Choices (11 page)

Logan spit out the water he had just been about to swallow and laughed so hard his sides hurt. Abby laughed with him and thought how Joyce would react to her speech. Joyce was a veteran vegetarian and card-carrying member of PETA, and would surely have shot Abby with the rifle in the back of Logan’s truck.

“‘Little animal friends’? Where’d that come from?” Logan gasped, wiping tears from his eyes.

“It’s something a friend of mine says when she talks about the evil injustices of eating meat. She’s a member of PETA.”

“She know about how you were raised?”

“Oh yeah, she calls it my ‘dark years’, before I moved East and became ‘civilized’.”

“But you eat meat. Doesn’t she disagree with that?” Logan asked, absolutely fascinated.

“Yes, she does. If I had given up meat and had become a vegetarian, I would have been ‘enlightened’ instead of just ‘civilized’. I haven’t eaten a whole lot of red meat in the last couple of years, just a lot of fish and poultry.”

“God, your killing me! And your father too, you know. Didn’t you ever hear ‘Beef, it’s what’s for dinner’?”

“Yes, but it’s also clogging up arteries. Oh, hell, we can debate this till the cows come home, ha-ha, but let’s suffice it to say that I eat beef, enjoy beef, and will probably eat more of it now.” She laughed, hopping down from the tailgate and rubbing her butt. Logan stopped laughing as he watched her, wishing he was rubbing her soreness away, then tore his eyes away before he got too turned on to stand up.

“My butt fell asleep. What time is it?” she asked, looking up at him. He glanced at his watch.

“It’s 2 o’clock. You want to stop and go back in?” he didn’t want to stop talking, wanted to stay out here forever with her.

“No, let’s work some more. I’m getting exercise and God knows I haven’t worked out since I came here, since, you know, this isn’t the Ritz.” She smirked.

“Ha-ha, very funny. Get back to work.”

She snapped him a salute and followed him as he headed back down the fence line.

She came back to the house for dinner again that night, and it was so much fun she didn’t want the evening to end. She had been to plenty of dinners and cocktail parties, but they had been formal affairs, and even dinne
rs she gave at her house among close friends had never been this kind of fun, where anything went. She had gotten Ben to tell the whole story of the bar fight that had brought him and Logan together.

“Well, you see Abby, I was just sitting down to a nice cold beer after work, and here comes this drunk kid, wanting to be a big hero. I knew he was gonna be creamed as soon as he walked up to them, but I hung back. I wanted to let him try to rescue the helpless maiden before I came to his rescue.”

Kassey snorted. “Helpless, my fanny. I was just about to kick one of them were it hurts when Sir Galahad showed up.” Kassey said, smiling sweetly at Logan, who grinned back at her.

“Ok, ass-kicking maiden. Anyway, I was trying to not get involved when the two of them just laid into him, and Logan didn’t have a chance. Not stepping all over your manhood there, buddy, but it wasn’t a fair fight.”

Logan just nodded, and took a swig of his beer.

Abby was leaning on the table, caught up in the story, but she watched Logan out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to be enjoying the retelling.

“So Logan goes down, and stays down, so I had to help then. I can’t stand to watch an unfair fight, and those guys counted for two people apiece. So I laid one out, and he landed almost right on top of Logan, who was still passed out on the floor.”

“I was not passed out on the floor. I was awake when he landed next to me.” Logan interjected, laughing.

“Yeah, ok. Sure you were.” Kassey threw in and Abby laughed. Logan gave her a hurt look. “Who are you going to believe, me or him?”

Abby thought for a moment. “Ben.” She said simply, and that got everyone laughing, including Logan.

Later, she and Kassey had washed the dishes together at the sink, Kassey washing and Abby drying.

“Did you tell him yet?” Kassey asked, lowering her voice.

“No, and I’m still going to wait for the dance.” Abby replied, putting the plate she had just dried into a cupboard.

“Lord, are we still in high school? Abby, you need to tell him now.”

“Why the rush?”

“I just want to see you both be happy. Look, I’ve never had a close woman friend and despite how we started, I really think you’re a great person, and I think you’re perfect for him.” Kassey replied, turning to face Abby.

“Thanks Kassey, that means a lot. I just wanted to get to know him more, and let him get to know me, so that when I do tell him, he makes a decision based on how he feels, not what he feels.”

“Abby, trust me, I know him. It’s not just about sex with Logan. He could have that whenever he wanted it, he’s a good-looking man. Did you ever stop to think why he isn’t married yet?”

“Well, yeah, the thought did cross my mind.” She replied, putting up the last dish and moving to sit at the kitchen island. Kassey brought her over a cup of coffee and sat down with her. “Logan is very serious about his relationships. In the years I’ve known him, he’s only had two long term relationships, and both women left because he wouldn’t commit to marriage. He would always just say he was waiting for the right one, and he would know her when he saw her. None of those relationships meant much to him, and he didn’t care much when they left. Now, I know that makes him sound callous, but he never made promises to those women he couldn’t keep and not one of them even got to the point of moving in.”

“You’re right, it does make him seem kind of cold. Why stay with someone so long and not take it anywhere?”

“A man can get sex whenever he wants, but sometimes he needs companionship, too. Logan is the type of guy who thinks that casual sex is a waste of time. I’m sure when he was in college, he got plenty of it, but as he got older, it just didn’t hold an appeal for him.”

Abby gazed into the fire that was dancing in the kitchen fireplace, and said, “So you’re telling me you think I’m the one he’s been waiting for?”

“I’d bet my life on it.”

“Lordy, can’t you pull any harder?” Logan teased, watching as Abby fou
ght with the fencing stretcher.

“Well, if you weren’t using such an ancient stretcher, my poor woman’s muscles wouldn’t have to work so hard.” Abby
replied tartly, giving a final yank to pull the fencing tight. She rubbed her right bicep absentmindedly, but that wasn’t the muscles Logan pictured in his mind.

They were having a good time together, but Logan was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on work. His vaunted self-control was rapidly decreasing, and he was bowing under the weight of what Ben liked to call “peer-pressure”. Even Jake got into it, though who told Jake what was going on was something Logan had been trying to figure out.

He watched her from under the brim of his hat, his eyes shaded in the glare of the sun on snow. It had turned out to be a warm day, in the upper 40’s and Abby had taken off her heavy jacket to work. She had on another v-neck long-sleeved shirt that rode right at the waist-line of her low-riders, so whenever she reached to do something, the shirt rode up a bit, giving him a tantalizing view of creamy skin. Many a time in the past two days, he had pictured himself kissing that band of skin, running his tongue into the depression of her navel, and all that accomplished was to drive himself crazy.

He glanced up to catch her watching him, and their eyes met briefly, but Abby turned away quickly. He had no doubt in his mind that she felt at least some of what he was feeling, an
d it had made him feel better knowing that it wasn’t just him that was suffering.

They hadn’t talked anymore about what her plans were, or what was going happen in a week when she went back to Boston. This was their third day working out in the pastures, and despite the physical discomfort, he was having the time of his life.

Abby stripped off a work glove to take a drink from her bottle of water, and grinned to herself. She loved to catch him looking at her. It reinforced to her what Kassey told her, that Logan was attracted to her. In the three days that they had been alone together, nothing had happened other than that they were both enjoying getting to know each other.

The dance was in two days, and Abby was having a hard time waiting to tell him about her decision to stay. The courier had come with her papers to sign for the sale of her townhouse and Abby had ran into town and had them notarized and Fedexed right back to Boston. It seemed as though the past week and a half had flown by, and at the same time had slowed to a snail’s pace as she and Logan had worked together, and learned about each other.

She now knew he had gone to college, and his parents had died when he was 19 in a car wreck. He had told her about the nightmares he had when they died, and how he had sunk into depression. He told how he had met Ben in the bar fight, and made her laugh with stories of their early days as friends, learning the cattle business. He told her how he had worked three jobs to save for the ranch of his own. Now he owned 10,000 acres of prime southern Montana ranch land at the age of 36. Quite an amazing feat in this day and age.

“I’m going to grab lunch out of the truck. Be right back” he said, and turned to walk back to the truck, which was parked about 500 yards from where they were working.

Abby bent back to work, wanting to get one more strand ran before breaking for lunch. She was humming to herself when the smell hit her. She glanced up, wondering if she was downwind of a carcass, then saw it. A grizzly was coming at a lope across the pasture in her direction, but she couldn’t tell if it saw her. She looked around, trying not to panic, but found no escape. The truck was parked too far away to run for it, and there were no trees near to climb. She debated what to do; she used to know what to do in this kind of situation, but she hadn’t had to worry about bears since she moved to Boston. Did you play dead with a grizzly or make as much noise as you could to scare it off? It was coming closer, she had to make a move.

She screamed, knowing as she did it that she shouldn’t, but it was only a couple hundred yards from her and moving fast. She hoped Logan would hear her. If the bear hadn’t noticed her before, it did now, and it charged.

Time stopped as it let out a roar and came at her. Abby could smell it, a cross between wet dog and carnage. She tried to wave her arms, make herself seem bigger, but that only made it worse. It seemed as though she could see every hair on its body and the hungry intent in its black eyes. Her last hope was Logan and if he didn’t reach her in time…she dropped to the ground and threw her hands over her head, which is what she probably should have done in the first place. She could feel the ground tremble as the bear thundered toward her.