The Last Honest Woman

  as it always did. "I wouldn't have either of them if you hadn't helped me."

  "Oh, you'd've got by all right-but maybe you'd've paid too much." With a cackle, he went down to the next horse. "You were a novice back then, Miz Rockwell, but I think you've lost your green."

  From him, it was an incredible compliment. With more pleasure than she'd been able to drum up in days, Abby began to lead the horses out. She groomed them in the sunshine.

  Dylan watched her from his window. She was singing. He couldn't hear her, but he could tell by the way she moved. He watched as she meticulously cleaned out hooves, brushed manes and curried. There was a lightness about her that he hadn't seen before. But then, she thought she was alone.

  Her gloves were on a post, and she ran her bare hands over the flank of one of the geldings. lea-serving hands, he thought. Yet somehow they looked just as right brushing hard over the gelding's coat. How would they look brushing over his skin? How would it feel to have those hands running with abandon over his body, arousing, exciting, exploring? Would she have that dreamy look in her eyes? He thought she had it now, but he was too far away to be certain.

  And if he was smart, he'd stay away.

  Her face wouldn't be pale now. The early-morning air would bring the color up as the strong sunlight and exercise warmed her muscles. Her face wouldn't be pale when he made love with her. Excitement would flush it. Passion would make her agile. He could imagine what it would be like to have her skin slide over his. He could almost taste the flavor of her flesh in those dark, secret places made only more mysterious by the layers of thick winter clothing. He wanted to peel them off her while she stood watching him, wanting him, waiting for him Just thinking of it made his pulse thud.

  He'd wanted other women. Sometimes his wants had been eased, sometimes they hadn't. Passion came and passion went. It erupted and it vanished. He understood that well. Just because he churned for her now, just because he stood at the window and watched her with needs bouncing crazily inside him that didn't mean he'd want her tomorrow. Desire couldn't rule your life-not desire for money, not for power and certainly not for a woman.

  But he continued to watch her while his typewriter hummed impatiently behind him.

  He watched as she led the horses, two and three at a time, into the barn. He waited until she came out again not even calculating the time that passed. Then, abruptly and obviously on impulse, she swung herself onto the big gelding she'd called Judd. With a halter and nothing else, she sent the horse racing out of the paddock and up the rough, narrow track that led in to the hills.

  He wanted to throw the window open and yell at her not to be an idiot. He wanted to watch her ride. He could see her knees pressed tight to the gelding's side and her hand holding the halter rope. But more, as the sun fell like glory over her face, he saw the look of absolute delight.

  She let the gelding run up and down the track-ten minutes, fifteen, Dylan was too mesmerized to notice. Her hair rose and fell in the wind they created, but she never bothered to push it from her face. And when she swung to the ground he knew she was laughing. She nuzzled the horse, stroking again. Stroking, soothing, murmuring. Dylan wondered what soft, pretty words she spoke.

  A man was losing his grip when he became jealous of a horse. He knew it but continued to stand by the window, straining for control, or perhaps for the inevitable. She disappeared inside the barn again, and he told himself to turn away, to get back to his work, but he waited.

  She returned with the stallion, holding the rope close under his chin as he danced impatiently, bad-temperedly. Abby tied him securely to the rail and began to groom him.

  The animal was beautiful, his head thrown high and an arrogant look in his eyes that Dylan could see even from the window. And he was skittish. When Abby took his hind leg to clean his hoof, he jerked it twice, nearly pulling out of her grip before he settled down and let her do her business. When she set it down again, Dylan caught his breath as the horse took a hard, nasty kick at her. Abby avoided it and calmly picked up the next leg. He could almost hear her gently scolding as she might have if one of the boys had had a fit of temper.

  Damn it, who ate you? He pressed a hand to the glass as if demanding she look up, hear him and answer. Who the hell are you? If she was genuine, why the lies? If she had the kind of morals, the kind of values she seemed to have, how could she lie?

  Yet she was lying, Dylan reminded himself. And she would continue to lie until he tripped her up. Today, he promised himself as he watched her brush out the smooth, dark skin of the stallion. Today, Abby.

  Turning, he went back to his typewriter and told himself to forget her.

  It was after eleven when he heard her come back into the house. He had Rockwell's early professional years, his earlier family background, drafted out. He'd written of Rockwell's meeting with Abby from her perspective, using quotes from her and bits of her family history. People would be interested in the sister of one of Hollywood's rising stars, and in the sister of a successful Broadway actress. He hadn't overlooked the triplet angle or the theater background. Three sisters, three actresses. But he was about to rewrite Abby's script.

  She heard him come down but continued to wash the eggs. "Good morning." She didn't look back at him, and continued to keep her hands busy. "Coffee's on."

  "Thanks."

  When he walked to the stove, she glanced over. He hadn't shaved. It always made her stomach quiver-perhaps at the thought of having that rough, slightly uncivilized face scrape against hers.

  "Mr. Petrie's back. I think he could have used another day or two, but he missed the horses."

  "You finished out there?"

  "For now. I'm going to be checking on the mates off and on."

  "Fine." He took his coffee to the bar, lit a cigarette, then turned on his tape recorder. "When did you and Rockwell decide to divorce?"

  An egg hit the floor with a splat. Abby stared down at it in dull surprise. Without a word, she began to clean it up.

  "Do you want me to repeat the question?"

  "No." Her voice was muffled, then came stronger. "No, but I would be interested to know where you got the idea."

  "Lori Brewer."

  "I see." Abby cleaned up the last of the mess, then turned to wash her hands.

  "She was sleeping with your husband."

  "I'm aware of that." Abby dried her hands meticulously. They were steady. She hung on to that.

  "She wasn't the first."

  "I'm also aware of that." She went to the stove and poured coffee.

  "You got ice for blood, lady?" When she turned to look at him calmly, it goaded him all the more. "Your husband slept with any woman who could crawl between the sheets. He made a career out of cheating on you. Lori Brewer was only the last in a long line."

  Did he think she was hurting her? she wondered. Did he think she should feel a stab of pain, a wave of betrayal? She'd felt it all before, but that was long since over. She felt nothing now but a sort of vague curiosity about the anger she saw in Dylan's eyes.

  "If we both know that, why talk about it?"

  "Was he going to dump you for her?"

  She took a sip of coffee. It steadied the nerves. She would give him the truth as long as it was possible to give him the truth. "Chuck never asked me for a divorce." She drank again, and the liquid slipped, hot and potent, into her system. "Though he may very well have told Lori Brewer that he did."

  That was the truth. His gut told him that this time she spoke with pure honesty. It only made it more of a morass. "She's not a stupid woman. She had it in her head that she and Rockwell would be married before the year was out."

  "I can't realty comment on what she thought."

  "What can you comment on?" His anger surged, and because he trusted it, be moved with it. Perhaps with anger he could finally break through her shield. "Tell me this-how did it feel knowing your husband wasn't faithful to you?"

  She'd known the question would come up. She'd prep
ared herself for it. But now, somehow, the answer didn't come as easily. "Chuck and I- understood each other." How flat that sounded, how foolishly sophisticated. "I- well I knew he was under a great deal of pressure, and being on the road like that month after month-"

  "-is a license to relieve the pressure anyway you chose?"

  She wasn't as calm as she wanted to be, but she was still in control. "I'm not talking about a license, or even an excuse, Dylan. But it is a reason."

  "You consider being separated from you, being on the road and pressured by a need to win, is a reason for the women, the booze, the drugs?"

  "Drugs?" Her face went a dead white. If the shock in her eyes wasn't real, Dylan decided, she should be the sister in Hollywood. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "I'm talking about cocaine. Freebasing." His voice was clipped and hard, a reporter's voice. He tried not to hate himself for it.

  "No." There was a sudden sheen of desperation in her voice. He watched her knuckles blanch as she gripped the counter. "No, I don't believe that."

  "Abby, I have it from four different sources." His tone had softened. She was hurting inside. She might have lied to him before, but the pain was real. "You didn't know."

  "You can't write that. You can't. The children." She put her hands over her eyes. "Oh, God, what I have done?"

  He had her arm. She hadn't heard him get up. "Sit down." When she started to shake her head, he pulled her over to a stool. "Sit down, Abby."

  "You can't write that," she repeated, and her voice was a roller coaster of ups and downs. "You can't be sure it's true. If you try to put that in the book, I'll withdraw my authorization. I'll sue."

  "What you'd better do right now is calm down."

  "Calm down?" She clutched her hands together until her fingers ached. Only determination kept her facing him, and her eyes were drenched with despair. "You've just told me that Chuck was-" She swallowed and got a grip on herself. "Turn that off," she said quietly, then waited until the recorder stopped. "We're off the record now, do you understand me?"

  Her eyes were dry again and her voice steady. He had a sudden flash of her carrying his suitcase up the stairs. Stronger than she looked. "All right, Abby. Off the record."

  "If Chuck-if he used drugs, I never knew."

  "Do you think you would have?"

  She closed her eyes. A sense of failure reached up and grabbed her by the throat. "No."

  "I'm sorry." He touched her hand, swearing at himself when she drew back. "I am sorry. His mother knew. I have it that she tried to get him into rehab."

  A sudden hysterical thought drummed through her. "The last race. The crash."

  "He was clean." He thought he heard the relief sweep through her, though she didn't make a sound. "He just took the turn too fast."

  She nodded and straightened her shoulders. If Abby had teamed anything over the past eight years, it was to take one step at a time, deal with it, then go on. "Dylan I'm not asking for favors, but I'd like you to remember there are two innocent people involved. The children deserve some legacy from their father. If you try to print anything about this I'll find a way to stop you, even if I have to go to Janice."

  "How much will you try to cover up, Abby?"

  She gave him a clear, direct look. "You'd do better to ask me how much I'd do to protect my children."

  He felt a twinge and fought to grind it down. "Once a ball's rolling, it rolls. You'd have been smarter to stop the book in the beginning."

  "Isn't the sex enough for you?" she lashed out, desperate to find solid ground again. How could she take the first step when each time she did she was knee-deep in quicksand? "Do you have to put this ugly business in, too? Can't you leave the boys something?"

  "Do you want me to write a fairy tale?" He grabbed her wrists before she could push away from the counter. He should have resented her for making him fed responsible, yet he couldn't. She looked lost and helpless. "Abby, it's too late to stop the book now. The publishers would sue you, not the other way around. Talk to me, tell me the truth. Trust me to tell it."

  "Trust you?" She stared at him, wishing she could see inside him, find some soft, giving spot. "I trusted myself and I've made a mess of it" Faced with the inevitable, she stopped resisting his hold on her hands. "I've got no choice, do I?"

  "No."

  She waited a moment until she was certain she was strong enough. "Turn your recorder back on." She withdrew from him, not by inches but by miles. As soon as the machine was running, Abby began speaking again. But she never looked at him. "Chuck never used drugs in my presence. We were married for four years, and I never saw him with drugs of any kind. As far as I'm concerned, he never used them at all. Chuck was an athlete, and he was very disciplined about his body."

  "For most of your marriage, you only lived together for short periods."

  "That's true. We each had certain responsibilities that kept things that way."

  "It would seem to me that you had certain responsibilities that should have kept you together."

  She would ignore that. She wouldn't wallow in guilt or in self-pity ever again. If the time had come to compromise herself, so be it. She'd take the lesser demon. "To go back to your earlier question, Chuck was often lonely. He was attractive and women were a part of the circuit."

  "You accepted that?"

  "I accepted that Chuck was not capable of being faithful. I realized that a marriage is the responsibility of two people. In certain areas, I wasn't able to give him what he needed."

  "What are you talking about?"

  Pride was brushed aside. Abby had found it was rarely useful in any case. "I was only eighteen when we were married. Despite the fact that we were entertainers and on the road continually, I was very sheltered. I was a virgin when I married Chuck, and he often said I remained one. I failed him in bed and so he looked elsewhere. Maybe that was wrong, but it was also natural."

  "Stop humiliating yourself this way."

  She heard the barely restrained fury and turned to look at him. "You wanted answers, I'm giving them to you. Chuck slept with other women because his wife didn't satisfy him."

  "The hell with this." He spun her on the stool until she faced him. "You're a fool if you believe that."

  "Dylan, I know what went on in my own bedroom. You don't."

  "I know what goes on inside you."

  "You asked me if I had ice for blood. I'm answering you."

  "No, you're not." He pulled her off the stool to stand beside him. "Now you will."

  He had her close. His mouth came down on hers, hot, furious, before she could even think about protesting. Excitement bubbled up inside her to war with a strong desire for self-preservation. She tried to resist. There was something wild and frightening about the way he could take her over, make her hurt with need. The hands in her hair weren't gentle, but held her to him in a kind of angry possession. Slowly, inevitably, she let herself go.

  He'd burned for her through the night, through the morning, but he hadn't expected it to be like this. There were waves of fire and smoke blinding him. Her body was tight as a bowstring against his, holding back against the passion he could feel building. Her fingers didn't push at his shoulders, but dug into them. He could almost hear her heart thudding in her throat-fear, excitement, desire, he didn't care. As long as it was for him.

  Then, with incredible ease, she relaxed. Her lips softened, her body yielded, and she was his.

  Her heartbeat didn't slow. Somehow it increased even as her arms wound slowly around him. She sighed. He felt the soft trickle of air whisper against his mouth. He combed his hands through her hair, gently, soothingly, because she seemed to need it. The flame had gone out of him, but the heat was still there, simmering, sizzling. He could have burned alive with tenderness.

  "Come upstairs, Abby." He murmured it against her ear, then against her mouth. "Come upstairs with me."

  She wanted to. The fact that she did jolted her. She'd already accepted that
she was attracted to him, but it was a different matter to slip into bed with a man. "Dylan, I-"

  "I want you." His mouth loitered along her chin, where he bit gently. "You know that"

  "I think I do. Please-" Her voice was trembling. Her muscles felt like putty. She couldn't allow herself to tumble over the edge a second time without keeping her eyes open. "Please, Dylan, I just can't. I'm not ready."

  "You want me." He skimmed his hands up, molding her hips, tracing her ribs, teasing her breasts. "I can feel it every time you take a breath."

  "Yes." She was through denying. "But I need more than that." She took his hand and brought it to her cheek. "I need some time."

  Dylan brought his hand up under her chin and held it there. Her cheeks were flushed, as he'd once imagined they would be. Her eyes were dark and unsure. If it hadn't been for them, watching him, almost trusting him, he'd have ignored her protests and taken her.

  "How badly did he mess up your head, I wonder."

  "No." She shook her head. "This has nothing to do with what happened between Chuck and me."

  "You don't believe that and neither do I. He's your yardstick. Sooner or later you're going to find out you can't measure me by it."

  "I don't think of Chuck when I'm kissing you. I don't think at all."

  His fingers tightened on her skin. "Abby, if you want time, you'd better watch yourself."

  She felt the energy that had poured into her so quickly drain out again. "I don't know how to play the games, Dylan. That's the reason I messed up so badly once before."

  "I'm not interested in games. And I'm not interested in hearing you shoulder blame. Let's make a deal."

  She moistened her lips and wished she could be sure of herself again. "What sort?"

  "You tell me the truth. The truth," he repeated, laying his hands on her shoulders. "I'll write it objectively. Then we'll let the blame fall wherever it belongs."

  He made it sound so simple, but then he had nothing to lose. "I don't know if I can do that, Dylan. I have the children to think of. Sometimes the truth hurts."

  "Sometimes it cleanses," he countered. "Abby, I'll find out everything I need to know one way or the other." It was a threat. He understood that, and he saw by the look that came and went in her eyes mat she did, as well. "You should think about that. Don't you think it would be better if it came from you? I don't want to hurt those kids."

  Trapped, she studied him, carefully, critically. "No, I don't think you do, but you and I might not agree on what's best for them."

  He rubbed a hand over his face, then paced around the kitchen. It wasn't like him to make compromises. He didn't care for it. Yet he was compelled to find one.

  The book? He was beginning to think the book didn't mean much of anything. He wanted the truth from her, about her. And he wanted it for himself. He thought perhaps he wanted it for her.

  "Okay, you give me the real story, the true story, without all the little evasions. I'll write it, and then before I submit anything for publication I'll give it to you to read. If there's a problem, we'll work it out. Both of us have to be satisfied with the manuscript before it flies."

  She hesitated. "Do you mean that?"

  He turned back. She wasn't ready to trust him. The woman had been lied to before, he thought, and lied to in a big way. "You've got it on record." He gestured to the recorder which was still running.

  She took the step, though her legs were a little wobbly. "All right."

  When he came forward and offered his hand, Abby held her breath and accepted it. Another bargain, she thought, hoping she could keep it better than the one she'd made with herself.

  "He hurt you."

  Dylan said it quietly, so quietly she answered without hesitation. "Yes."

  It made him angry. No, it made him furious. He couldn't explain it, but he knew that fury wouldn't help him get to the truth. And for years, maybe too many years, that had been his driving ambition. "Why don't you sit down again?"

  She nodded, then sat with her hands neatly folded and her face placid.

  "Abby, you and Rockwell were having serious marital problems."

  "That's right." It seemed so easy to say it now. Just as he'd said, cleansing.

  "Was it the other women?"

  "That was part of it. Chuck needed more than I could give him in so many areas. I guess I needed more than he could give me. He wasn't a bad man." The words were quick and earnest. "I want you to understand that. Maybe he wasn't a good husband, but he wasn't a bad man."

  Dylan planned to use his own judgment there. "Why did you stop traveling with him?"

  "I was pregnant with Ben." She let out a little breath. "I can't honestly say whether that was a convenient excuse or a legitimate reason, but I was pretty far