His blue eyes locked with hers and held.
“But I can’t pay you,” she whispered.
“I don’t want anything,” Cade said in a brisk but firm voice. He stopped, shook his head. “Actually I do,” he corrected himself. “I want you to wait until Max’s children are born, to take some time before you make your decision about your future and theirs. Okay?”
Abby couldn’t believe it. God had sent her a place to stay, to wait for her babies’ arrival without fearing someone would hassle her about her bills, moving and everything else she’d been fighting. A little window of hope, that’s what Cade was offering. All she had to do was accept.
And yet, there was something in the depths of his kindly eyes, something that tugged at one corner of his mouth—something that made her stomach tighten with worry.
“What aren’t you saying, Cade?” she murmured.
Shutters flipped down over his eyes. He eased his hand from hers and leaned back, his big body tense.
“Come to the ranch, Abby. It’s better if you see the way things are for yourself. Then you can decide whether or not you want to stay.” He lifted one eyebrow. “Okay?”
Abby sat silent, thinking. God had opened this door, she knew it.
Max had trusted Cade with his life.
Maybe she was being weak by accepting this opportunity. Max would have expected her to handle her life without revealing that he’d left her unprotected. If he’d known she was pregnant he wouldn’t have left, but on the day she’d kissed him goodbye, the morning after she’d comforted him through a terrible nightmare, he went back to active duty in Afghanistan without knowing he was going to be a father. Neither of them had known what the future held.
She had no alternative but to accept Cade’s offer, just until the babies were born. Then she’d get on with her life, alone except for her babies.
“I’m ready,” she told him. “Let’s go to the Double L.”
“You don’t have to do this, Cade. I’ll find another way. I’ll figure out something.” Abby’s voice broke through the silence that had reigned since they’d left the city behind. “There’s no need for you to put yourself out like this.”
Abby’s words drew Cade from his morose contemplation. He suddenly realized she thought his silence meant that he didn’t want her at his home.
“What other solution do you have in mind?” He drove silently, waiting for her response with undiluted curiosity.
“I could sleep on my friend’s couch while I think of the next step.” Those green eyes of hers squinted at him with defiance. “Isaiah 62:7 says, ‘Put God in remembrance of His promises.’”
“Uh, okay,” he said, clueless as to her meaning.
“It means that if I keep praying, I know that eventually He will give me an answer.”
“Until He does, maybe this is His answer—coming to my place, I mean.” Cade didn’t actually believe that, but Abby’s certainty that God would help her intrigued him. He’d never known anyone so confident in God.
“It’s not His answer if it’s going to put you out or make things difficult in your home.”
“Things are already difficult in my home.” The words burst out of him. As soon as they were said he wished he could retract them but, of course, Abby’s curiosity was obviously pricked.
“What do you mean?” she asked with a frown.
How to explain? Cade tossed around several responses. There was no easy way to say this.
“I got leave from the military because my father had a stroke and couldn’t run the ranch himself. In fact, he was on the verge of bankruptcy.” Cade licked his lips, mentally framing his explanation. “The day of Max’s funeral, Dad had a second stroke. That’s why I wasn’t there.”
“I heard.” She blinked and nodded. “Go on.”
“The stroke not only paralyzed him and took away his speech, but it left him locked inside his anger.”
“Anyone would get frustrated in such a condition,” Abby murmured.
“Trust me, he was frustrated long before he had a stroke,” Cade muttered. “My father is a very angry man. He’s been that way for as long as I can remember. It’s my fault. He hates me.”
“That can’t be true,” Abby gasped. “I’m sure your father doesn’t hate you.”
A faint smile twisted Cade’s lips. Max was the only other person he’d told his life story to and he’d shown the same reaction.
“He hates me because I killed my mother.” Why did the knowledge still hurt so much? “She died giving birth to me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Abby’s hand touched his shoulder, then fluttered away. Her voice dropped. “But even so—it can’t be true. You must have confused something. He probably got so caught up in his own pain and didn’t know how—”
“No.” Cade heard the sharpness in his own voice, felt his jaw tighten. “You can’t romanticize it, Abby. Even if he was decimated by grief, it’s been over thirty years and his attitude toward me hasn’t changed one iota. His anger and the way he took it out on me for my entire life is the reason I left home and joined the military.”
He swallowed the rest of what he wanted to say. His fingers gripped the steering wheel as he turned off the highway and into Buffalo Gap. It struck him that he’d received his wish. A woman now sat beside him. The rumor mill would be rampant with speculation.
Cade with a woman? He hasn’t brought anyone to the Double L since that woman, Alice, and Ed chased her off pretty quick.
Again Cade pretended he didn’t see the curious stares. He drove stoically through the small town.
Cade didn’t get involved in Buffalo Gap. He didn’t have time for it. The constant mental battles with his father left him beaten and worn down, as did the challenge of constantly avoiding another misstep that would take the ranch to financial ruin. He didn’t have time to socialize with the townsfolk.
Max had told him once that women could sense the anger festering inside him and so they steered clear of him. Cade now knew that was true. In his life he thought he’d loved only two women and both of them had dumped him after a visit to the ranch. Cade had blamed his father’s anger and rudeness, but he knew the truth; he simply wasn’t the kind of man women cared for. He lacked the softness that having a mother would have given him. Now Cade no longer wanted the complication of romance in his already uncomfortable world.
But with sudden awareness, he now realized that to expect Abby to endure the simmering discontent of his father was a bad idea. She said she had a little more than three months to go before the twins were due; three months in which she should be pampered and soothed to prepare for delivery. Cade was no expert on human birth, of course, but he’d helped deliver hundreds of calves and about the same number of colts, and he knew giving birth was hard work for any mom.
“Cade?” The softly voiced query drew his attention to Abby. “I don’t have to stay on your ranch. I could go to my friend’s or a shelter, if that would be better for you. I don’t want to cause you problems.”
“You can’t stay in a shelter. Max would never have allowed it and neither will I.” Admiration for her pluck drove off the brooding that always enveloped him when he thought of his father. Cade focused instead on the small woman in the opposite seat.
“But I need to prepare you for what you’ll find. And I want to ask you to, as much as possible, avoid my father. He’s very unhappy with