The Pretender (8 page)

“Yeah? Like what?” The tension in the old man’s voice vibrated across the miles.

“It’s kind of like…almost like she’s afraid. Of us, I mean. Like she’s not sure of herself—like, maybe whether we’ll like her, or something, you know? Which seems kind of funny, for someone that looks like she does.” He paused. “Just seems like a woman that
beautiful ought to have more self-confidence.”

Sam chuckled. “Listen here, son, you watch yourself, now, you hear? It’s been my sad experience that you shouldn’t ever trust a beautiful woman
too
far.”

The shower proved too great a temptation for Abby to resist, even if she didn’t feel right about unpacking her suitcase. She fully expected to be tossed out on her rear the minute Sam
Malone showed up, but in the meantime it had been a long day of travel and her body clock was still on Eastern time, and she really could use the chance to “freshen up” before dinner.

The bathroom wasn’t large or fancy, by any means—just a bathtub and shower combined, a toilet, a sink with plenty of counter space, but compared to the one she’d been sharing with Sunny, it was beyond luxurious.
And when she turned on the shower and found it not only had an abundance of pressure but a seemingly limitless supply of hot water, she sighed with pure bliss. Still, mindful of her pretender’s status, she did turn off the faucet to conserve water while she undressed and twisted her hair and pinned it high on her head. She’d like to have shampooed it, but knew it would never dry before dinner
and decided she’d rather not appear at her host’s table with wet hair.

The feel of hot water sluicing over her body made her ache with pleasure, and with longing.
It’s all so beautiful here…I can’t let myself get used to this…

Enveloped in warmth, with her eyes closed she saw it all again like a montage of movie clips played at fast-forward: a brown-skinned man with jet-black hair,
standing like a tree in the flowing stream of people, waiting for her; grass-covered hills folding into wild blue mountains, and flowers cascading over looming rock cliffs that whizzed by too fast to really see; black cattle and brown horses grazing in a sea of meadow grass and wildflowers; a dog with long ears and soulful eyes; a woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a welcoming smile; back to the
man again, now with questions in his jet-black eyes and his big strong hand warm and steady on her back.

A shudder passed through her, and she drew a deep breath and willed the sadness away.
Remember it’s only make-believe. Like a play I’m privileged to have a role in, for a little while…

She turned off the water reluctantly, dried herself and dressed quickly, envisioning the family
gathered around the dining room table, waiting patiently for her to make her appearance. Not being sure how formal an occasion dinner was in this household, she chose a tunic and calf-length swirly skirt, both made out of some sort of velvety, stretchy, clingy material she didn’t know the name of. She’d found both in a secondhand store. The skirt was coppery brown, the tunic a shade of sea foam-green
that brought out the green in her eyes.

The air felt so good on her bare neck and shoulders, she decided to leave her hair pinned up in its usual style, even though she knew she looked less like Sunny that way. What did it matter? They would know soon enough anyway.

She replaced the bandage on her hand with a much smaller one she found in a box in the medicine cabinet, then left the
bathroom and was about to step into a pair of brown sandals when she froze, senses on full alert.
Something
wasn’t right. She held her breath and looked around the room. Then it hit her: the courtyard door was open a few inches. And Pia was nowhere to be seen.

Her heart lurched into emergency mode and she crossed the room in two strides. She’d closed the door, she was sure of it. She
remembered
the cold metal shape of the handle against the palm of her hand. Which left only two possibilities: someone had come into her room while she was in the shower—a scenario that made her skin crawl but was so ridiculous she instantly discarded it—or…Pia had opened the door herself. Which may have sounded far-fetched to anyone else, but Abby remembered how the cat had tried to open the doors in
her apartment, stretching herself full-length until she could put both paws around the doorknob. It was only her lack of opposable thumbs, Sunny had once said, that kept her from being able to open doors.

But this was a
handle,
not a doorknob. And the door opened outward. All it would take, Abby realized as she experimented with it, was for Pia to reach up and pull down on the handle. Her
weight would be enough to push the door open.

Now what?
She stood with one hand clamped to her forehead and blood pounding in her ears, gazing out on the now-silent courtyard garden. The sun had already gone down behind the towering mountain to the west; the air had cooled and the hum of insects had ceased. Abby held her breath and listened for the slightest telltale rustling, the faintest
chirping call. But there was nothing. So different from the unrelenting din of New York.

“Hi.”

Soft and pleasant though it was, the voice made her jump, coming from out of the silence and deep shadows. She couldn’t stop a small gasp.

“Sorry.” Rachel was smiling as she rose from a rocking chair a short way down the veranda with her baby in her arms. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh—that’s okay.” Abby waved a hand at her wide-open door and the courtyard garden beyond. “I was just looking for my cat. She got out…somehow. Now she’s out here…somewhere. And she’s not used to being outside. At all.”

“I’m sure she’ll be all right. Why don’t you leave the door open for her? She’ll probably come back on her own.” She shifted the baby to the crook of one arm and made
adjustments to her blouse, then smiled again at Abby. “You look lovely. What a fabulous outfit. I would give anything to look that slim again.”

“Thanks,” Abby said, unexpectedly touched. She was searching for the words to tell the other woman she looked pretty darn fabulous herself, and that she didn’t need to be any slimmer than she already was, when the big blond sheriff appeared in the
doorway, minus crutches and holding on to the door handle and frame for support.

“Hey, honey,” he called softly, in his Western movie star drawl, “you ’bout ready to go?”

Rachel said, “Coming,” in the breathy voice of suppressed excitement, the kind that comes only from being in love. She swiveled and smiled at Abby past the little head, fuzzy with straight black hair, now resting
on her shoulder. “We’re just going in to dinner. Would you like to come with us?”

Abby said, “Sure,” and found her voice was husky with emotions she hadn’t known she was capable of.

The big blond sheriff held the door, and Abby followed Rachel past him into the room, noticing as she did so that Sunny’s cousin’s head barely came to the sheriff’s shoulder. She wondered what it would
be like to be so tiny.
A doll I can carry…
Wasn’t that a line from a Broadway tune? One from way back when, and probably totally politically incorrect now.

She watched as Rachel carefully laid her sleeping baby in his crib without waking him and turned on the monitor, while the sheriff—J.J.—collected his crutches. Rachel gave Abby another warm, inclusive smile, and they left the room together.

As she walked with the couple down the long corridor, Abby discovered the butterflies were back.

Dinner was not served in the huge dining room, but outside on the patio overlooking the valley, which was rapidly sinking into the blue, purple, lavender and indigo shadows of twilight. There were five seated around one of the large round patio tables. Abby was directed to a chair between
Rachel and Josie, which meant she was more-or-less across from—and could hardly avoid looking at—the two men. Not that she would normally have considered that a hardship, given that Sheriff J.J. was an attractive—though somewhat imposing—man, and she’d already acknowledged Sage as being one of the most beautiful human beings she’d ever seen. But these were not normal circumstances, and evidently
in her case a guilty conscience trumped sex appeal.

A nervous shudder rippled through her. With a smile she turned it into what she hoped would be taken for breathless excitement and exclaimed, “Oh, what a lovely spot.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Josie placed a huge bowl of salad in the middle of the table and, with a smile and a gesture, invited Abby to help herself. “We eat out here quite
a bit when the weather’s nice,” she added as she took her place on Abby’s right, in the chair nearest the kitchen. “Or, in the kitchen, if it’s too windy. When it’s just us.” Her nod took in Sage, J.J. and Rachel. “When we have a work crew here, we use the big dining room.”

“A work crew?
Here?
” Abby was trying to imagine that elegant formal room filled with men in spurs, chaps and cowboy
hats.

She caught a glimpse of a smile on Sage’s lips, but it was Josie who answered.

“Oh, sure. This is a working cattle ranch, you know. Right now, the men are busy in the fields down in the valley, and since most of them live nearby, they go home for lunch—or dinner. That’s what we call the midday meal—at least we used to. This would be supper.” She paused for a small chortle of
laughter, then shook her head and went on. “But next month they’ll start moving the cattle up to the high meadows. They’ll be branding and vaccinating over at the old place where the chutes and corrals are. And, since this is where the kitchen and the cook—which is me—are…” She smiled and shrugged. “It makes much more sense for them to come here to eat than for me to take the food to them.”

“Oh, sure,” Abby murmured, nodding.

She helped herself to a generous heap of salad, then waited for everyone else to do the same. A pitcher of what appeared to be freshly made ranch dressing began to make its way around the table. As Rachel was about to pass it to Abby, she hesitated and said, “If you’d rather have something lighter—a vinaigrette…”

“This is fine,” Abby said, taking
the pitcher and pouring a generous amount of dressing over her salad.

“I just thought—since you’re so slim…” Rachel sighed. “How do you do it?”

Abby’s glance lifted involuntarily and encountered Sage’s unreadable black eyes gazing back at her. She cleared her throat and muttered, “I don’t— I mean, it’s never been a problem…”

“Well, I envy you.”

“Oh, Rachel,” Josie began,
but J.J.’s deep rumble overrode her.

“Honey, you’re nursing a baby. You don’t need to be worrying about getting thin. I keep telling you, you’re just fine.” The way his blue eyes smoldered as they looked at Rachel, it was obvious he thought she was a lot more than “just fine.”

Watching him, Abby felt a flutter in her chest that felt surprisingly like envy. She didn’t think she’d ever
had a man look at her like that in her whole life.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a vegetarian,” she said, with a shrug of apology.

The table went silent. Everyone looked at each other. Sage ducked his head to hide a grin, and Josie simply looked dismayed. Rachel murmured, “Oh, dear.”

J.J. dug into his salad, then looked up at Abby and said, “You know this is a ranch, right? As in…beef
cattle?”

“It’s all right,” Josie said in a comforting tone. “We’ll find you something.” She paused, then asked hopefully, “Do you eat eggs?”

“Please don’t go to any trouble,” Abby mumbled, poking at her salad. “This is fine. Really.”

Josie subsided into troubled thought.

There was a little silence, and then Rachel said brightly, “What do you do in New York, Sunny?”

Abby put down her fork, wiped ranch dressing from her lips and cleared her throat. “I’m a dancer.”

“Oh, wow.” Rachel’s dark eyes were bright with interest. Her smile was wry. “Okay, I guess that explains a lot.”

“Yes, well…I’m an actress, actually.
And
I dance.”

“Do you sing, too?”

Abby shook her head. Then panic seized her.
How much do they know about Sunny? Do they know
she’s a singer?

She looks scared to death,
Sage thought. It was the same impression he’d gotten at the airport. She’d reminded him then of a cornered animal, and he sensed the same panic in her now.
Why? I wonder…

“I’ve been wondering about Sam—I mean…my g-grandfather,” Sunny said, changing the subject.

Her voice was a little too loud, a little too bright. And was he the only
one who heard the desperation in it? He stole a glance at J.J., who he thought ought to be tuned to false notes as much as anyone. But then, as usual, the sheriff had eyes—and evidently ears—only for Rachel.

Rachel had put her hand over Sunny’s, and her voice was soft with compassion. “You have trouble saying the word, too, don’t you?
Grandfather.
I know just how you feel.”

“It seems
so unreal.” Sunny was staring down at her plate, so her voice was muffled. Then she seemed to gather herself, smiling too brightly as she turned to Rachel. “Have you met him? What’s he like?”

Rachel gave a laugh that sounded like a musical note. She looked at Sage first, then J.J. “Well…sort of. I mean, not
really.
Not officially.”