“Let’s see how conceited I am, Abby,” he ground out, bending his head to hers.
One glance into those blazing eyes was enough to tell her that he wasn’t teasing. She groaned helplessly as his hard mouth crushed down onto hers in cold, angry possession.
It might have been so different if he’d been careful, if he hadn’t given in to his temper. But she was too frightened to think rationally. It was New York all over again, and a man’s strength was holding her helpless while a merciless mouth ground against her own. Through the fear, she thought she felt Cade tremble, but she couldn’t be sure. Her mind was focused only on the hard pressure of his mouth, the painful tightening of his arms. Suddenly she began to fight. She hit him with her fists, anywhere she could, and when the shock of it made him lift his head, she screamed.
An indescribable expression washed over his features, and he seemed to go pale.
Abby hung back against his arm, her pale brown eyes full of terror, her lips bloodless as she stared up at him, her breasts rising and falling with her strangled breaths.
“My God, what’s happened to you?” he asked in a shocked undertone.
She swallowed nervously, her lips trembling with reaction, her body frozen in its arch. “Please...don’t handle me...roughly,” she pleaded, her voice strange and high.
His eyes narrowed, glittering. His face went rock-hard as he searched her features. “What made you come here, Abby?” he demanded. “What drove you out of the city?”
Her eyes closed and she shuddered. “I told you, I was tired,” she choked out. “Tired!”
He said something terrible under his breath and straightened, moving her away from him with a smooth motion. “It’s all right,” he said when her eyes flew open at the movement. “I’m only going to let you sit up.”
She avoided his piercing scrutiny, sitting quickly erect with her back to him.
He spurred the horse toward the house. “If you can’t bear to be touched, there has to be a reason,” he said shortly. “You’ve been hurt some way, or frightened. I asked you if you’d been knocked around by a man, and you denied it. But you lied to me, didn’t you, Abby?”
Her jaw set firmly. “All this fuss because you kissed me against my will and I fought you!” she burst out. “Are you so conceited that you think I can’t wait to fall into your arms, Cade?”
He didn’t say a word. He rode right up to the front steps and abruptly set her down on the ground.
She stood by the horse for a long moment before she looked up. “Thanks for the ride,” she ventured.
He’d lit a cigarette and was smoking it quietly, his face grim as he looked down at her. “You’re going to tell me what happened sooner or later.”
“Nothing happened,” she lied, raising her voice.
“I didn’t wind up with three ranches and a corporation because I was an idiot,” he informed her. “You didn’t come rushing down here a month early just to help Melly get ready for her wedding. And it damned sure wasn’t because you were dying for the sight of me.”
He was hitting too close to the truth. She turned away. “Believe what you like, Great White Rancher.”
“Abby!”
She whirled, eyes blazing, as gloriously beautiful in anger as a sunburst, with her pale hair making a frame for her delicate face and wide brown eyes. “What?”
His eyes went over her reverently, from toes to head, while the cigarette smoked away in his tanned fingers. “Don’t fight me.”
It was like having the breath knocked out of her. She looked up at him and felt the anger drain away. He was so gorgeously masculine, so handsome. Her eyes softened helplessly.
“Then don’t hurt me,” she said quietly.
He laughed mirthlessly. “That works both ways.”
“Pull the other one,” she muttered. “I’d have to use dynamite. You’re hard, Cade.”
“This is hard country. I don’t have time for the limp-wristed courtesies you city women swear by in men.”
“Sophistication doesn’t make a man peculiar,” she returned. “I like a polished man.”
His dark eyes glittered. “Not always,” he replied. “There was a time when I could look at you and make you blush.”
“That old crush?” she said. “I thought the sun rose and set on you, all right. But you made a career of pushing me away, didn’t you?”
“You were eighteen, damn it!” he shot at her. “Eighteen, to my thirty-two! I felt like a damned fool when I left you that night. I should never have touched you!”
The one beautiful memory in her life, and he was sorry it had happened. If she’d ever wondered how he really felt inside his shell, she knew now.
She lowered her eyes and turned away. She walked to the house without another word, without a backward glance. As she went up the steps, she imagined she heard him swear, but when she looked back, he was riding away.
* * *
Abby brooded about the confrontation for the rest of the day, and at the supper table it was patently obvious to Melly and Jerry that something was wrong. Even Calla, walking back and forth to serve up the delicious beef the ranch was famous for, with the accompanying dishes, commented that the weather sure had gotten cold quick.
Cade finished his meal before the rest of them and lit a cigarette over his second cup of coffee.
“I’ve got those reports printed out whenever you want them, Cade,” Melly ventured.
He nodded. “I’ll look them over now. Jerry, come on in when you finish,” he added, rising. “We’ll have to make a decision pretty quick about those cows we’re going to sell off. Jake White wants a few dozen head for embryo transplants.”
“Wants them cheap, too.” Jerry laughed. “I reckon he thinks our culls will be the very thing to carry his purebred Angus.”
Melly grinned at them, aware of Abby sitting rigidly at her side. “Oh, the advances in cattle breeding. Herefords throwing Angus calves, without even the joys of natural conception.”
Cade gave her a hard glare and walked out of the room.
“Shame on you,” Jerry muttered as he started to join the boss. “Embarrassing him that way.”
“I’m just helping him lose some of his inhibitions, darling,” Melly whispered back, blowing him a kiss before he winked and left the room.
“He’ll get even,” Abby said solemnly, picking at her food. “He always does.”
“You could help him with those inhibitions, too,” her sister said, tongue in cheek.
“Not me, sis,” came the instant reply. She glared toward the doorway. “He can keep his hang-ups for all I care.”
Melly stared at her hard. “Why don’t you and Cade start kissing and stop fighting?”
“Ask him,” she grumbled, getting up. “It’s one and the same thing with Cade, if you want to know. I’ve got a frightful headache, Melly. Say good-night to the others for me, will you?” And she rushed upstairs without another word before Melly could ask the questions that were forming on her lips.
Abby hadn’t had a nightmare since she arrived at the ranch, but after the confrontation with Cade, it was almost inevitable that it would recur. And sure enough, it did.
She woke up in the early hours of the morning, screaming. Even as the sounds were dying away, her door burst open and Cade came storming into her room, flashing on the overhead light, with Melly at his heels.