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Her little friend shivered heavily.
“I know. It gives me cold chills just to think about it now.” Casey leaned down and rubbed her cheek against the back of the animal’s head. Her feet felt like two blocks of muddy ice and she was beginning to lose feeling in her fingers altogether. Stupid weather. Trying to ignore her own discomfort, she kept talking to her little friend. “The worst part was telling everyone that there wouldn’t be a wedding. You should have seen their faces, pal.”
He mooed quietly.
“Who?” she asked with a choked laugh. “The people in the church, of course.” She sniffed. “And my parents. It’s a good thing for Steven that his note said he was going to Mexico. If my father had been able to get his hands on that jerk…” She sighed and lifted her head to look at her new friend again. “It’s not every day a girl gets jilted, you know. Don’t you think I should be feeling worse than I am about all this?”
The calf shook its head.
“I don’t, either,” Casey’s fingers stroked the animal’s rough yet smooth hide. She shivered hard before saying, “Now don’t be offended because I said your eyes were like Steven’s. It’s not your fault, after all. Besides,” she pointed out with a wry smile, “you seem to have a much more pleasant personality.”
The calf moved and stomped on her toes.
She yelped and dragged her foot out from under the animal’s hoof. “You dance like Steven, too.”
The wind kicked up, snatching at her veil and flinging it out around her. “I know it’s hard to believe now,” she told the squirming calf, “but a few hours ago, I looked pretty good.”
An image leaped in her brain. Of her, standing at the back of the church, waiting for her cue to start down the incredibly long pine-bough-decorated aisle at her father’s side. She’d looked at her ten maids of honor lined up in front of her and realized she didn’t really know any of them.
Oh, they went to the same functions. Told the same stories. Laughed at the same jokes. But not one of those ten women would she have considered a friend. Then it had struck her that the one real friend she had wasn’t even attending her wedding. Annie had refused to watch her friend make what she called a “giant mistake.”
The doubts she’d been battling for months had risen in her again. But then the organ music had started, swelling out into the church and stealing away her breath. The first bridesmaid had been about to start her staggered walk down the aisle when an usher had brought Casey the note from Steven.
During the next few interminably long minutes, she’d endured curious stares, hushed whispers and even a muffled laugh or two. She hadn’t been able to find a friendly face anywhere in the crowd of surprised disappointed guests.
Even her parents had been too stunned to offer comfort to her. Her father, grim-faced and tight-lipped, stood awkwardly patting her mother’s shoulder as she wept quietly into her hanky. The twins, Casey’s older brothers, looked as though they just wanted to find someone to punch.
Naturally, when she ran out of the church a few minutes later and jumped into her sports car—which one of her brothers had thoughtfully driven to the church—she’d instinctively headed for her one real friend.
The only person she could count on to listen to her. To tell her that she wasn’t crazy. That she was right to feel as though she’d just escaped from prison.
Annie Parrish.
Casey yanked her full skirt a little higher over the animal’s back and told herself that all she had to do now was find the Parrish ranch. Hopefully before she froze to death. It had been only five years since her family had moved out of Simpson. Why did everything look so different?
The rain, she thought. She was only disoriented because of the rain. When the storm passed, she would find the ranch. If the storm passed, her mind added silently. She glanced up at the black clouds overhead, noted the wind-whipped trees surrounding the meadow and fought down her first thread of worry. For all she knew, it could start snowing any minute. By morning she would be nothing more than the ice statue of a haggard-looking bride.
The Irish lace and ivory silk dress she wore felt as though it weighed five hundred pounds. The fabric had soaked up the rain like a dime-store sponge, and the heavy mud along the hemline wasn’t helping the situation any. Idly she wondered what the gown’s designer would say if she could see her creation now.
The world’s most expensive tent for water-logged calves.
And what, Casey asked herself, would her father say?
She groaned quietly and closed her eyes for a second or two. Henderson Oakes wasn’t going to be a happy man for quite a while. No doubt he would take Casey’s being jilted as a personal affront. Though basically good people, her parents were far more concerned about how things looked than with how things really were.
Better not to even think about them yet.
The rain came down harder and began to feel like a thousand cold knives stabbing her body. Her back ached from hunching over the calf. Her arms were scratched from clawing her way through barbed wire to rescue the little beast. She’d lost one shoe to the muck and she definitely felt a cold coming on.
With any luck it would develop into pneumonia.
“Here comes the bride,” she sang softly, then stopped abruptly. If she wasn’t so blasted tired and if she wasn’t afraid she’d sink neck deep in mud, Casey would have plopped right down on the ground and had a good cry.
“What in hell are you doing, lady?”
The deep gravelly voice seemed to come out of nowhere. She jumped, staggered and fell across the calf’s sturdy little body. Throwing one hand down onto the muddy ground, Casey broke her fall and ignored the tiny twinge of pain that shot through her wrist. She cocked her head to one side and looked through her veil’s saturated netting at a man on a horse.
Finally. Help.
At least she hoped it was help.
She really had to start paying more attention to her surroundings. She’d been so wrapped up in her own thoughts she hadn’t even heard the horse and rider approach.
Pushing herself upright, Casey kept one hand on the calf and looked at the man carefully. His hat was pulled down low on his forehead, and an olive green rain slicker covered the rest of him, except for his lower legs and the worn boots shoved into stirrups.
The rain continued to pound relentlessly around them and Casey lifted one hand to shield her eyes, hoping for a better look at the cowboy.
“Cassandra Oakes,” he muttered. “I don’t believe it.”
The obvious displeasure in his tone struck a chord of memory within Casey. How many times had she heard that same raspy voice say, “Get the hell away from me!”? And how many of her dreams had that same raspy voice invaded?
Goosebumps that had nothing to do with the rain and the cold suddenly leaped up on Casey’s arms, then raced across her shoulders and down her spine.
Only one man could have such an effect on her.
Even if it had been five years since she’d seen him.
Five years since he’d broken her heart.
“Hello, Jake.”
Two
Hello, Jake?
That was all she could say? Standing in the middle of his field in a soaking-wet wedding gown, hovering over a mewling calf, and she says, “Hello, Jake”?
A groan rattled through him. When Jake had spotted that convertible on the side of the road, he’d figured someone was in trouble. That road only led to his and Don Wilson’s ranches, so there never was much traffic on it. Jake had expected to find some tourist lost in the storm or someone on their way to Don’s place.
He sure hadn’t expected a bride.
Let alone this particular bride.
Man, a day could really go to crap in a hurry, he told himself. Not twenty minutes ago he’d been feeling great. He should have known it wouldn’t last. But dammit, he never would have guessed that it would be Casey showing up out of nowhere just in time to ruin his good mood.
Ruefully, though, he admitted that her appearance did make a sort of karmic sense. He mentally bowed to the inevitable and asked, “What the hell are you doing here, Casey?” His gaze swept over her ruined bridal gown quickly. “Looking for a church, are we?”
“Running from a church, actually.”
“Uh-huh.” He leaned forward in the saddle. “And where’d you bury the groom?”
“It’s a long story.” Her face paled a bit.
“Naturally.”
Tipping her head back, she managed to swing her soggy veil out of her face long enough to look at him. Those green eyes of hers locked onto him, and Jake felt his insides tighten into knots.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” she said stiffly. “But right now, would you mind helping me?”
No one should be able to look that good covered in mud, he thought absently. Then when desire began to rear its ugly head, he heard himself ask gruffly, “Help you what?”
“Save him.” She wagged her head at the calf still cradled in her arms.
No animal had looked less in need of saving. In fact, Jake admitted silently, he wouldn’t mind trading places with the damn thing. But he remembered clearly that even years ago, she’d had a soft heart for animals. He chuckled slightly as he recalled the year she’d realized hamburgers actually came from cows. She’d been horrified. Probably came from living in town all her life. Hell, the only time she or her brothers ever even saw an animal up close was when they came out to the ranch. Their parents had never allowed their children to have a pet of any kind.
Her brothers. Jeez, it had been a long time since Jake had seen the twins. Of course, between working twenty-five hours a day on the ranch and his brief but memorable marriage to Linda, he hadn’t had time for any of his old friends.
“Jake? Earth to Jake.”
“Huh?” He frowned and forced himself back to the problem at hand. “Oh, yeah. The calf. Save him from what?” He was too wet and cold and tired to be dealing with this. He’d learned long ago that when talking to Casey, it paid to stay alert. Even then, it often wasn’t enough.
“He’s scared,” she said.
“Scared?” Jake’s fingers tightened on the reins. Knowing he would regret it, Jake heard himself ask a question, anyway. “And just what is he scared of?”
“The storm, of course.”
The wind howled through the trees as if to underline her statement, and the calf squirmed against her. Casey’s eyebrows lifted and she nodded shortly as if to say, “See?”
Jake’s teeth ground together. She was as stubborn as ever. And as beautiful, his brain added, even with her hair hanging in limp soggy strands along her cheeks. Even with her wedding dress splotched with mud. Even with her emerald eyes squinted against the downpour. Uneasily Jake watched her widen her stance and wiggle her behind as she struggled to get a better grip on the animal.
Something hard and tight settled in his chest, wrapping itself around his lungs and heart. He struggled to draw a breath. Even after five years she still had the same old effect on him.
For the first time since leaving the ranch house, he was beginning to wish his Jeep wasn’t out of commission. At least then he’d be seated on a nice comfy bucket seat, instead of futilely trying to find a comfortable position in the saddle. Dammit. He’d always enjoyed riding in the rain.
Until now.
Immediately he told himself to get a grip. She was wearing a damned wedding gown. She’d said she was running from a church. But she hadn’t said whether she’d started running before or after the wedding.
The notion of Casey’s being someone else’s wife tightened that cold band around his chest another notch.
Rain pelted his hat and slicker. He felt the slap of each drop and welcomed it. At least he knew what to do about rain. She was another matter entirely.
“Are you going to climb down and help me or not?”
Jake shook his head, tightened his grip on the reins with one hand and rubbed his jaw viciously with the other. There was no way he’d be able to climb down from his horse and walk. Even if his rain slicker did hide his body’s reaction to her, his discomfort would be all too visible.
But he had to do something.
This ridiculous conversation was getting them nowhere.
“Cows live outside,” he said.
The calf bawled piteously.
Casey cooed in sympathy, then flashed Jake a hard look. “He’s just a baby.”
“Who weighs more than you do.”
A deep reverberating sound rolled out around them and Casey half straightened, still keeping her arms around the animal beside her.
“What was that?”
“That would be his mama, I’d bet,” Jake told her when she swiveled her head to look at him.
The calf called a quavering answer and its mother mooed back.
“Here she comes,” Jake said, and dipped his head toward the distant line of trees.
She looked in the direction he indicated and sucked in a quick breath. Mama indeed. A huge cow was lumbering toward her, moving much more quickly than Casey would have thought possible. Apparently her friend didn’t need saving as much as she did at the moment. Immediately she released the calf and started for the man and relative safety.
She grabbed up fistfuls of skirt, hiked the hem past her knees and trudged through the mud. The cow’s hoofbeats pounded against the sodden ground and sounded like native war drums to Casey. It seemed to take forever to cross the few feet of space separating her from the horse, and naturally Jake wasn’t offering the slightest bit of help.
Just as that thought raced through her mind, though, he urged his mount closer, kicked free of a stirrup and held out one hand to her.
She looked up at him and didn’t see even the tiniest flicker of welcome in his blue eyes. She hesitated, glanced over her shoulder at the approaching two tons of offended motherhood and chose the lesser of two evils.
Slapping her hand into his, she felt his long callused fingers fold around hers in a firm grip. Ignoring the warm tingle of awareness sparking between them, she stuffed one muddied stockinged foot into the stirrup and allowed him to pull her up behind him on the saddle.
Immediately Jake turned his horse around and kneed it into a fast walk. After a few feet he pulled back on the reins, bringing the horse to a stop. He turned in the saddle to look behind him, and she shifted to follow his gaze.
She smiled as she watched the calf dip its head below its mother’s belly and nuzzle around for milk. Of course, the cow still didn’t look very happy with the two interfering humans, but at least Casey’s young friend was safe.
And so was she.
“Here,” Jake said, and dropped his hat onto her head.
She tipped the brim back and looked at him.
Rain flattened his thick black hair to his skull, and he reached up to brush it out of his way. His blue eyes were hard as he stared at her, but there was a spark of something else there, as well. Then in a heartbeat it was gone.
“I’ll take you to your car.”
“Don’t bother,” she told him, remembering that loud snap when she’d stomped on the brakes. “I think it’s broken down.”
“Perfect,” Jake grumbled, and turned the horse’s head. “Wrap your arms around my waist,” he said. “It’s about a ten-minute ride to the ranch from here.”
“What about my car?” She pointed at the abandoned convertible.
