Ed hooted. “At least you’re honest.” He rose, using the arm of the sofa for leverage. “Son,” he said, “do yourself a favor. Go drown that kid in a cold shower, then load up your girls and take ’em down south. Janey don’t have to go back till Thursday so I can keep an eye on things. Angel needs to make peace with her old life, and I’m thinkin’ it might not hurt to put a little space between you and Abby for a time. Might be her feet’ll warm up by the time you get back.”
ABBY COULDN’T CONTAIN the excitement bubbling in her chest as she pulled into the Hastingses’ driveway. She hadn’t seen Tom in a week. Last Sunday, the Fourth of July, something had changed between them, something that both thrilled and terrified Abby. She hadn’t been deliberately avoiding Tom all week—well, maybe she had, a little, but work had provided the perfect excuse not to see him until she could get things straightened out in her own mind.
As Melina told Tom, Daniel had appointed Abby moderator of the hiring committee. Her days were packed with résumés and interviews; her nights were filled with dreams of dancing in Tom’s arms.
She could have called or made a better effort to return his calls, but she didn’t want to do that until she knew what she was going to say. Indecisiveness was not a trait she liked in herself or others, but Abby found herself flip-flopping on this issue like a politician before election day.
And my decision is? she thought, slowly extricating herself from the car. She looked toward the newly painted addition visible through the leafy walnuts. To go for it, of course.
Janey’s invitation to Sunday dinner gave Abby a much-welcomed chance to see the family she missed. With any luck she and Tom could slip away to discuss the possibility of seeing each other socially. It was a big step, one that meant she would have to reassign his case to another advocate, but she thought he’d agree.
“Hi, Abby,” Ed said, opening the door for her. “Come in. We’re tickled pink you could come.”
Abby walked into the flagstone foyer. Straight ahead, in the step-down living room, a wall of glass provided a panoramic view of fields and orchards beyond the knoll. “What a view!” Abby exclaimed, handing Ed the bottle of wine in her hands.
He ushered her into the room. “We like it. Makes me feel like a king some days.”
Janey, entering through a swinging door to the right, hurried to Abby’s side and took her hands in a warm greeting. “Hello, dear,” she said, smiling. “We’re so glad you could come. I’d hoped Tom and the girls would be here, but they won’t be back from down south until Wednesday. Heather absolutely refused to miss the Rainbows picnic.”
Abby knew all about the picnic. She couldn’t go because of Daniel’s first-ever VOCAP four-day staff retreat that she was coordinating. Melina said it was retribution for dumping him. Abby argued the dumping was mutual, since Daniel was the one who’d called her into his office two weeks earlier and demanded to know whether they had a relationship or not. Abby couldn’t lie. She felt bad for letting him think he’d ever had a chance to win her heart. Her only solace was that rumor had it Daniel was already involved with a woman from the mayor’s office.
Abby’s disappointment must have shown, although she did her best to hide it. Ed handed her a glass of wine. “Here. This’ll help.”
“I didn’t know he’d made up his mind to let Angel go,” Abby said, sipping the red wine.
Janey glanced at her husband. “I think Ed helped point Tom in that direction. Ed told him Angel needed to put a few ghosts to rest. I sure hope it was the right decision.”
Ed shrugged his burly shoulders. “You can’t go forward with your life if you’re always looking back,” he said sagely. “Now that Angel’s got some friends around here, she’s got something to compare to her old life. She has a good head on her shoulders and she’s always liked the ranch. I think it’ll work out the way it should.”
Abby hoped he was right. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Angel about her new friends, but Heather told Donna that Tom was thinking about getting Call Waiting because Angel was constantly on the phone.
During dinner Janey explained about Tom’s compromise: he agreed to drive Angel back to Riverside if she agreed to four days, not a week. That way he could take Heather to a few amusement parks, and even visit a guy who was interested in purchasing one of Tom’s colts.
Abby was impressed, but not surprised. Tom’s flexibility was one of the things she admired most about him. She only hoped that it extended to his social life, because as much as she wanted to be included in that life, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to give him what he’d want—marriage, babies, the whole nine yards. She hoped he’d settle for a love affair.
“THANK YOU, dear,” Grace Davis said, practically patting Abby on the head like a child. “Come back for me around four.”
“Come back?” Abby exclaimed. “Mother, you can’t be serious. You can’t just…I need…the girls don’t even…”
Abby knew Heather and Angel were staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. Her mother, the woman who’d unloaded her infant daughter on her mother-in-law to raise, had just volunteered to hang wallpaper with two children—children she’d never even met until ten minutes earlier. Granted, Grace had talked with them on the phone before deciding on which decorating scheme to follow, but still.
“You…you want me to leave?”
“Yes, dear,” Grace said, relieving Abby of the two oversize shopping bags she’d just hauled in from the car.
“But I can help.” Abby detested the pleading sound in her voice.
Grace looked at Abby through the fashionable, gold-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Don’t you remember what happened when we tried wallpapering your guest room?”
Abby shuddered. A near brush with matricide. If Melina hadn’t intervened, Abby would have dumped a pan of wallpaper paste over her mother’s head.
While Abby watched, Grace rolled back the sleeves of her paint-splattered smock and handed a wide roll of wallpaper to Angel and two smaller rolls—the border—to Heather. “Clear off the kitchen table, girls. We need room to spread out.” She looked toward the dining nook. “My, what a nice fifties dinette!”
Grace briefly surveyed the room before turning her attention back to the collection of shopping bags at her feet. She tapped a tastefully lacquered nail against her still-smooth cheek and hummed, thinking.
She never really ages, Abby thought, admiring her mother’s punkish haircut, an avant-garde blend of silver and red. Grace would be seventy next year, but she still worked four days a week and played golf the other three. Abby both envied her and resented her.
“I believe I have everything I need, dear,” she said, smiling warmly. “This will give you a couple of free hours to yourself. You work much too hard.”
That theme had been discussed at length last night; Abby wasn’t about to get into it again. “But, Mom, I want to help.”
Grace’s lips pursed—a look Abby remembered well from childhood. It meant her mind was made up. “You and I don’t work well together, dear. We’re too much alike, I guess.”
Abby blanched at the thought.
“But the girls—”
“Look eager and intelligent,” she said, cutting Abby off. Grace beamed at her two helpers as if genuinely pleased to spend time with them. “And we’ve already determined they have exquisite taste. Don’t worry, dear, we’ll get along fine.”
Heather and Angel, avidly watching the interplay, smiled back. But I want to spend time with them. She’d missed them, having barely managed twenty minutes with them in the past three weeks, thanks to Daniel. He’d scheduled an employee orientation meeting so Abby wasn’t able to drive the girls to their final Rainbows meeting. She’d shared the pain but been cheated out of the triumph.
“Come see our room,” Heather said, taking Grace’s hand. Abby’s heart constricted jealously.
“Oh, Abby,” Grace said. “Let’s not forget a before-and-after picture. Where�
��s my camera? I know your father packed it somewhere.” Abby’s father had remained in Palm Desert.
Abby fished a small silver Nikon out of Grace’s tote bag and followed them to the addition. She hadn’t seen it since the carpet went in.
“Light and airy,” Grace said. “Very good choice of carpet, Abby.”
It wasn’t much, but compliments from Grace Davis were rare. “Thanks.”
After a dozen shots, Grace hustled Abby off.
“Wait,” Heather said, dashing to Abby’s side. With a conciliatory smile, she deposited a marble-size piece of blue bubble gum in Abby’s hand.
Abby popped the rock-hard treat in her mouth and left with a smile on her face. Masticating with conviction, she plopped down on the front step. Heat, that ghastly, pizza-oven heat of summer, immediately tried to melt her. A sprinkler methodically arched back and forth over the ragged little patch of lawn, dousing Heather’s bike with staccato bursts. “Now what?” Abby asked Rosie, who hogged the only available patch of shade. The old dog thumped her thick tail twice—whether in greeting or to annoy the flies, Abby wasn’t sure.
She held her hand to her forehead and squinted through desertlike heat waves toward the ranch house. Abby knew Janey and Ed were back in Stanford for Janey’s final series of treatments.
Abby had meant to call to wish them good luck, but the time flew by in a haze of tension generated by the new staff and Daniel’s autocratic attitude. Abby would have postponed her mother’s visit except she didn’t want to disappoint the girls, who couldn’t wait to add the finishing touches to their new bedroom. Last night, after her mother went to bed, Abby worked up the nerve to call Tom, but Angel, who, along with Trudy Gills, was baby-sitting Heather, told her Tom was at a fish fry at the Elks Club with Johnny. It seemed everyone had a life but her.
“So,” Abby said, stroking Rosie’s sun-heated coat, “do I drive all the way home and come back in two hours or what?”
Rosie’s ears perked up. Abby tilted her head and strained to listen, too. A clanking sound echoed from the direction of the new horse corral. Curious, she rose and headed in that direction.
If a picture was worth a thousand words, the image of Tom, shirtless, sweating, looking like a model for some sexy calendar, was worth a million. Abby’s fingers tingled as if she’d just touched metal after walking over carpet. A smile sprang to her lips even when she tried to banish it. This feast for the eyes nourished something puny and starved in her soul. Suddenly, whatever was lacking in her life—that essence that made daylight brighter, jokes funnier and oranges sweeter—hit her full force. A little dizzy, she grabbed for the closest fence post.
With legs spread a shoulder-width apart on either side of the steel fence post he was in the process of driving into the ground, Tom lifted a heavy-looking tool in place above the post and slammed it down with brute force. His gloved hands curled tighter on the handles of the pounding tool. He raised it a few inches and repeated the process. With each upward stroke, his shoulder muscles bunched from the strain, giving Abby a heart-stopping display of muscle power. His pectorals were molded like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. Although she’d long admired Tom’s solid build, Abby hadn’t realized the strength that went along with those muscles.
Each clanging sound made Abby’s blood pulse in her ears.
A miniature dust devil sent the powdery soil at his feet billowing upward. Coughing, he reached for a water bottle sitting in the skinny strip of shade at the base of a previously positioned post. Without a belt, his jeans rode low, giving Abby a glimpse of shorts and white skin. The upper three inches of denim around his waist was dark with sweat.
His thumb popped the cap. He took a gulp then tilted his head back, squirting water across his face. Under his frayed, misshapen straw cowboy hat, a blue bandanna was knotted to absorb moisture. His skin looked flushed from the heat and sun. Grimy rivulets of perspiration and water coursed down his neck, leaving trails meandering over dust-coated muscles, fanning out in the diamond-shaped patch of chest hair.
He swished a mouthful of water from cheek to cheek then turned and spat. The stream landed two feet in front of her. A few drops sprinkled her bare toes, making her jump.
His eyes narrowed. “Sorry. Didn’t see you there.”
“Hi,” she said, her gum getting tangled with her tongue. Blushing, she moved the nasty wad to one side.
He lifted one hand to push back his hat a notch. A lukewarm greeting, at best.
Suddenly, a bolt of lust swept through her. Why in the hell was she being so damn noble? She had needs, too. She was trying to be adult about this, trying to be circumspect, to do the right thing for his sake and the sake of his children. Did he appreciate her restraint? Apparently not. He was looking at her as if he thought she’d been avoiding him on purpose, as if she didn’t want him. What woman in her right mind wouldn’t want him?
The force of the blood moving through her veins made her chest ache. Her palms were sweaty while her feet felt cold. Wavy lines across her vision made her blink. This is either lust or heatstroke. Either way, there was only one cure.
TOM’S HEART SLAMMED against his chest.
“Hello, Abby.” He kept his tone neutral, studying her face and eyes with a trainer’s intuitiveness. What had Ed said about giving her time to recognize her feelings? Was that desire he saw? Wasn’t this too soon to try again?
One part of his brain shouted out the obvious: cutoff shorts and flip-flops. Too much leg and ten toes with lilac polish. Little blue tank top and white lace under-things. Shit. She didn’t play fair.
He dropped the sport bottle, giving it a kick for good measure. When he reached for the heavy-gauge steel post driver, the top-heavy post wobbled drunkenly. He’d have kicked it, too, but probably would have broken a toe.
He looked again. The raw desire in her eyes nearly sent him over the edge. Where the hell were her sunglasses when he needed them?
Goddamn it, how much am I expected to take? Tearing his gaze from her, he stalked to the newly installed water trough. Yanking off his gloves, he let them drop then pitched his hat toward the barn and plunged his upper torso into the tepid water. Blindly, he reached for the shirt that should have been hanging on the post.
“Here,” she said.
Squeezing out his soaked bandanna, he used it to wipe his eyes. She stood an arm’s-length away, offering him the shirt like an invitation—one she knew damn well that he couldn’t resist.
With a groan, he pulled her against his bare, dripping chest and crushed her lips beneath his. Her arms flew around his neck. He felt his shirt drop from her grasp and slide down his bare back. She pressed her body against him as if trying to crawl under his skin.
Her tongue met his with a passion he didn’t expect. Part defense, part offense. He couldn’t really tell where one started and the other left off. She tasted of bubble gum; the silliness of it made a laugh catch in his throat.
Choking, he pulled back. “Why are you here?” he asked with his first good breath.
“You know I can’t stay away.”
She reached up and pulled his head down to finish what he’d started. Her fingers moved in his wet hair. Her scent, as fresh and intoxicating as a field of wild-flowers filled his nostrils. He followed the flowery trail lower, spreading kisses along her jaw, stopping to nuzzle the tender depression at the top of her breastbone.
Her sweet moan tantalized him, spurring him lower. He placed his hand over her breast, and felt her tremble. Her nipple solidified through both shirt and bra. He pulled the shirt free from the waistband of her shorts and worked his hand upward, lifting the jersey material over her quivering ribs. His focus centered on the rounded white breast and rose-tipped nipple straining against translucent material.
Forcing his impatient brain to slow down, he dipped a finger beneath the lace.
“Small…” she started to say.
He stopped her words with a kiss. Kneading the breast that fit his hand perfectly, he deepened the
kiss. A groan deep in her throat almost sent him over the edge. Whatever illusion of control he thought he possessed disappeared like a sinner’s good intentions.
Her hips wiggled provocatively against his. His body ached to do what it was designed to do. Tom reached behind her with both hands cupping her buttocks and lifted her that inch or so to fit against him.
She moaned against his lips. “Tom, I’ve missed you. I need you.”
His heart quickened its already frantic beat. His chest sizzled from the sensation of her rigid nipples pressing against him. In his mind, he could almost taste her. Honey. She’d taste like honey. His mouth watered, but when he tried to swallow, nothing happened.
Like a freight train braking at full speed, it took a minute for the message to reach all the way down the line.
With a groan of pure agony, he pulled back. “No.”
Her hand slid around from his buttocks to the hard length between them. She cupped him; her thumb flicked across the straining zipper. “Your body says yes.”
Her simmering, husky tone beckoned like a siren in a Greek tragedy. Months of longing pushed toward the point of no return. Do it. This is what he wanted. Why wait? Take what she’s offering. Where? The barn. He knew where to find an old sleeping bag. Or they could use the couch in his office. No lock, but…
The images imploded.
“No.” He shook his head, trying to move the blood back from his extremities. “Not here. Not like this.”
He put both hands on her shoulders and moved her back a step. “My body says, ‘Yes, please, God, yes.’ My heart says, ‘Yes.’ But my head says, ‘Get a grip, man. We’re not seventeen and Abby deserves better than a roll in the hay.”’
The glimmer of passion, which had turned her eyes copper, was extinguished like a flame in a storm. She dropped her chin. Tom pulled her back into his arms. The heat still surged between them, but he could control it now. He had to. This was too important.
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