A COWBOY'S PROMISE Page 15

  "It's over," he'd always said brusquely. "Time now to move on."

  Of course his sentiment was shared by a lot of people.

  For one reason or another, many did not want to look back at what had happened in Vietnam. Her father had simply been one of them. Until now.

  Now he told her his story.

  Cait knew some of it. Her mother had told her about their long-distance love affair. "I wanted to get married before he left," she'd told Cait. "But Walt wouldn't do it. He said he didn't want to leave a widow. And he said I was too young, that I might meet someone else. As if I would." She'd shaken her head and laughed at the chance of that.

  Cait had understood. Her father was still, at sixty, a handsome man. And when he wanted to he could charm the ladies. But the only woman he'd ever looked at, as long as Margie was alive, was her mother.

  "Margie was so young," he told Cait now. She sat on the sofa where he'd steered her while he paced back and forth. "A child. Nineteen, for heaven's sake. And she thought the world rose and set on me. She never knew anyone else! She never," he reflected, "wanted to know."

  He paused and ran his fingers over his short, salt-and-pepper hair. "I thought we should wait. War's unpredictable. I didn't want her tied to me. We wrote letters. She was a lifeline to the world I knew. I loved her for it. I loved her," he said more firmly. "But I was surprised when she actually came to Hawaii for my R&R."

  That part Cait had heard about. She knew lots of stories about the whirlwind week her parents had spent together on Oahu. Her mother had told her time and again, her eyes shining, of how exciting it was to see her father again, to touch him, to hold him.

  "Of course she came," she said now. "Why wouldn't she?"

  "Lots of women didn't," her father said. "Guys went, hoping … and their girls weren't there. I was all ready to have the same thing happen to me. I couldn't believe it when I got off the bus at Fort DeRussey, and she was actually there."

  "She loved you, Dad. She would never have gone with anyone else."

  "I know that now. I knew it in Hawaii. I didn't know it before."

  Cait stared at him, not quite following.

  He didn't say anything for a long moment. Then he sighed and spoke, his voice low. "I met a woman in Vietnam. A teacher. Before I met your mother in Hawaii. Before we got married. This teacher spoke some English. She wanted to learn more." He rubbed a hand against the back of his head. "She asked me to teach her." He stared away out the window again.

  Cait didn't have to guess what had happened next.

  She remembered Abuk. She remembered Charlie. She knew exactly what could happen. It had happened to her.

  "Her name was Sue. Well, actually it was somethin' I never could pronounce," her father said ruefully, "so I called her Sue. She was a fine woman. And I … I—" He stopped and shook his head, unable to say the words.

  "And you fell in love with her."

  He twisted his head to look at her. "I don't know if I loved her or not," her father said, surprising her. "I liked her. I liked her a hell of a lot. I might have even thought I loved her. She was sweet, funny, generous. Very kind to a homesick American guy. But then I went to Hawaii, and I saw your mother again and there was no comparison. That was love, Caity. That was my future. And when I went back, married, I looked up Sue first thing and I told her so."

  He turned away again. Stood still as a statue. And Cait contemplated him. She tried to envision her father as a young man in a foreign country, finding solace with another woman. She could see that. She imagined even her mother might have understood. They hadn't been married, after all. And once they'd got married, he'd presumably ended it with this Sue.

  "And you never saw her again?"

  He shook his head. "I told her we couldn't."

  "And now you're going back to look for her?"

  "Not for her, Caity. She's gone. She died several years later. Right at the end of the war."

  "But then…?" She didn't understand.

  A ghost of a sad smile touched his mouth. "There was a child."

  Cait couldn't move.

  She was glad she was sitting down. She stared at her father as if she'd never seen him before. A child?

  Her father and this Vietnamese teacher, this woman called Sue, had a … child?

  There was another Blasingame halfway across the world? A half brother or sister of hers and Wes's? A sibling she had never known?

  Never even heard of?

  She tried to bend her mind around this. "All these years…" Her voice trailed off, her mind whirling. "A child?"

  Her father nodded. "A child."

  "Did Mom…?"

  He knew what she was asking. "No. No one knew. I never said."

  "But—"

  "Life is full of choices, Caity. We make them, sometimes on the spur of the moment, sometimes with a lot of thought. But we make them—and then we go on. We do the best we can with what we've made. It's what I tried to do." He sighed. "I didn't know Sue was pregnant when I left for Hawaii. Had no idea. Hadn't even considered the possibility, fool that I was. I didn't find out until I came back and told her I was married."

  "Oh, God."

  Her father sighed. "Yes. Oh, God. I was pretty well poleaxed when she said. I didn't even want to believe her. But I did." He studied the tops of his boots, then lifted his gaze and looked straight at her.

  "But you didn't see … you never knew your—" Cait couldn't even finish a sentence.

  "No. I let it go."

  "You never—"

  He shook his head adamantly. "No. I might have been able to try to get the child. I might have been able to claim it and have brought it to the States. Some guys had kids there and did that. I didn't. Sue wanted to keep the baby. She said so. And I … I didn't push. I was afraid to hurt your mother. I didn't know what she'd say. I was afraid to … rock the boat. Afraid to take the risk." He sighed and slumped a little then, as if the decision weighed him down.

  "But why now?" Cait asked.

  "Because when I had that heart attack last fall, I had a lot of time to think."

  That's what he'd been thinking about? That's what had made him so pensive and withdrawn?

  "And I thought I could die without ever having known him … or her. Because I wouldn't take a risk." He shook his head. "I'm not saying I was wrong in the first place, Cait. Maybe I was. Maybe I was selfish. I was damn sure scared. So I made the choice I thought was right—and I went on. I didn't look back."

  She tried to think back over all the years of her life, all the years her father had lived keeping this inside him, tried to imagine what it must have been like for him to walk away from this child he would never know.

  "But I'm looking now," he said. "It was your little gal that made me start thinkin' I needed to look."

  Cait started. "My little gal?"

  "The one in Charlie's book. The little girl in the hospital. The little girl who lost everything in the war. Seein' her made me think. It made me feel guilty, and like I needed to know. I talked to Charlie."

  "Charlie knows?"

  "Charlie and I have talked. Not about my … my child. About kids. About risk. About war. About life. About dyin'."

  Cait nodded. Yes, Charlie knew about dying. Her throat grew tight. Her eyes blurred.

  "Reckon I might never know," Walt went on resolutely. "It might be impossible. There might be too little to go on, it might be way too late. But I don't want to die without tryin', Cait." His pale-blue eyes met hers. "I don't want to die without tryin' to find 'im. Eternity is a long long time."

  As usual Gaby pulled out all the stops.

  The night of the opening, the sangria flowed and the champagne corks popped. Critics and journalists drifted along with art patrons who had more money in their checking accounts than Charlie would earn in a lifetime, casually consuming trays full of Santa Fe's trendiest hors d'oeuvres while they wandered through Sombra Y Sol's gallery rooms, murmuring and discussing the photos, Nathan's and his.
<
br />   It was Nathan's show, of course. Nathan would be the one the critics praised or scorned. He was the one whose work they would buy or walk away from. He would live or die by the results of it.

  But Nathan barely seemed to care.

  He was distracted. Preoccupied. Forgetful.

  "We're lucky he even remembered to show up," Gaby muttered, glaring at him. "At least he could have dressed for the occasion!"

  Nathan was wearing jeans and an open-necked shirt. He was standing with the same half-full glass of champagne that Gaby had handed him an hour ago. He looked startled when one of Santa Fe's biggest art patrons came up to talk to him. Watching, Gaby groaned.

  "He'll be all right," Charlie said.

  "Will he?" Gaby didn't look optimistic. "He's about as bad as you were a few months back. Couldn't follow a three-word sentence from beginning to end."

  Well, yes, Charlie could do that now—if he worked at it.

  He'd been working at it. He'd been trying hard. Working his butt off to help Gaby get the show hung. Determined to take his mind off Cait.

  It was true what he'd told her—that he didn't want to get her out of his system. But he had to function.

  If he wasn't going to have her in his life, he still had to live. He'd come back to Santa Fe with Gaby the day after she'd proposed the show to him. He'd been working flat-out ever since. It was how he coped.

  But it wasn't easy.

  His mind could still drift away in the middle of a conversation. He could still see a flash of dark hair in the other room, and if the light caught it just the right way, he would still whip his head around to see if it might be her. Some voices had nearly the same timbre as hers. Some laughs were almost, but not quite, as genuine and delighted.

  Some woman someday would probably come close.

  But no other woman was Cait.

  He'd hoped Joanna and Chase would say something encouraging, something that would give him hope.

  He'd gone to see them as soon as he'd got home. He'd walked straight into their house and put his arms around both of them and said right out, "Thank you for everything. For being there. For … loving me."

  It hadn't even been hard to say it, though he'd thought it might.

  And the looks on their faces—the joy, the tenderness, the love—had made him wish he'd had the courage to say it, and to believe in it, years ago.

  They loved him. They told him so. But they hadn't held out hope for him with regard to Cait.

  Joanna had hugged him and told him with maternal ferocity that Cait was crazy. Chase had clapped an arm around his shoulders and said, "It's hell, man. I've been there."

  He had. But at least Chase had found his way back. Eventually, Charlie reminded himself, years later Joanna had found him again. So maybe…

  But thinking things like that was the way to drive himself nuts.

  "Ah," Gaby said, patting his hand and craning her neck to look past dozens of gallery lurkers and patrons, "your family's arrived."

  And Charlie looked around, following her gaze, eager to catch a glimpse of Joanna's red curls and Chase's raven hair. He'd told them they didn't have to come.

  "It's not a big deal," he'd said. "Not a one-man show or anything."

  "It's your show," Chase had said.

  "It's a big deal," Joanna had said. "We're all coming."

  That meant they were bringing the kids, too. He was glad. For all that he'd said they didn't have to come, he was glad they had. He'd looked forward all week to them coming. He wanted them all here.

  Now he could hear seven-year-old Annie's high-pitched voice saying, "Look, Daddy. Look! There's Charlie's bears!" And he saw her tug Chase to see the bears Charlie had told her about, but not before Chase had nodded backward toward the rest who were following him.

  Charlie spotted the ten-year-old twins, Emerson and Alex. They waved to him, gave him a thumb's-up, then made a beeline for the punch bowl and the food.

  Then he saw Joanna. She caught his eye and smiled, then drew someone else forward.

  Cait.

  Charlie stared. The noise faded. The clink of glasses, the clatter of trays, soft comments, raucous laughter, droning opinions—all of it—vanished. The only thing Charlie could hear was the roar of blood in his veins.

  Cait?

  Here?

  He blinked, disbelieving. But when he looked again she was still there. Looking straight at him. There was a warmth, a tenderness, a hope in her eyes that he remembered from the days she had first loved him.

  It was the expression he'd looked for on the day he'd been shot, when he'd sought her out in the crowd of people in the light. The day she hadn't been there.

  And now she was here.

  He felt a deep, fierce ache in his throat. He felt his body begin to tremble.

  "Charlie!" Gaby's voice sounded a million miles away. "You're spilling that champagne!" Then her gaze seemed to follow his and she said quietly, "Oh. I see."

  He felt her grab the glass out of his fingers and take him by the hand and pull him across the room, through the throng of people to where Joanna stood with Cait.

  She didn't say anything when she got him there. And he didn't, either.

  He couldn't. He didn't know what to say.

  Cait did. She wasn't smiling as she looked at him. Her eyes were brimming. "Forgive me?"

  "For what?"

  Her lips trembled. "For being a fool. For doubting you. For being afraid."

  He was the one who was afraid now—afraid he was hearing things, seeing things—afraid to believe.

  "Afraid of what?" His voice sounded rusty.

  "Of loving you. I do," she said, and it sounded like a vow. "Oh, God, Charlie, I do! And I believe you love me, too!"

  A pinch-faced critic stepped between him and Cait. "I've been looking for you, Mr. Seeks Elk. We need to discuss this unpredictable highly irregular turnabout in your work."

  "I—"

  Cait was looking at him, her heart in her eyes.

  "You are the one who did those stunning post-urban chaos photos, are you not?"

  Her fingers reached out tentatively past the critic to touch his. His wrapped tightly around hers, and he gave her his own heart, though she'd had it all along.

  "I find the departure astonishing," the critic rabbited on, regarding Charlie over his spectacles with blatant disapproval. "And not a little disconcerting. I wonder how you can move so rapidly from such brutal realism to this … this … tender, hopeful…" He said the words as if they were epithets.

  "I—"

  "Can't," Gaby finished for him firmly as she took the man by the arm and drew him away. "But I'm his agent and I'll be happy to talk to you."

  The critic was only slightly mollified. He shot a look over his shoulder at Charlie and Cait.

  Gaby made shooing motions at them with her hands. "Go on," she mouthed. "Go." Then she tucked her arm into the critic's and led him away to see the mothers and the babies—the bears and the horses and the humans.

  "How do you account for this astonishing development?" the critic demanded.

  "Well," Gaby said, "I think it all began when he saw the light."

  He had her in his bed.

  He had her in his arms.

  Just as, for so long, he'd had her in his heart.

  He couldn't believe it. He'd had to keep stopping on the walk back to the apartment just to touch her, to kiss her, to reassure himself that she was really here.

  "I'm here," she'd said. "I'm here." But there was such wonder in her voice, that he guessed she didn't mind reassuring herself, too.

  "I was so wrong," she told him when they went inside and shut the door. She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging herself tightly, fiercely, shaking her head, and then she looked up at him anguished. "I'm sorry. I do love you."

  And all Charlie could think to tell her was the truth. "I love you, too."

  Then he wrapped her in his arms and held her close. He didn't kiss her this time. He just held h
er—felt the warmth of her body melt the ice that had held his heart so long, felt the gentle touch of her hands against his back, felt them press him closer. Felt their two hearts begin to beat as one.

  "How did you … Chase … Joanna?"

  "I went to find you. You were gone. So I went to find them. Joanna wasn't all that thrilled to see me. She told me a few home truths." Cait smiled a little ruefully. "And I deserved every one of them."

  "Joanna can be a little fierce," Charlie said, smiling as he stroked her cheek.

  "She loves you."

  "Yes."

  "I love you, too. I don't want to get you out of my system, either, Charlie," she whispered. "I understand about eternity now."

  His hand stilled and he looked deep into her eyes. "Do you?"

  She kissed him. "Oh, yes."

  He took her to bed then and he loved her.

  His body ached for release. But he made himself go slow. He stroked her skin. He kissed the line of her jaw, the slope of her breasts, their peaks and the valley between. He moved over her, touching and brushing. His hands shook. His body trembled. He reined it in.

  He was making memories. He was storing up pieces of eternity.

  Until finally Cait wrapped her arms around him and drew him down and into her warmth. He felt her body clench and heard her cry out. And he closed his eyes and saw the light—and gave himself up to their love—and to her.

  They had more than time now. Their love went beyond.

  Charlie had never seen snow.

  "Never seen snow?" Cait had been astonished when he'd told her that. It had been September then. They'd come back to the ranch from their honeymoon in Jamaica to find two inches of snow on the ground.

  He'd shaken his head. "Never." And he'd scooped it up in his hand, oddly surprised when it felt so cold. He'd tried packing it into a snowball, but it hadn't worked. He wasn't skilled at it. Something else he'd had to learn.

  Now it was December. He could mend a fence now. He could spot black leg and scours. He could make a snowball. And a snowman. And he could shovel it for hours.