Chapter 7
Ty had a job overseas that took three months out of his busy schedule. He’d finished the hardcover novel that was to be released in the spring of the following year, books generally being produced a year in advance of publication. It had been a hectic thing, with the side trip, but he and his editor had met the deadline.
He’d dedicated it to Sara.
He thought about nothing else as time went by. He saw her occasionally, but she was like a wisp in the wind that he was unable to capture. Once he’d tried to talk to her, but she’d just smiled and excused herself and kept walking. Once burned, twice shy. He understood why she avoided him. It still hurt. So did his conscience.
Sara was feeling her own discomfort. Ty had become a big part of her life. She didn’t understand why he’d gone from a friend to an enemy in such a short time. Mrs. Grimes said he was fighting his own feelings for her. Sara didn’t believe it. If he’d cared, he wouldn’t have stayed away so long.
What she didn’t know was that he was making plans that included her. He was giving up his dangerous lifestyle. It was difficult, because he was obligated for two missions that he couldn’t back out of. But he’d made himself a solemn promise that he was going to live a normal life from now on. Go on tour with the books. Maybe raise a few cattle. Write a lot of books. And just live life. He had more than enough material to write about for the rest of his life.
Now, he just wanted to get back to Sara.
Danny Hartman had phoned her once or twice, offering trips to the theater or opera in Denver, but she’d turned down every invitation. She had no interest in a relationship with a man she ardently disliked. Besides that, he didn’t like Ed, and vice versa. Nobody was going to come into her life who didn’t want her little brother around.
“Sis, why don’t we ever see Mr. Blakeney anymore?”
Ed asked out of the blue one afternoon while he was playing games on the console and Sara was sketching an idea for a new canvas.
Her hand slipped on the sketching pad. She erased madly.
“What do you mean? We saw him in town just the other day,”
she reminded him, while inside she was quivering like a jelly.
“You know what I mean. He really liked you.”
“I’ll tell you when you’re twenty-five,”
she promised.
He laughed.
“Okay. But remember, you promised.”
“Cross my heart,”
she replied, and did that.
Her dreams were wild and savage. Most of them contained Ty. She wished that she could just forget him. Once or twice, she’d entertained the idea of moving away, to some other small town where she wouldn’t have to see him.
She’d mentioned it to Doris, the owner of the local bookstore, who was also a casual friend.
“You can’t move away from problems.”
The other woman sighed.
“They just go with you. Oh, you read Truman, don’t you?”
she added, pulling out a hardcover from the new releases shelf.
“You should look at this!”
She handed the book, open, to Sara. The dedication said.
“To Sara, who inspired it.”
Her heart jumped into her throat, at the words, but logic stuffed it back down. She handed the book back.
“It’s a coincidence. A big-time author like that wouldn’t even notice somebody like me,”
she said, smiling.
“I don’t even know Cyrus Truman. It’s somebody he knows well.”
Doris frowned.
“Surely you know.”
“Know what?”
“I can’t believe you’ve lived here all your life and you don’t know about Ty Blakeney. Honestly, he was always taking you places last year!”
Sara frowned.
“What don’t I know about him?”
“He writes books under a pen name. The pen name is Cyrus Truman,”
Doris told her.
Sara felt as if every cell in her body had exploded. She leaned against the counter, trying to get her breath.
“And there’s only one Sara around here that Ty Blakeney has been seen with,”
Doris added with a grin.
“I don’t understand,”
Sara said nervously. She glanced at Doris.
“Honestly, I haven’t even seen him for months . . .”
“Nobody has. He’s overseas. Some hush-hush mission,”
Doris replied.
“He’s due home soon, though.”
Sara was still trying to absorb the shock. “Wow,”
she said finally. She had to read that book.
“Do you have a copy of it that you can sell me or is that only a promotional copy?”
Sara asked huskily.
“I have many of them to sell. He’s got a huge reading audience locally. Here.”
She handed the book to Sara, who promptly paid for it, thanked her friend, and walked out of the bookstore almost in a daze.
When she picked up Ed from his class, he was concerned.
“Are you okay, sis?”
he asked worriedly.
“You don’t look like yourself.”
“I’m not myself. At least, not right now. I’ll tell you when we get home.”
They were in the living room when she pulled the hardback out of the bag and handed it to Ed.
“Read the dedication.”
“I can’t read a lot of big words yet,”
he told her.
“Try.”
He sighed. “Okay.”
He looked at the words and sounded them out. He looked up.
“It’s you.”
She nodded.
“Do you know this guy? I know you have all his books . . .”
“He’s really Ty Blakeney,”
she said.
“This is his pen name.”
Ed was stunned.
“He writes books?”
She nodded again.
“He writes books. I’m going to read this one tonight, so you’re going to bed early.”
“Aw, sis,”
he complained.
“You can take your Game Boy to bed with you,”
she compromised.
He grinned.
“Fair enough!”
She did read the book. It was, as usual, a roller coaster ride of a novel, full of espionage, spy versus spy, deadly attacks, and high-level politics. In between, it was a love story. The hero fell in love with a small-town girl who was everything he didn’t want in a woman. But she turned out to be the only real thing in his life.
When she finished it, she was in tears. It was their story. It was what might have been. Was that why he’d dedicated it to her?
She put it on her bedside table and turned out the light. Perhaps it was just as well that he’d written the whole thing out of his system. She’d been trying to do that, all the lonely months since their ill-fated fishing trip, but with little success.
“Maybe I should write a book.”
She sighed as she closed her eyes.
“Did you hear?”
Mrs. Grimes asked one Friday after she’d been babysitting Ed and Goose while Sara went to see a potential client.
“Hear what?”
Sara asked as she put her purse on the table. She looked elegant in a pale silver silk dress with patches of subtle pastel colors. It was late summer, and the dress was cool and comfortable.
“Ty Blakeney’s back.”
Sara jumped. It wasn’t obvious, more like a tiny reflex, but her whole body felt electrified.
“Is he? In one piece?”
“So they say. He’s going on tour for this new book.”
“Devil’s Pawn,”
she said, naming it.
Mrs. Grimes grinned.
“He dedicated it to you.”
“That’s not me,”
Sara said stubbornly.
“It must be some other woman, maybe the one who threw him over.”
She looked down.
“He’s barely spoken to me.”
“Miracles happen every day,”
Mrs. Grimes said smugly, looking past Sara to the open window.
“Sometimes when you least expect them. My, my, look there, you’ve got company.”
Sara turned. A pickup truck was stopping at the front door. A tall man wearing jeans and a black T-shirt got out of it.
“Ed, let’s go play with the Game Boy in the kitchen with Goose,”
Mrs. Grimes said, tugging Ed to his feet and disappearing.
Sara went to the door like a sleepwalker.
She opened it before Ty could knock. They stood, just looking at each other.
“I tried to call you,”
he said after a minute.
“But I figured you’d hang up the minute you heard my voice.”
She nodded sadly, her eyes meeting his.
“Then I thought I might write to you, but I had visions of burning mail,”
he continued, smiling.
She shrugged and smiled, too.
“Finally, I thought if you read Cyrus Truman, you’d understand that the dedication in Devil’s Pawn was meant for you.”
She swallowed.
“I didn’t.”
She drew in a breath.
“You probably know ten woman named Sara.”
He searched her eyes hungrily.
“No. I don’t.”
He drew in a breath.
“Sometimes we chase away the things we want most, because we’re afraid we can’t keep them,”
he said huskily.
She drew in a long breath, tears stinging her eyes. “Yes.”
Her voice broke on the word.
“I thought . . . I’d never see you again . . .”
He drew her up tight and kissed her until her mouth was sore, and then he kissed her some more.
“When did you know that Truman was my pen name?”
he asked finally, when he was sitting on the sofa with her in his lap, cradled in his arms.
“At the bookstore, when the book came out. Doris thought you dedicated it to me. I didn’t know who you were until she told me.”
He brushed back her wavy dark hair.
“I wanted you to see a rancher instead of a famous author when we went around together,”
he said simply.
She smiled.
“I’m no gold digger. Besides, I’m rich, too.”
He laughed softly.
“In which case, we should make plans to be together for a long, long time,”
he whispered against her mouth.
“What sort of plans?”
she whispered.
“White dresses, lace, veils, black tie, ministers . . . that sort of plans.”
She drew back a little, her eyes on his.
“I’m greedy,”
he said quietly.
“I want forever.”
She nodded. “Me, too.”
He pulled a small box out of his pocket.
“I bought them in Tangier. If you don’t like them . . .”
She opened the box. They were rubies—her favorite stones—in a beautiful setting with a ruby solitaire that was at least three carats. She gasped.
“But they’re . . . they’re magnificent!”
He chuckled.
“You might go ahead and put on the solitaire. Just to see if it fits.”
She did, and it did. She looked up at him.
“You have to wear one, too,”
she said firmly.
“I remember all about those women having to be evicted from your hotel rooms when you’re on tour!”
“I will,”
he promised.
“But you’ll be right beside me when I go on tour, so I think other women will get the idea rather quickly.”
She just looked at him, her heart in her eyes.
“Oh, I love you,”
she whispered.
He bent and brushed his lips tenderly over her forehead.
“And I love you. I didn’t want to”—he sighed—“but sometimes victory lies hidden in defeat.”
She grinned.
“That’s a nice line. You should put it in a book.”
He chuckled.
“I might do that.”
Mrs. Grimes stuck her head around the door.
“Is it safe to come back in?”
“Yes. We’re going to get married,”
Ty told her.
“You can be my matron of honor,”
Sara told Mrs. Grimes.
“Can I be a flower boy?”
Ed asked, and ran to hug Ty tightly.
“You can carry the ring,”
Ty told him.
“It’s a position of great honor.”
“I’ll do a good job,”
Ed promised. Ty hugged him close.
Sara just smiled, with her whole heart in her eyes.
And so they were married. The chapel was covered up in all sorts of beautiful roses. They spoke their vows with almost the whole town of Raven Springs, and half of Benton, in attendance. And the sheriff, Jeff Ralston, was Ty’s best man.
Later, in a hotel room in Tangier, Sara practiced that chapter in Cyrus Truman’s book that she’d been studying ever since Devil’s Pawn was released.
She was drenched in sweat despite the air conditioning, disheveled, nude, and absolutely satisfied from head to toe as she looked at her husband’s beaming face above hers.
“Did I get it right?”
she asked breathlessly.
He chuckled.
“You got it exactly right, my darling,”
he whispered, and kissed her again. He groaned and rolled over onto his back.
“Talk about unbearable pleasure . . .” he said.
“You said I shouldn’t be afraid, but I was. Sort of. At first.”
She whistled.
“Only at first.”
She glared at him.
“All those women in those books . . . !”
He put a finger over her mouth and grinned at her.
“Lies. All lies. Honest. I have a great imagination.”
“Lies,”
she countered with mock anger.
He made a face.
“Okay, then, research. Only research! I write books, you know.”
She laughed uproariously. It wasn’t all lies—of course it wasn’t—but she was far too happy to be jealous of women who were truly in the past. And they had, after all, contributed to Sara’s own delightful first time. She could overlook a few things, in the interest of peace.
She melted into his side, sliding one silky leg over his powerful one.
“All those beautiful women”—she sighed—“and you settled for a plain Jane like me.”
“There is nothing plain about my wife,”
he said firmly.
“She’s unique. One of a kind. And I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
She smiled, and kissed his shoulder.
“I’m lucky, too. I never dreamed we’d end up like this.”
She sighed.
“Neither did I. Now I can’t understand why I fought it so hard.”
“You didn’t want to be hurt. Neither did I. We were both looking for escape routes.”
He nodded, his arm contracting around her shoulders.
“But in the end, we got it right.”
She smiled.
“Just right.”
She cuddled closer.
“Ty, about Ed,”
she began worriedly, because they hadn’t discussed it in the breakneck run-up to the wedding.
“Ed will grow up in a loving household with happy people and a destructive but beautiful dog, and in a few years he’ll have company to play video games with,”
he said gently.
Relief washed over her. She should have known. He’d even loved Goose at first sight, much less Ed. “He will?”
She smiled mischievously.
“You planning to start a gaming group?”
He chuckled and drew her up closer.
“I had in mind a few smaller versions of ourselves. Little people who’ll look like us.”
She beamed at him.
“I’d like that. I can teach them to paint.”
“I’ll teach them to write.”
“We can both teach them to play video games,”
she added.
“And to fish for trout . . .”
“All those things,”
he agreed, rolling her back over, his dark eyes twinkling.
“But just at the moment, I have a few more things that I’d like to teach you . . .”
His mouth covered hers very slowly, and she didn’t make any more comments. Not for a long, long time.
Outside the hotel room, the moon over Tangier shone discreetly through the window, right on the two happiest people in the world at that moment, in each other’s arms. In each other’s lives. In each other’s hearts.
And they owed it all, every bit of it, to a furry little wuppie who’d brought them together.
A happy little wuppie, who was sleeping beside his boy, who was dreaming of Christmas, when he’d dress up his puppy as a reindeer, with a special Christmas collar . . . back home in Colorado.