The Cowboy

more energetically at the sound of her name. Margaret smiled briefly and found it something of an effort. She realized that she was suddenly feeling tired and curiously let down.
    There was more to it than that, she acknowledged as she crossed the well-appointed lobby and stepped into the elevator. An unusual sense of loneliness had descended on her after the wedding reception had ended. The excitement of planning the event and the fun of seeing her two best friends again was over.
    Her friends were both gone now, Sarah on her mysterious honeymoon, Kate back to Amethyst Island. It would be a long time before Margaret saw either of them again and when she did things would be a little different.
    In the past they had all shared the freedom of their singlehood together. Late evening calls suggesting a stroll to the Pike Place Market for ice cream, Saturday morning coffee together at an espresso bar downtown while they bounced plot ideas off each other, the feeling of being able to telephone one another at any hour of the day or night; all that had been changed in the twinkling of two wedding rings. Sarah had found her adventurer and Kate had found her pirate.
    Sarah and Kate were still her closest friends in the world, Margaret told herself. Nothing, not even marriage, could ever change that. The bond between them that had been built initially on the fact that they all wrote romance novels, had grown too strong and solid to ever be fractured by time or distance. But the practicalities of the friendship had definitely been altered.
    Marriage had a way of doing that, Margaret reflected wryly. A year ago she herself had come very close to being snared in the bonds of matrimony. A part of her still wondered what her life would be like now if she had married Rafe Cassidy.
    The answer to that question was easy. She would have been miserable. The only way she would have been happy with Rafe was by changing him and no woman could ever change Rafe Cassidy. Everyone who knew him recognized that Cassidy was a law unto himself.
    Now what on earth had brought back the painful memories of Rafe?
    She was getting maudlin. Probably a symptom of post-wedding party letdown. She thought she had successfully exorcised that damned cowboy from her mind.
    Margaret stepped out of the elevator into the hushed, gray-carpeted hall. Near her door a soft light glowed from a glass fixture set above a small wooden table that held an elegant bouquet of flowers. The flowers were shades of palest mauve and pink.
    Margaret halted to fish her key out of her small gilded purse. Then she slid the key into the lock and turned the handle. She thought fleetingly of bed and knew that, tired though she was, she was not yet ready to sleep. Perhaps she would go over the last chapter of her current manuscript. There were a few changes she wanted to make.
    It was as she pushed open the door and stepped into the small foyer that she realized something was wrong. Margaret froze and peered into the shadows of her living room. For a moment she saw nothing but deeper shadow and then her vision adjusted to the darkness and she saw the long legs clad in gray trousers.
    They ended in hand-tooled Western boots that were arrogantly propped on her coffee table. The boots were fashioned of very supple, very expensive, pearl gray leather into which had been worked an intricate design of desert flowers beautifully detailed in rich tones of gold and blue.
    A pearl gray Stetson had been carelessly tossed onto the table beside the boots.
    The hair on the back of Margaret's neck suddenly lifted as a sense of impending danger washed over her.
    Sarah's words came back in a searing flash.
Promise me you'll be careful
.
    She should have heeded her friend's intuitive warning, Margaret thought. Instinctively she took a step back toward the safety of the hall.
    "Don't run from me, Maggie. This time I'll come after you."
    Margaret stopped, riveted at the sound of the deep, rough-textured voice. It was a terrifyingly familiar voice—a voice that a year ago had been capable of sending chills of anticipation through her—a voice that had ultimately driven her away from the man she loved with words so cruel they still scalded her heart.
    For one wild moment Margaret wondered if her thoughts had somehow managed to conjure reality out of thin air. Then again, perhaps she was hallucinating.
    But the boots and the hat did not disappear when she briefly closed her eyes and reopened them.
    "What on