The Cowboy Steals a Lady

by Anne McAllister

  "In all that snow?"

  "It wasn't snowing that badly when I left," Poppy lied.

  "It was snowing like crazy. He must've been pretty special," Amber said slyly.

  "What makes you think it was a he?"

  "Had to be. You wouldn't have done anything that dumb otherwise."

  "It wasn't dumb."

  "Not if he was the right guy," Amber agreed.

  * * *

  Right before closing her father came in.

  "You knew, didn't you?" he said without preamble.

  Poppy, who was putting the finishing touches on an anniversary bouquet and thinking for the hundredth time that day about Shane's lovemaking, started guiltily and stared at him. "Knew? Knew what?"

  "That Callahan was going to come barging in there and make an ass out of himself! True love conquering all." The Honorable Judge George Winthrop Hamilton gave an ungentlemanly snort and stalked around the shop, nearly knocking over a hothouse palm.

  "Well, it was sort of romantic," Poppy ventured. Hadn't he noticed she wasn't there, either?

  "Told you he was going to do it, did he?"

  "What? No, of course not."

  He stopped, turned and leveled a stare in her direction. "Then how'd you know not to be there?"

  So he had noticed. "I … er, had an errand to run.

  "Long errand," he said shortly. "You were gone three days."

  "An out-of-town errand," Poppy said hastily.

  His gaze got narrower. "You were supposed to be at the wedding. You were doing flowers for the wedding. That's what you told me, anyway. And I said I'd bring young Phillips to meet you. Or is that why you weren't there?"

  Poppy shook her head. "No. I'd just had a pressing commitment. I'd … love to meet him sometime," she said vaguely. "I'm sure he's … very nice."

  "Nice." Her father fairly spat the word. "Nice never cut ice! Phillips is strong, tough. Right out of the old school. Plus he's got a good brain. He's going to be one of Montana's most powerful men one day. You watch."

  "I will." She just didn't intend to do it from across the breakfast table.

  Her father scowled and did another lap around her shop. "Didn't matter that you weren't there," he said finally. "Phillips couldn't be there, either. He had an appointment in Helena. At least he called." He fixed Poppy with a glare that told her she hadn't been forgiven her lapse in manners.

  Her father didn't sound all that pleased with his perfect Mr. Phillips, though, either. He rarely had to deal with someone too busy to be at his beck and call. And he made a harrumphing sound that told Poppy he was displeased at having to admit it.

  "Said he'd come in the next week or two. I'll call you when he's going to be here," he went on. "Then you can come out to the house to meet him. No excuses this time. Cook him a good meal. Your mother's stuffed roast recipe."

  "Dad, I don't—"

  He placed his palms flat on the counter and leaned toward her. "He's a good catch, Poppy. Good man. Good education. Good job. Family owns half a county. He'll make some woman a good husband. And time will come when he'll need a good wife." He looked at her pointedly.

  "He might want to pick his own," Poppy suggested mildly.

  "No time," her father said. "Busy man. Figured I'd help him out a little."

  Poppy groaned. "Dad, that's not how it's done these days."

  "It's how I do it," Judge Hamilton told his only daughter. He plucked a drooping daisy off at the stem and tossed it in the trash. "I'll call you when I get a date set up."

  * * *

  "Thought we'd lost you."

  "What?" Shane blinked. He'd been staring out the window, seeing not the kids playing in the snow, but Poppy loving him. He hadn't heard a word that Jenny had said.

  So what else was new? He hadn't heard much of anything since he'd got back to the ranch three days before.

  "I said, I thought when you didn't come back last weekend that you'd decided you'd rehabbed enough. I thought you'd gone and done something stupid—like entered a rodeo."

  "No," Shane said.

  He'd done something stupid, all right, just not that. "I'm glad," Jenny said. She smiled at him. He managed a wan smile in return, then went back to staring out the window, still not watching the kids, just trying to relive those days with Poppy. And not just the hours when they'd made love. No, he wanted it all—the meals, the smiles, the teasing, the talking, the snowballs and the silliness, the serious conversation and the quiet sighs.

  He'd wanted it ever since he'd driven off and left her. He'd told himself he would forget about her. He was a master at forgetting, at turning his back and moving on. He couldn't begin to remember the names of the women he'd been with over the years.

  He couldn't imagine ever forgetting Poppy.

  "—all right?"

  He was suddenly aware that Jenny was still standing there. "Huh?"

  "I asked if you were all right? Ever since you came back you've been—I don't know—different. Quieter." She crossed the room and put her palm against his forehead. "No fever," she said.

  "I'm not sick!"

  "Well, you're not normal, either."

  He couldn't dispute that. He shrugged irritably. "I'm getting antsy," he said. "Too much time in one place. It does that to a guy. I oughta be gettin' on down the road."

  "A month the doctor said. At a minimum. You need more time to heal."

  "My hand might. I don't."

  That was what was wrong with him—not Poppy Hamilton. The reason he was obsessing about her was that he didn't have anything better to do. "Reckon it's time for me to be on my way."

  "Where would you go?"

  "Don't matter," Shane said stubbornly. "I got friends. Reckon I'll just head out. See what I can see."

  "That's crazy," Jenny said.

  The door opened and her husband came in, a son clinging to each arm, a daughter hanging around his neck.

  "Mace, Shane's talking about leaving!"

  Shane nodded firmly. "You know I'm not cut out for this settled routine."

  Mace looked skeptical. "A man can change."

  "Not me."

  "You're gonna have to one of these days," Mace said mildly.

  But Shane shook his head. "Not yet."

  He wasn't ready to call it quits yet. He'd been to the edge of the abyss, but he still couldn't look over. There would be time to do that. He had his whole damn life to do that! But not now. Not yet.

  Slowly Mace shrugged. "Suit yourself."

  "But—" Jenny began.

  "It's not up to us," Mace said to his wife, looking briefly at her, but then letting his gaze swing back to meet his brother's. "It's your call," he said.

  "That's right. It's my call. I'll be on my way at first light."

  * * *

  It was just what he needed: a wide-open road, a new vista, the horizon spread out before him.

  He felt the surge of adrenaline the minute he drove away from Mace and Jenny's ranch.

  It wasn't that he didn't love them. He did. He loved the kids, too. They added something he hadn't even realized was missing in his brother's life until the three of them were there. Now he couldn't imagine Mace and Jenny without them.

  "Why are you goin'?" Pilar had demanded. His niece had hung on his arm almost from the moment she'd learned Uncle Shane was going away.

  "Got to," he'd said, throwing his clothes into his duffel and setting his rigging bag by the door.

  "Why? Is somebody makin' you?" she'd asked. She had started first grade this past fall. She understood now how other people could make you do things.

  But Shane shook his head. "Nobody's making me."

  Pilar drew her knees up against her chest and wrapped her skinny arms around them. "Then why are you goin'? Don't you love us anymore?"

  Shane looked up. "Of course I love you."

  "Then are you leavin' 'cause it's for our own good?"

  He tried to figure out what she was thinking. Probably it had to do with her South American
grandmother who couldn't take care of her and her brothers anymore and had sent them to Mace and Jenny. Pilar knew it wasn't because their grandmother hadn't loved them. She had done it "for their own good."

  But Shane couldn't even say that. He shrugged. "Maybe he's runnin' away," his nephew Mark suggested.

  Shane's eyes had flashed. "I am not running away." He wasn't, he assured himself now, as he headed down the road away from home and family. And Poppy.

  Of course he wasn't.

  * * *

  She would forget. It would just take time. And a good thing, too, because time was something Poppy had an abundance of.

  She had her work, and her cat and phone calls from her father about his progress in lining up the elusive J.R. Phillips.

  But J.R. Phillips was so busy that he was becoming a distant threat as the days passed. Poppy's life settled into a routine again.

  At first she thought maybe Shane would drop by. She knew he'd been staying with his brother and sister-in-law on their ranch northwest of Elmer. That wasn't so far, she assured herself. He could drive down to Livingston in little more than half an hour.

  But he didn't come.

  Then she told herself it was just as well. If she saw him, what would she say? Worse, what would she do?

  Would she be able to pretend indifference?

  God knew she hadn't mastered indifference on the inside. Perhaps she was lucky he wasn't testing her ability to display it for public consumption.

  Still, it didn't stop her from glancing up hopefully every time the door opened, even after a week went by.

  But always it was customers.

  Until the following Monday when the door opened and Milly walked in.

  Poppy wasn't exactly surprised. It was the day Milly was supposed to have come back to work after her honeymoon with Mike. But even though there had obviously been no honeymoon, she hadn't appeared last week. Poppy hadn't wanted to call her.

  Now she thumped her backpack down on the counter and shed her jacket without speaking.

  Poppy looked up from the cyclamens she was watering and gave Milly a wary smile. "Hi."

  Milly grunted.

  "If you don't feel like working, you can go home," Poppy offered a little hesitantly.

  Milly looked up, eyes flashing. "Why wouldn't I feel like working? What else would I be doing if I weren't here?"

  "I don't know," Poppy said, at a loss. "What have you been doing?"

  "You mean, since I didn't get married?"

  Poppy nodded awkwardly. "I should have called you. I didn't know what to say." And not just about Cash, either.

  "Who does?" Milly said bitterly. "How dare he? How dare he think he can just bust into my wedding and destroy my life!"

  "Did he?" Poppy asked. "Destroy your life?"

  Milly gave her a sharp look.

  "Well, I mean, if you don't love Mike … and you do love Cash…"

  "Did you know? Did he tell you?" she demanded. She set to work repotting some begonias and Poppy feared silently for their lives.

  "Of course he didn't tell me! I didn't see him before he—"

  "You didn't see him there, either," Milly accused. She picked up a potting knife and began cutting apart a flat of begonia seedlings. "You didn't come. You left the flowers for me to finish! Where were you?"

  Poppy concentrated on the cyclamens. "I … got tied up. It was … unavoidable." She didn't think, under the circumstances, she wanted to add to the stories that would forever surround Milly's nonwedding.

  "A man," Milly translated bitterly. She slapped her hand on the counter. "To hell with men."

  "They're not all terrible," Poppy said. "Cash obviously loves you."

  "Cash is crazy! He thinks that he can just show up, ruin my wedding, chase off my fiancé, and I'll fall into his arms like a ripe plum."

  "I take it you won't?"

  "I told him to go to hell." Sniffling, Milly stabbed a begonia. Then the sniffles turned to sobs, and she dropped the potting knife and groped in her pocket for a tissue. "Damn," she mumbled. "Oh, damn."

  "Milly," Poppy said gently, "go home."

  Milly rubbed her eyes. "No." Her tone was defiant. So was the look she gave Poppy. "I don't want to go home. Home is worse than anywhere. My mother thinks I should talk to him. My father thinks he should shoot him. I've listened to both of them for over a week! I need to get out, to work, to be here."

  Poppy gave her a wry look. "You won't be much good selling flowers with red eyes and a blotchy face."

  "I'll tell them I'm allergic."

  "And that will help sales enormously, I'm sure," Poppy said dryly.

  Milly gave one last sniffle. "All right, I won't. But don't send me home, Poppy. Please. I need to keep busy." She gulped and picked up the potting knife again. "I just need to stop thinking about it. About him," she admitted. "I hate him. And I love him. Nothing makes sense."

  Poppy could relate to that.

  * * *

  Shane closed bars with his buddies all the way from Elmer to Spokane. Then he headed south, looking for warmer weather.

  "'Reckon I'll find myself a gal in a bikini and take it easy for a while," he told his pal Martin in Oregon on his way through.

  And when he stopped in Red Bluff, his old traveling partner's sister, Dori, had a red bikini. But somehow Shane couldn't dredge up the appetite for taking it easy with her. Besides it was raining in Red Bluff. It wasn't close enough to the ocean. He kept moving on.

  He stopped in Santa Maria to see another friend. It was closer to the ocean. It wasn't raining. But Norm didn't have any sisters, and his wife's sisters weren't, she told him firmly, about to be corrupted by him.

  "What makes you think I'd corrupt 'em?" Shane asked.

  "I know you," Betty Lou answered.

  Did she?

  Shane didn't think he even knew himself anymore.

  Certainly nothing that used to appeal to him seemed appealing any longer. The call of the open road didn't beckon the way it used to. The notion that there were brighter lights and prettier women over the next hill held no enticement.

  He told himself it was because he wasn't competing. The purpose had gone out of his life.

  That was, of course, the truth. But he didn't dwell on it. He dwelt on Poppy.

  And then he shoved her out of his mind.

  She would be out for good when he got back to competing, when his life returned to normal. Soon. Please God, real soon.

  He'd checked with the doctor in Portland when he passed through. Doc Reeves thought the thumb looked pretty good. He took the cast and bandages off. He manipulated it slowly.

  "Bend it like this," he said, demonstrating with his own.

  Shane tried to. It felt stiff and awkward, like he was trying to move somebody else's thumb. "I'll get better," he assured the doctor quickly. "I'll work at it. Be back to those bulls in no time." He grinned.

  The doctor had nodded and glanced down at Shane's medical records. "You're thirty-two now?"

  Thirty-two wasn't old, damn it! It was the prime of a man's life! The height of his powers. His best years.

  Unless he made his living riding bulls, Shane thought grimly now.

  He would find something else, he remembered Poppy telling him.

  What? he wanted to ask her.

  He wanted to share his misery with her. He wanted to kiss her and touch her and make love over and over to her.

  But Poppy was in Montana. And he was… Hell, he couldn't even remember where he was anymore.

  * * *

  Nine

  « ^ »

  Poppy and Milly went out on a double date.

  It was perhaps not the brightest thing either of them had ever done. But desperation made fools of lots of women.

  "They're nice men," Poppy had assured Milly. "Kyle is everything I could want in a man. He's dependable and kind and respectful and—"

  "He sounds like a lapdog," Milly grumbled. Poppy had been inclined to think the same thing wh
enever she'd run into high school journalism teacher, Kyle Raymond. But she had to do something to distract herself.

  So when she saw him at the grocery store, and he suggested going to Bozeman to a movie on a night when she'd promised Milly to join her in watching reruns of "Welcome Back, Kotter," well, admitting the truth only encouraged him.

  "Milly can come, too," he said brightly. "With Larry."

  Larry Pitts was the high school football coach. Like Kyle he was single and lonely.

  "I don't know," Poppy hedged. But eventually she allowed herself to be convinced. She even convinced Milly.

  "You need to get on with your life," she told Milly. "If you're not going to marry Mike and you're not going to marry Cash, why not go out with someone else?"

  "What if he wants to marry me?" Milly had asked with gallows humor.

  But in the end, she went.

  It was not a memorable evening. Kyle was everything Poppy had said he was. Larry was better than Milly had had any right to hope.

  But Kyle wasn't Shane, and Larry wasn't Cash.

  Milly said, "I can't do this," and declined Larry's suggestion of a second date.

  Poppy was made of sterner stuff.

  When Kyle called and asked her to drive to Billings with him the following Saturday night for a concert, she said, "That sounds like fun," in such a bright voice that Milly, who was snipping baby's breath and shamelessly eavesdropping, groaned and rolled her eyes.

  "You don't love him," she said when Poppy hung up.

  "I don't have to love him to go to a concert with him."

  "You're never going to love him," Milly went on relentlessly.

  "I'm never going to know that unless I go out with him, am I?" Poppy said logically.

  "You know. Love hits you between the eyes like a hammer," Milly said glumly. "You're never the same again."

  "I don't think I believe that," Poppy said.

  But she was beginning to.

  It had been three weeks since Shane had kidnapped her, loved her and left her.

  And she was no nearer forgetting him than she was to falling in love with Kyle.

  * * *

  "Good news."

  The voice on the other end of the line rocked Poppy out of a restless sleep. "Good morning, Daddy," she mumbled, prying open her eyes and seeing that it was just after 6:00 a.m. on the Sunday morning after the Billings concert.