goes on, darling,” Melly reminded her, “and a cattle ranch is no place for sentiment. I can’t just see you owning one—you’d make pets of all the cattle and become a vegetarian.”
“Hmm,” Abby said, frowning thoughtfully, “I wonder if Cade’s ever thought of that?”
“I don’t know,” came the amused reply, “but if I were you, I’d wait until way after roundup to ask him!”
Abby laughed. “You may have a point.”
Melly murmured something, but her mind went quickly back to the computer and her work. Abby, curious, asked questions and Melly told her about the computer network between Cade’s ranches, and the capacity of the computer for storing information about the cattle. There was even a videocassette setup so that Cade could sell cattle to people who had never been to the ranch to see them—they could buy from the tape. He could buy the same way, by watching film of a bull he was interested in, for example. It was a far cry from the old days of ranching when ranchers kept written records and went crazy trying to keep up with thousands of head of cattle. Abby was fascinated by the computer and the rapidity of its operation. But after a few minutes the phone started ringing and didn’t stop, and Abby wandered off to watch the snow.
“Isn’t Cade going to come in and eat?” Melly asked as Calla set a platter of ham and bread and condiments on the table, along with a plate of homemade French fries.
“Nope.” The older woman sighed. “Said to pack him a sandwich and a thermos of coffee and he’d run up to the house to get it.” She nodded toward a sack and a thermos on the buffet.
“Is he coming right up?” Abby asked.
“Any minute.”
“I’ll carry it out,” Abby volunteered, and grabbed it up, hurrying toward the front door. She only paused long enough to tug on galoshes and her thick cloth coat, and rushed out onto the porch as she heard a pickup skid up to the house and stop.
Cade was sitting in the cab when she crunched her way through the blowing snow to the truck. He threw open the passenger door.
“Thanks, honey,” he said, taking the sack and thermos from her and placing them on the seat beside him. “Get in out of the snow.”
She started to close the truck door, but he shook his head. “In here,” he corrected. “With me.”
Something about the way he said it made her pulse pound, and she shook herself mentally. She was reading things into his deep voice, that was all.
“Hank said you were turning the air blue. Is this new snow your fault?” Abby asked him with humor in her pale brown eyes.
He returned the smile and there was a light in his eyes she hadn’t noticed before. “I reckon,” he murmured, watching the color come and go in her flushed face. “Feel better this morning?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said softly.
He reached out a big hand and held it, palm up.
She hesitated for an instant before she reached out her own cold, slender hand and put it gingerly into his. The hard fingers closed softly around it and squeezed.
“This is how it’s going to be from now on,” he said, his voice deep and quiet, the two of them isolated in the cold cab while feathery snow fell onto the windshield, the hood, the landscape. “I’ll ask, I won’t take.”
She looked into his eyes and felt, for a second, the old magic of electricity between them. “That goes against the grain, I’ll bet,” she said.
“I’m used to taking,” he replied. “But I can get used to asking, I suppose. How about you?”
She looked down at his big hand swallowing hers, liking the warmth and strength of it even while something in the back of her mind rebelled at that strength. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.
“What frightens you most?” he asked.
“Your strength,” she said, without taking time to think, and her eyes came up to his.
He nodded, and not by a flicker of an eyelash did he betray any emotion beyond curiosity. “And if I let you make all the moves?” he asked quietly. “If I let you come close or touch or hold, instead of moving in on you?”
The thought fascinated her. That showed in her unblinking gaze, in the slight tilt of her head.
“Therapy, Cade?” she asked in a soft, steady tone.
“Whatever name you want to call it.” He opened his hand so that she could leave hers there or remove it, as she wished. It was more than a gesture—it was a statement.
She smiled slowly. “Such power might go to my head,” she said with a tentative laugh. “Suppose I decided to have my way with you?” she added, finding that she could treat the matter lightly for the moment.
He cocked an eyebrow and looked stern. “Don’t start getting any ideas about me. I’m not easy. None of you wild city girls are going to come out here and lure me into any haystacks.”
She let her fingers curl into his and hold them. “It’s a long shot,” she said after a minute.
“My grandfather won this ranch in a poker game in Cheyenne,” he remarked. “I guess it’s in my blood to take long shots.”
“Won’t it interfere with your private life?” she added, hoping her question wouldn’t sound as if she were fishing.
He studied her closely for a minute before he replied. “I thought you knew that I don’t have affairs.”
She almost jumped at the quiet intensity of his eyes. “I...never really thought about it,” she lied.
“I’ve had women,” he said, “but nothing permanent, nothing lasting. There’s no private life for you to interfere with.”
She was suddenly fiercely glad of that, although she didn’t know how to tell him. “It’s not going to be very easy,” she confessed shyly. “I’ve never been forward, even before this happened.”
“I know,” he murmured, smiling down at her. “I could sit here and look at you all day,” he said after a minute, “but it wouldn’t get the work done,” he added ruefully.
“I could come and help you,” she volunteered, wondering at her sudden reluctance to leave him.
“It’s too cold, honey,” he said. His eyes wandered over her soft, flushed face. “Feel like kissing me?”
Her heart jumped. She felt a new kind of excitement at the thought of it. “I thought you weren’t easy,” she challenged as she slid hesitantly toward him.
Surprise registered in his eyes, but only for a second. “Well, only with some girls,” he corrected, smiling wickedly. “Come on, hurry up, I’ve got calves to deliver.”
“Young Dr. McLaren,” she murmured, looking up at him from close range, seeing new lines in his face, fatigue in his dark eyes. There were a few silver hairs over his temples and she touched them with unsteady fingers. “You’re going gray, Cade.”
“I got those because of you, when you were in your early teens,” he reminded her. “Hanging off saddles trying to do trick riding, falling into the rapids out of a rickety canoe, flying over fences trying to ride Donavan’s broncs...my God, you were a handful!”
“Well, Melly and I didn’t have a mama,” she reminded him, “and Dad was in poor health from the time we got in grammar school on. If it hadn’t been for you and Calla and the cowboys, I guess Melly and I wouldn’t have made it.”
“Stop that,” he growled. “And don’t make me out to be an old man. I’m just fourteen years older than you, and I never did feel like a relative.”
She put her fingers against his warm lips and felt their involuntary