This had to work.

He couldn’t imagine the alternative.

Zach had made mistakes—he would be the first to admit them. But he had paid dearly for them. Could he make it right with her? What were the chances that Cassidy would ever be able to find it in her heart to forgive him?

Well, he would just have to do his best. He had to do everything to make this work. To take this chance.

To see if somewhere inside this hurt, self-protective woman still remained any shred of the one person in the world who had seen something in him worth loving.

Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid
RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RAEANNE THAYNE

lives in a graceful old Victorian nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honors, including several Romantic Times Readers’ Choice Awards and a RITA® nomination from the Romance Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com or at P.O. Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341.

To Angela Stone and her band of angels, especially Merrilyn Lynch, Dorothy Griffiths, Terri Crossley and Leslie Buchanan, for nurturing my family when I couldn’t.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 1

Forget bad hair days. Cassidy Harte was having a bad everything day.

The ancient commercial-grade oven had been giving her fits since lunch; the owner of the small grocery in town had messed up her order, as usual; and her best assistant had decided to run off to Jackson Hole with a hunky, sweet-talking cowboy.

And now this.

With a resigned sigh, she set the spoon down from her world-famous, scorching-hot chili bubbling on the stove and prepared to head off yet another crisis.

“Calm down, Greta, and tell me what’s happened.”

One of the high school students Jean Martineau had hired for the summer to clean rooms and wait tables at the Lost Creek Guest Ranch looked as if she was going to hyperventilate any second now. Her hair was even spikier than normal, her eyes were huge with panic behind their hornrimmed glasses, and she was breathing harder than a bull rider at the buzzer.

“He’s here. The new owner. A whole week early!” she wailed. “What are we gonna do? Jean and Kip took the guests on a trail ride before dinner, and there’s no one else here but me and I don’t know what to do with him,” she finished on a whimper.

Is that all? From the way the girl was carrying on, Cassie would have guessed a grizzly had ambled into the office and ordered a cabin for the night. “It’s okay. Calm down. We can handle this.”

“But a whole week early! We’re not ready.”

It was pretty thoughtless of the Maverick Enterprises CEO to just drop in unexpectedly like this. But the man hadn’t done anything in the usual way, from the moment his representative had made Jean Martineau an offer she couldn’t refuse for her small guest ranch in Star Valley, Wyoming.

All of the negotiations had been handled by a third party—the few negotiations there had been, since the company hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow at Jean’s seven-figure asking price.

She turned her attention back to Greta. “We’ll just have to do our best. Don’t worry about it. Maverick has made it clear it wants the ranch pretty badly. The company has already invested buckets of time and money into the sale. As far as I know, it’s basically a done deal. Even if we tried, I don’t think we can possibly blow it at this late date.”

The girl still had the wide-eyed, panicky look of a calf facing a branding iron. “You know how much I need this job. If he doesn’t like the service here, he could still fire every single one of us after Maverick takes over. I don’t want to go back to making ice-cream cones at the drive-up.”

True. And Cassie would really hate to lose her job cooking meals for the guest and staff at the ranch. Finding a well-paying job she was qualified for in rural Wyoming wasn’t exactly easy. Especially one that included room and board.

She knew she could always move to a bigger town but she didn’t want to leave Star Valley. This was her home.

If she had to, she knew she could really go home, to her family, but the idea of crawling back to the Diamond Harte appealed to her about as much as sticking one of those branding irons in her eye.

Besides that, she loved working at the Lost Creek. These last few months on her own had been so rich with experiences that she couldn’t bear the idea of losing it all, just because some spoiled, inconsiderate executive decided to drop in on a whim.

She sighed. What a pain in the neck. He’d ruined her plans. With a twinge of regret she remembered the great menu she had planned for the new boss’s first night at the ranch—rack of lamb, caramelized pearl onions and creamed potatoes, with raspberry tartlets for dessert.

Tonight’s dinner was good, hearty fare—chili, corn bread, salad and Dutch-oven peach cobbler—but it was nothing spectacular. It would have to do, though. She didn’t have time to whip up anything else.

“You have to help me,” Greta pleaded. “I don’t know what to do with him and I’m afraid I’ll ruin everything. You know how I get.”

Cassie winced at the reminder. Two weeks before, the president of a fast-food chain from back east had rented the entire ranch for a family reunion. In the midst of a severe case of nerves, Greta had ended up accidentally short-sheeting his bed, leaving out towels altogether and overcharging his credit card by a couple of extra zeros. Then at breakfast she’d topped it off by spilling hot cocoa all over his wife.

“Where is the new guy now?”

“I left him in the gathering room. I didn’t even know which cabin to put him in, since that doctor and his family have the Grand Teton for another two nights.”

Their best cabin. Rats. “What’s left?”

“Just the Huckleberry.”

One of the very smallest cabins. And the one next to hers. She blew out a breath. “That will have to do. He can’t expect to drop in like this and have the whole world stop just for him. Check to make sure the cabin sparkles and then send one of the other wranglers up the trail after Jean. I’ll go out and try to keep him busy until she gets back.”

With a last quick stir of the chili—and a heartfelt wish that she were wearing something a little more presentable than jeans and a T-shirt with her favorite female country band on the front—she headed for the gathering room.

It didn’t matter what she was wearing, she assured herself. He was probably a rich old man who only wants to play cowboy, who wouldn’t notice anything but the ranch unless a stampede knocked him over. He had to be. Why else would his company go to so much effort to buy the Lost Creek Guest Ranch?

The ranch consisted of a dozen small guest cabins and the main ranch house that served as lodge and dining hall. The centerpiece of the split-log house was the huge two-story gathering room, with several Western leather couches set up in conversational groups, a huge river-rock fireplace and a wide wall of windows overlooking the beautiful Salt River Mountain Range.

At the doorway Cassie found the new owner standing with his back to her, gazing out at the mountains.

Okay, she was wrong.

This was no pudgy old cowboy-wannabe, at least judging by the rear view.

And what a view it was.

She gulped. Instead of the brand-spankin’-new Western duds she might have expected, the new owner wore faded jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt the same silvery green as the sagebrush covering the mountains. Dark blond hair touched with gold brushed the collar of his shirt and broad shoulders tapered down to lean hips that filled out a pair of worn jeans like nobody’s business. The long length of faded denim ended in a pair of sturdy, battered boots built more for hard work than fashion.

Whoa, Nellie.

By sheer force of will she managed to rein in her wandering thoughts and douse the little fire of awareness sparking to life in her stomach. What in the world was the matter with her? She wasn’t the kind of woman to go weak-kneed at a pretty, er, face. She just wasn’t.

Standing in a hot kitchen all day must have addled her brain. Yeah, that must be it. What other excuse could there be? She couldn’t remember the last time she had experienced this mouthwatering, breathless, heart-pumping reaction.

On some weird level, she supposed it was kind of comforting to know she still could. For a long time she’d been afraid that part of her had died forever.

Still, it was highly inappropriate to entertain lascivious thoughts about her new employer, tight rear end notwithstanding.

She pasted on what she hoped was a friendly, polite smile and walked toward the man. “Hello. You must be from Maverick Enterprises,” she said. “I’m Cassidy Harte, the ranch cook. I’m afraid you caught us by surprise. I apologize for the delay and any inconvenience. Welcome to the Lost Creek Ranch.”

Oddly enough, as soon as she started to speak, the man completely froze, and she saw the taut bunching of muscles under the expensive cotton of his shirt.

For one horrified moment, she wondered if he was going to ignore her. When she was within a half-dozen feet of him, though, he finally began to slowly turn toward her.

“Hello, Cassie.”

The world tilted abruptly, and she would have slid right off the edge if she hadn’t reached blindly for the nearest piece of furniture, a Stickley end table that, lucky for her, was sturdy enough to sustain her weight.

She couldn’t breathe suddenly. This must be what a heart attack felt like, this grinding pain in her chest, this roaring in her ears, this light-headedness that made the whole room spin.

Even with the sudden vertigo making her feel dazed and disoriented, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. In a million years she never would have expected him to show up at the Lost Creek Guest Ranch after all this time.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” her former fiancé and the man who had destroyed her youth and her innocence asked her with that same damn lopsided smile she’d fallen in love with ten years before.

She gulped air into her lungs, ordered oxygen to saturate her brain cells once more. Still gripping the edge of the oak table, she finally forced herself to meet his gaze.

“What are you doing here, Zack?”

Zack Slater—ten years older and worlds harder than he’d been a decade ago—angled his tawny head. “Is that any way to greet me after all these years?”

What did he want from her? Did he honestly think she would embrace him with open arms, would fall on him as if he were a long-lost friend? The prodigal fiancé?

“You’re not welcome here,” she said, her voice as cold as a glacial cirque. She had ten years of rage broiling up inside her, ten years of rejection and betrayal and shame. “I don’t know why you’ve come back but you can leave now.”

Get out before I throw you out.

For just an instant she thought she saw the barest hint of a shadow creep across his hazel eyes, then it slid away and he gave her a familiar, mocking smile. “Funny thing about that, Cass. Welcome or not, I’m afraid I won’t be leaving anytime soon. I own the place.”

Her heart stumbled in her chest as instant denial sprang out. “No. No, you don’t.”

“Not yet, technically. But it’s only a matter of time.”

Owned the place? He couldn’t. It was impossible. Fate couldn’t be that cruel. She wouldn’t believe it.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing this time,” she snapped, “but you’re lying, something we both know you’re so very good at. How stupid do you think I am? Maverick Enterprises is buying the Lost Creek.”

Again he offered nothing but that hard smile. “And I’m Maverick Enterprises.”

She wouldn’t have been more shocked if he’d suddenly picked up the end table still supporting her weight and tossed it through the eighteen-foot window.

Zack Slater and Maverick Enterprises? It wasn’t possible. Jean had done her research before she agreed to sell the ranch. She might be in her seventies but she wasn’t some kind of doddering old fool. According to the papers provided by the lawyer who had brokered the deal, Maverick had more investments than Cassie’s oldest brother had cattle—everything from coffee-houses to bookstores to Internet start-ups.

The one common thread among them was that each business had a reputation for fairness and integrity, things the man standing in front of her would know nothing about.

“Nice try, but that’s impossible,” she snapped. “Maverick is a huge operation, with its fingers in pies all over the West.”

“What’s the matter, Cass? You don’t think a money-grubbing drifter who could barely pay for his own wedding might be the one licking the apple filling off his fingers?”

She scowled. “Not you. You never had any interest in business whatsoever.”

“Sorry to shatter your illusions, sweetheart, but it’s true. Do you want the number to my office so you can check it out?”

In the face of his cocky attitude, her assurance wavered. This couldn’t be happening. He had to be lying, didn’t he?

“Why should I believe anything you say?” she finally snapped. “You don’t exactly have the best track record around here. I made the mistake of trusting you once, and look where it got me.”

He shifted his gaze away, looking out at the mountains once more. After a moment he turned back, his expression shuttered and those long, dark lashes shielding his vivid eyes.

“Would it help if I said I was sorry for that?” he asked quietly.

For what? For leaving her practically at the altar…or for asking her to marry him in the first place?

She gazed at him, words choking her throat like Western virgin’s bower around a cottonwood trunk. Did he honestly have the gall to stand in front of her and apologize so casually, as if he’d simply bumped shopping carts or pulled in front of her in traffic?

She thought of her oldest brother and those first days after, when Matt had walked around in a state of dazed disbelief. Of a tiny, frail Lucy, just a few months old, wailing shrilly for the mother who would never come back.

Of her own shock and the agonizing pain of complete betrayal, those days and months and years when she knew the whole town looked at her with pity, when the whispers behind her back threatened to deafen her.

Sorry? Zack Slater could never be sorry enough to make right everything he and Melanie had destroyed.

“You’re about ten years too late.”

Zack winced inwardly at the bitterness in her voice, though it was nothing more than he expected. Or than he deserved.

He wanted to kick himself for blurting that out so bluntly. He should have slowly worked up to his apology, waited until she had time to get to know him again before he tried to explain away the decisions he’d made that summer.

But since the moment she had walked into the vast room with its cozy furniture and spectacular view, his brain seemed about as useful as a one-legged chicken and he had to fight with everything inside him not to reach for her.

And wouldn’t that have gone over well? He could just picture her reaction if he tried to pull her into his arms. Knowing Cassie, if he tried it, she would probably scratch and claw and aim a knee at a portion of his anatomy he was fairly fond of.

She said he was too late for apologies, for explanations. He hoped not. He really hoped not, or all his work these last few months would have been for nothing.

Before he could answer, she drew herself up with the unconsciously sensual grace that had been so much a part of her, even as an eighteen-year-old young woman just growing into her body.

Eyes glittering with fury, she faced him. “I don’t know what kind of scam you’re trying to pull here, Slater. But I’ll warn you, Jean is not some feeble-minded old lady to sit by and just let you waltz in and swindle her out of the ranch she has loved all her life. And even if she were, you can bet, I’m not. Jean has people who love her, who look out for her. Whatever twisted scheme you’ve come up with, you won’t get away with this.”

At that, she stalked out of the room, her wildflower scent lingering behind her.

He blew out a sharp breath. So much for a warm welcome. Not that he’d expected one. But then, he’d never imagined Cassie would be the first one to greet him when he arrived, either. He’d thought he would at least have had a little more time to prepare for the shock of seeing her.

She had changed.

What had he expected in ten years? Time didn’t stand still except in his entirely too-vivid imagination. There, Cassidy Harte had remained as fresh and innocent as she’d been at eighteen, when she had stolen his heart with her mischievous smile and her boundless love and her unwavering loyalty.

That Cassie—the one who had haunted his dreams for so long, through the dark months when he had nothing else—had worn her hair long, in a sleek ponytail he used to love to pull from its binding and twist his fingers through.

Sometime during the long years since, she had cut it off. He wondered when, and felt a little pang of loss he knew he had no right to.

Her hair was still as dark and luxurious as it had been ten years ago—as glossy and rich as fine sable—but now she wore it in a sexy little cap that, on any other woman he might have called boyish.

There was nothing remotely boyish about Cassidy Harte, though. From her high cheekbones to her full lips to her body’s soft, welcoming curves, she was one hundred percent woman.

Her eyes were the same. Blue as the spring’s first columbine, fringed by long thick lashes that didn’t need any kind of makeup to enhance their natural beauty.

Ten years ago those eyes would have softened when he walked into a room, would have lit up with joy just at the sight of him. Now they were hard and angry, filled with a deep betrayal he had put there.

This had to work.

He shoved away from the couch and turned back to the mountains, looking out at the magnificent view with the same yearning he imagined was in his gaze when he looked at Cassie.

It had to work. He couldn’t imagine the alternative.

He had made mistakes—he would be the first one to admit them. But he had paid for them, and paid dearly. Could he make it right with her? What were the chances that she would ever be able to find it in her heart to forgive him, after the hurt he had caused her?

Slim to none, he figured.

He rubbed a hand over the ache in his chest. He would just have to do his best. No matter how tough, how seemingly insurmountable the task might seem, he had to do everything he could to make it work.

No matter the risk, he must take this chance.

To see if somewhere inside this hard, angry woman still remained any shred of the one person in the world who had seen something in him worth loving.

Chapter 2

It was true. All of it.

To her shock and dismay, it turned out he was telling the truth this time. By some sadistic twist of fate, Zack Slater was indeed the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the West—and the man who would be signing her paycheck from here on out.

What kind of warped sense of humor must Somebody have to mess up her life so completely? Just what, exactly, had she done to deserve this?

She tried to be a good person. She didn’t lie, didn’t cheat on her income taxes, didn’t swear—much, anyway. She obeyed the Golden Rule, she was kind to the elderly and small children and she really made an effort to go to church as often as she could manage. And for all her effort, this is what she got?

She should have raised a little hell when she had the chance.

Jean Martineau, steel-gray hair yanked back into her usual ruthlessly tight braid, frowned at her with concern in her snapping brown eyes. “I had no idea, Cassie. I swear I didn’t. The man who signed the papers went by William Z. Slater. Other than the last name bein’ the same, why would I have any reason to think for one minute that he might have anything in common with Zack Slater, the no-good drifter who caused Star Valley’s biggest scandal in years?”

Thank you so much for bringing that up again. Cassie pounded out more of her emotional uproar on the hapless ball of dough for the next morning’s sweet rolls. At this rate, the poor things would be as tough and stringy as cowhide.

“It’s not your fault,” she assured her friend and employer slowly. “I’m sure he concealed his identity on purpose.”

But why? That was the question that had been racing through her head all afternoon. If this whole thing wasn’t a scam—and apparently it wasn’t—why would Zack put himself to so much trouble to buy a small guest ranch that would probably never be more than moderately successful? It didn’t seem like the kind of savvy investment a fast-track company like Maverick Enterprises would make.

The ranch was geared toward families, with plenty of activities for all ages. Jean had the philosophy that children needed to be exposed to the history of the West, to what life was like on a real working cattle ranch, in order to preserve appreciation for the old ways.

To that end she tried to keep her rates affordable, well within range of the average family’s vacation budget.

Cassie would hate to see Zack come in and turn the ranch into some kind of exclusive resort for the rich and famous, like some of the other guest ranches in the area had become. It would be a shame, not to mention take a huge investment in capital.

But why else would he want it, especially when he had to know he wouldn’t be welcomed back by many of the good people of Star Valley?

And why all the secrecy?

Maybe for that very reason—if Jean knew he was the one buying the ranch, she never would have agreed to the sale.

Cassie pounded the bread one last time, wishing it were a certain man’s lean, masculine, treacherous features.

“I can try to back out of the sale, if it’s not too late.” Jean didn’t sound very confident. Her frown cut through her wrinkled, weather-beaten face like sagging barbed wire.

Cassie shook her head. “You won’t get another offer to match the one Maverick made for the ranch.”

“Well, I can get by without the money.”

Maybe, but both of them knew Jean wouldn’t be able to run the ranch much longer, at least not with the same hands-on approach she had always maintained. Some days her arthritis was so bad she couldn’t even raise her arms to saddle a horse.

“I can’t let you back out of the sale,” Cassie said gently. “Not on my account. I’ll find a job somewhere else. Wade Lowry is always after me to come cook for the Rendezvous Ranch.”

Jean touched her shoulder. “I’d hate to lose you. I wouldn’t be able to find anybody else with your gift in the kitchen.”

“I’m sorry,” she said helplessly. “I can’t work for him. Surely you understand that.”

Jean squeezed her shoulder, then stepped back to lean a bony hip against the table. “The past is past, honey. Nothing you can do to change what happened ten years ago. You got to move on.”

It was so much like the lecture Matt always used to give her, she wanted to scream. “Maybe I can’t change the past. But I also don’t need to have it thrown in my face every day when I go to work.”

“True enough. Can’t say as I blame you.”

Still, the disappointment in the feisty rancher’s eyes gnawed at Cassie’s insides. Guilt poked at her. Leaving right now in the middle of the ranch’s busiest season would create a bundle of problems. Jean would have to find someone else fast to fill her position, which meant she would have to take time from the ranch’s guests for hiring and training someone new.

She wavered. Maybe she could stick it out a little longer, just for Jean’s sake.

Then she thought about working for Zack, having to see him regularly. Ten years ago she had been nothing short of devastated when he jilted her. She had worked hard during the intervening years to get to this place where she had confidence again, where she could see all the good things about herself instead of constantly dwelling on what it was she had lacked that had driven the man she loved into the arms of her brother’s wife.

Seeing him all the time, working for him, was bound to undermine that confidence. She couldn’t do it. Not even for Jean.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Jean shrugged and managed a weathered smile. “We’ll just have to make the best of a bad situation. That’s all we can do. Now, it’s been a heck of a day. Why don’t you go back to your cabin and I’ll finish up here?”

“No. I’m almost done. You get some rest.”

Jean touched her shoulder again. “Good night, then,” she said, then hobbled from the kitchen.

After her boss left, Cassie quickly finished her prep work for breakfast, then turned the lights off and walked out of the kitchen toward her own cabin next to the creek.

She considered her little place the very best perk of working for the ranch. It was small, only three rooms—tiny bedroom, bathroom and a combined kitchen and living room—but all three rooms belonged to her.

For another few days, anyway.

The cabin was more than just a place to sleep. It represented independence, a chance to stand on her own without her two older brothers hovering in the wings to watch over her, as they had been doing for most of her life.

She was twenty-eight years old and this was the first time she had ever lived away from home. How pathetic was that? She had never known the giddy excitement of moving into a college dorm and meeting her roommates for the first time or the rush of being carried across the threshold of a new house by a loving husband or repainting a guest bedroom for a nursery.

She didn’t like the bitter direction her thoughts had taken. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that if it hadn’t been for Zack Slater, her life might have turned out vastly different.

She had just graduated high school when he blew into her life. She had been young and naive and passionately in love with the gorgeous ranch hand with the stunning gold-flecked eyes and the shadows in his smile.

To her amazement he had seemed as smitten as she. The fierce joy in his face whenever he saw her had been heady stuff for a girl who had never even had a serious boyfriend before.

Right from the beginning they had talked of marriage. He had wanted her to finish college before they married, but she couldn’t stand the idea of being away from him for four long years. She had worked for weeks to persuade him that she could still attend college after they were married, that he could work while she went to school since she had a scholarship. After she graduated, she would work to put him through.

Finally she had worn down his resistance. She flushed now, remembering. Maybe if she hadn’t been in such a rush, had given him time to adjust to the idea of settling down, he wouldn’t have felt the need to bolt.

But he did, taking her dreams—and her brother’s wife—with him, and leaving Matt a single father of a tiny baby.

What else could she have done but stay and try to repair the damage she had brought down on her family? If she had the choice to do all over again, she honestly didn’t think she would change anything she had done after he left.

She sighed and let herself into the cabin, comforted by the familiar furnishings—the plump couch, the rocker of her mother’s, the braided rug in front of the little fireplace. She had made the cabin warm and cozy and she loved it here.

Functioning more on autopilot than through any conscious decision, she walked into the small bathroom and turned on the water in the old-fashioned clawfoot tub, as hot as she could stand. When the tub was filled almost to overflowing, she took off her clothes and slipped into the water, desperate to escape the unbelievable shock of seeing the only man she had ever loved, after all these years.

Taking a bath was a huge mistake.

She realized that almost as soon as she slid down into the peach-scented bubbles. Now that she didn’t have her work in the kitchen to keep her busy, she couldn’t seem to fix her mind on anything but Zack and the memories of that summer ten years ago, memories that rolled across her mind like tumbleweed in a hard wind.

The first time she had talked to him—really talked to him—was branded into her memory. He had worked at the Diamond Harte for several months before that late spring evening, but she had been so busy finishing her senior year of high school that she had barely noticed him, except as the cute, slightly dangerous-looking ranch hand with the sunstreaked hair and that rare but devastating smile.

Matt liked him, she knew that. Her oldest brother had raved about what a way Zack had with horses and how he worked the rest of the ranch hands into the ground. And she remembered being grateful that her brother had someone else he could trust to run things, while he had so many other worries on his mind.

Melanie had been in the advanced stage of a pregnancy she obviously hadn’t wanted. Never the most even-tempered of women, her sister-in-law had suddenly become prone to vicious mood swings. Deliriously happy one moment, livid the next, icy cold a few moments later. Her brother definitely had his hands full, and she was grateful to Zack for shouldering some of that burden.

Then, in late May, the week after her high school graduation when the mountain snows finally began to melt, Matt had asked Zack to take a few of the other ranch hands and drive part of the herd to higher ground to graze. Because it was an overnight trip, they would need someone to cook for them, and Cassie had volunteered, eager for the adventure of a cattle drive, even though it would be a short one.

When she closed her eyes, she could see every moment of that fateful trip in vivid detail….

She loved it up here.

With a pleasant ache in her muscles from a hard day of riding, Cassie closed her eyes and savored the cool evening air that smelled sweet and pure, heavy with the rich, intoxicating perfume of sagebrush and pine.

The twilight brushed everything with pale-rose paint, and the setting sun glittered on the gently rippling surface of the creek. Hands wrapped around her knees, she sat on the bank and listened to the water’s song and the chirp and trill of the mountain’s inhabitants settling down for the evening.

She would miss this so much in the fall when she moved to Utah for college. The campus in Logan was beautiful, perched on a hill overlooking the Cache Valley, but it didn’t even come close to the raw splendor of the high country.

This was home.

So many of her most pleasant memories of her parents were built on the firm foundation of these mountains. Every summer and fall on the way to and from their grazing allotment they used to camp right here where the creek bowed. Her mom would cook something delicious in a Dutch oven and after supper her dad would gather her and Matt and Jesse around the campfire and read to them out of his favorite Westerns.

She smiled softly. Her memories had begun to fade in the six years since her parents had died in a wintry roll-over accident, but she could still hear Frank Harte’s booming voice ring through the night and see his broad, callused hands turn the pages in the flickering firelight.

She missed them both so much sometimes. Matt did his best. Both her brothers did. She knew that and loved them fiercely for working so hard to give her a good, safe home for the past six years.

Matt had only been twenty-two, Jesse seventeen, when their parents died, and she knew a lot of men would have figured a grieving twelve-year-old girl would have been better off with relatives or in the foster care system. Their aunt Suzie over in Pinedale had offered to take her in, but Matt had been determined they would all stick together.

It must have been so hard for him. She thought of how rotten she’d been sometimes, how often she’d snapped at him when he told her to do her homework or make her bed.

You’re not my mother and you can’t make me.

She owed him big-time for putting up with her. Someday she would have to find a way to repay him.

She sighed, resting her chin on her knees. She was reluctant to leave this peaceful spot, even though she knew she should probably go check on the stew and see if the ranch hands had eaten their boots yet.

When she walked away from camp a half hour earlier, Jake and Sam Lawson had been snoring in their tent in a little before-dinner nap after beating the brush all day. But they were probably awake now and wondering where she’d wandered off to.

She smiled at the thought of the two bachelor brothers, who were in their early sixties and had worked for the ranch her entire life. They treated her like a favorite spoiled niece, and she loved them both fiercely.

And then there was Slater.

A whole flock of magpies seemed to flutter around in her stomach whenever she thought of the lean, hard cowboy leading the cattle drive. This was the longest she had ever spent in his company, and she had to admit she had spent most of the day watching him out of the corner of her eyes.

The few times he’d caught her watching him, he had given her that half smile of his, and she felt like a bottle rocket had exploded inside her.

He made her so nervous she couldn’t think straight. What was it about him? She’d been around cowboys all her life and most of them were simple and straight-forward—interested in horses, whisky and women, not necessarily in that order.

Zack seemed different. Despite the way he joked with the older cowhands, there was a sadness in his eyes, a deep, remote loneliness that probably made every woman he met want to cuddle him close and kiss all his pain away.

She rolled her eyes at the fanciful thought. If a woman wanted to kiss Zack Slater, it wasn’t to make him feel better. He was totally, completely, gorgeously male, and a woman would have to have rocks for brains not to notice.

Well, she couldn’t sit here all night mooning over Zack Slater. Not when she had work to do.

Just as she started to rise, the thick brush ten yards upstream on the other side of the creek begin to rustle with more than just the breeze. A few seconds later, a small mule deer—no more than a yearling doe, probably—walked out of the growth and picked her way delicately to the water’s edge. After a careful look around, she bent her neck to drink and Cassie watched, smiling a little at the ladylike way the doe sipped the water.

The deer so entranced her that she almost missed another flicker of movement, again on the opposite side of the creek, at the halfway point between her and the deer. She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what other kind of animal had come to the water, then inhaled sharply. She caught just a glimpse of a tawny hide and a long swaying tail as something slunk through the brush.

A mountain lion!

And he had his sights on the pretty little doe.

Even though she knew it was all part of the rhythm of life—hunter and hunted, another link on the food chain and all that—she couldn’t bear to watch the inevitable.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then changed her mind and jumped to her feet, waving her arms and hollering for all she was worth. As she’d hoped, the doe lifted her head from the water with one panicked look, then bounded back into the trees with a crash of branches.

“Ha, you big bully,” she said to the cougar. “Find your dinner somewhere else.”

The big cat turned toward her and she could swear there was malice in those yellow eyes. With a loud, deep growl that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention, the animal turned, his long tail swaying hypnotically.

Uh, maybe drawing attention to herself with a cougar on the prowl wasn’t exactly the best idea she’d ever had.

“Nice kitty,” she murmured in a placating tone. “Sit. Stay.”

The big cat paced the bank on the other side, staying roughly parallel to her. For the first time Cassie began to feel a real flicker of fear, suddenly not at all sure the eight-foot-wide creek would be enough of a barrier between them if the cat decided she made a better snack.

Moving slowly, she scooped up a softball-sized rock, just in case, and began backing toward camp and the men.

She had only made it a few yards when the cat tensed his muscles as if to spring back into the brush. Before she could breathe a sigh of relief, he turned at the last minute and spanned the creek in one powerful leap. With a strangled shriek, she threw the rock but it only glanced off the cougar’s back before landing in the water with a huge splash.

Cassie didn’t wait around to see if her missile found a target. She whirled and took off for camp, heart racing and adrenaline pumping through her in thick, hot waves. The cat was gaining on her. She knew it and braced, expecting jagged teeth to rip into her flesh at any second. This was it, then. She was going to die here in these mountains she loved, all because of her stupid soft heart.

And then, when she thought she could almost smell the predator’s breath, fetid and wild, and feel it stir the hair at the back of her neck, a gunshot boomed through the twilight.

For an instant time seemed to freeze and she became aware of the total silence on the mountainside as the echo died away. A few moments earlier the evening had buzzed with activity but now nothing moved except the soft wind rustling the new leaves of the aspens.

She stopped, gratitude and relief rushing through her, then shifted her gaze to see which of the ranch hands had come to her rescue. She wasn’t at all surprised to see Slater just lowering a rifle.

What did surprise her was the yowl behind her. To her shock, the cat wasn’t dead, just royally teed-off. Apparently he decided he’d had enough of interfering humans. With a last angry screech exactly like one of the barn cats tangling with the wrong cow dog, the mountain lion skulked back into the trees.

She whirled back to Zack. “You missed him!”

“I shot into the air.”

“Why?” she asked, incredulous.

He shrugged those broad shoulders. Despite the fierce need to pump every ounce of air to her oxygen-starved cells now that the danger had passed, her heart skipped a beat at how big and strong and wonderful he looked leaning there against a rock. “I saw you scare away his prey. You can’t blame the guy for going after the consolation prize.”

She stared at him. “You were going to let him take a chunk out of me just because I didn’t want to watch him kill a poor, helpless deer in front of me?”

“Naw.” He grinned and she began to feel a little shaky. “I probably would have gotten around to shooting him once he caught up to you.”

“Well, that’s comforting.”

He only laughed at her snappish tone. “You okay?”

“Swell. Thanks so much for your help.” The panic of the moment, coupled with the fact that she hadn’t had time to eat anything since breakfast, combined to make her feel a little light-headed.

Zack walked closer to her, then frowned. “You’re shaking.”

“I think I need to sit down.”

To her complete chagrin, she swayed and would have fallen over if he hadn’t suddenly moved as fast as the cougar had—and with exactly the same lithe grace—and reached for her.

He guided her to the soft meadow grass. “Here we go. Just sit here for a minute until you feel more like yourself.”

She hissed in fast breaths between her teeth, thinking again of that terrible moment when she thought her number was up. Remembering it wasn’t helping calm her down, any more than having Zack Slater crouching so close.

She knew she was trying to distract herself from her scare but she couldn’t help noticing his hard mouth, just inches from hers. A little wildly, she wondered what it would be like to have those lips on hers, how he would go about kissing a woman.

“Deep and slow.” His voice broke through her thoughts, and she stared at him, suddenly terrified he’d read her mind.

“Wha-what?”

“You’re going to hyperventilate if you keep breathing so fast. Slow down a little.”

Wrenching her mind away from any thoughts of the man’s kisses, she focused once more on the cougar. “Do you think he’ll be back? We should watch the calves.”

“I think between the two of us, we’ve probably scared him clear to Cody by now.”

They sat there for a moment longer until she felt she had enough control of herself to return to camp.

To her amazement Zack had stuck close to her all evening, as if afraid she might have some delayed reaction to almost becoming cat bait. He was sweetly protective, even insisting on going with her to bury the remains of their food from any wandering bears.

Later they sat around the campfire long after the Lawson brothers had gone to bed, talking softly while each glittering star came out and the wind mourned through the tops of the pines and the fire hissed and sputtered.

She told him of her parents and her grief and how tough it had been after their deaths. He shared snippets of his own childhood, of moving from town to town with a saddle bum for a father and of being on his own since he was fifteen.

And then, when the campfire burned down to embers, he walked her to her tent, pushed her hair away from her face with a work-hardened hand and softly kissed her.

It had been worlds better than anything she could have imagined. Sweet and tender and passionate all at once. Just one kiss and he had completely stolen her heart.

That had been the beginning. They were inseparable after that and had tumbled hard and fast into love. It had been the most incredible three months of her life, filled with laughter and heady excitement and slow, sexy kisses when her brothers weren’t looking.

Until it ended so horribly….

Cassie came back to the present to several depressing realizations. The water in the tub was now lukewarm, bordering on cool, and any bubbles had long since fizzled away.

And, much worse, silent tears were coursing down her cheeks as she relived the past.

Oh, cripes. Hadn’t she cried enough tears over Zack Slater? It was a waste of good salt. The man wasn’t worth it ten years ago, and he certainly wasn’t worth it now.

She climbed from the tub, wrapping herself in a thick towel, then splashed her face with cold water to cool her aching, puffy eyes. She hadn’t indulged in a good, old-fashioned pity party for a long time, and she figured she must have been long overdue. But enough was enough. Now that it was all out of her system, she could move on.

She put on her robe and decided on a glass of milk before bed. Just as she was opening the refrigerator and reaching for the carton, she heard a knock at the front door.

Rats. It was probably Jean coming to check on her one more time. The last thing she wanted was to have company, with the mood she was in tonight. She thought about ignoring it, but the knocks only grew louder and more insistent. Gritting her teeth, she looked out the small window at the cabin next to her, thinking of the man who now stayed there.

The man who now owned the whole blasted place.

What if he decided to venture outside to investigate the commotion? She didn’t need another encounter with him today. Swearing under her breath, she went to the door and swung it open, then her breath seemed to tangle in her lungs.

Well, she didn’t have to worry about Zack coming out to see who was banging on her door, since he was the one standing there, fist raised to knock one more time.

Chapter 3

As he’d expected, she didn’t look exactly thrilled to see him. Her eyes turned wintry, her mouth went as tight as a shriveled-up prune, and her spine stiffened, vertebrae by vertebrae.

Even so, she looked so beautiful he had to shove his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching for her.

She must have only just climbed out of the bath. Her still-damp hair, a few shades darker than normal, clung to her head, and she had wrapped herself in a silky robe of the palest yellow. The delectable smell of peaches wafted to him on the cool, early-summer breeze, and his mouth watered.

Framed in the light from inside her cabin, she looked warm and soft and welcoming, just as he had imagined her a thousand times over the years.

Her voice, though, was as cold as her eyes. “What do you want?”

Just to see you. To hear your voice again. He shifted his weight, alarmed at the need instantly pulsing through him just at the sight of her. He would have to do a much better job of controlling himself if he wanted this plan to work.

“I just spoke with Jean.” Despite his best intentions, his voice came out a little ragged. “She said you tendered your resignation.”

He didn’t think it was possible, but that prune-mouth tightened even more. “What else did you expect?”

“I expected you to show a little more backbone.”

She stared at him for several seconds. In the porch light her eyes looked huge, those dark lashes wide with disbelief, and then she laughed harshly. “Oh that’s a good one, coming from you. Really good. Thanks. I needed a good joke tonight.”

Okay. He deserved that. He had no right to lecture her about staying power when he had been the one who walked away just days before their wedding. Still, that was a different situation altogether.

He plodded gamely forward. “So you’re just going to walk out and turn your back on Mrs. Martineau when she needs you?”

Her gaze shifted to some spot over his shoulder. “Jean has nothing to do with this. You’re the new owner. That means I’m turning my back on you.”

“We need to talk about this.”

“No, we don’t.” She started to close the door, but his instincts kicked in and he managed to think fast enough to shove a boot in the space. Still, she pushed the door hard enough to make him wince.

“We don’t have anything to say to each other,” she snapped.

“I think we do. Come on, Cass. Let me in.”

After a long pause where she continued to shove the door painfully against his foot, she finally shrugged and stepped back. He followed before she had a chance to change her mind.

Inside, he saw the cabin’s floor plan matched his. Here, though, it was obvious Cassie had decorated it to suit her personality. It was warm and comforting, with richly textured rugs and pillows and Native American artwork covering the walls.

Cassie was a nurturer. She always had been, even as a girl just barely out of high school. She used to talk about her brothers raising her, but he had spent enough time with the family to know she took as much care of them as they did her. The Hartes looked out for each other.

The cabin reflected that nesting instinct of hers.

He smiled a little at an assortment of whimsical, ugly, carved trolls filling an entire shelf above her mother’s rocking chair. She’d been collecting them since she was a girl and he recognized several new ones since he had last seen her collection.

He narrowed his gaze, looking closer. Where were the little kissing trolls he’d given her as a gift during their first month together? He couldn’t see the piece here with the rest of the figurines.

He almost asked her what she’d done with it—why she hadn’t set it out, too—but then clamped his teeth against the question. He had no right to ask her. Even if she burned it and flushed the ashes down the toilet, nobody would have blamed her.

“This is nice,” he murmured instead.

“You must live in some grand mansion somewhere, now that you’ve hit the big time.”

He thought of his cold, impersonal apartment in Denver, with its elegant furniture he was never quite comfortable using. Her little cabin held far more appeal.

“Not really,” he answered. “It’s a place to sleep and that’s about it.”

There was an awkward pause between them, and he thought about the little trailer home they’d planned to buy in Logan while she finished school. She had decorated it in her head a hundred times, talking endlessly about curtains and furniture and wallpaper. He had even gotten into the spirit of things, something that still amazed him. Neither of them had cared how cramped the little trailer would be. They were too excited about starting their lives together.

She finally broke the silence, her expression stony and cold. “Can we skip the small talk? I’ve had a long day and need to be up at five to start breakfast over at the lodge.”

He pushed away his memories. If he wanted this to work, he had to focus on the present. “Okay. Let’s get down to business. I don’t want you to quit.”

“What you want hasn’t mattered to me for a long time, Zack.”

He ignored her clipped tone. “From all the research my people did before we made the offer, we know that the food at the Lost Creek is one of the main draws of the ranch. In just a few months you’ve developed quite a reputation for delicious, healthy meals.”

He paused, waiting for her to respond, but she remained stubbornly silent. After a moment he went on. “I want to build on that reputation. Use it as a selling point. That’s been one of my goals for the ranch from the beginning.”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Zack. You didn’t really think I would stay here and work for you, did you?”

At his continued silence she gazed at him for a moment, then her jaw sagged. “You did! I can’t believe this!”

He had hoped. Now he realized how completely foolish that had been. “You used to be the kind of woman who would never back down from a good fight.”

Her mouth hardened again. “I used to be a lot of things. Ten years is a long time. I’m not the same person I was then. I’ve become much more choosy about the things I’m willing to fight for.”

“And your job isn’t one of them?”

“I won’t lie to you. I like working for the Lost Creek. Jean is a sweetheart and gives me all the freedom I could ever want to create my own menus. But I would rather take a job cleaning truck-stop toilets than stay here and work for you.”

He deserved everything she dished out and more. He knew it, but her words still stung.

“Is there anything I can say to change your mind?”

She shook her head firmly and he chewed the inside of his cheek. He hadn’t wanted to play this card but she was the one folding way too early in the game. “Fine,” he said, his voice cool and detached. “I’ll let Jean know in the morning that Maverick will have to pass on the ranch.”

Her eyes widened, and that stubborn little jaw threatened to sag again. “You can’t! You’ve already signed papers. Jean already has a check.”

“Earnest money, that’s all.” He refused to let the shocked outrage in her voice deter him. “We had thirty days to reach a final decision on the sale. I’ll just tell Jean I’ve changed my mind.”

“You’re willing to walk away from the whole deal just because I refuse to work for you?”

“I’m a businessman, Cassie, as unbelievable as you seem to find that. The food you provide is an important component of the ranch’s appeal to its guests. Who knows what kind of an impact your resignation will have? I don’t want to take that risk.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look serious?” He brushed an imaginary piece of lint off the sleeve of his shirt while she continued to gape at him.

“This is blackmail,” she hissed.

“Call it what you want.” He smiled as if his whole world wasn’t riding on this moment.

“You bastard.” Her voice quivered with fury.

Her reaction cut deep, but he only smirked. “You think I’ve never been called that before?”

“I’ll just bet you have.”

“I never would have made it this far without a thick skin.”

“Just like every other snake in the world, right?”

Her eyes were bright with anger, and hot color flared high on her cheekbones. He wanted to reach across the distance between them and kiss away her anger, wanted it so badly his bones ached with it. He clamped down hard on the need for some kind of contact—any kind—between them.

“Think what you want about me—”

“Oh, I do. You can bet I do.”

He went on as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “But as far as I’m concerned, you’re part of the package deal.” He paused. “However, I can understand your reluctance, given our unfortunate history.”

She snorted. “Unfortunate, my eye. The day you ran out on me was the luckiest day of my life.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I’m trying to be reasonable here, Cassie, but you’re not making it very easy.”

She remained stubbornly silent.

“As I was saying,” he said, “I understand why you might want to find a new position. So I’m willing to make a deal with you.”

“What kind of deal?” Suspicion coated her voice like a thin sheet of ice on a puddle.

“You stay the thirty days until the sale is finalized, and Maverick won’t back out. In the meantime you can hire someone as your replacement, someone who can learn your menus and build on your success.”

“And what do I get in return, besides the oh-so-appealing pleasure of your company?”

The Boy Scouts probably would have laughed themselves silly if he’d ever tried to join up, but he certainly believed heartily in their motto about being prepared.

Through a little casual conversation with Jean during the negotiations for the guest ranch, his lawyer had learned Cassie’s job at the ranch was always considered temporary between the two women, that she was saving for a down payment on the diner in town.

Why she didn’t use some of the vast Diamond Harte resources was beyond him, but in this case her typical dogged determination worked to his advantage.

“Stick it out for thirty days, and I’ll give you a bonus of five thousand dollars.”

Only the slightest flicker in her gaze betrayed that she had even heard him. “I don’t want your money.”

He shrugged. “Then stay for Jean’s sake. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you it will probably be a long time before she’ll see another offer as good as the one we’ve made.”

Not just a long time. Never. Cassie drew in a breath, trying to gather the thoughts he seemed to scatter so easily. Maverick had offered far more than the appraised value for the ranch. And who knew when Jean would even get another offer? The ranch had been on the market for a year already with little to show for it but a few nibbles.

He had her backed against the wall, and he damn well knew it. Would he be ruthless enough to make good on his threat to renege on the deal, even knowing he would hurt a sweet, feisty woman like Jean Martineau in the process?

Yes. She didn’t doubt it for a second.

She wasn’t stupid enough to buy his argument that the ranch’s reputation would suffer without her. She was a good cook but there were plenty of others who could pick up right where she left off. No, he wanted her here for his own sinister reasons. She couldn’t begin to guess what they might be. Just thinking about his motives made her stomach flip around like a trout on the end of a line.

On the other hand, Jean was her friend. She had been kind to her and given Cassie a chance to prove herself, when all she had for experience was ten years spent cooking for her family’s cattle ranch.

How would she be able to live with herself if the deal fell through because of her?

Anyway, what did it matter who signed her paycheck? She probably wouldn’t even see him during that thirty days. The president and CEO of Maverick Enterprises most likely didn’t have a spare second to spend hanging around supervising a dude ranch in western Wyoming. He would probably be here for a few days and then crawl back under whatever rock he’d been hiding under.

The realization cheered her immensely. She could handle a few days. She was a strong and capable woman. Besides, he didn’t mean anything to her anymore. Any feelings she might have had for him so long ago had shriveled up and blown away in the endless Wyoming wind.

“Ten thousand dollars,” she said promptly. With that much, she’d have all she needed to make the down payment Murphy wanted.

“You really think you’re worth that much?”

She refused to let him see her flinch at his words. “At least.”

“Okay. Fine. Ten it is.”

She had never expected him to agree. The very fact that he did left her as wary as a kitten in the middle of a dogfight. “One month, then. For Jean’s sake.”

At least he didn’t spin her platitudes about how she wouldn’t regret it. Instead his dazzling smile sent a chill of premonition scuttling down her spine. She ignored it and held the door open for him to leave in a blatant message even Zack Slater couldn’t disregard.

After a pause he sent her another one of those blasted smiles and obediently trotted for the door. As he walked out into the cool June night toward his own cabin next door, she couldn’t help wondering if she had just made the second biggest mistake of her life.

He was already up and dressed when he heard her leave her cabin an hour before sunrise.

From his comfortable spot in the old wooden rocker, Zack listened to the squeak of her screen door, her footsteps on the wooden planks of her porch, then her sleepy, muffled curse as she stumbled over something in the predawn darkness.

He grinned into the hidden shadows of his own front porch. His Cassidy Jane had never been much of a morning person. Apparently, she hadn’t changed much in the past decade.

His smile slid away. Wrong, he reminded himself again. Maybe she still wasn’t crazy about getting up early, but she was no longer the same girl he had loved ten years ago. Everyone changed. He couldn’t come back after so long and expect her to have waited for him in suspended animation like some kind of moth trapped in glossy amber.

She was a different woman, just as he had changed drastically from that wild, edgy ranch hand. The only thing they shared was a bittersweet past ten years old.

But last night in her house he had seen glimpses of the girl she had been, like some kind of ghostly reflection shimmering under deep, clear water. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear. The stubborn jut of her chin as she had argued with him. Those luminous blue eyes that showed every emotion.

She was the same but different, and he wanted to find out all the ways she had changed over the years.

He would see this through. He had come too damn far to back down now. If nothing else, he could at least explain to her why he had left. He owed her that much.

On impulse, he rose from the comfortable old rocker and followed her on the gravel pathway toward the lodge, maintaining a discreet distance between them.

The early-morning air was cool, sharp and sweet with pine pitch and sagebrush. He inhaled it deeply into his lungs, listening to the quiet. He had missed this place. More than he realized, until the day before when he returned.

He bought his own ranch in the San Juans a few years ago and he escaped to it as often as he could manage, but it wasn’t the same. Western Colorado had never felt as comfortable to him as Star Valley.

As right.

The months he spent working the Diamond Harte were the best of his life. Not just because of Cassie, although he had watched her and wanted her for a long time before that fateful trip into the high country when he had kissed her for the first time.

Cassie was a big part of his bond to this place, but there was more. Her brother Matt had treated him well, far better than any other man he’d worked for over the years.

Wandering ranch hands without their own spreads generally had a social status roughly equivalent to a good cow dog. He’d become accustomed to it as a boy following his father from ranch to ranch across the West. He didn’t like it but he accepted it.

At the Diamond Harte, everything had been different. Zack had been given more responsibility than he’d ever had before. He’d been treated as an equal, as a trusted friend.

And he had repaid that trust by abandoning the boss’s sister a week before their wedding.

He frowned and pushed the thought away, concentrating instead on moving quietly several yards behind her. By now they had reached the lodge. Instead of going in the main door, Cassie slipped around the back of the big log structure and unlocked a door on the side, going straight into the kitchen, he assumed.

After a moment’s debate as to the wisdom of another confrontation with her so early in the game, he gave a mental shrug, twisted the knob and walked inside.

He found her standing across the large, comfortable kitchen with her back to him, her arms reaching behind her as she tied on a crisp white apron.

She didn’t bother looking up at his entrance. “I’m glad you’re on time this morning, Greta. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us for breakfast if we’re going to do this right today. As much as I would love to serve a steaming bucket of slop to Zack Slater, I can’t do that to Jean.”

He paused several seconds, then couldn’t resist. “I appreciate that,” he drawled. “How about we save the bucket of slop for tomorrow? I think I’d prefer bacon and eggs this morning.”

She whirled around at his voice, her blue eyes going wide. Color soaked her high cheekbones but she didn’t apologize, just tilted her chin a little higher as her cool beauty punched him hard in the gut. “You’re up early.”

He leaned a hip against one of the wide counters. “I spent too many years as a ranch hand. Old habits, you know. It’s tough for me to sleep past six these days.”

“It’s only half past five,” she pointed out. “You have another half hour to laze around in bed.”

“Must be all this fresh, invigorating mountain air.” Or something.

“Well, I’m afraid you’re too early for breakfast.” Her voice was sharp as she reached for a metal pan on a shelf. “We don’t start serving until seven.”

“I can wait.”

She studied him for a moment, then pursed her lips together. “If you’re starving, there might be a few muffins left over from yesterday. And the coffee will be ready in a few moments.”

Despite the grudging tone of voice, her words still reached in and tugged at his heart and he saw another ghostly reflection of the woman he had loved, the soft-hearted nurturer who hated to see anybody go hungry on her watch. Even him.

“I’m fine,” he assured her. Better than fine. He thoroughly enjoyed watching her bustle around the kitchen, even though her movements were jerky and abrupt, without her customary elegant grace.

His presence unnerved her. He could see it in the way she fumbled through drawers and rummaged blindly in the huge refrigerator.

Under ordinary circumstances she probably knew this kitchen like she knew her own name, but you’d never be able to tell by her movements this morning.

He found it very enlightening to see her composure slip. Enlightening and entertaining.

Somewhat ashamed of himself for finding secret pleasure in the knowledge that he could fluster her so much just by invading her space, he straightened from the counter. “Can I help you do something?”

She peered around the chrome door of the refrigerator to stare at him. “You mean like cook?”

He shrugged. “I have been known to rattle a few pots from time to time.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Why would the CEO of Maverick Enterprises volunteer to cook breakfast for ten hungry families?”

Because the CEO of Maverick Enterprises has spent ten years mooning over the chef. “Maybe I’m bored.”

“Don’t you have some kind of leveraged buyout or hostile takeover to mastermind somewhere?”

“I’m all leveraged out this morning. And I’ve found takeovers to be generally much less hostile once I’ve had my morning coffee.”

She didn’t return his smile, just watched him with that suspicion brimming out of her blue eyes. Finally he decided not to argue with her. Instead, he picked up a knife and went to work cutting up the green peppers she’d pulled from the refrigerator.

“Am I doing this right?”

She watched him for a moment, a baffled look on her features, then she shrugged. “You’re the boss. If you want to play souschef, don’t let me stop you. Dice the pieces a little smaller, though.”

She returned to rifling through the refrigerator, and they worked in silence for a few moments, the only sounds in the kitchen the thud of the knife on the wooden cutting board and the delicate shattering of eggshells from across the room.

He had a quick memory of other meals they had cooked together, when he had been free to sneak up behind her if the mood struck him. When he could wrap his arms around her and lift her long, thick hair to plant kisses on the spot right at the base of her neck that drove her crazy, until she would turn breathlessly into his arms, the meal forgotten.

They had ruined more than one meal at the Diamond Harte together. He smiled at the mental picture, and of the slit-eyed look her older brother would give him when he would come in and find something burning on the stove and the two of them flushed and out of breath.

Not caring for the direction of his thoughts or the awkward silence between them, he looked for a distraction, finally settling on what he thought would be a benign topic of conversation.

“So how’s your family these days?” he asked.

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.

If he had learned anything after ten years of building a successful business from nothing, he’d learned that sometimes diversion was the best course of action. “I understand congratulations are in order,” he finally murmured, stretching his lips into what he hoped resembled a polite smile. “When’s the big day?”

Jesse continued watching him with that stony expression. “Next month.”

“Lovely time of year for a wedding.”

The other man had apparently contributed all he planned to in the conversation because he didn’t respond. Zack finally gave up. “Nice talking to you,” he murmured coolly, prepared to walk through him if he had to.

Jesse stepped forward, shoulders taut and his face dark. “You’re not welcome here, Slater.”

Big surprise there. He felt about as wanted in Salt River as lice at a hair party.

Jesse took another step forward, until they were almost nose to nose. “Now, why don’t you make this easy on yourself and everybody else? Just go on back wherever you came from and forget about whatever game you’re playing.”

He tensed. “Who says I’m playing a game?” he asked, even though he was. It was all just a risky, terribly important game.

“I don’t care what you’re doing here. I just want you to leave. No way in hell will I stand by and let you hurt my family again.”

The hands he hadn’t even realized he had clenched into fists went slack as he remembered what people thought of him. What Cassie thought of him. That he had run away with Melanie, destroying her own dreams as well as her brother’s marriage.

What a mess. Damn it, Melanie had left a new baby, no more than a few months old. He remembered a sweet little thing with dark curly hair and big gray eyes who had immediately stolen her aunt Cassie’s heart.

Melanie had abandoned her husband, her baby daughter, her whole life here in Wyoming. And everybody thought she did it because of him.

No wonder the whole town despised him.

“I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” Jesse muttered. “You screw up one time—drive one damn mile over the speed limit—and I’ll be on you like flies on stink. I’ll tie you up in so much trouble you’ll be begging me to let you leave town.”

He didn’t doubt it for a minute. “Good to know where we stand.” He offered a bland smile but wisely refrained from holding out his hand. “Nice seeing you again.”

Since the police chief still showed no inclination to step aside and let him pass, he finally moved around him and headed for his Range Rover.

Leaving would be the easy thing, he thought as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed on the road back to the Lost Creek. The smart thing, even. But he’d taken that route once and lived with the guilt and self-doubt for a decade. He wasn’t ready to do it again.

Not yet, anyway.

Cassie hung up the phone in her small office off the main kitchen of the ranch and fought the urge to slam her forehead against her messy desk three or four dozen times. If she received one more call about the scene in front of Murphy’s between Slater and Jesse that morning, she was afraid she couldn’t be held responsible for the consequences of her actions.

She had a whole afternoon of work ahead of her, planning menus and ordering supplies, and she didn’t have the time—or, heaven knew, the inclination—to sit there listening to salacious gossip.

What had Jesse been thinking to confront Zack in front of the most popular hangout in Salt River, where he could have optimum visibility? As if all the busybodies in town needed a little more fuel to add to the fire. She was sure the grapevine was just about buzzing out of control over Zack Slater’s triumphant return.

It all made her so furious she wanted to punch something. She had spent ten years trying to live down the past, hoping people were starting to forget the scandal.

Hoping she was starting to forget.

And now here he was again, stirring them all up like a boy poking at a beehive with a stick.

Still, Jess had no business pulling his protective, big-bad-cop act in front of Murphy’s. She could just picture him scowling and threatening, trying to intimidate Slater into leaving town.

As if he could. She leaned her head back in her chair with a grimace. Two of the most stubborn men she had ever known going at it like a couple of bull moose tangling racks.

And Slater. She blamed him even more. None of this would have happened if he had stayed clear of town.

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