. He's. . . a friend." The man she called Dobie relaxed, but MacCrea noticed that his expression remained hostile. If anything, it became more so as he straightened to his feet, shrugging off Abbie's attempt to help him.
“I'd like you to meet MacCrea Wilder. MacCrea, this is Dobie Hix, our neighbor. He's been coming over to help Ben and me with the horses."
"Hix." MacCrea acknowledged the introduction with a nod of his head, and the man mumbled something in reply, but didn't offer to shake hands.
MacCrea noticed the look Hix darted at Abbie. It would have been obvious to a bl
ind man that Hix was crazy about her. Or maybe it was just obvious because he recognized the symptoms. Just when he thought Hix was going to leave and he'd have Abbie to himself again, the old man appeared in the stall doorway. His sharp eyes seemed to take in the situation in a flash, although his stoic expression never changed.
"Your mother says we should clean up for supper now," he informed Abbie.
"Thanks, Ben." Then she turned expectantly to MacCrea. "You will join us, won't you?"
This was his chance to bow out, to leave before he became involved any deeper with her. Common sense told him to clear out, but MacCrea heard himself accepting the invitation. All during the long walk to the house with Abbie and her two cohorts, MacCrea cursed himself for being twenty kinds of fool.
The very minute Abbie set foot in the house, she left him to cool his heels in the living room. He spent a good fifteen minutes listening to Babs Lawson chatter away about nothing while avoiding the staring match Hix kept trying to instigate.
He was about ready to make his excuses and leave when Abbie sailed down the staircase into the room and the sight of her blocked all other thoughts from his mind. Her skin glowed with a scrubbed freshness and her wet hair was skimmed back from her face and plaited in a single braid, the severe style softened by wispy curls around her temples and neck. She had changed into a simple cotton frock in a vivid shade of green with a row of white buttons down the v-neck front. She breezed past him, leaving in her wake the clean smells of soap and some sexy perfume. MacCrea watched her, staring at the way her breasts strained against the material of the snug-fitting dress top.
He stayed. She sat next to him at the dining room table, their chairs crowded close together, her thigh brushing against his. It was unquestionably the longest meal MacCrea had ever had to sit through, trying to participate intelligently in the table talk.
"No, thanks." MacCrea refused the second cup of coffee Babs Lawson tried to pour him and pushed his chair away from the table. "The food was good—too good. As a matter of fact, I'm afraid I'm going to have to walk some of it off. Join me, Abbie?"