"It took me nearly two years with Margaret," he said honestly. And he had only been out with two women so far and hated both of them for not being her. He knew all about the pain of adjusting. At least she didn't have that to deal with, though he still didn't know about her husband. "It must have been very hard on your husband too," he said, fishing for information, but she didn't understand that. He had seen the narrow wedding band, but the way she spoke didn't confirm that she was married, "Actually," she decided to be honest with him. "It was hard on him. Our marriage didn't survive it."

Hartley nodded. He knew about that too, though not firsthand, but from a cousin who had been through it. It was not surprising. "Where is he now?"

"In London," she said, and he nodded. It was what he had wanted to know. And he assumed that meant Bill lived there. Mary Stuart didn't understand why he had asked her and just thought he was being friendly. It had been a long time since a man had shown an interest in her, and she didn't fully comprehend that that was the case now with this one. For the moment, she just thought they were fellow riders, although she liked him immensely, and was amazed at how easy he was to talk to.

He asked if they would join him for dinner, and she said she'd ask the others, and he left her to do some work, and read his mail Like many of them, he was managing to maintain contact with his office from a distance, and he was planning to do a little work here. He promised to see her at dinner, and when the others came in, she told them about the invitation. And predictably, they teased her, especially Tanya.

"Quick work, Stu! I like him." She was smiling at Mary Stuart and Mary Stuart threw a small cushion at her in outrage.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, he invited all of us to dinner, not just me, you dummy. He's lonely. He lost his wife, and he has no one to talk to."

"He seemed to be doing fine with you." Tanya pursued her mercilessly, and Mary Stuart told her she was silly.

"He's very nice, very intelligent, and very lonely."

"And very interested in you. I'm not blind, for Heaven's sake, even if you are. I think you've been married for so long, you don't even see it when guys look at you."

"And what about you and the wrangler?" Mary Stuart teased her right back. They were like freshmen. "He seems to have overcome his speech block. You even had him smiling."

"He's a real character. He lives here alone in the winter, in twenty feet of snow." She didn't tell them that he listened to her music. But there was certainly nothing romantic between them. Just horses.

"I think you're both blind." Zoe addressed both of them. "Hartley Bowman looks like he's crazy about Stu, and unless I've lost my touch entirely, I'd say by the time we leave here, our wrangler is going to be head over heels for Tanya. I predict it for the yearbook." They both laughed at her, and Tanya raised an eyebrow. It was so outlandish, she didn't even bother to comment.

"And what about you, Zoe? Are you going to break up that marriage and run off with the doctor from Chicago?" He was short, round, and bald, and even the thought of it was really funny.

"Unfortunately, his wife is more interesting than he is, which is a real problem. I'd have to run off with her, and that's not my thing, I'm afraid, so I guess that leaves me high and dry here."

"There's always Sam!" Tanya reminded her, and Zoe groaned. That was not a reminder she wanted.

"Mind your own business. Little does he know that he has a champion in Wyoming. Tell you what, Tan, when you come to San Francisco, I'll introduce you, and you can go out with him. You'd like him."

"That's a deal. Now, let's talk about Mary Stuart." She turned her attention to her and Mary Stuart groaned in anticipation. "Tell us about your new friend."

"There's nothing to tell. I told you. He's just lonely."

"So are you, so am I. So is Zoe. So what else is new?" Tanya said, lying down on the couch. Her legs ached. They had done a lot of riding.

"I'm not lonely," Zoe corrected her. "I'm very happy."

"I know, you're a saint. You just don't know you're lonely. Trust me," Tanya said, and they all laughed.

"Forget all these guys, I'm going out with Benjamin," Zoe said with a smile. He was an adorable child, and they had both liked him.

"Great choice," Tanya said, and Mary Stuart said nothing, but asked them what they wanted to do about dinner with Hartley. Should they accept his invitation to sit at his table? "Why not? Maybe we'll get Mary Stuart all fixed up with him."

"Relax," Mary Stuart said soberly, "I'm still married."

"Does he know that?" Zoe asked with interest. Mary Stuart wore a wedding band, but he might have wondered where her husband was and why she had come to the ranch with two women.

"He didn't ask actually," Mary Stuart said, confirming her belief that he was only interested in friendship. "He asked where my husband was at one point, and I said in London."

"Oh-oh," Tanya said wisely. "You'd better clear that up. I think that's what he was asking, he may have gotten the wrong impression from that." But what was the right one?

"I told him our marriage didn't survive when my son died," she said casually.

"You told him that?" Tanya looked startled. That was a lot to say to a perfect stranger. But they had spent six hours riding side by side. It was more time together than some couples spent in a week's time, and he had been very interested in her.

"Maybe I should tell him I'm still married," though she didn't know for how much longer. But somehow it seemed presumptuous to just volunteer that information. What if he really didn't care if she was married? "I'll see what seems appropriate. I really don't think he's interested like that," Mary Stuart said demurely, and the other two hooted at her.

"You're both disgusting," she said, and went to take a shower, while Zoe called Sam. She wanted to know what was happening in her office, but he was in a treatment room with a patient. And Annalee told her that everything was going smoothly. She went to lie down after that, and had a short nap before dinner. She was surprised at how well she felt when she got up. Sleep really made a difference.

The three of them dined with Hartley that night. He was intelligent, interesting, and wonderfully worldly. He had traveled everywhere, knew fascinating things, and knew all kinds of intriguing people. And more than that, he was a nice man, and was extremely polite about dividing his attention. He never left anyone out, and all three of them felt as though he enjoyed being with them. But when they walked back to the cabin afterward, and he accompanied them, he walked along beside Mary Stuart. And he spoke to her in a gentle voice that seemed meant for her ears and no others. Tanya and Zoe went inside when they arrived at their cabin, and Mary Stuart stayed outside with Hartley for a while. She wasn't sure how to bring it up, but she thought the others had made a good point that afternoon about telling him that she was married.

"I feel a little foolish saying this to you," she explained, as they sat peacefully beneath a nearly full moon that shone blue on the snow atop the glaciers. "And I have no idea if it means anything to you, but I just didn't want to mislead you. I'm married," she said, and was startled to see a look of disappointment in his eyes. "My husband is working in London for the summer. I realized that what I may have said to you might have given you a different impression. To be honest with you," and she always was with everyone, "I'm planning to leave him at the end of the summer. I needed some time to decide what to do, but our marriage died with our son, and now I think it's time to move" on, put us both out of our misery, and end it."

"Will your husband be surprised?" Hartley asked quietly. He was looking at her very intently. He barely knew her, and yet he liked her honesty, her kindness, and her directness. But he was sorry to hear she was still married. Perhaps, in the long run, it didn't make any difference. She sounded pretty definite about it being over with her husband. "Do you think your husband is aware of what you're feeling?"

"I don't see how he couldn't be. He's barely spoken to me for a year. We have no marriage, no life, no friendship. He blames me for our son's death, and I don't think anything will ever change that. I can't live like that anymore. I don't mean to tell you my problems, but I just wanted you to know that I am actually still married for the moment, although I don't think I will be for too much longer."

"Thank you for being honest with me," he smiled. It was incredible even to him how much he liked her. She was the first woman he had really liked since Margaret died, and after only one day, he was crazy about her. But everything here was in triple time. It was very much like being on shipboard.

"I hope you don't think I'm crazy for bringing it up, I just don't want to mislead you. I'm sure it doesn't make any difference to you... it's just..." She was suddenly mortified to have told him any of it, and she was stumbling over her words. What difference could it possibly make to him that she was married? She was suddenly furious with the other two for influencing her, and she felt really stupid. But as she sat there uncomfortably, he looked at her and he was smiling.

"I have no idea what I'm doing here, Mary Stuart. I wasn't even going to come here this year. I've been feeling sorry for myself for two years, and I haven't looked at another woman. And now suddenly here you are, like a bright ray of sunshine on the mountains, and all I can tell you is that I've never been so bowled over by anyone before. I have no idea what this will be, or what you want, or even what I do, or if you'd even be interested in me, but I just want you to know that I barely know you, but I care very much about you. I hate the fact that you lost your son," he said, as he gently put an arm around her, and he pulled her slowly against his shoulder. "I hated the look in your eyes when you saw that little boy this afternoon, and I wanted to take all that hurt away from you. And actually, although I can't believe I'm saying this, I don't like the fact that you're not divorced, but I'm not even sure that that's important. I have no idea if you'll ever want to see me again after next week, and I'm probably making a terrible fool of myself, and if I am, tell me, and I won't do more than tip my hat at you for the rest of the trip." His eyes were searching hers in the moonlight and hers were full of tears. They were all the things she had wanted Bill to say and he never had. He had completely abandoned her, and suddenly there was this stranger, answering all her prayers. "I just want to be with you, and talk to you, and learn about you... and then let's see what happens." What more could one ask? She sat looking at him, unable to believe what she was hearing.

"Am I dreaming this?" she asked, looking at him with eyes full of tears and wishes. Was it possible to find someone like him?

"That's how I felt all afternoon today. Let's not look for any answers quite so soon. Let's just enjoy it," he said, feeling her hair brush his cheek, he closed his eyes, breathing in her perfume. He didn't say another word, he just sat there, holding her for a long time, until he felt her begin to tremble. It was only partly from the chill, the rest was pure emotion. She had only arrived the day before, and seen him for the first time that morning. But she had read everything he'd ever written, and almost felt she knew him, and they had talked for hours and bared their souls, and they shared a powerful attraction.

"You're cold, I'll take you in," he said, wishing he didn't have to leave her. She stopped and looked up at him, and once again he put his arm around her.

"Thank you for everything," she whispered, feeling him close to her, and then he walked her to the door and left her there. She slipped inside, hoping the others had gone to bed, and she was grateful to find they had. But when she went into her own room she found a fax on her bed, from Bill. It was painfully simple.

"Hope all goes well. Work is satisfactory here in London. Best regards to your friend. Bill." That was it. And at the bottom, in her lacy handwriting, Tanya had scrawled across the page, "If I were you, I'd call my lawyer." It was certainly dry, and suddenly life was giving her a brand-new opportunity. A door was closing behind her, but another, just ahead, was beginning to open. And through it, she could finally see sunlight on the mountains.

Chapter 14.

The next morning, Zoe and Mary Stuart dragged Tanya out of bed together.

"Rise and shine!" Zoe said, as Mary Stuart pulled the covers off and took Tanya's mask off "You're both sadists!" Tanya groaned, squinting in the sunlight. "My God, what is that... I'm going blind." She rolled over on her stomach and refused to move as the other two pulled her off the bed just as they had in college, "It's called sunshine, and there's lots of it outside," Mary Stuart said, as Tanya sat slowly upright in pink shorty pajamas. "If I didn't know you better I'd think you were a drunk, the way you wake up in the morning."

"It's just old age. I need a lot of sleep," she said, staggering slowly to the bathroom.

"Well, Big Max is waiting," Zoe added.

"Tell him to go back to sleep, he'll feel a lot better," she said, yawning, but twenty minutes later she was dressed and showered, and she looked as spectacular as she did every morning. She was wearing pale pink jeans and a pale pink T-shirt, her old yellow boots, and a pink bandanna. Her hair was down her back in a long braid, and there were soft tendrils around her face that made her look incredibly sexy.

"That ought to catch your wrangler's attention," Mary Stuart said, when she saw Tanya's outfit. She looked better than ever. "It's a shame you're so ugly." Mary Stuart smiled at her, suddenly anxious to see Hartley. She had thought about him all night, and she felt like a kid waiting to see him that morning. For the moment, they were just friends, but the undercurrent of something more intrigued her.

They were on their way to the dining room, when Benjamin crossed their path again, and Mary Stuart looked as though she'd seen a ghost as he walked beside them. He wanted to stand next to her, and it was almost eerie the way he wanted to be near her.

"Where's your mom, Benjamin?" Zoe asked, sensing Mary Stuart's discomfort. It was easy to see why. Although she had never seen Todd, the child actually looked like Mary Stuart.

"She's sleeping," he said matter-of-factly. "My dad told me to go get breakfast."

"How come she gets to sleep and I don't?" Tanya complained.

"She's eight months pregnant," Zoe explained to her.

"I'm going to look like a hag by the time we leave if you guys don't let me get some sleep. It's not good for your health to wake up this early."

"Who said that?" Zoe grinned.

"I did." Tanya glared at her as they stepped into the main building, and the three of them strode across the dining room a moment later, with Benjamin right behind them. He was sticking to them like glue, and Mary Stuart was determined to ignore him. But when they sat down at the table they'd used the day before, he sat right down with them. Tanya was amused by him, and Zoe liked him too, but neither of them wanted to upset Mary Stuart. They tried to suggest he go sit with his friends, but he absolutely didn't want to.

"It's okay," Mary Stuart said to them finally. "Don't make a big issue of it."

"Are you okay?" Tanya asked her pointedly, and Mary Stuart nodded.

"I'm all right." You couldn't protect yourself to that extent. No matter how much it hurt to see him sitting there, you couldn't create a world without children.

"Nice fax from your husband last night, by the way," Tanya commented as she drank her orange juice. "Very warm and emotional and loving. Nice guy," she said, and Mary Stuart smiled. "Sorry I read it, but I couldn't help it Are you going to answer?"

"There's not much to say." And then she thought of something. The night before had been almost dreamlike, and she was beginning to wonder if it had ever happened, sitting there with Hartley's arms around her, holding her close, and him telling her he wanted to get to know her. "By the way, I clarified things with Hartley last night, about my husband. You were right, I think he did misunderstand what I said. But now he's clear."

"Did he care?"

She tried to sound cool about it, but the others didn't believe her. "Why would he?"

"Because I don't think he's interested in offering you a secretarial position," Tanya explained as though she were retarded. "The guy likes you."

"We'll see what happens," Mary Stuart said calmly, and couldn't help noticing Benjamin in his red cowboy hat staring at her.

"You look kind of like my mom," he said, looking at her, "and my Aunt Mary."

"My name is Mary too," she said to make conversation, "Mary Stuart. That's kind of weird, isn't it? Stuart was my daddy's name, and he wanted me to be a boy, so that's what they named me."

"Oh," he said, nodding. And then, "Do you have any children?" He was far more interested in her than the others, it was as though he sensed something different about her.

"Yes, I have a daughter, but she's very big now. She's twenty."

"Do you have boys too?" he asked, munching on a Danish Zoe gave him.

"No, I don't," Mary Stuart answered, and the child was too young to understand the tears in her eyes as she said it.

"I like boys better," he said matter-of-factly. "I hope my mom doesn't have a girl when the baby comes. I don't like girls. They're stupid."

"Some of them are okay," Mary Stuart explained, and he shrugged, unconvinced in his prejudice about females.

"They cry too much when you push them," he said, by way of an explanation, and Zoe and Tanya exchanged a smile as they listened. Maybe it was good for her to have to talk to him, they wondered silently. Like kind of a vaccination.

"Some girls are pretty brave," Mary Stuart said in defense of her sex, but he lost interest in the subject and ate a piece of bacon, and a little while later he wandered off again when he saw his father. His mother came into the dining room a little while later too, and Mary Stuart noticed that she was hugely pregnant. Her husband had explained to Zoe earlier that the altitude was making her feel wretched.

"I hope you don't wind up delivering a baby," Mary Stuart said in an undertone. "She looks like she's having triplets."

"God, no. There's a hospital here. I don't carry forceps with me. And I haven't delivered a baby since I was an intern. It scared the hell out of me. Delivering babies is a lot scarier than what I do. Too much can go wrong, too many split-second decisions, too many elements you can't control, and I hate dealing with people in that much pain. I'd rather do dermatology than obstetrics," Zoe said with feeling. Mary Stuart said she thought it would be fun, and a really cheerful job, since most of the time it had a happy outcome. Tanya said then that she wondered what it was like having a baby. She had wanted lots of them when she was young, but as her life had unfolded, the opportunity had never happened. And it intrigued Mary Stuart to realize that of all of them, she was the only one who had ever borne children.

"Maybe it was something subliminal they told us at Berkeley," Zoe said, smiling at them. She was happy she had adopted.

"I would have loved to have kids," Tanya said, "I loved having Tony's kids around, they were great children." She wondered if she'd ever see them again, for more than a few minutes. It was all so unkind, losing them, losing him, and when all was said and done, he could just take them and leave her. It made her think that somewhere along the way she should have had her own kids, then no one could have taken them away, and she'd have had them forever, or maybe not, she realized, as she thought of Mary Stuart.

They finished breakfast just in time, and hurried down to the corral. Hartley was already down there, and he looked pleased to see Mary Stuart. Their eyes met and held for a long time, and he stood very close to her as they waited to mount their horses. The doctors from Chicago were back again, and the same groups formed as the day before. Zoe rode with them, and Hartley rode alongside Mary Stuart, which left Tanya and the wrangler to ride ahead again, and this time he tried to make more of an effort.

"You look very nice today," he said, looking straight ahead, and sounding like a robot, and she could see there was a faint flush on his cheekbones as he said it. He was really embarrassed, and she tried to put him at ease as they rode along, but it took a while to do it. After a while, he asked her a few questions about Hollywood, the people she'd met. He asked if she'd ever met Tom Cruise or Kevin Costner or Cher, and he told her he'd seen Harrison Ford in Jackson Hole that summer. She said she'd met them all, and she and Cher had been in a movie together.

"It's funny," he said, looking at her with narrowed eyes, "looking at you, you don't look like that kind of person."

"What does that mean?" He confused her.

"I mean, you're like someone real, not like some movie star or big singer or something. You're just like a regular woman. You ride, you talk a lot, you laugh, you've got a pretty good sense of humor." He glanced over at her with the beginnings of a smile, and this time without blushing. "It's hard to remember after a while that you're the one on the CD's and in the movies."

"If that's a compliment, thank you. If you're telling me I'm a disappointment to you, that's okay too. The bottom line is I'm just a girl from Texas." She was smiling at him, as he admired the pink T-shirt.

"No." He shook his head, glancing at her appraisingly with wise eyes. There was a lot more to Gordon than met the eye on first impression. "There's a lot more to you than that. And you know that. It's just that you're not phony, the way they are."

"The way who is?"

"Other movie stars I've met. They don't even ride when they come here. We've had them all. Politicians, movie stars, even a couple of singers. They just show off a lot, and expect a whole lot of special treatment."

"I asked for a lot of towels, and a coffeepot," she confessed, and he laughed. "Besides, I put on the card that I hate horses."

"I don't believe you," he said, looking more relaxed with her than he had the previous morning. He had hardly dared to speak to her for most of the day before. This was a lot better. While he chatted with her, he was fun to ride with. "You're from Texas," he said approvingly. It said something about her, as far as he was concerned. People from Texas didn't hate horses. "And you're just a regular woman." The funny thing was that she was just that, and he knew it. It was what she had been with Bobby Joe, and Hollywood had screwed it all up, and it was what she had tried to be with Tony. But Tony had wanted a movie star, with none of the problems that went with it. He wanted something that, even with the best of intentions, she just couldn't give him.

"I am a regular woman, but the world I live in doesn't give me much chance to be. I don't have much of a life, to tell you the truth, and I never will now. I hate that, but that's the way it is. The press will never let me have a real life. And even the people who meet me won't. They want you to be what they think you are, and then when they get close to you, they want to hurt you." Even talking about it, it sounded crazy.

"It sounds awful," he said, watching her with interest. He was surprised at how much he liked her. He hadn't wanted to, but she was completely different than he'd expected. He had done everything he could not to be her wrangler, and now he was glad Liz hadn't listened to him. She was actually pleasant to be with.

"It is awful," she said quietly. "Sometimes I think it'll kill me. Maybe it will one day, or a fan will." She said it so sadly that he shook his head as he listened.

"How can you live like that? I don't care what they pay you, it's not worth it," he said, as their horses began loping.

"It's not the money. Not entirely. It's what I do. That's my life. I sing. You can't go backward, you can't hide. If I want to do what I do, then I have to put up with all that."