Diana Palmer - A Husband For Christmas

He’d lit a cigarette and was smoking it quietly, his face grim as he looked down at her. “You’re going to tell me what happened sooner or later.”

“Nothing happened,” she lied, raising her voice.

“I didn’t wind up with three ranches and a corporation because I was an idiot,” he informed her. “You didn’t come rushing down here a month early just to help Melly get ready for her wedding. And it damned sure wasn’t because you were dying for the sight of me.”

He was hitting too close to the truth. She turned away. “Believe what you like, Great White Rancher.”

“Abby!”

She whirled, eyes blazing, as gloriously beautiful in anger as a sunburst, with her pale hair making a frame for her delicate face and wide brown eyes. “What?”

His eyes went over her reverently, from toes to head, while the cigarette smoked away in his tanned fingers. “Don’t fight me.”

It was like having the breath knocked out of her. She looked up at him and felt the anger drain away. He was so gorgeously masculine, so handsome. Her eyes softened helplessly.

“Then don’t hurt me,” she said quietly.

He laughed mirthlessly. “That works both ways.”

“Pull the other one,” she muttered. “I’d have to use dynamite. You’re hard, Cade.”

“This is hard country. I don’t have time for the limp-wristed courtesies you city women swear by in men.”

“Sophistication doesn’t make a man peculiar,” she returned. “I like a polished man.”

His dark eyes glittered. “Not always,” he replied. “There was a time when I could look at you and make you blush.”

“That old crush?” she said. “I thought the sun rose and set on you, all right. But you made a career of pushing me away, didn’t you?”

“You were eighteen, damn it!” he shot at her. “Eighteen, to my thirty-two! I felt like a damned fool when I left you that night. I should never have touched you!”

The one beautiful memory in her life, and he was sorry it had happened. If she’d ever wondered how he really felt inside his shell, she knew now.

She lowered her eyes and turned away. She walked to the house without another word, without a backward glance. As she went up the steps, she imagined she heard him swear, but when she looked back, he was riding away.

* * *

Abby brooded about the confrontation for the rest of the day, and at the supper table it was patently obvious to Melly and Jerry that something was wrong. Even Calla, walking back and forth to serve up the delicious beef the ranch was famous for, with the accompanying dishes, commented that the weather sure had gotten cold quick.

Cade finished his meal before the rest of them and lit a cigarette over his second cup of coffee.

“I’ve got those reports printed out whenever you want them, Cade,” Melly ventured.

He nodded. “I’ll look them over now. Jerry, come on in when you finish,” he added, rising. “We’ll have to make a decision pretty quick about those cows we’re going to sell off. Jake White wants a few dozen head for embryo transplants.”

“Wants them cheap, too.” Jerry laughed. “I reckon he thinks our culls will be the very thing to carry his purebred Angus.”

Melly grinned at them, aware of Abby sitting rigidly at her side. “Oh, the advances in cattle breeding. Herefords throwing Angus calves, without even the joys of natural conception.”

Cade gave her a hard glare and walked out of the room.

“Shame on you,” Jerry muttered as he started to join the boss. “Embarrassing him that way.”

“I’m just helping him lose some of his inhibitions, darling,” Melly whispered back, blowing him a kiss before he winked and left the room.

“He’ll get even,” Abby said solemnly, picking at her food. “He always does.”

“You could help him with those inhibitions, too,” her sister said, tongue in cheek.

“Not me, sis,” came the instant reply. She glared toward the doorway. “He can keep his hang-ups for all I care.”

Melly stared at her hard. “Why don’t you and Cade start kissing and stop fighting?”

“Ask him,” she grumbled, getting up. “It’s one and the same thing with Cade, if you want to know. I’ve got a frightful headache, Melly. Say good-night to the others for me, will you?” And she rushed upstairs without another word before Melly could ask the questions that were forming on her lips.

Abby hadn’t had a nightmare since she arrived at the ranch, but after the confrontation with Cade, it was almost inevitable that it would recur. And sure enough, it did.

She woke up in the early hours of the morning, screaming. Even as the sounds were dying away, her door burst open and Cade came storming into her room, flashing on the overhead light, with Melly at his heels.

6

Abby sat there in the plain cotton gown that concealed every inch of her body, her hair wild, her eyes raining tears down her pale cheeks, and gaped at them on the tail of terror.

Cade was in his pajama trousers and nothing else. They rode low on his lean hips, and the sheer masculinity of his big body with its generous black curling hair and bronzed muscle was enough to frighten her even more.

“How about making some coffee?” Cade asked Melly, although his tone made it an order, not a request.

“But...” Melly began, nervously looking from her sister to her employer.

“You heard me.”

Melly hesitated for just an instant before she left them alone, her footsteps dying away down the hall.

Cade put his hands on his hips and stared down at Abby. With his hair tousled and his face hard, he looked as threatening as any storm.

“Get up and put on a robe,” he said after a minute, turning away, “while I get dressed.”

“You don’t have to,” she managed weakly.

He half turned, his eyes glittering. “Don’t I?” he growled. “You’re looking at me as if I were a rapist.”

Her face blanched and he nodded. “That’s how you feel, too, isn’t it, baby? Put on a robe and come into the living room. And stop looking at me like that. I’m not going to touch you. But you’re going to tell me the truth, one way or the other.”

He left her sitting there, his back as stiff as a poker.

Melly brought the coffee in just as Abby came out of her room, wrapped to the throat in a heavy navy terry-cloth robe.

Cade was dressed, barely, in jeans and an open-throated blue shirt that he hadn’t tucked in. He was barefoot, sitting forward in an armchair, worrying his hair with his hands. He looked up as Abby came in.

“Sit down,” he said quietly. “Melly, thank you for the coffee. Good night.”

“Cade...” Melly began.

“Good night,” he repeated.

The younger woman sighed as she looked over at Abby, her whole expression one of regret and apology.

“It’s all right,” Abby said gently. “You and I both know that Cade would never hurt me.”

Cade looked faintly shocked by the words, but he busied himself with lighting a cigarette while Melly said good-night and left them alone.

“Fix me a cup, will you, honey?” he asked.

Abby automatically poured cream in it and handed it to him.

He took it, cup and saucer balanced on his big palm, and smiled at her. “You remembered, didn’t you?”

She flushed. Yes, she had, just the way he liked it. She remembered almost everything she’d learned over the years—that he didn’t take sugar, that he hated rhubarb, that he loved a thick steak and cottage potatoes to go with it, that he could go for forty-eight hours without sleep but not one hour without a cigarette....

“Tit for tat?” he murmured, and reached out to put two sugars and cream in the second cup and hand it to her, smiling when she raised astonished eyes to his.