Affair of the Heart (17 page)

He had quite a lot to say, and the fact that he said it in his well-bred and understated way somehow only made it worse. She had never never meant to hurt him like this. She looked up at him, her mouth tragic, and said again, “Oh, Gerald, I’m so sorry.”

“Caroline.” He put his hands on her shoulders, and then she was in his arms and he was kissing her. She was quiet, her hands resting lightly on his upper arms. She didn’t try to push him away, but after a minute he raised his head. Out of the corner of her eye Caroline thought she saw a shadow against the door. But when she turned her head it was gone. “It’s no good, is it?” Gerald said.

She shook her head. “No.” Her big eyes brimmed with tears.

“Don’t cry, darling. Please don’t cry.” His voice was very gentle, which only made her feel worse.

He was smiling a little crookedly. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”

She sniffled. “Yes.”

“Your stepbrother?”

Now she stared in astonishment. “How did you know?”

His smile was a little painful, but it was a smile. “You never ran after me,” he said. Then, “Are you all right? Shall I take you back to the house?”

“All right,” Caroline said in a subdued voice. She wouldn’t wait for Jay tonight, she decided. In a strange kind of way, she felt she owed Gerald that at least.

When they reached the ranch house, Gerald considerately let her go in alone, but his thoughtfulness was to no avail. Jay wasn’t in the living room with the others. Nor did he come in before Caroline went to bed. And when she arrived downstairs for breakfast the following morning it was to learn from Joe that Jay had left an hour ago with Mahogany and the van. She wouldn’t see him again until she was back at the Double Diamond.

* * * *

They pulled into the ranch as it was getting dark. When Joe and Caroline came into the house they were greeted by Ellen. Jay was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s down the bunkhouse,” Ellen said indulgently. “The boys are celebrating Mahogany’s win.” And indeed the sound of male laughter was wafting up the hill and into the kitchen.

The laughter continued long after Caroline had gone to bed. Then it gradually ceased, but still Jay did not come to bed. Finally Caroline got up, pulled her nightgown off and a cotton dress on, and went quietly down the stairs. He wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen, so she went, more from instinct than from reason, toward the barn.

“Jay?” she called softly as she entered the barn door. A light was on, so she knew he was there. He didn’t answer, and she walked down the aisle. “Jay, are you here?” she called again.

“Yeah, I’m here.” She stopped dead and then went over to the one empty stall in the barn. It was where Marmalade had chosen to move her kittens, and they were all curled up in the corner, fast asleep. Jay was leaning against the far wall of the stall, and Caroline knew that something was very wrong. Actually, she had known since this morning, when he had left without seeing her, that something was wrong. But what it was she didn’t know.

“What are
you
doing here?” The controlled violence of his voice came to her like a slash across the face.

“I—I was looking for you,” she replied.

“Why? Couldn’t your Irish boyfriend satisfy you?”

It took a minute for his words to register, then her eyes widened with shock and the beginnings of anger. “What do you mean, speaking to me like that?”

“How else am I supposed to speak to a slut?”

By now she was white as a sheet, her eyes blazing. “What are you talking about?”

“You, sweetheart. I’m talking about you.”

She crossed the distance between them in two strides and, reaching up, hit him across the face as hard as she could. Her palm stung and his fingers closed like steel around her wrist. He was in a deadly, white-hot rage, and, held close to him, she realized for the first time that he was not sober.

“Never start something you’re not prepared to finish,” he said between his teeth, and before she realized what was happening he had pinned her to the barn wall with the weight of his body and his mouth was coming down on hers.

It was aggression, pure and simple, and Caroline fought him. She could smell the scotch on his breath, and she struggled wildly, kicking at his legs, trying to get her knee up to give him an even more effective blow. She was absolutely furious.

He felt what she was trying to do, cursed, gripped her even harder, and threw her to the ground. The hay under her was soft and she was unhurt; but winded. She tried to scramble to her feet, but he was too quick for her. He pinned her to the floor, her hands held together above her head, her body crushed by the punishing weight of his. He moved a little, and one of his legs forced hers apart. Quite suddenly her anger vanished to be replaced by sheer, primitive terror. The dim stable light showed her his face. It was hard and sharp; his blue eyes were narrow, glittering, almost black. The wildness of her resistance had released all of his civilized brakes, and rape was looking at her out of those midnight-dark eyes. Her heart was thudding so hard it hurt her head.

“Jay,” she breathed through a throat suddenly closed with fear. “Please don’t.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. He shifted his weight slightly, and she saw his free hand go to his belt. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even speak. She stared up at him, and slow tears formed in her dilated eyes and began to slip silently down her cheeks. She was trembling violently.

Through the haze of anger and lust that possessed him, Jay saw the tears. His hand stilled on his belt buckle and he watched the slow trickle of drops run down her cheeks and drip to the ground. For a brief moment he struggled to hold on to his anger. He wanted to hurt her, to force her to submit to him, to thrust his strength and his maleness on her whether she desired it or not. But the tears were too strong. He took one deep shuddering breath and then another. He dropped his grip on her hands and moved back, taking his weight off her, allowing her freedom to move. He got to his feet and turned his back. “Get out of here,” he said in a harsh, frightening voice.

Caroline scrambled up and fled as if all the hounds of hell were after her.

She didn’t stop shaking for an hour. She had had her share of scuffles with overeager escorts, but she had never faced anything as savage or as deadly serious as that brief, terrifying episode in the barn. She had escaped by the skin of her teeth, and she knew it.

Why had he done it? What had made him so angry that he had wanted to take by force what was his for the asking? What had turned her ardent, passionate lover into the brutal, ugly stranger she had just encountered in the barn?

When she had calmed down a little she thought of the things he had said to her. Your Irish boyfriend. Slut. It came to her in a flash of understanding: He had seen Gerald kissing her in the carriage house. She remembered that shadow at the door. It had been Jay.

Tears began to slide down her cheeks again. He had seen them and he had assumed ... “Oh, Jay,” she whispered to herself.
Jay.

There was nothing to be done. It was over. Nothing she could say or do would ever convince him she was not the kind of girl he thought she was. The kind of woman he thought his mother had been. Nothing she could say or do would ever make him trust her. It was over.

She arose the following morning, leaden-eyed, and packed her bag. She walked down to the barn to find Joe and ask him to drive her to Sheridan to the airport. Jay was nowhere around. She had known he wouldn’t be.

Joe was upset by her abrupt decision, but Caroline was adamant. “Did you and Jay have a fight?” he asked as they drove along the now familiar mountain road.

“Yes,” said Caroline.

“I see.” Joe didn’t say anything more, but when Caroline glanced at him his craggy profile looked grim. “You liked it here on the ranch, didn’t you?” he asked after a while, seemingly changing the subject.

“I loved it,” Caroline said sincerely. “You’re so lucky, Joe, to live surrounded by such beauty.”

“The winters are hard. Snow and storms and wind. You can go a little crazy here in the winter. It was the winters Nancy hated. And they last from October through April.”

Caroline sighed and leaned her head back against the headrest. She closed her eyes. “At least snow is clean,” she murmured. “All you get in Washington or New York is slush and filth and dreariness. And in the summer you steam.”

Joe gave her an assessing look and grunted. He waited until she had bought her ticket, then kissed her warmly. “Take care of yourself, Caroline. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Goodbye, Joe.” She smiled mistily at the big rancher. “Thank you for everything.”

She sank into her airline seat and stared out the window, her eyes unfocused. What she was seeing was an image in her mind’s eye, the image of a man’s face, and in her heart she was saying goodbye.

* * * *

Caroline did not go to Maine. For the first time in her life the wounds were too deep to be cured even by Maine and her uncle and aunt and cousins and the family life there she so loved. She found she perfectly understood the instinct of the wounded animal to be alone.

She went to Washington and threw herself into her job. All through the dog days of August and the months of autumn, she submerged herself in work. It didn’t help. No job would ever be a substitute for what she had lost. But it filled up her days. She needed to be busy, for when she wasn’t, when she had time to remember and to feel, then she was filled with such loneliness that it was like a sickness.

She ached for Jay. It was like a physical hollow in her, the longing that she felt. But there was nothing she could do. She tried going out with other men, but they only made it worse. She worked. After a while she even stopped jumping every time the phone rang and her heart stopped thumping every time she opened her mailbox. It was finished, and she must close the door and walk away from it. She worked.

She was coming home late on a Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It had been a gray day and damp, and she felt chilled in her tailored gray suit, so she hurried along the pavement. She stopped at the corner store for some bread and milk and was shifting the bundle of groceries from one arm to the other when she noticed the figure of a man leaning negligently against the lamppost in front of her building. He was looking the other way, and she stopped and stared at the thick brown hair illuminated by the glow of the lamp. It was as neatly brushed and as shining as a little boy’s. Her throat suddenly hurt. It couldn’t be, she thought. She was hallucinating. The brown head turned and she saw his face. “Jay?” she said in a high, thin, unrecognizable voice.

“Yes,” he said gravely and came toward her. She stood stock still, incapable of moving. He stopped two feet in front of her. “I had to see you.” Then, as she didn’t say anything, “May I come upstairs with you for a moment?”

“Y-yes, of course.” She tried to get her voice under control. “I’m just so surprised to see you.”

“I can imagine you must be.” He took the groceries from her, and she shot a quick look up at his still face. They walked together to the front door of her building, and the doorman smiled and said, “Good evening, Miss Carruthers,” and let them in.

There was another tenant sharing the elevator with them, a girl who lived on the floor above Caroline’s: Caroline saw her give Jay a long admiring look as he held the elevator door for the two women. He asked for the floors and pushed the buttons, and Caroline found herself trying to see him with the eyes of a stranger, to see what her neighbor was seeing.

In a city of civil servants who were all meticulously attired in suit and tie, Jay’s muted plaid wool sports coat and wool flannel slacks looked perhaps more casual than was quite usual but not at all out of place. Caroline, who had an unerring eye for such things, knew that his jacket alone had cost far more than most of the men she worked with paid for their three-piece suits. It wasn’t his clothes that told you he didn’t belong to this city. It was something about his face.

The elevator stopped. He said to Caroline, “Our floor.” As she moved past him her neighbor gave him a brilliant smile. He looked right through her.

Caroline switched on the lamps in her living room and, taking the groceries from Jay, said, “Sit down. I’ll just put the milk in the fridge.”

When she came back into the room he was standing by the window wall looking out at the lights of the city. He was not that big a man, she found herself thinking; certainly he was not built on the epic proportions of his father. So why did her room suddenly look so small, so confining?

He turned at the sound of her step. “Thank you for letting me come up.” His face looked very somber. “You had every reason in the world not to.”

“Oh, Jay,” she said helplessly. Then, “Can I get you a drink?”

“No.”

She moved into the room and sat down on the oyster-white love seat. She gestured to the matching sofa that was placed at a right angle to the love seat. “Sit down, Jay. How have you been? How is Joe?”

He came across the room, looking somehow like a panther in a cage. He sat down on the sofa, and his eyes devoured her face. “Dad’s fine,” he said. “I’m not.”

“Oh?” She would have to be blind to miss the message in his eyes. “W-why is that?” she managed to ask.

“Nothing’s any good anymore,” he said tensely. “I miss you like hell. Cara, I love you. Would you consider marrying me and coming back to Wyoming?”

Caroline stared at him in absolute astonishment. She was not sure she had heard him correctly.
“What
did you say?” she asked faintly.

“I asked you to marry me.” He thrust his hand through his neatly brushed hair and rose again to his feet. “Listen, Cara, you wouldn’t have to stay on the ranch for the whole year, you know. We could go somewhere else for part of the winter—somewhere warm. California—the south of France—wherever you want.” He had reached the windows again and turned once more to look at her. “You can call the shots. Nothing’s any good for me if you’re not there. I found that out these last few months.”

Very, very slowly, Caroline stood up and crossed the room to stand in front of him. His face was still very tense-looking, and she couldn’t quite decipher the expression in those dark-blue eyes. He met her gaze fully, and quite suddenly she saw that he was braced to meet her rejection. He didn’t think she would say yes. Yet he had come all the way from Wyoming to ask her. Happiness, like a sudden sunburst, began to glow inside her.