The Last Honest Woman (25 page)

Between packing, last-minute details and Saturday-morning cartoons, everyone in the house was occupied. Chantel bided her time. When Dylan went to help the boys tend the stock, she waited a few moments, then slipped out to join them. It was warm for March by East Coast standards, but she shivered inside her jacket and decided she'd be glad to get back to Southern California. Before she went, she had something to do.

Most of the horses were in the paddock. Chantel wandered over to lean on the fence. He'd come out sooner or later. She could wait.

Dylan let out the two geldings and saw her. He'd known for days that she had something to say to him. It appeared the time was now. He released the horses and carefully closed the gate behind them. In silence he moved over and joined her at the fence. She took the cigarette he offered. She rarely smoked; it all had to do with mood. She inhaled deeply then let out a long stream of smoke, watching the horses as she spoke.

"I haven't decided if I like you. It's not really important. Abby's feelings are."

Dylan decided she couldn't know how closely her words echoed Maddy's. It was just part of the bond. Together they watched as Eve's foal began to nurse. The mare steadied herself against the pull and tug, then stood patiently.

"I can tell you I didn't like you when you interviewed me about Millicent Driscoll for your last book. Some of it had to do with that period of my life, and the rest was your attitude. I found you abrasive and unsympathetic, so I wasn't as open with you as I might have been. If I had been, maybe you'd have found a little more room for compassion in your story. But Abby's my sister."

For the first time, she turned to look at him. Even in the strong, unrelenting sunlight, her face was stunning. The classic oval shape, the sweep of cheekbone, the flawless skin. A man could look at that face and forget there was anything else to the woman. But it was her eyes that held his interest. He imagined they'd ruthlessly flayed a great many men.

"I think you care about Abby, but I'm not sure if you're too tough to let that matter. I want to tell you about Chuck Rockwell in a way I don't think Abby can." She drew in more smoke, appreciating its rough taste. "This is off-the-record, Dylan. If Abby consents to this you can use anything I say. If she doesn't, you're out of luck. Agreed?"

"Agreed. Tell me."

"When Chuck came into the club that first night, he was utterly infatuated with Abby. Maybe, for a little white, he was even in love with her. I don't know the kind of women he'd been running with before, but I can imagine. Abby, was, even with the tacky costume and greasepaint, untouched. Gullible's a hard word unless you understand the person, and Abby was and still is gullible." She smiled, not the clever, ice-edged smile she used so often but a simple, easy curving of the lips that was as beautiful as it was revealing. "She believed in love, devotion, till death us do part. She went into marriage with stars in her eyes."

He could imagine Abby then, open, innocent, trusting. "And Rockwell?"

"He loved her, I think, as far as he was capable and for as long as he was capable. Some people say weakness doesn't make a person bad." Something flickered in her eyes but was quickly masked. "I disagree with that. Chuck was weak emotionally. I could make excuses for him, knowing that he was raised by an impossibly domineering mother and a workaholic father. Personally, I don't care much for excuses."

She glanced over, waiting for him to comment. "Go on." Dylan had already researched Rockwell's upbringing.

"They had trouble almost from the start. She'd cover it up, but it's difficult to hide anything from another triplet. She went with him to Paris, London, wore beautiful clothes and was offered the sort of life-style a lot of women dream of. Not Abby." Chantel shook her head, and her fingers began to drum lightly on the fence rail. "I'm not saying she didn't enjoy it at first, but Abby had always looked for roots. The O'Hurleys have a difficult time sinking them."

"That's why she wanted this place."

Chantel dropped her cigarette on the ground and left it to smolder. "Chuck bought it after a particularly messy affair with a girl too young to know any better. Then, almost as soon as he did, he grew bored with it. He made it clear to Abby that if she wanted to keep the place and maintain it she had to do it herself."

"She told you that?"

"No. Chuck did." She sent him an odd, self-mocking look. "He breezed into L.A. and decided it might be interesting to put the moves on his wife's sister. Charming. Give me another cigarette."

While he lit if for her, Chantel composed herself. "As it happened, he wasn't my type, and though my morals are often in doubt, I do have standards. He did manage to get drunk and tell me all the problems he was having with the little woman at home. She was boring." Chantel blew out a vicious stream of smoke. "She was too ordinary, too middle-class. She'd dug into this farm and was holding on, and he had better things to do with his money. If she wanted the damn roof fixed, she could deal with it herself. If she wanted the plumbing brought up to twentieth-century standards, she'd just have to figure out how to manage it on her own. He wasn't interested. He went on about how she had this wild idea to raise horses. He laughed at her." Chantel's jaw stiffened. When she realized she was speaking too quickly, she deliberately slowed. "I didn't throw him out, because I wanted to hear it all. While she'd been going through this, I'd been busy carving out my own career. Too busy, you see, to pay much attention, even though I knew instinctively that things weren't right with Abby."

And how much attention had
he
really paid over the past weeks? That thought stung him. He'd expected her trust and honesty—had demanded it—but all he'd given her were questions.

He'd seen her, listened to her, watched her, and he'd known in his gut that all the preconceptions he'd come with were wrong. Yet why had she stayed with Rockwell? And why did he hate himself for still needing to know?

He drew back, "Why do you think he told you all this?" he asked his voice unemotional.

Her look was hard. It was amazing how quickly her expression could change from cool to frigid without her moving a muscle. "Obviously he thought I'd be just as amused as he." She smiled again and drew more calmly on her cigarette. "Anyway, I got rid of him, then I called Maddy and we came here. Abby was living in a place that was nearly ready to fall down around her ears. Chuck wasn't giving her a dime, so she was working part-time at places she could take Ben along. She was glad to see us, but she wasn't ready to listen to any advice that led to divorce."

"Why?" Dylan touched her for the first time, just a hand on her arm, but she could feel the intensity of his response. "Why did she stay with him?"

So, that was the crux of it, Chantel realized. He cared, and that made it difficult to hold her grudge against him. "I think you'll need to get that answer from her, but I can tell you this. Abby has a large capacity for hope, and she kept believing that Chuck would come around. Meantime, there was the immediate problem of making the house livable. We went to Richmond and sold her jewelry. Chuck had been very generous in the first six or eight months of their marriage and it brought in enough to get her going. I bought her mink." What she didn't mention was that she hadn't been able to afford it at the time. "She joked later that she saw a picture of me wearing her roof."

"She sold the mink to fix the roof," he murmured.

"There were a lot of repairs. It amazed me then how stubborn she was about this place. But when I see her here now, it's obvious how right it is for her and the kids. After that, things settled down a bit. She was pregnant with Chris. I have my own theory on that, but it's best left alone."

He looked at her and saw that she understood more than Abby would ever have guessed. "It's being left alone."

"Maybe I do like you." She relaxed a little and tossed the cigarette aside. "After Chris was born, things went from bad to worse. Chuck was blatant about his affairs. I don't consider it a point in his credit, but I believe he wanted to push Abby into a divorce for her own good. When she did, when she finally did, I think he realized just how much he was losing."

"Are you saying that Abby had filed for divorce?"

"That's right. She could have raked him over the coals—I certainly would have—but she didn't charge him with adultery and she didn't ask for alimony. All she wanted was the farm and some reasonable support for the kids. He was involved with Lori Brewer at the time, and they went on quite a binge. Somewhere along the tine, it must have hit him. He'd compensated for the loss of the thrill of racing with other things. He'd had a wife who'd stuck by him and two wonderful children he'd traded for a life-style that only led to more misery. I know how he felt because he called me a few days before that last race. God knows why. I was hardly sympathetic. He said he'd called Abby and had asked her to reconsider and she'd refused. He wanted me to go to bat for him. I told him to grow up. A couple days later, he crashed."

"And she was left feeling guilty because she'd planned to divorce him."

"You catch on." She tapped a beautifully manicured nail against the rail. "There's never been any use telling her not to feel that way, or not to let herself be punished."

Dylan was having problems enough with his own sense of guilt, but he focused on Chantel's last words. "What do you mean, punished?"

"Did you ever consider how difficult it is to maintain a place like this, to raise two children—I'm not speaking of emotionally or physically now, but financially."

"Rockwell had plenty of money."

"Rockwell did—Janice Rockwell did, and she still does. Abby didn't get a penny." She shook her head before he could interrupt her. Every time she thought of it she tasted venom. "She saw to it that Abby didn't get a penny of Chuck's trust fund, not for herself, not for the farm, not for the children."

While Chantel tasted venom, something like acid rose in Dylan's throat. Everything he'd said to Abby from the first day in the rain dreary kitchen to the morning he'd watched her drop rubber gloves in her purse came back to him. And he realized, as his stomach twisted, that he'd have to live with that.

"How has she managed to hold on to the farm?"

"She took out a loan."

There was a bitter taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with tobacco. He hadn't believed in her, hadn't trusted his own feelings enough. She'd been too proud to tell him the things Chantel was saying now.

The hell with her pride, he thought suddenly, viciously. Didn't he have a right to know? Didn't he have a right to… Checking his thoughts, he stared over the paddock and to the hills beyond. No, it was
his
pride that was bruised, he realized, both the man's and the reporter's. She'd known what he'd thought of her, and she'd accepted it—and him.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because someone has to convince Abby that it wasn't her fault, that she couldn't have prevented anything that happened. I think you're the one to do it. I think you're the man, if you've got the spine for it, to make her happy."

Her chin was up, her eyes dark as she tossed the challenge at him. Dylan found himself smiling. "You're a hell of a woman. I missed that the first time around."

She smiled back. "Yeah. I missed a few things about you, too."

Maddy stuck her head out of the back door. "Chantel, the limo's here."

"I'm coming." She took a step back, then gave him one last piercing look. "One more thing, Dylan. If you hurt Abby, you're going to have to deal with me."

"Fair enough."

He offered his hand. As though she were amused by both of them, Chantel accepted it. "I guess I'll wish you luck."

"I appreciate it."

The goodbyes were long, tearful and noisy. Maddy came to Dylan and gave him a surprisingly hard and affectionate hug. "Lucky for you I think you're good for her," she whispered in his ear. Then she backed off with a smile. "Welcome to the family, Dylan."

Each member made the rounds twice before climbing into the limo. Chris and Ben had to be coaxed out once they discovered all the knobs and automatic buttons inside the car. After they'd raised and lowered the windows half a dozen times, blasting the stereo and the sleek compact TV, Abby pulled them out so that the rest of her family could climb in. Serene as an ocean liner, the limo cruised up the rut-filled lane.

"I'm going to drive a limo," Chris decided on the spot. "I can wear a neat hat like the one Mr. Donald had and ride in the front seat."

"I'd rather ride in the back with the TV."

Laughing, Abby ruffled Ben's hair. "There's a lot of O'Hurley in this boy. I don't know about you, but I want something long and cold before I tackle the mess in the kitchen."

"Can we go play with the foals?" Ben was already off the porch as he asked.

"Not too rough," Abby called after them. With a sigh, she turned into the house. "I miss them already."

"Quite a family."

"To say the least. Do you want a soda?"

"No." Restless, he wandered around the kitchen. Chantel's words were still eating at him. That, and everything else he'd learned over the last couple of days. The fact that he'd misjudged Abby so completely and so unfairly left him unsure of himself. "Abby, this place, the farm, it's very important to you."

"Aside from the boys, it's the most important." She filled a glass with ice.

"You're not a pushover." He said it so strongly that she turned back to stare at him.

"I don't like to think so."

"Why did you let Rockwell push you around?" he demanded. "Why did you let his mother push you out of everything you were entitled to?"

"Wait a minute." She'd expected a day, even a few hours, before she had to plunge into it all again. "Janice had virtually nothing to do with the rest of it, certainly nothing to do with Chuck's biography."

"The hell with the biography." He took her by the arms. It wasn't until that moment that he realized the book meant nothing, had meant nothing for some time. Abby meant everything. He could only see what she'd been through, what she had done, what had been done to her. If she wouldn't hate, he would hate for her. "She made certain you didn't get a penny of Rockwell's trust fund. With that money the farm would have been free and clear. You were entitled, your children were entitled. Why did you tolerate that?"