Diana Palmer - A Husband For Christmas

“Will you?” she asked involuntarily.

“Will I what, honey?” he asked.

“Want a virgin?”

He looked strange at that moment. Thoughtful. Hungry. Irritated. “The biggest problem in my life,” he said after a minute, with a flash of humor, “is that I want one right now.” He bent then and kissed her briefly, roughly, before he stood up.

“Cade...?” she began, her hand going to the coverlet, the offer in her young eyes.

“No,” he said firmly, loosening her fingers from the material. “Not yet.”

“Yet?” she whispered.

He traced her mouth with a lazy, absent finger. “Make me the same offer again in about three or four years,” he murmured with a faint smile, “and I’ll drag you into a bed and make love to you until you pass out. Now get dressed. And don’t try this again, Abby,” he warned firmly. “It’s the wrong time for us. Don’t force me to be cruel to you. It’s something I’d have hell living with.”

Her head whirling with unbridled hope, she watched him walk to the door with her whole heart in her misty eyes.

“Cade?” she called softly.

He’d turned with one hand on the doorknob, an eyebrow raised.

“I’ll hold you to that...in three or four years,” she promised.

He smiled back at her, so tenderly that she almost climbed out of the bed and threw herself at his feet. “Good night, honey,” he chuckled, walking out the door.

* * *

Neither of them had ever mentioned it, or referred to it, in all the time since then. Shortly afterward she had left the ranch; she’d seen Cade only a few times in the intervening years. It was odd that she should remember the incident now, when her promise was impossible to keep. She’d never be able to offer herself to Cade now.

She opened the door of the truck and got in.

Cade was quiet on the way back to the house, but that wasn’t unusual. He never had liked to talk and drive at the same time. He seemed to mull over problems in the silence, ranch problems that were never far away. In winter it was snow and getting enough feed to the livestock. In spring it was roundup and planting. In summer it was haying and fixing fence and water. Water was an eternal problem—there was either not enough or too much. In May and June, when the snow melted on the mountains and ran into streams and rivers, there would be enough water for agriculture—but there would also be flooding to contend with. After roundup, the cattle had to be moved to high summer pastures. In fall they had to be brought back down. The breeding program was an ongoing project, and there were always the problems of sick cattle and equipment breakdowns and the logistics of feeding, culling, selling and buying cattle. Cade had ranch managers, like Melly’s husband-to-be, but he owned three ranches, and ultimately he was the one responsible to the board of directors and to the stockholders, as well. Because it was a corporation now, not just one man’s holdings, and Cade was at the helm.

Her eyes sought his face, loving it as she’d loved it for four, long, empty years. Cade, the eternal bachelor. She wondered if he’d ever marry, or want children of his own to inherit Painted Ridge and the other properties he had stock in. She’d thought once, at eighteen, that he might marry her one day. But he’d made a point of avoiding her after that devastating encounter. And in desperation, she had settled for the adventure and challenge of modeling.

It had been the ultimate adventure at eighteen. Glamour, wealth, society—and for the first year or so it had almost satisfied her. She remembered coming home that first Christmas, bubbling with enthusiasm for her work. Cade had listened politely and then had left. And he’d been conspicuously absent for the rest of the time she was at Painted Ridge. She’d often wondered why he’d deliberately avoided her. But she’d been ecstatic over the glitter of New York and her increasing successes. Or she had been at first...

Cade seemed to sense her intense appraisal. His head suddenly turned and he caught her eyes as he pulled up to the house and parked at the back steps. Abby felt a shock of pure sensation go through her like fire. It had been a long time since she’d looked into those dark, glittering eyes at point-blank range. It did the most wonderful things to her pulse, her senses.

“You’ve been away longer this time,” he said without preamble. He leaned back against his door and lit a cigarette. “A year.”

“Not from the ranch,” she countered. “You weren’t here last summer or at Christmas when I was.”

He laughed shortly, the cigarette sending up curls of smoke. “What was the use?” he asked coolly. “I got sick of hearing about New York and all the beautiful people.”

She sat erect, her chin thrusting forward. “Are we going to have that argument all over again?”

“No, I’m through arguing,” he said curtly. “You made up your mind four years ago that you couldn’t find what you wanted from life anyplace except New York. I left you to it, Abby. I know a lost cause when I see one.”

“What was there for me here?” she demanded, thinking back to a time when he wouldn’t come near her.

But his face went cold at the words. It seemed actually to pale, and he turned his eyes out the window to look at the falling snow. “Nothing, I guess,” he said. “Open country, clean air, basic values and only few people. Amazing, isn’t it, that we have the fourth largest state in the country, but it’s forty-sixth in population. And I like it that way,” he added, pinning her with his eyes. “I couldn’t live in a place where I didn’t have enough room to walk without being bumped into.”

She knew that already. Cade, with his long, elegant stride and love of open country, might as well die as be transplanted to New York. This was Big Sky country, and he was a Big Sky man. He’d never feel at home in the Big Apple. A hundred years ago, however, he would have fit right in with the old frontier ways. She remembered going to the old Custer battlefield with him, where the Battle of the Little Bighorn was fought, and watching his eyes sweep the rolling hills. He sat a horse the same way, his eyes always on the horizon. One of his ancestors had been a full-blooded Sioux, and had died at Little Bighorn. He belonged to this country, as surely as the early settlers and miners and cattlemen had belonged to it.

Abby had wanted to belong to it, too—to Cade. But he’d let her get on that bus to New York when she was eighteen, although he’d had one hell of a fight with her father about it the night before she left. Jesse Shane had never shared the discussion with her. She only knew about it because she’d heard their angry voices in the living room and her name on Cade’s lips.

“You never wanted me to go to New York,” she murmured as she withdrew from the pain of memory. “You expected me to fall flat on my face, didn’t you?”

“I hoped like hell that you would,” he said bluntly, and his eyes blazed. “But you made it, didn’t you? Although, looking at you now, I could almost believe you hadn’t. My God, Calla has better taste in clothes.”

She avoided his eyes, puzzled by the earlier statement. “I’m very tastefully dressed for a woman on a ranch,” she threw back, nervous that he might guess why she was wearing loose clothing, why she couldn’t bear anything revealing right now.

“Is that a dig at me?” he asked. “I know ranch life isn’t glamorous, honey. It’s damned hard work, and not many women would choose it over a glittering career. You don’t have to tell me that.”

How little he knew, she thought miserably. She’d chuck modeling and New York and the thought of being internationally famous if he asked her to marry him. She would have given up anything to live with him and love him. But he didn’t know, and he never would. Her pride wouldn’t let her tell him. He’d rejected her once, that magic night years before, even though he’d done it tenderly. She couldn’t risk having him do it again. It would be too devastating.