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“He was late?”
Frank shook his head. “Not once, but I suspect there were a lot of months when he had to choose between eating and meeting his obligation.”
She stared at him, seeing the kind eyes and the strong features. “But the risk…you must have had a reason.”
“He had hungry eyes.” Something flickered in his own eyes, and for an instant, his jaw tightened. “Nobody had to tell me he’d had a rough time as a kid. Or that he was desperate for a place of his own, a piece of earth and sky and security where he could put down roots, a place no one could take from him.” His smile was sad. “It’s hell growing up knowing no one wants you.”
“Oh, Frank,” she whispered, deeply touched, for him, for Cassidy—and more than a little confused. “Does Mother know what you did?”
“No one knows, except Charlie and me—and Cassidy.”
That threw her. “When did you tell him?”
“I didn’t. He found out a few weeks before you two were married, when he went to the bank for a second mortgage in order to finance some renovations on the house.”
“He was angry?”
“You might say that, yeah,” Frank drawled before lifting the mug to his mouth again. “Had this notion I felt sorry for him, and his pride wouldn’t let him accept charity.”
Karen rubbed her toes along the chair rung. “Men and their pride.”
Instead of grinning as she’d expected, Frank responded with a frown. “Sometimes, when a man’s had a lot to overcome, pride’s the only thing holding him together.” Absently he rubbed at a thin white scar along his jaw.
“Did you feel sorry for him?”
“No.” She heard the trace of annoyance in his deep voice and knew he’d put it there deliberately. “I told you I understood him, but what I told him was the truth, too. What he got from me was a loan, nothing more—with enough interest tacked on to have him sucking in hard.”
I’ll bet, she thought, seeing Frank in a new light. “And?”
“And he chewed on the furniture for a while, added a couple of points to that interest and told me to write it up as a separate note.” He grinned. “Made me a tidy bit of change on that cowboy of yours.”
She smiled, but it seemed he wasn’t finished. “I’ve made a fortune on reading people—what they say they want and what they really want. Cassidy wants you. I’d stake every penny I made on that.”
She held the mug to her cheek and wondered if she would ever be able to talk about her failed marriage without feeling sick inside. “Then why am I sitting here talking to you instead of out at the ranch where I belong?”
He arched a brow. “Good question. Got an answer you’d care to run by me?”
“A lot of them, some that even make sense.” She took another sip and held her breath against the intoxicating heat sliding down her throat. “He just wore me out, I guess. I got tired of defending myself for wanting to do what I could to make the world a better place.”
He nodded. As practically a member of the family, he knew all about the problems that had led up to their separation.
“I have pride, too, Frank. Maybe more than I should, but I simply couldn’t stay with a man who held me and my goals in contempt.”
“Are you so sure he did?”
“He…he told me I reminded him of his mother and that he hated her.” She felt her stomach lurch as she revisited the scene in the den in her mind. “He used our daughter as a weapon to blackmail me into doing what he wanted, and when that didn’t work he threatened to take my daughter away from me.”
“And you can’t forgive him for that?”
“No. Yes.” She frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Poor kid, you’re really hung up on the guy, aren’t you?” He slipped the words out so softly that it took her a moment to react.
When she did, it was with a bleak smile. “Does it show?”
“In neon lights.”
She drew a shaky breath. “All I was asking was that he bend just a little,” she said in a small voice.
He regarded her in sympathetic silence for a long moment, then picked up both mugs. “It’s just an observation, Kari, but it seems to me Cassidy was doing nothing but bending from the moment you decided to go back to med school. And he’s been bending ever since.” He paused by her chair to drop a kiss on her hair. “You might want to think on that some when you get to feeling lonely.”
Chapter Thirteen
Cassidy had just turned off his computer on Monday morning and was thinking about the week just starting out when the phone rang, demanding his attention. Since it wasn’t yet 6:00 a.m., he figured the call was important. With a scowl, he snatched up the receiver before the second ring.
“Sloane here.”
“Cass, it’s Rio Redtree.”
He’d met the Grand Springs native a few years back when Rio sat in for Bren Gallagher during one of their poker nights. Never one to warm to a stranger quickly, Cassidy had found himself liking the younger man immensely by the end of the evening. Since that time, they’d spent many a night glaring at each other across a steadily mounting pot. More often than not, to Cassidy’s chagrin, Redtree had gone home with more money in his jeans than he’d brought while Cassidy’s pockets tended to be all but empty.
Curiosity surfaced in his mind as he leaned back in his chair and made a stab at massaging away the hard ache at the base of his skull that was his constant companion.
“How’s it going?” he asked, because it was expected.
“Can’t complain. And you?”
“Overworked.” And missing his wife so much he was sick with it.
Redtree chuckled. “There is that.”
“You got a reason for calling a hardworking rancher in the middle of the night?”
“Like you were asleep.” The other man cleared his throat. “Something’s come up I think you ought to know about.”
Instantly alert, Cassidy narrowed his gaze. “I’m listening.”
There was a brief hesitation, as if Rio was searching for words. Cassidy felt the first prickling of concern and sat up straighter.
“It concerns Vicki, mostly,” Rio confided finally.
Fear stabbed deep. He warned himself not to bolt before he knew where he was heading. “Concerns her how?”
“Easy, Cass, it’s probably not serious, but—”
“Answer the question, Redtree.” He heard the threat in his voice and made a conscious effort to control himself as he added, “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
Rio’s sigh did little to stem Cassidy’s growing alarm. “Vicki’s class was here at the Herald last week on a field trip, and while the other kids were learning about computer pasteup and design, she slipped away to talk to me. Said she recognized me because I played poker with her daddy.”
Cassidy heard the crunch of gravel outside and glanced at the clock. Billy was a few minutes early. The other hands wouldn’t be arriving for another half hour or so.
“Go on.”
There was the sound of rustling paper before the other man continued. “It seems she’s decided I should do an article on the effect of divorce on little girls and dogs.”
Cassidy indulged in a curt oath that had Rio chuckling. “Yeah, well, I told her that it might be a better idea if she wrote it, seeing as she’s had experience.”
Because he was alone, Cassidy let his head drop. “Why do I think I’m not going to enjoy this?” he muttered, digging harder into the knotted muscles of his neck.
“You have a fax machine, right?”
Cassidy already knew where this was going. “Yeah.”
“Hold on a minute while I get a pencil.”
Cassidy heard drawers opening and Rio muttering. “Okay, what’s the number?” he asked when he came back on the line.
Cassidy recited the digits, waited until Rio repeated them before asking a little too brusquely, “She didn’t, uh, cry or anything, did she?”
“Like a bubbling little fountain,” Rio said cheerfully, earning him another rude comment. “But I had her laughing again before they left.”
“Hell, Redtree, I didn’t think you had a sensitive bone in that pitiful wreck you call a body.”
Rio’s chuckle would have been infectious—if Cassidy wasn’t busy bracing himself to read his daughter’s words as soon as they spilled out of the fax. “Funny what living with a good woman can do for a man, ain’t it, Sloane.”
Cassidy closed his eyes on a knife-thrust of pain. “What is this, Redtree, a damned conspiracy to rub my nose in my own stupidity?”
“Something like that, yeah. Is it working?”
“It’s working.”
“Going to try to get her back?”
Cassidy thought about lying. A man had his pride. “I’m considering it.”
“Want some advice from a man who’s been there?” Redtree’s voice was subtly altered, as though he was grinning.
“Might as well, since I figure you’re gonna give it whether I want it or not.”
Rio laughed. “Well, hell, you’re smarter than I figured.”
“You gonna tell me or insult me?”
Cassidy heard a long-suffering sigh that had his teeth grating together.
“Get yourself all duded up, buy her a coupla dozen roses and maybe some candy—to get her in the mood, you know. And then, get down on your knees and grovel. Works every time.”
* * *
Karen woke a little before noon, still groggy from the aftereffects of a long and stressful weekend as a resident-on-duty. Exhaustion still buzzed in her head, and her arches ached.
Just over seven more months and her days as an ill-paid, overworked resident would be at an end. Then, after surviving the worst, she could look forward to private practice as a better-paid, but still overworked doctor.
With a heartfelt sigh, she sat up and threw off the covers. Though her bedroom was the smallest of four on the second floor, she’d chosen it because its two dormer windows looked out on the snow-capped Rockies marking the western horizon. It was the same view she’d had from the master bedroom at the ranch, and it didn’t take much thought to realize why she favored it.
Three weeks down and a lifetime to go, she thought as she glanced at the thick packet of legal papers on the small desk between the windows. She must have signed her name two dozen times in the past weeks, each signature taking her closer to a final act of separation from the man she loved. And couldn’t have, she reminded herself as she climbed out of bed.
Without bothering with a robe, she padded across the chilly floor to the door. The second floor was wrapped in silence as she gained the hall and turned left, heading toward the bathroom at the end of the hall. Halfway to her destination, she was startled to hear a heavy footfall behind her. Turning quickly, her heart suddenly pounding, she was stunned to see Cassidy coming toward her from the direction of the stairs.
He was wearing a sky blue Western-cut shirt that she’d never seen before, and his jeans were clean, though far from new. His jaw was shiny from a recent shave, and he’d made an attempt to tame the unruly curl from his glossy black hair.
Her body responded before her mind, and desire was already racing through her as she stood frozen, unable to move. How long would it take before she stopped acting like a giddy schoolgirl with a crush every time they happened to meet unexpectedly? she wondered as she fought to regain her composure.
When the earth stops spinning or that untamed sex appeal that he exudes suddenly disappears, came the answer from the more primitive part of her woman’s heart.
Cassidy, too, stopped dead when he caught sight of her, and for an instant, she was sure she saw a naked look of longing flash across his carved-granite features, but when he spoke, his voice was as controlled as ever.
“I rang the bell,” he said, shifting his stance. “I figured you wouldn’t mind if I let myself in.”
Karen resisted the urge to huddle deeper into the oversize Broncos jersey that served as her nightshirt. She hadn’t missed the hot lick of arousal that had appeared in his eyes when he first caught sight of her standing there with her legs bare and the neck of the big shirt hanging over one shoulder. That, at least, hadn’t changed. Cassidy found her sexually appealing.
“Of course not. You’re always welcome in my mother’s house.”
He narrowed his gaze, but not before she saw a slice of frustration in those dark depths. “But not in yours?”
“You’re Vicki’s father,” she said evasively. “You’ll always be welcome in her house.”
His mouth slanted. “I came up to see if you were awake yet. I tried to be quiet, just in case.”
She couldn’t help smiling. Cassidy was too big and too impatient to be quiet—unless he was sleeping. And even then, he had a tendency to mutter disjointedly. Though she’d never managed to make out more than an odd word or two, the urgent tone of his rambling suggested that he was pleading with someone only he could see.
Early in their marriage, she’d tried to get him to talk about the problems that followed him so tenaciously into sleep. After a few abrupt but icy rebuffs, she’d let him fight his nocturnal battles alone. Now she wondered if the pleading words had been directed at the mother he claimed to hate.
“You didn’t wake me,” she assured him, endeavoring to make her voice as cool as his. “Or, if you did, it was time for me to get up, anyway.”
He nodded, then glanced back toward the stairs. Probably planning his escape route, she thought. These days they rarely managed more than five minutes of conversation before one or the other walked away. This time she decided to make it easy for him.
“Was there anything particular you wanted?” she murmured politely. To her surprise, he scowled and turned red.
“I had a call from Redtree this morning. It seems that our daughter has taken up journalism.” He reached behind him and pulled a folded piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans. “She wrote this article after her class visited the Herald.”
Cassidy saw the quick look of puzzlement come into Karen’s still sleep-drowsy eyes as she took the fax. Though he kept his gaze resolutely fixed on hers, he was all too painfully aware of the familiar outline of her small, firm breasts beneath the thin covering of her orange-and-blue sleep shirt. One look and he wanted her with an intensity that could weaken him, if he gave into it.
“I was one of the chaperones for that trip,” she said, unfolding the paper. “I do recall seeing her talking with Rio at one point, but she didn’t say anything to me about an article.”
“Yeah, well, she wrote one.” Cassidy shifted, far too aware of the growing desire in his lower body. “Look, why don’t I make some coffee while you read it? We’ll talk when you’re finished.” And dressed, preferably in something that a nun might consider conservative, he added silently as he turned and beat a hasty retreat.
The coffee took four minutes to brew. She was back in six, dressed in old jeans and an outsize University of Colorado sweatshirt the color of a strawberry roan colt he’d once had.
