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Dreamless
Darlene Graham
Their dislike of each other turned into attraction…which turned into loveCassie McClean, a builder of luxury homes, and Jake Coffey, a breeder of fine Andalusian horses, have neighboring businesses. While they've had several differences of opinion about how their businesses are affecting each other, their mutual attraction forces them to work out their problems–and discover their love for each other.All Cassie and Jake want to do is concentrate on their busy lives–and their new relationship. But when a dangerous arsonist starts destroying property on both sides of their fence, Cassie and Jake find they have new problems–problems that are costing them time and money, but are also endangering lives, particularly Cassie's. She and Jake set out to find the connection between the threats being made to Cassie now and the heartbreaking childhood illness she almost didn't survive. Will they discover it in time?
“Are you okay?”
Cassie nodded, then shook her head as the tears came. She swiped at them and glanced up at the rooftop, where the wiry young carpenter who’d handled the hotwire was standing, braced at the edge, staring down at the two of them. She turned her face away from the house so the men couldn’t see, and Jake pulled her around in front of him, shielding her from view with his huge shoulders….
“Look, I don’t want to add to your stress today,” he offered gently. “We can finish our business another time.”
“Okay,” Cassie said. But she was so upset that she couldn’t even recall what business, exactly, they’d been discussing. Dynamite. Oh, damn. She’d blurted that word out like a threat. And she hadn’t remained civil as she’d planned, not at all. And now she’d started to shake and cry like a fool because one of her men had got hurt. Jake Coffey had certainly seen her at her worst, and now she’d have to face this man—this handsome, intimidating man—in civil court the day after tomorrow.
Seeing him again felt like the last thing she needed. And yet, as she watched him walk away, it felt like the only thing she wanted.
Dear Reader,
This book is set in an area that is suspiciously similar to my hometown. Locals will recognize a few landmarks, but none of the people. The characters come straight from my imagination.
I want to emphasize that because, though my father taught me much about the home-building business, he is nothing like the character Boss McClean in this book. My father is the most honorable and loving father any daughter could ever ask for.
Though I create my characters from scratch, they do experience the same joys and struggles we all share.
Jake Coffey and Cassie McClean must each find a way to forgive the past in order to embrace the bright future that beckons them. I loved writing this story because forgiveness, I sometimes think, is the most beautiful word in the English language. Well, maybe forgiveness is the second most beautiful word. The most beautiful word in any language is, of course, love.
Keep your cards, letters and e-mails coming. They feed my spirit and inspire me to be a better writer.
P.O. Box 720224, Norman, OK 73070
www.superauthors.com/Graham
My best to you,
Darlene Graham
Dreamless
Darlene Graham
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This story is dedicated to Jennifer Leigh Gardenhire
My dear daughter
And my precious “first fan”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#ue5b71e2a-5536-5146-923c-585a1dac7e2b)
CHAPTER TWO (#u32204566-58c8-5523-a09f-5efeba69d6fc)
CHAPTER THREE (#ue5c74919-af43-538e-a5c6-e0a2ccd2a45f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u9b3e7e9d-232f-53dc-a6d8-aa705f8b9691)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
CASSIE MCCLEAN had just about had her craw full of Mr. Jake Coffey.
She removed her soiled leather work gloves finger by finger with vicious precision, squinting out over the Ten Mile Flats and watching that hated man’s pickup jolt up the narrow gravel road that shot straight toward her like a mile-long arrow.
That road, that ridiculous…cow path of a road, was the most recent spear Jake Coffey had chucked into their escalating series of skirmishes. In the spring, it had been the watershed. In the dry weeks of August, the grading dust. With him, it was always something.
Her plans would be unfolding perfectly by now were it not for Jake Coffey.
Ten Mile Flats lay below her in a gentle sea of green winter wheat, a marked contrast to the high, darkly wooded ridge that she had christened The Heights. With its brick and wrought-iron gates, its curving concrete streets and newly installed underground utilities, The Heights was as sophisticated as the Flats were rustic. And that’s exactly what Cassie had envisioned.
She had counted on the fact that Ten Mile Flats would never change. Out there, horse-farming operations with miles of white fencing and pristine barns had been producing their champions since the turn of the century. And as long as the horse farms were there, those bottomlands would spread forth like a hazy patchwork quilt, meeting the curve of the South Canadian River, creating an unobstructed, timeless view, complete with breathtaking Oklahoma sunsets. The future homeowners of The Heights were willing to pay a fortune for that view. Yes, everything was perfect. Everything except Jake Coffey.
She bit her lip and whacked her gloves against her palm. That man.
She had jumped through hoop after hoop to appease the landowners out on the Flats. Many of them had come to consider Cassie’s exclusive, luxury housing addition as a welcome cushion between their peaceful farms and the urban sprawl creeping westward from the city of Jordan. All of them had come to accept, grudgingly, that The Heights was a quality development of classic homes.
All but Jake Coffey. Owner of the nearest, the largest, the most productive of those horse farms.
What was that man going to complain about now?
At the base of the hill, where the pricey lots were pocked with massive red rock formations that veered into a narrow creek, the noise of rock crushers cracked the morning calm, answering Cassie’s question.
Of course. Undoubtedly he’d gripe about the rock crushers and the track hoe hammer and the bulldozers making so much noise as they cleared the lower lots.
Well, wait till the dynamite started!
The noise was certainly going to be the next thorny issue with her nearest neighbor, Cassie was sure. She wondered if he was going to overreact, as he had over the road access. A temporary restraining order, for heaven’s sakes! Forcing Cassie’s grading equipment, her delivery vehicles, and now her concrete trucks, to drive all the way around on Troctor Avenue. Five long miles out of the way, each way, when his road through his dadblame antiquated horse farm was an easy shortcut from Highway 86.
The elderly sisters who’d previously owned Cassie’s land had held an easement to use the road through Cottonwood Ranch—mostly to haul feed to their wild goats in their rattletrap Toyota pickup. When Cassie bought the land, she made sure she got the easement in the deal. She thought everything was fine and that she could pass through Cottonwood Ranch until the interstate loop under construction to the north was completed.
But Jake Coffey had claimed that the easement allowed for light traffic only and that Cassie had “so changed the use of the easement that it had become an excessive burden on the road.” Or, rather, his lawyer had claimed that. And now, the man was seeking a permanent injunction. Permanent.
Well, with that nasty maneuver, Louis Jackson Coffey had turned their peevish little telephone feud into all-out legal war. Cassie had contacted a lawyer and filed a counteraction of her own.
And right now it looked like the whole thing was about to get up close and personal.
Fine. C. J. McClean was more than ready to take on Louis Jackson Coffey.
When the crushers ceased their pounding for a moment, she slapped the gloves against the leg of her overalls and turned to holler up at the foreman from Precision Stone. “Darrell! This limestone looks perfect. Let’s get that chimney rocked up today.”
Darrell Brown, husky, middle-aged, hardworking and brutally honest, gave her a salute from high up on the twelve-pitch roof. “Yes, ma’am!”
Darrell’s crew and a couple of the framing carpenters were hammering away, nailing toe boards and protective wood planks over shingles still slick with morning frost. “Just so long as you’re happy with the quality, Ms. McClean,” he called over the noise. “I don’t want to be knocking no low-grade limestone off of this monster.”
He jerked a thumb at the chimney towering behind him. The thing peaked a full seventy feet in the air—tall enough to clear all three stories of the eleven-thousand-square-foot house and the tops of the massive black oaks sheltering it.
Down the hill, the rock crushers started up again, cutting off further conversation.
Darrell shrugged and Cassie smiled, waving him off. She surveyed the woods rising up behind the house, remembering the design challenges those huge trees had presented. The timber on this hill had cost her in more ways than one, but on the outskirts of Jordan, Oklahoma, a forested crest like this was dear.
Every home builder from here to Oklahoma City had tried to get his hands on this land, and Cassie, using extreme patience and her aunt Rosemarie’s social goodwill, had finally secured it for a fair price from the eccentric Sullivan sisters. In the deal, she’d promised that any tree over thirty feet tall would be preserved—a promise that had put her architectural skills to a real test. But C. J. McClean was always true to her word. Always.
In the end, she would make a killing off this exclusive housing development, but it was the quality and integrity of the homes, not the profit, that mattered to Cassie. The lasting beauty. Ever since she was a little girl, the one thing that had always made her spirits soar was the sight of a well-built, well-designed home positioned on a beautifully landscaped lot.
Pride rose in her chest as she backed up, giving the frame of the most recent house she’d designed a quick once-over. Board by board, stone by stone, her dream houses were becoming a reality. All custom-designed, all over ten thousand square feet, these majestic homes would grace this crest for generations to come. And her name, her good name, C. J. McClean, would stand solidly behind them. It was a hell of a dream—one she’d carried in her heart ever since the day her father had gone to prison. And now it was a thrill to see that dream materialize right before her eyes.
Darrell Brown would start the stonework on the Detloff family’s chimney today. The Becker place was already partially framed. At the highest and most westward cul-de-sac, country-and-western singer Brett Taylor’s enormous concrete slab would be poured by week’s end.
Barring rain, of course. Cassie frowned at the sky where soggy clouds threatened to band together and make trouble. It was already November and soon chilling rains would delay work on everything from concrete to brick masonry. At least she had this first house weathered in, which meant she could keep the indoor subcontractors busy through the winter.
She sighed. There was never any shortage of things to worry about in the building business. She sure didn’t need the likes of Jake Coffey adding to her stress.
She cut an angry gaze back to the red double-cab pickup as it raised a plume of dust, fishtailing round the development marquee.
While Jake Coffey’s truck pell-melled up the hill, Cassie marched to her own white one, the one with the Dream Builders logo stenciled on the door—a tasteful aubergine logo that she had designed herself.
Cassie McClean lived a life entirely of her own design. She enjoyed riding around town with the radio blasting so loudly on her favorite oldies station that even with the truck windows rolled up, the guys on the second-story roof could hear the pulse of the music. Everybody in the building business knew who she was. Big blond ponytail. Bouncy energetic stride. Too young. Too successful. Boss McClean’s only daughter.
She liked it that way…except for the Boss McClean part, that is. She shook off that thought.
She ripped open the truck’s door and snatched up her cell phone. When the noise at the bottom of the hill ceased again, she punched the speed dial for her lawyer’s office. She was determined to face this Coffey bully well armed.
“How’s our little countersuit shaping up?” She paced back to the curb and spied glints of red winking in and out of the bare trees as Coffey was forced to slow down on the steep, winding streets. Even the streets in The Heights were designed to contribute to the atmosphere of privacy, serenity, peace.
She nodded as she listened. When Mr. Jake Coffey parked that truck, he was, by George, in for quite a roaring earful.
“Excellent,” she said, after her lawyer had told her everything she wanted to hear. “Fax the letter.” She punched off and stepped up onto the curb.
The red pickup braked with a screech right in the middle of the cul-de-sac. A large, long-legged man in a cowboy hat and sunglasses muscled his frame out, slammed the door and strode toward her.
From the top of his dusty black Stetson to the tip of his scuffed brown boots, the man exuded virile masculinity. His bearing, his movements and what she could see of his face, his jaw, his mouth—all of it—looked handsome, sexy.
Cassie just hated that.
She deteriorated into a complete klutz around good-looking, sexy men. As C. J. McClean, she could hold her own with the rough-cut good old boys in the construction business any day. But around any eligible, attractive male she reverted to little Cassie, the awkward tomboy raised by her strange maiden aunt.
Jake Coffey was single, or so she’d been told. But why did he have to be so danged appealing?
He stopped on the pavement a yard short of her person, regarding her from behind reflective sunglasses. “Ms. McClean?” He did not remove his shades.
She kept her place up on the curb, which gave her only a slight boost against his massive build.
“Yes?” She was determined to keep this carefully civil. Deliberately cool. But she did not remove her sunglasses, either. Civil was one thing, but she refused to make this confrontation easy for him.
“I’m Jake Coffey. Owner of Cottonwood Ranch.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the spread at the bottom of the hill. “We’ve talked on the phone.”
She glanced at the logo on the pocket of his jacket—the same one was on his pickup—an unimaginative black silhouette of a horse’s head with Cottonwood Ranch in a semicircle of script wrapped below it. “I know who you are, Mr. Coffey.” She did not extend her hand.
They hadn’t “talked” on the phone the last time. They’d shouted. Well, she had shouted. He always kept his voice infuriatingly low while refusing to budge about anything. Lately, it had been this restraining order. “What brings you up to my turf?”
Cassie was glad she was wearing sunglasses because she almost rolled her eyes at her own baiting tone. Here we go, she thought, the klutzy tomboy is already acting defensive. Why couldn’t she ever just act normal?
He didn’t respond to her taunt. “Seems you and I have another problem this morning, ma’am.”
“We have a problem? I don’t have a problem.” Cassie spread a palm on the bib of her overalls. “My work is proceeding on schedule.”
He hooked his fingers in his back pockets and planted his booted feet wide, with his torso settled low on his hips and his pelvis thrust forward, like a man who sat atop a horse a lot, which she supposed he did. Under his worn denim jacket, tucked into a dusty pair of Levi’s, he wore a faded black T-shirt that stretched over a well-developed chest.
“Ma’am,” he repeated, looking over his shoulder in the direction from which the noise had started late yesterday, “we have a problem.” His soft voice belied his firm stance. He looked back at her.
His skin was weathered, tan, and he had a black five o’clock shadow though it was only eight in the morning. His full lips were chapped-looking and slightly pouty, turned down, as if he might spit out something vile at any moment.
A most unpleasant man. Most threatening.
Cassie cocked a knee and took a dainty swipe at her thigh as if his dustiness had somehow contaminated her overalls. “Okay. Exactly what is it now, Mr. Coffey?”
