The Pretender (21 page)

Sam shrugged. “Well, son, looks to me like you turned out pretty well.”

All Sage could do was shake his head.

All he could think of was the fact that the three people he should have been able to trust the most—his parents and the woman he loved—had all lied to him. Who in this world, then, could he trust?

“Don’t judge me, son,” Sam said quietly. “Not until you’re an old man looking at the emptiness of your life, thinking about everything you lost
because of the stupid choices you made. Then you can tell me whether or not I did the best I could.”

Sage didn’t answer. With his eyes closed, he listened to the sound of an old man’s footsteps, slowly fading into the distance.

He tried to make his own footsteps continue down the road to his place. He didn’t want to talk to anybody. He didn’t want to see anybody. Especially not Sun—no,
what was her name?
Abigail.
Especially not her. So why did his feet keep slowing down?

Finally, they stopped…and turned around.

Abby was packing, and trying to ignore how hungry she was. Because she couldn’t possibly join the people she’d deceived so grievously around the family dinner table, could she? No way, she told herself, swiping a hand across her streaming nose. She’d starve
first.

Pia was lying on the pile of clothes Abby had laid out on the bed, switching her tail and glaring, as if daring anyone to make her move. The first clue Abby had that she was about to have company was when the cat jumped off the clothes and vanished under the bed.

A moment later, a shadow fell across the open suitcase. She glanced up, and the bottom fell out of her stomach. The
man standing on the other side of the French door could have come straight out of a Western movie, the Indians-versus-Settlers kind. His hair streamed freely down past his shoulders, and his face was dark and menacing.

Sage lifted a hand to rap with a knuckle on one of the glass panes, then opened it and came in without waiting for an invitation. After that first glance, Abby kept her eyes
focused on her hands as she went on methodically—if not neatly—folding her clothes and placing them in the suitcase.

The silence lengthened. Her chest began to ache from the relentless pounding of her heart.

“So, you’re leaving?” His voice sounded like ground-up rock.

“Why not?” She threw that at him almost in defiance. Then exhaled and said haltingly, without looking up. “I
always meant to, you know. I never intended to stay. I want you to know that. I thought—” she hitched in a breath “—I expected he’d be here. Sam, I mean. Or at least, his lawyer. I thought…I’d tell them about Sunny, and that would be that. I thought…” she lifted a shoulder “…I don’t know, maybe they could give me a job. So I could pay back the money I’d used to come out here. I just… I wanted to get
out of New York…so badly.” She stared down at her hands, which were still, now, and whispered, “I never meant to lie.”

“And yet,” said Sage, “you did.”

She flinched, then laughed a little. She shook her head, then lifted it and faced him.
I won’t cry. I must not cry.
“Okay, yes, I did. So I’m a liar, and you can’t trust me. I get it.” Pride came riding in like the cavalry, reinforcing
her courage. “I really wish I could have figured out a way to do it differently. You know? Probably, I was stupid. I’m definitely not perfect—can’t even imagine what that would feel like. But—” she swiped her hand across her nose; she was
not
crying! “—I always intended to tell the truth, even after—” She stopped in the nick of time and jerked herself around. Turning her back to him was the only
defense she had.

“After?” he prompted, in a voice without sympathy.

After falling in love with you. Even knowing I’d lose everything…including you.

She only shook her head.

When she didn’t answer, Sage said in an emotionless, conversational tone, “Why don’t you stay? Seems to be okay with Sam if you do.”

She wiped her cheeks, and as she turned again to face him, a
strange calm settled over her. “I used to think,” she said softly, “that the worst possible thing I could imagine was being homeless in New York City. Now…I know there are lots worse things.”

His face was impassive, his eyes the flinty black she’d imagined. And dreaded. “Such as?”

“To go on living here, close to you. And you—” her voice broke “—hating me.”

Tiny muscles near his
eyes twitched—the only sign of emotion he’d betrayed so far. His lips parted as if there was something he wanted to say.

At that moment, Pia, who had crept unnoticed from her hiding place under the bed, in one of her patented surprise attacks, launched herself into the air to land squarely on Sage’s shoulders. There she stood proudly, like a leopard on a tree limb, chirping her usual question.

Abby had gasped at the initial assault, then pressed her fingers to her lips. Sage didn’t even seem surprised, but merely reached up and drew the cat down from her perch, into his arms. To Abby’s shock, she came without resisting—although she did open her mouth and twist her head around, trying to bite Sage’s fingers as he tried to pet her.

He didn’t seem to notice, but spoke softly
to the cat in his special language. Abby watched his strong brown hands stroke the speckled gray-striped fur, and felt a sob building like a tsunami inside her. Before it could break, Sage gently placed the now-purring cat in her arms.

“I don’t hate you,” he said, and left her.

After all the emotional drama, it was the practical aspects of leaving—and doing so with her pride intact—that
nearly defeated her. It was one thing to
say
“I’m leaving.” But how to do that, when she had no transportation, no workable cell phone, no money—except for the lawyer’s credit card, which she supposed she would have to use for a little while longer. Considering how much she already owed Sam Malone, she thought a few hundred dollars more would hardly matter.

Beyond the matter of money, there
was the transportation issue—which wouldn’t have been quite as big a problem if her cell phone had been working. She decided her best option, the one that didn’t involve asking for help from any members of Sam Malone’s household, would be to walk down to Sage’s place and call from there. Her phone seemed to work okay once she got to his lane. From there she could simply call for a cab to come
pick her up. She’d take her backpack and Pia’s carrier, since Sunny’s old suitcase had no wheels and would be a problem no matter where she wound up. She could always send for it later, once she found a place to live.

Then…there was Pia. How to get her into the carrier without getting clawed to pieces? She’d already learned from painful experience that it was virtually impossible to stuff
a cat into a small opening headfirst. After giving the matter some thought, she decided to try turning the carrier up on its end and dropping the cat in backward.

No one was more surprised than Abby when this method worked on the first try. Whether that was because Pia was still under Sage’s spell, or simply blindsided by the unexpected maneuver, she didn’t know. Whatever the reason, before
the cat had recovered enough to take evasive or punitive action, Abby had the steel door shut and the locking mechanism snapped into place.

That’s it, then. Time to go.

Refusing to allow herself to think, knowing she would cry again if she did, Abby closed and zipped the suitcase and left it on the bed. She slipped the backpack over her shoulders, picked up the cat carrier—with Pia
growling menacingly and clawing at the gate—opened the French doors and stepped out onto the veranda.

The courtyard was utterly still and already in shadow, the sun having made its early exit behind the mountains. Abby moved quickly and quietly across to the doors that opened into the entry, bypassing the kitchen, dining room and living room, where, she was certain, the family would still
be gathered, enjoying Josie’s food and celebrating the return of Sam Malone. She tiptoed across the tiled entry floor, opened the front doors and peered outside. Not a soul was in sight, not even the dogs. Shaky with relief, she went out and closed the doors behind her.

Hurrying now, she went down the steps and across the flagstone driveway, knowing anyone who happened to look out toward
the meadow would see her. She had her hands full trying to balance the weight as the cat shifted furiously inside the carrier, but made it to the shelter of the trees without being observed. When she got to the part of the lane that ran parallel to the meadow, she took out her cell phone and checked for bars.

Nothing. Still no service.

She was walking rapidly, head down, staring at
the cell phone’s lighted pad, waiting for some bars to show up, and the carrier was tipping and tilting back and forth with the shifting weight of the angry cat inside. Pia was complaining in earnest, now, growling and yowling and clawing at the steel bars of her prison. Which was probably why Abby didn’t see or hear the car until it pulled up beside her.

She stared at the nondescript light
blue sedan, partly because it seemed so out of place, but partly because it seemed unreal, as if she’d made a wish and the very thing she’d asked for had dropped out of the sky.

The window rolled down, and a familiar voice with a strong New York accent called out, “Hey, Abby—where you going?”

Pauly?
It truly was a miracle. “Oh, my God, Pauly,” she said with a stunned gasp, “what are
you doing here?”

Without waiting for a reply, she opened the back door, set the carrier on the seat, slammed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat. Then she and Pauly were both talking at the once, peppering each other with questions.

“What are you
doing
here?”

“What is this? Are you
leaving?
”

“How did you find me?”

“The internet, what did you think?”

“How did you get here?”

“GPS—came with the car. Works great.”

“You came all the way to California?
Why,
Pauly? Why would you do that?”

“What the hell was I supposed to do? You didn’t answer my phone calls.”

“There’s no service—I told you. I couldn’t even call for a cab.”

“Are you crazy? There’s no cabs out here. Anyway, why are you leaving? You can’t leave.”

She tried to laugh, but her voice broke and released a sob instead. “I’ve, um…kind of got no choice, Pauly.”

He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand, and his face contorted. “Aw, jeez, don’t tell me you told him already.”

Pauly had turned the car around and they were heading down the rocky, bumpy dirt road. Jouncing and bouncing, they dipped down into the creek bed,
then growled their way up the other side. Dusk was falling. Even in her own distraught emotional state, Abby could see Pauly was driving too fast for the conditions and the road.

She wiped her eyes and tried to make her voice calm, reasonable. “I told them. I had to, Pauly. Sam—Mr. Malone showed up, and turns out he already knew—about Sunny being dead.”

If she’d hoped to settle Pauly
down, she was out of luck. Her words seemed to have the opposite effect. Pauly was gripping the wheel as if he wanted to pull it loose and hit something with it. His voice started at a mutter and rose quickly to a scream as he began to rant about Sunny ruining everything…they could’ve had it all…
she
wasn’t going to do anything about the letter,
he
was the one who convinced her she should. Abby
listened, staring at him, paralyzed with shock, growing colder and sicker with every word that came out of his mouth.

They’d had it all planned. Sunny would take her share of the old man’s money, Pauly would get a cut—not a big one, he’s not a greedy man, but he had these expenses…got into a little problem with a bookie—had a losing streak—it happens sometimes. He was in real bad trouble.
But Sunny was going to help him out, and in return, he’d use his connections, they’d open a club, maybe even finance a show— off-Broadway, to start with, then…who knows?

“But then…
Damn it, Sunny!
She had to go and change her
mind.
” His face contorted, became a stranger’s face, a mask of grief and rage. His fingers let go of the wheel and curved as if he were gripping something…shaking it.
He spoke now as if to himself. “And at the last minute.
The last minute.
When I was counting on her.
She had to go and ruin everything....
”

It dawned on Abby then, as she listened to the man who had been her friend, her agent…Sunny’s friend…that she was trapped in a car, careening down a mountainside with Sunny’s murderer.

Chapter 13

S
age was pacing in the space between the barn and his front yard. He couldn’t make up his mind where he wanted to go, what he wanted to do. The places of his life, the places where he’d always felt safe and comforted…
happy
…seemed alien and unwelcoming to him now, as if doors had slammed shut in his face. Accusing voices rang in his ears.

You going to just let her
go?… The best thing that ever happened to you, and too damn blind and proud to see it… Everything you lost…stupid choices you made… There’s worse things…worse things… You…hating me....

He answered the voices with every argument he could think of, most of which he’d already used on Sam…and on
her.
They hadn’t impressed Sam, much. And they weren’t impressing him now.

To go on living here…without
you…

Damn it, Sam was right. She
was
the best thing that ever happened to him. The one person he’d been searching for his whole adult life, a woman who seemed to love the place he called home as much as he did. A woman with music in her soul—whether she knew it or not. And kindness, and warmth. And love. Yes…love. A woman he would love and cherish until they both grew old. And who would
love him, too.

He couldn’t let it end this way. Couldn’t let her leave. He was the only one who could stop her. The one who had to forgive.

He was walking down the lane toward Sam’s hacienda, head down, twisting his hair back into its knot, when he heard the car. He looked up in time to see Abby open the door and get in, and stood rooted like an old tree while the car turned in a cloud
of dust and headed back down the mountain.

Swearing, he turned and ran for his house, where he’d left his pickup.
It’s not too late,
he told himself.
It can’t be too late. If I have to chase her all the way back to New York…

Don’t panic. Don’t let him know you know. Stay calm. Keep him calm…

“You know, maybe you’re right,” she said, trying desperately to keep her voice from
trembling. “Maybe I shouldn’t leave. It’s not too late to change my mind. Why don’t you…if you can find a place to turn around, you can just take me back…”

He looked at her. And she thought,
He knows.

His face crumpled like a little child’s. And to her added horror, he started to cry. “Aw, no, Abby, not you, too. Don’t do this, Abby.”

She put out her hand, reached toward him.
Then, as suddenly as they had begun the tears stopped, and he became eerily calm. He began to explain, in the same voice he might have used to give her directions to an audition, that he never meant to hurt Sunny, that it was all just an accident, a misunderstanding, and then he just got so upset with her, and he was desperate, and what was he going to do now? And before he knew it…

Abby
felt numb. Terror seemed to have frozen her…dulled her wits. She couldn’t think of a way out. There was no place to turn around. She was stuck in a car with a murderer, one who was now almost certainly going to feel he had no choice but to kill her, too. Should she open the car door and bail out? There was nothing out there but rocks. She’d probably be killed. Should she take a chance? It seemed
better than meeting the same fate as Sunny…

She was gripping the door handle, sweat making the handle slippery. Her heart was pounding, her mind screaming. She took a huge breath—

There was an ear-splitting screech, and a yowl that seemed to come straight from hell. That was followed by a loud clank, then a thump, and a ball of spitting scratching clawing mayhem came shooting out of
the backseat as if it had been launched by a catapult. It landed squarely on Pauly’s shoulders. He gave out a scream and let go of the steering wheel as he tried desperately to rid himself of the demon clinging to the back of his neck.

After that, everything happened so fast Abby could never quite recall the exact sequence of events. It was the noise she would never forget. She would hear
it in her nightmares, and in quiet moments, for years to come. The grinding, groaning and screaming of metal, as if some giant living being were dying in agony. The crunch of shattering glass…thumps and bangs and screeches like all the demons of hell in chorus.

And then…silence.

Sage was driving too fast. He knew it. It was dusk, and the headlights weren’t much use, and he wasn’t
keeping his eyes on the road ahead of him, anyway, because he was trying to watch for the lights of the sedan farther down the mountain. They would slash across the rocks and brush, then disappear…and he would hold his breath while his mind played his mantra:
Not too late…not too late.

He seemed to be gaining on the car. Now he could see its taillights, flashing red, not too far up ahead.
Then…as he watched in frozen horror, the car lurched wildly, hit a boulder with a sickening crunch…then seemed to rise in slow motion into the air. Slowly, slowly, it toppled…and rolled.

His breath stopped. Only his heart thumped on, pounding out the rhythm:
Too late. Too late. Too late.

Abby knew she was alive, and awake. Beyond that, nothing made sense. She couldn’t seem to figure
out where she was, or what had happened, or which end was up. She held herself very still, listening. After the terrible noises of a moment ago, the silence seemed absolute. Then…she began to hear sounds. The ticking of a cooling engine…her own ragged breathing…the distant scrape of tires on hard-packed earth.

Her other senses began to function. She could tell it was getting darker, but
there was light coming through a window above her head. She could feel something under her—a body.
Pauly.
Her powers of reasoning came back to her and she was able to figure out the car must be lying on its side—the driver’s side. She could smell hot oil. What if it caught fire? Exploded? She had to get out of the car. The window above her head was broken. All she had to do was climb out…if she
could only…get…her…seat belt…unfastened! Something—the airbag!—was in her way.

Headlights swept over her. She heard the crunch of tires on gravel, the slam of a car door. Running footsteps. Someone called her name.

Sage?
“Sage—”

She hadn’t known she’d cried out his name, but suddenly he was there, his dark form blotting out the light from the window above her head. His hands were
reaching for her…touching her. He was talking to her, asking if she was hurt, telling her it was going to be okay.

Then, somehow, she was out of the car and on the hard bare ground, cradled in Sage’s arms. He kept stroking her hair and whispering to her that everything was all right. But she shook her head, sobbing, because she knew it wasn’t.

“Where’s Pia? I can’t find Pia. She got
out of her carrier somehow. She attacked him. She saved my life. Where is she? Oh, God…where is she?”

It was sometime after midnight when Sage brought Abby back to the June Canyon Ranch. The paramedics had arrived remarkably quickly, considering the remoteness of the area, followed soon after by fire trucks, since the danger of a brush fire starting from sparks or fuel from the accident
was extreme. Then came the sheriff’s department, and even the CHP, since the crash had happened just off of a state highway. Both Abby and Pauly were airlifted to a trauma center in Bakersfield, over Abby’s protests that she was fine except for a bump on the head. After receiving numerous tests and a CT scan, doctors agreed there was no concussion, and she was released.

Pauly’s condition
was critical, but he was alive. He remained in the hospital, in police custody, and would eventually be returned to New York City, where, if he survived, he would stand trial for the murder of Sunshine Blue Wells.

Sam Malone’s chopper flew them home. Because it was dark, Abby didn’t realize until she stepped out of the chopper onto bare earth that the pilot had set them down in the open
area in front of Sage’s house, rather than the meadow. Sage guided her away from the rotors’ wash, then waved to the pilot.

Abby waited until the growl of the chopper’s motor had diminished as it disappeared behind the barn, while her heart thumped in time to its rhythms. Then she looked at Sage and said, “Why?”

“That was going to be my question.” She couldn’t see his face clearly,
but his voice sounded wry.

“I mean, why did you bring me here?”

He shrugged as he guided her, with a light touch on her back, toward the front door, which was brown, not blue, of his little adobe house. “We need to talk, and there’s more privacy here. And…I’d just feel better having you where I can keep an eye on you.”

A shiver rippled through her. “The doctors said I’m fine.
Or,” she added in a dull, flat voice, “is it that you’re afraid I might run off with the family silver?”

He gave a mirthless little laugh. “Oddly enough…I believe you when you said it wasn’t about the money.” He paused to open the door and gestured for her to go in ahead of him.

He turned on the lights, and she faced him, arms folded across her waist, because exhaustion, physical and
emotional, had left her feeling weak and hollow inside. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take, but summoned what remaining reserves of strength she had and lifted her head high. “How can you be sure, knowing what a liar I am?”

“Ah. Yes.” A smile tugged at his lips. “That. You know, that’s what I thought, too, until it hit me. Something I’d known all along, just hadn’t realized it.”
He walked slowly toward her. She stared at him and in spite of all her efforts, began to shake. He lifted a hand and brushed gently at her cheek, as if wiping away a smudge. “You,” he said softly, “may be a good actress—I don’t know about that—but you are a terrible liar.” She gave a tiny gasp, and he smiled and went on. “Yeah, you are. You have a tell.” His thumb grazed her cheek, just below her
eye. “It’s in your eyes. You get this scared look…like a little rabbit looking for a place to hide. Which brings me back to my original question. If not for the money…then
why?
What made you do it?”

She closed her eyes, sniffed and said in a muffled voice, “I’m not sure you’ll understand.”

“Try me. And you’re shaking,” he said, taking her by the arms. “Come here and sit down.”

She shook her head, resisting him and his inexplicable kindness, knowing how little it would take of that for her to completely fall apart. “It was…the family thing,” she said tightly. When he didn’t comment, she wiped a hand across her eyes and lifted them to his. “Because I didn’t have one. And Sunny didn’t, either—I thought. We were a couple of orphans, all we had was each other. And the cat.
That stupid, awful
cat.
That’s why…” Her voice broke. She waited until she could talk again. “Then…Sunny was gone, and I found out she had this…family. This family who wanted her, and she’d never told me about, and she was going to go…but she died before she could. And the thought of phoning, or emailing, and telling them she was dead—I just couldn’t. Then…when I got here, and everyone was so
welcoming and kind…and Sam wasn’t here, so I had to go on pretending. Pretending it was mine.” She ended it in a whisper. “I really…
really
wished it could be mine.”

Long before she finished, Sage had gathered her into his arms; there seemed to be no other remedy for the vast ache that filled him. He held her now, one hand cradling her head against his beating heart, and pressed his lips
to her hair as he whispered meaningless comforting words. Then…the answer came to him. The words that would heal her heart, and his.

“It can be,” he said, and the words came from deep in his chest. From his heart…his soul.

She went utterly still. Then…she raised her head and her shimmering eyes gazed into his. “What?” she whispered.

“This…can be your family. If you still want
it.” She pushed away from him, staring at him, and he let her go. He folded his own arms over the place she’d left cold and empty. “It’s one of the reasons I brought you here, actually. I wanted you to see…my home. It’s old, it’s small, it’s simple. I’ve thought of adding on to it, if…I needed to. It’s not the hacienda. But it’s mine. I wanted you to see it before I asked you if…” He hauled in as
much air as he could. “If…you’d want to share it with me.”

She just kept staring at him. Her face… He thought he’d never seen anything so heartbreaking. So beautiful. It was a child’s face, full of hope. A woman’s face, full of love.

Her lips moved, and he had to bend close to hear her. “You mean…forever?”

A laugh burst from him. He lifted his hands to her face and held it between
them, stroking dampness from her cheeks into her hair as he gazed at her. “Yep,” he said. “Forever.”

She closed her eyes and drew in a long sniff. “I never expected…you,” she whispered.

“You came as a pretty big surprise to me, too.”

She laughed, with tears. He felt her trembling. Guilt and contrition filled him. “You’re exhausted,” he said huskily. “We can talk about it in the
morning.” He paused, tilted her face to his. “Will you share my bed, Abigail?”

She sniffed again and wiped her eyes. “Are you going to just hold me again?”

“Well, you’ve been in a pretty bad car wreck…”

“The doctors said I’m okay—no concussion.”

“And, you’re exhausted…”

“Not
that
exhausted. Hey, I’m a New Yorker, I’m—”