Matt shoved his plate back and made a rough sound. "You should have told me, dammit."
"So you could do what? A week ago you would have scoffed, told me I was foolish for letting some cockeyed prediction bother me. Since then, what would you have done? Told me to get security installed, get a dog, be careful – all of which I've done."
Matt glanced at the big red dog sprawled near Abby's side of the kitchen table and could hardly help but say, "I wouldn't have told you to get a dog. At least, not one so attached to you."
She smiled. "I like my males possessive. But don't worry. I've had a talk with Bryce. He won't try to get between us in bed again."
Matt wasn't at all sure that "having a talk" with a dog could possibly do much good, and once more turned a jaundiced eye toward the Irish setter. "Yeah, right. Bryce. What kind of name is that for a dog?"
"Blame his former owners, not me."
The beautiful dog lifted his head and looked at each of them briefly, tail thumping against the floor, then stretched out again with a gusty sigh.
Matt returned his gaze to Abby. "He'd damned well better protect you, is all I've got to say."
"I'm sure he'll do his best," she replied, rising to carry her plate to the sink.
Matt followed suit with his own. "You could move in with me. My place has better security – and I'd be there with you every night."
"Not until the divorce is final, Matt."
"What would a few weeks matter?"
"I told you. I want to wait and see how Gary reacts when the divorce is final."
"And what if he reacts violently? Honey, the town's like a powder keg, everybody's tense and jumpy. Gary may not need much to push him over the edge."
She managed a smile. "That's exactly why I don't intend to push him until I absolutely have to."
"And if I have to, I'll lock his ass up in my jail until he learns how to be reasonable."
"And the hell with due process?"
"You could file charges against him."
"No. No, I won't do that. Not unless he forces me to."
Matt put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. "Abby, I know you say Gary hit you just that once, the night you told him to get out, but I've always been sure you weren't telling me everything."
Her gaze was fixed on his loosened tie. "I told you the truth about that night."
"About that night, yes. But not the truth about it being the first time he hit you."
Despite her best efforts, Abby felt her eyes sting as they filled with tears. Shame crawled inside her. She hadn't wanted Matt to know what a weak creature she was.
"Honey…" He gently tipped her chin up so she'd look at him. "You don't have to tell me about it until you're ready. But I want you to know something. Nobody has to tell me what kind of guts it took for you to throw him out. And nobody has to tell me how scared you were when you did it."
Abby blinked back the tears. "I can't talk about him to you, Matt. I just can't."
"Okay. Okay, sweetheart." He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. The dog didn't growl in protest this time, so things were definitely improving on that end. But Abby was just a bit too tense in his arms, and the embers of rage glowed deep inside Matt. Given the chance, he knew he'd beat Gary Montgomery to a bloody pulp.
"I could stay here tonight," he offered huskily.
"No, you couldn't. Not all night." But her arms slid up around his neck, and her body was relaxing, softening against his. "For a while though. You can stay for awhile."
And it seemed her talk with Bryce had done some good after all. The dog didn't even follow them to the bedroom.
It was still well before midnight when Matt reluctantly pulled himself from Abby's bed and dressed. She got up as well, because she wasn't yet ready for sleep and she needed to reset the security system behind him. She didn't bother to dress, just pulled on a robe and belted it tightly, then walked him to the front door.
"Look how much it's snowed. Be careful driving home," she told him.
"I will. And you be careful, especially later, when you let the dog out," Matt told her.
"I will, don't worry."
He kissed her a last time, then left, waiting on the front porch until he heard her throw the dead bolt.
Abby went back into the kitchen. "You're a good boy," she told Bryce, who was still lying patiently near the table. "Just let me finish cleaning up in here, and I'll take you out one last time tonight."
Like any housebroken dog, Bryce recognized the word "out" and sat up eagerly. But he was a very patient dog and whined only once while she finished cleaning up from supper.
"All right, let's go." She decided to take him through the back door so that he could run free in her fenced yard; that way, she didn't have to get dressed and could wait on the porch for him until he was ready to come in.
With the dog at her side, she went to the back door and put the security system in a standby mode, then unlocked the door and pulled it open.
She was barely able to grab Bryce by the collar, when he lunged with a deep-throated snarl at the man standing on the top step.
"Gary," she said.
TEN
"All I know is what the sheriff and Judge Ryan said in the paper," Hannah Payne told her boyfriend worriedly as they sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and finishing the last of the muffins she'd fixed earlier. Joe was about to leave for his third-shift job at the plant, and she was up because he was about to leave her alone in the house they shared.
"Baby, he just wants to scare you girls into being careful, that's all," Joe said patiently. "And he's right. But s'long as youare careful and don't go anyplace by yourself, you'll be fine. I checked all the doors and windows, locked everything up tight. You've got a dependable car, a cell phone, a pistol in the nightstand drawer, and Season."
Half asleep under the kitchen table, the big mongrel thumped his tail against the floor in a brief response.
"I know, but – "
"Take him with you when you leave the house, and be sure you drive with all the doors locked. Don't open the doors here to anyone but me or your sister. Let the machine screen all the calls, and don't pick up if you don't know who it is." He smiled at her. "Just be careful, Hannah. If you're really scared, I'll take you and Beason over to your sister's every night when I leave for work, and you can stay with them till morning."
"No, I don't want to do that. You know we always end up in a fuss over something stupid if we spend too much time together. I'll be okay here with Beason."
"You sure?" He watched her intently. "I don't know if I can, but if you want I'll try to get some time off maybe next week. We could drive up into the mountains. Unless they catch this bastard before then."
"Well, let's wait and see."
"I need to go ahead and put in for the time."
Hannah considered, then nodded. "I think I'd like to get out of town for a while. Even if they do catch him."
"Okay, I'll see if personnel can schedule me off for a few days. Just stop worrying, baby, okay?"
"I'll try. But I need to get groceries tomorrow morning," she said.
"I'll be home by eight-thirty. I'll take you."
"You need to sleep."
"I can sleep later. Now, come on – and lock the door behind me."
Hannah went with him to the front door of their small house and kissed him good-bye, perhaps clinging a bit more than was her habit. "Drive carefully. It's still snowing."
"I will, don't worry." Joe patted her on the bottom and whispered a lewd suggestion in her ear, which made her smile and remind him they didn't have time and he was going to be late for work. He grinned and winked at her.
And then he was gone.
Hannah locked the door behind him and checked the locks twice. She took Beason with her when she finally went to bed, even though he was supposed to stay in his bed in the living room.
She turned on the TV and watched a very old movie just so she wouldn't have to listen to the thick silence of the snowy night.
"Gary," Abby said.
He kept his gaze on the dog and didn't venture to cross the threshold. "Where the hell did you get that?" he demanded.
Abby was about to answer him, when it occurred to her that she didn't have to. "Gary, what are you doing here? It's nearly midnight." She made no attempt to quiet the tense, growling dog at her side.
Gary tore his gaze from the dog and smiled at her. It was the charming smile she had fallen for as an eighteen-year-old girl too young and inexperienced to worry about his brooding silences and bursts of jealous rage. He had been a strikingly handsome man then; at forty, he was thickening – around the middle and in his features. Too many years of indulging his temper and his appetites had left their mark.
"I just came to see you, Abby. What's wrong with that?"
She had been terrified, and fought not to let him see her overwhelming relief. He didn't know about Matt, at least not yet. If he had, he wouldn't have been able to keep quiet about it; in Gary, jealousy was immediate and unmistakable.
Abby drew a breath and kept her voice even and without emotion. "Gary, it's late, the weather's lousy, and I'm tired. And if that isn't enough, you must remember what Judge Ryan told you. You don't live here anymore, and if you keep showing up here unannounced, I'll get a restraining order. You don't want me to do that, do you? Talk about our business in court for everybody to know?"
It was the only real leverage she had against him, and she used it cautiously so as not to use it up. Gary was a vice president at one of the local businesses, a real estate development company that was highly respected and very prominent in town, and his reputation meant a great deal to him. A divorce was one thing; a divorce from a wife claiming physical and emotional abuse during a thirteen-year marriage was something else entirely.
She had gone to Ben Ryan the day after she'd ordered Gary – at the point of his own gun – to leave. He had listened to her story, the whole sad and messy story Matt still didn't know, and had given her both genuine compassion and excellent legal advice. Even more, he had paid Gary a discreet visit and had made it very plain to her husband that he could either quietly agree to an uncontested divorce, or find himself charged with assault and battery and divorced on the grounds of extreme cruelty.
In the months since then, Gary had been relatively cooperative, though at first prone to show up at the house from time to time. When she had gotten involved with Matt only a few months after her separation, Abby had grown fearful that her volatile husband would appear at just the wrong moment; combine Gary's violent jealousy with Matt's fierce protectiveness and the meeting could only end in tragedy.
Once again she had gone to Ben, though this time withholding the relevant fact of her involvement with another man. And once again he had visited Gary, this time to explain that unsolicited visits would not be tolerated.
Gary had been very quiet since then.
Too quiet.
Now he scowled at her. "I suppose you'll go running to Ryan again, just because I wanted to see you. It's a sad thing when a man can't talk to his own wife, Abby."
Bryce's growls grew louder as he either sensed her growing tension or heard the menace in Gary's voice.
Abby allowed the dog's growls to fill the silence for a moment, then said, "Gary, our divorce will be final in just about three weeks. I am not your wife, not anymore. There's nothing you have to say to me that I'm the least bit interested in hearing. Except good-bye. Please close the gate as you leave."
His scowl intensified, but his voice was low, almost gentle. "You really shouldn't talk to me like that, Abby. Until those final papers are signed, you're still my wife. And a wife should never say such things to her husband. Not if she knows what's good for her."
Abby felt an all-too-familiar chill of fear and fought to keep him from seeing how easily he could still manipulate her emotions. "In thirty seconds I'm going to let go of this dog. From the sound of him, I don't think he'll need any encouragement at all to take a few pieces out of you. And while he's doing it, I'll be calling the sheriff."
Maybe he remembered that shotgun she had pointed at him on his last night in this house, or maybe Gary simply recognized that Abby was not going to back down this time. In any case, he was the one who retreated, slowly, down the steps.
"And Gary?"
He looked at her, silent, face hard.
"Just so you know – if anything happens to this dog, like poison, for instance, or a stray shot from some anonymous hunter's gun, or even a car that doesn't stop, I'm going to give your name to the sheriff."
His expression darkened just a bit, proving to Abby that she did indeed know her husband. Then he swore beneath his breath and stalked away. She heard the gate open, and then close with a loud click.