Abbie And The Cowboy Read online

  She slowly stretched. Her movement woke Dylan, who blinked sleepily at her before smiling. She thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life. This was the definition of happiness. Waking up in Dylan’s arms, watching him smile at her.

  “So do you want a small wedding or a large one?” she asked.

  The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Dylan stiffened, panic and disbelief stamped on his face.

  And that’s when it hit her—despite the night they’d spent together and the lovemaking they’d shared, Dylan did not plan on having her as his bride.

  Eight

  “I was kidding,” Abigail immediately declared, even as she scurried out of his arms like a startled water bug. “Can’t you take a joke? I mean really, you and I permanently? We’d kill each other.”

  “Yeah, but what a way to go,” Dylan murmured.

  “Right.” She tugged on her clothes.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded.

  “Outside,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Mother Nature calls.”

  “Oh. Hurry on back.”

  Once outside, instead of visiting the outhouse, Abigail took the time to try to regain her shattered control. What an idiot she’d been.

  Inhaling lungfuls of crisp air, she wondered how she could have been so naive as to think that Dylan was ready for marriage. She’d heard the word bride and gone weak at the knees. Her brains and reasoning powers had turned to red Montana dust.

  The sunrise was spectacular as a calm splendor spread over the mountains, softening their edges, turning the sky into a rosy wash of color. But Abigail couldn’t appreciate it. This was a land of extremes. And her own feelings were equally extreme.

  The reason this hurt so much was that she’d gone and done the inevitable and the foolish deed of falling in love with Dylan Janos.

  She’d taken every precaution; she really had. But despite her eloquent and frequently delivered self-warnings, in the end she hadn’t been able to get her heart to agree with her head. Her head knew better than to get involved with a rolling stone like Dylan—a man who never looked more than a few weeks ahead, a man who didn’t include the words future or stability in his vocabulary.

  But her heart…ah, her heart had seen his flashing dark eyes and his incredible lips. Had it stopped there, she could attribute this aching pain to humiliation, and her feelings for Dylan as nothing more than physical attraction.

  But there was more to Dylan than lips or eyes or even a cowboy butt. There was his dry sense of humor, his willingness to help others, the kindness with which he treated animals, from horses to the barn cat who wanted nothing to do with humans. Dylan had convinced the feline otherwise. Just as he’d convinced Abigail that there had been a chance that he’d been serious, that he really had kidnapped her to be his bride.

  But he hadn’t meant that reference to kidnapping a bride to be taken seriously. He didn’t see her as his bride. That much had been clear from the stark panic and disbelief on his face when she’d talked about a wedding.

  She had to act like an adult about this. She didn’t want him knowing how stupid she’d been. Humiliation blended with her bone-deep pain. But she couldn’t just stand out here, blinking back tears like a kid who’d just found out that Santa didn’t exist. She had to go back inside, or Dylan would start getting suspicious. She didn’t want him questioning her behavior.

  “You were gone a long time,” Dylan noted as she walked in the front door. “I missed you.”

  “It’s getting cold out at night. Autumn is just around the corner. Might come early this year.”

  Which would mean that Dylan would leave early, she silently noted.

  “I know how to warm you back up,” Dylan murmured, turning back the cover on the bed invitingly.

  When she didn’t react, he said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  Dylan sighed. “Look, about what I said earlier…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she dismissed curtly. “We’re both adults. Let’s not make more of what happened here than really did. We both enjoyed ourselves. Let’s just leave it at that. You’re not the type of man I’m looking for anyway,” she stated.

  It was one thing for Dylan to think that he wasn’t ready to settle down, but it was something else again for her to say it, to say he wasn’t the type of man for her. Or was she saying that she wasn’t in the market for a banged-up, ex-rodeo saddle-bronc rider? He was hardly what you’d call a catch. Sure, he’d done all right, even investing part of his money instead of blowing it on the high life, but she was a famous author, making damn good money. To her, he must seem like a saddle bum.

  “So last night was just the boss lady rolling in the hay with the hired help, is that it?” he growled.

  “Listen, you’ve got no call to be acting insulted,” Abigail retorted angrily. “I’m the one who…”

  “Yes? The one who what?”

  “Who is not riding back on that horse with you,” she declared, stopping herself in time from disclosing her true feelings, the love she felt for him. Unrequited love. “When you get down to the ranch house, have Shem or one of his sons bring Wild Thing up here. Until then, I’ll stay here.”

  “Forget it.”

  “You may have gotten your way before, but you aren’t again,” she vowed fiercely.

  “We’ll see about that. Meanwhile, you can ride Traveler down. I’ll wait here. Randy and I needed to check out the fencing on the property line up here anyway. Send him back up with Traveler.”

  “Fine.”

  As she rode away, Dylan broodingly decided that horses were much easier to figure out than women.

  “What are you doing back so soon?” Raj asked Abigail as she stormed into the kitchen. “And wasn’t that Dylan’s horse I saw you riding in on? Did something happen?” Seeing the look on Abigail’s face, she said, “Stupid question. Of course something happened. Care to talk about it?”

  “I’m going to cry,” Abigail warned her, reaching for a big box of facial tissue.

  “That’s okay. The guys have all had breakfast and are out of the way for a while.” Putting her arm around Abigail’s shoulders, Raj hugged her. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I f-fell…” Abigail choked before the tears got too much for her.

  “You fell…from the horse? Are you okay? Did you break anything?”

  “My h-h-heart.”

  “Start at the beginning,” Raj suggested, guiding her over to a kitchen chair and putting a fresh cup of coffee in front of her.

  Once several handfuls of tissues had been used to wipe away her tears, Abigail began, “Dylan kidnapped me yesterday.”

  “He did what? He left a note saying you two were touring the property.”

  “He kidnapped me.”

  “You mean like for a ransom or something?”

  “No, I mean like the old-fashioned Gypsy tradition of kidnapping a bride.”

  Raj lifted one dark eyebrow. “A bride?”

  “That was my reaction.”

  “I gather congratulations are not in order, though.”

  “You’ve got that right. He didn’t mean it.”

  “Didn’t mean what?”

  “Anything. He was just kidding around.”

  “The lout!”

  Abigail nodded. “He’s a no-good, cactus-eating rat bag.”

  “He certainly is.”

  “No, he’s not,” Abigail wailed, the tears starting up again. “He can be sweet and funny, and his kisses are incredible…I guess it’s not his fault that he doesn’t love me.”

  “Then he’s stupid,” Raj declared. “Where is he, dare I ask?”

  Abigail’s tears turned to a damp smile at the sound of Raj’s hesitant expression. “I didn’t murder him, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “How about leaving him stranded naked in a river?” Raj asked, referring to a scene in the new book Abigail was writing. “Did you do that?�
�

  Abigail had had the chance to do that yesterday, but instead she’d cavorted like a wanton woman in the water with him. Well, actually she hadn’t turned into a totally wanton woman until they’d gotten into bed.

  But then, Dylan had hardly been an innocent bystander. His passion had matched hers; there had been no hiding how much he’d wanted her. But wanting and loving were two very different things. She’d been wanted before. She had yet to be loved.

  Not that what she’d shared with Dylan last night had been like anything she’d ever experienced before, because it wasn’t. She’d felt things with him, done things with him, that she’d never dreamed of. But she’d done them and felt them because she loved him. And that was the difference between her and Dylan—a difference as immense as the Grand Canyon. Love…a small, four-letter word that made Abigail cry.

  Following the premise that when it rained, it poured, Abigail’s father called her later that morning.

  “Have you gotten it out of your system yet?” he asked her.

  She certainly hadn’t gotten Dylan out of her system, but her dad had no way of knowing about Abigail’s broken heart. “Gotten what out of my system?”

  “Running my brother’s ranch.”

  It wasn’t the first time that she noticed how her father relegated people as to how they related to him. No one had his or her own identity or, most often, even a name. She was always referred to as “my daughter,” never “Abigail.” And the phrase “my daughter” was usually followed by some comment about a harebrained idea she was entertaining.

  Even getting her library degree hadn’t pleased him. “Folks won’t be needing librarians anymore, I read an article in the newspaper that said so. You’d have done better…” He varied the rest of the sentence from time to time, but the bottom line was that her father always thought she could have done better doing what he wanted her to do.

  “The ranch and I are both doing fine, Dad. Thanks for asking.”

  Her slight edge of sarcasm went unnoticed by her father, just as she’d known it would.

  “By the time you decide to sell the place, Redkins’s offer could be much lower,” he warned her.

  “This isn’t a whim, you know,” Abigail told him for perhaps the twentieth time since she’d inherited the ranch from her uncle in the late spring. “I’m not going to suddenly wake up one morning and get bored with running a ranch.”

  “I did,” her father told her.

  “You didn’t get bored,” Abigail retorted. “You couldn’t resist the money Redkins offered you.”

  “Family ranching is a dying proposition. Half this state is being turned into condos and ski slopes. The ranches that do survive are part of huge combines. Now, I know you’ve got this hankering after the past, you writing about history of the old West and all, but the time comes when you have to be realistic about things.”

  Realistic about things. Like the fact that Dylan didn’t love her. Maybe that was why she wrote fiction. Because reality stank.

  * * *

  To her surprise, Ziggy dropped by just after lunch bearing a gift, which made Abigail wonder if Raj hadn’t contacted him.

  “How do you like it?” Ziggy asked, throwing out his chest proudly.

  Uncertain what it was, Abigail said, “It’s very nice.”

  “It was going to be a sculpture, then a bench, now I do not know what it is, but I thought you might like it,” Ziggy said, placing the odd combination of tree branches and chunks of wood on the living-room floor, where it teetered on the old rag rug. “Perhaps it will make you smile?”

  She did smile, although it wasn’t the brilliant wattage that her friends were accustomed to.

  “You want I should hog-tie that varmint cowboy of yours?” Ziggy asked her.

  “You’ve been watching Raj’s old Westerns again, haven’t you?”

  Ziggy nodded.

  “Thanks for the offer, Ziggy, but—”

  “You know I was married four times, yes?” Ziggy interrupted her.

  “I knew you were married,” she agreed. “Not that you did it four times.”

  “With such a history, a man learns a thing or two.”

  “Or three or four,” Abigail couldn’t resist adding.

  “It is not always natural for a man to settle down. The advantages of such a thing need to be pointed out to him.”

  “Is that what your wives did? Point out the advantages of settling down? I’m sorry, Ziggy, but from where I’m sitting it doesn’t look like they had much success at it.”

  Ziggy shrugged, his red-and-black-plaid flannel shirt contrasting with his yellow pants. “Ah, but the trying of it was very enjoyable while it lasted.”

  “It’s that last part I’m not so keen on,” Abigail said. “But thanks for the effort at cheering me up. I’m lucky to have such good friends as you and Raj.”

  “And we are lucky to have you. I know—” Ziggy clapped his hands together excitedly “—I will make fondue for you tonight, yes?”

  “That would be great, thanks. It’s been a long time since I’ve had your fondue.”

  “The summer, it is nearing an end now,” Ziggy noted with a nod toward the window. “The nights they are getting cold.”

  The end of August was only a week away. Abigail had noticed the signs: the squirrels gathering up food for the winter, the cottonwood trees already sporting a few yellow leaves in amid the green. “Yeah, time is running out,” she murmured.

  It was useless; she couldn’t get any work done. So she decided to do something that had been on her to-do list all summer—sanding and painting the crooked porch swing.

  “Dylan ain’t good enough for you,” Randy declared.

  Startled, she jerked her hand, the paintbrush dripping white paint onto the porch. “I didn’t see you standing there, Randy.”

  “You never see me. Seems these days you’ve only got eyes for Dylan.”

  “At the moment, I’ve only got eyes for this swing,” she retorted.

  “I can do that for you. You know, you’ve only got to ask, and I’d do anything for you.”

  “I appreciate that, Randy, but…” Something about his hot gaze was making her feel uncomfortable.

  “You deserve the best of everything. Dylan can’t give you that. He’s too young for you.”

  Abigail didn’t appreciate that observation. “Yes, well…”

  “I’ve read your books, you know. I know whole passages by heart. Go on, ask me to recite a part. Any part.”

  “That’s okay. I believe you.”

  “No, go on, ask me.”

  “Really, it’s not necessary.”

  Randy went ahead and recited the opening to her last two books, word for word.

  “My father doesn’t know it, but I’ve got a great memory, ” Randy bragged.

  “I can see you do.” Abigail was feeling real uncomfortable now. “Weren’t you supposed to be cleaning the horse stalls this afternoon?”

  “I finished that work already. This is more important. ”

  “What is?”

  “Talking to you…”

  “I’m flattered, but there really is plenty of work to be done on the ranch…”

  “You won’t have to worry about that. I’ve taken care of things for you.”

  That had a somewhat ominous ring to it. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I mean that I’ve taken care of things for you,” Randy repeated. “A beautiful woman like you shouldn’t have to worry about the details of running a ranch like this. It will make you old before your time.”

  Another quote from one of her books, she thought to herself, wishing Raj would come outside before remembering her friend had gone into Big Rock to pick up groceries and a new batch of Western videos she’d ordered by mail.

  “You really don’t have to worry about me,” Abigail tried reassuring Randy.

  “I know I don’t. Because I’ve taken care of things. I’d like to show you want I mean.”

  �
��Another time, maybe. As you can see, I’m right in the middle of repainting this old swing.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “No, I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

  “Then I’ll paint it for you.”

  “No!” When he tried to take the paintbrush from her, she held on to it for all she was worth. “Really, I’d rather do it myself.”

  To her relief, Randy backed off. “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

  “It is.”

  “Guess I’ll ride on up to help my dad and Dylan with those fences.”

  “Good idea,” Abigail said.

  After he’d gone, she told herself she was just getting oversensitive. Randy hadn’t said anything wrong, although reciting memorized passages of her books was a little weird. She shook her head. She was making too much of things. It must just be that her feelings were confused by Dylan.

  Just as she’d put the last coat of paint on the swing about an hour later, Randy came galloping in, yelling, “Dylan’s hurt. There was an accident. He’s asking for you, Abbie. I think you better hurry.”

  “Why can’t women just come right out and say what they mean? I don’t think it’s too much to ask, do you? I mean, look at how well you and I get along. We don’t have any trouble communicating. You always know what I’m talking about, you can sense my moods, you know my routine, we’re comfortable together. Why is it that you’re the only one who understands me?” Dylan asked Traveler while undoing the saddle cinch. “And why am I standing here talking to my horse? Not that I don’t enjoy our talks, you know I do. Remember the good old days, when we’d ride in the opening parades? I swear you got as many cheers as I did, being the fine specimen that you are.”

  Traveler snorted and blew air through his flared nostrils in equine agreement.

  To reward him, Dylan added more oats to Traveler’s feed before heading on over to the ranch house. He knew he wouldn’t be getting a warm welcome from Abbie.