Choices

by Federici, Teresa

“At spring muster he comes down for two weeks or so to help out. Calls it his vacation time, but what he needs a vacation from is beyond me.” Celia put in.

  “Oh come on now Celia, can’t be all fun and games standing around taking pictures of beautiful women all day long.” Tuck replied, the look on his face suggesting something different.

  “Oh sure, because that’s work for a hot blooded young man?” she asked sarcastically.

  “It could be.” Logan said under his breath with a laugh, and Abby giggled.

  “Well, I guess we’re gonna get going. We’re staying in Bozeman overnight then heading back up to Missoula in the morning.” Tuck said, getting up from the hay bale. “We just came down to see if you were here, and to see Kyle. Logan, give me a call next week, and we’ll talk some business.”

  Logan and Abby stood and said goodbye, Celia telling Abby that she’d call her mom and tell her that she thought Abby was too thin, but otherwise doing fine. Abby hugged her fiercely. “Thank you for caring.”

  “Baby doll, you’re like the daughter I never had, of course I care. This time, don’t let time go by without keeping in touch, you hear?” Abby nodded, blinking back tears. They watched them weave through the crowd, Celia shaking her behind to the music, Tuck’s hand at her back.

  “They’ve been married forever, and yet they still seem so in love.” Abby marveled, as if that were a foreign concept to her.

  “That happens when you find your soul-mate.” Logan leaned down to whisper in her ear, the warmth of his breath raising goose-bumps on her arms.

  “Is that what we are Logan? Soul-mates?” she asked tremulously, longing for it to be true. He wrapped his arms around her, bending to whisper fiercely in her ear, “By God I’ll make you believe it eventually.” He moved her through the crowd, intent on leaving. He was going to put a stop to all the doubt in her mind if it killed him.

  Abby let him usher her through the crush of people, then they were in the truck, heading home. He had almost sounded mad, and his face was set as he drove the miles back home.

  “Logan? Are you mad at me?” she asked slowly, struggling to control her anger. How can he expect her to be certain of anything when the rest of her life was in complete turmoil?

  He was silent, gathering the reins of his own temper. When would she see what was in front of her face and know that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her?

  When he didn’t reply, she crossed her arms over her chest and went on.

  “You have to forgive me Logan if I have a hard time believing in soul mates, or happily ever after. Besides my parents, I don’t exactly have role models to suggest otherwise. Most everyone I know has been divorced at least once.”

  “You were married to a bastard.” He ground out between clenched teeth.

  “You’re absolutely right, Logan, I was married to a bastard, let’s not forget. A bastard that I had been with for a long time and I know nothing else. I can’t just forget that.” She shot back, but regretted it when the look of pain crossed his features.

  That was the problem, he thought. She couldn’t forget him and let Logan take his place. Well, he would take care of that, he was damn tired of fighting a ghost, a memory of a marriage gone bad.

  They didn’t say anything, for fear of saying something they would regret. The miles passed in a stony silence and when they pulled into LM and Logan took the road leading to her cabin, Abby turned to him, about to apologize, but something in his face made her stop. He was staring out the windshield, his mouth set in a grim line as he slowly brought the truck to a stop.

  “Logan?” she asked hesitantly. He looked at her then, and the rage in his eyes made her gasp.

  “You have a visitor.” He spat out.

  Abby turned to face the cabin and let out a low moan. Steve was standing on the porch. Her first thought, How did he find me, was spoken out loud by Logan, but he drew all the wrong conclusions.

  “How did he find you Abby? Your parents wouldn’t have told him. Did you talk to him?” he asked angrily. Her lie came back to haunt her, though she hadn’t told Steve where she was. She nodded slowly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said, all the hurt and anger he felt reflected in his voice.

  “You don’t understand Logan. I didn’t tell him where I was, and I didn’t want you to know I talked to him, because I was afraid of this reaction, the one you’re having right now.” She lashed out. She watched Steve start down the steps, coming toward the truck.

  “So I’m supposed to believe he just magically found you? What, sent out a private investigator?”

  It was a viable answer, and he knew it, but he was hurt that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him she had talked to him.

  “It might be. Let me take care of this.” She warned as Logan opened the truck door and got out. Abby scrambled to get her door open and ran around the front of the truck.

  “Abby, what’s going on? Who’s this?” Steve demanded, motioning to Logan.

  “Steve, just go inside the cabin. I’ll explain later.” Abby pleaded, reaching for Logan’s arm. He shrugged her off, and looked down at her, contempt in his eyes.

  “No Abby, tell him who I am. Tell him what’s going on.” he said, spitting the words through clenched teeth. If he was so important to her, why did she not just tell him who Logan was?

  “Who is he, Abby?” Steve demanded again, saw the way Abby was trying to draw the guy away, and put two and two together.

  “Are you sleeping with my wife?” he had the gall to say, then with a roar Logan punched him, knocking him to the ground, at the same time Abby shouted “Wife! What do you mean, wife!”

  “Logan!” Abby screamed, then knelt down at Steve’s side. Logan had knocked him unconscious. “Damn you, I would’ve told him everything! I just had to do it in my own time.” She yelled up at him.

  He stared down at her, his eyes cold, almost black in the light from the porch.

  “Now you have all the time in the world to tell him.” He said, then turned on his heel and got back in the truck. He reversed in a spray of gravel, then turned the truck around and sped down the road. The last she saw of him was his taillights going around the corner.

  Chapter Ten

  “Honey, for someone whose divorce is finalized, you sure look dejected. Quit staring out the window and come eat something.”

  Abby turned from the window and faced Joyce. Her friend had a plate of food in her hand, and was setting it down on the little table in front of her couch. Abby wrapped her arms around her waist and sat down. She felt cold, couldn’t seem to get warm since that night two weeks ago when she last saw Logan.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Joyce asked, sitting in a chair that faced the couch, curling her legs up underneath her. Abby shook her head. Joyce sighed, running a hand through her mahogany tresses.

  “Abby, you need to talk, girl, you can’t just sit around and wallow.”

  “I know, and maybe when it doesn’t hurt so terribly, I will. I feel like my heart has been ripped out.” She said hollowly. She reached for her fork, but just pushed the food around on her plate. Good old take out from Pastrano’s, Abby’s favorite Italian restaurant, and she couldn’t even enjoy it.

  Since coming back to Boston the day after that disastrous night, food had turned to ash in her mouth, and she hadn’t spoken to anyone but Joyce and her lawyer. She hadn’t seen Steve either since that night, and had no idea what the hell he’d been doing there at the ranch.

  “When do you go back?” Joyce asked, trying to get something out of her.

  “I’m going back tomorrow. If I stay any longer, the cost of keeping the Rover in long term parking will break me.” She replied.

  She was going back to Whitefish after all, to move back with her parents, try to rebuild her life there. Bozeman was too close to Logan, too close to more memories she had to escape. A year ago she had been one of the wealthiest women in Boston, able to go anywhere she wanted.

 
Would she trade all the wealth in the world to be back with Logan? Absolutely. She had stopped being furious with him the second she saw his taillights retreating in the dark.

  “Abby, please, please talk to me! You won’t talk to your mom or dad, your friend Kassey calls here trying to talk to you, but you always tell me to tell her you’re not around, and it’s eating you up inside.”

  Abby kept up her perusal of her food, thinking that the last thing she needed was to talk to Kassey, who probably just wanted to give her a piece of her mind.

  God knows what Logan told them all. Even thinking his name hurt, because it brought his face into focus in her mind. She heard Joyce get up from the chair, and then felt her take her shoulders and draw her into an embrace. And the flood gates opened. Abby dissolved into her tears, tears she hadn’t let shed in two weeks. Joyce held her while she cried out her torment, shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.

  “Joyce, it hurts so bad! I feel like someone took my heart out and filled the empty space with cold fire.” She sobbed, her whole body trembling. Joyce rocked her, not saying anything. Abby needed to get it out, and Joyce wasn’t about to speak and give Abby a chance to close down again.

  “Did I ever tell you how I felt the first minute I looked at Logan?” she sniffed, feeling the tears flowing freely down her cheeks. Joyce shook her head and said “no” softly.

  “I felt as if I had just come alive. It was as if my whole life had been someone else’s until I met him. Like I had just been going through the motions. Now I’ve lost him.” She whispered brokenly. Joyce sat her up and stared intently into her eyes. “He lost you Abby. He didn’t trust you enough to believe in you, to believe that you wouldn’t go back to Steve.”

  “I never gave him any reason to believe in me. When we started to talk about our future, I didn’t give him any reason to think I would stay with him. I got scared because I knew he would ask me to marry him, and I didn’t want to face marriage again that fast. And that’s why I lost him. I think if I had told him how I felt, that I was planning on going to Boston and get my things, say goodbye to an old life then move back to the ranch with him, not the cabin, he would’ve reacted differently. But that’s what he thought, what I led him to believe, that I was going back to the cabin, not to move in with him, but to recuperate from a divorce.”

  “If he was the man you say he is, that would’ve been enough for him until you could recuperate.” Joyce said, hating a man she had never met for making her friend feel this way.

  “He would have, if I had just told him, don’t you see?” she pleaded, knowing how Joyce felt.

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. He knows where you are Abby, he has the phone number here. Why hasn’t he called?” she shot back. Abby shook her head and ran her hands through her hair. “Pride?” she offered dully.

  “Well I hope his pride keeps him warm at night.” Joyce replied cattily.

  Logan looked up at the knock at his bedroom door, and looked back down, scowling. “Go away Ben.” He growled as his friend came in the door. He was sitting in the dark, a bottle of beer on the table next to his bed.

  “No. I’m done going away. We’re all tired of walking on eggshells around you Logan, and you’re going to sit there and listen while I knock some damn sense into your head.” Ben replied, moving over to the chair in the corner of the room.

  They hadn’t seen much of Logan since the night of the dance, and when he was around he was like a bear with a bad tooth, lashing out at everyone for even the slightest reason. Until Abby had showed up at the ranch house the next day to check out, they had thought Logan had been at the cabin with her. Then Abby walked in, eyes red from unshed tears, hands trembling, and had just handed over the key to Kassey.

  She wouldn’t tell Kassey what had happened, just gave a phone number and address she could be reached at in Boston and had left. Ben had found Logan at the barn, saddling up Bridger and all he had said to Ben was that Abby’s ex-husband had come for her and it was over. Then he had ridden off, and hadn’t been around much since then.

  Kassey was worried sick, especially when she couldn’t reach Abby in Boston. “You go talk to him Ben, find out what happened. I can’t believe Abby went back to her ex-husband.”

  Logan got up off the bed, and Ben growled from the corner, “You better sit Logan, or so help me I’ll get up and knock your ass back down.”

  Logan sent him a scowl, but sat back down. He didn’t doubt him.

  “Look, Ben I don’t want to talk. It’s over, she went back to that asshole she married.” He said. The pain was still too fresh to talk about. He tried to drown it in beer and work, but nothing chased away the empty ache her leaving had left behind.

  “Bullshit. None of us believe that, don’t see why you should. Logan, anybody who looked at you together would’ve seen how much she loved you.”

  “Don’t say that!” he shouted, coming off the bed. “If she loved me so much, why’d she go back with him?” He paced in front of the bed, his head down, hair in his eyes.

  “She sure as shit didn’t go back with him. When she came in, she was alone, no one with her, no one in the Rover. Kassey hurried out to the cabin when she left, to look for you, and there was no one there. Logan, he had to’ve left the same night. If she was going back with him, wouldn’t they have left at the same time?” Ben asked softly, and he could see that got to him.

  “Well, maybe she had the need to tell him to leave ahead of her so it wouldn’t look bad on her part.” He grumbled, but he was grasping straws and he knew it; Abby would never do something like that. “But the fact remains that she didn’t tell me she talked to him, and that just reeks of mistrust on her part.”

  “True, it does sound like she didn’t put much faith in you, but Logan, she was scared.” Ben said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees, his hands in his hair. God, what a mess, he thought, save us from prideful people.

  Logan turned back to him, saying sharply, “What did she have to be scared about?”

  “Think about it Logan, put yourself in her shoes. She comes out here to get away from a bad marriage, a marriage to a man she had known her entire adult life. Then here you come and you both fall in love with one another, and she sees in your eyes the church and baby carriage. For someone who had been married as long as she had to a man she just found out she never really knew, after 13 years, what’s she supposed to think about a guy she’s only known for two weeks? She was gun shy, you idjit.” Ben finished in a shout.

  Logan heard his words and knew he was right. All he had cared about was making her his, and wiping away every trace of a past that couldn’t be wiped away so easily, not because she still loved her ex but because of what that ex had done to her.

  Logan fell back on the bed, raising his hands to his eyes. “God, your right, I am an idjit. What am I going to do?” he asked Ben, staring at him through eyes ringed with fatigue and anger at himself.

  “Go after her. We have an address.” Ben said, holding up the piece of paper Kassey had pressed into his hands when he went to talk to Logan. It was a long shot, but Ben hoped that Abby would see what Logan had put himself through and be understanding.

  “And for Christ’s sake, take a shower. You smell like the bear you’ve been.”

  Joyce had just poured herself a glass of Chardonnay, and was settling in for a night of jazz and a good book when the pounding started on her door. She frowned, then scowled when she heard a man say, “Abby! Open up, I know you’re in there.” She pressed her eye to the peep-hole and yelled through the door, “No she’s not. Go away.” So the cowboy had come to chase Abby down? Not if Joyce Caldwell had anything to do with it.

  “Who is this?” the Voice asked from the other side of the door and Joyce replied tartly, “Abby’s watch dog. Now go be a good cowboy and ride off into the west.” She turned away from the door, happy with her parting salvo, when he spoke again, his voice low and ragged. “Please, I need to see her.”

 
She stopped at the pain in his voice and tried to resist the urge to turn back to the door, but lost it. She opened it, and there he stood, his arm propped up on the frame, his head hung low. He was a sexy thing, she thought to herself, even with eyes red from fatigue and at least a day’s growth of beard on his chiseled jaw.

  She remembered then how torn up Abby had been and crossed her arms over her chest, cocking out a hip. “Why should I let you see her?” she asked, not ready yet to tell him that Abby was already gone. Those smoky gray eyes rested on hers, and she knew then that no matter what happened between him and Abby, it had all been a horrible mistake. Those gray depths were as full of pain and unshed tears as Abby’s had been when she came back from Montana.

  “Can I just see her? I need to apologize, to make things right.” He said, shifting to stand upright. Joyce was tall, but still had to look up at him.

  “How did you get here?” she asked, turning to get her purse from the table.

  Logan looked puzzled, trying to peer past this woman who was pushing him out the door.

  “I flew. Where’s Abby?” he asked again, having no choice but to follow her down the hall to the bank of elevators. She gave him a sarcastic look over her shoulder as she punched the down button repeatedly.

  “Well, cowboy, I didn’t think you rode your horse here. Do you have any luggage or did you fly out here with just the clothes on your back?”

  “Who are you?” Logan asked incredulously. She reached out and flicked his chin with a long finger nail. “I’m getting you back to your girl. We’ll talk in the car. Do you have luggage?” she asked again, stepping into the elevator, barely waiting for him to follow her before hitting the lobby button.

  Logan stepped into the elevator just before the doors would have closed on him, leaning against the back wall. “Yes, I have a bag and it’s in the cab I kept waiting downstairs. Now would you please tell me where Abby is and who you are?”

  Joyce looked at him again, taking in the disheveled hair, t-shirt and jeans messed up from a long flight across country. Those eyes though, they told the true story. They were filled with hope and wariness, and Joyce wanted to turn the screw a little more, just one last parting shot.