by Diana Palmer
The two men studied each other quietly. Jim was neat in a dark sports coat with matching slacks and a cream-colored shirt. Curry looked as if a whirlwind had hit him, his jeans dusty, his shirt torn and wet with sweat, his hair damp with perspiration.
“I’m taking Norie over for the evening,” Jim said as if he expected an argument.
“That’s your business,” Curry said abruptly. His pale eyes speared the other man.
“I’m glad you finally realized it,” Jim replied. “No hard feelings, Curry. I hope you’ll come to the wedding.”
Eleanor didn’t think she’d ever forget the look on Curry’s dark face when Jim told him that. Obviously he thought Jim meant Eleanor, and his jaw locked violently, his face seemed to harden to solid rock.
“Wedding?” he asked in a strange tone.
Jim grinned. “It happens to all of us sooner or later, doesn’t it? I hope you and Amanda will be as happy as we expect to.”
Curry didn’t say another word. He turned, sparing Eleanor a glance so hateful she felt as if he’d struck her, and walked straight into the house without a backward glance, slamming the screen door behind him.
“What was that all about?” Jim asked.
She sighed and shook her head. “Beats me,” she told him. “If anything, he’ll give a party when I leave. He’s that glad to see me go.”
“Is he, now?” Jim’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
Eleanor got into the car and sat quietly until he started it.
“Thanks for rescuing me,” she told him. “Supper was going to be another ordeal.”
“What’s eating him?”
“Amanda won’t come and live on the ranch after they get married,” she explained. “He’s furious. He doesn’t think she cares enough to stay with him, and he’s like a fire-breathing dragon lately.”
“So that’s it,” Jim remarked, as if he’d been thinking something very different. “I knew that wasn’t going to work out. Amanda’s a lovely girl, but she’s not ranch stock.”
“It’s more than that,” Eleanor said, staring out the window as she spoke. “She doesn’t love him, Jim. She’s more interested in how much she’ll be able to spend, and keeping up her career, than she is in taking care of Curry.”
“Does he love her?”
“Apparently,” she replied, “although he says no. He wants her,” she added in a subdued tone. “I suppose that’s as close as he can come to feeling anything for a woman.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s missing.” Jim grinned.
“You old maverick,” she teased. “You look ten years younger. Elaine’s influence, I’ll bet!”
“You’d be right, too. Oh, what a girl!”
And she was. The petite little blonde, once she got over her initial reserve when she and Eleanor were introduced, turned out to have a live wire personality. There was a loveliness in her that had nothing to do with exterior beauty. She was a caring person, and everything she felt for Jim was in her eyes when she looked at him.
Maude liked her too, and it showed. Eleanor noticed that Jeff, too had been captured by that bright smile and sunny manner.
“Looks like you’re not going to have to win anybody over,” Eleanor teased the older girl when they were washing up the dishes after supper.
“I know,” Elaine replied with a smile. “It was so strange, the way everything seemed to fall into place. I seemed to fit here the first time I walked through the door. I love Maude and Jeff, too, and I’m crazy about the ranch. Jim’s teaching me how to ride.”
“You’ll make a good wife,” she told the blonde. “He’s needed someone like you for a long time. He got a raw deal with his first wife, I guess you knew that.”
Elaine nodded. “I’ll try to make it up to him.”
Eleanor grinned. “I don’t think you’ll have to try too hard.”
“You’re still coming to work for him, aren’t you?” Elaine asked suddenly, as if it really mattered to her. “Jim’s told me what you had to put up with over there. I hope you’ll still feel welcome—I’d like very much to have someone my own age to talk to. We could go shopping together and everything.”
“If you and Jim don’t mind,” Eleanor replied, “I’ll come for a few weeks.” She looked down at the soapy water. “I…I don’t know where I’ll wind up eventually. Even ten miles away from Curry may not be enough, I’ll just have to play it by ear.”
“Do you love him that much?” Elaine asked softly.
Eleanor bit her lip. She nodded, hating the tears that misted in her eyes.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
She shrugged. “We don’t always get everything we want in life,” she said philosophically. “And sometimes there’s a good reason. I’ll live.”
“Couldn’t you come sooner?”
“I promised him two full weeks, and that’s what he’s going to get if it kills me. Anyway,” she laughed, “it’s just a couple more days. After the time I’ve already put in, it’s going to be a piece of cake.”
Curry was waiting for her in his den when she finished breakfast the next morning, dressed in a gray business suit that matched his eyes. He spared her a grudging glance when she walked in the door.
“I’ve left a couple of letters on the Dictaphone,” he said in a voice like ice. “I’m going to be out of town today; you might tidy up in here so that your replacement can find things.”
Your replacement. He made it sound so impersonal, as if the three years she’d spent working in this room weren’t worth anything at all to him. And that was probably true. Curry wasn’t sentimental. He’d tried to keep her, he’d failed, and now he wasn’t even making an effort to be courteous. She’d refused his generous offer and he had no more time for her.
“Yes, sir,” she said in a subdued tone.
“When’s the wedding?” he asked with his back to her.
“I don’t know. Soon,” she said vaguely.
“You don’t sound enthusiastic.”
“I think it’s wonderful,” she corrected. “It’s going to be a good marriage. One of the best.”
Curry’s hands jammed hard into his pockets. He drew in a deep, harsh breath. “I’m going to bring Amanda home,” he volunteered into the silence. “It’s time she faced up to what marriage means. I’m not going to have my wife living one place while I live in another. She’s going to understand that from the beginning.”
“You don’t give an inch, do you?” she asked sadly, turning away so that she didn’t have to meet his eyes. “She’s the one who’s going to have to make all the sacrifices.”
“If she loved me, giving up her career to be a mother wouldn’t constitute a sacrifice, and you damned well know it!”
She did, but she wasn’t going to puff up his ego by admitting it.
“Does Black want children?” he asked suddenly.
She laughed softly, remembering what Elaine had told her. “Oh, yes,” she said with a smile, “a whole huge houseful of them, assorted.”
There was a tense silence between them. “Damn him!” Curry breathed violently. “Damn him, and damn you, too!”
She turned, astonished by the emotion in his dark face, his blazing eyes, trying to puzzle out what in the world was wrong with him.
“Don’t be here when I get back,” he told her in a voice so cold it seemed to choke him. “Get your bags packed today, and get out! I never want to set eyes on you again, do you hear?”
She could only nod, strangled by the demand, her voice buried.
He spared her one last, scathing glance as he opened the door. “Good riddance,” he murmured. “I’ve had enough puritans to last me a lifetime. I wish him joy of you.”
And with that last, puzzling statement, he was gone. She stood there white-faced, half relieved that the stress was finally over, that she wouldn’t have to stay here and watch him with Amanda while another part of her was already wilting like a flower suddenly thrust from full sunlight into the cool shade.
Tears were pouring down her cheeks when she put the cover on her typewriter for the last time and left the room.
Leaving was harder than Eleanor had ever imagined. It was one thing to know she was going to do it, quite another to make it an accomplished fact.
Three years was a long time to leave behind. There were so many memories in the sprawling ranch house. Nights when she and Curry sat up and watched the late show together while he dictated correspondence during the commercials. Long, lazy afternoons when he’d stop her in the middle of something and they’d go driving, or riding out to see the new calves. Periods of such comradeship that they seemed infinitely closer than boss and secretary. And now, all of it was only a memory.
Jim came to get her, bag and baggage, and Bessie cried.
“Fool man,” the housekeeper sobbed, “hasn’t got eyes in his head to see with! Amanda’ll never satisfy him!”
“It’s his life, Bessie, he has to do what he thinks is best,” she replied tearfully, defending him unconsciously, as she always had.
“He had such a jewel in you.” Bessie tried to smile. “If only he’d realized it.”
“Secretaries are easy to come by,” Eleanor reminded her. “Remember the first day I came here, and there were four very efficient ones in front of me for an interview? He won’t have any trouble replacing me—he may have already done it for all I know.”
“He’s hired Betty Maris, is what he’s done,” Bessie scoffed.
“Miss Betty?” Eleanor blinked. “Old Miss Betty who lives just past Smith’s store and raises the African violets and hates men?”
“That’s right. Oh, she’ll make a dandy secretary, and Curry won’t cow her,” Bessie admitted. “But she’s a far cry from you.”
“Mandy will love her,” Eleanor teased lightly. Her lower lip trembled with tears that wanted to escape. “I’ll miss you, Bessie.”
“I’ll miss you, sugar. Please keep in touch with me. I’ll never tell him a thing, I promise,” she added knowingly.
Eleanor nodded and, turning to Jim, went quickly out the door without looking back.
The first week was harder than she’d imagined anything could be. Not the work. Jim was patient, and Elaine and Maude and Jeff kept her mind occupied when she wasn’t hard at work. But Curry seemed to follow her, always in her mind, on her mind, his face flashing before her eyes, night and day until she thought she’d never again see any peace.
Then, miraculously, after those first days were lived through, she began to lose the paleness and the sparkle came back into her green eyes. It was like living through combat. Taking it one day at a time. She was going to survive it in spite of Curry Matherson.
“Amanda didn’t come back with him,” Jim remarked over supper one night.
Eleanor concentrated on her mashed potatoes with a vengeance. “Didn’t she?’
“Rumor is that he broke the engagement himself.”
“Best thing that could have happened,” Maude remarked with a nod. “She’d never have made him happy.”
“Traveling won’t either, but it looks like he’s trying it,” Jim said as he sipped his coffee. “He’d no sooner got back to the ranch than he took off again. Hasn’t come home yet.” He frowned. “Maybe the memories are haunting him.”
Eleanor knew about haunting, she’d had her share. She could almost feel sorry for Amanda, but the redhead should have known that she couldn’t dictate terms to a man like Curry.
“Well, how do you like it here?” Jim asked Eleanor suddenly.
She laughed, gazing around the table to Elaine, Maude and Jeff. “How should I like being surrounded by nice people? None of you turn the air blue, or yell, or threaten to have me drawn and quartered if I don’t finish my work exactly on schedule.” She glanced at Elaine with a beaming smile. “And I’m having a ball helping Elaine get everything ready for the wedding. I don’t even mind addressing invitations.”
“Only two more weeks,” Jim sighed, his eyes drinking in his pretty fiancée. “How will I live?”
“One day at a time, like the rest of us,” Maude laughed.
“I think it’s going to be keen, having a mom like the other guys,” Jeff volunteered with a wink at Elaine. “I’ve told everybody.”
“I hope I don’t disappoint you,” Elaine told him with a smile. She was already taken with Jim’s son, and it showed. She’d be good for him.
“As long as you don’t try to read me any bedtime stories,” Jeff cautioned her, “we’ll all get along just fine!”
And they all broke up at the plea.
Several days had gone by when Bessie called one night and asked to speak to Eleanor. She’d kept the lines of communication open, but this was the first time Bessie had called at night, and Eleanor had an ominous feeling about it when she picked up the phone.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked without preamble.
“To my mind, everything is,” Bessie admitted with a weary note in her voice. “He’s back.”
“Jim said he’d been away,” came the soft reply, and there was no need to pretend she didn’t know who Bessie was talking about.
“Well, he looks like the back end of beyond,” the housekeeper said gruffly. “And his temper’s so raw I can’t even talk to him. Eleanor, I’ve seen him in all kinds of conditions. Drunk, mad, irritated…but I’ve never seen him the way he is now. He’s pushing himself so hard, I expect any day for one of the boys to bring him in unconscious with a heart attack. I don’t know what to do. He won’t talk to me, or to anybody else. I’m so worried I can hardly stand it.”
Eleanor knew what was coming, and she dreaded the words, but she had to ask, “What do you want me to do?”
“Come over here, and talk to him,” she replied, just as Eleanor expected. “He always would talk to you when he wouldn’t say a word to anybody else. You can find out what’s wrong with him, if anyone can.” There was a pause. “Eleanor, we both love that man, despite all his faults. I can almost hate him sometimes, but I can’t stand by and let him kill himself. Can you?”
Eleanor stared down at the push buttons on the phone. “No,” she admitted weakly. “I can’t. When do you think would be a good time?”
“Come to supper. I’ll tell him I invited you to come see me. Will you?”
“For you. I’ll get one of the boys to drive me over. Bye.”
“Thanks, Eleanor. I knew I could count on you.”
She hung up the phone with mixed emotions. Could she bear seeing Curry again with all this water under that bridge? Could she bear to hear him pour out the grief that his broken engagement must have caused him? She went upstairs to dress reluctantly. In many ways, this was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.
It was almost dark when Decker, one of Jim’s ranch hands, let her out at the doorstep. The house looked just as she remembered it, big and warm and welcoming with light pouring out the windows onto the ground. If only things had been different, she’d never have had to leave it, she thought wistfully.
She paused on the bottom step to watch Decker drive away, putting off the confrontation until the last possible minute. Then she went up the steps, remembering belatedly that she had to knock on the door now. She couldn’t simply walk in as she’d been used to doing before. Everything was different now.
Eleven
She waited breathlessly for someone to answer the door, nervously smoothing the white sleeveless dress down over her hips as she dreaded the sound of booted feet.
But it was Bessie who answered the door, drawing her inside to hug her heartily before she took her into the dining room.
“Curry, I invited company for supper,” Bessie called as they went into the dining room, and Eleanor’s heart stopped dead as she turned the corner and saw him unexpectedly sitting at the head of the table. She felt as if she’d been shot suddenly, looking straight into those narrow silver eyes without warning.
He looked older, tired, positively haggard, and he�
��d lost weight. His gaze slid up and down her like an artist’s brush, copying every soft line of her body, her face, until his eyes came back up to capture hers and search them.
“If…if you’d rather, I can eat in the kitchen…with Bessie,” Eleanor stammered nervously.
He shook his head. “Sit by me,” he said quietly, drawing a chair out for her.
Bessie disappeared, leaving her stranded. She laid her purse down in a chair by the door and sat down next to Curry. Her eyes carefully avoided his.
“How are things going?” she asked casually.
“Fine,” he replied carelessly. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips and took a sip of the hot, black liquid. He set it down again. “That’s a damned lie,” he added quietly. “Nothing’s right around here anymore. Is that why Bessie sent for you? Does she really think I need a shoulder to cry on?” he asked in a soft, dangerous tone.
She kept her eyes on the white tablecloth. “She was worried about you; don’t be mad at her, Curry.”
“Were you worried?”
She kept her face down wordlessly.
He drew in a harsh breath and lit a cigarette. “No,” he said for her. “Of course not, why the hell should you be after the way I treated you? Are you happy, Jadebud?” he added in a softer tone.
“No,” she said involuntarily, letting the word slip out when she’d rather have bitten her tongue off.
“That makes two of us.” He reached out suddenly and caught her cool, nerveless fingers in his. “Honey, if you’re not happy now, how can you be happy married to him? Don’t jump into anything!”
“Married? Me?” she exclaimed, meeting his eyes with a puzzled look in her own. “I’m not getting married.”
“But, Black said….”
“He’s marrying Elaine,” she replied. “Elaine, whose father owns the Limelight Club,” she explained. “They’re crazy about each other.”
“Oh. I see,” he murmured heavily. He took another long draw from his cigarette and meticulously thumped the small ash into the ashtray by his plate. “Rough, isn’t it, Eleanor, wanting something you can’t have?” he asked.