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is looking forward to seeing you, Sam. It’s been kind of lonely for her ever since Barb died. You know, she talks about you a heck of a lot. I always wondered if you’d come back. I didn’t really think so after the last time.” They had left the ranch early, and John had made no secret of the fact that he’d been bored stiff.
    “I would have come back, sooner or later. I was always hoping to stop here when I went to L. A. on business, but I never had enough time.”
    “And now? You quit your job, Sam?” He had only avague idea that she had something to do with commercials, but he had no clear picture of what, and he didn’t really care. Caroline had told him that it was a good job, it made her happy, and that was all that counted. He knew what her husband did, of course. Everyone in the country knew John Taylor, by face as well as by name. Bill King had never liked him, but he sure as hell knew who he was.
    “No, Bill, I didn’t quit. I’m on leave.”
    “Sick leave?” He looked worried as they drove through the hills.
    Sam hesitated for only a moment. “Not really. Kind of a rest cure, I guess.” For a minute she was going to leave it at that and then she decided to tell him. “John and I split up.” He raised a questioning eyebrow But said nothing, and she went on. “Quite a while ago actually. At least it seems like it. It’s been three or four months.” A hundred and two days, to be exact. She had counted every one of them. “And I guess they just thought I needed the break at the office.” It sounded lousy to her as she said it, and suddenly she felt panic rise in her as it had that morning when she spoke to Harvey. Were they really firing her and just didn’t want to tell her yet? Did they think she couldn’t take the pressure? Did they think she’d already cracked up? But when she looked at Bill King, she saw that he was nodding, as though it all made perfect sense to him.
    “Sounds right to me, babe.” His voice was reassuring. “It’s damn hard to keep on going when you hurt.” He stopped for a moment and then went on. “I found that out years ago when my wife died. I thought I could stillhandle my job on the ranch I was working on then. But after a week my boss said, ‘Bill, my boy, I’m givin’ you a month’s money, you go on home to your folks and come back when the money’s gone.’ You know, Sam, I was mad as fire when he did it, thought he was telling me that I couldn’t handle the job, but he was right. I went to my sister’s outside Phoenix, stayed for about six weeks, and when I came back, I was myself again. You can’t expect a man nor a woman to keep going all the time. Sometimes you have to give him room for grief.”
    He didn’t tell her that he had taken three months off twenty-five years later, time off from the Lord ranch, when his son was killed during the early days of Vietnam. For three months he had been so stricken that he had barely been able to talk. It was Caroline who had nursed him out of it, who had listened, who had cared, who had finally come to find him in a bar in Tucson and dragged him home. He had a job to do on the ranch, she had told him, and enough was enough. She barked at him like a drill sergeant and heaped work on him until he thought he would die. She had shouted, yelled, argued, bullied, until finally one day they had almost come to blows out in the south pasture. They had gotten off their horses, and she had swung at him, and he had knocked her right on her ass, and then suddenly she had been laughing at him, and she laughed until the tears ran from her eyes in streams, and he laughed just as hard and knelt beside her to help her up, and it was then that he had kissed her for the first time.
    It had been eighteen years ago that August, and he had never loved another woman as he loved her. She was theonly woman he had actually ached for, longed for, lusted after, laughed with, worked with, dreamed with, and respected more than he