Tom laughed. For the first time in weeks he felt relaxed. He couldn’t explain it. Last night’s confrontation with Angel, a week of dreading how he’d handle his attraction toward Abby in public all just sloughed off like old skin.
THREE HOURS LATER, amidst a triangle of aluminum tables, portable grills and folding lawn chairs, Tom stretched out on a musty-smelling sleeping bag and cocked his hat over his face to block the sun filtering through the canopy of trees. The noisy horde of friends and family had disappeared, spreading out in all directions. Closing his eyes, Tom listened to the hum of voices and laughter.
What a great day! They’d lucked out, weatherwise. Unseasonably mild with rare high clouds leading the way for some misguided Pacific front, the valley sky was true blue, the temperature well below ninety.
“Looky there,” Janey exclaimed, her voice laced with humor. “Just proves my mama was right. There’s no fool like an old fool.”
Tom rose up on one elbow. Regally sitting in a rattan peacock chair, her baldness disguised by a Middle Eastern print turban, Janey looked exotic, not recuperative. Tom followed her outstretched finger.
Ed—dead center in a cluster of men, each pushing seventy—elbowed his way to the throw line of the horseshoe pit, posturing for the sake of the decades-younger women at the opposing pit.
“When you got it, flaunt it,” Tom said dryly.
“He can tell that to his chiropractor tomorrow.”
Tom chuckled and eased back down.
“How come you’re not over there with them?” She made a snuffling noise. “Oh, I know. You’re above all that foolishness. You don’t need a woman in your life.”
Tom readjusted his hat. He heard a lecture in the offing.
Janey threw something that managed to knock his hat askew.
Groaning, he sat up, crossing his legs. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
“You’re wound tighter than a pig’s tail in January. It’s plain as day you care about Abby and, for a smart woman, she’s positively goofy when you’re anywhere in sight. Why don’t you do something about it?”
“Not that simple.”
“Hmmph,” she snorted. “Truth is, dear heart, you’re wrong. Nothing like a brush with death to get your priorities straight.
“Did Ed tell you Peter and Maureen are flying out next week? They’re thinking about selling their empty nest and moving out here to be closer to us. I begged Pete to do that years ago—before you came to live here—but he had to do his own thing. One thing cancer’s shown me is life doesn’t wait for us to make time for it.”
Tom traced the groove of his inseam with this thumb-nail. “I know what you mean, but there’s not just me to consider. I don’t want to upset the girls.”
“Pooh.” She fanned the air with a folded fan Heather had made for her. “You don’t think the girls were upset all week watching you mope around? They love you, Tom. They want to see you happy.”
“I am happy. Most of the time. The girls have only been here six months. It’s not like I was a big dater before they came. I can get by. Besides, a ready-made family with two kids in therapy isn’t exactly the kind of thing you spring on somebody.”
“Don’t blow that smoke around me, Tom Butler. We’re not talking about somebody. We’re talking about Abby. Cancer gives a person twenty-twenty where bullshit is concerned. You love that gal.”
He reached for his hat, any kind of protection from this blunt honesty.
“You’re afraid, aren’t you? You think Abby might do the same thing Lesley did—love you and leave you.”
He crammed the hat down tight. “It’s crossed my mind.”
“Lesley Pimental was looking for a ticket outta this one-horse town and you were it. Her mama was the same way. Ruby thought a man was the answer to her problems. Five husbands later and she still hasn’t got a clue.” She shook her head in disgust. “I learned a long time ago that answers come from inside, not outside. Abby already knows that. She has the answer, she just hasn’t asked the right question yet. But she will.”
Janey reached out and took his hand. He thumbed the yellowish bruise left by the IV needle. “I went to a counseling group at the hospital, Tom. Know what one gal with colon cancer told me? She said, ‘When I was first diagnosed, I was afraid of dying. Now, I’m only afraid of not truly living.”’
Tom thought about her words a moment then squeezed her hand. “You’re one smart lady, Janey Hastings. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She squeezed back. “Well, I’m licking this damn disease, so you’re not going to have to worry about that for a long, long time. Now go find your girls. All three of ’em.”
“BETH, LET ME GET a picture of you and Johnny Dee,” Abby said, motioning the Moores together in front of the bandstand. The music, such as it was, had attracted a large group of young people, including Angel and Trudy and a substantial following of teenage boys and girls. Johnny seemed convinced something sexual would take place if he wasn’t on patrol. Beth ribbed him about old guilt coming back to haunt him. Nearby, Heather stood with a group of youngsters watching a clown juggle bright scarves.
Abby focused the wide-angle lens. A nice couple. Fourteen years of marriage, Beth told her. Thirteen good, this past one not so hot. But they were working at it.
“Smile.”
As soon as the shutter snapped, Johnny swooped Beth into a backward dip and lip lock.
Grinning, Abby turned away, casually scanning the crowd. She was enjoying the day, after all. Her week-long trepidation about meeting Tom’s friends had eased once Maria and Miguel arrived with baby Rey. The Fuenteses and the Hastingses went out of their way to make Abby feel welcome. Chad “Chubs” Raines and his wife, Annette, had eyed her curiously but were distracted by the arrival of the Moores, who’d brought their two kids plus a niece and nephew the same age.
After a huge lunch of hot dogs and barbecued steaks and more side dishes than she could count, Abby found herself chatting with the other women about children, families and the economy. Every once in a while she’d feel Tom’s gaze on her, but she was too replete to worry about it.
Johnny broke her mellow reverie when he stepped toward her, hand out. “Your turn. Let me get one of you and Tom.”
Abby’s heart lurched. “Tom?” She looked toward the blankets where she’d left him napping. From nowhere, a lanky form in faded denims, crisp white shirt with sleeves rolled back to the elbows and gray leather “pointy-toe spider killers,” as Ed described Tom’s dress boots, materialized at her side. She took a step back.
Johnny snatched the camera from her numb fingers and shoved her to the right. “Closer, not farther apart.”
Tom’s solid shoulder kept her from stumbling. Abby glanced at Beth, who grinned knowingly. “Smile, Abby.”
Lowering the camera, Johnny made a face. “Take off the damn hat, Tom. Why don’t you learn to wear a ball cap like everybody else?”
Abby felt him shrug. To her extrasensitive skin, even that slight motion felt full of portent. It set other feelings in motion, making her jiggly inside. “Just take the darned picture, Dee,” Tom told him.
“Put your arm around her.”
“Take the darned picture,” Tom and Abby said together.
Fighting a grin, she looked at him; his lips turned upward, too. Even shaded by the brim of his hat, his eyes reflected the cloudless blue of the sky. Damn, she missed being able to look into his eyes.
“Now, that was more like it,” Johnny said, walking up to them. He passed the camera to Abby, who accepted it, unable to make herself break the connection with Tom. “Listen, buddy, we have to do something before it’s too late.”
“About what?” Tom’s eyes held a question that didn’t seem to have anything to do with Johnny Dee.
“Them.”
Tom also seemed reluctant to move away from Abby, but Johnny stiff-armed him, sending him back a step. “Boys. Walking, talking pillars of raging hormones.”
While the two me
n discussed youthful lust, Beth drew Abby’s attention to a group of women Beth called the “town scions, such as they are.” Abby only partially listened.
“If that was my guy, I’d have my claws out about now,” Beth said in a low voice.
Confused, Abby looked around, finally spotting Tom and Johnny a few feet away. Tom seemed to have acquired a new appendage—a twenty-something redhead in extremely short shorts and halter top plastered to his front, her belly button pressed tight to the big silver buckle at his waist.
A rush of adrenaline fueled by jealously surged through Abby’s system before she could stop it. Fighting a slight wave of nausea, she asked in a stiff voice, “Who is she?”
“Laurie Pimental. His ex-wife’s ex-sister-in-law.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Laurie used to be married to Lesley’s brother, Raymond. He’s in jail, she probably ought to be.”
Abby looked away, hating the way the young woman’s fawning made her gut churn. “Tom can handle it, if he wants to. Some men like that.”
Beth shot her a look. “Not Tom Butler. You’re obviously the person he’s interested in, and Tom wouldn’t dream of two-timing somebody. He’s the most honorable man I have ever met.”
Beth took Abby’s arm and led her a few steps away. “Let me tell you about Tom. Johnny and I started dating in eighth grade. We broke up once right before senior prom, and I sort of threw myself at Tom. He was so kind and sweet I ended up crying my eyes out and telling him my whole life story. There was a lot of alcohol abuse in my family, and Johnny was partying pretty heavy back then. The idea of reliving my mom’s life terrified me. Tom is the one who made Johnny go to counseling with me.”
Beth stepped closer and lowered her voice. “You probably don’t know this, but Johnny and I are the reason Tom wasn’t home when the cops first called about Lesley. We were fighting, and I’d packed up the kids and moved to my folks’ place in Fresno. Johnny and Chubs went out drinking and bumped into Tom. He’d been up in the mountains for a week. He’s not much of a drinker, and he hadn’t eaten all day. Anyway, the booze did a real number on him. Johnny hid his keys and left him sleeping it off in his truck. That’s where the highway patrol found him the next morning.”
She frowned. “He blamed himself, not Johnny or me.”
Abby could picture it. Honorable. Noble. She knew that about him, respected him for it, possibly even loved him for it, but that didn’t change things between them.
To keep from looking at Tom and the human leach, Abby scanned the crowd for Heather, who had been ten feet away not three minutes earlier. Squinting, she pivoted in each direction. No mop of white-blond curls in sight.
“Heather,” Abby called, instinctively heading in the direction where she’d last seen her. “Beth, do you see Heather anywhere?”
“She was here a second ago.”
Abby’s heart sped up. She spotted Angel and waved her over. “Have you seen Heather?”
Angel shook her head, as did her pudgy shadow.
“Run to the picnic spot, see if she’s with Janey.”
Obviously alert to the fear in Abby’s voice, Angel didn’t hesitate.
Abby sent Beth back to enlist Tom and Johnny in the search while she headed toward the 4-H and FFA exhibits. Heather loved animals.
Fighting back all the dire images of faces on milk cartons, Abby picked her way through the crowd, trying to look in all directions at once. A throng of people blocked her way. As she eased around them, she realized she’d reached the line for the portable bathrooms, which were at the outskirts of the festivities.
She turned back, recalling a wire-fenced enclosure beneath a stay of elms. The 4-H petting zoo. As she neared a fence of straw bales, a flash of white caught her eye. In the far corner of the pen sat Heather, a huge duck on her lap.
Abby flew past the startled young attendant. “Heather,” she cried breathlessly, tears brimming. She dropped to her knees, the scratchy straw poking her bare skin. “Why didn’t you tell me where you were going? I thought I lost you.”
Clearly puzzled by Abby’s tone, Heather shook her head. “I only just walked here. This is Ferdinand. Like in the movie.”
Abby shooed the duck away then pulled Heather into her arms. Rocking back and forth, she squeezed her tight. Relief opened the floodgate. She closed her eyes but couldn’t stop the tears. “Oh, baby, don’t ever scare me like that again.”
When she opened her eyes, she found Tom watching from just outside the fence. His smile thanked her for finding his daughter; the look in his eyes made her heart dance.
ABBY CLOSED HER EYES and inhaled. No smell on earth could be sweeter than a man’s scent mingled with spray starch. Tom’s shoulder beneath his neatly pressed shirt made the kind of pillow she could lean her head against for the rest of her life, if she let herself—which, of course, she couldn’t. But, Abby told herself, one night can’t hurt.
With tiny, white lights twinkling in the trees surrounding the grass dance floor, Abby felt like Cinderella at the ball. The magic would disappear at midnight and she would go back to being responsible, but for the moment she was free to drink it all in, every splendid moment.
The band, a fifty-something ensemble complete with an accordion player, set the mood with old standards like “Stardust” and “Fly Me to the Moon.” Tom danced with simple grace. He held her close but with respect and dignity. His strong arms made her feel safe. His heart seemed to beat in time with hers.
“Look,” he said, directing Abby’s attention to the row of kids perched on the split-rail fence that flanked the band shell. Angel, laughing and pointing with the others, looked happy—quite a change from the petulant youngster Abby had escorted to Fresno on Thursday. “They think because we’re old we can’t have fun. I’m having fun. What about you?”
“I don’t think fun quite covers it,” she said, looking into his eyes, wishing she could memorize the twinkling humor she saw reflected. So often lately, he’d been as serious and somber as his elder daughter, but tonight both seemed transformed. Angel because she’d reconnected with her friends; Tom because…Abby wasn’t brave enough to explore that one.
His oh-so-masculine lips narrowed slightly and his forehead creased. “No?”
“No. A fun day earns a paragraph or two in my journal. This one’s more like four or five pages,” she told him honestly. He rewarded her candor with a sweet kiss at each corner of her lips. It would have been so easy to turn her head to meet his lips, but a swell in the level of heckling made her bury her face against his shoulder.
“My brother always said I’d pay for sneaking up on him when he was making out with his girlfriend,” she muttered.
Tom’s chuckle rumbled through his chest.
“Daddy,” Heather cried, wedging between their legs. “It’s time for the fireworks. Look, Abby, look.”
Tom hoisted Heather to one hip and took Abby’s hand, leading the way to the curb, where the rest of their group had gathered. Abby glanced over her shoulder and saw Angel and her friends racing to find a good vantage point. A sudden sense of fullness, of perfection within a moment, brought tears to her eyes. She squeezed Tom’s hand. Her handsome prince with two wonderful daughters. Cinderella never had it so good.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TOM HUNG UP the receiver of the phone with exquisite care to keep from hurling it across the room.
“Something wrong?” Ed asked, poking his head in the doorway of the box-filled room that would soon be the ranch’s new office. Janey had commandeered the old office for her genealogy research, telling Ed, “Thirty-five years of having an office in my house is long enough.”
Ed used the move as an excuse to buy a new computer, which he planned to coerce Tom into using. First, Tom had to find time to get it out of its box.
Tom sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I think it’s called the brush-off, but it’s been so long since I’ve dated, I’m not real sure,” he said honestly.
On the
Fourth of July, Tom was certain things were heating up between him and Abby. They’d danced, laughed, even squeezed in a furtive kiss before Angel and her friends found them. By the time he fell asleep that night, he could picture their wedding and the birth of their child. But that was Sunday. Now it was Friday afternoon and he had yet to talk to Abby, let alone do anything that could result in propagation.
She’d even bailed on driving the girls to Rainbows yesterday, telling Angel her boss had scheduled a meeting, which she couldn’t avoid. When Tom tried calling her at home after their return at ten, there’d been no answer. He figured this was the same boss who was trying to date her.
Tom rolled his shoulders trying to ease some of the tension. “I finally made a decision about allowing Angel to go to Riverside and wanted to run it past Abby,” he told Ed. Tom trusted Abby’s judgment; he needed her input. He missed her, damn it.
“Did you try her office?” Ed asked, lowering his body to the used but serviceable leather couch.
Tom nodded. “I just talked to her friend, Melina. She sounded apologetic as hell, but she said Abby has been in meetings all week—something about their boss finding some money to hire two new employees, and Abby handling all the interviews.”
“She’s a busy lady.”
Tom sighed. “I know. But—”
“You thought things had changed between you.”
Tom eyed his friend, the man who in many ways knew him better than his father. “Yep.”
Ed steepled his callused fingers. “Could be Abby’s just plain busy. Could be she’s developed a case of what’s commonly called cold feet. You’ve seen it happen when you’re breaking a colt,” Ed told him. “You get ’em to a spot you think they’re comfortable with you, then—wham—somethin’ spooks ’em. Just takes time and patience.”
Tom sighed. “A part of me knows that. The girls need time. I need time. Abby needs time.” He looked at the freshly painted walls of what had once been the tack room. “But then there’s the seventeen-year-old inside me who wants it all right now.”
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