Yet, for a moment, Ellie hesitated. A couple of people urged her to get some food and join them, but instead, Ellie stood where she was, not moving. She could follow Valerie and ask her who the blacksmith was in the barn. Was he like Lew, a Harvard man who happened to like to fly planes?
Or was he an itinerant farrier who had three wives in different places around the state? Did Valerie and Woody have masses of trouble with all the women visiting them and getting a serious case of the hots over the man? Was he one of those cowboy gigolos who made sure all the women guests had a great time?
Suddenly Ellie realized that every idea she’d come up with was bad. Was it Leslie or Madison who had said that not all men are bad? It was Madison. She’d said that Thomas had once been in the world and he was a very good man.
“Come join us,” said someone as he looked back at Ellie. “Moonlight and warm water. What else do you want?” the man asked, and his eyes issued an invitation.
Ellie had to stop herself from saying, “Privacy.” She was Alexandria Farrell the writer now, not Ellie Abbott, so she had to be on her best behavior. She smiled at the man and made a little motion with her hand as though to say that she wanted to go with him but she had prior commitments.
With a sigh and a shrug, he went through the doors onto the artfully lit patio.
And Ellie ran out the side door that she knew led to her dear little guesthouse, which right now seemed to be a haven of peace and refuge.
Once she was alone and away from the others, Ellie felt relieved, but she also had the feeling that something was going to happen. She was jittery inside, expectant. For a while she stood on the porch and looked out at the night. She could hear music from the house, and she was glad that she wasn’t there with the crowd.
She walked all the way around the porch, straining her eyes to see into the darkness. Where was he? she wondered. Why hadn’t he come to her?
After about thirty minutes had passed and the high mountain air grew cold, she rubbed her arms and went inside the house. The lights were soft and the furnishings inviting. She liked the little house.
For a while she tried to write in her journal, but she couldn’t focus her mind. She was waiting for something.
“Or someone,” she said, annoyed with herself. She was nearly forty years old, and—Smiling, she thought that she still had three more years before that birthday came, but if she was zapped forward as quickly as she’d been sent back . . .
Forty, she thought. She shouldn’t be pacing the room like a caged tigress. She should be . . . What? Taking crochet lessons?
At eleven she took a shower and told herself to calm down, that she was acting like a teenager, and that she was married and past the age to be excited about anything except recipes and her approaching grandchildren—which she wasn’t going to have because she’d never had any children.
By the time she got out of the shower, she was calmer. And she was back to being the fatalist that her therapist Jeanne would recognize. So she’d had a few moments with a guy in a barn. So a good-looking assistant to a billionaire had flirted with her. And a man at a party had issued an invitation that she’d chosen to take very personally . . .
She got into bed, tried to read one of the books she’d bought that day, but she couldn’t. Instead, she turned off the light and closed her eyes.
To her disbelief, she felt sleepy, but a sound outside made her sit up instantly. It wasn’t a quiet sound, but loud. One. Two. Three. Four. Four thumps on the wooden floor of the porch.
Ellie opened her eyes so wide that they hurt. A horse was walking very slowly around the deep porch that ran all the way around her little house. She could hear each hoof beat, hear the click of the shoes.
Ellie didn’t think about what she was doing. If she’d been asked, she would have said that she was past the age of leaving the house without having eye makeup on, not with her pale lashes, but now she didn’t give a thought to what she looked like. Or to the fact that all she had on was a thin cotton nightgown.
She tossed off the down duvet and took off running the instant her bare feet hit the floor.
There were no lights on on the outside of the little house, and there had been when she’d returned from the party. But now everything was dark, with only the lights from the big house barely visible through the trees.
At first she didn’t see him. And for a horrible instant, she thought that maybe she’d imagined the sound of the horse. In her bare feet, she ran around the porch to the back of the house.
And there he was. The moonlight was behind him, so she saw him as a silhouette more than as substance. He was dressed in black on a black horse and it was dark.
But Ellie knew it was Him. She felt it.
The saddle leather creaked, and she saw the flash of something white, a button maybe, and she knew that he was putting his arm down for her.
She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t have a single thought of not going with him. Nor did she think of talking to him, of asking his name, about his life, where he went to school, nothing. No, right now all that she felt was . . . just that, feeling.
She took his hand, big, warm, calloused, the kind of hand she loved, the hand of a useful man, and vaulted onto the horse behind him. Her narrow nightgown wasn’t made for horse riding. It rode up until it barely covered her bottom. Her legs were as bare as if she’d been wearing a high-cut bikini.
It was as though she knew what to do. Her arms slid around the back of him, clasping over his chest, and for a moment she put her head down on his back and breathed in the clean scent of him. He’d been working. He wasn’t dirty sweaty, just very male sweaty, that kind of smell that made her know he was male and she was female.
His body moved as he rode, and she felt her breasts against his back. How long had it been since she’d felt anything like this? Since she was little more than a kid, she’d been with one man, her husband. When had her marriage become sexless? When had it become more about control and one-upmanship than about sharing? Sharing anything?
At first he rode sedately, as though he were making the horse tiptoe across the ranch. Ellie hadn’t explored the place much, but in the moonlight she could see long, low buildings, and she imagined that there were people sleeping inside the buildings. The idea that the world was asleep and that they were the only ones awake appealed to her.
After a few minutes, she relaxed her grip around his chest and lifted her head from his back. Then she held her breath as he reached back and ran his hand over her bare thigh, stroking it, his hand roaming as far as he could reach up her bare buttocks. The sensation Ellie felt nearly made her fall off the horse.
She heard what could have been a chuckle from him; then he said softly, “Hold on tight.” These were the first words spoken between them. She liked his voice. It was a whisper, but she liked the deepness of it.
In the next moment he turned the horse sharply and they were on a trail. There were fewer trees here and no buildings, so she could look around him and see the open trail in front of them. But she only had a glimpse because the next moment he snapped the reins, moved his legs backward, and the horse took off running at a speed that made Ellie dizzy.
She clasped the man hard, buried her face in his warm back, and held on with all her might.
He raced the horse for several minutes; then there was another turn and they slowed down. This time they started climbing. She could feel and hear the horse’s hooves on stone. A couple of times she heard loose rock falling.
But even when they seemed to be going straight up and Ellie was holding on so tightly that she feared that she was cutting off his circulation, she was never, for even one second, afraid. She wasn’t afraid that he didn’t know how to handle the horse, nor was she afraid of where he was taking her.
After a while the ground flattened out, and Ellie loosened her hold on him. He guided the horse so it walked slowly and carefully, so she wasn’t surprised when she lifted her head and saw that they were on a trail tha
t didn’t look to be as wide as the horse was.
She clung to him, but still she felt no fear. It was as though, as long as she touched him, she was safe. If he’d set her to the ground on this rocky, narrow trail in the dead of night, she would have been terrified.
He walked the horse for some distance; then he halted and sat still. Ellie didn’t want to lift her head from his back. She had her cheek in the deep crevice of his backbone and she liked it there. Right now she felt as though she could stay there forever.
But she could feel that he was waiting for something, so, slowly, she turned her head and looked to her right.
The view below was breathtaking. All the ranch was laid out below them. The big ranch house was in the center, and from this distance the lights were beautiful. She could even see the way the light sparkled on the swimming pool. And in the cool, quiet night, she could hear the sound of laughter and music floating up to them.
But for all that she could see and hear people, she felt removed from them. She wasn’t part of them. She was someone from another time and place as she sat on the big horse wearing only a thin bit of cotton over her body, and holding on to this man she didn’t know.
Surreptitiously, she stole a glance up at him.
He was looking at her. He was looking down at her in a way that made the inside of her feel shaky, and she knew that if he kissed her, she’d be lost to him. She’d have no more willpower than a teenage boy in the backseat of a car.
But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he smiled at her. Not a big, wide grin, but just a little smile, as though to say, “Thanks for coming with me.”
Nor did he speak. Instead, he turned back around, clicked to the horse, and started them down the side of the hill. Ellie settled into her place against his back and watched as the ranch buildings came closer and closer into view.
The trip down took much longer than the trip up. No more wild running along the road. It was as though he didn’t ever want this night or this ride to end.
But it did end. When he halted the horse, Ellie looked up to see that they were right where he’d picked her up, at the back of the little guesthouse.
Part of her wanted to invite him inside with her. Part of her wanted to spend the rest of the night in bed with him.
But another part wanted just what she’d had: and no words.
Smiling to herself, she threw her leg over the saddle and held on to his arm as he lowered her to the ground. As she walked up the steps to the porch, she knew that the moonlight was behind her and that, probably, her nightgown was as transparent as a spider web, and the thought made her heart beat faster.
Once she was on the porch, she turned back to him, but he was already turning away.
Smiling into the darkness, she turned and went inside the house.
Twenty-one
The next morning Ellie awoke feeling as though there was hope for the future. Her therapist had told her that all depression was really just a lack of hope. “Hope goes and everything else slides down the drain,” Jeanne had said.
What was it about attention from a man that could make a woman decide that life wasn’t so bad after all? When Ellie was twenty-one, she’d known that success was what was important in life. She’d left her hometown and run off to big, bad New York City in search of fame and fortune.
But what had happened? The first man to really go after her had made her forget all her dreams. She’d given up all she’d wanted in an attempt to try to make Martin a success. But in the end, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t force him to go after what he said he wanted. She couldn’t prevent him from sabotaging every effort she made to make him a success.
But when Ellie had been given a second chance at success, she’d taken it. She’d walked away from the opportunities given to her that could have made her career as an artist, but she wasn’t going to close the door the second time. Instead, when Daria had called and said they wanted to publish all her books and send her heaps of money, Ellie had said, “What do you want me to do to help?”
In the flurry of excitement that followed, Ellie had tried to make Martin a part of her success, but he’d refused to participate. “If a person does nothing, he can’t take the blame if there’s a failure,” Jeanne had said. “But he can’t take credit for the success either,” Ellie had shot back at her. “Except that he did!”
But in the end, all that success hadn’t changed Ellie. She was still that same starry-eyed girl who could walk away from possible success to follow a man.
“You’re an artist,” Jeanne had said. “A true creator. Whether it’s on canvas with paint or done on a computer, you’re an artist.”
At that Ellie had smiled.
“And, above all else, you’re a romantic,” Jeanne said. “You need romance. Art is romance to you. You couldn’t care less about the money. You want the romance.”
So now, stretching as she got out of bed, Ellie felt better than she had in years. And maybe better than she had in years and years. Last night had been the most romantic encounter she’d ever had in her life.
Yesterday she’d been dying to know who the man was, but not today. Today she thought that if she never saw him again, she’d be all right. In fact, maybe she didn’t want to see him again. Maybe she wanted to crystallize last night in her head and keep it there forever, the way a photograph freezes time.
She took her time dressing in jeans and a cotton shirt with silver buttons, nothing flashy, but she knew that Valerie would know to the penny how much everything she wore cost. She pulled out the gifts for Mark but decided not to take them to the house. For all she knew, most of last night’s guests were still in the house—and all awaiting her.
Ellie forced herself to keep her eyes straight ahead as she walked toward the big house. She wasn’t going to start rubbernecking to search for Mr. Midnight Cowboy.
At the house she started to knock on the door, but it was ajar, so she went inside. Right away she thought that it was a better house during the day than at night. Thanks to some lighting designer, at night the house looked like a theater set. This morning it just looked like a nice country ranch house. Astonishingly big ranch house, but still a home.
As though she’d been beeped, Valerie appeared. She was wearing jeans that had to have been made for her—and if she gained an ounce, she wasn’t going to be able to get into them. It was disgusting to see that she looked better in daylight, in her rich cowgirl clothes, than she did at night in her designer duds.
“We’ve all been waiting for you,” Valerie said.
Ellie controlled her urge to groan. Was the entire weekend going to be like this?
“I promise that this is the last one,” Valerie said, as though reading Ellie’s mind. “All the ranch hands are here, and they have books for you to sign. Do this one last time, then you’re free. I promise.”
Ellie wanted to say something funny, something to make Valerie laugh. In other circumstances, she could have, but not after the mention of “ranch hands.” Was he going to be there?
She was working hard to control the loud pounding of her heart, but she hoped that Valerie couldn’t hear it. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she mumbled, then wanted to kick herself for her flat, boring repartee. She wasn’t going to impress anyone as a sparkling wit this weekend, that was for sure.
Valerie had set up a stack of Ellie’s latest books on a little table near a set of doors leading out to the patio. Standing just inside the door, his hat in his hands, was a cowboy. He smiled shyly when he saw Ellie. Years before, in Oklahoma, a couple of cowboys had come to her autographing. One asked her to sign a book for his wife, while the other had just stood there and stared at Ellie without blinking. The first man asked his friend if he wanted to buy a book. “No, I wanta buy her,” the man had said with feeling.
Thinking about that time, Ellie smiled back at this man, then took her place at the table.
It was a big ranch, and there were a lot of men and women who worked on it. Valerie se
emed to have bought out an entire printing of Ellie’s latest book, so every employee had at least three and as many as ten books they wanted autographed by Ellie. After an hour, she was hungry, thirsty, and bored.
While Ellie had been signing, Valerie had had a buffet set up against one wall, and the room was filling up with hands and managers, real cowboys with manure on their boots (and on Valerie’s Oriental carpet) and fake cowboys with degrees from back east. Everyone had his or her hands full of big platters of food—and the smell was making Ellie’s mouth water.
“Last man comin’ up,” she heard the unmistakable sound of Woody’s voice from behind her.
She was bent over a book she was signing for a young woman who had a long list of relatives she wanted to give books to, and Ellie smiled when she heard Woody’s voice. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d seen him outside the detective’s office.
“This one is the most worthless,” Woody said in a teasing voice.
Ellie could hear the love in the man’s voice, so she smiled wider. At last, she was going to get to meet Woody’s son. Closing the book, Ellie handed it to the woman, who said thanks, then dropped all of the hardbacks into a big shopping bag with the name Neiman Marcus scrawled across it.
Turning, Ellie expected to see a little boy, so her eyes were down. What she saw was a pair of black, thick-soled boots. And, instantly, she knew who was standing in front of her.
“I want you to meet my little brother,” Woody said above Ellie’s head. “He’s been around here, but he’s kinda shy, hates parties, so we didn’t see him last night.”
Shy? Ellie thought. And exactly what is your definition of shy? she wanted to ask. Slowly, Ellie looked up, her eyes moving up the man’s body, a body that she knew rather well after last night. Her legs had straddled his hips for a couple of hours. Her arms had hugged his chest, her hands now and then moving over most of his upper body. She’d spent so much time with her head on his back that she could have identified that curve blindfolded.