A sudden cold wind, wet with ocean moisture, hit his cheek, and the oak leaves clattered behind him. The clouds above him were moving more slowly, heavily, massing.
It was going to be stormy tonight. Something was moving in.
By the time Cade got back to the house to make his dinner that night, he was body-and-bone exhausted. He’d thrown himself into clearing brush, and had made such a good bonfire with the stuff that even though he’d notified the local fire dispatch agency, neighbors had called, thinking it might be out of control.
An off-road fire engine had chugged up the fireroad to check on him, but since he’d gone to school with Tim, the captain on the rig, they hadn’t given him a hard time. They’d all stood there and watched, and they seemed as mesmerized as he was, staring into the flames, not saying much except about the incoming storm.
Now Cade smelled like smoke; his chest and throat ached from it. His muscles burned, and he was exceedingly dirty.
He needed a shower, food, and a good, strong drink, in that order.
The shower he got.
The food he made, a quick grilled steak and a salad from leftovers. He ate at the kitchen table, defying Abigail to come in, breaking their schedule.
She didn’t. Of course she didn’t. She must be avoiding him like he’d been avoiding her.
The first drops of rain hit the gutters outside the kitchen window. The silvery drops on the window were still hitting slowly, but they’d get faster as the night went on. They were in for it tonight.
After fixing himself a scotch and water, he grabbed the suspense novel he was reading from upstairs and went to the parlor.
He’d had his first bonfire of the season today and he’d light the first fire in the chimney tonight. Fitting. Maybe he’d burn the image of her, bare breasted, lips swollen, out of his mind.
Wasn’t working so far.
After he started the fire with kindling and wood from the back porch, Cade sat back and brushed off his hands with satisfaction—no matter how many times he lit a good fire, he never got over feeling like an accomplished Boy Scout.
No,
Man
Scout, that was it. He felt better than he had all day.
His favorite chair was an overstuffed purple monstrosity with an overstuffed ottoman to match. Eliza had loved to sit here in front of the fire, knitting. The chair wasn’t anything he ever would have picked, but it went with the feeling of the old room. The parlor had been the ladies’ waiting room when the house had been a stagecoach stop in the late nineteenth century. Through the big leaded panes of glass in the front windows, one could look out at the two remaining hitching posts. Cade had four horses for working and driving the sheep, and he’d never felt the need to hitch either of them in front of the house. But he liked sitting here, looking out into the dark, knowing that more than a hundred years ago, other people had sat here, looking out into the dark from this very room.
He cracked open his book with a snap, breaking the spine.
Took a sip of his scotch.
Sank into the words. Perfect.
Almost. His scheduled time for clearing out of here was just fifteen minutes away.
But he might not even leave when his time was up. This was still his house, wasn’t it? She could go somewhere else. Or if she came in here, which she wouldn’t, she’d leave if he didn’t.
Cade pushed the thought of her out of his mind.
Again.
Always add an inch of length to any sweater you’re making, before you reach the armhole. You’ll want it later if you don’t.
—
E.C.
A
bigail stood, her knees aching. She’d been sitting in this spot for at least two hours. She dug her cell phone out of her pocket to check the time. She noticed she’d missed five or six calls, but they were from a blocked number, and she had no messages. It was probably time to change her phone number.
And it was her time of evening for the kitchen.
She’d gone out this morning into town to get food. After her quick shopping trip, two bags full of necessities like peanut butter and ice cream, she’d taken a stroll down the boardwalk. It was mostly closed up for the season, but people still walked along in groups, drinking coffee, watching surfers, and fishing off the end of the pier.
People had smiled at her, like maybe she fit in already. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder all the time, and when she did, only friendly faces met her gaze.
Now Abigail locked the front door of the cottage, carrying a huge armload of boxes out to the recycling bin. She’d been working for hours, unloading bits and pieces of wheels and boxes of fiber, filling all the empty bookcases she could find and making makeshift cases out of cardboard as she had to. She wanted the rooms cleared out, so she could see what she was working with. But even though she’d worked all day, she wasn’t even half done with the front room.
The more she opened and unpacked, the more she realized Eliza’s intent. In her gently controlling way, Eliza was pushing Abigail, even now, to open a public space.
A classroom in her old cottage. A store.
Box after box, Abigail was finding everything that she’d need to start her dream business. She had enough spinning wheels to teach classes and still have overstock to sell. She had enough fiber in carded batts and rolags to spin into hundreds of skeins. There were boxes of plain, sturdy wool in all colors, with the manufacturer’s contact info on each box, in case she wanted to reorder, even though there was so much that she couldn’t imagine ever having to do that.
She’d even found an old cash register and a receipt book. Each box she opened answered one more of the questions in her head.
Abigail hadn’t fully asked herself yet whether she was really going to open a shop here. She hadn’t worked through it in her conscious mind, but in her unconscious mind, the one that really made the decisions, she knew she would.
Her dream a reality.
With a handsome cowboy nearby, no less.
She hadn’t thought about him all day. She’d been great at not thinking. At all. Every time he came into her mind—that mouth, those large, strong, knowing hands—she thought about the shop. Her cottage. The classes she could offer. The alpacas.
Anything but him.
She dropped the cardboard off at the garbage cans, which were between the barn and the house, and clapped her hands to call Clara, who was under her truck, gnawing on something.
It was getting cold out here. And windy. She felt her hair being lifted and thrown in front of her face. Was that a drop of rain? She called Clara again, but the stubborn dog just looked out from under the truck and ignored her.
Fine—she needed to check that she’d gotten all her shopping bags out of the cab of the truck anyway. She looked in through the window. No bags were inside, but her glove box was open.
Abigail frowned. She’d thought she’d locked the doors. It was a habit that two weeks in the country hadn’t been able to break yet. Yes, the doors were locked. She used her key to open the truck.
The glove box was hanging open. It was a tricky glove box, too. It was easy to close and almost impossible to open. She’d always had to bang on it just right. And she knew it had been closed when she got out of the truck with her groceries earlier.
Abigail rifled through the contents. She didn’t keep much in her glove box for the very reason that it was so difficult to open. Registration, owner’s manual, a tire gauge, two sixteen-inch circular needles and a small ball of sock wool for emergency knitting, nothing else. Nothing was missing.
Of course nothing was missing. No one would break into her truck in order to open the glove box. The sticky latch must just be acting up, in reverse. Abigail closed it and tried to shake off the creepy feeling that had settled on her shoulders. She looked up the gravel drive. Nothing. Back the other way, just the barn. Nothing out on the county road, what she could see of it.
It was the isolation, that was all. She’d get used to it.
As the rain started in earnest, she knelt next to the truck and pleaded with the dog, offering the treats that she’d stocked up on earlier. Clara finally came out after snarfing three treats, dragging what looked like an auto part out with her. She had grease on her muzzle.
Fantastic. A car-eating dog.
They went into the house. Abigail prayed Cade wouldn’t be in the kitchen.
He wasn’t. The coast was clear.
She made a quick sandwich. After working in the cottage and not thinking about Cade all day, she didn’t have the brain for much more.
She sat at the kitchen table, ate her sandwich, and watched the rain. Clara sat under the table and leaned heavily against her leg.
What Abigail
really
wanted was to sit and knit. This was the kind of weather that was best for knitting—windy and cold, wet and getting wetter, good for being warm and safe inside. If only there were a fireplace in the kitchen.
There
was
a fireplace in the parlor. She looked at her cell phone again to check the time. Wasn’t it her turn for the parlor now? He should be cleared out, and if he wasn’t, he sure would when he saw her.
She went upstairs to grab her knitting and was down again in a minute, Clara following close at her heels. At the bottom of the stairs, instead of going left back to the kitchen, she went right, into the parlor.
She found Cade sitting in the overstuffed chair, book in hand, as squarely in front of the roaring fireplace as one could be. Duncan, his enormous yellow cat, sat on his lap. Somehow Cade made even the purple armchair look rugged.
Crap.
Well, it was her time. He’d made the rules. She would play by them, even if he wasn’t. She entered with her head high, ignoring him. Perhaps she’d nod to him in a moment, once she was set up on the couch. But she’d give it a minute.
But Clara ruined her entrance by racing ahead, all wiggles and tongue, circling Cade ecstatically, as if he were a huge juicy piece of steak.
The cat exploded into a yellow puff of smoke as it screamed its way out of the room in protest.
“Duncan!” said Cade.
“Clara!” Abigail was horrified. She hadn’t considered this possibility. Would he think she’d sicced the dog on the cat on purpose?
Cade grinned and set down his book, the dog’s head in both his hands.
“Who’s my girl? Who’s a good Clarabelle? Who’s a good dog?”
Judas. Abigail scowled at the traitorous dog. Clara was too busy making love to Cade to notice.
Abigail sighed and took a spot on the long couch. It looked antique and uncomfortable, but she should have known better. Eliza wouldn’t have had anything in her house that didn’t soothe the soul and body. Abigail sank into its depths comfortably. A good knitting spot.
Even better would be the chair in front of the fire currently occupied by the guy who needed to go to bed. Soon.
“Long day?” she asked, attempting for a casual tone.
“Nope,” Cade said. His voice was ten degrees cooler when talking to her compared to her dog.
“Well, that’s good.”
Abigail pulled out the sleeve she was working on. She was almost done with this one, and in her mind she was playing with the idea of the next one—would she maintain the motif of this small zigzag, or would she leave it off the next sleeve? It was going to be a man’s sweater, perhaps a new design for the next book, but Abigail knew men were sometimes put off by asymmetry. It would be a risk.
This was the kind of decision making she usually loved doing.
She wasn’t enjoying it a bit.
She stared at the yarn as it wound through her fingers and onto the needles.
Wasn’t he getting the hint?
Nope, he was still playing with the dog, who was now rolling from her belly to her back.
“Lie down.”
Clara lay down.
“Roll over.”
Clara rolled over, almost knocking over a small end table.
“Now, sit.” She did.
Cade pointed his fingers at her in the shape of a gun. “Bang!”
Clara rolled her eyes in ecstasy right before she threw herself onto the ground, limp.
Abigail stared. She’d had no idea. But she wouldn’t let him know that.
“What else does she know?” Cade asked.
“She knows, um…shake.” Abigail guessed.
“Shake, Clara,” said Cade, and Clara lifted her left paw for him to shake.
Good girl
, thought Abigail.
“You got a good one,” said Cade, and laughed as Clara tried to get in his lap like a puppy and lick his face.
“Well, she seems to like you.”
“I like
her
. I always have, even when she was Mort’s.”
Gah. Abigail tried to put her face back into neutral.
“You knew about her tricks.”
He grinned. “Maybe.”
She’d fallen for it. Time for him to go. “So, did you get up at four thirty again today?” she asked.
Cade looked at her as if she’d grown a third arm. “Yeah.”
“Wow. That’s a long time to be up. Huh. What time is it anyway?” She lifted her bare wrist. “I don’t wear a watch.”
“Neither do I,” he said coolly.
Damn. He was playing the game, too.
Abigail spent the next half hour in a state of frustration. Oh, she wanted him out of this room. She wanted to knit. Listen to that rain: It was perfect, a perfect night for sinking deeply into the repetitive motions of knitting. She wanted to be able to think about her plans for the future, for the cottage.
She wanted to be in front of the fire. She wanted to sit in that chair he was planted in so firmly it was as if he had grown roots that went through the leather, through the wooden floor, down into the soil beneath.
Go to
bed
already.
She yawned. Watched him.
Nothing. He turned a page and took a sip out of the glass that apparently never needed refilling. Maybe he was faking it. Maybe he was taking false sips to out-sit her.
But she watched intently the next time he drank, and she saw the liquid level go down incrementally. She felt stupid. Cade was obviously just sitting here, enjoying the night storm as she was.