The Pretender (13 page)

She fell in beside him. “Hey. Do I look like a fragile flower? I can do that.”

He smiled but again didn’t answer her immediately, because he was dealing with some powerful and unexpected feelings. Tenderness, for one.

A fragile flower? Miss Sunshine, you may not know
it, but that’s exactly what you are. Like a sunflower…seems so tough and sturdy, but it’s really so vulnerable to the whims of weather, to the turning of the sun and the buffeting of the wind. And the bigger and brighter it appears to be, the more it needs protection and support.

He finally spoke, but only said, “Okay, then, you’re on.”

Abby didn’t think she’d ever had a shower that
felt so completely wonderful. She stood naked under the deluge of steaming hot water and felt…exhilarated. Joyful.
Happy. That’s what this is: happiness. I…am…happy.

For the life of her, she couldn’t think why that should be so. What was so joyful, so good about this moment…this day?

After chores, she’d come back to the hacienda with Sage just in time for dinner, with no time even
to grab a quick shower first. They’d brushed themselves off, left their shoes on the front doorstep, washed their hands and faces in the kitchen sink and joined Rachel and J.J. on the patio, and nobody had seemed to mind that they were both sweaty and dusted with hay. Dinner was Mexican, with beans, rice and enchiladas—cheese for Abby, chicken or beef for everyone else. Except for Abby’s brief description
of her walk in the meadow—leaving out the part about dancing, or her deal with Sage—the conversation had mostly revolved around Rachel and J.J.’s trip to the doctor with Sean. He’d gotten his first shots, and was fussy now, running a slight fever.

After dinner, she was finally able to retire to her room and strip off her dirty, itchy clothes. She didn’t think she’d ever been so dirty in
her life. Or so tired. And yet, it had been one of the best days of her life.

If I’m not careful, I could get to love it here.

A small voice in her head said,
Too late. You already do.

Pain lurked in that thought, and for some reason her mind called up images of Sage, inevitably returning there like a threatened creature to its den. Under the cascading water she smiled, remembering
how happy she’d felt just working beside him, carrying chunks of scratchy hay—he’d told her they were called flakes—filling mossy murky water troughs, pouring buckets of grain into pans for eager cattle, or fresh warm milk into pans for a swarm of meowing cats. She remembered his face as he’d told her to be back at six o’clock in the morning.
Six o’clock?
An unthinkable hour, and yet all she’d
felt—still felt—was a fluttery sense of anticipation.

I could easily get to love him, too.

And again the voice in her head whispered,
Too late.

The pain she’d been trying so hard to avoid twisted in her belly like a knife.

She’d dated a lot of men—even had a couple of relationships that lasted as long as…oh, maybe a few weeks. But nobody…no one had ever made her feel the
way Sage did.

A cliché popped into her head:
Where have you been all my life?

Oh, God, why? Why did I have to meet him here? And now?

Just like that, happiness turned to despair. Blindly, she turned off the water and toweled herself dry, then crawled into bed and pulled the sheets up to her chin, shivering with misery rather than cold. Pia came and stood on her chest, chirping
her usual question, and receiving no answer, bumped Abby’s chin with her head and licked her nose with her sandpaper tongue.

In spite of her anguish, Abby was tired enough to go to sleep, and woke to the chiming of her cell phone alarm. She threw back the covers, dislodging Pia, who uttered a chirp of protest. She dressed quickly in jeans and T-shirt, twisted her tangled hair into its
usual knot, grabbed up her hooded sweatshirt jacket, and all but sprinted to the kitchen.

But once again she was too late. Sage had already eaten and gone, Josie told her.

“Oops, well, I guess no waffles for me this morning,” Abby said, hiding her disappointment with a smile as she accepted the cup of coffee Josie had poured for her.

“Oh, but you shouldn’t skip breakfast. It’s
not good for you.” Josie’s forehead was creased with dismay.

“I know, but I don’t want to be late for chores—Sage is expecting me.” Abby lifted her coffee cup. “Is it okay if I take this with me?”

“Of course. And here—take this.” Josie tore a banana from a bunch in a big wooden bowl on the countertop and thrust it at her. “Oh—and these, too.” She peeled the lid off of a plastic container
and took out two large, flat oatmeal cookies. “Breakfast to go.” She smiled, but her eyes looked worried.

“Perfect,” Abby declared as she stuffed the cookies into her jacket pocket along with her cell phone. “Thanks so much. This is great.” She grabbed up the banana in one hand and her coffee cup in the other and all but skipped toward the door, where she paused and turned to wave the coffee
cup with a reassuring smile. “Really—thanks. This will be fine.”

But she knew Josie still wasn’t happy about sending her off without what she considered to be a proper breakfast, and was shaking her head as she speed-walked down the lane. She was thinking the housekeeper’s concern should have been annoying. So why, instead, was a warm spot blossoming inside her chest?

Once again,
it was his dog that told Sage she was coming. This time, though, the border collie went bounding down the lane to meet her without hesitation, wriggling with joy as if the woman had been a prodigal daughter, returning from her travels.

“I see you made it,” he said when she joined him in the barn, where he was stacking a wheelbarrow full of flakes of hay and pretending he hadn’t been watching
for her. He threw her a look, just a quick one, but it was enough to fill his mind with an image of pink cheeks and shining eyes and soft lips stretched in a radiant smile.

“What, you thought I wouldn’t?” She was juggling a banana and a coffee mug in one hand while she brushed Freckles’ footprints off her front with the other.

“Not this early.” He nodded at the banana. “I’m surprised
my mother let you escape without breakfast.”

“She didn’t, actually. She just sent it with me.” She stuck her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of Josie’s special oatmeal cookies. “Want one?”

He smiled but shook his head. “Had my breakfast, thanks. You’d better hang on to those—you’ll need ’em.”

She shrugged, tucked one of the cookies back in her pocket and
took a bite of the other one, while Freckles sat at attention and drooled. He watched her break off a piece of cookie and give it to the dog, who swallowed it in one gulp and then sat quivering in hopes of another handout. Which she gave him.

“Pushover,” Sage muttered.

For a reply, she popped the last piece of cookie into her mouth and gave him a cheeky smile with her lips tightly
closed. She chewed and swallowed, took a big gulp of coffee, then set her mug and the banana on the nearest hay bale and dusted off her hands in a businesslike way. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

He nodded at the laden wheelbarrow. “Grab that and follow me.” He picked up two grain buckets and headed for the barn door, wondering what she might have done if he’d told her what was really
on his mind.

He worked her hard, as he had the night before. He kept thinking he’d find something messy and dirty enough she wouldn’t want to put her city-girl hands in it, but she never hesitated, not once, just jumped in and did the job and asked what next.

Half of him was happy about that, the kind of happiness that filled him with warmth, like sunshine. Yeah, he knew he was thinking
in too many Sunny metaphors, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

What worried him was that the warmth was having an effect on some dreams he thought he’d cast aside long ago. Turned out they’d only been buried, and the warmth of Sunshine Wells was making them poke their little heads out of the barren soil of his life and…
Oh, Lord, I have to stop this.

That was the part of him that
wasn’t happy about the fact that Sam’s city-bred granddaughter acted like she’d been born to farm. He knew he had to stamp out those newly sprouted hopes and dreams before it was too late, and he was becoming more and more afraid it might already be. He was beginning to think it might be like trying to hold back the rain forest with a hoe.

He tried not to pay too much attention to her, but
even knowing it wasn’t helping him any, he couldn’t keep from stopping what he was doing to watch her with the calves. That seemed to be her favorite chore, and she was just so damn
watchable
when she let one suck on her fingers, or when she’d kneel down in the dirt and wrap her arms around a calf’s neck and press her face into the warm hair, because, she said, it felt so clean and soft.

He watched her try to coax the ornery brown bull calf into letting her pet him—without much success, but at least the little devil didn’t try to butt her again. Part of him almost wished he would, and that
he
could manage to be there to catch her again, because the memory of the way she’d felt in his arms was a constant temptation in his mind.

He tore himself away from watching her and went
to milk out the cows, now that the calves were done. But his respite was short-lived, because she came and hunkered down beside him and watched him avidly while he milked, and no matter how hard he tried not to let her, she filled up his senses. She smelled of hay and cattle and sweat, but even that couldn’t quite smother the scent of something sweet and flowery and fresh that came in tantalizing
little whiffs, like the smell of apple blossoms from his orchard when the wind was blowing just right.

“Can you teach me to do that?”

Her face was so close to his, he could feel her breath when she spoke. He shoved back the milking stool and stood up, every nerve in his body vibrating with restraint.

“Another time,” he said, and his voice creaked like a rusty hinge. “This morning
we’re going riding…remember?”

“Oh, damn,” Abby said, “I was hoping you’d forgotten that.”

Which was a lie. Not that she was any less leery of getting on the back of something so big and potentially troublesome, but she was willing to try just about anything if it meant she could spend a little more time with Sage.

For some reason, she thought about the time, in her younger days,
when she and Sunny had found themselves in a New York City cowboy bar, and Sunny had dared her to ride the mechanical bull. Naturally, she’d taken the dare. What she remembered most about the ride was that once it started, she couldn’t let go. She knew she had to hang on until it was over, no matter what.

“I’ll have you know I’ve ridden a mechanical bull before,” she said in a voice loud
with false bravado.

Sage laughed. “Then this should be a piece of cake.”

She stood hugging herself nervously while he took two feedbags from a nail on the wall in the barn and filled them with grain. Then, with a sense of impending doom, she followed him through the gates and corrals to the meadow where the horses were grazing.

Their heads came up when they saw Sage with the
grain, and they came at an eager trot, shaking their heads.

Abby had time to whisper, “Oh, God,” before they were surrounded, and she felt all but buried by huge creatures that seemed to be made of pure energy, a flurry of stomping hooves and switching tails and snorting muzzles, all whickering and bumping each other, competing for grain. She held her breath and stood absolutely still in
their midst, determined not to disgrace herself in front of Sage by whimpering and cowering.

She was awed by the way he moved so easily among the horses, speaking softly to them, giving each one a handful of grain, telling Abby their names as he patted and stroked them, reaching under their manes to brush dust and grass from their shiny hides. Then he slipped the feedbags over the noses
of two of the horses, a reddish brown one with a white mark on his forehead he called Diamond, and a darker red one with a black mane and tail whose name, he told her, was Morning Glory. He tied ropes around their necks and gave the end of one to Abby.

“What do I do with it?” she asked in a whisper.

He smiled, but at least, she thought, he didn’t fall down laughing. “Lead her back
to the barn,” he said kindly. “So we can saddle and bridle her.”

“But…” she swallowed, and her throat was so dry it made a sticking sound. “How do I— What if she—”

“She won’t step on you. Just walk—she’ll follow.”

She took in a breath and let it out with a doubtful, “Okay.” Hiding her terror, she began to walk toward the corrals, which now seemed a mile away. And just as Sage
had said she would, the horse followed her, just ambling along, matching her pace to Abby’s.

Fear left her and was replaced by wonder. Now, she couldn’t seem to stop smiling. When the horse—Morning Glory—nudged her with her nose and blew a gust of breath into her hair, she gasped in delight and looked over at Sage, and when he smiled back at her she felt the warmth of it from the top of
her head all the way down to her toes.

Back at the barn, he showed her how to brush and groom her horse before saddling her, to make sure there were no burrs or stickers or sores where the saddle would be.