their cutesy little routine and talking about their precious baby as though the whole world cared that she was pregnant, and it used to turn me inside out. Once when I came in, Caro was watching it, and I almost felt sick. And you know what happened tonight when that plastic face came on the screen?” She looked at Tate expectantly but got no answer. “Absolutely nothing happened. Nothing. I didn't feel a damn thing. Not sick, not nervous, not pissed off, not left out. Nothing.” She smiled broadly. “I just don't care.”
With that, Tate got up, stalked across the room, and turned off the set. “I think that's wonderful. You used to be married to one of America's best-looking young heroes, clean-cut preppie John Taylor of television fame, and he leaves you and you find yourself a tired old cowboy, some ten or twelve years older than our hero, without a goddamn dime to his name, shoveling shit on a ranch, and you're trying to tell me that this is bliss? Not only is this bliss, but it's permanent bliss. Is that it, Samantha?” He was steaming, and Samantha felt helpless as she watched. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“Why? What difference does it make? Besides, he is not nearly as well known or successful as you seem to think he is.” But that wasn't quite true.
“Bullshit. You want to see my bank account, baby, and compare it to his? What does he make every year? A hundred grand? Two? Three? You know what I make, Samantha? You want to know? Eighteen thousand before taxes, and that was a big raise for me because I'm the assistant foreman. I'm forty-three years old, for chrissake, and compared to him, I don't make shit.”
“So what? Who gives a damn?” She was suddenly shouting as loud as he was, but she realized that it was because she was scared. Something had just happened to Tate when he learned that she and John had been married, and it frightened her. She didn't expect him to take it this hard. “The point is…” She made a conscious effort to lower her voice as she smoothed the blanket over her legs. By now Tate was pacing the room. “The point is what happened between us, what kind of people we were, what we were like to each other, what happened at the end, why he left me, how I felt about him and Liz and their baby. That's what matters, not how much money he makes or the fact that they're on TV. Besides,
“So how come you didn't tell me who you were married to?” He sounded suspicious of her now, and she lay back in the bed and tugged at her hair, trying not to scream before she sat up to face him again, which she did with a look in her eye almost as ferocious as the look in his.
“Because I didn't think it was important.”
“Bullshit. You thought I'd feel like two cents, and you know something, sister?” He walked across the room and started to pull on his pants. “You were right. I do.”
“Then you're crazy.” She was shouting at him openly now, trying to fight his illusions with the truth. “Because you're worth fifty, a hundred, John Taylors. He's a selfish little son of a bitch who hurt me, for chrissake. You're a grown man, and a smart one, and a good one, and you've done nothing but be good to me since we met.” She looked around the room where they had spent all their evening hours for three months, and saw the paintings he had bought her to cheer the place up, the comfortable bed he had bought, even the color TV now to amuse her, the pretty sheets they made love on, the books he thought she'd like. She saw the flowers that he picked her whenever he thought no one was looking, the fruit he had brought just for her from the orchards, the sketch of her he had done one Sunday at the lake. She thought of the moments and the hours and the gestures, the rolls of film they had taken and the secrets they had shared and she knew once again, for the hundredth time, that John Taylor wasn't fit to lick Tate Jordan's boots. There were tears in her eyes when she spoke again and her voice was suddenly husky and deep. “I don't compare you to him, Tate. I love you. I don't love him anymore. That's all that means anything. Please try to understand that. That's all that matters to me.” She reached out to him but he kept his distance, and after a few minutes she let her hand drop to her side as she knelt naked on the bed with tears rolling slowly down her face.
“And you think all of that will mean something to you in five years? Oh, lady, don't be so naive. Five years from now I'll be just another cowboy, and he'll still be one of the most important people on television in this country. You think you won't stare at the set every night while you wash dishes and ask yourself how you wound up with me? This isn't playacting, you know. This is real life. Ranch life. Hard work. No money. This isn't a commercial you're making, lady, this is real.” She began to cry harder now at the fierceness of his words.
“Don't you think it's real to me?”
“How could it be, for chrissake? How could it be, Sam? Look at what you come from and how I live. What's your apartment in New York like? A penthouse on Fifth Avenue? Some fancy-schmancy number with a doorman and a French poodle and marble floors?”
“No, it's a top floor in a town house, a walk-up, if that makes you feel any better.”
“And it's filled with antiques.”
“I have some.”
“They ought to look real cute here.” He said it with feeling and turned away from her to put on his shoes.
“Why the hell are you so angry?” She was shouting again and crying at the same time. “I'm sorry if I didn't tell you I was married to John Taylor. As it so happens, you're much more impressed with him than I am. I just didn't think it mattered as much as you seem to think.”
“Anything else you didn't tell me? Your father is the. president of General Motors, you grew up in the White House, you're an heiress?” He looked at her with hostility, and stark naked, she sprang from his bed like a long, lithe cat.
“No, I'm an epileptic and you're about to give me a fit.” But he didn't even smile at her attempt to tease him out of his mood. He simply went into the bathroom and closed the door, while Sam waited, and when he came out, he glanced at her impatiently.
“Come on, put on your clothes.”
“Why? I don't want to.” She felt terror creep into her heart. “I'm not leaving.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I'm not.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Not until we hash this thing out. I want you to know once and for all that that man doesn't mean anything to me and that I love you. Do you think you can get that through your fat head?”
“What difference does it make?”
“It makes a big difference to me. Because I love you, you big dummy.” She lowered her voice and smiled gently at him, but he didn't return the smile. Instead he looked at her pointedly and picked up a cigar, but he only played with it, he didn't light it.
“You should go back to New York.”
“Why? To chase after a husband I don't want? We're divorced. Remember that? I like it that way now. I'm in love with you.”
“What about your job? You're going to give that up for ranch life too?”
“As a matter of fact…” She took a deep breath and almost trembled. What she was about to say now was the biggest step of all, and she knew that she hadn't yet completely thought it through, but it was the time to say it, tonight. She didn't have more time to think it out. “… that's exactly what I've been thinking of doing. Quitting my job and staying here for good.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“Why?”
“You don't belong here.” He sounded exhausted as he said the words. “You belong there, in your apartment, working at your high-powered job, getting involved with some man in that world. You don't belong with a cowboy, living in a one-room cabin, shoveling horse shit, and roping steer. Besides, for chrissake, you're a lady.”
“You make it sound very romantic.” She tried to sound sarcastic again but tears stung her eyes.
“It isn't romantic, Sam. Not a bit. That's the whole point. You think it's a fantasy and it's not. Neither am I. I happen to be real.”
“So am I. And that's the issue. You refuse to believe that I'm real too, that I have real needs and am a real person and can exist away from New York and my apartment and my job. You refuse to believe that I might want to
