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“You couldn’t face him, but you came running to me bawling your heart out, and I held you while you cried.” He shifted his hands, studying her drawn face. “When Vennie Walden called you a tomboy and said you looked like a stick with bumps, you came crying to me then.”
She nodded again, managing a smile for him. “I always cried on you, didn’t I?”
“Always. Why not now?” He reached out a big hand and waited, patiently, until she could put her own, hesitantly, into it and feel its warmth and strength. “From now on, it’s going to be just like this. I won’t touch you unless you want me to. Now tell me what happened. Did you find out he was married?”
“He?” she asked, studying him blankly.
“The man you had an affair with,” he said quietly. “The one you wake up screaming over in the middle of the night.”
She swallowed down the urge to get up and run. How in the world was she going to be able to tell him the truth. How?
“Come on, Abby, tell me,” he coaxed with a faint smile. “I’m not going to sit in judgment on you.”
“You’ve got it wrong, Cade,” she said after a minute. “It...wasn’t an affair.”
His heavy brows came together. He searched her face. “No? I understood Melly to say there was a man....”
“There was.” Her eyes opened and closed, and the pain of admission was in them suddenly. She tried to speak, and her mouth trembled on the words.
He was beginning to sense something. His face seemed to darken, his eyes glittered. His hand, on hers, tightened promptingly. “Abby, tell me!” he ground out, his patience exhausted.
Her eyes closed, because she couldn’t bear to see what would be in his when she told him. “I was assaulted, Cade.”
The silence seemed to go on forever. Forever! The hand around her own stilled, and withdrew. Somewhere a clock was ticking with comical loudness; she could hear it above the tortured pounding of her own heart....
At first, she wondered if he’d heard her. Until she looked up and saw his lean hands, tough from years of ranch work, contract slowly around the cup until it shattered and coffee went in a half-dozen directions onto the deep gray pile carpet.
Her eyes shot up to his face, reading the aching compassion and murderous rage that passed across it in wild succession.
“Who?” he asked, the word dangerously soft.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly.
“Surely to God there was a suspect!” he burst out, oblivious to the shards of pottery and the coffee that was staining his jeans, the carpet.
“Not yet,” she told him. “Cade, the carpet...look, you’ve cut your hand!” she exclaimed, seeing blood.
“Oh, to hell with that,” he growled. He glanced at his hand and tugged a handkerchief from his jeans pocket to wind haphazardly around it. “What do you mean, not yet?”
“Just what I said. It’s a big city.” She got up, kneeling beside him. “Let me see. Come on, let me see!” she grumbled, forcing him to give her the big warm hand. She unwrapped the handkerchief gently; there was a shallow cut on the ball of his thumb. “We’d better put something on it.”
“Is that why you backed away from me earlier?” he asked, his eyes on her bent head. “Why you were afraid when I was rough with you earlier, outside?”
Her eyes clouded. “Yes.”
He started to touch her hair and froze, withdrawing his hand before it could make contact. He laid it back on the arm of the chair with a wistful sigh. “What can I say, Abby?” he asked gently. “What in hell can I say?”
Her fingers let go of his hand and she got to her feet. “There’s some antiseptic in the guest bathroom, isn’t there?” she asked.
“I suppose so.” He got up and followed her down the hall, sitting uncomfortably on the little vanity bench, which swayed precariously while she rifled through the medicine cabinet for antiseptic and a bandage.
He sat quietly while she dressed the cut, but his eyes watched her intently.
“Please don’t watch me like that,” she asked tightly.
His eyes fell to his hand. “It’s an old habit.” His chiseled mouth made a half smile when she looked down at him, startled. “You didn’t know that, I suppose.” The smile faded. “Can you talk about it?”
She studied him quietly and lowered her eyes. “I was coming home from an assignment, at night. It was a nice night, just a little nippy, and I had a coat on over my dress. I only lived a few blocks away, so I walked.” She laughed bitterly. “The streets were deserted, and before I realized it, a man started following me. I ran, and he caught up with me and dragged me into an alley.” She shuddered at the memory. “I tried so hard to get away, but he was big and terribly strong....” Her eyes closed. “He pushed me down and started kissing me, touching me... I screamed then, just as loud as I could, and there were three men coming out of a nearby bar who heard me. They came running and he took off.” She drew in a steadying breath, oblivious to Cade’s white, strained face. “Thank God they heard me. People talk about cities being cold and heartless places, but it didn’t happen that way for me. The people at the emergency room told me I’d been damned lucky.”
“Was there someone to take care of you?” he asked as if it mattered, really mattered.
“Yes. There was a Rape Crisis Center. All women,” she said with a faint smile, recalling the gentle treatment, the care she’d received. “They sent me over there, despite the fact that I hadn’t been raped. It’s still a mentally scarring thing, to be handled that way, mauled. Thinking about the way it might have been... But I felt dirty, you know. Soiled. I still think about it constantly....”
His face hardened as he watched her quietly. “If I’d made love to you that night, kept you here with me, none of this would ever have happened.”
“Did you want to, really?” she wondered softly.
He drew in a long, steady breath. “I wanted to,” he admitted after a minute, and his eyes darkened. He got to his feet, towering over her. “But it would have been a slap in the face to your father. He trusted me to look after you. And God knows, it would have been a mistake, a bad one.” He studied her intently. “I’d never touched a virgin until that night.”
She felt a surge of pride at that confession, and it showed in her eyes.
“I’ve never touched one since, either,” he added with a quiet smile.
“Learned your lesson, huh?” she murmured with a feeble attempt at humor.
He nodded. “Can you sleep now?”
The thought of the dark room was disquieting, but she erased the nervousness from her eyes. “Yes. I think so.”
“You can sleep with me if you want to,” he said quietly, and she knew exactly what he meant—that he’d die before he’d touch her, unless she wanted it.
Hesitantly, her hand went out to touch his arm, a light touch that was quickly removed. “Thank you,” she said softly. “But I’ll be all right now.”
His eyes searched hers for a long moment. “You trust me, don’t you?” he asked gently.
“Yes,” she said simply. “More than anyone else in the world, Cade, if it means anything.”
“Yes,” he bit off, “it means something.”
“The carpet!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Oh, Cade, I’ll bet the carpet’s ruined....”
“I’ll buy a new one. Go to bed.”
“Thank you,” she said as he turned to go out into the hall. “I...I... Melly said I should have told you about it, but I didn’t...I wasn’t sure....”
“You didn’t think that I’d blame you?” he asked softly.
She stared down at the carpeted floor, embarrassed now that he knew.
“Stop it, for God’s sake,” he said bluntly. “So you got mauled. You’ve had a terrible experience, and I’m sorry as hell, but it doesn’t change who you are!”
Her lips trembled. “I feel unclean,” she whispered, shaken. “As if I’d been robbed of something I had the right to give to a man I chose. He touched me in ways no man ever did, not even you...”
He drew in a ragged breath. “Yes, you were robbed, but not of your chastity. Even if he’d raped you, you’d still have that.”
She stared up at him numbly. “What?”
He lit a cigarette with unsteady fingers. “Oh, hell, I’m putting this badly.” He blew out a cloud of smoke and stared down at her with narrowed eyes. “Abby, how long ago did it happen?”
“Week before last,” she confessed.
“Okay, and you’re still raw, that makes sense. But you’ll get over it. And it will be different, with a man you care about.”
Her lips pouted. “It wasn’t any different this afternoon. You scared me to death.”
His face paled, but he didn’t look away. “My fault. I’ve been without a woman for a while, and the feel of you went to my head. I was rougher than I ever meant to be. But you’ve got to help yourself a little by not dwelling on what happened to you.”
“How can I help it? It makes me sick just remembering...!” she burst out.
“Put it in perspective, honey,” he said curtly, jamming his bandaged hand in his pocket as if he were afraid he might try to touch her with it. “Has it occurred to you that by letting the experience warp your mind, you’re giving that piece of scum who attacked you more rights over you than you’d give a husband?”
She stared at him, stunned.
He took another long draw from the cigarette. “You’re giving him the right to dominate your life, by dwelling on what happened, by blowing up what he did to you and letting it lock you up emotionally and physically.”
“I...hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“Suppose you start.”
She wrapped her arms around her trembling body. “You can’t know how it is for a woman,” she murmured. “Against a man’s strength...”
“I can remember a time in your life when you very much liked being helpless against mine,” he said under his breath.
“That was different. I knew you’d never hurt me.”
“You knew that this afternoon, but you fought me like a wildcat.”
She flushed. “You hurt me!”
His jaw tightened. “Do you think because I have to be hard with my men that I’m that hard inside? You get under my skin like no other woman ever has. You deliberately needle me and then take offense when I defend myself. It’s always been that way.”
“I never thought you could be hurt,” she murmured, avoiding his piercing gaze. “Least of all by me.”
“Why talk about it?” he asked wearily. “It’s all water under the bridge now.”
“Thanks for the therapy session,” she said softly and smiled, because she meant it.
He smiled back. “Did it help?”
She nodded. Her eyes searched his. “Cade, I’m sorry I screamed this afternoon.”
He reached down and smoothed a lock of hair from her face. “I didn’t know. Now I do. Give it time—you’ll be fine. I’ll help.”
“Thanks for letting me come.”
He looked strange for a minute. “When Melly said you wanted to get here early for the wedding, so you could spend some time on the ranch, I didn’t know the real reason. I thought...” He dropped his hand with a gruff laugh. “You can still sleep with me, if you want. I wouldn’t touch you.”
Her soft eyes searched his, and he looked back as if it were beyond his power to remove his eyes from hers. “Calla and Melly would be shocked to the back teeth,” she whispered, trying to joke about it and failing. It would have been heaven to lie in his arms all night. “But thank you for the offer.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t for purely selfless reasons,” he said, winking at her. “Bed’s damned cold in early spring,” he chuckled.
She hit him softly. “Beast!”
“Think you can sleep now?”
She nodded. “I feel a little different about it. Maybe I just need time to put things into perspective, after all.”
“If you’d like something to occupy your mind, I’ll take you out to see the rest of the calves in the morning.”
“Oh, boy,” she said enthusiastically. “But what if it snows again?” she asked. “It was awfully cloudy this afternoon and cold as blazes and the radio says—”
“When has snow ever stopped me?” he asked, chuckling. “Night, honey.” He turned and strode off toward the stairs.
When has anything ever stopped you? she asked herself silently.
Except once...she’d never realized until now that he’d really wanted her that night. He’d been so cool and calm on the surface that she’d halfway convinced herself he had only been satisfying her curiosity to keep her from experimenting with younger, more hot-blooded males. But now she began to wonder. She was still wondering when she fell into a deep, satisfying sleep.
7 (#ulink_a795cdd0-91f3-53cd-a23b-bf1dc57ba4e6)
Cade had offered to take Abby back to see the calves, but by morning the snow had covered Painted Ridge and he was out with his men trying to bring in the half-frozen calves and their new mothers. According to Hank, Cade was cursing a blue streak from one end of the ranch to the other.
“Wants his other gloves,” Hank growled at Calla when he paused in the hall, the familiar wad of tobacco tucked into his cheek. “Ruined a pair trying to unhook one of them damned cows from the barbed wire.”
“He goes through gloves like some men go through food,” Calla grumbled, shooting an irritated glance at Hank for interrupting her in the middle of lunch preparation. “Only got one pair left as it is. You best remember to tell him that!”
“Can’t tell him a damned thing,” Hank muttered, waiting uncomfortably in the hall. His wide-brimmed hat was spotted with melted snow, and his heavy cloth coat was equally damp. “He hit the ground cussing this morning and he ain’t stopped yet. I just follow orders, I don’t give ’em!” he shouted after Calla.
“Is it bad out there?” Melly called from the den, where she was busily operating Cade’s computer.
“Bad enough,” Hank replied. “Hope your fingers are rested, Miss Melly, ’cause you’re sure going to do some typing when we get a tally on these new calves!”
“As usual.” Melly laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Hank, I get paid good.”
“If we got paid what we was worth, Cade would go in the hole, I guess,” the thin cowboy said to no one in particular. He glanced at Abby, who was standing there quietly in her jeans and a blue turtleneck sweater. “I hear you’re going to stay with us till Miss Melly’s wedding. How’re you settling in?”
She smiled. “Just fine. It feels like old times.”
“Far cry from the city,” he observed.
