“Are you okay?”

Cassie nodded, then shook her head as the tears came. She swiped at them and glanced up at the rooftop, where the wiry young carpenter who’d handled the hotwire was standing, braced at the edge, staring down at the two of them. She turned her face away from the house so the men couldn’t see, and Jake pulled her around in front of him, shielding her from view with his huge shoulders….

“Look, I don’t want to add to your stress today,” he offered gently. “We can finish our business another time.”

“Okay,” Cassie said. But she was so upset that she couldn’t even recall what business, exactly, they’d been discussing. Dynamite. Oh, damn. She’d blurted that word out like a threat. And she hadn’t remained civil as she’d planned, not at all. And now she’d started to shake and cry like a fool because one of her men had got hurt. Jake Coffey had certainly seen her at her worst, and now she’d have to face this man—this handsome, intimidating man—in civil court the day after tomorrow.

Seeing him again felt like the last thing she needed. And yet, as she watched him walk away, it felt like the only thing she wanted.

Dear Reader,

This book is set in an area that is suspiciously similar to my hometown. Locals will recognize a few landmarks, but none of the people. The characters come straight from my imagination.

I want to emphasize that because, though my father taught me much about the home-building business, he is nothing like the character Boss McClean in this book. My father is the most honorable and loving father any daughter could ever ask for.

Though I create my characters from scratch, they do experience the same joys and struggles we all share.

Jake Coffey and Cassie McClean must each find a way to forgive the past in order to embrace the bright future that beckons them. I loved writing this story because forgiveness, I sometimes think, is the most beautiful word in the English language. Well, maybe forgiveness is the second most beautiful word. The most beautiful word in any language is, of course, love.

Keep your cards, letters and e-mails coming. They feed my spirit and inspire me to be a better writer.

P.O. Box 720224, Norman, OK 73070

www.superauthors.com/Graham

My best to you,

Darlene Graham

Dreamless

Darlene Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This story is dedicated to Jennifer Leigh Gardenhire

My dear daughter

And my precious “first fan”

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

CASSIE MCCLEAN had just about had her craw full of Mr. Jake Coffey.

She removed her soiled leather work gloves finger by finger with vicious precision, squinting out over the Ten Mile Flats and watching that hated man’s pickup jolt up the narrow gravel road that shot straight toward her like a mile-long arrow.

That road, that ridiculous…cow path of a road, was the most recent spear Jake Coffey had chucked into their escalating series of skirmishes. In the spring, it had been the watershed. In the dry weeks of August, the grading dust. With him, it was always something.

Her plans would be unfolding perfectly by now were it not for Jake Coffey.

Ten Mile Flats lay below her in a gentle sea of green winter wheat, a marked contrast to the high, darkly wooded ridge that she had christened The Heights. With its brick and wrought-iron gates, its curving concrete streets and newly installed underground utilities, The Heights was as sophisticated as the Flats were rustic. And that’s exactly what Cassie had envisioned.

She had counted on the fact that Ten Mile Flats would never change. Out there, horse-farming operations with miles of white fencing and pristine barns had been producing their champions since the turn of the century. And as long as the horse farms were there, those bottomlands would spread forth like a hazy patchwork quilt, meeting the curve of the South Canadian River, creating an unobstructed, timeless view, complete with breathtaking Oklahoma sunsets. The future homeowners of The Heights were willing to pay a fortune for that view. Yes, everything was perfect. Everything except Jake Coffey.

She bit her lip and whacked her gloves against her palm. That man.

She had jumped through hoop after hoop to appease the landowners out on the Flats. Many of them had come to consider Cassie’s exclusive, luxury housing addition as a welcome cushion between their peaceful farms and the urban sprawl creeping westward from the city of Jordan. All of them had come to accept, grudgingly, that The Heights was a quality development of classic homes.

All but Jake Coffey. Owner of the nearest, the largest, the most productive of those horse farms.

What was that man going to complain about now?

At the base of the hill, where the pricey lots were pocked with massive red rock formations that veered into a narrow creek, the noise of rock crushers cracked the morning calm, answering Cassie’s question.

Of course. Undoubtedly he’d gripe about the rock crushers and the track hoe hammer and the bulldozers making so much noise as they cleared the lower lots.

Well, wait till the dynamite started!

The noise was certainly going to be the next thorny issue with her nearest neighbor, Cassie was sure. She wondered if he was going to overreact, as he had over the road access. A temporary restraining order, for heaven’s sakes! Forcing Cassie’s grading equipment, her delivery vehicles, and now her concrete trucks, to drive all the way around on Troctor Avenue. Five long miles out of the way, each way, when his road through his dadblame antiquated horse farm was an easy shortcut from Highway 86.

The elderly sisters who’d previously owned Cassie’s land had held an easement to use the road through Cottonwood Ranch—mostly to haul feed to their wild goats in their rattletrap Toyota pickup. When Cassie bought the land, she made sure she got the easement in the deal. She thought everything was fine and that she could pass through Cottonwood Ranch until the interstate loop under construction to the north was completed.

But Jake Coffey had claimed that the easement allowed for light traffic only and that Cassie had “so changed the use of the easement that it had become an excessive burden on the road.” Or, rather, his lawyer had claimed that. And now, the man was seeking a permanent injunction. Permanent.

Well, with that nasty maneuver, Louis Jackson Coffey had turned their peevish little telephone feud into all-out legal war. Cassie had contacted a lawyer and filed a counteraction of her own.

And right now it looked like the whole thing was about to get up close and personal.

Fine. C. J. McClean was more than ready to take on Louis Jackson Coffey.

When the crushers ceased their pounding for a moment, she slapped the gloves against the leg of her overalls and turned to holler up at the foreman from Precision Stone. “Darrell! This limestone looks perfect. Let’s get that chimney rocked up today.”

Darrell Brown, husky, middle-aged, hardworking and brutally honest, gave her a salute from high up on the twelve-pitch roof. “Yes, ma’am!”

Darrell’s crew and a couple of the framing carpenters were hammering away, nailing toe boards and protective wood planks over shingles still slick with morning frost. “Just so long as you’re happy with the quality, Ms. McClean,” he called over the noise. “I don’t want to be knocking no low-grade limestone off of this monster.”

He jerked a thumb at the chimney towering behind him. The thing peaked a full seventy feet in the air—tall enough to clear all three stories of the eleven-thousand-square-foot house and the tops of the massive black oaks sheltering it.

Down the hill, the rock crushers started up again, cutting off further conversation.

Darrell shrugged and Cassie smiled, waving him off. She surveyed the woods rising up behind the house, remembering the design challenges those huge trees had presented. The timber on this hill had cost her in more ways than one, but on the outskirts of Jordan, Oklahoma, a forested crest like this was dear.

Every home builder from here to Oklahoma City had tried to get his hands on this land, and Cassie, using extreme patience and her aunt Rosemarie’s social goodwill, had finally secured it for a fair price from the eccentric Sullivan sisters. In the deal, she’d promised that any tree over thirty feet tall would be preserved—a promise that had put her architectural skills to a real test. But C. J. McClean was always true to her word. Always.

In the end, she would make a killing off this exclusive housing development, but it was the quality and integrity of the homes, not the profit, that mattered to Cassie. The lasting beauty. Ever since she was a little girl, the one thing that had always made her spirits soar was the sight of a well-built, well-designed home positioned on a beautifully landscaped lot.

Pride rose in her chest as she backed up, giving the frame of the most recent house she’d designed a quick once-over. Board by board, stone by stone, her dream houses were becoming a reality. All custom-designed, all over ten thousand square feet, these majestic homes would grace this crest for generations to come. And her name, her good name, C. J. McClean, would stand solidly behind them. It was a hell of a dream—one she’d carried in her heart ever since the day her father had gone to prison. And now it was a thrill to see that dream materialize right before her eyes.

Darrell Brown would start the stonework on the Detloff family’s chimney today. The Becker place was already partially framed. At the highest and most westward cul-de-sac, country-and-western singer Brett Taylor’s enormous concrete slab would be poured by week’s end.

Barring rain, of course. Cassie frowned at the sky where soggy clouds threatened to band together and make trouble. It was already November and soon chilling rains would delay work on everything from concrete to brick masonry. At least she had this first house weathered in, which meant she could keep the indoor subcontractors busy through the winter.

She sighed. There was never any shortage of things to worry about in the building business. She sure didn’t need the likes of Jake Coffey adding to her stress.

She cut an angry gaze back to the red double-cab pickup as it raised a plume of dust, fishtailing round the development marquee.

While Jake Coffey’s truck pell-melled up the hill, Cassie marched to her own white one, the one with the Dream Builders logo stenciled on the door—a tasteful aubergine logo that she had designed herself.

Cassie McClean lived a life entirely of her own design. She enjoyed riding around town with the radio blasting so loudly on her favorite oldies station that even with the truck windows rolled up, the guys on the second-story roof could hear the pulse of the music. Everybody in the building business knew who she was. Big blond ponytail. Bouncy energetic stride. Too young. Too successful. Boss McClean’s only daughter.

She liked it that way…except for the Boss McClean part, that is. She shook off that thought.

She ripped open the truck’s door and snatched up her cell phone. When the noise at the bottom of the hill ceased again, she punched the speed dial for her lawyer’s office. She was determined to face this Coffey bully well armed.

“How’s our little countersuit shaping up?” She paced back to the curb and spied glints of red winking in and out of the bare trees as Coffey was forced to slow down on the steep, winding streets. Even the streets in The Heights were designed to contribute to the atmosphere of privacy, serenity, peace.

She nodded as she listened. When Mr. Jake Coffey parked that truck, he was, by George, in for quite a roaring earful.

“Excellent,” she said, after her lawyer had told her everything she wanted to hear. “Fax the letter.” She punched off and stepped up onto the curb.

The red pickup braked with a screech right in the middle of the cul-de-sac. A large, long-legged man in a cowboy hat and sunglasses muscled his frame out, slammed the door and strode toward her.

From the top of his dusty black Stetson to the tip of his scuffed brown boots, the man exuded virile masculinity. His bearing, his movements and what she could see of his face, his jaw, his mouth—all of it—looked handsome, sexy.

Cassie just hated that.

She deteriorated into a complete klutz around good-looking, sexy men. As C. J. McClean, she could hold her own with the rough-cut good old boys in the construction business any day. But around any eligible, attractive male she reverted to little Cassie, the awkward tomboy raised by her strange maiden aunt.

Jake Coffey was single, or so she’d been told. But why did he have to be so danged appealing?

He stopped on the pavement a yard short of her person, regarding her from behind reflective sunglasses. “Ms. McClean?” He did not remove his shades.

She kept her place up on the curb, which gave her only a slight boost against his massive build.

“Yes?” She was determined to keep this carefully civil. Deliberately cool. But she did not remove her sunglasses, either. Civil was one thing, but she refused to make this confrontation easy for him.

“I’m Jake Coffey. Owner of Cottonwood Ranch.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the spread at the bottom of the hill. “We’ve talked on the phone.”

She glanced at the logo on the pocket of his jacket—the same one was on his pickup—an unimaginative black silhouette of a horse’s head with Cottonwood Ranch in a semicircle of script wrapped below it. “I know who you are, Mr. Coffey.” She did not extend her hand.

They hadn’t “talked” on the phone the last time. They’d shouted. Well, she had shouted. He always kept his voice infuriatingly low while refusing to budge about anything. Lately, it had been this restraining order. “What brings you up to my turf?”

Cassie was glad she was wearing sunglasses because she almost rolled her eyes at her own baiting tone. Here we go, she thought, the klutzy tomboy is already acting defensive. Why couldn’t she ever just act normal?

He didn’t respond to her taunt. “Seems you and I have another problem this morning, ma’am.”

“We have a problem? I don’t have a problem.” Cassie spread a palm on the bib of her overalls. “My work is proceeding on schedule.”

He hooked his fingers in his back pockets and planted his booted feet wide, with his torso settled low on his hips and his pelvis thrust forward, like a man who sat atop a horse a lot, which she supposed he did. Under his worn denim jacket, tucked into a dusty pair of Levi’s, he wore a faded black T-shirt that stretched over a well-developed chest.

“Ma’am,” he repeated, looking over his shoulder in the direction from which the noise had started late yesterday, “we have a problem.” His soft voice belied his firm stance. He looked back at her.

His skin was weathered, tan, and he had a black five o’clock shadow though it was only eight in the morning. His full lips were chapped-looking and slightly pouty, turned down, as if he might spit out something vile at any moment.

A most unpleasant man. Most threatening.

Cassie cocked a knee and took a dainty swipe at her thigh as if his dustiness had somehow contaminated her overalls. “Okay. Exactly what is it now, Mr. Coffey?”

His head had ticked in the direction of her gesture, as if it distracted him. He clamped his lips tight and looked back up at her face. “I’ve been up most of the night with my horses.” His voice was tired, unemotional. “That rock crusher down there sent my broodmares crawling up the stable walls yesterday. Kept ’em skittish all night. Another day of this and I might lose a couple of my winter foals. If I do, I am holding you legally responsible.”

She’d listened to him on the phone often enough. His voice was always low, controlled like this. But in person, it carried a resonance that rolled from deep in his chest. She hadn’t felt that during their terse phone conversations. And underneath it all, she clearly sensed his rising ire.

She let one eyebrow arch high enough that it cleared the frame of her sunglasses. “I doubt you can do tha—” Unfortunately, the crusher drowned out her last word, underscoring the man’s argument.

I don’t, he mouthed as he made an emphatic jab at his chest.

“How can you—” Cassie shouted as the crusher took another vibrating bite out of the hill—boom, boom, ka-boom! Unfortunately, the noise halted before she finished on a high note “—possibly hold me responsible?” The men up on the roof turned their heads toward her shouting. More quietly she continued, “I am in no way liable for what happens to your horses.”

“You don’t have to make all that noise. You could have that rock chipped out by hand.”

Was this man insane? She yanked off her sunglasses so she could give him the benefit of her most incredulous stare.

“Mr. Coffey—” now it was she who kept her voice lethally low “—removing a ledge of imbedded red rock that size with little pickaxes—” she pinched a thumb and finger together in front of his face “—would take weeks, perhaps months, and we’ve got to have those lots cleared soon so we can pour concrete before the first fall freeze. If the noise disturbs you, I suggest you move your horses to a quieter location.”

She started to turn away, but he stepped around her, jerking off his sunglasses and matching her flabbergasted expression with an incredulous one of his own.

“Move twenty-two mares? Do you have any idea what that would cost? And where would I take them? Texas? That noise ricochets over the whole of the Flats. You can hear it all the way to the river! Cottonwood Ranch was down there a long time before you started building these fancy houses. You can just shut down those machines until after my mares foal—”

“Absolutely not. Do you know what that machinery cost? I can only rent it for a limited time, and while I’m paying for it, I’m using it every minute of the day.” Cassie had not reached her level of success by wasting money.

He planted his fists at his belt. They were into it now. “Not where there’s a noise ordinance.”

“For your information—” The accursed booming started up again, seeming to support Jake Coffey’s grievances all the more, and Cassie hated the fact that she had to raise her voice again. “I have obtained a noise variance.”

“Well, there you have it—” Coffey said sarcastically.

When she cupped a hand to her ear, he leaned closer, bringing the aroma of horses, smoky wood and fine leather forward with him. He smirked while keeping that maddening voice level.

“I reckon when my horses read that variance, they’ll calm right down.”

Cassie felt her blood pressure spike. Nothing irked her more than being mocked by a man. The Scottish temper that she had inherited from Boss McClean boiled right to the surface. “They can eat the variance, for all I care.” She narrowed her eyes as she stared into his infuriatingly calm ones. “Those crushers stay.”

Heads jerked around on the roof above.

She clamped her lips and gritted her teeth, hating herself for flaring up in the same way her father always had.

Jake Coffey’s color heightened and the line of his mouth tightened, but his voice remained calm, in spite of the deafening noise booming from the base of the ridge. “I thought maybe I could come up here and deal with you, man to ma—neighbor to neighbor. But I can see plain dealings won’t work with you. Never mind, then. I’ll be back with the sheriff in one hour.” He turned toward his truck.

She slapped the gloves against her thigh, wishing she could whack his hat off with them.

“The sheriff can keep me off your road, but that is all!” she shouted, even though, now, the crushers were silent. “And that’ll end soon enough when we put a stop to your blamed injunction. By the way, I’ve added the crushers to the countersuit I’m bringing to court—” her voice went spiraling up to a shriek “—and the dynamite!”

Coffey froze with his hand on the door of his pickup. His head swiveled toward her. For the first time he shouted back at her. “Dynamite?”

“My attorney’s faxing your attorney a letter right now.” Cassie waltzed toward him. “We’re going to get this damn road business squared away, once and for all, and we may as well settle up on the noise deal, too, because it looks like some blasting’s gonna be called for.” She tended to fall into her father’s tough speech patterns when she felt threatened. Normally, Cassie tried never to think about Boss McClean during the course of her workday. But this morning she’d thought of him twice already. Not a good sign.

Her aunt Rosemarie always said that Cassie’s father was not a bad man. Only weak. And Cassie had to admit, his legacy to her, good and bad, had certainly amounted to a lot more than blunt language and hot temper. From him, and from her grandfather, she had learned the nuts and bolts of the building business, had absorbed it into her very cells. But her grandfather had shown her the rewards for doing things right, while her father had shown her the penalty for doing things wrong.

“Dynamite?” Jake Coffey repeated, and his dry lips looked paler.

But the haughty answer Cassie might have tossed back died in her throat, because even as the booming vibrated through the woods again, they both heard a horrified scream above it, followed by frantic shouting from the men up on the roof.

Cassie whirled to see Tom Harris, the youngest of the stonemasons, skidding down a valley of the roof like a puppet whose strings had snapped. The young man’s face looked shocked, disoriented, as he tumbled sideways with such force that he knocked toe boards loose on his way down. The other men scrambled along the shingles grabbing for him, but he slipped from their hands and went flying over the edge, hitting a high scaffolding before bouncing down thirty feet onto a jagged pile of limestone below.

Cassie emitted a choked cry, then raced to the fallen man. She threw herself to her knees on the mound of rocks, tossed aside her sunglasses and shouted, “Tom! Tom!”

The young man, an apprentice barely out of his teens, lay perfectly still, white-faced, with eyes closed. But he was still breathing. Blood pooled onto the limestone from the back of his head. Cassie jerked off her flannel shirt and pressed it against the gash.

“He grabbed ahold of a live wire up there!” Darrell Brown shouted as he crabbed his way down the scaffolding toward the ladder braced against it. Other men were crawling down behind him like ants off a mound.

From inside the structure, the banging of hammers, the whining of saws and the loud rumbling of a rock radio station all ceased. The framing carpenters rushed out and gathered around with the stonemasons.

High up on the house, a new man—a loner named Whitlow—stood and pointed with a long piece of board at a thick white wire. Up there, Cassie knew, the dangling wire was the power to the decorative lighting that would eventually illuminate the massive chimney.

“That one shouldn’t be hot!” she argued senselessly.

“This thing’s hot, all right,” the carpenter called back. He casually flipped it with the stick, and sparks flew.

The man’s fearlessness with the arching wire snapped a red flag in Cassie’s mind, but she was too distracted by Tom’s condition to puzzle its meaning.

Why the hell was that wire hot? It wasn’t like her electrician to make a mistake and switch the temporary with the main power.

“Somebody go kill that damn power,” she ordered.

A gangly young man hollered, “Yes, ma’am!” and sprinted away.

“Somebody go down to the site trailer and get the big first-aid kit.”

Again Cassie’s order was obeyed with a “Yes, ma’am!”

Jake Coffey had dropped to one knee on the other side of Tom and was pressing two fingers against the victim’s neck. “His pulse is okay,” he said quietly.

Cassie fumbled around in the bib of her overalls, pulled out her cell phone and punched 9-1-1. Electric shock was a worry, but she was more concerned about the effects of the fall. She told the dispatcher the problem quickly, while Darrell scurried over the stones toward them.

“No,” Cassie shouted into the phone. “There’s a shortcut, a private gravel road—” she looked pointedly at Jake Coffey “—through Cottonwood Ranch.” Jake nodded. His dark brown eyes were alert, concerned. His mouth looked grim.

“How far is the turnoff from Highway 86?” She searched Jake’s face imploringly while the dispatcher held.

“Let me.” He took the cell phone from her. “It’s two-tenths of a mile. Hard to see. I’ll phone someone at the ranch and tell them to park one of our red trucks out there and flag the paramedics.”

He handed Cassie the phone. “They want us to stay on the line.”

She nodded, pressed the phone to her ear and looked down at Tom.

“Think he broke his neck?” she heard Darrell calling to Jake Coffey, who was sprinting toward his pickup.

“We’d better not move him, just in case,” Jake called back. Cassie looked up and saw him pull out his cell phone. She turned her full attention back to Tom.

The men stood in a circle of stunned silence, watching as Jake, Darrell and Cassie covered Tom with emergency blankets, then padded the man’s limbs against the sharp rocks as best as they could. They bandaged his burned hand, and then there was nothing to do but wait on the ambulance.

In the distance the rock crushers resumed their methodical work, the operators oblivious of the tragedy up on the hill. The sound filled Cassie with a mixture of guilt and nausea. She wanted the noise—that aggressive sound of progress—to stop. She knew there was no rational reason for work all over the development to halt. Still, her ambitious concerns of only moments ago seemed utterly callow now.

Please let him be okay, she prayed as she studied Tom’s unconscious face. “Hold on,” she told him gently. “Help is on the way.”

She kept up this litany of silent prayer and verbal reassurance while they waited for the medics.

Time stretched taut, and she glanced up once to find Jake Coffey, wearing his sunglasses again, obviously studying her. When he caught her glance, he removed the shades, poked them into his breast pocket and squatted down on his haunches next to her.

As their eyes met in mutual concern, her fear mysteriously seemed to abate and a strange lightness overcame her.

“Is there anything else I can do?” Jake said quietly.

His face, the face she’d viewed as an angry opponent’s only moments before, was the face of a compassionate ally now. She looked away because she felt the sting of tears and she didn’t want to cry in front of the men…or in front of Jake Coffey. She shook her head and turned to stroke Tom’s unburned hand.

Jake stood up again. “Fellas.” He addressed the men gathered around. “We’d better move all these pickups out of the way.” The circle of Levi’s and boots disappeared from Cassie’s view, and then she heard engines roaring to life. She only glanced up from Tom’s face one other time, to see the vehicles pulling away from the cul-de-sac. At the same time, she caught sight of men jogging down the hill from the other building sites.

None of them could do anything to help Tom, she knew, but she felt a wave of gratitude for the caliber of the subcontractors and workmen she employed. These men were the finest of craftsmen, and they knew the meaning of teamwork and cooperation. They were always on schedule, always fair, always professional and honest, and not one of them would let a man lay fallen without rushing to his side.

She heard the sirens then. “Here comes help, Tom,” she reassured the young man and squeezed his hand.

ONCE TOM WAS STRAPPED into a neck brace and safely loaded into the ambulance, Cassie turned to find the men still grouped around the cul-de-sac. An air of helpless frustration was setting in.

“Let’s get back to work!” Darrell Brown bellowed at the assembly. He waved a beefy paw, and slowly, as if unfreezing from a carved tableau, the men responded.

“Ms. McClean, I’m so sorry this happened.” A deep voice spoke quietly from behind Cassie. She turned. She hadn’t noticed Jake Coffey still standing there.

She tilted her face up to him and tried to speak, but could only give her head a forlorn shake. He studied her, and his eyes were sad. They were also very kind, as if the earlier animosity between them had never existed.

He sighed. “What a terrible thing to happen.”

“I can’t believe it,” Cassie admitted, and looked away.

Their sudden bonding over the accident came as a surprise to Cassie. And those few seconds of eye contact also brought another completely unexpected sensation. A thrill of attraction pulsed through her middle as she realized again that Jake Coffey was undeniably good-looking.

Cassie, who spent her days solely in the company of men, was seldom genuinely attracted to one. She often wondered if living in the world of construction had left her abnormally inured to male magnetism. But her honesty—her most valued trait—prevented her from feigning attraction when there simply was none. Even so, she secretly worried about herself: at age twenty-seven, she remained stubbornly alone.

And yet, she enjoyed men—enjoyed their world, their ways. She just couldn’t seem to develop an intimate relationship with one. And ordinarily she wouldn’t even behave normally around a guy this attractive, but for some reason she wasn’t acting like an awkward schoolgirl now. She supposed she was too shocked to be anything but totally raw, totally natural.

This man standing beside her was certainly handsome. But there was something else about him. She glanced up again to find him still looking at her, with the tiniest frown line of compassion forming between his brows. She decided it was that protective, caring look that was definitely causing a physical stir deep inside of her. The realization gave her a spark of sheer wonder, of amazement. Of all things. She might actually have enjoyed discovering these new sensations if she weren’t so worried about Tom. She couldn’t let herself feel such things—she shouldn’t even acknowledge such things—at a time like this.

She looked away, toward the ambulance now winding its way down the hill. Darrell Brown punched numbers into his cell phone as he paced the ground where the ambulance had briefly stopped. Contacting Tom’s family, Cassie supposed.

She glanced up at Jake Coffey. “I’ve got to get to the hospital,” she mumbled. The hospital. Would Tom even make it that far? She had never seen a body look so limp. Imagining the possibilities, she started to tremble and clutched her arms at her waist. She felt like she was going to cry. “Excuse me,” she said as she moved around Jake Coffey.

He gave a hoarse whisper. “Of course.” And he stepped aside.

She glanced back and saw that he was still studying her with that look of concern. She stopped in her tracks and drew a great shuddering breath.

His lips opened and he hesitated, as if he wanted to say something important but wasn’t sure how. Then he simply said, “I hope the young man will be okay.”

“Me, too.” Cassie’s tears threatened to spill over and she covered her mouth with her hand.

Jake stepped forward and wrapped warm fingers above her elbow. “Are you okay?”

Cassie nodded, then shook her head as the tears came. She swiped at them and glanced up at the rooftop, where the wirey young carpenter who’d handled the hot wire was standing, braced at the edge, staring down at the two of them. She turned her face away from the house so the men couldn’t see, and Jake pulled her around in front of him, shielding her from view with his huge shoulders.

Cassie dropped her eyes, ashamed of her unprofessional behavior, but he said, “It’s okay to cry.”

She shook her head. “It’s just that so many things have been going wrong lately. One little thing after another. And now this.” She swiped at her eyes again.

To her astonishment, he produced a clean red bandana from his back pocket. “Here.”

She took it and swabbed her cheeks. “Thanks.” She handed it back.

He stuffed it back into his jeans. “Accidents happen, Ms. McClean, especially on construction sites.”

Cassie sniffed. “I know that. But ever since I started this development, it seems like it’s been one calamity after another. I admit I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I’ve planned and saved and dreamed about this project for so long…but I’m beginning to think my dream is turning into a nightmare.”

“Look, I don’t want to add to your stress today,” he offered gently. “We can finish our business another time.”

“Okay,” Cassie said. But she was so upset that she couldn’t even recall what business, exactly, they had been discussing. Dynamite. Oh, damn. She had pitched that word out like a lit stick of the stuff. And she hadn’t remained civil like she’d planned, not at all. And now she’d started to shake and cry like a fool because one of her men got hurt. Jake Coffey had certainly seen her at her worst, and now, she’d have to face this man—this handsome, intimidating man—in civil court, the day after tomorrow.

Seeing him again felt like the last thing she needed. And yet, as she watched him walk away, it felt like the only thing she wanted.

CHAPTER TWO

JAKE COFFEY STEERED THROUGH THE LABYRINTH of streets in The Heights, fighting down a strange mixture of low arousal and high confusion. Since the day the sign went up announcing The Heights, he and architect and home builder C. J. McClean had been on a collision course. He’d spoken to her on the phone several times. But nothing in her smooth, confident, businesslike and occasionally caustic voice had indicated that Ms. McClean was so young…and so very beautiful.

What a face! Even without a speck of makeup, it was a face so fresh—so beguiling—that no healthy, normal man with two eyes in his head was likely to forget it.

Her eyes, he’d noticed the instant she removed the sunglasses, were deep set, blue as a cloudless Oklahoma sky, full of intelligence and fire. And when they’d filled with tears, he’d had to fight the urge to cradle her in his arms.

She sported the kind of thick, bushy blond ponytail that he was a sucker for—a wild, unselfconscious mane that broadcast vitality. That straight, little, barely freckled nose enhanced her look…and to top it all off, she had those full, ripe lips. She was his all-American type, all right. The kind of lively doll he’d tried to impress at high school football games and rodeo championships ever since he was a randy kid.

His type. Complete with that fit, curvy little body. Even those ridiculous overalls couldn’t disguise her curvy bust, especially after she’d stripped off that baggy shirt to help the injured man. With only a thermal undershirt hugging her torso, it was easy to see that Cassie McClean had the goods. What was a woman like that doing sashaying around among construction crews all day long? Breaking lots of hearts, he bet. He’d done enough checking to know she wasn’t married, but he wondered if she had a steady boyfriend.

What the heck was he doing, thinking about her in this vein? He didn’t know a thing about C. J. McClean, except that she had the kind of rare good looks he’d once been a complete sucker for. And behind that pretty face, she had a mean-as-a-junkyard-dog business style.

Cowboy, he reminded himself sternly, for the foreseeable future, you’ve taken yourself out of circulation.

He’d sworn off dating as long as he had Jayden and Dad and the horses to worry over. And besides, since his divorce, he’d discovered that it was damn crazy out there in singleland. Scary, in fact. Cute little numbers wrapped in spandex could turn into a sane man’s nightmare after only a couple of casual dates.

The last sweet young thing in his life had, in fact, ended up being a genuine stalker. Sitting outside the ranch gates in her darkened car. Calling late at night and scaring Jayden with her whispery questions: “Where’s your daddy tonight, honey?”

After he’d finally gotten rid of that weirdo, he decided he would live without women for a while. At least until Jayden’s life was more stable. Truth was, being single wasn’t an impossible lifestyle—if a man kept himself real, real busy.

Your life might not be fun— he recited his familiar self-lecture —but it’s sane. It’s healthy. It’s simple. Well, okay, maybe not simple. He gripped the steering wheel and gritted his teeth as he drove past the rock crushers. They banged so loudly they made his truck windows vibrate. It took enormous self-control not to flip the bird at the cussed things.

What was this business about dynamite?

He grabbed the cell phone off the seat and dialed his attorney.

Yes, Edward Hughes reported, they’d just now received a fax from C. J. McClean’s lawyer. She’d filed a countermotion to force open the road and she’d apparently beaten them to the draw on the noise injunction by planning to bring forth evidence that the noise was not excessive.

“Not excessive!” Jake hollered into the phone. “Listen to this!”

He rolled the truck window down to give Edward the full benefit of the crushers. “And apparently,” he said as he rolled it up again, “she plans to do some blasting with dynamite to finish the job.”

“I know. I know,” Edward Hughes groaned. “But my guess is they’ve got enough crap in this motion that the judge will be forced to conduct a trial. And there is no way the court can hold a trial before a week from now, because Jewett is in the middle of a big criminal case.”

“Can’t some other judge do it?”

“No. The district court is one judge short. Judge Baker is recovering from a heart attack.”

Jake sighed into the phone. He was headed for a heart attack if he didn’t get a grip. “A week from now, none of this will matter. If she starts dynamiting, my mares all will have lost their foals by then.”

“I expect she’ll have succeeded in getting her rock out of there in a week and the whole thing’ll be moot. Pretty sharp maneuvering. Is that McClean woman a total hellcat or what? Chip off the old block, I say.”

“How’s that?”

“She’s Boss McClean’s daughter.”

“That name rings a bell.”

“The old man went to prison a few years back for insurance fraud…and there was something else. I can’t recall. But he was the same way. Anybody who got in Boss’s way paid for it.”

Jake did recall a trial, years ago. “His daughter sure seems to want her way about everything, and pronto,” Jake confirmed.

“Yeah. As in, yesterday,” Edward agreed dryly. “The court appearance has been set for the day after tomorrow. That they managed to schedule a hearing on Judge Jewett’s docket so fast is amazing. Must have some pull.”

“Figures. Apparently, she doesn’t intend to lose a single day getting her damn fancy houses built. Says she has to beat the first freeze.”

“You talked to her again?”

“I’m just now driving back from a little jaunt up to The Heights.” The last two words were soaked in sarcasm.

“Well, then, did you explain the value, the rarity, of an Andalusian foal? And did you tell her the amount of money you’ll lose if your thoroughbred quarter horses foal before January first? The risks?”

“Didn’t get a chance. She was too busy explaining to me that I could simply move my horses. I said maybe I’d have to get the sheriff out there and she was telling me to meet her in court, when all of a sudden one of her men got hurt.”

“Somebody got hurt? Was it serious?”

“Some guy grabbed the business end of a hot wire. The fella survived the shock, but he took a real nasty fall. Can’t say how that’ll turn out.”

“Hmm,” the attorney mused. “That’s awful. In the meantime, maybe we can get the judge to give us another temporary restraining order—at least on the dynamite. That’ll buy you some time. If we can hold off for a couple of weeks, you might not actually lose a foal, even if one does come early. I hate to say it, but maybe Miss McClean will be so distracted by this accident that she won’t show up, and the judge’ll favor us.”

“Oh, she’ll show up. She’s one of those tiny, determined types that likes to make a man sweat.”

“Nevertheless, you don’t have to be present. If you’re too busy with the mares, I’ll get the noise stopped one way or another.”

That’s what Jake liked about having Edward Hughes in his corner. Nobody had to tell Edward what to do. Without Edward, Lana and her daddy would have pounded Jake into the ground by now, and where would that leave Jayden?

“I’ll show up,” Jake assured his family friend and longtime attorney. “I want Ms. McClean to understand that this is as vital to me as it is to her and that I won’t back down any more than she will.”

And the truth was, he was itching to see C. J. McClean again. Hell, just admitting that to himself made him realize he was in more than one kind of trouble with this woman already.

WHEN JAKE DROVE HIS TRUCK under the iron gates at the head of the long driveway leading to the ranch house, he immediately spotted a whole other kind of trouble.

Lana Largeant’s champagne-colored Lincoln Navigator was parked up by the house, sparkling in the sun, looking like one of her daddy’s men had just given it a fresh wax job. He eased his dusty truck past the showy vehicle and saw that it was deserted, meaning Dad had let Lana into the house, despite Jake’s instructions not to.

He suppressed the familiar irritation at his father. The poor old man couldn’t remember what day it was, much less keep the complications of Jake’s relationship with his ex-wife straight. Lana treated Dad like a dear old pet, and his confused mind lapped up her attention.

At least Jayden was at school. This time Lana wouldn’t be able to work her manipulative magic on their daughter.

Another reason not to get involved with some cute little number, he reminded himself as he jerked the parking brake. Relationships brought all kinds of entanglements—like unplanned pregnancies that could complicate your life for good.

Not that he regretted having Jayden. Oh, no. That child was the only joyous thing about his life these days. Besides the horses.

What he resented was the tie Jayden had formed to Lana. As he climbed out of the truck, that fact coiled up in his gut, mean as a sidewinder. Over the past year or so, he had succeeded in setting aside his resentment of Lana for Jayden’s sake, and, thanks to some long, honest talks with his brother Aaron, he had found a measure of peace about the whole deal. But Lana still found clever ways to disrupt that peace, keeping him lightly tethered, silently bound, through Jayden.

He always ended up asking himself the same circular question. How could he raise a daughter without giving the child the benefit of some kind of mother? Wasn’t any mother—even a seriously flawed one—better than no mother?

But last year he’d sworn that if Lana called Jayden one more time when she’d been drinking, he’d order Edward Hughes to find a way to terminate the woman’s parental rights. And, true to form, that’s exactly when Lana had stopped her boozing. Just dried out. Like she’d read his mind or something.

But, sober or not, Jake didn’t trust the woman. As far as he could tell, Lana’s life always revolved around Lana, what she wanted, how things affected her—and to hell with everyone else. The woods seemed full of those self-centered types these days. What he wouldn’t give for one sensible, honest, decent, unselfish…sexy woman.

The screen door banged and Lana stepped out onto the porch, into the morning sun. The newel posts and white siding on the east-facing house glowed around her slim silhouette. Lana’s sleek blond hair and svelte form—wrapped in some kind of clingy high-fashion dress that was printed to look like army jungle fatigues—created a sharp contrast to the simple homey setting. She jutted a bony hip against a newel post and shaded her eyes.

“Well, hello!” she called brightly, as if she were surprised to see Jake walking up to his own home at ten o’clock in the morning.

Instead of returning her chipper greeting, he sighed and planted a boot on the bottom step. “Lana, what are you doing here?”

She immediately adopted a stunned expression. “Don’t be like that,” she sighed. “Just when Dad and I were having so much fun, remembering when Jayden got up on Arrestado and rode him all the way down to the river. Remember that? When she was only six?”

Jake narrowed his eyes at the woman. She had a lot of nerve, persisting in calling his father “Dad” a full two years after the divorce. And she had a lot more nerve, bringing up the memory of the time she’d been so drunk she hadn’t even noticed that their daughter had run off on the back of a dangerously high-spirited animal—commiserating about it with his addled father as if it were something cute, instead of the most terrifying day of Jake’s life. Nothing pissed him off more than when Lana tried to rewrite history this way.

“Lana, look. This is not a good time.”

“That Jayden!” Mack Coffey exclaimed from beyond the screen door. Poor Dad had always had a way of falling right into Lana’s hands, even before the Alzheimer’s had eaten away at his good sense. “That child always was a real cutter, even as a baby!”

Even with the shadow of the screen over his dad’s face, Jake could see that Mack was overexcited—his cheeks flushed, his eyes unnaturally bright. Lana didn’t give a thought to getting him all worked up like this, the same way she never gave a thought to feeding Jayden too many sweets.

Jake turned his attention away from the task of getting rid of Lana. “Dad, you look tired. Where’s Donna?”

Before the old man could get his mind around the question, Lana answered. “I sent her to the store, Jake.” She moved down the steps, closer to him. “I hope you don’t mind. Y’all never have any of those cookies Jayden likes. And Dad and I need a pack of smokes.”

“Dad—” Jake tried not to grit his teeth, but he was losing what little patience he had left over from the confrontation up on The Heights “—does not smoke anymore.”

“Now see here, sonny.” The screen door creaked and Mack Coffey tottered forward. “I can have a smoke if I want to. I don’t recall ever giving up that particular pleasure. That’s your notion.”

You don’t recall anything, Jake thought, then hated himself for being mean-spirited. It was wearisome, caring for someone so fragile, someone who could be contrary and combative and confused all at once.

“Dad, it’s chilly out here.” Jake angled up the steps past Lana and clamped a friendly hand on his dad’s arm. He had learned how to finesse his father without hurting Mack’s pride. “Let’s go inside.”

Lana, naturally, followed Jake right through the door.

Jake steered Mack to his familiar rocking recliner by the window, then turned a level gaze on Lana. He was not about to give the woman an inch. “Okay, Lana, tell me what you want. I’ve got some skittish mares down at the barn that I need to tend to. I’ve already wasted half the day as it is.”

Her eyes widened. “Nothing’s wrong with the Andalusians, I hope!”

The Andalusians, prized mares from a province in southern Spain, were Lana Largeant’s bread and butter. The mares had come from Lana’s father’s stock, and at the time of the divorce settlement, Jake had felt lucky, getting Lana to let him keep six Andalusians to breed along with his other Cottonwood Ranch mares, mostly thoroughbreds. In exchange for breeding the mares with his own rare Andalusian stallion, Arrestado, Jake had agreed to let Lana sell every foal that was born from certain mares.

An Andalusian foal could sell for as much as thirty thousand dollars, so neither Jake nor Lana had ended up exactly broke, even after they split their operation. This arrangement had satisfied Lana, tenuously, for the past three years.

For his part, Jake had to bear the enormous overhead of getting Cottonwood Ranch back in the black. His father’s slow deterioration was written all over the books in red. Jake didn’t mind the back-breaking work of training and tending the stock on freezing cold nights and blazing hot days. But Jake felt now, just as he had during their ten-year marriage, that he did the work and Lana got the profits.

“The Andalusians are fine.” Jake tried to sound confident. “Mainly, I don’t want my quarter horses to foal before January first.”

“Of course not! Lord knows, you can’t run a yearling like it was a two-year-old.” Jake wondered if Lana still imagined herself as his ally in the equestrian business. It’s in our blood, she used to coo at him.

In the equestrian world, quarter horses turned one year old on January first, even if they’d just been born twenty-four hours earlier on December thirty-first. Thus, a breeder invariably lost money on any foals born late in the year. At sale, in races, those yearlings competed with horses that were actually a year older. With a horse’s gestation running eleven months, two weeks, the timing was tricky. Jake always managed to keep his mares fertile and cycling through the dark winter, using constant barn lighting and every bit of available southwest sunshine. And he could always count on his two stallions, Arrestado and Pintado, to perform on cue.

By mid-February, babies were on the way. By Valentine’s Day of the next year, Jake had new foals in the barn. By the following winter, the pasture was full of yearlings. Thus, the operation at Cottonwood Ranch renewed itself, year after year, in a cycle of breeding, birth and maturing stock that had garnered praise and prosperity for three generations.

Lana frowned as she went on. “But your mares never foal early. You’re a great horse breeder, Jake—why would they?”

He jerked his head toward the noise in the distance as the ka-rump of the rock crusher echoed over the valley. “Hear that?”

“Yeah, I noticed it when I drove up. What the hell is it? Some kind of oil well operation or something?” To the west of Ten Mile Flats, an occasional oil well dotted the prairie.

“It’s that damn upstart young woman’s machinery!” In a flash Mack’s face went from placid to agitated. He tried to push himself up from his recliner, but Jake stopped him with a calm hand on the shoulder.

“I’m taking care of it, Dad.”

“What young woman?” Lana positioned herself in front of Jake.

Jake could see Lana’s jealousies spiraling up as plainly as antennae.

“That woman up there on that hill.” Mack flipped a weathered, shaky hand in the direction of The Heights.

Jake hooked his thumbs at his belt. “There’s a developer building houses up on the old Sullivan ridge. She’s making a lot of construction noise in the process.”

“The builder is a she?”

“A woman architect. Name’s C. J. McClean.” Jake exhaled a pent-up breath. Why did he feel uneasy all of a sudden? “Calls her operation Dream Builders.”

Lana eyed him, then lit up with a kind of excitement. “I’ve heard of Dream Builders! They run a big ad in the paper every Sunday. And they have TV ads on cable.” She turned her head toward the picture window, gazing in the direction of The Heights. “You want me to tell Daddy to make this woman stop that racket?”

“I said I’m handling it.” Jake’s jaw clenched again. He was going to crack every filling in his mouth before this day was over. The last thing he wanted was Stu Largeant poking around in Cottonwood Ranch business. “You don’t need to get involved.”

“But we are talking about our Andalusians.”

“You can only claim the foals, Lana, and only from Bailadora and Encantadora and—”

“How could I ever—” Lana’s voice grew instantly acid “—forget about that…that devil’s pact we made?”

Like her transparent jealousy, Lana’s temper sprouted as plainly as horns popping out on her forehead. She whirled on the hapless Mack, who, Jake hoped, would have no memory later of the undercurrents that had just been unleashed in the room.

“Just for once, you would think your son could forget his stiff-necked pride and let somebody help him.”

“Jake don’t need Stu Largeant’s kind of help.”

Mack, suddenly alert, suddenly lucid, surprised Jake this way at least once a day. That was the torment of Mack’s disease. Jake could never be sure who was on board. Tough, sensible, loving Mack Coffey, or his withered twin, the frail man who couldn’t remember how to put on his own socks.

Jake intervened. “Lana, look. I’ve already talked to the woman myself. And I’ve talked to my attorney. I will get this settled. In the meantime, I want you to stay out of it.” Jake hated to state it so bluntly, but he knew from long experience that you couldn’t give Lana Largeant any wiggle room or before long she’d be ordering your hired help to run out and fetch her cigarettes.

“All right. If that’s what you want.” Lana snatched a stylish leopard-skin clutch off the couch. “I was hoping to discuss something important with you—about Jayden—but I don’t want to do it when you’re in a bad mood. I’d better get going. Don’t worry, Jake, I won’t interfere with this…C. J. McClean woman.”

Jake nodded, but if he knew Lana, she’d head up to The Heights and have a look at C. J. McClean for herself, no matter what he said. And he knew she would run home and tell her rich daddy the whole story.

She thrust her arms into an oversize black microfiber duster. “Tell Donna not to worry about my change.” She said this to Mack. Then she flew out the door without bothering to pull it shut behind her.

Jake walked over and closed the door with a soft click. He removed his hat and hung it on a nearby coat tree. He gave a soft, mirthless snort of laughter when something occurred to him. Lana’s clothes always gave some kind of clue to her mood. He wondered if the cutesy army getup meant she was gearing up for war. Again.

That’s all he needed, more legal entanglements. Her mention of Jayden had caused a familiar twist of fear in Jake’s gut.

“I wonder what Lana wanted. Did she tell you, Dad?”

But Mack was staring out the window, lost again in the cobwebby world of Alzheimer’s disease. “Who?” he said, and his voice was croaky with fatigue.

“Nobody,” Jake said.

“Where the heck is Donna?” Mack’s gaze was fuzzy as it panned the room.

“At the store. She’ll be back soon.”

“She’d better be.” Mack’s voice cleared and he flicked out his pocket watch in the same crisp manner he always had. “It’s gettin’ on toward lunchtime.”

Jake smiled. That was Mack—in and out.

BY THE TIME JAKE HAD FINISHED an apple and made a couple of business calls, he heard Donna’s Jeep roaring up the drive. Donna Morales bustled in the back door by the kitchen, as was her habit, clumped through the house, and appeared in Jake’s office doorway, out of breath.

“Is she gone?” she huffed.

Jake nodded, frowning.

“I’m sorry, Jake.” Donna pressed a hand to her ample bosom. “But have you ever tried to tell that woman no?”

“Many times.” Jake pushed his leather desk chair back and smiled.

“I swear—” Donna stepped into the office and flopped onto the leather sofa opposite the desk. “She makes me so nervous. I cannot imagine the two of you ever being married!”

Jake smiled again. What would he have done these past three years without Donna Morales? A licensed practical nurse, a mother of three perpetually hungry college-age sons, and an ardent Catholic, Donna whipped up the foods Dad loved, kept their rambling ranch house passably clean, and, best of all, was so honest and plainspoken that even Jayden had come to trust her.

Donna’s quiet, reliable husband, Jose, had worked for Jake for years, cutting hay, cleaning barns, fixing fence and talking to the Andalusians in soothing Spanish. Soon after Lana packed herself off to her daddy’s house, Jose had mentioned that the couple could sure use some extra income, with three boys studying engineering over at the university—and Jake, he had pointed out gently, could sure use Donna’s kind of help.

At first Donna wore herself out, beating a path from the hospital to the ranch the minute her shift was over, arriving just about the time the school bus dropped Jayden at the road. But before long, Jake offered to make her position full time. She and Jose had prayed about it for about two seconds, then jumped at the deal. Jose and Jake’s main hand, Buck Winfrey, had always been friendly, and they soon got into the habit of hitting the ranch house of a morning, looking for Donna’s home-baked treats. Sometimes they’d grab a quick cup of coffee with Mack. Donna called the three older men “the boys” in the same tone she used for her sons. Jake didn’t mind the traffic in his home. His life, Mack’s life and, most of all, Jayden’s life would be awful lonely without that little ensemble running in and out.

And in the past year, Donna had become a trusted confidante to Jake where it concerned his father’s declining health. She seemed to be able to put a calm, cheerful, down-to-earth slant on the discouraging daily incidents that came with Alzheimer’s disease. If the woman had known anything about horses, Jake decided, she’d be dang near perfect. Except that she weighed two hundred pounds and her unkempt frizzy hair was died the color of day-old coffee and her little mustache was thicker than Mack’s. But Jose seemed to think she was a goddess.

“I shouldn’t have left your dad alone with that woman.” Donna looked slightly embarrassed. “Honest to Pete, I don’t know why I let her get to me.”

“It’s okay.” Jake stood and threaded his arms into the sleeves of his denim jacket. “Dad’s asleep in his chair. I’ve gotta get out to the barns.”

“What’ll I do with these?” Donna held up the plastic grocery sack she’d carried in.

“Here—” Jake held out his hand for the carton of cigarettes. “I’ll give the smokes to Buck. He’s not picky about the brand.”

She handed him the cigarettes, then pulled out the expensive cookies. “And these?”

“Have the boys already been here?”

“Cleaned out my cinnamon rolls an hour ago.”

“Then, I guess you and Jayden can have a little party when she comes home from school.”

“Oh, not me. I’m on a diet.” Donna winked.

“Yeah, me, too.” Jake winked back. He grabbed another apple—his standard snack—out of the basket that Donna kept filled on his desk. “So how about a nice big pan of sour-cream chicken enchiladas for lunch?”

Donna flapped a chubby palm at him. “Behave yourself and get on out to the barns!”

AS JAKE PULLED A GOLF CART up to the barns in the eastern pasture, he saw Buck Winfrey opening the south-facing barn doors. On a chilly day like this, Buck might even have the space heaters going. Jake trusted Buck, a veteran of the horse trade, with all such decisions.

Just inside the doors, two barn boys were blanketing this year’s heavily pregnant broodmares for a walk in the sun. Jake was worried. The mares, normally placid, were dancing away as the barn boys held up the blankets. How high-strung had the quarter horses become? Jake had kept the Andalusians, thoroughbreds and quarter horses cycling this winter. Of those, the quarter horses were the biggest worry.

Losing an Andalusian or thoroughbred foal to prematurity would be costly, but early quarter horses, a full year behind the growth curve, might hurt the Cottonwood Ranch reputation for years to come. In the horse-breeding business, Jake himself was a rare breed, raising both racing and show horses. He valued his reputation, which was his father’s, which was his grandfather’s, as if it were an actual commodity.

The booming seemed considerably louder on this side of the valley. As he parked, Jake saw one of the old pickup trucks, loaded with hay, pulling around beside the barn. With his skinny arms raised over his head, Buck signaled the driver to go out far, past the water troughs. The farther he took the hay into the field before dumping it, the farther the mares would run for the feed and the longer they would stay out in the sunlight while they ate, getting needed exercise and sunshine.

“Buck!” Jake hollered, waving.

Buck ambled toward him, his cowboy’s gait loose, easy, reflecting the wiry older man’s attitude about life. He pushed a battered baseball cap back on his bald pate.

“What’d that McClean gal have to say about this damn racket?”

“She’s taking me to court.” Jake got out of the cart.

“Say what?” Buck cupped an ear against the intermittent noise of the crushers. “Taking you where?”

“To court!”

“Court!”

“Silly, isn’t it?”

“What the hell for?”

“I expect so she can drive her concrete trucks through this ranch.”

“By God, she will not,” Buck asserted. He pushed his hat farther back and spit into the straw at his feet. Then he fished a cigarette out of his breast pocket.

“Let’s hope not. But I’ve decided a court hearing could be useful. It’ll give me a chance to ask the judge to shut down this noise permanently. I told Edward to ask for another restraining order.”

“That’ll show ’er.”

“How’re the mares?” Jake set off toward the barn.

Buck double-timed it to keep up with Jake’s long legs. “Bailadora and Encantadora just about kick their stalls down every time that damn thing starts going ka-boom.”

As he reached the barn door, Jake could hear the disturbed whinnying of his two most beautiful Andalusians. The plaintive sound made his chest tight. He opened the heavy steel door, and once inside the dim barn, the echoes of the horses’ cries felt suffocating to him. Jake never broke stride on his way to the mares, but reached into a coffee can nailed to a post and grabbed a handful of sugar cubes on his way by.

He went straight to the mares, soothing them with his voice. “Whoa, girls. Facil. Fah-ceel. Easy. Easy.”

The whinnying stopped, and first one, then the other, came to the stall’s bars to nip a sugar cube off his palm. He popped one into his own mouth while he patted the mares’ withers, each in turn.

Jake found that the ritual calmed him as much as it did his animals. For the first time all day, he felt his shoulders relax, felt his breath filling his lungs fully. This was where he found peace—in the barns, in the fields, with the smell of clean hay and healthy horseflesh around him. These beautiful animals, their solidity, their strength, their warmth, had calmed him ever since he was a small boy, reaching up into his grandfather’s pocket for a sugar cube. Even as a man of thirty-five, with all the responsibilities a man could bear, Jake still found that a little time out in the barns, with the taste of a plain sugar cube melting in his mouth and the feel of horseflesh under his palms, could make the world seem sane again.

“It’s the same for you, isn’t it, my lovely ladies.” He spoke to the horses. “A sugar cube and a pat from old Jake can soothe just about anything.”

But even under his calming touch, the tension in the mares’ muscles communicated loudly to Jake through his fingertips. How long could they go on like this? This constant noise was an untenable situation, one he’d never encountered on the peaceful Ten Mile Flats. If C. J. McClean started blasting with dynamite, he’d have an early, or perhaps even dead, foal on the ground before the week was out. He’d wager these mares would drop early, or he hadn’t been a horseman for the past twenty years.

LANA LARGEANT WHEELED her Lincoln Navigator around the first bend in the road that climbed the Sullivan ridge and sucked in a breath. Glorious!

Even in their skeletal state, anyone could see that the homes in The Heights were destined to be first class. They rose up on the hillsides with the steeply pitched roofs and magical lines of the rambling English country manors that she’d grown to love when she and her parents had traveled to equestrian shows in Europe. The midmorning sun created long shadows over pockets of mist under the tall trees and along the deep sandstone creek.

Oh, my! The landscaping possibilities on this slope were endless. Already this developer, this C. J. woman, had erected curving rock retaining walls, gradual terracing and winding stone pathways, all of which lent a quaint, fairy-tale charm to the common grounds. The place embodied the kind of character and style that women like Lana lusted after.

Lana had always fancied this piece of land. Coveted it. When married to Jake, she had occasionally ridden her personal Andalusian mare, Isadora, up onto the hillside. Nowadays she didn’t get over to this side of the Flats often.

Twice, she’d secretly contacted Helen and Caroline, the elderly Sullivan sisters and begged to buy the property from them. But the sisters had said that would never happen. So why, now, had the old ladies finally sold it to this C. J. McClean person? And how on earth had that woman managed to get the development under way so quickly? In a way, the overnight change in the place unsettled Lana, as if some interloper had sneaked in during her absence and stolen something from her.

One. Two. Three houses under construction, and pads cleared for six or seven more. She slowed the Navigator to a crawl, unconcerned that the construction workers might notice her. The Navigator was new, she was wearing her shades and it had been ages since her picture had been in the paper. As she circled the cul-de-sacs, she might have been any well-to-do woman out scouting for properties—not the daughter of Stu Largeant, the longtime mayor of the City of Jordan. Not the ex-wife of horse rancher Jake Coffey, who had apparently already been up here this morning, throwing his weight around with that McClean woman.

Lana wondered what this C. J. McClean looked like. Mack had called her young, but the woman couldn’t be too young if she was overseeing a costly development like this. Unless, like Lana, she was using family money to make her way. Hadn’t there been some McCleans in the home-building business in Jordan, way back when? Hadn’t there been a scandal? Didn’t somebody die or something?

The Heights. Already Lana was itching to live in one of the mansions on these slopes. Right above Cottonwood Ranch. Right next door to Jayden…and Jake. Daddy would definitely have to see this place. But at the thought of her father, Lana stopped her dreaming. Hadn’t she told herself that the Navigator was the last expensive thing her father would ever buy for her? How would his control over her ever end if she didn’t end it?

On her way back out of the brick gates, Lana passed a white pickup coming in. A burgundy Dream Builders logo was on the door and the woman behind the wheel looked petite, blond and definitely young.

Lana’s curiosity strummed as she wondered if that was her. Lana Largeant fancied that she knew Jake Coffey awfully well. Knew when his blood was running high. And when he had mentioned C. J. McClean’s name, Lana could already tell that the man’s blood was up. Way up.

CHAPTER THREE

TWO DAYS LATER Jake Coffey and Cassie McClean stared at each other as they climbed the steps of the Cleveland County Court House. Their faces couldn’t have registered more shock if they’d been naked as jaybirds instead of dressed in their finest business apparel. Both had apparently turned out in their best for this confrontation, although, Cassie surmised, in Jake’s world business attire was by definition more casual, more Western.

Still, he looked so polished that he didn’t even seem like the same man.

He wore cowboy boots again, although this pair, cut of a fine suede in a muted shade of cognac, could have taken him to lunch at the governor’s mansion. Under a Western-cut sports coat in a dark khaki and olive windowpane blend, a cream-colored basket-weave Polo shirt contrasted against the tanned skin at his throat. The jacket was obviously made from a superior cloth—Cassie recognized the blend of silk and wool—and it coordinated flawlessly with his dark wool trousers, which had pleats that bulged subtly below his flat abdomen. His hair, which the battered Stetson had concealed at the job site, was close cropped—a clean, classic shade of chocolate brown that matched his eyes exactly, offset by a few tantalizing strands of gray at the temples and nape. To make the whole effect utterly devastating, the chill November wind carried from his person the scent of an aftershave that filled Cassie with a bad craving.

Cassie herself had pulled together her best power look: a pencil-slim suit of the finest red worsted wool, giant diamond ear studs, and a chunky solid gold watch. Oh, yes, and black heels. Very high black heels.

“After you,” Jake said, when they reached the top step. He opened one of the heavy double doors and inquired, “Where’s your attorney?”

“Inside. Yours?”

“The same.”

Cassie was relieved when they were directed to a smallish office where Judge Jewett sat behind an ordinary-looking desk with a fake floral arrangement at one end. She had anticipated with dread the cold, mahogany-paneled courtroom of her father’s trial. She imagined the judge, remote and punitive, high up behind a bench surrounded by seals and flags.

Her lawyer, Miles Davies, whispered near her ear, “We are meeting in chambers because the judge is in the middle of a big criminal case in the courtroom.”

Cassie liked Miles. He was a kindly old eccentric. Her grandfather had considered him to be so competent and trustworthy that he had hired Miles to defend Boss fifteen years ago, and that was good enough for Cassie.

She and Jake were seated in comfortable armchairs at right angles to each other. Their attorneys positioned themselves between Cassie and Jake, and the two older men shook hands, sat down and crossed their legs, balancing fat files in their laps. They seemed to know each other, chatting and joking until the judge came in. When they got down to asking for what their clients wanted, it was as if Jake and Cassie weren’t in the room.

The legal mumbo jumbo made little sense to Cassie, although she and Miles had reviewed the procedure only an hour before. She could sense that he was making their case, and for her, that was enough. She wanted to get this thing over with, then go by the hospital and check on Tom Harris. After that, she hoped she’d have time to run home and change into work clothes and make a final check on the day’s progress in The Heights. All the judge had to do was see the light and let her get on with her business.

But when it was his turn to talk, Jake Coffey’s attorney, Edward Hughes, seemed to be making a convincing case, too.

Miles interrupted once, and a little bit of lawyerly yelling took place. All in all, the whole thing struck Cassie as going through the motions, something these guys, and the judge, apparently did every day.

For her part, she found this haggling and posturing most annoying because it interrupted the very real, very creative work she loved. And she blamed him for causing it.

She gave Jake Coffey a disdainful glance.

He didn’t catch it. His handsome head was down as he listened to his snotty old attorney argue that the noise was clearly a nuisance and not merely a tort…or something like that.

At the moment, Cassie resented these two men with all her heart. Her own attorney was quietly leafing through his files. “What’s going to happen?” she whispered, when the Edward Hughes guy finally stopped talking.

“The judge will probably go into chambers to make his decision,” Miles muttered. “We shall wait here.” He leaned forward and handed the judge a piece of paper. A copy of the noise variance, Cassie supposed. The judge had asked to see it.

She checked out Jake Coffey again. With a jolt, she saw that he was staring at her. And not exactly unpleasantly. He was slumped low in his chair with his long legs crossed comfortably, one hand resting loosely at his belt. The other hand—for some reason this gesture rattled Cassie—was covering his mouth. Well, not covering it, exactly, because Cassie could see the corners of a Cheshire smile peeking from behind his fingers. When he caught her looking at him, his brown eyes sparked for an instant, then narrowed in thought. Was that a dirty look? Or an admiring one? Did it mean he knew something she didn’t? Oh, God, had the other side somehow won?

“I’m taking everything under advisement and will come back with my decision shortly.” The judge got up and left the room.

Silence.

Jake continued to study her, continued to squint and continued to smile in that enigmatic, intimidating way.

Cassie squirmed. She hated courthouses, anyway—who wouldn’t if their very own father had been taken away from them in one?—but this…this close-quarters examination by this…this man. Well, it was too much.

After what seemed like days, the judge returned.

“I am forced,” Jewett droned as soon as he had resettled himself behind his desk, “to require difficult concessions from both parties in this case.”

Everybody sat up straighter, giving the judge their full attention.

“If Mr. Coffey can extend the gestation of his mares for three more weeks, the foals will likely survive without damage—”

“Not really.” Jake jerked forward. “Not at nine months—”

“Mr. Coffey, you’ve presented your evidence. Now, Ms. McClean, you understand that the jurisdiction of the City of Jordan ends at 60th Street, which happens to be Mr. Coffey’s property line. So this noise variance means nothing to landowners on Ten Mile Flats.” The judge lifted the paper and sent it drifting to the corner of his desk.

“Mr. Coffey has asked for jurisdictional relief regarding this noise. And I am of a mind to give it to him. This noise is clearly a tort, as it threatens the safety of valuable livestock. I am particularly concerned about any blasting with dynamite. However, if you can voluntarily delay the noise until the foals are viable, you’ll likely save yourself a lawsuit for damages.”

Jake cocked an eyebrow and pressed his lower lip out, as if weighing the merits of such a lawsuit.

Thanks for giving him ideas, Judge. Cassie narrowed her eyes in warning at Jake. He wasn’t the only one who could dish out dirty looks.

“In the meantime, there is nothing preventing you from removing the rock in a more conventional, and far quieter, manner.”

Nothing but money, Cassie thought, feeling her outrage beginning to build. Three weeks was a long time to pay interest on millions of dollars in construction loans and to pay rent on machines that were sitting idle. This was a compromise?

Cassie felt an encouraging nudge at her elbow, her attorney indicating that he thought this was an acceptable idea. She nodded her understanding at the judge. What else could she do?

“After three weeks, Ms. McClean’s rock crushers may resume work, and if necessary at that time she may use the dynamite—”

Jake sat bolt upright. “But, Judge—” he started.

The judge held up a palm.

“But three weeks—”

“Mr. Coffey, that is the best I can do. I understand about birth dates and quarter horses, but we can’t make Ms. McClean delay construction until January. For your part of the compromise, I suggest that at the end of three weeks you give up this restraining order—” the judge flapped another piece of paper “—and see your way clear to let her concrete trucks pass through Cottonwood Ranch. That will make up for some lost time, won’t it, Ms. McClean?”

Again, Cassie nodded. It was apparent that nobody was going to walk out of this room happy.

Jake most certainly did not look happy. The deepening crease between his brows indicated that he wasn’t at all satisfied. Well, tough. Neither was she.

Judge Jewett picked up his pen. “My final decision will be issued tomorrow morning at nine a.m., unless I hear that you two have settled it between yourselves before then. I encourage you to compromise and try to reach an equitable position between yourselves before I issue that order. You could save yourselves the distress of the trial.”

The two attorneys smiled and nodded, but Jake and Cassie looked at each other like disgruntled juveniles being forced to shake hands.

Jewett rose when his courtroom deputy stuck his head in the door. “The attorneys in the criminal case are waiting in the courtroom, Your Honor.”

“I’m coming.” Jewett was gathering papers. “Now you two—” he aimed his pen at Jake, then Cassie “—sit down at a table and work this out.” Then he left.

It was a decision worthy of King Solomon—that’s what Cassie’s attorney said when they got out in the hallway.

Cassie’s jaw dropped. “King Solomon?” She turned on the old gentleman. “Miles, if you ask me, that was a crock of crap! A knee-jerk decision handed down by an overworked judge who doesn’t want another trial on his docket. That—” she pointed toward the judge’s chambers “—was what I call a lose-lose situation. Now Jake Coffey and I are probably both going to lose money on this! When you go before a judge, isn’t somebody supposed to come out the winner?”

The fussy old gentleman looked offended. “I have done the best I can for you, Ms. McClean.”

Cassie wanted to say something about how she supposed the lawyers would be the only ones making money, but she managed to bite that back. Still, then and there, she made up her mind to pay Miles every last cent she owed him and find herself a new lawyer who was more aggressive and less chummy with his pals at the courthouse.

But right then, Jake’s attorney came up behind them and grabbed Miles Davies’s shoulder before she could inform him of this. “Miles,” Edward Hughes said pleasantly, “would you like to use my office for our negotiations?”

“How kind of you to offer, Edward.” Cassie’s attorney smiled. “Perhaps we can, at least, work out something where both parties feel they are bearing equal financial risks in the—”

“I’d rather talk to Ms. McClean alone.” The rich timber of Jake’s voice stopped the discussion.

Cassie and the lawyers turned to face him.

“Uh, Jake, maybe it would be better if I were present—” Edward Hughes started.

“Nope.” Jake’s dark gaze was fixed firmly on Cassie. “The judge told us to work it out between ourselves. I’m good for my word. How about you, Ms. McClean?”

“I am absolutely a woman of my word.” Cassie had no trouble asserting that. It was her lifelong code.

“Good. Then, we don’t need the lawyers.”

The two lawyers stood looking from Jake to Cassie, dumbstruck.

“I’m hungry.” Jake put a palm on his flat middle. “How about some lunch?”

Cassie wondered what the heck this was all about. One minute they were sparring in court and the next he was inviting her to lunch. Was this a trick?

“The judge said to sit down at a table.” He gave her a wicked grin. “There might as well be food on it.”

Cassie frowned.

“Seriously.” Jake tilted his head. “We only have until tomorrow morning, and in the meantime, we’ve got to eat.”

This was true. Cassie always managed to find time to eat. Her appetite was as healthy as any man’s. But most of her lunches were fast food, eaten in the cab of her truck while she studied a materials list. It was not often that she was dressed nicely enough to go to a real restaurant and sit down and have a decent lunch. Suddenly it seemed like a shame to waste her snazzy outfit.

“I guess we might as well eat while we talk this over, but it needs to be on this side of town. I’ve got to go by the hospital.”

“Oh? The injured man?”

“Yes.”

“Is Legend’s okay?”

Legend’s! A gourmet restaurant that had been hosting special events for Jordan residents for over thirty years. Cassie had loved that place ever since her aunt Rosemarie had first taken her there as a child. Her fluttery aunt always called the atmosphere…romantic. Cassie preferred to think of it as tasteful, classy.

“Uh, sure. Legend’s will work.”

“Great.” Jake gave the lawyers a little salute and put a light hand at Cassie’s back, steering her toward the stairs.

Cassie glanced at the two older men, who were staring like stunned referees that had been told by the players to get off the field.

“How about if I drive,” Jake said as he opened the stairwell door. “Once we’ve reached an…equitable position—” there was an unmistakable hint of humor in his voice “—I’ll bring you back to your car.”

As they descended the stairs, Cassie started to feel something. Something akin to magnetism. She didn’t know if it was the synchronized physical movement—they stayed side by side, right in step the whole way—or the man’s very nearness as he held her elbow on the way down. Cassie didn’t even know if she had the right to feel this…this magnetism or whatever it was. For all she knew, he might be involved with a woman. The good-looking ones were never available.

All she knew for certain about Jake Coffey was that, right now, she was going to lunch at Legend’s with him. And that prospect seemed at once frightening and thrilling.

CHAPTER FOUR

LEGEND’S NEVER CHANGED MUCH, and Cassie liked that. She liked the permanence of the quiet, sophisticated atmosphere. Layer upon layer of antiques, timeless art, and black-and-white photographs of patrons graced its shelves and walls. They’d never even removed the old private liquor storage lockers from Oklahoma’s “bottle club” laws of earlier decades. The quaint, old-fashioned wooden bins were used to hold house wines now.

The owner recognized both Jake and Cassie, and stepped around the small maître d’ podium to greet them by name. He seemed mildly curious to see them together.

Walking past the gleaming brass-and-glass case with the famous Legend’s desserts on display at shoulder level, Cassie remembered how her aunt had always stopped to let Cassie choose a favorite. Sometimes it took the child a long time, as if her future depended on whether she ate strawberry genoise or Kahlúa pecan pie after brunch.

The lunch patrons—gussied-up older ladies, the local chamber crowd, professors from the university—were in high chatter. As they mounted the short steps to a balcony area and then threaded past the tables to a secluded corner, Jake smiled and nodded at a couple of folks. Cassie didn’t recognize anyone, but she didn’t really expect to since she seldom socialized outside of construction circles. The owner seated them at a cozy table by large windows that looked out on the patio garden.

A waiter came and took their drink orders. When he left, Jake smiled. “The food here is great. And at lunchtime they’re pretty fast.” He tapped his fingers lightly on the table as if considering something. “Maybe I should have taken you by to check on the young man in the hospital first.”

Cassie thought that was nice, considerate. “That’s okay. I’ll want to stay awhile. You know, sit with his family.”

Their eyes met, as if they were suddenly reliving the event and again feeling the bonding that had happened as a result of it.

“I should have asked before now. Is he doing okay?”

“He’s still unconscious. I’m afraid we don’t know much about his long-term prognosis yet.”

Jake frowned and again Cassie noticed what a sensuous mouth he had. “I hope he recovers all right. Have you figured out what went wrong?”

“Somebody switched the main and temporary wiring.” Cassie squinted at the menu, not really reading it. That mix-up was most disturbing.

“How could that happen?”

“It shouldn’t. Ever. The electrician swears none of his men could have done it.” Cassie shook her head. “I can’t figure it out, but I’ll get to the bottom of it. There may be liability issues.” Cassie bit her lip. Maybe she shouldn’t talk about liability. This man put her so at ease that she’d almost forgotten they were suing each other. “But Darrell carries full workmen’s comp.”

“That’s good.”

After the waiter brought water for Cassie and tea for Jake, Jake said, “I happen to agree with you, you know.”

Cassie frowned. “About what?”

“That was a crock of crap back there at the courthouse.”

Cassie felt her cheeks turning pink. “I should watch my tongue. I probably hurt poor old Miles’s feelings.”

“You were being honest. The judge didn’t want to bother with our dispute, and the attorneys let him put us off. I admire your honesty. It’s what made me decide to take you to lunch.” His brown eyes twinkled again, the way they had when he’d been watching her in the judge’s chambers. “Well, that was part of it, anyway.”

Cassie’s cheeks grew hotter as she wondered exactly what the other part was. The way he was smiling at her, it should have been obvious. But she didn’t dare imagine that this man was interested in her. She took a sip of water to cover her discomfort.

“Nevertheless, I should watch my temper. I just get so impatient when it comes to business.”

He smiled. “I like your style. Like I said, at least you’re honest. Honesty is a big deal to me.”

When she didn’t respond to that, only sipped her water again, he stopped grinning. “Anyway, I figure we could have done better for ourselves.”

“I agree.”

An uncomfortable silence passed. For some reason Cassie felt like she was on one of those miserable blind dates she occasionally endured to appease her friends.

“I really like this place,” she commented lamely. Anything to end this endless water sipping and silence.

“You come here often?”

“No, not lately. But when I was a kid, my aunt brought me here for brunch almost every Sunday after church.” Cassie smiled. “She always let me take of a little nip of her mimosa.”

“Who is your aunt?”

“Rosemarie Cowan.”

“Ah,” he said, as if realizing something. “So you’re related to Cowan Construction?”

“Yes. Cowan Construction was my grandfather’s company—Rosemarie’s father. My mother’s father.” The company was formerly very well-known in Jordan.

“Oh.” Jake glanced out the window, then his gaze snapped back to her, assessing. “So you inherited the building business from two families?”

“I didn’t inherit anything.” Cassie wanted to be clear about that. She wondered if he was sizing up her assets. The assumption that she had stepped into Boss’s shoes always rankled, but she had learned to keep her cool about it. Jake Coffey was not the first to assume that she had been handed success on a silver platter. “My grandfather taught my father the building business after my parents married. When my grandfather died, Boss changed the name of the business to McClean Builders. But then my father lost all of it when—”

“I know that McClean Builders went under.”

At her surprised look, he said, “I checked you out.”

“Then, surely you discovered that I started Dream Builders on my own.”

“Well, I didn’t dig real deep, but I know about the other two additions out east that you threw up in record time before you got your hands on the Sullivan land.”

“Those are fine, modest homes,” she defended. She did not build junk, as her father had, and she resented any implication that she did.

“I merely meant that you sure work at lightning speed for a builder. What’s the hurry?”

Cassie ran her finger over the rim of her water glass. “When I built Sandplum Creek and Meadow Farms, I was struggling for credibility. The bankers trust me now. If you consistently bring projects in on schedule, or even ahead of schedule, they’ll loan you bigger money the next time.”

He nodded. “Makes sense. So all the time you were headed for The Heights.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “Yep. And now I’m there, up on The Heights. And nothing is going to mess up this project now.”

“Certainly not some cranky horse farmer who wants peace and quiet for his mares.”

Their gazes locked, and they were suddenly the two people who’d recently had a confrontation from behind sunglasses.

Fortunately, just then the waiter brought a basket of hot, fragrant bread. They calmed down while they busied themselves buttering it.

After Jake swallowed a bite, he rolled his eyes. “The bread here is great. I’ve got a pretty decent cook, but she can’t top this.”

“You have a cook?” It occurred to Cassie again that she knew very little about this man, except that he could be awfully stubborn when it came to protecting his horse ranch.

“Yeah. Donna. A sweetheart. She’s a very competent cook, but mainly she takes care of my dad.”

“Oh? Your father lives with you?” Cassie felt a tiny prick of something akin to envy. Wouldn’t it be nice, the generations living together in peace on the family ranch?

“Actually, it’s the other way around. Cottonwood Ranch belongs to him. But he’s got Alzheimer’s disease.” He stated it matter-of-factly, with regret but with no inkling of self-pity.

“Oh. I’m so sorry. I’ve heard that’s very stressful for the family. Is your mother still alive?”

“No. She passed on years ago.”

“Then, does…does the rest of your family help you with your father?”

She knew she was trying to get down to the question of whether he was in fact single, without actually asking. It made her feel nosy and manipulative, but she couldn’t help herself. This was the first man she had been attracted to in a long, long time, and she had to know if he was romantically involved. She wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t, in fact, married. Someone had said they thought Jake Coffey and his wife had split up about three years ago, but sometimes couples reconciled after a separation.

“My brother Aaron lives in Dallas. My parents were in their early forties when they had us. It was a miracle, according to my mother. But no matter how it happened, I’m sure glad they had Aaron. He’s my best friend.” His smile was warm, unselfconscious. “Do you have any siblings?”

“No, I’m an only child.” And Cassie had always hated that. But she did have a gaggle of close friends from her aunt’s neighborhood that had sustained her through the years. Three girls and one guy, Hermie. All into math and music and art. They’d all grown and gone their separate ways, far from Jordan, except for her and Stacey.

“But I still see my best friend since seventh grade about once a week,” she said, and, again, mentally thrashed for a way to find out what she wanted to know without sounding like a ninny.

She glanced at his left hand. No ring, but that didn’t mean anything, especially in a man who worked outdoors. Plenty of married construction workers left their rings at home for safety reasons.

“I’m divorced,” he volunteered with a wry grin.

“Oh.”

The waiter came back before Cassie could think of a way to find out if that meant he was actually available.

“Have you folks had a chance to look at the menu?”

They smiled sheepishly at each other, realizing that they’d been engrossed in each other instead of deciding what to order.

“I already know what I want.” Cassie laid her menu aside.

“Why am I not surprised?” Jake’s smile widened.

Cassie’s smile grew more abashed. Maybe she had been a little too assertive when she met this guy, but that was business. She could separate business from pleasure, couldn’t she? So, which was this? She glanced at the waiter.

“I’ll have the chicken crepes.”

Jake scanned his menu, then snapped it shut. “The prime rib. Medium. Plenty of horseradish on the side.”

“Help yourselves to the salad bar.” The waiter smiled and picked up the menus.

The salad bar at Legend’s never changed, either. Eating here felt like coming home. Soon, she decided, she would have to bring Aunt Rosemarie here for dinner again. Cassie’s work had been keeping her too busy lately, but that was no reason to neglect her dear aunt.

As they loaded their plates with tabbouleh, German potato salad, and the freshest of radicchio and field green salads, Cassie said, “I love this salad bar. My aunt used to let me pick out anything I wanted when I was a kid.”

“Legend’s is sort of a fancy restaurant for a little girl,” Jake commented.

“I wasn’t that little. I was already twelve by the time I went to live with her.”

“Was that after your dad went to prison?”

He said it quietly, the way he said everything, and not at all unsympathetically, but Cassie nearly dropped her chilled glass plate. She looked around, relieved that they were the only ones near the salad bar. “Did you dig that up when you checked me out?”

“I’m a little older than you, Ms. McClean. And thanks to my father, I was reading the paper and paying attention to current events long before most of your contemporaries.” Seeming to sense her discomfort, he added, “My lawyer told me. And it was all a long time ago, right?”

She squinted up at him, gauging him. He had maybe ten years on Cassie, but she hadn’t expected him to be aware of her family’s tragedy, their shame. Her cheeks burned as she turned her attention back to picking out fresh spinach with the salad tongs.

“Yes. It was a long time ago. Fifteen years.”

When would she ever get used to the humiliation? After all these years. “But I still don’t like to talk about it.” She pinched up a few homemade croutons.

He reached across and covered her hand with his large, warm one, right there at the salad bar. She twisted and looked up into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it here.” To cover the intimacy of his touch he made a small business of extracting the salad tongs from her fingers. “Thanks.”

She turned and went back to the table.

When he joined her, he still seemed apologetic. He spread his napkin in his lap, avoiding her gaze. “You know, I really don’t remember all that much about the deal with your dad. I think I saw a small article once in the local paper, that’s all. I was in college at the time.”

It had been all over the local TV news, on the front page—everywhere Cassie had turned, it seemed. The headline was still emblazoned in her memory. McClean Sentenced To Twenty Years.

“Oh? Where did you go to school?” She had long been adept at deflecting people from the subject of her father’s incarceration.

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