The Nine-Month Marriage Page 4

  Edna went on anyway. “But I never got my house. We never bad that kind of money. So I spent our life together taking care of the Bravo house. And I didn’t mind it, really. Not most of the time. Those boys needed me. They’re like my own…but not really my own.”

  Edna fell silent. For a moment, Abby thought she had dropped off to sleep again.

  But then she said, “Abby? Are you still awake?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “I’m fortunate, I know. I’ve managed to save some. And we did have a little life insurance, because I insisted. So I won’t be destitute when I can’t work anymore.” She made a low sound, perhaps a chuckle. “Zach. Mr. Responsible. He’s seen I have good health insurance, so this episode will all be taken care of.”

  “Good.”

  “But we both know Cash would take care of me anyway, even if there was no savings and no insurance at all.”

  “Yes. He would.”

  “And Nate would come all the way from L.A. if necessary, to help me.” Edna made that sound again, that sound that might have been a chuckle. “Your father. Like the wind. Who can tie down the wind?”

  “No one.”

  “I did love him. I don’t think I knew…how much. Until he was gone.”

  “Mom…”

  “I loved him.” She sounded almost defiant. “And I love you.”

  “I know you do, Mom.”

  “So very much…”

  “Go to sleep now.”

  Edna sighed and said no more.

  Abby lay in the darkness, listening to the machines for a while. Soon enough, exhaustion claimed her.

  She awoke in the middle of the night when a nurse came in to check on Edna. And she felt her stomach rise and roll.

  Stifling a groan, she slid from the bed. Luckily, the bathroom was only a few feet away. She pushed the door closed and got her head over the toilet basin before the scanty contents of her stomach came up. She tried to be as quiet as she could.

  When the retching finally stopped, she turned on the light and held back another groan at the sight of herself in the medicine cabinet mirror.

  “So attractive,” she whispered to her own haggard image.

  She cleaned up as best she could. Then she turned off the light and waited for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

  Slowly, quietly, she pulled open the door. The room beyond was quiet, except for the machines. The nurse had gone. She tiptoed to the bed and looked down at her mother.

  Sound asleep.

  Abby went back to her own bed and slid beneath the sheet. Within minutes, dreams embraced her.

  It was a week before Edna left the hospital. Zach went back to the ranch the day after Abby arrived. The next day, Cash got a call from one of his business associates about a land deal they were working on. Abby told him to go handle it; she could look after her mother just fine on her own. She felt relief when he agreed to go, because sometimes, when he looked at her, she was sure he knew her secret—which she did intend to tell him about.

  Soon. Very soon.

  Before he left, Cash made sure she had a rental car so that she could get around.

  The doctors ran more tests. Finally, they told Abby that Edna had experienced a coronary vasospasm, and not a real heart attack.

  “A coronary vasospasm,” the doctor said, “amounts to severe, extended cramping of the heart muscle. It is not a heart attack—there is no disease involved. It’s like a big charley horse. But it’s dangerous because it’s happening to the heart.”

  They couldn’t say why it had happened. But they did say that Edna’s arteries were surprisingly clear, with very little plaque buildup. Thus, with time, she would probably recover completely. Of course, she’d have to take it nice and easy for a while. And for the rest of her life, she would require medication to keep the problem from recurring.

  Cash returned on Sunday, a week after Edna became ill. By then, they had taken her off the device that helped her heart to pump and moved her from intensive care into a regular room.

  He appeared in the afternoon, while Edna was napping and Abby sat in a chair in the corner playing Super MarioKart on a Game Boy that one of the nurses had lent her. She was so intent on trying to pass Yoshi without spinning off the track that she didn’t know Cash had come in until he spoke.

  “Are you winning?”

  Her nimble thumbs went slack. Mario whirled off into oblivion. She looked up. “I was.”

  Those gorgeous blue eyes scanned her face.

  “You look better. More rested.”

  Her foolish heart trip-hammered against her breastbone. She prayed he couldn’t hear it. “Not a lot to do around here but rest.”

  He went on looking at her. And she looked back.

  Then he seemed to shake himself. “How is she?”

  “I’m right here, Cash Bravo,” Edna said. “Turn around and see for yourself.”

  He did turn. “Well, well,” he said. “Beautiful. Downright beautiful.”

  Edna was blushing. Abby thought she really did look pretty, in a new bed jacket, with her hair neatly combed—and just a touch of blusher and lipstick.

  “You look like you’re ready to go home,” Cash said, taking her hand.

  “They said I could. Tomorrow.”

  For a moment, he just held Edna’s hand.

  Then she asked, “Are you staying the night here in Billings?”

  “You bet.”

  “Then would you do a favor?”

  “Name it.”

  “I want you to take Abigail out for dinner.”

  Panic lanced through Abby. Of course she needed to tell Cash her secret. But she wasn’t quite ready yet. And until she was ready, she wanted to avoid spending time alone with him. She jumped to her feet. “No, really. I’d rather—”

  Edna didn’t let her finish. “Nonsense. All you do is sit here with me. And I’m getting along just fine now. A nice dinner out will be good for you.”

  “Mom…”

  “Cash. Will you do that for me?”

  They went to a steak house.

  Abby’s stomach had been behaving much better in the past few days, probably a result of the extra rest she was getting. Confident she could handle a nice, juicy porter-house, she ordered one, along with a salad and a baked potato smothered in sour cream and chives.

  “And hot tea.” She smiled at the waitress.

  As soon as the waitress had walked away, Cash demanded, “What’s this tea you’re always drinking lately?”

  It occurred to her that he’d given her the perfect opening. She should tell him the truth right now. But she just wasn’t ready yet. “I like tea. So what?”

  He took a sip of the drink the waitress had brought him earlier, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wondered.”

  She felt defensive—because she knew that she was going to sit across from him through the entire meal and not say a word about something that would change both their lives irrevocably. “If I want tea, I’ll have tea.”

  “Abby, come on.”

  She glanced away, knowing herself to be petulant and cowardly—and not liking herself much at all. “I’m sorry.” She met his eyes.

  He looked back at her in a way that made her more uncomfortable than ever.

  “I know you didn’t want to come out to eat with me. And believe me, I understand your feelings.”

  No, you don’t, she wanted to say. You don’t understand at all. Because I can’t seem to tell you. I can’t stand to tell you….

  “Abby, we’re going to have learn to get along. We’re going to have to get past what happened.”

  She swallowed. “I know.”

  The waitress came with their salads. For a few blessed minutes, Abby concentrated on forking up lettuce leaves and putting them in her mouth.

  Cash sipped his drink again. “I’d like to just…let it go. Forget it ever happened. If you could do that. Could you?”

  She almost dared to answer, Well, that might be kind
of difficult, considering I’m pregnant. But she didn’t dare. She didn’t say a word, only looked at him.

  He set down his drink. “Okay, stupid suggestion.”

  She put down her fork. “Look. Can we just eat, please? Can we just…not talk about it? I mean it, Cash. If every time I’m with you, we have to rehash it all again, I, well, I think I’ll go plain crazy, you know?”

  “Yeah. Fine. I get the message.” He picked up a piece of bread and tore it in half.

  They finished their salads and the waitress brought the main course. Abby cut off a bite of her porterhouse. It was delicious. But her appetite had fled. Across from her, Cash looked miserable.

  She forced herself to speak in a bright tone. “Well, it seems like I’ll be coming home for the summer after all.”

  He kept watching her, broodingly. “That’s something, I guess.” He raised his hand for the waitress.

  She appeared from thin air, eager to serve him, as all waitresses were. “What can I get you?”

  He pointed at his drink.

  “Coming right up.” She bounced happily away.

  Abby tried again to talk about everyday matters, to get them back on some kind of even ground with each other. “I think as soon as we get Mom settled at home, I’ll fly to Denver.”

  He lifted a bronze eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Well, to get my things, to close up my apartment and to pick up my car.” She had already called Mac and the manager of the coffee shop where she worked days and told them she wouldn’t be returning.

  “Forget that,” Cash said.

  For a moment, Abby thought he was talking to the waitress, who’d just reappeared with his fresh drink. But then he went on.

  “I handled it.”

  Abby frowned. “You what?”

  “I arranged to have your things sent home and told the manager at your apartment that you wouldn’t need the place anymore. I also hired someone to drive your car home.”

  She stared at him.

  He waved a hand. “Your mother needs you now. You can’t be fooling around in Denver.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It sure as hell is.”

  “They were my things, Cash. This is my life.”

  “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

  “No, I’m not.” She reached for her water glass and then set it down, hard enough that water sloshed on the tablecloth.

  “Abby…”

  “No.” She leaned across the table and kept her voice to a whisper. “You can’t take over my life, Cash. You can’t fix everything for me. I’m twenty-one. It’s time I fixed things for myself. Do you understand?”

  He sat back and sighed. “You always used to let me do whatever I thought was best for you. You’d just say thanks and let it be.”

  He was right, so it took her a moment to compose a reply. When she spoke, she made her tone gentler than before. “I know. You’ve been good to me. But I really do want to make my own decisions now. And I want you to let me.”

  “You wouldn’t be saying this if it wasn’t for—”

  She didn’t let him finish. “Look. I’ve told you more than once that I don’t blame you for what happened. And I meant it. So just give up feeling guilty, why don’t you?”

  He looked sheepish—and so handsome it hurt.

  “I’ll try.”

  They managed to get through the rest of the meal without incident. He took her back to the hospital for a while after that. And then he returned her to her hotel, where he had a room, too.

  She thought that maybe she’d gotten through to him, at least about trying to run her life for her—until the next morning, when she went to check out of her room and learned he’d already paid the bill. She spoke to him about that briefly, before they went to drop off her rental car and pick up Edna for the drive home.

  “Cash, you can’t just pay all my bills.”

  “Why not?”

  She remained calm. “Because they’re my bills.”

  “Are you coming back to work for me?”

  “Cash…”

  “You know it’s the best thing. How do you expect me to keep track of my money, without you and all those damn spreadsheets of yours? And you won’t find another job that pays as well—or that you can do at home, where you can keep an eye on Edna at the same time.”

  She was shaking her head.

  He put on that boyish look that knocked all the women dead. “Come on. Work for me.”

  And she heard herself giving in, saying yes.

  He grinned and told her he’d take the cost of the hotel room out of her paycheck, over time, if she insisted. And the same went for her rental car.

  Abby told herself they’d come to some sort of understanding, that even though she’d agreed to work for him, which was bound to cause some problems, at least he would stop trying to take over her life. But then, when they went home, he drove to Medicine Creek instead of out to the ranch. He pulled onto Meadowlark Lane, a street a few blocks from his.

  Abby saw her battered Rabbit right away, parked in the driveway of a neat two-story brick house with a big, spreading cottonwood tree in the front yard. Cash turned in and parked beside the Rabbit.

  “What’s this?” Edna asked, her eyes shining.

  “I think it’s about time you had your own house,” Cash said.

  Chapter Four

  “Oh, Cash.” Edna sounded young, full of life and joy. “I just…I can’t believe it!”

  Cash basked in her excitement. Over a year before, Ty had told him how much Edna longed for her own house.

  That had been during the spring trail drive, which took place every April; Zach would get together whatever hands he had working for him, and a neighbor or two, and move a good half of the herd up to higher pastures for the warmer months. Cash had been helping out with the spring drive since the first year he’d come to live at the ranch. Some years, if they stopped at fenced land for the night, they’d go on home to sleep.

  But last year, they’d taken a little different route and ended up spending one night on open land, in a camper trailer, watching over the herd. Early on, as the hands took a turn circling the herd, Cash and Ty sat out under the stars for a while, sharing a nip or two, talking about nothing in particular. Somewhere in the conversation, Ty had mentioned that he’d never bought Edna the house he’d always promised her.

  “If there’s anything I got regrets about, it’s that,” he’d said. Then he’d looked up at the shadows of the Big Horn Mountains, capped with their glittering mantle of snow, and lifted a thermos with whiskey-laced coffee in it. “Nothin’ else. Nothin’ else at all.”

  On the day Ty died, Cash had remembered what Ty had said that cold spring night under the stars. And he’d decided to see to it that Edna got her house.

  What had happened after the funeral between him and Abby had nothing to do with his decision. Nothing at all.

  He’d bought the house two weeks after Ty’s death. It was just right. It had a master suite downstairs for Edna, and two spare rooms upstairs: one for Abby when she came home, and one, as it turned out, that Abby could use as an office. Escrow had closed without a hitch. But he’d wanted to fix it up nice before giving it to Edna, so he’d sort of back-burnered the project until he’d had a little spare time to finish it up right.

  Edna’s illness had motivated him. During her hospital stay, he’d overseen the delivery of two moving vans full of furniture in solid, conservative styles. Then he’d spent all day last Saturday moving the stuff into the rooms with the help of a couple of local kids. He’d even hired a woman to come in and put the new sheets on the beds, as well as to fill the kitchen cabinets with packaged goods.

  “Oh, Cash.” Edna hung on his arm as he gave her and Abby the tour. “How could you have known? It’s exactly as I always dreamed it might be. Even the furniture….”

  “I’ve seen you studying those JC Penney catalogs. I think, after all these years, I know what you like.”


  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then don’t say a thing.” He glanced at Abby. Her face wore that closed, tight look it wore too much lately. He looked at Edna again, drank in her smile. “It’s your retirement present—if you want to retire, I mean. You know you won’t have to. Zach would be more than glad to have you back, when you’re feeling better. But this house will always be here, waiting for you.”

  She gave his arm another squeeze. “I think I’ll have to pinch myself. Is this really real?”

  “You bet it is.”

  They walked slowly up the stairs, in consideration for Edna’s weakened condition. He showed them the room that would be Abby’s bedroom.

  Abby pulled open the closet door, “Why, all my clothes are here,” she sneered. “Already put away. Isn’t that convenient?”

  Cash just looked at her, feeling reproachful. He had only wanted to help.

  “Abigail…” Edna murmured warningly.

  Abby fell silent, but her eyes were mutinous.

  And then, when she saw her computer and all her accounting software and books in the office room, she looked madder than a teased hornet.

  “Thank you,” she said in a tone that didn’t sound grateful at all.

  He just went ahead and smiled at her. “You’re welcome. Renata will be expecting you over at the office tomorrow. You can pick up the books and things from her.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll let you get them in order, and then I thought I’d drop by in a few days so we can go over everything.”

  “Great.”

  Edna patted his arm again. “Cash, I am just completely overwhelmed.”

  Abby muttered something too low to make out.

  “What was that, Abigail?” Edna asked sharply.

  “Nothing.”

  She stuck out her lip. Cash thought she looked just like the kid she constantly insisted she wasn’t anymore.

  Cash smiled at Edna. Her eyes sparkled with happiness. Still, she had to be careful not to wear herself out. The doctors had said she’d need a lot of rest, that she wasn’t to do anything strenuous for at least the next month. “You should get yourself to bed.”

  “Yes. Of course. You’re right.”