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The egg she had just picked up slid out of her fingers and landed on the floor. She made no move to clean it up, just stood across the kitchen staring at him with her eyes murky and dark.
He only meant to make a casual inquiry. What had he said? “Was that the wrong question?”
“Coming from you, yeah, I’d say it’s the wrong question.” With color again high on her cheekbones, she snapped a handful of paper towels off a roll and bent to clean up the egg mess.
He set the knife down carefully on the cutting board and frowned at her. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not allowed to ask how your brothers are doing these days?”
She rose, her eyes hard, angry. “I will not let you do this to me, Slater. I can’t believe you have the gall to show up here after all these years and act like nothing happened.”
While he was still trying to figure out how to answer that fierce statement, she shoved the paper towel in the garbage, then returned to cracking eggs with far more force than necessary.
“My brothers are fine.” Her voice was as clipped as her movements. “Great. Jess is the police chief in Salt River. He and his fiancé are planning a late July wedding. Matt remarried a few months ago, and he and his new wife are deliriously happy together. She’s a vet in town and she’s absolutely perfect for him.”
He wondered about the defiant lift to her chin as she said this, as if daring him to say something about it. “So he and—what was her name? Melanie, wasn’t it?—aren’t together anymore?”
She didn’t say anything for several moments. At her continued silence, he looked up from the cutting board and saw with some shock that she was livid. Not just angry, but quaking with fury.
The woman he’d known a decade ago rarely lost her temper, but when she did, it was a fierce and terrible thing. He only had a second to wonder what had sparked this sudden firestorm when she turned on him.
“No, they’re not together anymore.” Her voice sounded as if it was coated with ground glass. “They haven’t been together since you ran off with her.”
He blinked at the cold fury in her eyes. “Since I what?”
She turned away from him. “I’m really not in the mood for this, Slater. I have too much to do this morning if I’m going to feed your guests.”
His own temper began to spiral. “The hell with the guests. I want to know what you’re talking about. Why would you say I ran off with Melanie?”
“Hmm. Let me think. Maybe because you did?”
“The hell I did!”
“Drop the innocent act, Zack. People saw you. Jesse saw you. The two of you were making out in the parking lot of the Renegade. There are variations on the story but from what numerous people told me, she was climbing all over you like the bitch in heat that she was, and you weren’t doing much to fight her off. Before Jess could beat the living daylights out of you, you and my darling ex-sister-in-law climbed into your truck and drove off into the sunset, never to be seen in Star Valley again.”
His mind reeling, he scrambled to come up with something to say to that stunning accusation.
Before he could think past the shock, the side door swung open and the teenager who had greeted him the day before with such dumbstruck inadequacy whirled in, tucking a T-shirt into her jeans as she came.
“Sorry I’m late, Cassie. I slept through my alarm again.”
The kitchen simmered with tension, with the fading echoes of her ridiculous claims. The idea that he would take up with that she-devil Melanie Harte was so ludicrous he didn’t know where to start defending himself.
“No problem, Greta. You can take over for Mr. Slater. He was just leaving. Isn’t that right?” she challenged him, her lush mouth set into hard lines.
He wanted to stay and have this out, to assure her he would rather have been hog-tied and dragged behind a pickup truck for a couple hundred miles than go anywhere with Melanie. He didn’t want to do it in front of an audience, though. And since he couldn’t figure out a polite way to order the poor girl out of the kitchen, he decided their shoot-out could wait.
“This isn’t over,” he growled.
Her eyes were still hot and angry. “Yes, it is, Zack. It was over ten years ago. You made sure of that.”
He studied her for a few moments, then set the knife down carefully on the cutting board and walked out of the room before he said something he knew he would regret.
As Cassie watched him leave, a vague unease settled on her shoulders like a sudden summer downpour.
Why did he seem so astonished when she told him she knew he left with Melanie? Was he honestly dense enough to think they could both disappear on the same night and nobody would be smart enough to put two and two together and come up with four?
He had definitely been shocked, though. That much was obvious. He couldn’t have been faking that dazed, dismayed expression.
She shrugged off the unease. She had too much work waiting for her, to sit here trying to figure out what was going through the mind of a man who was a virtual stranger to her now.
“Do you want more green peppers?” Greta asked.
She saw that Slater had diced a half dozen, far more than she really needed for the huevos rancheros. “No. That’s plenty. Why don’t you start putting together the fruit bowl?”
While Greta moved around the kitchen gathering bananas and strawberries and grapes, she kept sending curious little looks her way. Cassie ignored them as long as she could, then finally gave a loud sigh. “What?”
Greta yanked a grape off a cluster and popped it into the bowl. “Just wondering what that was all about. What’s the story with you and the new boss?”
For a moment she was surprised at the question, then she realized the teenager would have been only a child a decade ago, too young to hear about the biggest scandal in town. “Nothing. No story.”
Greta raised her eyebrows doubtfully. “What were you saying has been over for ten years, then?”
She didn’t want to talk about this. Especially not with someone who had a reputation for garbling stories until they had no resemblance whatsoever to the original.
On the other hand, Slater’s return was a rock-solid guarantee that the whole ugly business was going to be dredged up all over town, anyway. She might as well get used to answering questions about him. “It was a long time ago,” she said tersely. “We were engaged, but it didn’t work out.”
There. That was a nice, succinct—if wildly understated—version. It seemed enough for Greta. “You were engaged to the CEO of Maverick Enterprises?”
“Like I said. A long time ago.”
“Wow! That’s so romantic. Maybe he came back to try to win your heart again.”
When pigs fly.
“I strongly doubt it,” she murmured, then tried desperately to change the subject. “When you’re done there, you can start squeezing the orange juice.”
Greta wasn’t so easily distracted. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s gorgeous. Like some kind of movie star or something.”
Gorgeous he might be. But Cassie didn’t have the heart to tell the starry-eyed teenager that beyond that pretty face, Zack Slater was nothing but trouble.
She was telling the truth.
Two hours later Zack poked at a runny omelette and half-cooked hash browns with his fork, trying hard to pretend he didn’t notice the sullen whispers and the not-so-subtle glares being thrown his way by the Salt River locals.
When he had lived here before, Murphy had a well-earned reputation for good, hearty meals. Either the service and the menu had drastically gone downhill or Murphy was saving all the edible food for his other customers.
He supposed he was lucky to get anything, given the overwhelmingly hostile atmosphere in the diner.
When he walked into the café—with its red vinyl booths and mismatched paneling—the breakfast conversation of the summer crowd had ground to an awkward halt like a kid cartwheeling down a hill and hitting the bottom way too fast.
At first he figured everybody focused on him only because he was a new face in town. It was a sensation he was well acquainted with after spending most of his life being the worthless drifter who would never quite belong.
By the time the waitress slammed a menu down in front of him, the tension in the diner still hadn’t eased a bit, and he began to suspect the attention he was receiving had its roots in something else.
So a few people remembered him from a decade ago. Big deal.
Soon the whispers began to reach him, and it didn’t take long to hear his name linked with Melanie Harte’s.
Cassie hadn’t been making it up. Judging by the reaction at Murphy’s, everybody in town thought he had not only had been chicken enough to run out on his sweet, loving bride-to-be less than a week before the wedding but that he’d stolen her brother’s wife in the bargain.
The one taste of greasy eggs he’d managed to choke down churned in his gut.
Son of a gun.
He had known that leaving so abruptly a decade ago would cause a scandal, that Cassie would be hurt by it. He’d had his reasons for going, and at the time they had sure seemed like good ones.
Hell, when it came right down to it, he hadn’t really been given much of a choice, had he?
At the time—and in the years since—he had tried to convince himself that leaving was the least hurtful option. He was going to break her heart eventually. He knew it, had always known it, even as they had planned their future together.
This way was best, he’d decided. Better to do it quick and sharp, like ripping off a bandage.
But he would have stayed and faced all the grim consequences if he had for one moment dreamed everybody would link his disappearance with a twisted, manipulative bitch like Melanie Harte.
What the hell were the odds that they both had decided to run off on the same night?
Cassie would never believe it was only a coincidence. He couldn’t blame her. He had a hard time believing it himself.
Giving up on the eggs, he sipped at his coffee, which was at least hot and halfway decent. Of course, Murphy and his glowering minions probably hadn’t had time to whip up a new pot of dregs just for him.
What was he supposed to do now? Going into this whole thing, he’d been prepared for a tough, uphill climb convincing Cassie to give him another chance.
To forgive him for walking out on her.
Tough was one thing. He could handle tough, had been doing it his whole life.
But he’d never expected he would have to take on Mount Everest.
Maybe he ought to just cut his losses and leave. He had plenty of other projects to occupy his mind and attention. Too many to waste his time on this hare-brained idea.
This little hiatus from company headquarters was playing havoc with his schedule. Maybe it would be best for everyone involved if he just handed the Lost Creek over to one of the many competent people who worked for him and return to what he did best.
Making money.
He sipped at his coffee again. Why did the idea of returning to Denver now seem so repugnant? He had a good life there. He’d worked damn hard to make sure of it. He had a penthouse apartment in town and a condo in Aspen and his ranch outside of Durango.
He had a company jet at his disposal and a garage full of expensive toys. Everything a man should need to be happy. Yet he wasn’t. He hadn’t been truly happy since the night he drove out of Star Valley.
“You want anything else?” The waitress stood by the table with a coffeepot in her hand and surliness on her face.
Yeah. He wanted something else. He wanted a woman he couldn’t have. Was there anything more pathetic?
“No. I’m finished here.”
“Fine. Here’s your tab. You can pay the cashier.” She yanked the ticket from the pocket of her apron and slapped it down on the table, then turned away without an ounce of warmth in her demeanor.
Okay. So this little junket into town had established he wasn’t going to be welcomed back to Star Valley with open arms by anyone. He fingered the tab for a moment, tempted to climb into his Range Rover parked outside and just keep on driving.
No. That’s what he had done a decade ago, and look where it had gotten him. He wouldn’t give up. Not yet.
He could show Cassidy Harte—and everybody else in town, for that matter—that his stubborn streak would beat hers any day.
With new determination he slid out of the booth, reached into his wallet and pulled out a hundred, just because he could. He left it neatly on top of the ticket then walked out the door, leaving the whispers and glares behind him.
The morning air was clean and fresh after the oppressive atmosphere inside the diner. It was shaping up to be a beautiful summer day in the Rockies, clear and warm.
He nodded to a man in uniform walking through the parking lot toward him, then did a double take.
Hell.
Cassie’s middle brother, Jess, was walking toward him, fury on his features. Great. Just what he needed to make the morning a complete success.
Chapter 4
Uncomfortably aware of the patrons inside the café craning their necks out the window to watch the impending scene, Zack straightened his shoulders and nodded to the other man.
Hard blue eyes exactly like his sister’s narrowed menacingly at him, and Jesse folded his arms across his chest, a motion which only emphasized the badge pinned there. “Slater.”
“Chief,” he answered, remembering that Cassie had told him her brother now headed the Salt River PD.
The other man stood between him and his vehicle and showed no inclination to move out of the way as he stood glowering at Zack. Yet one more person who wasn’t exactly overjoyed to see him turning up in Star Valley again.
Zack couldn’t say he was surprised. For while he hadn’t known Jesse as well as Matt, Jesse had at least tolerated him.
Even so, neither brother had been exactly thrilled at the developing relationship between their baby sister and the hired help—a penniless drifter without much to his name but a battered pickup and a leather saddle handed down from his father.
Although they hadn’t come right out and forbidden the marriage, they hadn’t been bubbling over with enthusiasm about it, either. He hated to admit their attitude had rubbed off on him, making him feel inadequate and inferior.
He’d gotten their unspoken message loud and clear. Their baby sister deserved better.
Jesse had been a wild hell-raiser back then. Hard drinking, hard fighting. In a hundred years Zack never would have expected the troublemaker he knew ten years ago to straighten up enough for the good people of Salt River to make him their police chief.
Of course, the fact that Jesse was a cop didn’t mean a damn thing. Not around here. Zack knew more than most that a Salt River PD uniform could never completely cover up the kind of scum who sometimes wore it.
He shifted, wary at Jesse Harte’s continued silence. Either he was gearing up to beat his face in or he was going to order him out of town like a sheriff in an old Western.
The irony of history repeating itself might have made him smile under other circumstances.
And while he was definitely in the mood for a good, rough fight, he had a feeling Cassie wouldn’t appreciate him brawling with her cop of a brother on Main Street.
