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With very mixed emotions, Sara studied him. Tyler—who’d vowed he would never marry or have kids and “all that stuff” as he used to scornfully mutter—in love?
Well, maybe not in love, but certainly a chord had been struck in him by someone. Unfortunately, it appeared the same thing hadn’t struck her.
“Wait,” she requested when he opened the door. “Cade has invited me out to his ranch with him and Stacy this weekend. I told him I might be busy.”
“Go,” Tyler said at once. “This could be a chance to pry some info out of him. See if you can find out how the Parks empire is faring money-wise. Maybe he knows of some new deals his father is putting together. Or what was in those packages the courier dropped off.”
“Right, like he’s going to tell me they’re smuggling diamonds or something.”
Her brother gave her a sardonic glance. “Men have been known to disclose a lot during a weak moment.”
Her face flushed hotly in a sudden surge of guilt and remembered passion. Tyler touched her cheek. “Perhaps you and he have already had that moment?”
She shook her head. “There is an attraction. That’s what worries me. I want to believe that Cade is decent and honorable, then I think of his father and what Mother told us. It gets me confused and angry and frustrated.”
Tyler nodded. “I know the feeling. Maybe you’d better stay out of it, let me and Nick and Mark handle everything.”
Sara shook her head. “I came here to help. I’ll stick it out. And do my part.”
“No matter what it takes?” he asked.
“No matter what it takes.”
They agreed to meet Monday and discuss the weekend, then said goodnight. Sara locked the door and returned to the den. She cleaned up the dishes and went to bed, but not to sleep. Too many restless thoughts filled her head.
“Miss Carlton, guess what?” Stacy demanded Friday morning when Sara stopped at the adjoining town house to pick up the youngster for the short walk to school.
“What?”
“Dad and I are going to the ranch tonight and you’re invited!”
“Yes, your father kindly included me,” Sara admitted. She’d been over and over all the arguments about why she should go, but her conscience had bothered her all week. It seemed underhanded to take advantage of Cade’s and Stacy’s trust in her. “I don’t think I should intrude on your private time.”
“Please, you have to come. You haven’t seen my pony. She’s so beautiful. She can do tricks, too.”
“I think you’ve taken Miss Carlton by surprise,” Cade said, opening the door wider and handing his daughter a bright red lunchbox. “The invitation is still open. Can you join us?”
Sara tried to think of a plausible excuse to refuse, but some willful part of her urged her to accept. “You’re spending the night?”
“Yes. We’ll leave early Sunday afternoon. Stace and I have a family dinner at my father’s Sunday night.”
Stacy wrinkled her nose. “Do we hafta?”
“Yes,” her father said firmly.
Stacy went back to the original question. “Can you come to the ranch? We got cows and everything. We can help milk.”
“You have milk cows?” Sara asked, surprised.
“Actually I lease the operation. The farmer also takes care of our five horses and two dogs. The ranch is a two-hour drive north of the city. We would really like for you to join us, if you haven’t made plans for the weekend.”
“Uh, no—”
“Please come,” Stacy urged.
“Yes, do,” the father chimed in. “I would consider it a slight repayment for the help you’ve given me and Stace while Tai is unavailable.”
This really was a chance to find out more about his family, she decided, then wondered if she was rationalizing her desire to go. “Okay. It sounds like fun.”
“Yay, she’s going. I told you she would.” Stacy twirled around in delight. “We’re leaving right after school.”
“You’re quitting work early?” Sara asked.
“I thought we would try to beat the traffic, if that’s possible.”
His smile made Sara’s heart do weird things—speed up, skip a couple of beats and generally act silly. “What clothing will I need?” she asked.
“Jeans. A jacket. Boots, if you have them, otherwise sneakers will do. Do you ride?”
“I’ve never been on a horse in my life.” She opened her eyes wide and gave them a horrified grimace.
Stacy burst into giggles, which were underscored by his deeper chuckles. “It’s easy,” the girl assured her teacher.
On the way to school, Sara wondered just how easy the weekend would be.
“This is lovely,” Sara murmured that afternoon after they’d left the city and its traffic behind.
Cade expertly followed the winding coast road north of San Francisco. Bay laurel grew profusely along narrow canyons that opened at frequent intervals to the side of the highway. On one curve, the road had recently been repaved.
“There was a landslide during the March rains,” he told her. “They had to build a bridge-type understructure to make the repair. The highway department would like to close the road, I think, but people object. On nice weekends, this is a busy stretch.”
“It’s very scenic,” she said.
They left the highway and turned toward the west, passing through ranch land where cows grazed.
“This is it,” Stacy said from the back seat. “This is our ranch.”
Cade drove over a grate designed to prevent livestock from crossing it. Fences stretched to either side, but no gate barred the gravel road from access. Black-and-white cows stared at them with casual interest.
“These are the milk cows,” Stacy told her.
Cade drove past a large barn. “The milking parlor,” he explained. “It has the latest equipment.”
A neat white house was set back from the road. Cade nodded toward it. “Roger and Candy Mendolson. They milk two hundred cows twice a day, every day of the year. No time off for good behavior. Fortunately they have help, so everyone gets a weekend off once a month.”
“Gracious,” Sara said. “Teachers complain about only getting a month off during the summer when we’re on the all-year program.”
“Roger and Candy say they wouldn’t have it any other way. Life in a town would drive them nuts.”
“I can identify with that,” Sara muttered darkly, drawing a chuckle from him.
The road sloped upward, then dropped over the top of a hillock. In a secluded dip of land nestled another house, one made of fieldstone on the bottom third, then split logs on the rest. A quarter mile away, the land dropped over a cliff to a rock-strewn beach that stretched northward until it disappeared into the salty haze from the sea.
“This is incredibly lovely,” she said. “The grass is green.”
Cade pulled into a carport and turned off the engine. “We get condensation from the coastal fog. That’s why the fields along the coast stay relatively green in the summer. The cows will graze on dried grass, too.”
Cade helped the two females out, then unlocked the front door. Inside the cottage, Sara surveyed the open living area that flowed into a small but modern kitchen. A natural stone fireplace dominated the main wall. To the left of the fireplace was a set of steps to the second story.
“Your bedroom is back here.” Cade, carrying her suitcase, led the way down a short corridor. “The bathroom is directly across the hall. Linen closet there.” He indicated the doors to each, then entered the bedroom.
The furniture was made of pine and was simple in design. There was a double bed, a tall, narrow chest of drawers between two windows, a lamp and table next to the bed and a cane chair with a blue cushion beside the table.
“Here’s the closet in case you need to hang anything.” Cade opened a door to show her a space about eighteen inches wide with a shelf over a clothes rod. He put her case on the floor between the bed and the closet. “We usually walk down to the beach first thing. Do you feel up to joining us or would you rather rest?”
“I’d like to go, too,” Sara said.
“Bring a jacket. It might be windy.”
After he left, Sara removed her pajamas and toiletry case, laid the pj’s on the bed and took the case to the bathroom to freshen up. Upstairs she could hear Stacy calling to her father, but couldn’t make out the words.
When she returned to the main area, she stood at the window and looked toward the ocean. It was more gray than blue. The horizon blended into a barely discernible line separating sea and sky. For some reason, the lovely vista seemed vast and lonely.
She smiled slightly, knowing the feeling was within herself. A nagging sense of deception hung over her spirits.
Stacy clambered down the stairs and dashed toward the door. “Come on, let’s beat Daddy to the shore.”
Sara followed her student out of the cottage and along a path that led down a rocky slope into a ravine cut by the periodic flow of a creek. From there, they walked out on the sandy shore cluttered with rocks and boulders of various sizes. A few pieces of driftwood littered the beach.
Cade caught up with them when they paused to remove their shoes and socks. He grinned and added his to the boulder where they left their things.
“We were here first, Daddy,” Stacy cried and raced into the shallow waves that crested on the beach.
Sara was in the water past her ankles before the sensation of pain registered in her brain. “Oh, it’s cold,” she complained, hopping from one foot to the other.
“Your feet will be numb in a minute,” Cade assured her.
“Right,” Sara agreed. “As soon as they turn to ice.”
“Look, sea lions,” Stacy called, pointing to a large rock in the water. “You can tell ’cause they have ears.”
“Sea lions still have visible external ears,” Cade explained. “Seals don’t. That’s how you tell them apart.”
The animals snoozed in the setting sun. One scratched lazily with a flipper. From down the coast, Sara could hear a foghorn sounding a warning off a rocky promontory.
“Each foghorn has its own signal,” Cade told her. “By timing the blasts and the silence between, sailors can tell which lighthouse they’re passing, even if it’s foggy. The same is true of the flashes of light.”
“How interesting,” Sara said, throwing off her qualms about being there. “I didn’t know that.”
Behind them, the excited barking of two dogs drew their attention. The animals rushed down the ravine.
“Teddy! Rufus!” Stacy clapped her hands and called the two pets to her. The dogs raced around the girl, jumping, barking and licking her face in delight. One dog had a rusty red coat.
“That’s Rufus,” Cade told her. “Teddy is the brown-and-white one. Stace thought he looked like her teddy bear.”
Teddy had thick fur with splotches of brown and white, and patches around each eye. Sara thought he looked more like a panda.
“I told her she should have named him Panda,” Cade said, echoing her impression.
Their eyes met, and they both smiled.
Warmth flowed over her, reminding her of the heat that flared between them when they had kissed. She stared at his mouth and wanted that fire again.
“Keep that up and I’ll be forced to kiss you,” he murmured, touching her lower lip with a fingertip.
“Come on,” Stacy yelled, running along the breaking waves with the two dogs circling around her. “Let’s explore the cave. This way.”
Flustered, Sara hurried after the girl. Behind her, she heard Cade’s chuckle and knew that he knew she was running from him, from herself, from the passion that rose too readily between them.
After exploring a shallow cave farther down the line of cliffs, they returned to the ravine to climb the path back to the cottage.
“I’m hungry,” Stacy announced upon their return.
Inside the cabin, they made sandwiches from supplies that Cade had brought, ate at a round pine table, then continued their exploration of the ranch.
“We’ll go for a ride in the morning,” Cade promised his daughter when five horses rushed to the fence and stuck their heads over the top of the barbed wire.
Sara slipped her jacket on as the sun dipped into the ocean and out of sight.
“It gets cold along the coast at night,” Cade commented as they ambled back to the house.
Sara nodded. “I read something about the tides along the coast. The current sweeps out of the north, flowing from Alaska, then southward down the continent’s edge. I assume that’s why it cools down so much at night.”
“Right. The current churns up colder water from the depths of the sea, which produces an afternoon breeze off the ocean and brings in the coastal fog.”
“I like to walk in the fog,” Stacy told them. “It’s creepy. You could fall off the cliff.”
“Which is why we don’t run when we can’t see more than a few feet in front of our noses,” Cade reminded the child.
She laughed and ran ahead with the two dogs.
Cade shook his head as he lightly clasped Sara’s hand. “Tell me, teacher, how do you keep up with that kind of energy from twenty kids?”
“With great difficulty,” Sara said.
They again smiled at each other. It was a moment to savor, she thought. A time out of time, separate from all the troubles that had been or were to come.
“Let’s make brownies for a snack,” Stacy suggested when they were back in the cottage.
