A Husband For Christmas

3

Abby might have planned to avoid him, but Cade seemed to have other ideas. She noticed his quiet, steady gaze over the dinner table and almost jumped when he spoke.

“How would you like to see the new calves?” he asked suddenly.

She lifted her eyes from her plate and stared at him, lost for an answer. “Isn’t it still snowing?” she asked helplessly.

“Sure,” he agreed. “But the trucks have chains. And the calving sheds are just south of here,” he reminded her.

Being alone with him was going to unnerve her—she knew it already—but she loved the sight of those woolly little creatures, so new to the world. And she liked being with Cade. She felt safe with him, protected. Despite the lingering apprehension, she wanted to go with him.

“Well?” he persisted.

She shrugged. “I would kind of like to see the calves,” she admitted with a tiny smile. She dropped her eyes back to her plate, blissfully unaware of the look Cade exchanged with Melly.

“We’ll have dessert when we get back,” Cade informed Calla, pushing back his chair.

Minutes later, riding along in the pickup and being bounced wildly in its warm interior, snow fluttering against the windshield, it was almost like old times.

“Warm enough, honey?” Cade asked.

“Like toast.” She wrapped the leather jacket he had loaned her even closer, loving its warmth. Cade was still wearing his shepherd’s coat, looking so masculine he’d have wowed them even at a convention of male models.

“Not much farther now,” he murmured, turning the truck off onto the farm road that led to the calving pens, where two cowboys in yellow slickers could be seen riding around the enclosures, heads bent against the wind.

“Poor devils,” she remarked, watching.

“The men or the heifers?” he asked.

“Both. All. It’s rough out there.” She balanced her hand against the cold dashboard as he stopped the truck and cut the engine at the side of the long shed. Cade was the perfect rancher, but his driving left a lot to be desired.

“Now I know how it feels to ride inside a concrete mixer,” she moaned.

“Don’t start that again,” Cade grumbled as he threw open the door. “You can always walk back,” he added with a dark glance.

“Did you ever race in the Grand Prix when you were younger, Cade?” she asked with a bright, if somewhat false, smile.

“And sarcasm won’t do the trick, either,” he warned. He led the way through the snow, and she followed in his huge footprints, liking the bite of the cold wind and the crunch of the snow, the freshness of the air. It was so deliciously different from the city. Her eyes looked out over the acres toward the distant mountains, searching for the familiar snow-covered peaks that she could have seen clearly in sunny daylight. God’s country, she thought reverently. How had she ever been able to exist away from it?

“Stop daydreaming and catch up,” Cade was growling. “I could lose you out here.”

“In a little old spring snowstorm like this?” She laughed. “I could fight my way through blizzards, snowshoe myself to Canada, ski over to the Rockies...”

“...lie like hell, too,” he said, amusement gleaming in the dark eyes that caught hers as they entered the lighted interior. “Come on.”

She followed him into the airy enclosure, wrapping her arms tight. “Still no heat, I see.” She sighed.

“Can’t afford the luxury, honey,” he remarked, waving at a cowboy farther down the aisle.

“Is that why it’s so drafty in here? You poor thing, you,” she chided.

“I would be, if I didn’t keep the air circulating in here,” he agreed. “Don’t you remember how many calves we used to lose to respiratory ailments before the veterinarians advised us to put in that exhaust fan to keep stale air out of these sheds? Those airborne diseases were bankrupting the operation. Now we disinfect the stalls and maintain a rigid vaccination program, and we’ve cut our losses in half.”

“Excuse me,” she apologized. “I’m only an ignorant city dweller.”

He turned in the aisle and looked down at her quietly. “Come home,” he said curtly. “Where you belong.”

Her heart pounded at the intensity of the brief gaze he gave her before turning back to his cow boss.

Charlie Smith stood up, grinning at Cade. “Hi, boss, get tired of television and hungry for some real relaxation? Jed sure would love to have somebody take his place—”

“Just visiting, Charlie,” Cade interrupted. “I brought Abby down to see the newcomers.”

“Good to see you again, Miss Abby,” Charlie said respectfully, tipping his hat. “We’ve got a good crop in here, all right. Have a look.”

Abby peeked into the nearest stall, her face lighting up as she stared down at one of the “black baldies,” a cross between a Hereford and a Black Angus, black all over with a little white face.

“Jed brought that one in an hour ago. Damn...uh, doggone mama just dropped it and walked away from it.” Charlie sneered.

“That’s not his mama, huh?” Abby murmured, noticing the tender licking it was getting from the cow in the stall with it.

“No, ma’am,” Charlie agreed. “We sprayed him with a deodorizing compound to keep her from getting suspicious. Poor thing lost her own calf.”

Abby felt a surge of pity for the cow and calf. It was just a normal episode in ranch life, but she had a hard time trying to separate business from emotion.

Cade moved close behind her, apparently oblivious to the sudden, instinctive stiffening of her slender body, the catch of her breath. Please, she thought silently, please don’t let him touch me!

But he didn’t attempt to. He leaned against the stall and rammed his hands in his pockets, watching the cow and calf over her shoulder. “How many have we lost so far?” Cade asked the cow boss.

“Ten. And it looks like a long night.”

“They’re all long.” Cade sighed. He pushed his hat back over his forehead, and Abby, glancing up, noticed how weary he looked.

“I’d better check on my own charge down the aisle here,” Charlie said, and went off with a wave of his hand as the ominous bleating of the heifer filled the shed.

“Prime beef,” Cade murmured, chuckling at Abby’s indignant expression.

She moved away from him with studied carelessness and smiled. “Heartless wretch,” she teased. “Could you really eat him?”

“Couldn’t you, smothered in onions...?”

“Oh, stop!” she wailed. “You cannibal...!”

“How does it feel to be back?” he asked, walking back the way they came in.

“Nice,” she admitted. She tucked her cold hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I’d forgotten how big this country is, how unspoiled and underpopulated. It’s a wonderful change from a crowded, polluted city, although I do love New York,” she added, trying to convince him she meant it.

“New York,” he reminded her, “is a dangerous place.”

She stiffened again, turning to study his face, but she couldn’t read anything in that bland expression. Cade let nothing show—unless he wanted it to. He’d had years of practice at camouflaging his emotions.

“Most cities are,” she agreed. “The country can be dangerous, too.”

“It depends on your definition of danger,” he returned. He looked down at her with glittering eyes. “You’re safe as long as I’m alive. Nothing and no one will hurt you on this ranch.”

Tears suddenly misted her eyes, burning like fire. She swallowed and looked away. “Do I look as if I need protection?” She tried to laugh.

“Not especially,” he said coolly. “But you seemed threatened for an instant. I just wanted to make the point. I’ll protect you from mountain lions and falling buildings, Abby,” he added with a hint of a smile.

“But who’ll protect me from you, you cannibal?” she asked with a pointed stare, her old sense of humor returning to save her from the embarrassment of tears.

“You’re just as safe with me as you want to be,” he replied.

She looked into his eyes, and for an instant they were four years in the past, when a young girl stood poised at the edge of a swimming pool and offered her heart and her body to a man she worshipped.

Without another word, she turned around and started back out into the snow.

4

As she walked toward the truck, huddled against the wind, her mind suddenly went backward in time. And for an instant, it was summer, and she was swimming alone in the pool at Cade’s house one night when her father was in the hospital.

She’d been eighteen, a girl on the verge of becoming a woman. Her father, far too ill during that period of her life to give her much counsel, hadn’t noticed that she was beginning to dress in a way that caught a lot of male attention. But Cade had, and he’d had a talk with her. She’d marched off in a huff, hating his big-brother attitude, and had defiantly gone for a swim that night in his own pool. There was no one around, so she had quickly stripped off her clothes and dived in. That was against the rules, but Abby was good at breaking them. Especially when they were made by Cade McLaren. She wanted him to look at her the way other men did. She wanted more than a condescending lecture from him, but she was too young and far too naive to put her growing infatuation into words.

She’d been in the pool barely five minutes when she’d heard the truck pull up at the back of the house. Before she had time to do any more than scramble out of the pool and pull on her jeans, she heard Cade come around the corner.

She was totally unprepared for what happened next. She turned and Cade’s dark eyes dropped to her high, bare breasts with a wild, reckless look in them that made her breath catch in her throat. He just stood there, frozen, staring at her, and she didn’t make a move to cover herself or turn away. She let him look his fill, feeling her heart trying to tear out of her chest when he finally began to move toward her.

His shirt was open that night, because he’d just come in from the corral, and the mat of thick black hair over the bronzed muscles of his chest was damp with sweat. He stopped a foot in front of her and looked down, and she knew that all the unspoken hunger she’d begun to feel for him was plain in her wide, pale brown eyes.

Without a word, he bent and lifted her. Very, very gently, he brought her body to his and drew her taut breasts against his chest, letting her feel the rough hair against her soft, sensitive skin in a caress that made her moan and cling to him, while her eyes looked straight into his and saw the flash of triumph in them.

He turned and carried her into the house, up the stairs and into his own bedroom, and laid her down on the bed. And then he sat there, with one hand on the bed beside her to support his weight, and looked at her again, letting his dark eyes feast on the soft, pink bareness of her body. She wasn’t even aware of being wet, of her body soaking the coverlet. All she saw, all she knew, was Cade’s hard, dark face and his eyes.

Finally, he moved and his fingers traced a pattern from her shoulder down over her collarbone. She held her breath as they kept going down, and she felt the slow, sweet tracing of them on the curve of her breasts—exploring, tantalizing with the light pressure—until they reached the burgeoning peak and caught it lightly between them.

She gasped, arching at the unexpected surge of pleasure, and his eyes looked straight down into hers.

“Hush,” he whispered then. “You know I won’t hurt you.”

“Yes,” she whispered back, as if the walls could hear them, her eyes wide with unexpected pleasure. “I...I want you...to touch me.”

“I know.” He bent, one hand still cupping her, and she lifted her arms hesitantly until they were around his neck. He looked into her eyes as his warm, hard mouth brushed hers, so that he could see the reaction in them. “Open your mouth for me, Abby,” he breathed, moving his hand to tip up her chin, “just a little more....”

She obeyed him mindlessly and felt the delicious probing of his tongue between her lips, working its way slowly, sensuously, into her mouth. She gasped, moaning, and he eased down so that she could feel his bare chest against her breasts. She lifted herself, clinging, and for one long, unbearably sweet moment she felt his warmth and weight and the fierce adult passion of a man’s kiss.

She thought she imagined a tremor in his hard arms before he suddenly released her, but when he sat up again he was as calm outwardly as if he’d been for a quiet walk. His eyes went down to her breasts and drank in the sight of them one last time before his big hand caught the coverlet and tossed it carelessly over her bareness.

“You wanted to know,” he said gently, holding her hand tightly in his as if to soften the rejection, “and I’ve shown you. But this is as far as it goes. I care too much to seduce you just for an hour of pleasure.”

She swallowed, studying his hard face, her body still tingling from the touch of his fingers, her mouth warm from the long, hungry kiss they’d shared. “Should I be ashamed, Cade?” she asked.

He brushed the damp hair away from her face. “Of what?” he asked tenderly. “Of wanting to know how it felt to be touched and kissed by a man?”

She drew in a deep, slow breath. “Not...by a man,” she corrected. “By you.”

The impact of that nervous confession was evident on his face. He hesitated, as if he wanted desperately to say something but thought better of it. His jaw tautened.

“Abby,” he said, choosing the words carefully, “you’re eighteen years old. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, a lot of the world to see, before you tie yourself to one man. To any man.” He toyed with the coverlet at her throat. “It’s natural, at your age, to be curious about sex. But despite the modern viewpoint, there are still men left who’ll want a virgin when they marry.” His eyes met hers levelly. “Be one. Save that precious gift for the man you marry. Don’t give it away to satisfy your curiosity.”

“Will you?” she asked involuntarily.

“Will I what, honey?” he asked.

“Want a virgin?”

He looked strange at that moment. Thoughtful. Hungry. Irritated. “The biggest problem in my life,” he said after a minute, with a flash of humor, “is that I want one right now.” He bent then and kissed her briefly, roughly, before he stood up.

“Cade...?” she began, her hand going to the coverlet, the offer in her young eyes.

“No,” he said firmly, loosening her fingers from the material. “Not yet.”

“Yet?” she whispered.

He traced her mouth with a lazy, absent finger. “Make me the same offer again in about three or four years,” he murmured with a faint smile, “and I’ll drag you into a bed and make love to you until you pass out. Now get dressed. And don’t try this again, Abby,” he warned firmly. “It’s the wrong time for us. Don’t force me to be cruel to you. It’s something I’d have hell living with.”

Her head whirling with unbridled hope, she watched him walk to the door with her whole heart in her misty eyes.

“Cade?” she called softly.

He’d turned with one hand on the doorknob, an eyebrow raised.

“I’ll hold you to that...in three or four years,” she promised.

He smiled back at her, so tenderly that she almost climbed out of the bed and threw herself at his feet. “Good night, honey,” he chuckled, walking out the door.

* * *

Neither of them had ever mentioned it, or referred to it, in all the time since then. Shortly afterward she had left the ranch; she’d seen Cade only a few times in the intervening years. It was odd that she should remember the incident now, when her promise was impossible to keep. She’d never be able to offer herself to Cade now.

She opened the door of the truck and got in.

Cade was quiet on the way back to the house, but that wasn’t unusual. He never had liked to talk and drive at the same time. He seemed to mull over problems in the silence, ranch problems that were never far away. In winter it was snow and getting enough feed to the livestock. In spring it was roundup and planting. In summer it was haying and fixing fence and water. Water was an eternal problem—there was either not enough or too much. In May and June, when the snow melted on the mountains and ran into streams and rivers, there would be enough water for agriculture—but there would also be flooding to contend with. After roundup, the cattle had to be moved to high summer pastures. In fall they had to be brought back down. The breeding program was an ongoing project, and there were always the problems of sick cattle and equipment breakdowns and the logistics of feeding, culling, selling and buying cattle. Cade had ranch managers, like Melly’s husband-to-be, but he owned three ranches, and ultimately he was the one responsible to the board of directors and to the stockholders, as well. Because it was a corporation now, not just one man’s holdings, and Cade was at the helm.

Her eyes sought his face, loving it as she’d loved it for four, long, empty years. Cade, the eternal bachelor. She wondered if he’d ever marry, or want children of his own to inherit Painted Ridge and the other properties he had stock in. She’d thought once, at eighteen, that he might marry her one day. But he’d made a point of avoiding her after that devastating encounter. And in desperation, she had settled for the adventure and challenge of modeling.

It had been the ultimate adventure at eighteen. Glamour, wealth, society—and for the first year or so it had almost satisfied her. She remembered coming home that first Christmas, bubbling with enthusiasm for her work. Cade had listened politely and then had left. And he’d been conspicuously absent for the rest of the time she was at Painted Ridge. She’d often wondered why he’d deliberately avoided her. But she’d been ecstatic over the glitter of New York and her increasing successes. Or she had been at first...

Cade seemed to sense her intense appraisal. His head suddenly turned and he caught her eyes as he pulled up to the house and parked at the back steps. Abby felt a shock of pure sensation go through her like fire. It had been a long time since she’d looked into those dark, glittering eyes at point-blank range. It did the most wonderful things to her pulse, her senses.

“You’ve been away longer this time,” he said without preamble. He leaned back against his door and lit a cigarette. “A year.”

“Not from the ranch,” she countered. “You weren’t here last summer or at Christmas when I was.”

He laughed shortly, the cigarette sending up curls of smoke. “What was the use?” he asked coolly. “I got sick of hearing about New York and all the beautiful people.”

She sat erect, her chin thrusting forward. “Are we going to have that argument all over again?”

“No, I’m through arguing,” he said curtly. “You made up your mind four years ago that you couldn’t find what you wanted from life anyplace except New York. I left you to it, Abby. I know a lost cause when I see one.”

“What was there for me here?” she demanded, thinking back to a time when he wouldn’t come near her.

But his face went cold at the words. It seemed actually to pale, and he turned his eyes out the window to look at the falling snow. “Nothing, I guess,” he said. “Open country, clean air, basic values and only few people. Amazing, isn’t it, that we have the fourth largest state in the country, but it’s forty-sixth in population. And I like it that way,” he added, pinning her with his eyes. “I couldn’t live in a place where I didn’t have enough room to walk without being bumped into.”

She knew that already. Cade, with his long, elegant stride and love of open country, might as well die as be transplanted to New York. This was Big Sky country, and he was a Big Sky man. He’d never feel at home in the Big Apple. A hundred years ago, however, he would have fit right in with the old frontier ways. She remembered going to the old Custer battlefield with him, where the Battle of the Little Bighorn was fought, and watching his eyes sweep the rolling hills. He sat a horse the same way, his eyes always on the horizon. One of his ancestors had been a full-blooded Sioux, and had died at Little Bighorn. He belonged to this country, as surely as the early settlers and miners and cattlemen had belonged to it.

Abby had wanted to belong to it, too—to Cade. But he’d let her get on that bus to New York when she was eighteen, although he’d had one hell of a fight with her father about it the night before she left. Jesse Shane had never shared the discussion with her. She only knew about it because she’d heard their angry voices in the living room and her name on Cade’s lips.

“You never wanted me to go to New York,” she murmured as she withdrew from the pain of memory. “You expected me to fall flat on my face, didn’t you?”

“I hoped like hell that you would,” he said bluntly, and his eyes blazed. “But you made it, didn’t you? Although, looking at you now, I could almost believe you hadn’t. My God, Calla has better taste in clothes.”

She avoided his eyes, puzzled by the earlier statement. “I’m very tastefully dressed for a woman on a ranch,” she threw back, nervous that he might guess why she was wearing loose clothing, why she couldn’t bear anything revealing right now.

“Is that a dig at me?” he asked. “I know ranch life isn’t glamorous, honey. It’s damned hard work, and not many women would choose it over a glittering career. You don’t have to tell me that.”

How little he knew, she thought miserably. She’d chuck modeling and New York and the thought of being internationally famous if he asked her to marry him. She would have given up anything to live with him and love him. But he didn’t know, and he never would. Her pride wouldn’t let her tell him. He’d rejected her once, that magic night years before, even though he’d done it tenderly. She couldn’t risk having him do it again. It would be too devastating.

Her eyes dropped to her suede boots. The boots would be ruined. She’d forgotten to spray them with protective coating, and she’d need to buy a new pair. Odd that she should think about that when she was alone with Cade. It was so precious to be alone with him, even for a few minutes. If only she could tell him what had happened, tell him the truth. But how could she admit that she’d come back to be healed?

“Hey.”

She looked up and found him watching her closely. He reached out and caught a lock of her long hair and tugged it gently.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.

She felt the prick of tears and blinked to dispel them. It was so much harder when he was tender. It reminded her forcibly of the last time she’d heard his voice so velvety and deep. And suddenly she found herself wondering how she would react if he tried to hold her, touch her, now.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said shortly. “I was just thinking.”

His face hardened and he let go of her hair. “Thinking about New York?” he demanded. “What the hell are you doing here in April, anyway? I thought summer was your only slack time.”

“I came to see Melly, of course,” she shot back, her face hot and red. “To help her get ready for the wedding!”

“Then you’ll be staying for a month,” he said matter-of-factly, daring her to protest. How could she when she’d stated the lie so convincingly?