All I Need Is You (23 page)

C
asey paused on the hill overlooking the Bar M Ranch and had to wonder, in retrospect, if it all had been worth it. She was afraid she had too many of her father and grandfather’s traits, being too stubborn, headstrong, and sure that only she knew what was best. In the end, she wasn’t sure what she’d proved.

She’d wanted to keep Fletcher’s legacy from falling to ruin, a noble endeavor, or so she’d told herself at the time. But would this ranch have fallen to ruin if she never stepped foot on it again? Would Chandos really have let that happen? Probably not. She’d simply been too full of herself, thinking only she could save the day. She gave herself a mental snort. She’d been gone seven months and the ranch was apparently still running fine.

And now she had to explain her reasoning to her parents, when she no longer felt her reasons had any validity. She’d done a fool thing and needed to own up to that.

Casey swung Old Sam around and dug her
heels in for the last leg home. She arrived at the dinner hour, so chances were she’d find both her parents in the dining room. And she did. But standing there in the doorway of that elegant room, feeling so out of place in her dusty poncho and jeans, she couldn’t get the words out that she’d planned to say. It was so good to be home, she’d missed her mother and father, missed them terribly, yet for some reason she just didn’t feel like she belonged here anymore, and that realization was cutting deeper than all the other things troubling her.

She hoped it was merely a passing sense of sadness. This was her home, after all. She knew she’d always be welcome here. Yet she also always figured that someday she’d leave here for good, when she found a man…

“Did you have to cut your beautiful hair, Casey?” Courtney asked in a disapproving tone.

That certainly wasn’t what she had expected to hear after having been gone for seven months, and in fact, Casey stared at her mother incredulously. Was that all the scolding she was going to get? She was afraid to even look in her father’s direction, dreading the anger she expected to see from him. He wasn’t yelling yet—but he would.

“It will grow back,” she replied lamely.

Courtney smiled and stood up to hold out her arms. “So it will. Now come here.”

That was what Casey had been waiting for, hoping for, and she didn’t hesitate before she flew into her mother’s arms—and promptly burst into tears. Her mother’s soothing voice reached her through the noise she was making,
but the tears wouldn’t stop, just got worse.

Casey had so much to be forgiven for. She had so much bothering her that could never be made right. Parents were usually able to “fix” everything that went wrong in a child’s life, but she was past the age of having problems easily “fixed.”

All she could think to wail was, “I’m sorry! I never should have left, I know that now!”

“Casey, honey, shhh,” Courtney continued to murmur. “All that matters is that you’re home now, safe and sound. Everything else will fall into place.”

It wouldn’t, but Casey wasn’t going to argue with her mother. She was being given a reprieve. She wasn’t even being asked for an explanation…

“Perhaps if you told us why you felt the need to leave like you did?”

Casey almost chuckled. She did manage to wipe the tears off her cheeks and lean back to give her mother a half smile. At least
this
was something she’d expected.

“Well, why I left like I did, sneaking off in the middle of the night, is pretty obvious. If I’d told you what I planned to do, you probably would have locked me up and thrown the key down the nearest well.”

“Quite possibly.” Courtney smiled back. “And why you left?”

Casey finally glanced at her father, who was still sitting there, staring at her—inscrutably. It didn’t make her no nevermind that he wasn’t yelling yet, but at least he could
look
like he was furious with her.

“It was a fool reason that I wished I’d never thought of. I just wanted to prove that I could handle the Bar M fine on my own. Daddy claimed that only a man could run it proper. I set out to do what only a man would consider doing, and I earned more’n some men earn in a lifetime.”

“Did you have to pick a profession that was so dangerous?” Chandos asked quietly.

Casey cringed. “So you got close, did you? Close enough to find out what I was doing?”

“Closer than that, little girl.”

Casey went very still, and not because he’d called her “little girl.” She hesitated before saying, “What do you mean?”

“Did you really think you could elude me all these months?”

Casey sighed inwardly. She’d never thought any such thing. In fact, she’d expected her father to show up from day one. That he hadn’t had caused her some worry.

“When did you find me?” she asked.

“A couple weeks after you left.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just confront me then?”

“Maybe because it was my fault that you left and I didn’t want to compound that mistake. I figured that if you reached your goal, that would be the end of it, and I wouldn’t feel so damned guilty about it anymore. Just wish it hadn’t taken so long—or that the whole thing wasn’t so dangerous.”

“But it
wasn’t
that dangerous—for the most part. When I was just hunting bounties, it was easy enough to catch my targets unawares.”

“I know.”

Those two words really had her worried. “You know? You’re not saying that you didn’t just find me, but you also stayed with me?” Then Casey answered her own question. “Of course you did. You would. You were waiting for me to get in trouble, weren’t you? You expected it!”

“No, now, you’re barking up the wrong tree there, little girl. I knew damned well that you were competent enough for the job you chose. But you’re my
daughter
. If you think I could have just left you out there, knowing the kind of people you’d be dealing with, think again. I had to be around—just in case. There was no other way, Casey. Either I stayed near, or you came home.”

Casey nodded. She didn’t know why she’d been surprised. He had always protected her. Why would she think this would be any different?

And then it dawned on her and she nearly blanched. He’d been following her all along. He’d been there, watching her. When she and Damian had made love on the trail—had her father witnessed that, too?

She had to ask. “Were you always there? Every step of the way?”

He shook his head. “There were quite a few times you managed to lose me. The longest was when you were headed toward Coffeyville. It took me more’n a week to catch up to you that time. When you left Fort Worth just as I got there, I had to ride like hell to make it to the next whistle stop before the train pulled out
again. When you sneaked out of Sanderson in the middle of the night, you lost me for several days. Didn’t catch up to you then until you were in the midst of that showdown in Culthers.”

Casey sighed mentally and yet cringed at the same time. He hadn’t witnessed her and Damian making love. But that damned gunfight…

“That was pretty stupid of me,” she admitted.

“Yes, it was.”

“I don’t mind telling you, I was so scared I don’t know how I managed to get my gun drawn, much less hit the fella. You were the one who gave Damian and me cover to get off the street, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Sure wish I’d known you were out there when they had me in that cabin later that night, waiting for Damian to show up so they could kill him.”

“I wasn’t. My horse came up lame. But I assume you managed to extricate yourself from that mess just fine on your own. At least it looked that way when I finally caught up to you and found you heading back to town with prisoners.”

Casey managed to keep from laughing at her own shortcomings. “Me? No, I just managed to come within an inch of dying, after drawing an empty gun on those fellas. It was Damian who got us out of that mess, and not a second too soon, breaking the door down when he did. He saved my life.”

“The tenderfoot did?”

“Don’t sound so skeptical. He’s never used a handgun, but he’s an expert marksman when it
comes to a rifle. And he was adapting pretty good to our part of the country, before he headed back East.”

“Why did you even hook up with him to begin with? That’s something I never could figure out.”

Casey pulled the bank draft out of her pocket and tossed it on the table for her father to read. “Because he offered me way more’n the job was worth, too much for me to refuse for a couple weeks of easy work. And I was ready to come home. Figured a bit over twenty thousand dollars was enough to prove I don’t need a husband—till I’m ready for one.”

Courtney lifted her hand to her mouth to cover a grin she couldn’t restrain. Chandos put on his inscrutable look again, which gave no clue to what he was going to say next. What he did say surprised Casey.

“Yes, that proves
that
point well enough. And if any one of the Bar M hands could have seen you in action these last months, you’d probably have no trouble there either. But I still think you will have trouble, Casey, getting a bunch of wranglers, young and old, to follow your orders without argument. Trouble with men is, most of them think they know the right of it, and most of them have a hard time keeping their mouths shut if they disagree with their boss—and that’s if their boss is a man. If their boss is a woman, then they will
know
they’ve got the right of it, even if they don’t, and won’t hesitate to show the little woman up, if you get my drift. Now, when you prove them wrong, what’s going to happen?”

Casey sighed, understanding what he was getting at. “Bad feelings, of course. Wanting to get even by showing me up again, then more bad feelings if they’re wrong again. Or me being forced to fire them if they’re right, because it sets a bad precedent, feuding with the boss.”

Chandos nodded. “Now, having pointed all that out, which I really regret I didn’t do before, I won’t stop you if you still want to try running the Bar M. As long as you know what to expect, and, if you fail, that it won’t be a personal failure.” He grinned at her before adding, “Then again, little girl, anyone who’s accomplished what you have these last months can probably figure out a way to avoid what I’m predicting. Be a proud day for me if you prove
me
wrong.”

L
ater, in her spacious bedroom, a room still in the pink-and-white tones of her youth, Casey sat in front of the vanity, wearing an old white cotton nightgown. Her mother stood behind her, brushing her hair as she used to do when Casey was much younger. Courtney was tsking every so often over its length, but Casey was enjoying the brushing anyway.

Courtney had knocked on her door not long after Casey had come upstairs. Casey had pretty much expected her. They’d always been close, always been able to talk with ease. And there were some subjects that just weren’t for discussing in front of Chandos.

“You’ve put on weight—but in the right places,” Courtney pointed out.

Casey blushed. She hadn’t really noticed, but her breasts and hips did have a bit more curve to them—at long last. She should be delighted by the observation, after waiting so long for it to happen. But all she felt was indifference, really, which was telling.

“Guess I finally reached that magic sprouting age you used to assure me would come around.”

Courtney nodded, but after a few more brush strokes, she remarked, “Your father seems to think something else is wrong, that you’re unhappy for some reason that doesn’t have much to do with everything else. Has something unusual happened that you’d like to talk about?”

“If you can call falling in love unusual, then I guess you could say so.”

Casey had sighed as she said it. She shouldn’t have said it. There was no point in talking about something that couldn’t be changed and couldn’t be resolved.

But Courtney seemed delighted. “Did you really? I was beginning to think that no one around here would ever hold your interest—but then, he’s not from around here, is he? The Easterner, I presume?”

Casey nodded with another sigh, though she assured her mother, “I’ll get over it.”

“Why should you?”

Casey blinked up at her mother in the mirror. “Maybe because he doesn’t return the sentiment. Maybe because he’s from the upper crust of New York society, and I’m just a country girl he’d never consider taking for a wife. And maybe because I’d feel so damned out of place in a city that big, I can’t imagine living there. And maybe—”

“Maybe you’re throwing up too many obstacles,” Courtney chided. “Are you sure he doesn’t return the sentiment? I find it hard to
believe that any man couldn’t love you—once they get to know you.”

Casey chuckled. “Spoken like—my mother.”

“I’m serious,” Courtney insisted. “You’re beautiful, intelligent, and incredibly versatile in all the different things you’ve learned. You think nothing of taking on a man’s endeavors, yet are quite capable in your own. I think you’ve proved that there isn’t much of anything you can’t do, once you set your mind to it.”

“I don’t think all men would appreciate that,” Casey said wryly.

“No, perhaps not,” Courtney replied. “But your abilities give you a certain confidence that shines through and adds to your overall appeal. Was this—Damian, was it?”

“Damian Rutledge—the Third.”

“The Third, eh? Sounds impressive. But was he not attracted to you at all?”

Casey frowned, remembering the passion they’d shared. Still, had that stemmed from a mutual attraction or simply because, from Damian’s point of view, she’d been the only female around for most of the time they were together?

But to answer her mother, she pointed out, “A man can be attracted to a woman without wanting to marry her. There are other things to consider where a wife is concerned, like if she’ll fit into his life. He didn’t want me for his wife. That I am sure of.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because we were married and he couldn’t wait to get us unmarried.”

The brush fell out of Courtney’s hand. “You were
what?
”

“It wasn’t consensual, Mother, and it’s already been set aside.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t consensual? Someone
forced
you two to marry?”

Casey nodded. “You may have heard of that ornery judge, Roy Bean, over in Langtry. He took it upon himself to decide that Damian and I were traveling in sin, which we weren’t, but he was after the five-dollar charge he’d get for marrying us, so he married us without a by-your-leave, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.”

“That’s—that’s outrageous!”

Casey agreed. “Yes, it was. Damian was furious, naturally, and looked for another judge to undo the marriage in every town we hit thereafter. We didn’t find one, but when we came through Langtry on the way back, that old judge did it again, took it upon himself to unhitch us, again without asking, just for another five-dollar charge.”

Courtney sat down next to Casey on the vanity bench and gathered her daughter into her arms. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. That must have been especially hard for you, if you already loved him by that point.”

Casey tried to shrug it off. “It doesn’t matter. I knew all along that he wasn’t for me, that our lives were just too different for us to be compatible. He’s not comfortable out of a big city, I wouldn’t be comfortable in one, and there’s no middle ground there. I just wish my heart had kept that in mind instead of getting all soft on me.”

Courtney didn’t seem to want to accept that.
“Remember what I just said about your being able to do anything you set your mind to? Why have you given up on this man? You captured killers. You’re going to take on the running of the Bar M. Why do you shy away from going after your heart’s desire in this case?”

“Because failing with him would hurt in a different way that I don’t think I can handle.”

“You’re handling losing him now? Aren’t you? Or are you utterly miserable because you
didn’t
give it your best shot? The obstacles you imagine in your mind can be dealt with, too, honey. Who says you’d have to live in the city all the time, or that he’d have to live in the country from now on? Who says you couldn’t live part of the year in both places and enjoy it—because you’d be together?”

“But he didn’t want me for his wife!”

“So change his mind,” Courtney said pragmatically. “If you can’t figure out how to do that, I’ll be glad to advise you.”

Courtney was blushing now. Casey smiled at her mother. She meant well. She wanted Casey to be happy. She was just overlooking one little point. How could Casey be happy, even if she managed to snare a proposal of marriage out of Damian, if he didn’t really love her?