The Invitation (24 page)

C
ale stretched out on the grass in that favorite posture of writers, where the body is completely supported, thus leaving the mind free to think and create. She was thinking of a story in which the killer was a cowboy who was so handsome that no one suspected him, when she heard people approach.

Now what? she thought, not wanting to move, not wanting to cease the fantasies playing about in her head. There are people who hate to write, hate to have to come up with ideas, and people who will go to any length to be allowed to continue to create. Now, hearing footsteps, Cale thought that if she stayed very quiet, whoever it was might go away and leave her in peace.

But Cale looked up to see Kane take Ruth in his arms and kiss her incredibly gently, as though she were fragile and precious. Cale knew she should leave, and she moved to do so, but then Kane pulled away from Ruth.

“You're all right?” he asked. “You weren't hurt by the horse?”

With great interest, Cale propped her head on her hand and listened for Ruth's answer. She thought of it as not so much eavesdropping as research.

“I'm fine. Kane,” Ruth said with a gentle flutter of her eyelashes. “You don't know how I worried about coming on this trip. I was so frightened—frightened of the great outdoors, afraid of the animals, afraid of the people running the trip. I thought you'd be aggressive.” She laughed seductively. “I was concerned that you'd want us to…to shoe horses or something like that.”

So she wasn't going to tell him about burning the horse. Not that Cale had thought she would. If anything terrified this woman it was the possibility that men wouldn't adore her. Philosophical question to ponder, Cale thought: Does Ruth Edwards exist if no one is looking at her?

“Out here in the West we're just the same as any men. We want the same things as other men,” Kane said in a deep voice.

Yeah, Cale thought. They want Ruth.

Ruth ran her hand up his arm. “I wouldn't say you're the same as any other man.”

Even this guy couldn't possibly fall for that line. Could he? It would be the equivalent of a guy coming up to you in a bar and saying, “What's a nice girl like you,” et cetera. Women were past that, but was any man past Ruth's tired line?

“I'd like to think I'm not like other men,” he answered as he touched her arm.

Once again Cale had overestimated the male animal. Question, she thought, What's the difference between a rutting stag and a man on the make? Answer: nothing. They are both blind, deaf, and very dumb.

When they started kissing, Cale gave a loud “ahem.” Eavesdropping was one thing, but voyeurism was something else.

Kane's face changed when he saw Cale, but for one second she saw what Ruth had seen: a man with lust on his face, as well as desire, passion, and perhaps even greed. Even more interesting was the look Ruth was wearing. Unless Cale missed her guess, ol' predatory Ruth was afraid of Cowboy Taggert. The minute Ruth saw him turn away, she turned tail and headed back to camp.

“I guess I can add spying to your list of accomplishments,” he said through a jaw clenched tight in rage.

“I was here first,” Cale began, starting to defend herself, but the look on his face made her stop. “What's the use talking to you? You've made up your mind about me.” She stood up and started to leave, but he reached for her. “Don't touch me,” she answered, pulling back from him.

His look was almost a sneer. “Right. Being touched is one of your phobias.”

“Contrary to your opinion of me…Oh, who cares?” she said at last, and headed back to camp.

At the camp, Sandy had prepared a meal of beans and hot dogs, which the skinny one of the duet poked about on her tin plate, muttering about what nasty things hot dogs were, while the fat one brushed Ruth's hair to the obvious delight of Kane. After dinner the skinny one began talking about crystals and pyramids, telling in burdensome detail how pyramids were supposed to improve one's sex life, then slyly suggesting that Ruth hang one from a tree branch over her sleeping bag. In disgust, Cale walked away from the fire, heading toward the horses.

“You want to remove your shirt and let me have a look at that shoulder?”

Cale tried not to let her surprise show at Sandy's words, but she turned a radiant smile toward him. The moment she saw him the smile disappeared because hovering behind him was Kane.

“What's wrong with her shoulder?” Kane asked.

Sandy whipped around and snapped at the younger man. “If your brain was somewhere besides in your pants you'd see that she hurt herself when she saved Ruth's neck for the second time.”

Ah, sweet justice, Cale thought. My own darling knight come to my rescue. She wondered if Sandy would like to move to New York and live with her in her penthouse?

Kane's face turned red and he muttered something about looking at Cale's shoulder himself, but she put her chin up, pulled her shoulders back, and walked confidently back to the campsite, feeling the best she'd felt since coming to Colorado.

K
ane was restless in his sleeping bag, punching at the thing that was supposed to be a pillow, turning frequently so the nylon made enough noise to scare the owls, and cursing at every opportunity. He knew he should have been thinking about Ruth. So far as he could tell, she was perfect. Under her beautiful façade was a sweet, gentle personality. He could almost see her with his sons; he could imagine her eight months pregnant with their child.

But try as he might, Kane couldn't seem to think of Ruth. Instead, he could only see and hear that bratty little writer. She was like a splinter that couldn't be dug out and was now festering. When he saw her leap over Ruth to grab the bridle of that horse, he'd been terrified. One misstep and she would have been down and under the hooves. He knew it was dumb of him to have told her to wait for him, and he knew she had done what had to be done, but she still rankled him.

He wasn't sure what it was about her that bothered him so much. Maybe it was her smiles and her wisecracks. Maybe it was the way she looked at Ruth, as though Ruth had climbed out from under a rock. Or maybe it was the way her backside curved into her jeans.

Why
had
he been so angry at her when she saved Ruth? If it had been any other woman, he would have been proud of her for her fast thinking and faster action, but something about the blonde always enraged him. Yet even as he had stood there glaring at her, he'd had an urge to pull her into his arms and protect her.

Protect
her? That was like saying you wanted to protect a porcupine. And a porcupine was just what she was: small, prickly, and dangerous.

Sometime around three in the morning he got out of his sleeping bag and stepped into the woods, walking down a path he knew well, to look over the ridge to the trail below. Tomorrow evening they'd be in the ghost town of Eternity and his father's truck would be there to take the writer away. After that he'd have long days to spend with Ruth. He'd have time to get to know her, time to allow her to know him. He'd have time to—

He broke off his thoughts as below him he saw the flash of headlights. Someone was driving down the old road to Eternity. But who and why at this time of the morning? As soon as the questions occurred to him, he thought of an answer: something was wrong.

Immediately he too vividly remembered the night he'd come home to find an ambulance outside the apartment building in Paris where he and his wife and their new babies were living. Inside the ambulance was the broken and lifeless body of his beloved wife. Kane had been away on an overnight business trip and she'd been awake with the boys all the night before. In the late afternoon she'd sat down on the windowsill, sipping a cup of tea, and waiting for her husband to arrive. Quite simply, she must have fallen asleep, lost her balance, and fallen from the window.

Now Kane didn't bother with a horse, but went tearing down the hillside, stumbling over rocks and trees, sinking into piles of dry oak leaves, skidding down a shale slide in his attempt to intercept the truck before it reached the turnoff.

He leaped the last few feet, to land on all fours just a few yards in front of the truck. In an explosion of gravel, the driver slammed on the brakes, sending the truck into a skid that turned it sharply to one side as the driver fought to control it and straighten the wheels. Before the truck came to a full stop, the door flew open and out jumped Kane's brother Michael.

“What the hell are you trying to do? I could have killed you!” Mike shouted at his brother, not bothering to help him stand up.

Slowly Kane got up, brushing gravel and dirt from his clothes and hands. “What's wrong? Why are you here in Colorado?”

As though every muscle in his body ached, Mike leaned back against the hood of the car while Kane looked at him.

The two men were identical twins, as alike as two humans could be: exactly the same height, size, eye and hair color. All their lives they had been close, so close that they often communicated without talking. Many times they'd had the same ideas and thoughts independently of one another, and it was commonplace for them to buy the same shirt unknowingly and wear it on the same occasion. There had never been a secret between them, and when one had news, he always went first to his twin brother.

“Congratulations,” Kane said softly, because he knew without being told that his brother's wife had just been delivered of twins. For a long moment the brothers hugged each other in a fierce bond of love and understanding. Then they broke apart, both of them grinning.

“So?” Kane said, aware that his brother would know what his first question would be: Why did he leave New York?

Mike wiped his hand over his eyes in a gesture of tiredness and exasperation. “It was harrowing. At the first pain Samantha decided she wanted the babies to be born in Chandler, Colorado, that she wanted Mom there. No one could reason with her, and then…well, she started to cry, so Blair and I loaded her and your boys into the jet and took off. Sam was calm throughout the trip but Blair and I were frantic. What if the kids were born during the flight and they needed something we didn't have? Sam kept saying that we shouldn't worry, that the boys were going to wait until they could see their grandmother. Dad and Mom were waiting at the airport with an ambulance. As soon as we got to the hospital, Sam's water broke and the kids popped out like champagne corks.”

Mike paused and grinned. “You would think that the birth of my children would be a private time, but Mom, Dad, Jilly, Blair, and I plus two nurses were all in the delivery room. I expected someone to pass a tray of canapés.”

Kane wasn't fooled by his brother's tone. Mike was more than pleased that his sons had been born into the arms of his parents; he was pleased that his family loved Samantha as much as he did. “Sam's okay? Kids okay?”

“Yeah, great. Everyone's fine, but—”

“But what?”

“It's a madhouse at the hospital. Relatives I've never heard of are showing up there.”

Mike didn't have to explain to Kane that he wanted his wife and his sons to himself, that he wanted to be alone with them, because Kane knew how he felt. For two weeks after his sons were born, his wife's family had hovered about them until he felt suffocated. His mother-in-law was one of those women who believed men shouldn't change diapers, so Kane had rarely been allowed to touch his tiny sons. It wasn't until after she left that he was able to pull his wife and his children into his arms and feel them, touch them, hold them.

Now, looking at his brother, he knew the frustration Mike was feeling and the jealousy that was eating at him. He could picture Mike standing in the hospital room doorway watching one relative after another peer down at his newborn sons and thinking that they had spent more time with the children than he had. Kane used to worry that one of the babies would give his first smile to someone other than him.

Companionably, Kane put his arm around Mike's shoulders. “You know what I'd like more than anything in the world? I'd like to get my boys and bring them out here. This group is just women, and I'm sure they'd spoil them to death.”

“Yeah?” Mike said gloomily. “Want me to bring them back here?”

“I was thinking that maybe I'd go to Chandler and get them.”

Mike was so involved in his own misery that at first he didn't understand. “Wait a minute. You want
me
to stay here while you go back?”

“Twenty-four hours, that's all. And, besides, I want to see my new nephews. Are they as ugly as you?”

It was an old joke between them that never failed to produce a smile. “How would I know what they look like?” Mike said with a sigh. “The relatives won't let me near them.”

“Why should they?” Kane asked. “You did your job, and they don't need you anymore.” Laughing at his brother's expression of gloom, Kane moved away. “I'm serious. I need…a break from this.”

“A break? You've only been around those women for a few days.” Mike quirked an eyebrow. “What's going on?”

Kane gave his version of the past few days, telling Mike how lovely Ruth was and how flaky the duo was.

“How about the mystery writer? Sam loves her books and wants to meet her.”

After a moment of silence Kane nearly exploded in a barrage of invective as he told about her nearly shooting his foot off, running under an enraged horse's hooves, and being an all around pain in the neck. “Everywhere I look, there she is. She spies on me when I'm with Ruth, calls me Cowboy Taggert, and asks if I count by pawing the earth.”

Mike had to bite his lips to keep from laughing.

“It's not funny. The woman is insane,” he said, then told Mike about Cale's fit after she'd killed the snake. “They're healed now, but I had three scratches down the side of my face where she clawed me.”

“Couldn't have been too deep if they've healed so quickly.”

Mike and Kane rarely disagreed. Their mother said it would be like having a fight with your shadow, so now, at Kane's look, Mike backed off. Twenty-four hours wasn't long, and the way things were now, Sam wouldn't know he wasn't there. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea for him to be away for a whole day. “You're on,” Mike said. “We'll meet you in Eternity tomorrow evening.”