Roomful of Roses

“Not you—McCabe, McCabe!” Wynn ground out.

“McCabe’s drinking, and you’re there alone with him?” Andy gasped.

Wynn held out the receiver and cocked her head at it threateningly.

“Don’t do it,” McCabe advised. “I can manage to get something together before you come home. I’ll sit down and cook.”

She eyed him warily. The old McCabe was arrogant and commanding, not pleasant and cooperative, and she was immediately suspicious. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“No,” he said. “I’d love to see Andy again. Invite him over. About six.”

She felt as if she were walking obligingly into a shark’s mouth, but it had been years since she and McCabe had spent any time together. Perhaps his experiences had changed him. Mellowed him. She was even in a forgiving mood. Didn’t he seem different?

“Andy, come to supper at six,” she said, holding the receiver to her ear.

“Supper?” Andy brightened. “Just the two of us?”

“McCabe’s here, too,” she observed.

“We’ll just ignore him,” Andy said. There was a pause. “He isn’t going to stay for the wedding, to give you away?”

“If he does, we’ll let him be bridesmaid,” Wynn said darkly.

Andy giggled. “That’s cute, McCabe in ruffled satin...”

She started laughing and had to say a quick good-bye and hang up before she really got hysterical.

“Bridesmaid?” McCabe murmured with pursed lips. “Remember that old saying, Wynn—I don’t get mad, I get even?”

“I can outrun you,” she reminded him.

“Yes. But I’m patient,” he returned. His eyes narrowed and ran over her slender body in a way that made her frankly nervous. “I can wait.”

“I’ve got to get back to work. After supper,” she continued, moving toward the kitchen to get a towel to mop up the spill, “we’ll discuss your new lodgings.”

“Suits me,” he said obligingly.

That really worried her. McCabe never obliged anybody.

She went back to work with a frown between her wide-spaced green eyes. It deepened when she saw Ed.

“You didn’t mention that you were taking a vacation,” she said with grinning ferocity. “Or that your brother-in-law was coming to stay in your house. Or that—”

“Have a heart, could you say no to McCabe?” he groaned.

“Yes! I’ve spent the past seven years doing just that!”

“He’s like a son to me,” he said, looking hunted as he paused in the act of pasting up the last page of the paper, the front page, with a strip of waxed copy in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. “He’s been shot to pieces, Wynn.”

She straightened wearily and the fight left her. “Yes, he told me.”

“I just hope he’ll give himself time enough to heal completely before he goes back down there.”

She felt the blood leaving her face. “You can’t mean he’s talking about going back?”

He shrugged. “You know McCabe. He loves it, danger and all. It’s been his life for too many years.”

“He could stay home and write books!” she threw back. “He’s a best-selling author, why does he need to risk his life for stories someone else could get?”

“Ask him.” He cut off another column of copy and pasted it around another story in neat pieces, just right for a two-column headline. “I think it’s the lack of an anchor, Wynn. He doesn’t have anyplace that he feels wanted or needed, except at work.”

“His mother loves him.”

“Of course she does, but she’s spent her life avoiding his father...and now, McCabe. She’s independent, she doesn’t need him. And who else is there?” he added.

She stared blankly at the half-made-up page. “At his age, there must be a woman or two.”

“No.”

She looked up. “How do you know so much about him?”

“I helped raise him, remember? He used to hang around my house as much as he stayed at his own. We’ve kept in touch all this time.” He glanced at her over his glasses and smiled. “I always wanted to be a war correspondent, you know. But I had a family, and I didn’t feel I had the right to take the risk. McCabe’s shied away from permanent relationships for much the same reason, I imagine. Rough thing for a woman to take, having her man on the firing line most of their married lives.”

Wynn had thought of that, but she wasn’t admitting it. Neither was she admitting how many newscasts she’d chewed her fingernails over before she stopped watching them altogether, or the kind of worrying she’d done about McCabe over the years. He shouldn’t matter, of course, he was only her guardian.

“Wynn, are you listening?” Ed asked shortly. “I said, I’ve still got a hole on the front page. Go call the fire chief and see if they’ve had any fires overnight, okay?”

“Sure thing, Ed.”

The hectic pace kept her from thinking about McCabe any more until quitting time. The phones rang off the hook, people walked in and out, there were additions and deletions and changes in ads and copy until Wynn swore she’d walk out the door and never come back. She threatened that every Tuesday. So did Ed. So did Judy. So did Kelly and Jess. It was a standing joke, but nobody laughed at it on Tuesday.

At five o’clock, the pages were pasted up and Kelly was driving them the thirty miles to the printer. The wreck Kelly had covered earlier took up a fourth of the front page. It had been a tragic one involving people from out of town, two carloads of them. Wynn was sad but involuntarily relieved that no one from Redvale had fallen victim. It was harder to do obituaries when you knew the victims.

She dragged herself in the door at a few minutes past five, weary and disheveled and feeling as if her feet were about to fall off from all the standing she’d done. She already missed the air-conditioning at the office. She didn’t have it at home, and it was unseasonably hot.

“Is that you, Wynn?” McCabe called from the kitchen.

“It’s me.” She’d forgotten for an instant that he was here, and her heart jumped at the sound of his deep voice. She tossed aside her purse and paused to take off her suede boots before she padded in her hose onto the tiled kitchen floor.

He glanced up from the counter where he was perched on a stool, making a chef’s salad.

“Long day?” he asked, glancing down at her feet.

“You ought to know,” she returned. “Can I help?”

“Make a dressing, if you don’t have a prepared one.”

“What’s the main course?” she asked, digging out mayonnaise and catsup and pickles.