Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (53 page)

A lump formed in Cassidy’s throat, and she was glad the conversation was virtual.  “Me, too,” she wrote.  Not very romantic, she thought, but she was still shaking off last night’s dreams.  Surely, that was it.

“I’ll call you later,” Michael ticked off, rapid-fire.  He was a morning person, too, but he started early.  “In a meeting now.”

“Okay,” Cassidy replied.  Suddenly, she was almost overwhelmed by a strange, unfounded feeling of guilt, as if she’d lied.

A thumbs-up icon served as Michael’s good-bye.

She’d showered and dressed before the realization struck her--neither she nor Michael had used the word ‘love’, even once.

The backs of her eyes scalded.

Downstairs, the kitchen door opened and closed, and familiar voices rose through the planks of the floor.

Cassidy’s gloomy feelings evaporated instantly.

Grinning, she raced for the rear staircase, down the steps, into the morning smells of coffee brewing, eggs frying, bread toasting.

Shelby, pony-tailed and beaming, was just looping the handle of her shoulder bag over one of the hooks beside the back door.  Duke, looking as pleased as if he’d arranged the reunion personally, stood at the stove, spatula in hand, overseeing breakfast. 

Shelby and Cassidy hugged, both teary, both laughing.

“Girlfriend,” Shelby trilled, “it is
so
good to see you!”

Cassidy hugged her friend again, too happy to speak.

Shelby smiled and cupped Cassidy’s face in her hands.  “Repeat after me,” she said.  “Say, ‘it’s good to see you, too, Shelby’.”

Cassidy smiled back.  “What you said,” she replied.

Shelby rolled her dark brown eyes.  “You haven’t changed a bit,” she said.

Duke set another place at the table, dished up the eggs.  “I’d say she’s changed plenty,” he put in.  His tone was amicable, but there was an edge to his words.  “Time was, I thought Cassidy would get her fill of the bright lights and the big city and come on back to Busted Spur, where she belongs.  Instead, she’s marrying some yahoo with a hyphenated last name.”

Cassidy glanced quickly at her uncle, and just as quickly looked away.  “Don’t start,” she said evenly.  “You don’t even
know
Michael, and Seattle happens to be a very beautiful place.”

Shelby’s gaze tripped from Cassidy’s face to Duke’s and then back again. 

“Can we skip this part?” she asked. 

“Sit down and eat,” Duke ordered gruffly, the underside of his jaw going red.  He kept his eyes averted.  “Both of you.”

Nobody argued with that.

The toast was buttered, then slathered with blackberry jam.

The coffee was poured.

The food was delicious, plentiful and loaded with fat grams.

Cassidy ate anyway.  Normally, living her regular life in her tiny apartment in downtown Seattle, she’d break into a carton of Greek yogurt, the diet kind, and nibble at half a banana, saving the other half for a mid-morning snack at her desk.  Michael was big on healthy choices.

“So, where do we start, with this wedding thing, I mean?” Shelby asked, when Duke left the table to answer the wall phone on the other side of the room.  Although he was a technological wizard by anybody’s definition, there was one, count ‘em,
one,
landline in the entire house.

Again, Cassidy felt that dropping sensation, a sort of freefall from her head to her pelvis, but she answered blithely.  “Let’s not worry about the wedding right now.  I was thinking we could go for a horseback ride, or drive to Sedona and take in a movie or—“

Shelby’s eyes were solemn.  “Or?” she prompted, when the silence stretched past the three-second mark.

“We have plenty of time to make plans,” Cassidy said, looking away.

On the far side of the kitchen, Duke was discussing the logistics of an upcoming expedition in search of his favorite monster, the legendary Bigfoot.

Shelby touched Cassidy’s hand.  “Sure,” she agreed gently.  “We have all kinds of time.”

The visit was supposed to last a week, and the proverbial clock was ticking.  Not exactly an eternity.

Still, it seemed to Cassidy that a little procrastination wouldn’t hurt.

Duke finished his call, hung up, and returned to the table.  Scraped back his chair.  The look he gave Cassidy was sheepish, but there was a gleam in his eyes and his mouth tilted up at one side.

“When you marry this guy,” he ventured, “are you planning to hyphenate again?”

Cassidy relaxed.  “Cassidy Brighton-Stiles-McCullough?” she said, as though trying out the name.  “That would be a real mouthful.”

Duke chuckled.  “That it would,” he agreed.  Then, mercifully, he changed the subject.  “I got the truck running this morning, by the way.  Do you want me to pick up your stuff at the Gas & Grab, or were you planning on fetching it yourself?”

“On Pidge?” Cassidy rejoined.  “At the moment, she’s all the transportation I’ve got.”

“We’ll use my Blazer,” Shelby said. 

“Truck’s running again,” Duke reminded them both.  “I’ll be glad to make the trip to town.”

“You just want an excuse to see Annabelle,” Cassidy teased.

Duke cleared his throat.  “I happen to have an important meeting,” he said, very soberly.  Then, like sunshine parting clouds, his grin flashed.  “And I don’t
need
an excuse to see Annabelle.”

Thus, the matter was decided.

They finished breakfast, Duke left for town, and Shelby and Cassidy washed the dishes and tidied up the kitchen.  After some discussion, they decided against both the horseback ride and the movie in Sedona and settled on going to Shelby’s place instead. 

The buying trip to Nogales had been a good one, Shelby said, and she wanted to show Cassidy the loot. 

Afterward, Shelby would whip up a batch of her famous nachos, and they’d talk and talk, catch up on everything that had been going on in their lives since the last time they were together.

No mention of the wedding was made.

G.W. still considered himself a rancher—he owned five hundred acres, maybe a hundred head of cattle, a sturdy house and a good barn—but ranching was a hardscrabble enterprise at best, there in the red-rock country of Arizona.  He made most of his living by designing and building websites at one or the other of three computers set up in his home office and by investing and reinvesting his net profits.

He wasn’t rich, but he didn’t owe a dime to anybody, and Henry, at seven, already had a hefty college fund.

So far, so good.

That morning, with the first round of chores done and Henry clothed, fed and outside playing with Chip, the dog, G.W. was having a hard time keeping his mind on the business at hand.  If he was going to be preoccupied, it seemed to him, he ought to be thinking about Alice. 

Instead, he couldn’t get Cassidy out of his head.

Cassidy.

His best friend’s niece.

Until yesterday, he’d thought of her as a kid, if he’d thought of her at all.

He’d watched her grow up, for God’s sake.

As a child, she’d been a pesky little monkey, following him and Duke pretty much everywhere they went.  Then, right on schedule, she’d morphed into a gawky adolescent, all knees and elbows, with braces on her teeth.

Naturally, Cassidy had gone right on evolving, transforming into a college co-ed, and finally, unquestionably, a woman.

He’d loved Sandy, worked hard building a life with her.

And then she died.  After that, practically consumed by grief, G.W. had had all he could do just to keep getting up in the mornings.  If it hadn’t been for Henry, he suspected, he might have shut down entirely, turned into one of those crusty old codgers who hoard catalogs and newspapers and soup cans until they have to make their way along winding paths to get from one room in their house to another.

Devastated as he’d been, though, throwing in the towel hadn’t been an option.  He’d had a son depending on him.

So he’d taken hold.

Held on.

Always good with computers, he’d taught himself to build websites.

With Henry’s future in mind, he’d invested the proceeds from Sandy’s modest life insurance policy.

He’d herded cattle, hauled hay onto the range when the grass gave out, fed and exercised his horses.

Most importantly of all, he’d overcome an ongoing, bone-deep urge to withdraw into himself, close off his deepest emotions, and make sure Henry and everybody else in the world stayed on their own side of the barricade.

Making the decision to go on had been one thing, and living up to it had been another.  It had been a process, not an event, a series of efforts, wrong turns, and fresh starts.

If it hadn’t been for Duke, showing up on his doorstep with a six-pack or a pan of that God-awful chicken-and-wiener spaghetti of his, inviting Henry to go fishing or camping or some such, thus ensuring that he, G.W., would go, too, well, he still might have folded up. 

Looking back now, G.W. knew he wouldn’t have looked twice at
any
woman during those years.

Over time, however, the wounds had closed.  These days—and nights--he could remember Sandy without wanting drink himself stupid, drive his truck off the highest cliff he could find, or go outside, dig in his heels, and bellow insults at God until a retaliatory lightning bolt put him out of his misery.

He did the only thing he knew to do—he kept putting one foot in front of the other, literally and figuratively.

For all the healing he’d undergone, though, there were still scars.

G.W. loved Henry with his whole heart; it was involuntary, almost a reflex.

He’d loved Sandy in the same all-encompassing way.

And losing her had damn near killed him.

Love was a risky thing, he’d learned that the hard way.

He heard the back door open, heard Henry’s sneaker-padded steps and Chip’s toenails clicking across the kitchen floor.

“Dad?”  The boy spoke from the doorway to G.W.’s office.

G.W. closed the program he’d been working on and swiveled in his chair.  “That would be me,” he said, with a grin.  When Henry was younger, he’d have hurtled across the room and flung himself into G.W.’s lap, but those days were already gone, apparently.

A shred of an old song played in G.W.’s head:
turn around…

“Are you finished working yet?” Henry’s knees were grass-stained beneath the hems of his summer shorts and the laces of his seemingly oversized sneakers were untied.

G.W. shoved a hand through his hair, sat back in his chair.  “Truth is,” he said, “I’m got getting much done.  You hungry?”

Henry shook his head.  Beside him, Chip, a lop-eared black Lab, watched G.W. with interest.  “Could we go over to Uncle Duke’s?”

“Duke’s probably busy, and besides, he’s got company, remember?”

Henry’s grin practically blinded him.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Cassidy’s there.”

“Most likely, she’s busy, too,” G.W. said carefully.

“She might need a ride to town or something,” Henry insisted, with enthusiasm.

G.W. hated to dampen his son’s spirits, especially after the little tiff they’d had the night before over his “date” with Alice Fletcher, but reality was reality.  “We can’t just drop in, son,” he replied. 

“We do that all the time,” Henry pointed out reasonably.  “Are you mad at Uncle Duke or something?”

“No,” G.W. said, “I’m not.  Why do you ask?”

Henry screwed up his freckled face, considering.  In that moment, G.W. thought his heart might burst, trying to contain everything he felt for this boy.  He was mighty glad it wasn’t his turn to speak, because he’d sound like a bull frog if he tried.

“You were sort of cranky,” Henry said, finally.  “Soon as Cassidy got there, you were in a bad mood.  Don’t you like her?”

G.W. sighed.  He
had
overreacted when Cassidy showed up on horseback the day before, getting all bent out of shape at Duke’s failure to act like an uncle, but he wasn’t about to try explaining that to a seven-year-old—especially when he couldn’t explain it to himself.

“I like Cassidy fine,” he said moderately.

“Then you must have been mad at me,” Henry concluded, looking pretty annoyed himself. 

“I wasn’t mad at you, Henry.”

“Then why did you make me go to Gramma’s and watch
Dancing with the Stars
for three hours?”

“You know why.  I was having coffee with a friend.”

“You were on a
date.”

G.W. templed his fingers in front of his chest.  “We’ve had this discussion,” he reminded the child.  “But suppose, just for a minute, that it
was
a date.  What’s so terrible about that?”

Henry flushed, folding his skinny kid-arms in front of his skinny kid-chest.  Beside him, Chip thumped the floor with his tail, absorbed by the drama.

“You were with that woman you met at the schoolboard meeting,” he accused.

“And?”

“She’s not mommy material!”

G.W. suppressed a smile.  “Whoa back, boy.  Nobody said anything about mommies.  It was no big deal.”

“Grown-ups always say stuff like that,” Henry protested vigorously.  “Next thing you know, some woman is moving in, bossing everybody around, hanging her underwear on the shower rod.”

Where did he get this stuff?  “Henry,” he said, “Ms. Fletcher and I had coffee together.  That’s all.”  A pause, a breath. 
Steady now. 
“Trust me, she won’t be moving in with us
or
hanging her underwear on the shower rod.”

Henry remained doubtful.  His arms, still folded, looked rigid, and his chin was set at an obstinate angle.  “My friend Mark’s dad said that about
his
girlfriend, and guess what?  Now she’s Mark’s
stepmother
and she gets to tell him what to do and he’s seen her
bras
and her
panties,
because she wears fancy ones that cost a lot of money and she rinses them out in the bathroom sink all the time.”

“Horrifying,” G.W. said.

“You think it’s funny!”

“Well,” G.W. mused aloud, “yeah.  I guess I do.”

“It’s
not
funny!  It’s
embarrassing.
”