He stepped off the porch, moving out into the yard, and said, “Really, it’s going to take months, if it’s just you. You should hire professionals to clean it out and fix it up. I know some guys.”
“I can do a lot of it myself. Eliza would like that.”
His look of disbelief was clear, one eyebrow raised, his lips pressed firmly together.
Embarrassed. That was the strange feeling she had. But she said, “I know. She’s probably gone. But I like to hope she might be around a little bit, somehow, in a way that I can’t understand. So I have to act like she might see me, show her that I loved her.”
He turned his head away. “Hippy-dippy crap. You going to smudge the place with incense?” He had his jerk voice back and he didn’t meet her eyes.
She spun around and walked away from him in what she hoped was an appropriately offended manner. She didn’t stop until she was inside the cottage.
She shut the front door behind her.
Then she pulled back the dusty old curtain and peeked out the narrow window. He still stood in the same spot, looking down at the ground, as if lost in thought.
Any other time, any other place, she would want to talk to that cowboy. She’d objectify his rugged good looks. She’d be attracted to his long legs, his strong, wide back. Not here.
But she gave herself another second to look.
Then his head came up, fast, and even across the large yard, their eyes locked through the glass. Abigail gasped and stepped back, out of his sight line.
She took a deep breath. And then another.
Always knit sleeves first. They act as gauge swatches, and you get the dreaded things over with first, so you can move on to the fun things.
—
E.C.
T
his was awful. Horrible. Disgusting.
Abigail rolled to her other side in the sleeping bag, and prayed she wouldn’t hear anything else move. She was lying on the floor next to the dusty divan, in a small body-sized space she’d cleared among bags in the upstairs cupola room. Even without curtains on the windows, it was too dark outside, with no streetlights and no moon, to see anything around her except vague outlines of stacked boxes. Not sure what the scratching noise had been a few minutes ago, she was too terrified to open her eyes.
If she opened them and saw a pair of beady red eyes staring back at her, be they rodent or something else, she would die of a heart attack. She knew it. Hadn’t she already had enough of fear in the recent past?
Cypress Hollow was a tourist beach town. There hadn’t been a room available within twenty-five miles. Not that she’d really be able to afford a hotel room for very long. It was an expense she didn’t need. But still. It would have been nice to have had one night in a bed before committing to this run-down, junk-filled, rusted-pipe hovel of a cottage.
What had Eliza been thinking?
For that matter, what had Abigail been thinking? On the drive up today, she’d allowed herself to dream, even if only briefly, about a beautiful farmhouse. Or a sweet mother-in-law addition. A hammock, for God’s sake.
This squalor wasn’t helping. What the hell was in all these boxes? These bags? She pushed the thought of rodent enclaves out of her mind. She would not think of spiders. She would just think happy thoughts.
A happy thought seemed far away.
Sheep outside, grazing. That was happy. More. Tussah silk, unspun. A new pair of Addi Turbo knitting needles.
Abigail squinched her eyes shut tighter and rolled onto her back. It wasn’t working.
She would
not
open her eyes. Even with that weird scraping sound above her head.
Damn, she was starving. Somehow, in all the excitement, she’d forgotten to eat anything since this morning on the road.
Also, she had to pee. Of course she’d used Cade’s bathroom in the big house before she’d retired for the night. She’d taken her toothbrush out of her bag and scurried through his kitchen to the bathroom, hoping to remain unnoticed. She hadn’t seen him, a fact for which she was grateful.
But now, with her usual annoying nighttime timing, she had to go again.
No. She would not open her eyes. She would not make her way through this upper cupola room, downstairs through the crazy piled boxes and out. Her flashlight, although bright, only made it worse. Scarier.
She could just hold it all night.
Abigail suddenly understood the allure of chamber pots.
She took a deep breath and willed her body to relax. This was better. The floor was still as hard as before but she tried to allow herself to sink into it. Everything would be okay. It would all look better in the morning.
A huge
whomp
jolted her upright. She stifled a stream and reached for the flashlight. The noise was directly over her head, and it was followed by another
whomp
seconds later.
Was that…
flapping?
Damn, damn, damn. Her fingers fumbled to find the small button that would light the flashlight. Her breath seemed to be stuck in her throat—she could barely get air around the fear she couldn’t swallow.
Abigail directed the beam at the ceiling.
Something large. With wings.
The scream she’d been holding back tore from her throat. As she followed it with the beam of light, the bat flapped around the peaked ceiling.
A bat! A
bat
, probably rabid. Above her.
Without even thinking about what she was doing, Abigail scrambled out from the sleeping bag, shoved her feet into her slippers and ran down the stairs, pushed through the boxes, and stood outside.
She couldn’t breathe. In the cold air, it was necessary to concentrate on the very act of breathing in, then breathing out. She bent forward at the waist.
She couldn’t sleep in there. She just couldn’t.
Tears filled her eyes, and she dashed them away with the back of her fist. So stupid. She’d already failed. Maybe she’d just buy a truck-bed cover and sleep in the back until the cottage was fixed up.
If it ever got fixed up.
She straightened and looked across the yard at Cade’s house.
In the upper right corner, on the second floor, backlit against a yellow glow in the window, Cade stood watching her.
Just like he’d watched her this afternoon from the ridge, on his horse.
God, could he see that she was crying from there? Damn him.
She gave a fake smile and a wave, and went back into the cottage. Her purse. She needed just her purse and the sleeping bag. She got both, running as fast as she could through the mess, hearing things scurry as she ran. In the cupola room, she didn’t look up, didn’t swing her flashlight beam to the ceiling.
She peeked out the window before she exited the cottage. The coast seemed clear—the light in the room she had just seen him in was off.
Abigail raced through the cold night air to her truck. She unlocked it and threw herself inside. She cursed herself for letting her mind wander to the scene in
Cujo
where the people were in the car, hiding from the dog.
If a rabid dog flung its body at the side of her truck right now, she didn’t think she’d be much more scared than she already was.
This was going to be just fine. Sure, it was a pickup, so the bucket seats didn’t recline much, and she’d have to sleep basically sitting up. But she could do that. She wrestled her body into the sleeping bag, not even bothering to remove her slippers. She used the sweater she’d been wearing earlier as a pillow, propping her head against the glass driver’s-side window.
She sighed and closed her eyes. Not a great start.
Moments passed. She felt her body relax. So sleepy. It was going to be okay.
Then something pounded on the glass her head was resting on.
Rabid dog! Cujo! Abigail screamed like she had when she saw the bat, and she couldn’t stop the scream, even when she opened her eyes and saw it was just Cade, standing at the window, his hand drawn back from knocking on the glass. Abigail used every ounce of her willpower to stop screaming. She felt tears spring to her eyes. This wasn’t fair. She was done being scared.
She swung the door of the truck open, and twisted her body so that she faced him, still in her mummy-sleeping bag. She was an idiot.
Cade’s eyes were wide. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I would scare you like that. You’ve only been out here a few minutes, I didn’t think you’d already be asleep.”
“I wasn’t. You just startled me.” Abigail stopped and gripped the steering wheel with one hand. “Oh, hell. God.” She gripped the wheel tighter. “But since we’re both up, would you mind if I used your bathroom?”
Cade opened his mouth and then closed it. He looked as if he was going to say something, and she hoped like hell it wasn’t no. She really had to go now.
“Please?” she said.
He shook his head. “Of course. I just…”
Abigail unzipped the sleeping bag, cursing her pink pajamas covered with white sheep. Why hadn’t she chosen sweats to sleep in? “Thank you.” She almost tripped getting out of the truck. He reached to help, but she flinched away. She was fine.
He followed her into the house. Was he laughing at her pajamas behind her? Snickering at her fluffy slippers on the gravel? She wouldn’t blame him.
After she was done, she found him leaning against the kitchen counter. Watching her.
“You can sleep upstairs.” His words were slow and deliberate.
Abigail realized that she had no idea who this guy was, or what he was capable of. She had trusted Eliza not to put her in danger.
But she couldn’t be sure of anything now, could she?
“You don’t want me here.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But making you sleep sitting up in your car isn’t right, no matter what way I try to look at it. You can stay until you get the water on in the cottage.”
Abigail struggled to consider it rationally. She didn’t want to stay here. With a man that she didn’t know. Men weren’t to be trusted.
But this was Eliza’s nephew. If she could trust anyone, wouldn’t it be him? Eliza loved her, and wouldn’t place her in a dangerous situation, right?
She was just so tired. A bed sounded good. No, it sounded wonderful. She could almost taste the feeling of lying down, prone, in a place with no bats. Eliza would want her to do this, to be brave.
“All right. I accept.”
He nodded and looked at the floor.
“There was a bat,” said Abigail.
“In the cottage?”
“That’s why I was in the truck. I couldn’t stand to have it flapping above me.”
He nodded. “Makes sense.”
She struggled to appear casual. “I’m starving. Is there a grocery store nearby?”
“You going out in your pajamas?” He looked as if he were trying not to smirk.
“I could change. I just realized how hungry I am.”
“It’s after ten.”
“Okay?”
He spoke slowly, as if she were a child. “There is a grocery store in Cypress Hollow, five miles away. It isn’t open, because it’s late.”
“It’s only ten.”
“The sidewalks roll up around seven, you’ll find. It’s not really a party town. I hope that’ll be all right with you, princess.”
“Not looking for a party, cowboy. Just looking for food, but I guess that can wait until tomorrow.”
She spun on her heel as gracefully as she could in her slippers, but she realized she didn’t know where in the house she was going, where she was supposed to sleep.
“I have a little food.”
She waited.
“You could have some.”
“I don’t want to put you out any more than I already have.”
“I won’t be able to finish it anyway. You might as well have some.”
She would have laughed at his grudging tone, had it been a light moment in any way at all, but his words fell with thuds in the night air.
“Okay. Yes. Thank you. I had breakfast in Santa Barbara when I passed through this morning, but that was a really long time ago. I didn’t realize how far north this was, or how long it would take on the coast road.”
He opened the refrigerator and leaned in.
“Funny, I thought they still had fast food on the way here. All those joints close up?”
Okay, he was still going to be a smart-ass. That was all right. Smart-ass she could deal with.
“Sure. Like at every exit. But I was too excited to pull over, except for gas. And I hopped on the Pacific Coast Highway for the last few hours, from Morro Bay up. The fast-food options really are pretty limited out there. But the view isn’t. It was the most gorgeous drive…”
“Well, you’ve certainly had a good day. A great drive, an inheritance that stripped a man of his home and birthright, and now that same man is fixing something for you to eat. Enchiladas, to be exact.”
Abigail had just sat down in the wicker rocker in the corner of the kitchen. But she stood up. So much for this idea.
“I didn’t know about all this. Eliza didn’t tell me. And I don’t need dinner.”
“Oh, hell, I’m already reheating it.”
Abigail waited a beat before saying, “I’ll accept your enchilada, because I think I might die without eating.”
Cade hit the microwave buttons until it made a low hum and then turned to look at her.
She returned his gaze.
Neither said anything for a moment. The air in the kitchen filled with the scent of chilies, and something thicker that Abigail didn’t want to name.
She held his gaze. And her breath.
“Damn it, I believe you,” Cade finally said as the microwave beeped. He took out the food, turned it, and put it back in.
“It’s the truth. I never even knew exactly where you lived. I’d heard about you, of course, and I knew you had sheep, and I also knew that Eliza went to see you a couple of times a year, but I didn’t know that you lived here, on her land. Honest to God.”
“I said, I believe you.” He removed the food, grabbed a fork out of a drawer and handed it to her.
“Aren’t you eating?”
“I ate at six. Like normal people.”
“I was pretty freaked out.”