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“Okay, all right. I did have a crush on him,” Abby grumbled.
“Now was that so hard to confess?”
Yes. But at least she didn’t sneeze again.
“Well, it really doesn’t matter. I’m sure Durango Creed hates my guts. I was such a bitch to him.”
“Oh please, you’ve never been a bitch to anyone.”
“I refused to trust in him. I told him I couldn’t have a future with a common criminal.” Even now the memory of the harsh words she’d been forced to say made her cringe with regret.
“You did it to protect yourself. What else could you do? And I’m sure he’s gotten over you rejecting him by now. What was he thinking anyway? Giving you an ultimatum, expecting you to choose between him and your life in Silverton Heights?”
“He was hurt and confused. It was a real blow when his father remarried a woman half his age only four months after Durango’s mother died. And then for his dad to take his new wife’s side against his own son…” Abby let her sentence trail off.
“And it probably didn’t help matters any when your dad had Durango thrown in the slammer for a week for vandalizing his stepmother’s warehouse.”
Abby shook her head. It had been a rough time in her life.
Yeah, and it was even rougher for Durango.
“Can we just drop this conversation, please?” she asked.
“Aw, just when I finally got your number? No wonder you’re glad Ken ran off with Racy Racine. You’re still in love with Durango.”
“I was never in love with him,” Abby denied, but her heart skipped a beat at her denunciation. “It was all teenage angst and hormones.”
“Okay, then you’re hot for him because he’s the one you let get away.”
“I’m not hot for him, dammit. It’s just a stupid fantasy.”
“Ooh, watch out,” Tess teased. “Or you’ll start sneezing again. Sure you don’t want a shot of tequila?”
“Liquor is not the answer.”
“Then what is?”
Abby doubled her arms across her chest. “I don’t know.”
“I do.”
She shot Tess a sideways glance. “Well?”
“You gotta get it out of your system.”
“Get what out of my system?”
“Durango.”
Abby snorted. “Please.”
“I’m serious. When he left town, you were left wondering what it would have been like if you two had hooked up. And you’re probably still feeling guilty for hurting him the way you did, even though we both know you had no real choice.”
“I couldn’t have gone with him, Tess. I was only seventeen and my father was livid.”
“I agree completely, but you’ve apparently spent the last ten years spinning this mental fantasy about him that no guy would be able to live up to, especially someone as dull as Ken. Ideally, the best way to exorcise the Durango demon would be to find the delectable Mr. Creed and screw his brains out.”
“He’s probably happily married with a backyard full of cute kids who possess those same mesmerizing dark eyes.”
“No he’s not.”
Abby frowned and her pulse quickened. “How do you know that?”
“I saw an article on him in Arizona magazine a couple of months back. He’s doing some kind of Outward Bound charity work for disaffected youths, and the reporter made a point of saying he was a very eligible bachelor.”
Abby covered her ears with her hands. She didn’t want to hear any more. “Let’s not talk about him.”
“Okay, forget Durango. Then go find a surrogate and screw his brains out instead. Any wild, black-sheep bad boy should do the trick.”
Abby’s heart hitched.
Tess’s wacky solution actually made some sense. She was concerned about these incessant midnight fantasies she couldn’t seem to shake. Obsessive fantasies that bothered her far more than she cared to admit.
She didn’t want to feel this way. She wanted to free her mind of Durango so that the next time she found a stable, calm, sensible man she could give herself to him heart, mind and soul, the way she hadn’t been able to give herself to Ken.
“I’m just not gutsy enough for a rowdy fling. You know me, Tess. I have to do a thorough consumer investigation before I change toothpastes. Can you actually see me hopping into bed with the first good-looking guy who nods my way?”
“Uh-oh,” Tess warned. “Speaking of bed hopping, here comes Cassandra.”
Abby sighed and watched her mother, who was wearing a skintight miniskirt and three-inch heels, take mincing steps across the playground toward them, a glass of champagne clutched in one hand, a skinny dark brown clove cigarette in the other.
“Well, at least she’s minus the boy toy,” Tess observed.
“Thank God for small favors.”
“You know what?” Tess said, springing up off the swing as Abby’s mother drew closer. “I think I’m going to call your travel agent about cashing in your honeymoon tickets to Aruba. We could take off tonight on an exciting adventure. Vegas, New Orleans, Miami. Let’s cut loose. Whaddaya say?”
“I’d say you’re just running off so you won’t have to talk to Cassandra,” Abby accused.
“Well, there is that.” Tess grinned. “Want me to leave the tequila? You might need it.”
“She’d probably just drink the entire thing.”
“Good point.” Tess tucked the bottle under her arm. “The tequila stays with me.”
Tess and Cassandra gave each other fake smiles as they passed. For some reason her best friend and her mother rubbed each other the wrong way. Abby had never said anything to either one of them, but she’d always figured their animosity toward each other stemmed from the fact that they were two peas in a pod, both of them flamboyant, impulsive and audacious.
“Hi, sweetie.” Her mother, smelling of her signature honeysuckle cologne and the clove cigarette, plunked down on the swing Tess had just vacated.
“Hello, Cassandra.”
She reached over and gently touched Abby’s shoulder. “You can call me Mom today, if you want.”
Abby shook her head. After her mother had left her father, she’d insisted Abby call her Cassandra so the guys she dated wouldn’t know she was old enough to have an eight-year-old daughter. As Abby grew older, Cassandra raided her closet for hip clothes and flirted with Abby’s boyfriends.
All except for Durango. Abby had never introduced him to her mother.
“How you holdin’ up?” Cassandra polished off her champagne and then set the flute on top of the adjoining slide.
“I’m doing okay.”
“Your father seems to be having a rough time of it. He’s apologizing to the guests like he’s the one who did something wrong.”
“Ken was his campaign manager and now he’s going to have to fire him. That’s causing him grief. Plus, Daddy feels responsible because he was the one who got us together and he really likes Ken.”
“Yeah well, birds of a feather,” her mother muttered.
“Please, don’t even go there.”
“You’re right. No need to get petty, but I’m betting your father lost the sticker price of a showroom BMW on this failed shindig. And I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and pretend he’s more worried about you than how this is going to reflect on him with the voting public.”
Abby poked her tongue against the inside of her cheek. She’d had years of practice mediating truces and cease-fires between her parents. That skill had actually been excellent training for her job as a public relations specialist for a large nonprofit organization and she’d learned her lessons well. She refused to rise to Cassandra’s dangling bait.
“Nobody cares that I got stood up. Daddy’s running for governor, not me. And you needn’t worry about the cost of the wedding.” As if her mother would. “Daddy took out wedding insurance.”
“But of course he did.” Her mother gave a dry laugh and took a drag of her cigarette. “Wayne is nothing if not sensible.”
She said “sensible” as if it was a dirty word.
They sat in silence. Her mother smoking, Abby kicking more dirt onto her slippers.
“You wanna go shoe shopping or something?” Cassandra asked. Bonding over a sale on Manolo Blahniks was her mother’s answer to everything.
“I’m doing okay.” Abby forced a smile. “Honest. You can go back to Tahoe with Tad, guilt free.”
“It’s Tab, darling.”
“Whatever.”
Her mother reached over and brushed a lock of hair away from Abby’s forehead. “Ken wasn’t right for you. You do know that.”
“I think I sort of got the clue when he didn’t show up at the altar.”
“You are much too passionate for a dullard like him, my dear.”
“Apparently Ken isn’t all that dull. He caught Racy Racine’s attention.”
Cassandra waved a hand. “That won’t last. The stripper is just out for his money. Soon as she discovers he’s as exciting as watching paint dry she’ll abscond with his wallet and he’ll come crawling back to you. But don’t you dare take him back. Like I said, you’re much too lusty for the likes of him.”
Abby laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, right. I’m so lusty even dull Ken deserted me.”
“You just hide your passion because you’re scared that if you let yourself go you’ll turn out like me.”
“I’m not like you. Not in the least,” Abby protested, and then she sneezed.
“Deny it all you want, sugar babe. That sneeze says it all.”
“I have allergies!”
“Then how come you only sneeze when the topic of conversation turns to passionate feelings?”
“I sneeze at other times.”
“Do you really?”
“Yes.” No.
Cassandra just smiled knowingly. “Like it or not, my hot Gypsy blood courses through your veins and those sneeze attacks are nature’s way of trying to get you to realize it.”
Abby thought of Durango and a flame of fear leaped into her heart. Could it be true? Was she sitting on a volcano of passion that was just waiting to erupt and spew disaster on everyone in her path?
She swallowed. “It’s nothing a good antihistamine won’t cure.”
“You wish. Truth is, you’re just aching to express your secret inner desires. Deep down inside, you know that’s the case.”
“You’re wrong. I have no secret inner desires,” Abby fibbed, and crinkled her nose to keep from sneezing.
“Then why do you have Tess for a friend.”
“Because I like her.”
“And why do you like her?”
“Because she’s fun.”
“Exactly. You made her your best friend so you can live through her vicariously. She does all the things you’re afraid to do and you tag along. But sooner or later, no matter how hard you try to sublimate it, that passion of yours is going to come bursting out. Just like it did with me.”
“Not if I refuse to give in to it.”
“It’s bigger than your will, darling. God knows I tried to be a good wife to Wayne and a good mother to you. I tried to live the suburban lifestyle, but it just wasn’t possible. I felt suffocated, smothered, invisible. I had to be me and I won’t apologize for that.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself.”
“I’m not justifying myself. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to warn you.”
“Warn me?”
“Once you open that Pandora’s box, Abby, once your true passion is released, watch out. There’s no going back.”
