As a devastating summer storm hits Grand Springs, Colorado, the next thirty-six hours will change the town and its residents forever…

Dr. Karen Sloane is used to being in charge and saving lives at the hospital. But she feels shattered and helpless when her daughter Vicki goes missing in the storm. Her only comfort is in her husband, Cassidy’s, strong arms. When Cassidy accuses Karen of neglecting Vicki, his anger toward her is as chilling as the cold rain.

For rancher Cassidy Sloane, family is the most important thing in life. All he ever wanted was to take care of his wife and daughter. But now Karen seems to care about her patients more than her family, and Vicki’s been put in danger.

Will Vicki’s accident bring this loving but strong-willed couple together or drive them further apart?

Book 11 of the 36 Hours series. Don’t miss the final book in the series: Solving the mayor’s murder could be Martin Smith’s only chance at regaining his memory—but he’ll need computer guru Juliet Crandall’s help to do it in You Must Remember This by Marilyn Pappano.

The Parent Plan
Paula Detmer Riggs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Prologue

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

About the Author

Prologue

Saturday, June 7

Lazy S Ranch.

Dr. Karen Sloane was used to working under pressure. In med school, she’d found out she was a wimp when it came to dealing with the suffering of others and she’d trained herself to remain absolutely steady, her mind clear, her reflexes lightning quick. But now, standing alone near the makeshift canteen just beyond the glaring spotlights that bathed the side of Devil Butte in brilliant light, she was close to shattering.

Silhouetted by the harsh glow, rescue workers in protective clothing and miners’ helmets struggled to reach the spot below a thick slab of red rock where her eight-year-old daughter, Victoria, was trapped in the entrance of an unknown cave. Torrential rains had tumbled tons of rock and earth from the face of the butte, exposing the dark pit.

In the past ten hours since her arrival, she’d experienced shock, disbelief, terror, and finally a numb misery that increased minute by minute. Only one thing remained constant. Vicki was alone in that pit—and time was running out.

Karen had been on duty at Vanderbilt Memorial when Cassidy had called around ten that morning, and told her to come home. She could still hear the raw note in her husband’s distinctively husky voice, the stark undertones of desperation. The unspoken plea for help.

Somehow she’d managed to get through the roadblocks and detours set up by the state police, and she’d reached the site to the west of the main house shortly after Lieutenant Brendan Gallagher and the fire department’s mountain rescue unit had begun on the rescue shaft now angled down toward her little girl.

Cassidy had been like a crazy man, shouting at Bren to let him help, threatening his poker buddy with castration and worse if Bren didn’t give him something to do. Something. anything. If he had to, he’d claw his way to his daughter with his bare hands.

Catching sight of Karen half running, half stumbling down the mud-scoured slope, Bren had silently pleaded with her for help. She’d put aside her questions long enough to coax Cassidy away from the knot of grim-faced, dedicated men. A shiver transited her spine at the wild suffering she saw in his eyes. For an instant she wasn’t sure he even knew who she was. And then his arms crushed her to him, his need a living thing.

Between hard shudders, he told her about Vicki’s trip to the butte with her dog, Rags, and her regular baby-sitter, Wanda June, to watch the clouds. About the tons of mud that had torn down the hill. Of their little girl’s sudden disappearance and Wanda’s frantic search of the area before she’d run across the storm-ravaged pastures to find Cassidy.

It had been Rags who’d led him to the raw gash in the granite.

The torn flesh of Cassidy’s face and hands bore testimony to his attempts to reach their child. But his shoulders had been too broad to allow him to reach into the black pit where Vicki had been trapped.

Knowing her husband’s almost irrational fear for his daughter’s safety, Karen had a good idea how terribly he’d been suffering when he’d all but ridden a gelding into the ground in order to call for help. She suspected, too, that leaving Vicki with only Wanda and Rags to guard the site had almost torn him apart.

But when Karen tried to comfort him, he suddenly stiffened, as though jerked out of a terrible nightmare. His face twisted, his head snapped up. The arms that had bruised her flesh, so tightly had they held her, relaxed.

Suddenly he was in control again, his gaze steely, his emotions shuttered safely, as he jerked his hat from his head, placed it on hers and ordered her into taking his slicker, all the while castigating her for not wearing a jacket, for driving too fast, for a half dozen things she no longer remembered.

It was Cassidy’s way. Reaming her out while at the same time making her breakfast after she’d worked a late shift the night before. Growling orders at her as though she were one of his wranglers even as he put in endless hours helping her paint Vicki’s room or till the garden plot.

Maybe he never said he loved her in so many words, but a woman knew when she was loved. For all his firmly rooted beliefs and sometimes inexplicable opinions on the way of things, Cassidy was a gentle man at heart.

Karen was sure of it.

With a sigh, she searched for her husband’s tall form. But though she recognized friends and neighbors and the whey-faced paramedic she’d helped to patch up various minor injuries, Cassidy was nowhere in sight.

Had he gone back to the house for a moment? Or taken Wanda June home to be with her family on their neighboring ranch?

But no, Wanda was still huddled into a blanket in the first aid tent, looking scared and forlorn and far younger than her sixteen years. In the stark light, her normally vibrant face was pinched and drawn.

God, but it was a hellish night, Karen thought, swiping a tired hand over her face. Somewhere to the south, lightning rent the air like the vicious slice of a scalpel while thunder crashed and rolled in its wake. The trailing edge of the storm had finally moved out around six that evening, leaving chaos in its wake. Power in the Grand Springs area had been out since last evening, and according to the reports on the radio, many roads were closed and the emergency resources were stretched to breaking. It would go down in the history books as one of the worst storms to hit Colorado in a hundred years.

A sudden movement to the left caught Karen’s gaze an instant before Rags stuck his cold nose against her thigh. Ignoring the mud, she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around the Australian shepherd’s shaggy neck. Oddly, the warm, pungent odor of dog and dirt served to soothe her in ways that nothing else could manage. Perhaps because she’d so often smelled that same combination on her daughter’s skin.

“Oh, Rags,” she whispered. “She has to be all right. She just has to.” His tail wagged once, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Everything will turn out just fine,” she murmured, her voice hollow as she got to her feet again. As hollow as the comforting words she’d shouted down at Vicki only a few minutes ago. Words that echoed obscenely in the bottomless void where Vicki waited for someone to come for her.

As though sensing her thoughts, Rags licked the hand that had fallen to her side, then turned to jog to the spot in front of the jagged hole where he’d been hunkered down almost continuously since Vicki disappeared.

Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of her daughter’s beloved pet waiting patiently for his mistress’s return. And heaven help anyone who tried to make him move.

Oh, baby, don’t give up, Karen prayed as she pulled the slicker closer to her throat. We’re coming. Daddy and I are coming for you.

She saw Cassidy then, standing alone at the edge of the light, an intensely physical man who expressed himself with actions and kept his own counsel, taller than most, his large, well-muscled body a match for any there.

She took a hasty step, then stopped, suddenly uneasy, as he tipped back his head and looked up at the sky. There was a look of stark anger about him that chilled her to the bone as she, too, stared upward.

The overcast sky seemed as solid as the hard red Colorado ground, yet she knew those murky, threatening clouds contained enough water to swamp the ravine and half the ranch with torrents of angry, swirling, liquid mud, tearing down trees, scouring away precious grass, filling every crevice.

“No,” she whispered, staring helplessly at the black hole in the ground. “Please, God, don’t let it rain again. Please, please, don’t.”

* * *

Standing alone at the edge of light, Cassidy Sloane fought down a fierce need to fall to his knees and beg whatever God might be listening to spare his daughter’s life. Not that it would do any good, of course. God had abandoned him a long time ago—and with good reason.

Still, somewhere in his cynic’s heart, buried among unspoken longings and shameful secrets, he still hoped for a miracle. A reprieve for an innocent little girl whose only “crime” had been a desire to see the top of a cloud from the edge of the butte.

The need to plead came again, stronger this time. Almost as strong as his need to lash out at that same God. Or fate. Or even the damned weathermen who hadn’t foreseen the monsoon-like deluge.

As though issuing a parting taunt, thunder rolled again, more distant this time, and off toward the eastern part of his land where the stream feeding his meadows hooked toward the south.

His tired gaze fixed in that direction, Cassidy was startled from his dark thoughts by the sound of a gruff voice calling his name. Heart thudding, he spun around to find a familiar bearlike man bearing down on him.

Lieutenant Brendan Gallagher of the Grand Springs Fire Department stood a good two inches taller than Cassidy’s own six-one frame and still carried most of the muscle he’d developed while representing Burke Senior High at the state wrestling finals three years running.

“How much longer, Bren?” Cassidy demanded when the man was still a half dozen strides away.

Gallagher swept off his battered orange helmet and set it atop a cluster of oxygen cylinders. “Two, three hours, if the rain holds off.”

“That’s what you told me two hours ago, Gallagher!” Cassidy realized he had raised his voice, drawing startled looks from some of the nearby volunteers dispensing coffee and sandwiches to the exhausted men. The Ladies Aid Society from one of the churches, someone had told him.

Gallagher moved a massive shoulder. “Maybe less. Hard to say exactly.”

At the exchange of words, one of the volunteers stepped away from the fire department’s mobile canteen and came toward the two men, holding out two large white foam cups filled with steaming liquid.

“Coffee, Lieutenant?”

“Thanks,” Gallagher muttered before eagerly lifting the cup to his lips.

“Mr. Sloane?” The plain-faced woman in an army surplus poncho thrust a cup toward Cassidy. “Would you like some?”

“No.” The clipped word had no sooner passed Cassidy’s lips when he realized how ungrateful he’d sounded. “No, but thanks for offering,” he said, tempering his response. Tact was Karen’s forte. Not his. But that didn’t excuse unprovoked rudeness.

“You’re most welcome.” The woman hesitated before adding in a kindly tone, “I just want you to know that we’re all praying mighty hard for your little girl.”

Cassidy’s throat worked. Asking for help for his child had been easy. Accepting it for himself was all but impossible.

“I appreciate that, ma’am. Thank you.”

The woman’s eyes were shiny with unshed tears as she touched his arm, then turned away to return to the beat-up wagon.

Short of patience under the best of circumstances, Cassidy nevertheless forced himself to wait while the other man drank greedily. After brutally long hours of digging, with only occasional breaks, Brendan looked played out. But in spite of his leprechaun eyes and choirboy’s smile, Bren Gallagher was tempered steel, with ice water in his veins, and, according to men who’d worked under him, one tough man to cross.

At the moment, Cassidy didn’t care what kind of reputation Bren carried. Nor would he let himself think of Bren as a friend. No, pared to the basics, Brendan Gallagher was simply the man keeping Cassidy from his daughter. His feisty, bright-as-a-new-penny Victoria.

Vicki to her mom. Vick to him, more often than not. His little tomboy with angel eyes the same shade of dark brown as his own, though without the jaded remoteness he glimpsed in his shaving mirror on a daily basis.

Was it only this morning at the breakfast table when she’d flung her arms around his neck and begged him to let her ride out with him to check on the horses in the south pasture?

Afraid for her safety in the lousy weather, he refused and, instead, ordered her and Wanda June to stay within sight of the ranch house. For once Vick had done what he asked, wandering through the wet fields in a wide arc less than a mile from home.

The next time he heard her voice, it had come from far below the surface where she was wedged between slabs of icy granite like a cork in a bottle, calling feebly for help. When he answered, he’d gotten no reply.

Since then, the only constructive thing he’d done had been calling the fire department and threatening the dispatcher with mayhem if the man didn’t get a crew out to the Lazy S in record time.

“Beats me how something as vile as this could taste so good,” Gallagher muttered when the cup was empty.

Too anxious to be polite, Cassidy released his pent-up frustration in a rush. “Dammit, Gallagher, I’ve had it with standing around with nothin’ to do but watch other men work. That’s my kid down there. They’re doin’ my job.”

“Right now your job is taking care of your wife.” Though calm, Bren’s voice carried a ragged edge of fatigue.

“Karen doesn’t need me to hold her hand.” It was foolish to wish she did, Cassidy thought, his gaze searching for her small, quick form all but swallowed up by his yellow slicker. He saw the slicker first, and his favorite Stetson covering that mass of curly brown hair that she kept short because it was easier to manage that way. Soft, gold-spun hair he’d always longed to see brushing her shoulders—or his chest when they made love.

Outlined in the eerie blue glimmer of the propane lantern, her face was wan but composed as she bent over the table, calmly applying a large gauze dressing to a stocky firefighter’s forearm. Several other men slumped against nearby rocks or sprawled on the ground, waiting their turn to be patched up.

Chiseling away a mountain of granite chip by chip was tedious, spine-jolting work, but the crew didn’t dare dynamite or even use hydraulic equipment for fear of injuring Vicki in the process. But using pickaxes and chisels in such close quarters had its risks, too, mostly to the men doing the work.

At least Karen was busy, while he had nothing to distract him from his dark thoughts. As though sensing his gaze, she turned her head to look his way. Though a good fifty feet stretched between them, he felt her compassion reach out to touch him. Something gave way inside, leaving him feeling more vulnerable than he could handle.

Sick inside, Cassidy studied the worn toes of his working boots, grimly working to drive his stampeding emotions back into the sturdy mental corral where they belonged.

Damn, but he was tired.

“Straight talk, Bren,” he grated as the other man tossed his cup into a trash container near the canteen. “What are Vicki’s chances of…” He had to take a moment to corral yet another unwelcome surge of emotion. “What are her chances?”

Gallagher squinted skyward “If another storm doesn’t move in, floodin’ us out, I’d say your daughter’s chances are damned good.”

“Keep me posted, okay?”

Bren nodded. “You got yourself a deal.” With that, he snatched up his helmet and headed toward the tunnel.

A rustle of brush had Cassidy turning suddenly to find his wife hurrying toward him. “Cassidy, what did Brendan say?” she asked in the rushed, almost breathless tone she’d acquired over the years as her schedule had become more and more crowded. “Is Vicki all right? How much longer before they have her out of that horrible hole?”

Cassidy knew enough about the caprices of nature to realize just how much Bren hadn’t said. At the moment, however, he didn’t see any reason to share his private dread with Karen. It was bad enough for her as it was.

“Bren figures three hours, maybe less.”

Karen stared at him in stark distress. Tiny droplets of the moisture-laden air clung to her hair, and wispy curls clung to her neck and cheeks. “Three hours?” she whispered in aching disbelief.

“Honey, they’re working as fast as they can.” That, at least, was the truth.

“It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?” She looked tired and worried and terribly fragile, but it was the misery in her eyes that ripped at him in ways she would never understand.

“These guys are the best, Kari,” he hedged. “They know what they’re doing.”

“I’ve been talking to her every few minutes so she won’t be scared, but she didn’t answer. I don’t know if she…” Her voice broke and she bit her lip.

He knew the words she wanted him to say, the promises she was desperate to hear, but he couldn’t make himself lie. Instead, he started to reach for her, only to be interrupted by the approach of Vicki’s sitter.

The fourth of six sisters, Wanda June Peavy lived on a nearby ranch with her parents and grandparents. She had been Vicki’s companion and substitute mom for the past three years, ever since Karen had graduated from medical school and started at Vanderbilt Memorial, first as an intern, and now as a resident.

“Is…I mean, I saw Mr. Gallagher talking to you,” the distraught girl said in a trembling voice when she reached them.

“He thinks it won’t be long now,” Karen hastened to reassure the girl whose face was now tear-stained and ashen.

“It’s all my fault, Dr. Sloane. I told Vicki to stay back from the edge, but I was trying to see if the clouds were moving back toward us. I heard Vicki scream, and when I t-turned back to look, she was g-gone.”

“Stop blaming yourself right this minute,” Karen declared in a fierce tone as she took Wanda June’s cold hand in hers. “I know how stubborn Vicki can be when she’s got her mind set on something.”

The teenager blinked hard. “I should have been watching her closer.” She dropped her gaze and shifted her booted feet. “I keep thinking, if I close my eyes and wish hard enough, I could make this all into a dream and everything would be okay when I woke up. But…I can’t ever make it go away.” Casting an agonized look at Cassidy, she burst out, “You hate me, I know you do! And I don’t blame you. I deserve to die!”

“Don’t ever say that again. Don’t even think it,” he rasped, his voice rough. “Accidents happen.”

“But—”

“Enough!” He reached out to enfold Wanda June in a clumsy bear hug, his big hand awkwardly patting her back as though she were six instead of sixteen. When he lifted his head to look at her, Wanda June offered him a watery smile.

“Okay now?” Cassidy asked when the sitter’s breathing evened and the trembling eased off.

“Yes, I think so.”

The girl lifted her head and took a step backward. “Honey, you need to rest,” Karen told her gently. “Why don’t you go on home?”

“I’d rather stay here until…you know.”

Karen drew a breath. “Okay, but I want you to wait in the truck where it’s dry.”

Wanda June nodded. “Call me if…when…?”

“I will. I promise.”

Karen watched until Wanda’s slender silhouette blended into the darkness, then shifted her gaze to Cassidy once more. “Thank you for that.”

“For what?”

“For helping her to forgive herself.”

“She’s just a kid, doing the best she knows how. I knew better, and I let Vicki go out in this weather, anyway.” Because he’d never been able to say no when she’d sugared him the way he’d taught her to sugar her pony.

“Cassidy, don’t.” He jerked free of her touch. “Let it be, Karen.”

“No, not this time.” Karen took a deep breath “You couldn’t have known that cave was there. No one knew, not even the old-timers. And a mud slide can happen anytime, to anyone.”

“But it happened here! On land I thought I knew as well as my hand.”

“Cassidy, what happened was a freak occurrence, a one-in-a-million accident. If you need to blame someone, blame Mother Nature, because it’s not your fault any more than it’s Wanda June’s.”

“Bullshit. We both know it’s because of my weakness that our daughter is down in that cold hellhole, fighting to stay alive.”

“Stop beating up on yourself. You were on the other side of the ranch when she fell. Besides, you’re the strongest man I know.”

“Oh yeah, I’m strong, all right. So strong I gave in and let you go back to your precious job when I knew you belonged at home with our daughter.”

Karen’s mouth fell open. He knew he’d hurt her, but the resentment he’d bottled up for too long came tumbling out. “Oh, yeah, I knew better, all right,” he went on mercilessly, his fists knotted, “but I kept thinking you’d come to your senses.”

“I…see,” she murmured carefully. “Yes, I understand how you could come to blame yourself.”

She took two steps backward before stumbling over some unseen obstacle. Cassidy was at her side instantly, his strong arm wrapping around her waist to keep her from falling.

“Kari, I didn’t mean…I don’t—”

“Cassidy! Karen! Come quick!” It was Gallagher’s voice. And his tone was urgent—and exultant! Karen was already fighting tears of relief when he added excitedly, “We have her! Hot damn, she’s safe!”

Chapter One

March 18

As Karen turned onto Gold Rush Street where she’d lived for most of her childhood, she couldn’t help smiling to herself. In one of Grand Springs’s oldest neighborhoods, the thoroughfare was wide enough for four cars and lined with huge, gnarled oaks and towering cottonwood trees that covered the generous front lawns with glorious red and gold leaves in the fall and wisps of white every summer.

After parking the car in her mom’s driveway, Karen propped her arms on the steering wheel for a moment and gazed through the windshield at her childhood home. Built in the twenties for a bank president, the house itself had an oddly disjointed style and a seemingly random mix of red brick and shiplap siding, which always reminded her of a slightly eccentric but sweet-tempered dowager taking her ease in the sunshine.

With a weary sigh, Karen closed her eyes for a second, wondering why on earth she’d come here. Although she’d told her mother she would be stopping by to drop off some steaks from a steer Cassidy had had butchered last week, that was only an excuse. The truth was that Karen had needed to come home, if only for a while, to lick her wounds and regroup.

Back to the womb, so to speak, though, technically, her first home had been a bleak apartment above a pizza parlor. It was all that her parents, Sylvia and Fred Moore, had been able to afford on his resident’s salary.

After pulling the keys from the ignition, Karen glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes past two. If running true to form, Sylvia would be waiting with a full pot of freshly ground French roast and a tray of pastries she’d picked up from the bakery near the bank where she had worked her way up to the position of vice president. One of the perks of her job was being able to take off unannounced for a couple of hours to spend an afternoon with her daughter.

Karen slipped from the car and trotted up the shrubbery-lined walkway to the wide front porch, where she pressed the buzzer twice to herald her arrival before using her key. The silence of the huge old house settled over her like a soothing cloak as she slipped off her jacket and slung it over an arm of the antique coat tree.

“Yoo-hoo, Mom?”

Sylvia pushed through the louvered double doors that led from the dining room into the large living area adjacent to the tiled entry. In her slender, well-tended hands, she balanced a silver tray, steam rising from the coffee urn to create smoky ribbons before her finely sculptured face.

“Hello, sweetheart,” she called as she bent to set the tray on the coffee table. “A visit from you today is just what I needed.”

Karen crossed the living room to give her mother the expected hug and peck on the cheek, her mind strangely detached from Sylvia’s cheerful chattering. Karen accepted a cup of coffee, which she cradled absently between her cold palms as she wandered aimlessly around the living room. Her mother, enthroned in her favorite damask-covered chair near the fireplace, watched her pace.

Very little had changed over the years. A fire had been expertly laid in the stone fireplace, ready to be kindled the instant her mother felt the slightest chill. Snapshots in silver frames had pride of place on the ornate oak mantelpiece, chronicling her life from infant to bride. Pain shafted through her at the memory of those carefree days. With her life full to bursting these past few years, she’d pretty much lost touch with almost all of those friends smiling at her with the naïve happiness of the young and privileged. Even Eve Stuart, who used to be her “best friend in the whole wide world,” had all but drifted out of her life before leaving Grand Springs for good six years ago. Though Eve was back now and living with her new husband, Rio Redtree, and their daughter, Molly, Karen never seemed to have a moment to spare for socializing with her.

She wanted to blame Cassidy for that, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. She had been the one to refuse invitations for lunch or bridge and casual get-togethers, even though it had hurt her keenly.

“Is something wrong, darling? You look a touch sad this afternoon.”

At the sound of concern in her mother’s voice, Karen glanced over her shoulder and shook her head in what she hoped was a reassuring denial. “I’m just tired, that’s all. One of the other residents is off sick, and I’m working part of his hours as well as my own.”

Sylvia Moore pleated her patrician brow in a troubled look Karen knew foreshadowed a bout of maternal probing. “Winter’s officially over in three days. Perhaps you’ve a touch of spring fever,” Sylvia suggested with just a hint of a smile, her cup clinking softly as she returned it to the saucer on the piecrust table at her elbow.

“Could be. I admit I’ve just about had it with fighting my way from the house to my car in knee-high snow more mornings than not.”

She gave a dramatic shiver before turning back to continue her study of the framed photos. Since she’d been old enough to climb on a chair in front of the fireplace, she’d been fascinated by the people in those pictures, many of whom had faces very much like hers. Her father’s, especially. Karen always felt a tingle of recognition when she studied his likeness, which reminded her so much of her own.

She’d been only three when he’d kissed her goodbye that fateful morning and driven off to work. Ten minutes later, his life had ended in a car crash. A broken neck, according to the reports she’d read. Just like that, and her mother had been a widow with a child to raise by herself.

Kari and I raised each other, Sylvia invariably declared when anyone remarked on the unusually close relationship between mother and daughter.

Smiling to herself, Karen let her gaze move farther along the display of photographs. Her mother was there, too, as well as a steady progression of photos of Karen. As a bald baby in a flowery headband. As a Brownie and then a Girl Scout, her sash covered with merit badges. As an honor student and valedictorian of her class at Colorado State.

There were other pictures, too. Silly ones. Special ones. Her first day of medical school with her arms full of bedding and her roommate mugging in the background. Posing in her brand-new uniform as an LPN at Vanderbilt Memorial, where she’d worked double shifts in order to earn the money for the next term. Sunbathing in the backyard with her first boyfriend, Squirrely Miller Greavy. Her entire life, captured on glossy paper and framed with her mother’s impeccable taste.

Her breath hitched as she finally allowed herself to look at the large, formal photo in a priceless antique frame that sat all alone on one end of the crowded mantelpiece. Her wedding picture.

Her very own fairy-tale fantasy done in the colors of the sun and swirls of pixie dust.

It had been Indian summer, and the sun had bathed the small chapel in gold. Cassidy had worn the rented tux with an authority that had taken her breath away. Not even her mother’s friend and long-time beau, Frank Bidwell, in custom-tailored Armani had been as impressive.

Smiling, she traced the majestic line of those wide, wide shoulders with her blunt, unpainted nail. Clark Gable shoulders, she used to tease, just to watch him scowl. He’d been scowling when they’d met, too, between colorful curses that had questioned the paternity of the two ranch hands who had hauled him into the ER on a hot day in July.

“He’s all yours, ma’am,” one of the crusty hands had declared prophetically before hurrying to the safety of the waiting room.

“Best not try to take his pants,” the younger cowpuncher had counseled, before he, too, had abandoned her.

A wild stallion Cassidy had been set on breaking had tried to return the favor, and Cassidy had ended up at the receiving end of the horse’s flashing, steel-shod hooves. Still wearing his chaps over frayed jeans and dusty boots, he’d been all but out of his mind with pain from a gash in his forehead, a severe concussion and four broken ribs, one of which had been dangerously close to puncturing a lung.

While Karen helped the nurse with his vitals, he’d told them in no uncertain terms what they could do with their pain medication, threatened Karen with unspeakable horror if she so much as reached for the buttons on his fly and worked hard on turning the air blue in the small treatment cubicle, earning him a severe rebuke from a tough ex-army nurse by the name of Helga Tutt. He’d also gone down in history at Vanderbilt Memorial as holding the unofficial record for consecutive curses without a single repetition.

It had been love at first sight—on her part, at least. But when they’d started dating, Cassidy’s motivation had been far more direct—he’d wanted to take her to bed. While she’d been weaving romantic dreams, he’d been skillfully knocking down her virginal defenses one by one. And yet, when she’d told him about the baby, he’d kissed her with great tenderness before informing her in his usual brusque manner that they would be getting married as soon as the law allowed.

“You were beautiful that day, Kari,” her mother remarked quietly, drawing Karen’s gaze. “Truly radiant.”

“I was scared to death!”

“So was Cassidy. I’ve never quite seen that shade of white in a man’s face before.”

Karen felt a lump forming in her throat as she recalled the possessive note in his voice as he’d repeated the vows. Her own voice had been barely audible and more than a little shaky. At one point, she’d stumbled over the words, and Cassidy had given her icy hand a reassuring squeeze that had calmed her.

She’d been giddy with happiness for a long time after that. Cassidy had made no secret of his determination to grant her every wish, and he had, she reminded herself as she settled in the chair opposite her mother’s—until she’d made the decision when Vicki was nearly three to return to medical school for her final two years.

He’d changed after that. Each day he’d seemed to draw more tightly into himself until she’d come to feel as though she were living with a taciturn, polite—and terribly remote—roommate instead of the man she adored.

After taking a sip of the now tepid coffee, she asked brightly, “So what did you decide to wear to the reception tomorrow night?”

Her mother tossed her a saucy grin that took years from her face. “What else? My little black dress and pearls.”

“Of course.” Karen recalled with fondness the hours of her youth that she and her mother had spent discussing fashion and style.

“I wish Olivia was going to be at the party,” Sylvia murmured after a long moment of silence. “She and I used to tease each other about who wore pearls most often.” Sylvia drew a sad breath. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

Karen toyed with her coffee cup, centering it on her knee, tracing the handle, then repositioning it on the chair arm. Olivia Stuart and her mother had been friends for years—since the days when their girls had been in grade school together and almost as close as sisters.

Now pictures of Eve’s mom flitted gently though her mind. For all her grace and innate charm, Grand Springs’ mayor had been a strong advocate for the underdog. She’d also been a wonderful role model, especially for young women and girls, like Vicki and Olivia’s own beloved granddaughter, Molly.

“It doesn’t seem possible that a wonderful person like her should have been murdered.”

Her eyes dulled by sadness, Sylvia shook her head. “I talked to Rio the other afternoon when he came in to make a payment on his truck loan. He said that the police have pretty much exhausted the leads in the case.”

Karen heaved a weary sigh. As a doctor, she dealt with death nearly every day, in one way or another, but that didn’t make it any easier when the Grim Reaper struck so close to home.

“I’m sure Eve and Rio will be at the party. Maybe Rio’s work at the Grand Springs Herald has turned up new information.”

Sylvia let out a long breath. “If there is any new information. It seems to me things like this go on forever, and sometimes they’re never really satisfactorily solved. That disturbs me almost as much as losing Olivia did.” She shrugged a slender shoulder. “What a pathetic tribute to someone’s life.” She crooked her elegant fingers to indicate quotations marks. “‘Case pending.’ No sense of closure. No sense of justice being done. It makes a person wonder what it’s all about. You know?”

Karen understood, perhaps better than her mother realized. What was it all about? She’d been asking herself that question a lot lately. She had no answers.

As if Sylvia sensed how gloomy her daughter was feeling, she declared firmly, “Enough depressing stuff. Tell me about your new dress. You never did tell me what you bought.”

“Probably because there’s nothing to tell. I don’t have anything new.”

Sylvia arched an eyebrow. “But I thought that’s the reason you and Vicki made a special trip to the mall last month.”

Karen grinned and rolled her eyes. “That was the plan, yes, but remember me, the mother of a precocious soon-to-be nine-year-old? I’d swear she was thirteen going on twenty-five, listening to her talk. Barbie dolls are definitely behind us, I’m afraid. Now she’s lusting after makeup and heels with a gleam in her eye that will probably throw Cassidy into cardiac arrest when he realizes what’s on her mind.”

Sylvia chuckled. “She is shooting up fast, isn’t she?”

“Yes, scary, isn’t it? Anyway, by the time we settled on the absolutely perfect party dress, we’d run out of time to look for something for me.”

This time Sylvia’s cup clattered impatiently when she returned it to its saucer. “For heaven’s sake, Karen, why didn’t you tell me you were short on time? You know I leap at any opportunity to shop. I’m sure I could have found you something appropriate.”

“And expensive, no doubt,” Karen returned with a rueful shake of her head.

Sylvia arched a graceful brow again as she said airily, “Of course. After all, you’re the wife of one of our area’s most successful ranchers. You deserve the best, my sweet. Something with enough sizzle to make that tall, dark and handsome husband of yours want to rip it right off you when he sees you wearing it.”

Karen nearly choked on her coffee. “Mother!”

“Don’t ‘Mother’ me, Karen McCormick Moore Sloane. As you just said, Vicki is going to be nine at the end of April. It’s time she had a baby brother or sister to spoil. Otherwise, she might end up as set in her ways as you are.”

“If only it were that easy,” Karen muttered, dropping her gaze. She would not cry. She simply would NOT.

There was a weighty silence before her mother said softly, “Darling, I was just joking. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended.” Karen closed her eyes against the sudden sting of hot tears.

“Karen? What’s wrong?”

Her mother’s soft cry shredded Karen’s brave front “Oh, Mom, I’m so scared. I think my marriage is in terrible trouble, and I don’t have a clue what to do to fix it.”

Sylvia uttered a soft sound of dismay. “Oh, dear.”

Karen lifted a hand to dash away the tears trembling on her lashes, then steeled herself to meet her mother’s gaze.

“Cassidy blames me for Vicky’s accident. He’s been punishing me for it ever since.”

Sylvia’s disbelief was almost palpable. “You must be mistaken.”

“I wish I were,” Karen declared with weary vehemence before repeating Cassidy’s words to her on that awful night in June. “I thought it was just a form of shock, that he’d lashed out because he was hurting.”

“Your father was like that,” her mother stated firmly. “So was my father. I’ve often thought it must be some kind of a defense against feeling things too deeply.”

“Oh, Cassidy feels things, all right. Resentment, anger, contempt.” Karen wiped the tears from her cheeks with quick angry strokes of her cold fingertips. “These days he scowls more than he smiles, and the hands are threatening to force-feed him patience. As for me, I can’t seem to do anything right anymore.” She drew a breath. “And the only time he smiles is when he’s talking to Vicki.”

“Karen, Cassidy’s never been a man to smile easily, which isn’t surprising, given the fact that he’s virtually been on his own since his father killed himself.”

That was certainly true enough, Karen reflected with a frown. Cassidy had been barely seventeen and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he’d come home from football practice to find his father dead by his own hand. Since his parents had been divorced for many years by then, the grim details of his father’s burial had been left to him. As soon as he’d graduated, he’d sold the house and the few other possessions his father had left him, put the money and a small insurance settlement into a savings account, and enlisted in the army.

She knew very little of Cassidy’s family history—only the names of his parents and a few sketchy details of his growing-up years. He’d had a brother who died before the age of five and a mother who’d left ten-year-old Cassidy and his father shortly thereafter. All of which had given him a deep-seated need to be in control of his own destiny. Very early in their relationship, she’d realized that she was wasting her time trying to pry open a door to his past that for reasons of his own, he’d locked and bolted tight.

“There are other changes, too. More…intimate ones.”

Karen felt her face growing hot. Though she and her mother had always been close, they had only discussed sex in impersonal terms. To her credit, Sylvia had always been quite open about what she called bedroom romps, the hotter the better. Karen had been the one to shy away from the explicit details.

“In other words, you’re not sleeping together?”

Karen hated the wave of weary bitterness that passed over her. It was becoming as much a part of her as the indecision about her marriage.

“Oh, yes, we’re sleeping together,” she admitted, watching a cloud drift across the frame formed by the living room’s large bay window. “On our own separate sides of the bed.”

Karen mentally cringed at the memory of the last time she’d tried to snuggle up to Cassidy while he’d been sleeping. He’d jerked away from her violently, as though she’d attacked him.

“Forgive me for asking, darling, but have you considered that the problem might be…physical?”

“If you’re asking me if he’s impotent, he’s not.” The idea was laughable. Cassidy was an intensely virile man with a strong sex drive. “We still have sex now and then, but it’s mechanical. A quick, impersonal screw when he’s horny. Nothing more than physical relief.”

“And you believe Cassidy is to blame for that?”

“He resents my career and I resent him for resenting it.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “How’s that for complex?”

“But typical of you, my darling daughter. You always were able to see two or three layers deeper than anyone else. It’s part of your physician’s gift, I think.”

“I’m beginning to think it’s more like a curse.” Karen lifted a hand to rub at the beginnings of a headache behind her eyes. “Tell me the truth, Mom. If you were in my place, would you give up medicine in order to save your marriage?”

Sylvia inhaled a quick, nervous breath. “Surely it hasn’t come to that?”

“Not yet, but I have a terrible feeling that’s where we’re headed.” Karen sat forward, her hands wrapped tightly around the delicate Spode cup. “You haven’t given me your answer. Would you give up part of your soul to keep the man you love?”

“I don’t know, Karen. Thank goodness that was one particular dilemma I never had to face. And before you tell me that’s not an answer, I agree. Mostly because there is no one answer.”

Karen sighed. “Coward,” she grumbled.

Laughing softly, Sylvia glanced down at the worn gold band she had never once removed since her nervous groom had slipped it onto her finger almost thirty-five years ago. “Darling, forgive me for saying so, but I really think you should be having this conversation with Cassidy, not me,”

“I’ve tried, Mother. But the moment I bring up a topic that remotely has to do with his feelings, he just ices over.”

“Perhaps if you persisted. Gently, of course.”

“It’s difficult to persist when the person you’re talking with gets up and leaves the room.”

“And you let him get away with that? Tsk, tsk, Karen, I’m surprised at you. You never used to be so tractable.”

“Mother, there’s no ‘letting’ Cassidy do anything. Once he’s gotten it in his head to do something, nothing will stop him.”

“Do what, exactly?”

“Put me through hell until I agree to give up medicine.” She exhaled angrily. “But I won’t be blackmailed like that, Mother! I love him with my whole heart and soul, but a part of me is so angry, so…so disappointed that he’s behaving like some kind of feudal throwback.”

“Hmm, lord of the manor. Or in this case the ranch he loves so much. That does rather describe Cassidy, doesn’t it?”

Karen nodded, her burst of temper ebbing as quickly as it had come. She drained her cup before putting it aside. These days she always seemed to be running behind. As for catching up, forget it.

“I have to go,” she said, flexing her shoulders.

“I’ll see you Saturday night, then.” Her mother rose as well. “If you need anything before then, just call.”

“I will,” Karen promised, giving her mother a hug. “And I apologize for unloading my problems on you. I know I have to find a way to solve them myself.”

Her mother’s still-pretty face took on stern lines. “Karen, asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, just the opposite.”

To placate her mother, Karen smiled. “Don’t worry. If I need you, I’ll holler.”

“Sure you will,” her mother said with a little shake of her head as they walked out to the car together. “Mind how you go,” she said as Karen climbed into the driver’s seat.

“I will,” Karen said before reaching for her seat belt. As she drove off, she prepared herself mentally for the hours ahead. At the end of this shift, she would be one day closer to the end of her residency. Eight more months of brutal hours and unending stress before she could take a few months off to rest, and maybe make a start on another baby, then ease into a private practice where her time would be her own. Things between her and Cassidy would be better then.

They had to be.

Chapter Two

Cassidy had started his day in a decent enough mood, mostly because the tattered feed-store calendar hanging inside the barn doors said it was the first day of spring and there was a hint of warmth in the morning air. The land was coming alive again.

By the end of the day, his good mood had soured. Early spring thaws had left his beautiful ranch a sloppy, ugly mess, and everywhere he’d ridden, he’d seen wind-toppled scrub oaks torn from the ravaged earth as though by some angry hand. With a resignation born of ten winters in this part of the west, he calculated he had miles of fence to repair. Worse, the melting snow had turned the pretty little creek meandering across the north pasture into a frothing torrent of muddy water. At last count the Lazy S had lost six prime heifers to the flood, with the tally far from finished. And if the fat black clouds hugging the treetops let go, it was bound to be a rotten night to be on the road. But in a couple of hours that’s exactly where he and his ladies would be, heading for the fairgrounds on the far side of Grand Springs where tonight’s so-called celebration was being held.

Much as he hated the thought of hauling out his party manners and shining the almost new boots that still pinched his toes, it suited his sense of irony that the party to celebrate the town’s recovery from the June blackout was occurring on a night when the weather was nearly as brutal.

He’d been saddle sore and weary when he rode in from the pasture, a long list of urgent jobs for his men already taking shape in his head. As he hurried toward the house, he’d been desperate for a hot shower, a gallon of steaming coffee and, maybe, just maybe, a quick bout of loving from his wife. Tired as he’d been, he’d gotten hard at the thought. He and Karen hadn’t had sex for weeks, and he was about as frustrated as the wild stallion he’d glimpsed racing the wind on the horizon a few hours earlier.

But, when he reached the house, he found Vicki in tears, Wanda June at her wit’s end and Karen running late—as usual. It had nearly torn him apart to see the disappointment in his little girl’s big brown eyes when she’d come racing out of her bedroom at the sound of the back door closing, only to find him standing. According to Wanda June, Vicki had been waiting for the better part of an hour for her mother to get home.

It had taken him five harrowing minutes to narrow the problem to a hem that needed to be pinned up and sewed in place. Wanda June had offered to help, but Vicki had wanted her mom to do it. Like they’d planned, she kept telling him, her eyes flashing with impatience at his failure to understand.

He’d wanted to smash a fist into the nearest wall. Instead, he swallowed the anger that flared inside him like a familiar stab of pain and offered himself as a substitute. Which was why he was presently standing like an awkward, barefoot idiot in his own dining room, one hand clamped on a patch of flimsy cotton skirt, the other awkwardly trying to retrieve yet another tiny dressmaker’s pin from the small plastic box on the table. He’d rather eat dust and wrestle fifty terrified calves on branding day than pin up a damned skirt hem.

“Darn it, Vick, hold still.”

Vicki stood ramrod stiff on the tabletop, her small pixie face screwed into a knot of worry. He winced as she let out yet another long-suffering sigh. “How much longer till you’re done, Daddy?”

“Couple of minutes,” he mumbled, all thumbs and masculine frustration.

“You keep saying that.”

He drew a steadying breath. “Cut me some slack here, peanut. I’m doing the best I can.”

One pin later she was scowling at him again. “Your hands are too big.”

“Luck of the draw, peanut.” Damn pins were slippery, too.

“My hands are puny, like Mommy’s.” She lifted her hands and glared at them. “I can’t throw a rope worth spit.”

“Little girls aren’t supposed to throw a rope worth spit—or otherwise.”

Looking down, Vicki traced an imaginary pattern on the shiny tabletop. “Did your daddy teach you how to rope?”

“No, and hold still.”

“If your daddy didn’t teach you, who did?”

“I taught myself.” Cassidy felt sweat sliding between his shoulder blades, and his head hurt from squinting at the striped fabric. “Son of a—buck,” he all but shouted when the wickedly sharp sliver of steel pierced the ball of his thumb.

“Daddy, be careful! You’ll bleed on my beautiful dress and ruin it.”

His thumb stuck in his mouth, Cassidy regarded his daughter over the tops of his callused knuckles. “I’m bleeding to death, and all you care about is your dress?” he muttered.

Vicki’s dark eyes danced with mischief. “You’re not very good at this, are you?” She reached up to catch hold of his hand. After giving his injured thumb a quick appraisal, she wrinkled her nose. “It’s only a little prick.”

Cassidy turned his thumb to assess the damage. “That is not a prick. That’s a wound. Probably get infected and ruin my roping for a solid month.”

He stuck the smarting digit into his mouth again to stop the bleeding, his indignant gaze locked with his daughter’s laughing one. At least she was no longer worrying that her pretty new dress might not be finished in time for the party tonight, he congratulated himself.

Maybe he wasn’t much of a seamstress, but he could still tease a smile out of his little girl, even if she did seem more grown-up and femininely unpredictable with each passing day.

“After you pin it, you have to sew it by hand,” she informed him, her small mouth twitching suspiciously at the corners. “With a needle and thread, so no one can see them. Mommy said.”

“So you’ve told me about a dozen times already.”

Vicki nudged her chin down far enough to direct an imperious little-girl frown his way. “Just so you know.”

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

Cassidy gripped the blasted hem and braced himself for another attempt. At the same time, he cast another hopeful glance at the window. At the sight of the hovering clouds, which appeared to grow more threatening minute by minute, a nagging unease gripped him.

Karen had a reliable four-by-four and the best cell phone money could buy. Come winter, he always made sure she had new snow tires. Nevertheless, he hated the idea of her driving back and forth to town alone at night or when the weather was bad. One more reason to hate that frigging job of hers.

“Make sure it’s pinned real even, okay?” Vicki ordered with a worried frown as he tightened his hold on the material. “I don’t want to look like a loser in front of my friends.”

Eyeing the scrape on his daughter’s right knee, Cassidy bit off a sigh. Yesterday, she’d been happily running wild on the ranch in dusty jeans and a cowboy hat. Tonight she was as haughty and poised as a princess about to depart for a fancy ball. Was this yo-yoing back and forth normal for little girls? Or was he just inept at parenting? Either way, he was as worried as a greenhorn facing his first branding.

“Look, I have an idea,” he said with a forced heartiness. “Why don’t you wear your jeans and a nice shirt tonight? Maybe that blue one with the fancy buttons you wore to church last Sunday?”

Vicki managed to look both offended and impatient. “Because tonight is special, Daddy. All my friends are going to be there. And some important people from town are going to give Mommy a certificate. I can’t go wearing an icky old pair of jeans.”

It was special, all right, he thought sourly. Half the town would be showing up to honor the folks who’d helped out in last June’s massive storm—rescue workers, firefighters and hospital staff. Grand Springs’s own heroes and heroines. Since the invitation had arrived last month, Vicki had talked about little else. Her mom was a genuine heroine, just like in the movies or in the games on her Xbox.

A man had to be blind not to notice how proud Vick was. The more she talked, the more Cassidy bit his tongue. Okay, so Kari was good at her job. He respected that. But dammit, her patients weren’t the only ones who needed her care and compassion—and love. What about a little girl who spent more time with a sitter or hanging around the corral talking to the hands than she spent with her mom? Or a husband who was beginning to wonder if his wife would even miss him if he suddenly up and disappeared?

“Stop fidgeting, Vick,” he muttered, his temper almost as frayed as the ragged edge of the pink-and-white material he was trying to hide under a little fold the way Vick had ordered.

“I wish I was as pretty as Mommy,” Vicki murmured with a wistful sigh.

Seeing her shoulders slump dejectedly, Cassidy felt something tear inside. Before he could shore up his defenses, he was all but overcome by an urge to wrap her up in silk and sunshine and keep her safe from all the hurts he knew waited for her in the world outside the cocoon he’d tried to weave around her. But even as he fought it off, he knew he would always feel protective toward this marvelous little miracle in pink and white.

“Trust me on this, peanut,” he drawled past the lump in his throat. “You’re as beautiful as the dark-haired princess in that book you read under the covers when you think Mom and I are asleep.”

Vicki wrinkled her nose. “I’m way too skinny.”

“No way! I’m already dreading the day when the boys start lining up outside that door there.” Summoning a decent enough grin, he playfully tugged on one of her long fat braids, hoping to win a smile. When he saw a frown instead, he bit off a sigh.

“You’re willowy,” he assured her. “Just like those ladies on TV.”

Vicki looked unconvinced. “Brooks Gallagher says I’m as flat as one of his skis.”

“Forget Brooks Gallagher,” he said as he concentrated on the last few inches of unpinned hem.

“He’s always hanging around Maria Del Rio, ’cause she wears lipstick.” Vicki sniffed. “And a bra.”

Good Lord. A third-grader, wearing a bra? Cassidy felt a flare of helpless panic. “Don’t even think about it.”

“I’m only talking about lipstick.”

“No.”

“Oh, please, Daddy! Just for tonight.”

“No!” He fought down the urge to tuck her away in her room for the next twenty years. “You’re too young.”

“I’ll be nine in six weeks.”

Had it really been nine years since he first laid eyes on the doll-sized, red-faced, squalling scrap of femininity cradled in her mama’s arms? Lord, but he’d been punch-drunk with happiness that morning. And proud enough to shout his wife’s praises in the streets. He’d wanted another baby as soon as it was safe for Karen to get pregnant. She’d talked him into waiting. He was still waiting. But the so-called “right time” seemed about as far away as ever, and, at thirty-five, he didn’t have a lot of years to wait. Not if he wanted to be around long enough to make sure his kids had everything he’d missed—like a mom they saw for more than a few minutes every morning…and if they got lucky, a few minutes before bedtime.

“No bra and no lipstick. That’s final.”

“You’re just mad ’cause Mommy’s late,” Vicki accused, more perceptive than she should be.

“I’m not mad.” Cassidy felt a sudden heat spread over his face at the blatant lie. “More like…impatient.”

“You are too mad. I can tell, ’cause your face gets all hard and your eyes have a funny look.”

Cassidy made a mental note to exert more control on his thoughts. “Turn a little more to your right,” he muttered, squinting at the target he’d selected for the next pin.

“Daddy, how come boys don’t like girls who are smarter than they are?”

Whoa! Where did that come from? “What makes you ask that?” he hedged.

“Wanda June said I wouldn’t be popular if I keep on making straight A’s in school.”

Wanda June should learn to keep her mouth shut. “Honey, a girl as sweet and special as you isn’t going to have any trouble attracting boyfriends.” He had a mental image of pimply-faced punks trying to hustle his innocent daughter out of her virginity and felt his gut twist. “When the time comes,” he added with more force than necessary.

“What if it doesn’t? What if no one wants to marry me?”

Cassidy took a deep breath. He didn’t have a clue how to proceed. This kind of thing was Karen’s responsibility. “Someone will.”

“Mommy said it’s never too early to start thinking about the future.”

Cassidy stabbed another pin into the material. “Mommy was talking about your education, specifically about why you need to take arithmetic.”

Vicki huffed her disgust. “That’s only important if I want to go to college.”

Cassidy was beginning to think females were born with an innate ability to drive a man beyond his reason. “You’re going to college.”

“You didn’t.”

Cassidy felt an old ache flare to life. Every time he was around Karen and her doctor friends he was reminded of his poor education. Hell, he’d had to jump through hoops just to get through high school—and even then he’d had to take extra courses during summer school before the army would take him on.

“I wanted to. But I couldn’t afford college and the ranch, too.”

Vicki’s expression turned cunning, and Cassidy nearly groaned aloud. “It probably cost a lot more now, and Billy says you’re putting all your money into that new bull you’re fixing to get in California real soon.”

“Billy needs a lesson in watching his mouth.” Cassidy made a mental note to do some straight talking with his blabbermouth ramrod ASAP.

“Billy’s my friend. He thinks it’s great I’m going to run the Lazy S someday.”

“Get this straight, Victoria. You will go to college. I don’t care which one you pick or how much it costs, but you will get an education. Got that?”

“No way. I’m going to help you run the Lazy S, and when you get too old, I’m going to take over as the boss.”

“Vicki, we’ve had this discussion too many times already, and—”

“That sounds like Mommy’s car!” Vicki cried, whirling around.

Even as relief flooded through him, Cassidy had the presence of mind to grab for the small box of pins just as Vicki’s foot sent it flying off the table. Pins showered the carpet like silver hail. Before he could stop himself, Cassidy blistered the air with curses.

“Daddy! You’re not supposed to say words like that when I’m around! Mommy said.”

He felt his face flaming as Karen walked in, looking harried and tired, her eyes shadowed. She’d lost weight in the past few months, and her small body looked whisper-thin in the rumpled surgical scrubs. Even when she wasn’t working, exhaustion seemed to roll off her in waves. And no wonder. She’d worked three-to-eleven for two months straight, getting home at midnight most nights. And then, this morning, she’d had to get up before dawn in order to work the seven-to-three shift for somebody else.

Anger seared through him. She was wearing herself out at that damn place. And for what? Money? Hell, he wasn’t a rich man, but they weren’t starving, were they? Prestige? A membership in the country club when neither of them played golf? The chance to be “Woman of the Year?”

He scowled, fighting off black memories, the dangerous, ugly kind that would torture him for days if he let them take hold.

“Did you get my hair ribbons?” Vicki demanded before her mother had a chance to open her mouth.

“Of course.”

“Got ’em in Denver, did you?” The sarcastic words were out before Cassidy could stop them.

Karen cast him a reproving glance. “No, at Farley’s. Right after I picked up your suit from the cleaners and the colic medicine you wanted from the vet’s.”

It was then that he noticed the clear plastic cleaner’s bag dangling from her hand. He felt a momentary jolt of guilt before habit had him twisting it into anger, one of the few emotions he tolerated in himself.

“If you didn’t have time to stop tonight, you should have told me.”

The shadows in her eyes turned to sparks, and her chin seemed to jerk upward. “And then what? Listen to a lecture about how you don’t have time to run into town for every little thing?”

“Karen—”

“Not now, Cassidy,” she said, pointedly directing her attention—and his—to their daughter. By tacit agreement, they had tried to keep their problems from hurting Vicki. Problems that seemed to grow worse daily.

“Sweetheart, you look just as adorable in that dress as I thought you would. Lilac is definitely your color.”

Vicki glanced from one to the other, her brow knitted. “I wanted to wait to do the hem, but it was getting awfully late and Daddy said you wouldn’t mind if he helped out.”

“Of course I don’t mind.”

She draped Cassidy’s suit over the back of one of the chairs and dropped her purse onto the table. Something crunched under her sneakers and she glanced down.

“Oops.”

Vicki giggled. “Daddy dropped the pin box.”

“I think Daddy has done a terrific job,” she said, meeting Cassidy’s gaze. “I’m sorry I’m late, but Noah asked me to consult on a patient he’d just admitted. It was an emergency. I couldn’t very well say no.”

“It’s not hard, Karen. You’ve been saying it a lot to me lately.” She shot him a disgusted glance that had him kicking himself. “It’s getting late. I’d best take a shower while you finish up.” He grabbed his suit and headed for the back of the house.

* * *

Cassidy stepped buck naked from the shower, his skin tingling from the icy water. Scowling, he snagged a towel from the rack with one long arm and swiped away most of the drops clinging to his body before knotting the towel around his waist.

As he crossed to the sink, the sound of Vicki’s laughter floated through the closed door dividing the bathroom from the master bedroom. Apparently she and Karen were now involved in the more delicate work of sewing those baby stitches Vick had warned him about.

With a jerk of one powerful hand he opened the hot water tap, then reached for the ivory-and-steel straight-edged razor given to him during the last year of his hitch by a crusty sergeant who was retiring to Tahiti.

Damn the jackass who invented birth control, he thought as he slapped lather on a day’s worth of stubble. A woman with a houseful of kids wouldn’t have time to traipse off to work every morning.

A scowl tightened his face, and he paused with razor in hand to stare at the angry man in the mirror. Hell, he knew better than most how much it hurt to wait in line for a mother’s attention. He knew what it felt like to lie in bed at night and listen to his father beg his mother not to leave him. To beg God to help him control his temper and make good grades and remember to clean his room so they’d love him enough to stay together.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered. Johnny had died, and his mother had left.

Cassidy’s eyes burned with the sudden tears he’d refused to shed for a lot of years. His baby brother had been half Vicki’s age when he’d bled his life out in the middle of a Santa Fe street, his terror-filled eyes begging Cassidy for help. And God help him, there hadn’t been a day since that he hadn’t hated his mother for leaving her children alone that day.

And there hadn’t been a day since that he hadn’t hated himself even more, he thought with bitter anger as he swiped the wickedly sharp razor with long, sure strokes over his face. A sudden pain seared his jaw, and he bit off a curse. Blood dripped from the nick to drop on the sink, forming a shimmering spot of scarlet.

Shock jolted through him, and his breathing changed. He felt hot, then cold, and his stomach churned. Alone, where no one could see, he leaned over the toilet and was thoroughly, violently sick.

Chapter Three

Though the thunder rumbled steadily as Cassidy drove his family into town on Saturday night, the rain itself held off. Even the wind had abated, as though Mother Nature had decided to join in the spirit of the town’s celebration.

“Are we there yet, Daddy?” Vicki implored from the back seat of the truck’s extended cab. Cassidy glanced over his shoulder and grinned. Lights from a passing pickup revealed the starry-eyed excitement on her small face, and he felt a hard knot form in his chest.

“Five more minutes, peanut,” he told her, returning his gaze to the road ahead.

Vicki was silent for less than a mile before erupting again. “Drive faster, Daddy. We don’t want to miss any of the fun.”

Cassidy obediently nudged the speed up to the limit, though he would just as soon be heading the other way. Parties had never been his thing. The last one he’d willingly attended was his wedding reception. Even then, however, he’d been ready to leave as soon as they’d cut the cake and done the other folderol that Karen had set her heart on.

Just a few more minutes, she’d whispered, her face glowing. Those few minutes had stretched to the better part of three hours. Hours they could have spent alone, making love.

His loins ached at the memory of his restraint during the rest of that party. Karen had looked tired, but ecstatic, when he’d hustled her home to the ranch. The bed he’d bought especially for his new bride was waiting, made up with crisp new sheets that he’d picked out after a lot of second-guessing and embarrassment. Damn things had pink roses on them, the fluffy kind she’d talked about planting by the front door. He’d expected to feel like a sissy sleeping on flowers for the first time in his life. Instead, he’d lost himself so completely in Karen’s soft, lush body that he’d vowed never to sleep on anything else.

Their wedding sheets were worn thin now, but Cassidy had balked at letting Karen rip them into rags. Embarrassed to tell her the truth, he’d settled on the need to economize as the reason.

His face suddenly too warm and his collar too tight, Cassidy found himself sneaking a glance at his wife. Karen hadn’t said more than a few words since their talk in the dining room. He hated the tension between them, like a thorn buried too deep in his flesh to be easily removed.

Since this was her night, her party, he supposed he ought to apologize for being such a surly cuss. And then what? he asked himself sourly. End up like his father, a half-baked excuse for a man with no self-esteem and a spine about as stiff as a worn-out rope?

A familiar stab of disgust hit him squarely in his gut an instant before the truck rounded a curve, bringing the bright yellow lights of the fairground parking lot into view. Resolutely, he shut the door on his past and turned his attention to the evening to come. Two hours, three at the most, and he could hustle his ladies home, where they belonged.

“Turn here, Daddy,” Vicki ordered, beating him on the shoulder from her place behind him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his mouth twitching.

Vicki might look as delicate as a spring flower in her new party dress, but inside, she had the same single-minded determination as her mother.

“I told you, everybody’s already here,” Vicki wailed as Cassidy drove past row after row of mud-encrusted, well-used vehicles.

“Not everyone, darling,” Karen teased with a grin. “Otherwise, we’d be inside instead of out here, looking for a parking place.”

“Oh, Mommy,” Vicki protested, her tone long-suffering.

By the time Cassidy nosed his rig into a slot at the end of the second-to-last row, Vicki had snapped off her seat belt and was perched impatiently on the edge of her seat.

“You two stay put till I can help you out,” he ordered as he killed the engine and tossed the key into the empty ashtray.

“Oh, Daddy, Mommy and me aren’t helpless,” Vicki said in an outraged tone that had him grinning.

“I know that, sweetheart,” he said as he opened his door. “But you both look so pretty, I feel like playin’ gentleman, okay?”

Vicki beamed. “Way cool, isn’t it, Mommy?”

“I should say it is,” Karen replied, glancing his way. In the dim illumination of the interior light, her eyes seemed to glow, and her smile was soft, reminding him of the kind young woman who’d bewitched him one hellish afternoon in a cold emergency room cubicle.

Cassidy suddenly felt fifteen and tongue-tied. “Anything for my girls,” he said, and then winced. “Sorry. I realize that’s not politically correct these days.”

“We don’t mind, do we, Mommy?” Vicki piped up, glancing anxiously at her mother.

“If it were anyone else but your daddy, I would mind,” Karen disagreed gently. “But I know your dad doesn’t mean to be condescending.”

Vicki frowned. “Con-dee-sending? What’s that?”

Karen glanced his way. “It means that some men think women should be pampered and coddled instead of treated like equals. But Daddy knows better. When we first met, he thought it was great that I wanted to be a doctor.” Her eyes pleaded with him. But for what? Understanding? Approval?

An apology for wanting her to stay home with her child?

Something stirred inside him, part longing and part grief, two emotions he hated. Before either or both could take hold, he slammed the door and walked around the pickup’s long bed.

The air was still winter crisp, with the last of the storm still lingering like a heavy mist. He grabbed a lungful of fresh air and let it out slowly as he opened the passenger door.

“Thanks,” Karen said, putting her hand into his. As he assisted her down, he felt the suppleness of her wrist, the strength in her graceful fingers. The warmth of her touch. His jaw hardened at the memory of the incredible massages she used to give him in the early days. No matter how tired he’d been when she’d started or how chastely she touched him, he’d invariably ended up hard and throbbing.

It had been his turn then to slide his palms over the tantalizing curves of her breasts and hips, to trace the soft mounds of her bottom, to test the texture of her skin with his fingertips. When, at last, he’d turned his attention to the warm, moist secrets between her lush thighs, she’d all but exploded in pleasure.

Tonight she was wearing his favorite dress. It was pale blue with a high neck and long sleeves, and it had a way of clinging to her breasts that made a man think he was seeing more than he really was.

He wanted his mouth on her, her body warm and compliant beneath his. He wanted to stroke every inch of that curvy little body until she was wet and wild and trembling. And then he would sink into her, his engorged body filling the hot, smooth space that seemed fashioned just for him.

Thinking about those things now was a mistake, he realized as he felt his body harden instantly and painfully. Biting off a groan, he widened his stance, grateful that he was wearing loose-fitting trousers instead of his customary jeans.

“Mind the puddles,” he all but growled in his frustration. No matter how hot it was inside, he had a feeling he’d be wearing his suit coat most of the night.

“Hurry up, Daddy.”

Stifling a sigh, he released Karen’s hand in order to open the cab’s rear door. “There you go, Vick. Hop out.”

“No, Daddy, hold out your hand like you did with Mommy,” Vicki said with a pout.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Sloane.” He bowed slightly, sending Vicki into a gurgle of laughter. “May I?” he added, extending his hand.

As regal as any princess, Vicki allowed him to help her down from the high frame and his heart swelled at her innate grace and femininity. Just like her mama, he thought.

“Down, Rags!” Vicki ordered as she lowered the tailgate. The Australian shepherd bounded to the ground and immediately licked Vicki’s hand. “Stop wiggling so I can put on your new leash,” she ordered, tugging on his collar.

“Make sure you keep a tight hold on him,” Cassidy reminded her with a pointed look at the fifty-pound dog now straining at the end of the braided chartreuse strap. The Australian shepherd’s freshly shampooed black-and-tan coat glistened, and his ears were cocked forward, a sure sign he was eager to explore.

“Daddy!” Vicki said in a scolding voice as she scratched her adored pet’s ears. “Rags knows how to behave. Besides, he’s a hero! If it hadn’t been for him, you might never have found me stuck down there in that gross hole.”

Beside him, Cassidy heard Karen draw a quick breath and move closer to his side. Replying to her unspoken plea, he slipped a comforting arm over her slender shoulders. Maybe she did need him some, after all. His spirits edged up a couple of notches, inspiring him to tighten his hold.

“Of course Rags will be good, sweetheart,” Karen said with a smile, the soft one that begged for a kiss. “Daddy was just teasing you. He doesn’t like to think about how close we came to losing you, that’s all.”

“But you didn’t, ’cause I’m as tough as Daddy, right?”

“Right.”

Vicki tossed one of her beribboned braids over her shoulder before heading toward the brightly lit entrance. According to the child psychologist they’d taken her to for six months after the accident, she’d handled her ordeal with a surprisingly mature aplomb. In fact, she was quite pleased with herself for being such a brave little girl.

“Watch your step,” Karen called after her.

“Save your breath,” Cassidy muttered, winning him a pert grin that had him going soft inside. Until she shivered.

With a scowl, he dropped his arm in order to help her drape her lacy shawl over her shoulders. “Dammit, Kari, I told you to wear a coat,” he grumbled, wishing not for the first time that he had the money to wrap her in expensive furs.

“Maybe I just wanted an excuse to cuddle up next to my husband,” she said, slipping her arm through his. His already hard body began to throb.

“Are you flirting with me, Mrs. Sloane?” he demanded through the sudden thickness in his throat.

“Absolutely, Mr. Sloane.” This time the grin she gave him was ripe with seductive promise. His heart speeded as he imagined undressing her with slow and careful deliberation.

“I can see lots of decorations,” Vicki called from a spot just outside the door to the exhibition hall.

“Coming, sweetheart,” Karen called back, tightening her grip on his arm.

“Brace yourself for a long evening,” he muttered, eyeing the large concrete-and-steel structure with the same wariness he accorded to a suspicious pile of rocks in snake country.

Karen slowed, her gaze searching his face. “Cassidy, about the things I said earlier, I hope you know I don’t mind running errands for you or Vicki.”

Cassidy sensed her need to smooth over the rift between them, and his conscience walloped him a good one. “You’re working too many hours. You’re wearing yourself out.”

Her lips curved, and the dimple in one smooth cheek flirted with him. “I’m fine, Cassidy. Really, but it’s lovely to know you’re worried about me.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from getting them both in a tangle. “That’s my job.”

“Yes, I know. You take care of everyone around you, but when someone tries to take care of you, you buck like that beautiful white stallion you couldn’t bear to see broken.”

“I can take care of myself,” he said, embarrassed now, and wondering how this conversation got started.

Her hand touched his arm, gentling him to a stop. “I love the way you blush when someone dares to pay you a compliment.”

“The hell I do.”

“And I love you.”

“Do you?” The words were out before he realized he’d opened his mouth.

She nodded. “If you let me, when we get home I’ll show you just how much.”

Tension stretched across his shoulders and throbbed at the base of his neck. Need surged into him so fiercely he curled both hands into fists inside his pockets.

“Vicki’s waiting,” he reminded her, but she was already stepping into his arms, her face upturned, her lips parted.

“A quick lesson in patience won’t hurt her.” Palms down, she slid her hands over his lapels to his neck. Her fingers were warm against his neck as the tips threaded into his hair.

His little innocent-at-heart temptress, he thought, his mind beginning to cloud over. “Kari—”

“Shh.”

He recognized the lazy droop to her thick lashes, even as she pressed closer. With a defeated groan, he dragged his hands free and reached for her. His emotions tangled as he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his for what he told himself was a quick husbandly kiss. Her lips parted—not in protest, but urgency—and shock jolted through him, as strong as the first time he’d tasted her incredible mouth.

The beguiling scent of her perfume swirled around him, and he drew it in, along with the pungent aroma of rain and earth and wet pavement. He let his tongue tease hers, absorbing the feminine taste of her mouth. The flavor of her was as arousing as it was sweet, and he felt the hunger in his gut grow stronger. His already throbbing body stretched to the edge of pain. In spite of his good intentions, he settled one hand on her bottom and pulled her closer in an effort to ease his pulsating discomfort.

This time the groan was hers, and he felt his control slipping. For one wild, illogical moment, he considered scooping her into his arms and returning to the truck. It was then that he heard the familiar sound of impatient barking.

Drawing on what little strength of character remained to him, he eased backward, supporting her only with his hands on her arms. Slowly, her eyes still dazed and her breathing far too rapid, she lowered her spiked heels to the pavement and rested her head on his chest.

“Aren’t you two done yet?” Vicki called with audible impatience.

Cassidy raked one hand through his hair and straightened his spine. Though he tried, he couldn’t seem to get enough air in his lungs, and his body was still rock hard.

“Talk about rotten timing,” he said in a rasping voice.

“I’ll say.” Lifting her head, Karen smiled up at him, her eyes still passion-glazed and her lips rosy.

Feeling as though he had his boots on solid ground for the first time in months, he slipped his arm around her waist and guided her toward the entrance. Later, he promised himself as they reached the open door. As soon as Vicki was tucked safely into bed, he would close their bedroom door, lose the suit and make slow love to his wife.

They crossed the threshold into the cavernous hall and walked into a wall of noise and a blur of colors. From the look of things, Cassidy figured it had taken an army of eager volunteers to string thousands of tiny twinkle lights from the rafters, giving the place the effect of a star-studded summer night. According to the signs displayed prominently on sandwich boards near the entrance, local florists had donated enough flowers to turn the drab and drafty building into a perfumed garden, a perfect setting for a good old-fashioned Western fandango.

“Wow!” Vicki exclaimed, her face upturned to the fairy-tale sky overhead. Her mouth hung open and her brown eyes shone with a wonder he hoped would never desert her.

As he shepherded his ladies and Rags through the outer edges of the crowd, Cassidy checked the bars on his cell. Later, when things calmed down, he’d give Billy Russell a quick call.

It wasn’t that he was worried, he told himself. Vicki’s mare, Golden Girl, wasn’t due to deliver for another few days. Still, this was the dainty palomino’s first foal and he’d felt uneasy enough to stop by the Russells’ trailer in order to ask Billy to check on her a time or two during the evening.

“I’m gonna go find Elizabeth, okay?” Vicki murmured as they elbowed their way through the exuberant celebrants.

Cassidy surveyed the mingling throng before nodding. “Just be sure to check in with your mom or me once in a while.”

“Okay.”

“Wait, sweetie, let me fix your sash.” Karen bent to give the wide purple ribbon a quick tug. “There. Now you’re perfect,” she whispered. “And you look gorgeous.”

Vicki’s cheeks turned as delicately pink as a ripe peach. “Really and truly?”

“Really and truly,” Karen said, straightening. “If you don’t believe me, ask Daddy.”

Obediently, Vicki swung her gaze upward to Cassidy’s face. “Really, Daddy?”

His heart hammered at the absolute trust he saw shimmering in her big brown eyes. Karen’s eyes had had that same beautiful sheen when she’d repeated her wedding vows.

“Trust me, sweetheart, you’re a knockout,” he said when he had control of his voice again.

“Even without lipstick and stuff?”

“Especially without stuff.” He had to work hard to keep a straight face. “You and your mom are the two prettiest ladies in the place.”

Still beaming, Vicki wrapped another length of leash around her wrist and turned away. “Let’s go, Rags. Find Elizabeth for me.”

With an exuberant “woof” that drew a variety of stares their way, Rags charged into the crowd, pulling Vicki along behind.

“It’s a disgrace, bringing a filthy, slobbering animal into a public gathering,” a woman’s shrill voice declared loudly.

Instantly on alert, Cassidy whipped his head around to discover a prune-faced matron eyeing his daughter with obvious disapproval.

“Don’t you dare,” Karen muttered in a low voice while at the same time tightening her grip on his arm.

“Whose idea was it to bring the dog, anyway?” he asked, watching the crowd swallow the woman whole.

Karen bit the corner of her mouth in the cute way she had whenever she wanted to laugh but didn’t dare. “His name was on the invitation,” she said. “The woman I called to RSVP said that Rags is getting a certificate of appreciation along with the rest of us. For leading you to the cave.”

“Guess that makes sense,” he conceded, shoving down the memories that tore at him whenever he was reminded of those interminable hours in June.

Karen slipped her shawl from her shoulders and folded it over her arm. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were the color of shiny pewter, reminding him of the first time they’d made love.

“Come with me, Kari. Let me finish what we started outside.” The words were out before he could call them back.

Karen slanted him a startled look before glancing around at the hustle and bustle of the people bent on enjoying themselves. “Come with you where?” she asked when her gaze returned to his face.

Cassidy shot a fast look at the oversized man in an undersized suit bearing down on them through the crowd, a purposeful glint in his heavy-lidded eyes. Though he didn’t recall the man’s name, he recognized him as a member of the city council. Part of the official welcoming committee, he guessed, his jaw tightening.

“Let’s get out of here,” he urged, slipping a hand under her elbow to turn her away from the councilman.

“But the ceremony—”

“Forget the ceremony. We’ll have our own celebration, just you and me, naked on clean sheets.”

A tiny shiver ran through her, and he felt his expectations soar. Moving closer, he let her feel the hard evidence of his almost violent need jutting against her thigh.

“Oh, Cassidy,” she exclaimed softly. “You’re shameless.”

“No, I’m horny for my wife.”

The quick nervous swipe of her tongue over her bottom lip had his body throbbing. For good measure he moved to shield her and at the same time rubbed against her.

“Find your mom and tell her to take Vicki home for the night. We’ll drive over to that little inn in Toponas and get a room with a fireplace and one of those canopied beds you like so much.”

The sudden delight in her eyes made his heart leap. He had a notion to kiss her again, right then and there, before she could think of a reason to turn him down. Just as he’d resolved to do just that, however, he caught a movement from the corner of his eye and straightened.

“There you are, Dr. Sloane.” The councilman had reached them, his hand extended and his florid face wreathed in smiles. “Name’s Friendly, Bill Friendly. ‘Friendly’s my name, friendly’s my aim.’”

Karen blinked up at him, an uncertain smile on her face. “I…see.”

Friendly chuckled, the braying sound all but lost in the noise from the other people around them. “I represent the part of town where Vanderbilt Memorial is located, which makes you one of my constituents—part-time, anyway.”

“Hell,” Cassidy muttered under his breath as he dropped Karen’s arm an instant before her hand was clasped between the councilman’s sausage fingers.

Karen shot him an apologetic look before acknowledging the man’s greeting. “Mr. Friendly, I wonder if—”

“Call me Bill,” he boomed over the drone of surrounding conversations.

“Bill, we, my husband and I, were—”

“No need to introduce your husband, Doctor,” Friendly barreled on, his politician’s grin at the ready. “I recognized both of you from the picture in the Herald after those gallant boys from the fire department hauled your daughter outta that pit. Nearly tore this old man’s heart out, thinkin’ about what you two nice people went through.”

Cassidy bit down hard as he reluctantly shook the man’s sweaty hand.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Sloane,” Friendly declared with all the gusto of a practiced politician. “Friendly.” Cassidy usually kept a tight rein on his temper, but now and then those reins slipped a little. The result was generally explosive.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you how proud we all are of your wife,” Friendly went on, apparently oblivious to the chill that had settled over their little corner of the huge structure.

Cassidy cocked a thick black brow. “You don’t? Why not?”

Friendly’s mouth opened and closed, reminding Cassidy of a particularly unattractive bass. He glanced at Karen. The laughter in her eyes and the way she was biting her lip told him she was trying mighty hard to keep from giggling.

“Well, I, that is, of course we’re proud of her,” Friendly protested “Why, it gives the strongest man pause to think of her working so diligently in the emergency room, not even knowing her own little girl was trapped underground.” Friendly chuckled. “I reckon you know how lucky you are to have her.”

Cassidy’s control thinned. “Is there a point to this, Friendly?”

Before the councilman could blunder on, Karen leaned closer to Cassidy’s side to whisper urgently, “We’ll leave early, I promise.”

“Now, Kari,” he demanded, pinning her with a look that dared her to resist.

“But, Cassidy, we can’t just walk out.”

“Sure we can.”

“Cassidy, listen to me, please,” she pleaded, her gaze searching his. “More than anything, I want to be with you. But it wouldn’t be fair to the committee and everyone who’s worked so hard—”

“Forget it, Karen. I got the message.” His face closed up.

Karen wanted to scream in frustration. Just like that, he was once again the cold, angry man standing in the glare of rescue lights, his eyes rejecting her. But this time there was another emotion buried within those intimidating onyx depths, something that suggested an emotion far more complex than anger. It was a look she’d seen before, in patients suffering intractable pain.

Her heart contracted, and she felt the sudden, inexplicable press of tears against the backs of her eyes. Somehow she had to reach him, to make him understand.

“Cassidy, please don’t do this,” she whispered.

“Do what?” he challenged, making no effort to lower his voice. “Deny that I resent the demands other people make on my wife? Or the fact that you let them?”

Her body humming in ways she hadn’t felt for months, she leaned closer, deliberately brushing his arm with her breast. “Cassidy, it won’t be all that long before I’ve fulfilled my obligations and then we can leave.”

“Don’t kid yourself. We’ll be lucky if we get out of here before eleven.”

Conscious of the councilman’s curious gaze shifting from one to the other, she turned slightly to hide her face and whispered, “I want to make love to you, Cassidy, but—”

Brow arched, he deliberately took a step away from her. “I’ve heard that before, Kari, and ended up sleeping alone while you’re off on some emergency or other.”

Karen heard the resentment buried in his caustic words and felt her stomach constrict. Take a chance, Kari, she thought. Grab that thick, strong wrist of his and make a beeline for the truck. Maybe they couldn’t spend the entire night at the Fireside Inn, but—“Great party, isn’t it?” Friendly declared as he caught her eye again. Like all true politicians, it seemed, he couldn’t stand a lull in the conversation.

“Excuse me, I’m goin’ to find the bar,” Cassidy drawled. With that, he nodded to the councilman, then turned away to be swallowed up by the shifting currents of humanity.

“Did I say something wrong?” Friendly asked, his brow furrowed over troubled eyes that suddenly seemed more perceptive than she’d thought at first glance.

Reminding herself that Bill Friendly was her host, Karen summoned a social smile. “It’s not your fault. My husband hates to talk about Vicki’s accident, that’s all.”

“Understandably.” He cleared his throat. “Why don’t I get you something cold to drink, and then I can fill you in on the presentation ceremony.”

Karen bit off a groan. “Ceremony?” she asked warily.

Friendly held up a hand. “Nothing fancy, I promise. The VFW will present the colors, of course, and the American Legion marching band will play the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ then Hal Stuart will say a few words.” He sighed, then glanced around quickly before adding in a low voice, “Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Sloane, but I sure do miss Hal’s mama coming into City Hall every morning with that sunny smile of hers.”

Karen welcomed the distraction. Her cheeks were still hot as the result of the longing Cassidy had aroused in her. “Have the detectives handling the case uncovered any more leads?”

Friendly shook his head. “Not that I know of, but that young detective, Richardson, plays his cards pretty close to his vest.”

“I suppose that’s best.” Karen glanced around. At six-three in his boots, Cassidy had the advantage of height on most of the males in the room. Her spirits drooped even lower when she realized he wasn’t in sight.

“Shall we?” Friendly asked, offering his arm.

As Karen slipped her hand into the crook of the councilman’s elbow and allowed him to lead her through the throng, she couldn’t help thinking about the early days of her marriage when nothing short of a cataclysm would have pried Cassidy from her side.

Chapter Four

By eight-thirty, the formalities had been concluded, which for most of the attendees meant that the real party could start. Slim-Boy Brown and the Old Time Fiddlers tuned their instruments and a couple of slicked-up, freshly barbered and cologned cowboys eager to dance with the pretty ladies cleared a space near the bandstand.

With a whoop of excitement, one of Cassidy’s hired hands led a shy, freckled teenager onto the floor, and Slim-Boy shouted for the dancing to commence. Like a restless herd surging toward an open gate, couples spilled into the cleared area, some in jeans and boots, others in suits and sleek cocktail dresses, while friends and strangers alike cheered them on.

Across the cavernous hall, barbecued ribs and chicken sizzled on the grill of a huge old-fashioned chuck wagon while the caterer and her staff of gingham-clad cowgirls ladled up coleslaw and potato salad by the gallon. Nearby, bartenders in flannel shirts and derby hats served beer and wine to thirsty customers. As the bottles and kegs emptied, the noise level rose.

In the midst of the gaiety, Cassidy stood alone near the open doors of the main entrance, the silk tie he’d carefully knotted two hours earlier now wrenched free of the stiff collar, his patience thinned to tissue paper.

“Somethin’ tells me you’d rather be out chasing strays than proppin’ up the wall,” Travis Stockwell commented as he ambled Cassidy’s way.

Cassidy straightened, and for good measure, gave the knot of his tie another jerk. “You got that right,” he said as he saluted the younger man with the can of soda he’d been nursing for the past hour.

“‘Pears to me you’d do better to grab you one of these,” Travis advised, indicating the long-necked beer bottle in his big hand.

Cassidy gave it some thought. He hadn’t been drunk since the night of his father’s funeral. Now, on the rare occasions that he indulged, he limited himself to two beers. Eight years of watching his old man dive deeper and deeper into a bottle had made him cautious.

“Guess I’ll stick with the soft stuff,” he said, taking a swig. “Got me a mare ready to foal any minute now.” He’d been right to call Russell. Golden Girl had gone into labor an hour after they’d headed for town.

Travis nodded, one cowboy to another. “The bay?” he asked after taking a long pull on the bottle.

“No, the palomino, Golden Girl out of Goldenrod.”

“I’m guessin’ she’s a maiden, for all the worryin’ you’re doin’.”

“You guess right.”

Travis acknowledged that with an understanding nod. “Is that the mare you bred to that wild stallion I been hearing about?”

“Yeah. Took me two years to finally get a rope on that big white hellion. Bred him three times, last time to the Girl. Damn near lost two men trying to control him.”

Travis’s brown eyes gleamed. “Heard you set him free after he covered your mares.”

Cassidy nodded. He’d seen the stallion a time or two since, racing the wind across the wildest part of the Lazy S. As free as God made him.

“Word is you had a couple of sweet offers to take him off your hands, provided, of course, he was green broke.”

“One or two.”

“You figure he couldn’t be broke?”

Cassidy shrugged. “Didn’t seem right to try.”

Travis digested that in silence, then nodded. “You thinkin’ to sell the palomino’s foal?”

“Not unless I care to spend the rest of my life explainin’ my reasons to my daughter.”

Travis snorted over the sound of nearby laughter. “Yeah, I know what you mean. My sweet Virginia’s only a little past nine months and already she’s got me bustin’ my butt to make her happy. Peggy says I’m spoiling both my kids.”

Cassidy heard the note of self-conscious contentment in Travis’s voice and felt a sharp pang of envy. From rodeo gypsy to family man in the wink of an eye. A hell of a transition, he decided, but it seemed to suit Travis damned well. At least he had had a choice about becoming a father, Cassidy thought, then felt like an ass. Karen hadn’t gotten herself pregnant all by her lonesome.

“You still intending to take your family with you when the tour starts up again?” he asked during a lull in the music.

“Yep. Got me a honey of an RV and Peggy loves it. She’s got it all decorated real pretty, even has a corner fixed up like a nursery for the babies. Says it’s like taking her nest with her wherever she goes.”

Cassidy took a long breath. He and Karen had worked for days on the baby’s room, racing to get it done before Karen’s due date. Damn, if they hadn’t had fun, too. His heart ached at the memory of his new bride’s laughing eyes when he’d swung her off the ladder and kissed her senseless. They’d ended up making love on the floor amid paint cans and roller pans. He shifted, frowned. The hardness that had subsided started to throb again and he cursed the idiots who’d come up with the idea for this bash in the first place.

“Sounds like Peggy’s not planning on going back to work anytime soon.” Travis shook his head. “No way! She’s got all she can handle with me and the twins.”

Cassidy hid his jealousy behind a grin. “Guess it’s a toss-up who demands the most TLC, you or the babies.”

Travis chuckled. “You could say that, yeah. Course, me being the easygoing sort, I don’t take a lot of care. Mostly just the tender lovin’ part.”

After giving an obligatory chuckle, Cassidy took another sip of soda pop and let his gaze wander over the crowd. The dancing had started again, and he let his attention linger for a moment on one of the couples, friends of Karen’s from the hospital. Noah Howell and his wife Amanda. Both doctors.

The last time he’d done time in this suit and tie, he’d been attending their wedding. From the way they were squeezing up to each other tonight, their thighs rubbing in time with the waltz, he figured the honeymoon was far from over.

Give ’em another few years and the groom would be leaning against a wall and wishing he could go home while the happy bride was off on her own, gossiping with her friends. Like Karen, he thought as he shifted his gaze to the cluster of tables to his left where she was laughing with a sleek blonde in a filmy dress the color of wood smoke. It took him a moment to place the face. Olivia’s daughter, Eve, had come home for the funeral, and a few weeks later she’d up and married one of his poker-playing buddies, Rio Redtree.

Weddings and babies. Hell, it was an epidemic.

Karen said it was all due to the horrendous spring storm, and that a sociologist from Denver was doing a study to see if the increase in life-altering changes was the result of heightened emotions.

Emotions. Hell, he thought. It was sex that produced weddings, just like it produced babies. The hot, steamy kind of sex that took a man by storm and messed up all his well-ordered plans.

His body stirring once more, he watched Karen laughing at something Eve had just said and brooded on the long restless nights he’d spent lately staring at the ceiling, his body hard and aching to be buried in his wife’s soft warmth.

Before he’d met Karen, he hadn’t known he had any real tenderness in him. The women he’d cared enough about to take to bed had excited other things in him. Hot, turbulent needs that settled as quickly as they rose. Dark, angry emotions that set his teeth on edge, even as he exerted a will of iron to keep his hands from bruising and his need from galloping out of control.

But somehow, with Karen, the ferocity of his needs was tempered by the greatest contentment he’d ever known. Somehow, when he was holding her in his arms, his sated body still sheathed by hers, the accusing voice inside his head was silent, allowing him peace.

He’d been shaken right down to his boots to realize he’d wanted her love desperately, wanted something he’d stopped believing in on his tenth birthday. Wanted what he, himself, was no longer able to offer a woman.

He drew a breath and watched her lift her wineglass to her lips. He longed to feel that lush, sweet mouth on his, opening eagerly, her hands clutching at his shoulders as she made soft pleading noises in her throat.

Even now, when a part of him hated her for being so stubborn, he wanted her more than any other woman he’d ever known. His sweet wife, the mother of his child. The hottest lady in the room, bar none.

A need to hold her tore through him, as raw as a bloody gash left by a brush from a rusty barb. It wasn’t safe to let himself think about loving her. It would never be safe. The closest he came was a fierce desire to protect her and spoil her and make love to her so thoroughly she would forget to notice he’d never said those three little words that came so easily to her lips.

Lost in his brooding thoughts, it took him a moment to realize Travis had asked him a question. “Sorry, run that by me one more time?” he said as he shifted his gaze Travis’s way.

A strange look came and went in the other man’s eyes before Travis’s mouth sidled up into a smug half smile. “I was just asking if things are any better between you and Karen, but from the droolin’ you been doin’ just watching her across the room, I gotta figure they are.”

Cassidy scowled. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon you keep your figurin’ to yourself.”

Travis lifted the bottle for one long, last swallow before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Take the advice of an old married guy like me, Cass. Point those shiny Sunday boots of yours toward that pretty lady in blue yonder and ask her to dance.” He chuckled. “Better yet, hustle her on home so you can finish the evening off right, just the two of you.”

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