The Pretender (11 page)

Just about then, the brown bull calf evidently decided the stranger looked more like trouble than she did food, because he suddenly charged and butted her hard in the side of her leg, knocking her backward, right into Sage’s arms.

Chapter 6

H
e was glad he was there, in just the right place and at the right time to keep Sam’s granddaughter from falling on her backside in the manure. He knew he couldn’t have done anything else but what he did. Still, when he thought about it later, it seemed to him what it had done to his feelings, those things that had been rumbling around after being dormant in him for so
long, was something like pitching a rock into a beehive.

When her body slammed into his, and his arms came around her as they pretty much had to do, needs and desires he’d thought he had under control, that he’d thought were sublimated to the daily responsibilities of the crops and animals in his care, awakened and erupted in a frenzied, stinging swarm. And when he felt her warmth melt into
him, and heard breath gush from her lips along with laughter and a whispered, “Oops!” he knew it wasn’t likely they’d be going back into the hive anytime soon.

“Wow. That was a surprise.” Her voice was hushed. She tilted her head to look up at him, and her hair brushed his lips. Tickled his nose. “Did I do something to make him mad?”

He fought desperately against the urge to press
his mouth against her hair, and his voice was tight with the strain. “Nah…told you he’s used to fighting to survive. Hasn’t got it in his head yet he doesn’t have to anymore.”

Her breasts were warm and firm against his arm, and he felt the nipples harden even through the soft knit thing she wore. The urge to run his hands under her sweater and cup those warm firm breasts in his palms was
a pain he felt from his belly to his groin.

Sage, listen to me, man. Put her down, let her go. Step…away…from…the beautiful woman, Sage.

He set his teeth together, clenched his jaws tight and slowly lifted her until she was standing upright on her own feet. And even then he couldn’t seem to make his arms unwrap themselves from around her body. He wondered what would happen if she were
to turn, just a little bit....

And it came to him, then:
She didn’t flinch.

He was touching her—in a fairly intimate way, in fact—and she hadn’t flinched. Far from it. Pretty much the opposite; she seemed downright comfortable in his arms. And seemed no more eager to end that state of being than he was. Admittedly, he didn’t know the woman that well, but he was pretty certain that
if she
did
turn just a little bit, and if he were to, say…kiss her, she probably wouldn’t object.

It was an exhilarating notion, and as it swept over him, he found himself laughing out loud, with the same kind of warmth and joy and thanksgiving he sometimes felt after assisting in the successful birth of a new calf. He knew now. His touch hadn’t made her flinch before because she was afraid
of him, or because she found it offensive, or repugnant. He knew now, with absolute certainty, that she’d flinched because she’d felt the same electric jolt he had.

She was attracted to him.

Which, he reminded himself, didn’t change the fact that messing with one of Sam Malone’s granddaughters was a bad idea. More than bad—unthinkable.

Still. His day felt brighter, somehow.

She was laughing, too, as she slowly eased herself away from him. One hand went to her hair, self-consciously tucking loose strands behind her ear. “Well…thanks. That wouldn’t have been pretty.”

“Glad I could help,” he said.

Then, for a while, they just looked at each other, and it seemed to Sage all the warmth and colors of spring were right there in her face: golden hair, pink-flushed
cheeks, eyes the soft blue-green of hills newly carpeted with grass. And he knew he didn’t want her to leave—not yet. He opened his mouth to tell her there was a lot more he could show her, at the same moment she started to say something, so they both spoke at once.

“I guess you have better—”

“If you want to see—”

They broke off, laughed—and from somewhere on her person came
the unlikely tinkle of music, a bit from a Broadway tune, if he wasn’t mistaken.

She gave a start, jammed a hand into the pocket of her jeans and came up with a cell phone. “Oh, my God, I can’t believe it’s working!”

“It comes and goes,” Sage said.

She stared at the phone in her hand for a moment, then lifted her eyes to him as she held it to her ear. “Pauly? Pauly—yeah, hold
on just one sec, okay?” She covered the phone loosely, gave a shrug of regret and whispered hoarsely, “He’s been trying to reach me. I kind of need to take this.”

“Yeah, sure—that’s okay. Go ahead.”
Pauly?
A boyfriend, probably. Well, hell. What had he expected?

“Um…can I come back?”

“Anytime,” he said, and there was gravel in his throat. As he watched her walk away between corral
fences, head down, the damn cell phone pressed against her ear, he felt in every muscle, nerve and bone a lingering ache of regret.

“Where’ve you been? You didn’t get my messages?” Pauly sounded about as crabby as she’d ever heard him.

“Gee, Pauly, you know, I didn’t—except I got your text. But I haven’t been able to call back because cell service is awful here. I’m really sorry—”

“Here? What do you mean, here? You out of town, or something? Not that I blame you, after everything. Probably good you could get away for a day or two.”

“So, what’s up?” she asked, just as he was saying, “So, where are you?” And they both said, “Go ahead,” and then Abby said, “California.”

There was dead silence for a moment or two, and then Pauly gave a funny little laugh and
said, “California? So, what’re you doing there? And they don’t have cell service in California?”

Abby laughed, thinking she sounded about as sincere as Pauly. “Evidently not the part I’m in. At least not reliably. It comes and goes.” She could hear Sage’s voice saying that, and closed her eyes briefly as the image of his face formed crystal clear in her mind. A little spasm of regret and
longing twisted in her chest, so sharply she almost gasped.

“So,” said Pauly, “where is that, exactly?”

None of your business,
is what she wanted to say, but didn’t, because Pauly was her agent, after all, and sort of a friend besides, one who’d been kind to her after Sunny died. But she wasn’t about to tell him the whole Sunny story, either, especially not the idiotic reasoning that
had brought her here, pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

“It’s a long story,” she said, and gave it a couple of beats, thinking it would be a really good time for the cell phone to cut out on her, and why did it have to be working so well right
now?
She let out a gust of breath. “I’m, uh, taking care of something for Sunny, okay? She, uh…didn’t get a chance to—”

“You mean, that rich
grandfather of hers?” Pauly’s voice tried to sound casual, but she had that ear for nuances, and she could hear that it had sharpened.

Then she heard—really heard—the words he’d spoken. She felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. “She
told
you?”

“Yeah, well…sure. I’m the one who convinced her she should go check him out. I mean, she should at least see what was in it for her,
you know?” There was a long pause, during which Abby prayed for the call to get dropped, or at least for the nerve to fake it. “A shame she never got the chance,” Pauly said. “A real shame.”

“Yeah,” Abby said, and cleared her throat.
She told Pauly and not me? I was her roommate, her best friend. How could she tell Pauly but not me?
She closed her eyes, frowned at nothing. “Uh…so…Pauly,
why did you call me? Did you have something—”

“What? No, no, I was just calling to check up on you. You know—see how you’re holding up. I care about you—you know that, right? You and Sunny both. Always did.” There was a pause. Abby bit her lip but didn’t say anything; the knot of pain in her throat was too big. “So,” Pauly said, in a tentative, careful way, “how did the old man take the
news?”

Abby gave a sharp, painful laugh. “I wish I could tell you that, Pauly. I haven’t met him yet, actually.”

“Seriously? So, what—is he out of town or something? You’d think he’d want to hear about his own granddaughter, even if he is a gazillionaire.”

“An
eccentric
gazillionaire. Don’t forget that part.” Pauly laughed. Abby closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead. “Uh,
listen, Pauly…I really should—before I lose you…”

“Right. Yeah. So…when are you—”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll call you when I know more, okay?”

“Sure. Okay…”

“Bye, thanks, Pauly.”

She broke the connection, then stood in the middle of the dusty lane and stared at the phone for a moment. The battery was almost dead. Pity it couldn’t have conked out five minutes ago, she
thought. She tucked the phone into the pocket of her jeans, then looked over her shoulder at the cluster of buildings she’d left behind. The big barn with its stack of sweet-smelling hay, and out of sight behind it, the corrals with contented cows and adorable baby calves. To the right of the big barn, the dirt lane turned toward a cluster of giant metal buildings that seemed to hold equipment of
various kinds, the uses of which she could only guess. And in the middle of the wide space between the barns and the metal buildings, shaded by huge old trees, stood a little white house made of whitewashed adobe with a Spanish tile roof nestled behind a screen of lilac bushes and rambling roses.

Oh, wow, she thought, and something leaped inside her chest. All it needed was a picket fence
and a swing hanging from one of those big tree limbs, and it was the house she’d dreamed of as a child, the one she’d fantasized about living in, all those years she’d been growing up in those miserable foster homes.

A wave of longing swept over her, homesickness for a place she’d never known. For a long time she stood gazing at the house, imagining herself walking up to the front door—it
would be blue, she thought—and Sage opening it and inviting her in.

But he and his exuberant shaggy black-and-white dog were nowhere to be seen, and after a moment she turned and walked on, back down the lane to the road that led to the hacienda, home of the elusive Sam Malone.

“She just left here,” Sage said.

Sam snorted. “I didn’t ask the question yet, wiseass.”

“Yeah,
but you were going to.”

“Is that a fact. Well, I bet I know what you’re going to ask me next. ‘When are you comin’ down to meet her?’ Right? Admit it, smart aleck.”

“Well, you’d be wrong,” Sage said. “That question’s been asked and answered. So what would be the point in asking it again?”

That made Sam cackle with laughter. “You’ve got the gift of patience, son. Something I never
had. That’s a rare thing. Must have got it from your mother. There’s a patient soul if ever there was one.”

Sam waited a beat or two, hoping the kid would offer something without being asked. He should have known better. “So, you say she came down there to the old place? What for?”

“Said she wanted to see the animals. Guess Mom told her there were babies all over the place—you know
how it is.” The phone went silent again.

“And?” Sam prompted. “How’d she take to ’em? She’s a city gal, you know.”

That brought one of the kid’s soft chuckles, the one deep down in his chest that always made Sam think of a horse whickering. “Well, she seemed okay with the cows and calves. More than okay—seemed to enjoy herself, I think....”

There was something about the way he
said it that made Sam’s ears perk up. “Son,” he said, with some steel in his voice, “there’s something you’re not telling me, I can hear it. You still having some reservations about her? That it?”

“What? No. It’s not—” There was a gust of breath, and then: “She was different, this morning. Relaxed. Happy. Nothing like yesterday when she seemed like she was scared to death. It’s, I don’t
know, like she’s two different people.”

Like she’s two different people.

Sam stood still and silent while the words echoed down the halls of his memory. He muttered something, he wasn’t sure what, and disconnected the call. Didn’t care if it made any sense; Sage would just chalk up any peculiarities to old age anyhow.

He made his slow way over to the desk by the window and hauled
the handful of handwritten pages out of the drawer he’d dumped them in. They were in a mess, he knew that, scattered all over the place, some of ’em down at the hacienda, some of ’em up here. One of these days he was going to get them all sorted out and put in some kind of order.
Hopefully before I die,
he thought, with an audible snort.
But that ain’t gonna be today.

He hauled out a chair,
hitched himself onto it, pulled the pile closer and lifted the first page.

From the memoirs of Sierra Sam Malone:

I always thought it was like she was two different people living in the same body. Back then they didn’t have names for it, like they do now. And they sure didn’t have medicines to fix it. Back then, you pretty much just took her as she was, made the most of the good times,
and stayed out of her way when she was in one of her bad ones.

I knew that day was one of the bad ones before I even got to her trailer. I could hear her banging around and hollering, and things breaking in there, and my director was exiting about as fast as he could get through the door. He gave me a look and shook his head as he went by me, which was his way of telling me as far as he
was concerned she was my problem, not his.