Cowboy Comes Home

She flushed a little, realizing she had stated the obvious in response to his jesting remark. The tendency came from dealing with children so much of the time. In addition to her work with the church youth groups, she tended the church nursery during services. After a while with children, you got to taking everything literally. “I’m sorry. I get so used to talking with children.”

“Don’t sweat it. You’re just so all-fired serious, it’s hard not to pull your leg.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. She didn’t think of herself as being serious, but she supposed she was. There wasn’t a whole lot in life worth laughing at or getting overjoyed about. Life was a serious business.

“Anyway, the sheriff thinks the ranch is a good idea. I figure maybe we’d start with a half-dozen kids and see how it goes. I’d like to be able to take girls, too.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Everybody gets so concerned about all the crime caused by boys that girls get overlooked. They don’t commit as many crimes, but they have just as many problems at home and on the streets. Somebody needs to look out for them, too.”

“But won’t making it coeducational cause problems?”

“Not if I do it right.”

They had reached Park Street and turned right, heading toward her house two blocks down. Most of the driveways were empty, since nearly everybody was partying.

Hugh spoke again. “I don’t know how Nate is going to be able to afford to marry off so many daughters if he invites everybody in the county to the shindig.”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? But he knows everybody. And he’s not doing sit-down meals, so maybe it’s not as bad as it could be.”

“Maybe.”

They reached her house at last, climbed the porch steps and stopped at her door.

“I’ll just wait while you get inside, Miss Anna,” he said. “You have a good evening, hear?”

She stepped inside, turned on the light and locked the door behind her. Then she ran into the darkened living room to look out the window to watch him walk away. He had a slow, easy stride, like a man who’d walked many miles and was in no hurry to get to his destination.

She envied him his calm confidence and steady determination. She wished that once, just once, she could feel as comfortable with herself as he seemed to feel. And it must be wonderful to be able to walk down a dark street and not feel a nagging need to look back over your shoulder.

She let the curtain fall over the window and turned on another light.

She was home and she was lonely.

Nothing new. It was a fact of life. Loneliness kept her safe.

She had the nightmare again that night. It had been years since the last time, but it was still all too familiar when she woke up in a cold sweat, shaking with terror. The night-light she couldn’t sleep without glowed softly in the wall socket, but suddenly it wasn’t enough. Even the shadowy shapes of the furnishings refused to resolve into familiarity by its light.

Sitting up quickly, she reached for the switch on the bedside lamp. It came instantly to life, then, with a flash, burned out. Shaking, shivering, breathing raggedly, she desperately fought her way out from beneath the blankets and ran as fast as she dared into the kitchen. There, the flick of a wall switch cast immediate normalcy over the night.

The refrigerator hummed softly, as it always did. She could smell the very faint odor of gas from the range and realized the pilot must have gone out. Searching for matches gave her something to do, something ordinary and real. Something to drag her out of the consuming depths of her dream.

The matches were where she always kept them, but she dropped the box twice just trying to get it out of the drawer. She waited a moment, taking deep, steadying breaths, then lit the pilot light under the range cover. The match slipped from between her fingers into the drip pan, but she left it.

It could stay until she was steadier.

She poured herself a glass of milk and tried to ignore the phone on the wall, but it was as if her eyes were attached to it by rubber bands. No matter how many times she jerked her gaze away, it snapped back.

He might be dead by now. The thought was seductive and wouldn’t go away.

It had been years since she had called, and he would have to be in his sixties now, wouldn’t he? So maybe he was dead. God, she hoped he was dead.

But she didn’t want to hear his voice. What if he answered the phone? Then she would know for sure he wasn’t dead, that he was still out there. It was better not to know.

She sipped her milk and shivered again, this time from a chill. It was four in the morning, and while the house wasn’t cold, her body thought it ought to be in bed under the covers. But she couldn’t go back to sleep. Not now. She would only have the dream again. Once it came, it just kept coming back.

She wandered through the house, turning on lights as she went, refusing to worry about the cost. She sat in the big, overstuffed chair she had bought secondhand last winter and tried to read a paperback crime novel. She turned the pages four times before she realized she hadn’t absorbed a single word.

Giving up, she tried to turn her thoughts back to the wedding. Back to how nice Hugh Gallagher had been to her. And he had been nice. As threatened as most men made her feel, it was really surprising that he had managed to make her feel safe enough to let him walk her home.

There was a gentleness in his manner, she realized. Something that had reassured her. The slow way he talked, the easy way he held himself, the quick consideration of her feelings had all combined to make her feel she could trust him at least that far. Only Nate Tate and Dan Fromberg had been able to get so far past her defenses.

Deep inside her, she was astonished to realize, was a barely born hope that she would see Cowboy again.

As soon as she recognized it, she felt panic begin to build in her. No. No, she told herself. No. It was too dangerous. There were too many secrets. Too many horrible things in her past. Even if she could trust him not to hurt her, she couldn’t trust herself not to hurt him.

It wasn’t just the fact that she was terrified of men that kept her away from them; she was terrified of what her past could do to her relationships, to her entire life, if anyone found out about it.

Solitude was her fortress, and she kept herself inside it of her own free will. She couldn’t afford to lose sight of that.

But the phone kept beckoning her. He might be dead. It would be nice to know that he was.

The thought upset her, it seemed so evil, but the man had done evil things to her. She didn’t exactly wish him dead, she assured herself. It was just that she knew she wouldn’t be free of him until he was gone. Then she would have only the horrible things she’d done herself to be worried about. By comparison, her own deeds seemed paltry. She could handle that guilt.

She looked at the phone beside her chair and knew that she was going to call. She didn’t want to. She couldn’t stand the thought of hearing his voice again, but she had to know. Ever since she could remember, she had been doing things she didn’t want to because of that man, and she longed to break his hold over her.

But she couldn’t stop herself. As if watching from a distance, she saw her hand reach out for the receiver, watched her own fingers punch in a number she would never forget. Then, holding her breath, she waited while the phone rang. It was two hours later back there, and if he wasn’t up already, he would be getting up soon.

On the sixth ring, a groggy male voice answered. “Hello?”

She slammed down the receiver immediately, disconnecting the call. Her heart hammered wildly, and she could scarcely catch her breath.

He was still alive. Still sleeping in her mother’s bed as if he’d never done anything wrong. She would bet he never had nightmares about what he’d done to her. Never. He probably slept like a baby.

And suddenly, unable to help herself, Anna burst into tears and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore.

Chapter 2 (#u5ac1458c-a478-531b-af62-b7a8e7025ab1)

“Anna, you have to rescue me.”

Anna looked up from her desk as Reverend Daniel Fromberg stepped in from the brisk day outside. She made a point of always getting to the office ahead of him, and he had to insist in order to get her to leave before him.

Daniel Fromberg was a pleasant-looking man in his late forties.

Just average in height, he had a slight build that sometimes made people underestimate his backbone. As Anna had learned during the past five years, Daniel Fromberg had a backbone of steel when it came to what was right.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling a smile curve the corners of her mouth. With two teenage children and a pair of unexpected two-year-old twins, Dan Fromberg was often in need of her help. It usually involved finding him a baby-sitter so he could save his wife’s sanity.