The Pretender (7 page)

“Where the ranch—Sam’s ranch—is now? Doesn’t that…I don’t know…bother
you?”

He smiled—a real one, this time. “No, it doesn’t bother me. What would be the point? It’s the past. And besides—no one can own the land. People come and go. The land goes on forever. We only borrow the use of it for a while.” His lips twisted and the smile became wry. “Hopefully, we leave it in as good condition as we found it.”

“Yeah…right.”

He lifted one shoulder. “All
we can do is try.”

The road twisted and turned and became a dirt track, then twisted and turned and dipped and climbed some more, seemingly forever. Around them the plant life began to change, trees appearing now in the spaces between rocks, tall, gray-green pines of some kind—like nothing she’d ever seen in the lush forests of upstate New York. She was sure Sage would know what they were,
but she didn’t ask; her mouth was too dry for conversation.

They had left all signs of human habitation far behind when the pickup bumped to a stop. Sage nodded toward the window on his side and said, “That’s it over there—Sam’s place.”

Abby leaned toward him and bent down to see what he was talking about…and was somehow closer to him than she realized, until she felt the heat and
caught the scent of his body, unlike anything she’d ever known before. She couldn’t place it, but if she closed her eyes she could see green grass and tall pine trees and soft brown earth, and feel the warmth of sunshine on her cheeks…

“See it? In those trees, the red tile roof…”

Her breath caught, and she opened her eyes and struggled to bring the vista beyond the window into focus.
“Yes—okay, I see it.” Her heart was racing, her voice airless and small.

“It’s okay,” Sage said softly.

She jerked toward his voice and found his eyes so close they seemed to eclipse everything else; his eyes became her world, black as night, but warm as summer. Somehow, she managed to whisper, “What?”

“To be scared.”

“I’m not scared,” she lied.

“Then why are you
shaking?”

“I’m not.” She sat back abruptly, and from that safer distance, glared at him. “I’m a little nervous, okay? I already told you that. No big deal.”

“That’s right.” He smiled in his enigmatic way and the truck moved forward.

A little farther on, the road turned sharply to the left, dipped down a bank, crossed a creek with several inches of water running swiftly over a
rocky bed, threaded through a willow thicket, then angled up the other side. And now, across a landscape strewn with boulders and bristling with those wild-looking pine trees and rampant gray-green shrubs, she could see, stretching away to steep mountain slopes, lush green meadows where dark cattle rested in the shade of huge old trees.

She let out her breath slowly, silently, not wanting
him to know.

The road became a T-intersection at the meadow fence. Ahead and a little to the right, Abby could see a cluster of trees and buildings.

“What’s that?” She pointed. “Who lives there?”

“I do,” Sage replied. “That’s the original June Ranch. The house is the original adobe. Sam’s place is this way. We call it the hacienda.”

As he said that he turned left, and the
road, though still dirt, was now smooth and wide. It meandered between towering evergreen trees and some others she didn’t know the names of—poplars, maybe? In patches of sunshine between clusters of trees were beds of roses and irises in full bloom. Those, at least, she knew.

They passed a long building of white-painted stucco with a red tile roof, and Abby caught her breath.

Sage
threw her an amused look and said, “Garage.” She gave a low whistle, and he chuckled.

Then, around a last stand of trees, suddenly there it was—the hacienda, sprawling across the top of a hill like a sentinel keeping watch over the valley far below. The drive became an open area paved with flagstone, with wide curving flagstone steps leading up to a set of massive double doors, arched and
carved from heavy wood, stained dark.

As the pickup truck pulled to a stop below the steps, two dogs came from somewhere to meet them: a shaggy black-and-white dog like the sheep-herding dogs in the movie
Babe,
bounding and twisting eagerly; and at a much more sedate pace, an old hound with wrinkled face, long droopy ears and sad dark eyes.

Abby’s heart turned a huge flip-flop; as
a child she’d dreamed of having a dog. But, like family photos and heirlooms, pets didn’t often happen for a child in the foster care system. At least, they hadn’t for her.

She opened the door, and before she could even get her legs out of the truck the black-and-white dog came bouncing joyfully, wriggling into the space offered by the opening door, trying his best to climb into her lap,
it seemed, in order to lick her face.

Breathless and overwhelmed, laughing helplessly, she heard Sage say, “Freckles—
down.
” The dog backed away, but hovered, whining and all but vibrating with excitement. “You’ll have to forgive him,” Sage said dryly. “He’s just a people-lover.”

“It’s okay—really. I like dogs.” She slid out of the truck and dropped to one knee beside the quivering
animal, murmuring the kinds of baby talk things people say to dogs. She put her arms around him and he took up licking her face where he’d left off, though in a slightly more subdued way.

Emotions she’d never felt before sizzled and shimmered all through her and threatened to leak out.
Careful—don’t lose it now,
she cautioned herself.
Be strong.

“He knows better,” Sage said. “But he’s
young.”

She rose abruptly, brushing at herself, and nodded at the old hound, who was sitting a little way off, panting slightly. “I’m guessing this one’s not.” She went toward the other dog slowly, holding out her hand. The hound sniffed the hand, then gazed solemnly up at her.

“Don’t really know,” she heard Sage say as she lightly touched the dog’s wrinkled head. “She’s J.J.’s—the
sheriff’s—dog. Her name’s Moonshine.”

Abby squatted on her heels and some impulse made her put her arms around the old hound’s neck. “Hello, Moonshine,” she whispered, and tears came unexpectedly to burn her eyes.

“He says she just wandered into his place one day,” Sage said. “So he decided to let her stay.”

“Good thing I did, too, or these two might not be here now.” The voice
was deep, scratchy and Southern, like something out of a Western movie.

She froze, nerves twanging, heart thumping, nervous as a thief caught red-handed, as Sage called out, “Hey,” greeting someone she couldn’t see. She felt his hand touch her back as she rose, and resisted the impulse to reach for it…cling to it.

“Speak of the devil.” Sage kept his hand on her back, barely touching
but somehow supporting, and she turned with him to meet the three people coming down the wide flagstone steps.

The hound dog, Moonshine, went shambling over to meet them, too, and parked herself at the bottom of the steps to watch them descend, like a sentinel, Abby thought. Alert, now. Standing guard.

“Sunny, this is Sheriff J.J. Fox, and Rachel,” Sage said, nodding at each in turn.

The man with the voice like a Western movie star looked like one, too, except for the fact that one leg was encased in a protective blue boot, and he was leaning heavily on a pair of crutches. He was tall and rangy of build, with keen blue eyes and wavy, sandy-blond hair that brushed his collar. The woman, Rachel, moved carefully beside him, both because she was carrying a baby and out of
obvious concern for the man on crutches. She was exactly as Sage had described her: petite, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Except Sage had neglected to mention the fact that she was exquisitely lovely. Possibly one of the most beautiful women Abby had ever seen—which, again, considering the business she was in, was saying a lot. She looked entirely too
delicate and fragile to have borne the baby she was holding in her arms, but Abby remembered Sage had said she was tougher than she looked.

Abby said, “Hi,” and lifted her hand in a wave, because she couldn’t very well shake hands with a man on crutches and a woman carrying a baby, even if her own hand hadn’t been bandaged. She was about to offer something more by way of a polite greeting
when a hideous undulating yowl came from directly behind her.

She jerked around just as Freckles, the black-and-white dog, uttered a “Yike!” of pain and leaped backward, away from the cat carrier that was sitting on the bottommost step.

She clapped both hands over her mouth and gasped, “Oh, God—I’m sorry—” at the same time the sheriff was saying, “Holy… What’ve you got in there—a cougar?”

Sage picked up the carrier and said to the dog, “Yeah, I guess you learned a good lesson, huh, boy?” He gave Abby a crooked smile. “All the farm cats are his buddies. He’s not going to know what to think of this one.”

Abby was wondering what to say next when the big front door flew open and a woman burst through and came trotting down the steps, arms held wide.

“Ah,” said Sage.
“Here she is.”

Abby had time to notice that the woman was short and round—solidly built rather than fat—and wearing blue jeans and a pink plaid blouse, and that her hair was thick salt-and-pepper cut in a short, becoming style, and that she was smiling, though her round cheeks were flushed and her dark eyes bright with tears. That was all, before the woman came to a halt on the next step
up from her, and Abby was swallowed up in a huge, warm hug.

Such a thing had never happened to her, that she could recall. Never in her life before.

“Sunny,” she heard Sage say in a dry tone, “meet my mother, Josephine.”

The woman drew back to smile fiercely through tears. “
Josie.
You call me Josie. This is your
home.
Oh—welcome home, Sunny.”

Abby was both shocked and mortified
when she, too, burst into tears.

Chapter 4

A
bby felt as if she’d been beaten. Not physically, on the outside where it would show, but on the inside. Her emotions felt bruised. Battered. Like a punchy boxer, she didn’t know quite where she was. Or what to do next.

She was finally alone, in the room Josie had shown her to after a brief tour of the hacienda. The house was built in the Spanish style, a rectangle
arranged around a central courtyard. The arched front doors opened onto a foyer larger than Abby’s entire apartment in New York, with a high ceiling with dark wood beams and glistening tile on the floor. Across from the entrance, double French doors stood open, allowing the scent of flowers and the sounds of running water and birds’ song to drift through the house.

Through more open doors
to the left of the entry, Abby caught a glimpse of walls covered with shelves filled with books, and a large desk with a computer, and massive, comfortable-looking chairs, before Josie led her through matching doors on the right, into a living room that seemed roughly the size of Grand Central Station. In spite of its size, the room seemed warm and welcoming, with a huge native stone fireplace and
cozy groupings of comfortable couches and chairs and Navajo rugs on the Spanish tile floor. This room didn’t open onto the courtyard, but instead had large windows that overlooked the valley and the mountains beyond.

Next to the living room was the dining room, which was almost as big as the living room, with the same tile floor and spectacular view, a table that looked able to seat at least
twenty people, and buffets and cabinets that looked ancient and would have dwarfed a normal-size room. Beyond that was a modern kitchen that would have done a five-star restaurant proud. Here, instead of windows overlooking the valley, double French doors opened onto a flagstone patio bordered by a low stone wall just the right height for sitting. Several round tables were arranged around a central
fire pit, filled, now, with flowering plants in various size pots.

From the kitchen, a door opened into a bedroom wing, one of two, Josie had explained, each with four bedrooms, including private bathrooms. All of the bedrooms were accessible by a long hallway that ran the length of the wing, with windows high in the outer walls, and lamps in recessed alcoves across from each door.

Josie bypassed the first two doors, opened the third and ushered Abby into a room that was large and comfortable, light and airy, with a queen-size bed, a desk, comfortable chairs and double French doors that opened onto the courtyard.

“I hope this is all right,” she said as she stood just inside the door, sounding breathless. “Rachel and J.J. have the two next to you—although…” She smiled
and shrugged. “Well. I hope you’ll be comfortable here.”

Momentarily incapable of speech, Abby set the cat carrier on the floor and let her backpack drop beside it. Her suitcase, she saw, had been brought in and placed on a low wooden chest at the foot of the bed.

“It’s lovely,” she said as she turned slowly, enveloped in a fog of wonderment. She’d never had so much space all to herself
in her entire life.

“Well,” Josie said, looking rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed with happiness, “I’ll leave you to unpack…settle in.” She backed through the door and closed it gently after her.

Unpack? Settle in? How long will they let me stay here, I wonder, after I tell them about Sunny?

Do I have to tell them right away?

You know you do.

Seriously. What would it matter
if I waited…just a day or two?

Don’t even think about it. The minute you meet Sam Malone, it’s all over. That was the deal.

How long she stood motionless in the middle of that lovely room with those thoughts swirling through her mind, Abby didn’t know. It took a piteous chirp from the cat carrier to finally shake her out of her daze. Murmuring apologies, she knelt and opened the wire
door. Pia stepped tentatively out of the carrier, stretching and looking bad-tempered and suspicious, but somehow lost and bewildered, too.

At which point, Abby realized she’d neglected to ask Sage to stop somewhere so she could pick up cat food—also, kitty litter and a pan to put it in.

Seeing no other option for the moment, she opened the door to the courtyard and crooned invitingly,
“Come on, kitty…want to come out? It’s nice…see? Mmm…sunshine.”

Pia stalked to the threshold and paused there, head raised, eyes half-closed, sniffing the sweet evening air. Abby waited patiently while the cat took first one step…then another…cringed at some unseen threat, then ventured a few more steps. Like a space explorer, Abby thought, setting foot for the first time on an alien planet.
Which, in a way, for Pia it was, she supposed, since the cat hadn’t set foot on actual earth since the day Sunny had scooped her out of that pile of leaves.

When Pia began to dig industriously in the mulch at the base of a huge climbing rosebush, Abby exhaled a relieved sigh and went back inside, leaving the door open. Still unable to bring herself to unpack, she left her suitcase sitting
unopened on the chest, picked up her backpack and sat on the bed with it in her lap.

Okay, what now?

She felt desperately lonely and scared, regretting the idiotic journey she’d embarked on and now didn’t have a clue how to get herself out of.

She began digging through her backpack.
Toothbrush? Probably safe enough to take that out, surely they won’t mind if I just brush my teeth.

She took out the free magazine she’d taken from the plane, and the tiny package of pretzels she’d been too nervous to eat, and her cell phone. Realizing she hadn’t turned her phone on after the flight, she did so now, and found she had four voice mail messages and two texts, all from Pauly.
Pauly? Why would he be calling me, unless…

And wouldn’t
that
be ironic,
she thought,
if the minute
I leave town he tells me he has something for me—an audition, maybe even a job interview.

She tried to call voice mail, tried to return the call, but evidently there was no service. She checked the text messages. The first said,
Where are you
? The second,
Call me
!

Yeah, right. Would that were possible here on the dark side of Nowhere.

She was weighing her options and trying to
decide whether she had enough nerve to ask to use a landline phone, when there was a knock on the door. She went to open it and found Josie standing there with a tray, on which were a moisture-beaded pitcher of iced tea, a glass, a long-handled spoon, a dish containing packets of assorted sweeteners and another with wedges of lemon. She also had a large manila envelope tucked under one arm.

“Hi—sorry to bother you again,” Josie said as she breezed past Abby to set the tray on the desk. “I thought you might be thirsty—I know airplanes can really dry you out.”

“Thanks…that’s very nice of you,” Abby said faintly. She took a deep breath. “Um…I was wondering—” But before she could ask about using a telephone, Josie held out the envelope.

“I brought you this. I don’t know
if you’ve ever seen a picture of your grandmother—Barbara Chase.” She gave Abby one of her rosy smiles. “You know, you look just like her.” Her smile vanished and she shrugged an apology. “I don’t have a picture of your mother. We… I wish I did. Do you…”

“No—sorry,” Abby said, and her voice was edgy and strained. She took the envelope and held it, staring down at it through a blur of tears.
Because the realization had just struck her that there had been no photos whatsoever among Sunny’s things. She wondered whether she’d destroyed them after her mother’s suicide, or whether she’d ever had any to begin with. Whether in her case, as in Abby’s, the past had been a place she didn’t care to revisit.

“I’m sorry,” Josie said, gently touching Abby’s arm. “I don’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t.” Abby lifted her head, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. She forced a smile and it hurt her face. “Thanks—this is so nice of you.” She stared hard at the envelope in her hands, frowned, and pulled words from somewhere. “What about my grandfather? Sam Malone? Is he here? When will I meet him?”

Josie’s eyes slid sideways. “Oh, Sam—Mr. Malone—he’s unpredictable, you
know. It’s hard to know when he’ll show up.” She gave an uncomfortable little laugh. “Well—I should go. I just wanted to tell you dinner will be ready in about half an hour, if, you know, you’d like to freshen up before then.”

She turned to go, then paused, and her smile blossomed as she looked past Abby. “Oh—look, so this is your terrible kitty. Hello there, pretty one…”

Abby looked
over her shoulder in time to see Pia come stalking in through the open French door as if she owned the world. “Oh, God—I’m sorry,” Abby said, clapping a hand to her mouth as Pia leaped gracefully onto the bed. “She had to go to the bathroom, and I didn’t want— I hope she didn’t—”

Josie laughed. “Oh, my goodness, don’t worry about it. I think my flower garden will survive one kitty cat. You
will need a litter box, of course—I imagine Sage has one he can spare. I’ll have him bring one up. And some cat food, too.” She turned to the door, and again, paused.

“You know,” she said, studying the cat who was now lying in the middle of the bed, staring back at her, sphinxlike, motionless except for the tip of her tail, “except for the color she is like a very small…
tuugakut
—that is
the word for cougar—or mountain lion—in Pakanapul. The language of the Tubatulabal.”

She threw Abby a smile, said, “See you at dinner,” and went out.

Abby looked down at the envelope in her hands, expecting to see it trembling. To her bemusement, it appeared steady, so all the shaking she felt must be deep inside. She tossed it onto the bed, and Pia chirped and dipped her head, graciously
consenting to be stroked. Abby obliged, murmuring sweet nothings but fully alert, knowing from experience Pia’s hellcat nature could assert itself at any moment, compelling her, for reasons beyond Abby’s understanding, to bite the hand that petted her.

She reached for the backpack, opened it and took out the zip-locked plastic bag of dry cat food she’d packed for the trip. Pia rose, stretched,
and sniffed with apparent disdain at the bag while Abby opened it and poured a small pile of the kibble onto the bedspread. Then, while Pia sat herself down and began crunching away, Abby closed up the plastic bag and picked up the manila envelope. She stared at it for a moment, then opened it and took out the single black-and-white photo.

She held the photo in both hands and gazed at it,
while the envelope fluttered unnoticed to the floor. Slowly, mechanically, she sat down on the bed, without taking her eyes from the face in the photograph. She touched the image, and although it was only a black-and-white photo of a woman long dead, she could almost feel the warmth of real flesh beneath her fingertips. She could almost hear the whisper of a sultry whiskey-and-cigarettes voice coming
from the vivid lips. The eyes, gazing up at her from behind thick lashes and a curtain of near-white hair, were dark, and filled with secrets and sadness.

Sunny’s face.

And I look like Sunny, so I guess it’s no wonder they think I look like her, too.

“So, she’s there?”

“Yep.”

“Well, what do you think of her?”

“What does it matter what I think of her?” The edge
in his voice surprised Sage almost as much as it did Sam, who greeted the question with a telling silence. Sage drew a breath and sought self-control. “It’s what you think of her that matters. She keeps asking about you. When is she going to meet you…you know.”

There was a mild grunt, then more silence. Then, “Son, I asked you what you think of her because I really want to know what you
think.”

Sage pulled in another breath. He stared out the window at the spring-green meadow dotted with yellow flowers and the horses grazing there, and all he could see was a curtain of pale gold hair falling across one green-gold eye.

“What does she look like?” Sam prompted, when Sage remained silent. “You can tell me that much, can’t you? I know you ain’t blind.”

No, he wasn’t
blind. “Well, she’s pretty,” Sage said, realizing even as he uttered the word that it didn’t do her justice. “Tall… Blond hair…” He paused, then gave a kind of half laugh. “You want to know what she looks like, I tell you what. You go look at a picture of your second wife. Her grandmother. She looks just like her.”

“What? You telling me she looks like Barbara?”

“The spittin’ image.”

“No foolin’?” The old man’s voice had faded almost to nothing.

“Why are you so surprised? I’ve heard of family resemblances skipping generations. Happens all the time.”

“Yeah…sure.” Sam coughed, cleared his throat in the way he had that sounded like a love-struck bullfrog, and when he went on his voice still sounded like somebody being strangled. “So what else? What’s the girl
like? That’s what I want to know. And don’t tell me I ought to come down there and see for myself. I’ll come down when I’m damn good and ready. I want to know what
you
think of her, gol-dammit.”

Sage rubbed his knotted-up forehead, as if that might somehow smooth out the jumbled thoughts inside. What did he think of Sunshine Wells? He wished to God he knew. He exhaled, finally, and words
came with it. “I don’t know…there’s something…”