Rugged (16 page)

Rachel was about to argue back. Then she noticed the smile Hank was trying to hide. She swallowed her angry retort and retreated to the door.

“Rachel?” Hank called out after her.

“What?”

“It’s okay if you want to leave early so you can go and see the billboard.”

Growling like a beast, she grimaced at him.

Ten minutes later, she drove her Mercedes out of the parking lot.

* * * *

Jed was everywhere. In magazines. On roadside billboards. On drugstore displays when she went in to buy toothpaste and painkillers. In her dreams, day and night.

Come back to me.

Come back to me
.

He shouldn’t do that to her. A person had no right to throw ugly words at someone, and then ask them to come back. She refused to be a doormat, take any crap from a man who had behaved badly, simply because he couldn’t handle his own emotions.

In the office, people whispered behind her back. Even clients seemed to have become aware of the fact that those billboards were somehow connected to her.

“Come along, everyone come and listen.” Hank toured the office late in the afternoon on a Wednesday at the end of April, ushering people into the conference room.

Rachel left her desk with reluctance.

“My brother is on the news,” Hank informed the seated group with pride and pressed the button on the remote control for the big flat screen TV. “He said he’d try to mention the firm, if he can slip it in.”

On the screen, a groomed female newscaster with oriental looks stood on a snow-covered street outside what looked like an upscale mini mall. She got her cue from the studio and smiled at the camera. “Today, I’m talking to Melvin Goldman who is the organizer of the
Come Back to Me
exhibition here in Jackson, Wyoming.” The camera panned away, showing a beaming Melvin standing next to the newscaster. Muffled in a greatcoat and scarf, he looked even larger than normal.

“Melvin, tell me about these wonderful statues.”

“Well, Sara, there are eleven of them, and they are all timber, hand polished to follow the natural contours of the wood. They were carved by a blind man whose son died in Vietnam. There is one of them for every man in his unit who didn’t come back. Each statue has a name. The families have contributed to the exhibition, providing photographs of the men these statues represent. The proceeds from the exhibition will go to charities for the partially sighted, and to veterans’ groups.”

“And there is another twist to the story, isn’t there?” the newscaster said.

Melvin looked like a child on Christmas morning. “Yes, indeed, there is, Sara. The exhibition is sponsored by
Rugged Cologne for Men
. The statues were carved by the grandfather of the man who is on the
Rugged
posters.”

Jed’s picture filled the screen.

The newscaster’s voice came in on the background. “I understand that the scars on the
Rugged Man’s
face are not makeup. They’re real. Is that true?”

“It sure is, Sara. He got them when he was twenty. A mountain lion scraped a paw across his cheek.”

“So, he is a hunter?”

“No.” Melvin’s voice softened. “He found a mountain lion with its paw caught in a binding from an old ski that had been lost on the slopes years ago. He knew it was a female lion, likely to have young, and they would die if the mother didn’t get back to them. So, he attempted to release it. He used a stick to keep the mountain lion at bay. Most animals will attack the nearest object. He was holding the stick with one hand, distracting the animal, while using the other hand to work the binding loose. Right at the end, he needed both hands for a second, and that’s when the mountain lion scraped his cheek.”

Jed’s picture disappeared and the newscaster looked into the camera. “As a result of the
Rugged Man
advertising campaign, cosmetic surgeons have reported an increase in men seeking to have scars surgically applied to their face, to increase their masculine appeal.”

“Isn’t that something, Sara?” Melvin’s eyes twinkled. “We’ve started a trend.”

“So you have, and today we have an exclusive message from the
Rugged Man
himself, don’t we?”

“That’s right, Sara.” Melvin held up his cell phone. “The
Rugged Man
never gives interviews. His privacy is very important to him. But there was something he wanted to say, and I took a video clip on my cell phone.”

“Well let’s hear it then. A plea from
Rugged Man,
in his own words.”

Jed’s picture appeared again. He was sitting on the sofa in his living room. He seemed gaunt and tired. Rachel felt as if he stared straight at her. He spoke quietly, his voice a little hoarse. “It is always hard when someone you love goes away and doesn’t come back.” He paused, hesitated. She thought he’d blinked. As if holding back tears. “When they are taken by a bullet, or a hand grenade, or a bomb, there is nothing you can do,” Jed continued. “You just have to learn to live with the loss. But when you drive the person you love away with cruel words, you can only blame yourself.” His shoulders heaved with a long sigh. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have taken my anger and doubt out on you. I have no excuse. All I can say is that I love you. Please come back to me.”

The newscaster came back on, this time without Melvin.

“The
Rugged Man
,” she said crisply. “The veterans’ associations love him, disabled groups love him. Wildlife conservationists love him, cosmetic surgeons love him. But he only wants the love of one special woman, a woman called Rachel. Does she love him?”

The waltz from the
Jazz Suite
by Shostakovich started to play, and the picture changed into a blurred image of a blonde dancing with one of the timber soldiers. She was moving in slow motion, her straight hair flying about her shoulders. Rachel’s nails dug into her palms as she recalled telling Jed how much she loved that particular piece of music.

Hank raised the remote control and turned off the TV. He looked at Rachel. “Jed sent you a message. Something he didn’t want to say in the TV broadcast.”

“Go on,” she said in a low voice.

“You once told him that everything you’ve achieved, you’ve achieved through sheer stubborn determination. Don’t let that stubbornness work against you. Don’t let it stand between you and happiness.”

The words slowly sank in.

Was that why she was keeping away from Jed?

Instead of protecting herself from hurt, was she just being stubborn?

* * * *

Rachel got off the escalator and hurried across the marble floor of the upscale Los Angeles department store. She hadn’t been shopping since before Christmas, when she’d spent a forlorn weekend trying to pick out something for the people in the office, and the girl next door, whom she’d become friendly with after she returned from Wyoming. Now, she needed a wedding gift for the insider dealing client who’d started it all. She could think of a million better ways of spending her lunch break on a Friday, but professional courtesy demanded that she acknowledge the big day of the happy couple.

She paused in front of the store directory.

Although she tried not to notice which floor the cosmetics were on, her feet won the tug-of-war with her brain and took her past the rows of skin creams to the
Rugged
counter. Two women in their forties, dressed casually in jeans and Lakers sweatshirts, were gaping at a life-size cardboard cutout of Jed.

“Isn’t he gorgeous?” said the taller woman, the one with an ash blond bob.

“Divine,” replied the one with dark hair in a neat French twist. “I can’t understand why that woman left him. I bet he’s strong and patient and kind.”

“No he isn’t,” Rachel said without thinking. “He’s mean and morose.”

The women twisted around, like a pair of marionettes.

“Well, excuse me for living,” the blonde said.

Aghast, Rachel took a step back. She collided with the stand that held dozens of bottles of
Rugged
. Closing her eyes, she waited for the sound of breaking glass, but mercifully, the bottles only teetered before steadying again.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said to the women. She surveyed the floor for the fastest way out and started heading that way. From the corner of her eye, she could see the brunette curling a hand over the arm of the blonde, stopping the taller woman from launching into an argument.

“Rachel,” the brunette called out after her.

Purely on reflex, Rachel turned back. “Yes?”

“It’s her,” the brunette said to her friend, her voice rising with excitement. “She’s the one he’s in love with.” Addressing her words to Rachel, the woman said, “What did he do to you, honey? Did he cheat on you? Beat you up?”

Against her will, Rachel retraced her steps. “No…”

“What then?” the blonde demanded. “Steal your money? Kill your cat? Crash your car? Give you a disease? Make you eat carbohydrates? What?”

“He said something horrible to me.”

“He said something horrible to you?” the blonde drawled.

“Did he mean it?” The brunette asked with an air of curiosity.

“No,” Rachel said. “He didn’t, and that’s—”

“So, what’s the problem?” the blonde cut in. “He said something horrible, but you know he didn’t mean it, and he’s apologized in front of the entire nation.”

“It’s not enough,” Rachel said. “He can’t blow hot and cold—”

The blonde burst into a shrill gust of laughter. “Men blow hot and cold all the time. It’s part of being male. They don’t have the brains to be consistent.”

“Honey, do you love him?” The brunette tilted her head, waiting for an answer.

“Yes,” Rachel said, startled into telling the truth. “I do.”

“Then don’t you think you should go back to him?” The brunette raised her brows. “Don’t take too long to think about it, honey. Hundreds of other women are hoping that he’ll get tired of waiting for you. Go to him, before it’s too late.”

“If you can get a flight to Jackson Hole,” the blonde said, looking petulant. “Every unattached woman in the country seems to have decided they want a ranching holiday this year.”

Rachel’s gaze shuttled between the brunette and the blonde, the benevolent and the scornful. She’d never thought of it. That Jed might hook up with another woman. A terrible sense of emptiness opened up inside her, like a bottomless abyss where all her prospects for a happy future suddenly plummeted.

“Go to him,” the brunette urged.

Rachel walked away from the pair, crashing into other people as she kept turning to look back at the two women over her shoulder. Their words echoed in her mind.

Go to him before it’s too late…before it’s too late…too late
.

As soon as she found a quiet spot, Rachel pulled out her cell phone and called the airline to make a reservation.

She got the last seat on Saturday’s flight.

Chapter Nine

The engine on the small red Aveo changed to a higher pitch as Rachel pressed the accelerator. It was the only car she’d been able to rent at Jackson Hole airport, and making the last stretch in an ordinary sedan had worried her.

No need.

Freshly laid gravel crunched beneath her wheels, providing good traction. On the roadside, trees stripped of their limbs rose in neat stacks. Evidently, the road leading up to the cabin had been widened since she left. Up ahead, just before the bridge, the access had been closed off. She drove up to the steel barrier. The pillar on the right had a keypad with numbers. There was no voice box to ask for permission to enter.

Rachel pulled over and got out of the car. She’d traveled with only her tote bag again, in case she might not be able to rent any car at all and would have to hitch a ride along the highway, and walk the last couple of miles. After pressing the remote key and checking that the car doors were locked, she ducked beneath the barrier and strode up the hill.