Abby’s aunt waited only until the door closed behind him and they were alone. “He worried Jack might not come.”
“Why?”
“They aren’t as close as they used to be.”
Since that night? Abby wondered. Ray, the ranch foreman, had told her Jack had left. He’d had a fight with Sam and left. No one knew why. “Did Sam tell you what happened?” she asked Laura, feeling sad for them. Because her own father had been absent from most of her life, she’d envied Jack’s close relationship with his father.
Laura whisked past her to close the curtain. “Actually, no.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Yes, but I will not be meddlesome. Whatever’s wrong is between them, Abby.”
Abby wouldn’t have backed off so easily. If she were about to marry someone, she’d want to know why a strain existed in his relationship with his son. Maybe one of them should find out, she decided.
“You aren’t sorry you came, are you?” Laura asked.
Seeing the distress in her aunt’s pale blue eyes, Abby offered her a quick assurance. “I’m honored to be your maid of honor.”
“Abigail, no diversions.” She grabbed Abby’s hands. “We haven’t discussed this, but I have to ask. Are you really all right about seeing Jack again?” Laura asked in a low voice, with a glance in Austin’s direction to be certain he couldn’t hear.
“I’m fine.” She had to be. She’d have to be around him for the next two weeks.
“I thought you might feel uncomfortable.” Her aunt’s fair eyebrows knit. “You’ve said very little to me about Jack, but I know he was important to you once.”
“That was a long time ago, Aunt Laura.” She mustered up her most convincing smile. “I was still in college, twenty-one.”
“Yes, I know.” Her eyes searched Abby’s face as if she was trying to read the truth in her words. If she’d wanted to say something to her niece about Austin, she didn’t as he bounded into the room. “I’ll let you get settled in.”
Abby maintained her smile until the door shut. Behind her, she heard the theme song of a Disney movie coming from the television. With Austin occupied for the moment, she sank to the closest chair to relax. The tension she’d come here with had intensified.
If she closed her eyes, if she let her mind wander, she could still feel the caress of Jack’s hands when the headiness of lovemaking had enveloped them. From the first moment he’d directed that blue gaze at her on a warm May evening when she’d met him at the airport, she’d known he was the one for her. Then the next day, he’d strolled into the ranch dining room where she’d been waiting on tables. Every girl working at the ranch had ogled him. Handsome, fun, rich, he’d had a reputation for winning in rodeos and with the ladies.
She’d tried not to act silly, dreamy-eyed, about the tanned cowboy with the tousled brown hair, but he’d flashed that smile of white, even teeth at her. She’d smiled back, then had gone on working.
Friends had gathered around her when she entered the kitchen for her orders. He’d smiled at her, they’d gushed with youthful giddiness. It took effort, but Abby had managed to act indifferent. Plates in hands, she’d reentered the dining room. He’d still been there, still smiling, still staring at her.
That had been the beginning. They’d been inseparable during the next four months. On the night he’d taken off without a goodbye, without a look back, he’d made it clear that he’d never loved her. But she’d foolishly loved him with all her heart. She’d cried, as if mourning a death.
“Mom?”
That one word snapped her back to reality, a reminder that she wasn’t that giddy young girl who’d let emotion lead her. Mothers needed to keep their feet firmly planted.
“Mom, I left my comic books in the car,” Austin said with a little whine. “Can I go get them?”
“I’ll get them.” Rather than unpack her umbrella for a run to the car, she dug her windbreaker from a suitcase. “I’m going to lock the door. You know the rule.”
His eyes fixed on the television screen and the men chasing the dozens of dalmatians, he spoke by rote. “Don’t open the door for anyone but you or Aunt Laura.”
So he was home again, Jack mused as he moved Roper into one of the stable stalls. Each time he’d come to the ranch or telephoned, he’d felt less anger. He and Sam had reached an understanding. They were congenial, though they would never be friends like before, and Jack would never work side by side with him or live on this ranch in the barn he’d called home. At eighteen, wanting independence, he’d moved into the original barn. The building had undergone enough changes to make it a home and for the next two weeks he’d lived there again.
After giving the horse feed, he turned to leave. Even in the shadowed light, he could see Sam waiting just inside, by the opened doors.
“Abby said you were here.” With Jack’s approach, the older man went on, “I’m glad you’re home.” His eyes narrowed to slits as if trying to see something more clearly. “We were beginning to worry. Roads get impassable during storms.”
Abby. His mind still hung on the image of her, those dark eyes lacking the sparkle he’d remembered in them years ago. “I left Ogden later than I’d planned.”
“Did you win?”
Jack nodded and moved closer to view the rain plummeting onto the dirt. “It was a small rodeo.”
A frown suddenly crinkled deeper lines into Sam’s tanned, weathered face. “I wanted you to know that I’m glad you could come home.” He started to touch Jack’s shoulder, then stopped himself. Instead, he dropped his arm to his side and tucked his hand in his pants pocket.
Jack squinted as much at him as against the wind blowing rain at his face. A polite way of saying, I’m glad you didn’t refuse. “You’re getting married. I’d be a lousy excuse for a son if I didn’t come home for the wedding.”
His father’s head bobbed. “You’ll like Laura.”
Jack didn’t doubt that. He recalled Abby talking about her aunt with warm affection.
“I’ll never know what she sees in me,” Sam said, “but she’s told me that she’s crazy about me.” When he talked about Laura, he carried an air of joy, as if he’d won a lottery, one that had nothing to do with money. He was a man in love. Sixty-one years old and glowing from love. “I know rodeo life keeps you on the go. You’ve been busy with endorsements and public appearances. You said you did a television commercial, didn’t you?”
Quit trying so hard, Sam, Jack wanted to say. “Yeah. For jeans.” World champions were in demand. Next year, if he lost the title to someone else, no one would care what he was wearing. Jack gave him a token smile and deliberately shifted conversation away from himself. “You said business is good.”
The ranch catered to city slickers intent on experiencing life on a ranch without losing the creature comforts of a four-star establishment complete with a swimming pool, tennis court, golf course and room service. But the Double M remained a working ranch, as well, with several hundred cattle, an ornery bull named Duncan and a stable of horses.
“The ranch keeps me too busy.” Sam removed his Stetson and ran fingers through his cropped hair. “I could use help.”
It was an indirect way of asking Jack to stay. Sam would never ask him outright to retire from rodeo.
Appearing embarrassed by his own words, Sam shrugged. “I’ll see you at the lodge.”
Maybe it would always be like this, Jack mused. Conversations filled with tension, words being carefully chosen, a lack of affection. He knew nothing would ever be the same.
With Abby, either, he reflected. Sam was responsible for that, too. If it hadn’t been for Sam, he and Abby would be together.
Oh, hell, that wasn’t true. He would never have been with her. He’d been footloose, chasing a dream. He wasn’t sure she’d have wanted the life he was offering. But if it hadn’t been for Sam, he wouldn’t have left her that night, and he wouldn’t have hurt her.
Abby stepped outside to t
he chill of the evening air but no rain. She shrugged into her windbreaker on the way to the car, and scanned the darkness.
Beyond the stables stood Sam’s two-story, white farmhouse where her aunt was staying. Lights shone in several of its windows and in those at the ranch foreman’s cottage. But unlike Sam’s and Ray Guerny’s homes, the renovated barn nearby that was Jack’s home was dark.
In the distance, a coyote howled. When she’d left years ago, she never thought she’d be back, would hear that sound again. She still found it ironic that she’d lost love with one McShane male, but her aunt had found it with another.
At the car, she bent over and searched beneath the pillow and blanket in the back seat. She found Austin’s pack of bubble gum and a sketching toy. Wedged between the seat was a candy wrapper. Gathering the trash, she spotted the comic books under the front seat. Neatness wasn’t her son’s strongest trait.
She relocked the car door, then headed back toward the lodge. She’d always been a clean freak, even as a little girl. But then, her possessions had been few. Most of her childhood, she’d lived out of a suitcase. That life-style hadn’t allowed for much clutter.
“It’s been a long time, Abby.”
She jerked to a stop, her heartbeat quickening. As she slowly faced him, Jack stepped out of the shadows. He was close enough to reach out, to touch her.
“You’re looking good.”
It’s over. Mentally she said the words like a mantra. This chapter in your life closed long ago, she reminded herself. “Thank you. How are you?”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d talk to me.” Jack studied her. That was the truth. Leaving her as he had had been inexcusable. Though nearly a decade had passed, he’d been prepared for her bitterness when they met again.
Before leaving Boston, Abby had vowed that he’d never know how hurt she’d been. “That was eight years ago. I heard you’re a celebrity now.” How often had he told her that he was going to be a world champion? “You got what you wanted.”
He’d wanted her. And he’d wanted rodeo. Logic had told him that he couldn’t have both. “I guess.” He’d been so tired earlier. He’d been driving since seven that morning from just the other side of the Utah border. When the rain had begun, he’d considered stopping somewhere for the night, but he’d been pulling the horse trailer, and he’d known that Roper would rest easier in a stable stall, so he’d kept going. Now he was glad he had. The tiredness had lifted because of her. He stuck a hand in his jeans pocket to keep from touching one of the soft silky strands framing her heart-shaped face. “The boy in the car—”
Abby raised her chin. “He’s my son.” Our son. Years ago, she’d buried her secret with long-distance phone calls to a ranch co-worker. Abby had fed her information about another man, needing the phantom lover to explain her pregnancy so no one at the ranch would guess the truth—would know she was pregnant with Jack’s baby.
Earlier, when Jack had been moving Roper from the trailer to a stall, he’d watched her hug her aunt, noticed the boy, dark-haired, slim and tall like Abby. “What’s his name?”
“Austin,” Abby answered.
Several weeks after they’d gone their separate ways, he’d heard gossip that she’d already found another guy. Pride had demanded he not give a damn that she’d gotten over him so easily. But it had hurt. A lot.
He’d been told by Sam that there wasn’t a husband. He guessed the boy’s father had promised all she wanted, then let her down, too.
“I have to go back in.” That wasn’t a lie. She’d been gone from Austin longer than she felt comfortable with.
As shadows danced across her face, he couldn’t stop himself from saying what he was thinking. “You look beautiful.” An understatement, he mused. Reed-slim, she was dressed in snug-fitting jeans and a pale green T-shirt. She’d cut her reddish, straight hair to a shorter style that still brushed her shoulders but curved in layers toward her face. He stared into the darkness of her brown eyes, remembered them hooded, warm with passion. “I guess we’ll have plenty of time to talk. You’ll be here, what? Two weeks?”
“About that long. I should go, Jack.” Abby climbed one step. Two people, once intimate, couldn’t pretend to be only acquaintances, could they?
“Abby?”
He held her still with a word. In a small show of nerves, she lost her grip on her car keys. Breathe, she told herself, desperately trying to relax as she faced him.
Jack closed the distance between them, then bent over for the keys she’d just dropped. He smelled her perfume, a faint springy scent, a fragrance she’d always worn. Earlier, when he’d stood beside her car, he’d gotten a whiff of her perfume through the cracked window. In an instant, a memory of her dabbing several drops at the base of her neck had flashed back at him. “Here.”
She looked down as he pressed her car keys into her hand. “Thank you.”
“I’m glad to see you again,” he said, and meant it. Of all the things he’d done in his life, he’d regretted most the way he’d left her.
What could she say? He smiled and she felt a twinge of panic because the young girl the one who loved him, seemed so near. She stared a moment longer at the soft blue eyes, eyes that warmed her with a look, then she turned around and climbed the steps, not looking back. Years ago, she’d loved him, and he’d left her. With their son’s comic books rolled and tightly gripped in her hand, she vowed not to forget that.
Chapter Two
Sound was everywhere. Birds chirped in the huge oaks, a rooster crowed, though it was past daybreak, a young colt whinnied as it pranced around the corral. The sounds of a ranch. Comforting, familiar sounds that Jack never tired of. He loved the land before him. He scanned the wide-open rangeland. Beyond the ranch buildings, desert vegetation of straggly-looking pale green bushes and a few cacti blended with distant hills.
He’d taken a morning ride to connect with the land again. As he neared the stable, Jack slowed his brown quarter horse, Roper. He’d won more than one championship on the animal. By the corral, he dismounted and stopped to watch a ranch hand clinging to the reins of a bucking mustang. Nearby, men perched on the railings of the corral and yelled encouraging words to him.
“Remember when you used to do that?”
Jack angled a look at Guy Guerny. “You, too.” Because Ray, Guy’s uncle, had been ranch foreman for nearly thirty-five years, the Guernys had always seemed to be part of Jack’s life and of the ranch. Before, Ray’s wife Lili was the ranch cook, now Guy’s wife, Wendy, was.
Guy, a pal of Jack’s since fourth grade, had shared the joy and often the consequences of youthful mischievous acts. They grew into manhood together, and for the past decade, they’d traveled the rodeo circuit.
“Yep.” Guy hooked a thumb in the front pocket of his Levi’s. “Seems like long ago.”
Beside Jack, his horse nuzzled his long nose near Jack’s arm as he looked for the treat in his pocket. “Just wait,” he said on a laugh. “I’ll give it to you after your saddle’s off.”
“Sometimes I think you’re crazy. You and Mr. Ed,” Guy quipped.
Jack stroked the long nose with its white patch. “He’s insulting you, Roper, old boy. You’re smarter than Mr. Ed, aren’t you?” As if on cue, Roper snorted.
Guy sent him a wry grin that faded swiftly. “I saw Abby. Have you talked to her?”
“Last night.” Jack had told his friend long ago why he’d needed to get away from the ranch, from Sam, even from Abby’s sweetness. Too much anger had been churning within him. He hadn’t been thinking straight that night eight years ago. He’d been blind with anger. And all the love Abby would have offered couldn’t have reached him.
The next morning he’d awakened in his truck in a small town south of Los Angeles. His mood had gentled enough for him to talk to Abby, but by then it had been too late. He’d learned that she’d left the ranch. He’d decided then that he hadn’t been offering what she’d longed for most. Sure, she’d nodded agreeably when he’d sa
id no strings, but he’d never doubted that she really wanted the gold ring, kids and the white picket fence. So he’d done the right thing. He’d stayed away, aware she needed a man in her life who wanted to settle down. He hadn’t been—still wasn’t—that man.
Sunlight bathed the lobby and public rooms in a warm yellow glow. At ten-thirty in the morning, most of the tables were empty in the rustic dining room with its dark beams and wooden walls. Abby sat with Austin near one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. They offered a view of the distant mountains, the horse trail and the stream that ran through the property.
“Do you want more to eat?” she asked him as a waitress rounded their table and set a creamer before Abby.
Austin downed a glass of orange juice, then shook his head. “Can I go now?” Since he’d awakened, he’d been antsy for the day to start.
He’d barely touched his bowl of cereal, but Abby wasn’t going to push him. No doubt he would get hungry long before lunch. Tomorrow morning some of his excitement would have settled, and he would eat breakfast as usual. Today, his exhilaration about everything new had stolen his appetite. Abby understood, so didn’t play mother and nag. One day without breakfast wouldn’t harm him.
“Mom?” Austin’s voice sang with impatience, indicating he’d been trying to get her attention during her reverie.
She leaned close and ran a fingertip down his nose. She hoped the day proved as wonderful as he was imagining. “Yes, you can go.”
He bounced from the chair, sending it rocking. Quickly he straightened it, then shot her a grin. “See you later, Mom.”
“I’ll meet you back here at one-thirty for lunch.”
He flashed her a smile, and for one second, she saw Jack in that smile. “I’ll be here.” He swung around and nearly plowed into a man.
Abby didn’t need to see the man’s face. It occurred to her how well she knew the look of Jack McShane from the belt buckle down.
“Hi.” Austin raised his eyes to him.
During that second, Abby stopped breathing. Wasn’t this moment why she’d really been dreading the return to the ranch? Here’s your son, she wanted to say to him. But he wouldn’t want to hear those words. He’d never lied to her. From the beginning of their relationship, he’d told her he wanted no ties.
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