A Husband for Christmas: Snow Kisses / Lionhearted

“How about making some coffee?” Cade asked Melly, although his tone made it an order, not a request.

“But...” Melly began, nervously looking from her sister to her employer.

“You heard me.”

Melly hesitated for just an instant before she left them alone, her footsteps dying away down the hall.

Cade put his hands on his hips and stared down at Abby. With his hair tousled and his face hard, he looked as threatening as any storm.

“Get up and put on a robe,” he said after a minute, turning away, “while I get dressed.”

“You don’t have to,” she managed weakly.

He half turned, his eyes glittering. “Don’t I?” he growled. “You’re looking at me as if I were a rapist.”

Her face blanched and he nodded. “That’s how you feel, too, isn’t it, baby? Put on a robe and come into the living room. And stop looking at me like that. I’m not going to touch you. But you’re going to tell me the truth, one way or the other.”

He left her sitting there, his back as stiff as a poker.

Melly brought the coffee in just as Abby came out of her room, wrapped to the throat in a heavy navy terry-cloth robe.

Cade was dressed, barely, in jeans and an open-throated blue shirt that he hadn’t tucked in. He was barefoot, sitting forward in an armchair, worrying his hair with his hands. He looked up as Abby came in.

“Sit down,” he said quietly. “Melly, thank you for the coffee. Good night.”

“Cade...” Melly began.

“Good night,” he repeated.

The younger woman sighed as she looked over at Abby, her whole expression one of regret and apology.

“It’s all right,” Abby said gently. “You and I both know that Cade would never hurt me.”

Cade looked faintly shocked by the words, but he busied himself with lighting a cigarette while Melly said good-night and left them alone.

“Fix me a cup, will you, honey?” he asked.

Abby automatically poured cream in it and handed it to him.

He took it, cup and saucer balanced on his big palm, and smiled at her. “You remembered, didn’t you?”

She flushed. Yes, she had, just the way he liked it. She remembered almost everything she’d learned over the years—that he didn’t take sugar, that he hated rhubarb, that he loved a thick steak and cottage potatoes to go with it, that he could go for forty-eight hours without sleep but not one hour without a cigarette....

“Tit for tat?” he murmured, and reached out to put two sugars and cream in the second cup and hand it to her, smiling when she raised astonished eyes to his.

She took it, sitting back on the sofa to study the creamy liquid, turning the cup nervously back and forth in its saucer.

“Little things,” she murmured, finally lifting her eyes to his. “Isn’t it amazing how we remember them after so many years?”

“I remember a lot about you,” he said quietly, studying her. “Especially,” he added on a rueful sigh, “how you look without clothes.”

She flushed, dropping her eyes. “It was a long time ago.”

“Four years,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t seem that long to me.” He took a gulp of his coffee, ignoring the fact that it was hot enough to blister a normal throat, stubbed out his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me what happened, Abby.”

She felt the cup tremble in her hand and only just righted it in time. “I can’t, Cade.”

He took another sip of coffee and leaned forward suddenly, resting his hands on his knees. “Look up. That’s right, look at me. Do you remember when you ran over your father’s dog with my old jeep?”

She swallowed and nodded.

“You couldn’t face him, but you came running to me bawling your heart out, and I held you while you cried.” He shifted his hands, studying her drawn face. “When Vennie Walden called you a tomboy and said you looked like a stick with bumps, you came crying to me then.”

She nodded again, managing a smile for him. “I always cried on you, didn’t I?”

“Always. Why not now?” He reached out a big hand and waited, patiently, until she could put her own, hesitantly, into it and feel its warmth and strength. “From now on, it’s going to be just like this. I won’t touch you unless you want me to. Now tell me what happened. Did you find out he was married?”

“He?” she asked, studying him blankly.

“The man you had an affair with,” he said quietly. “The one you wake up screaming over in the middle of the night.”

She swallowed down the urge to get up and run. How in the world was she going to be able to tell him the truth. How?

“Come on, Abby, tell me,” he coaxed with a faint smile. “I’m not going to sit in judgment on you.”

“You’ve got it wrong, Cade,” she said after a minute. “It...wasn’t an affair.”

His heavy brows came together. He searched her face. “No? I understood Melly to say there was a man....”

“There was.” Her eyes opened and closed, and the pain of admission was in them suddenly. She tried to speak, and her mouth trembled on the words.

He was beginning to sense something. His face seemed to darken, his eyes glittered. His hand, on hers, tightened promptingly. “Abby, tell me!” he ground out, his patience exhausted.

Her eyes closed, because she couldn’t bear to see what would be in his when she told him. “I was assaulted, Cade.”

The silence seemed to go on forever. Forever! The hand around her own stilled, and withdrew. Somewhere a clock was ticking with comical loudness; she could hear it above the tortured pounding of her own heart....

At first, she wondered if he’d heard her. Until she looked up and saw his lean hands, tough from years of ranch work, contract slowly around the cup until it shattered and coffee went in a half-dozen directions onto the deep gray pile carpet.

Her eyes shot up to his face, reading the aching compassion and murderous rage that passed across it in wild succession.

“Who?” he asked, the word dangerously soft.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly.

“Surely to God there was a suspect!” he burst out, oblivious to the shards of pottery and the coffee that was staining his jeans, the carpet.

“Not yet,” she told him. “Cade, the carpet...look, you’ve cut your hand!” she exclaimed, seeing blood.