A Rancher to Remember--A Clean Romance

by Karen Rock

  He slumped back in his seat and dropped his elbows to the table. “She begged me to.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “The ranch had lost another hand. I had no choice but to come home and help out.”

  “Yes, you did! Maverick’s chasing his dream as a bull rider, Travis is the county sheriff, Heath’s a songwriter and I’ve got my practice.”

  “But I’m not like the rest of you!”

  She gaped at him. “Because you’re adopted?” When he didn’t answer, she blasted on. “You’re a Loveland, Daryl, in heart and soul, where it counts.”

  “Which is why I owe Pa,” Daryl insisted. “He gave me a home, even when he already had enough to handle with Ma’s issues, five kids and a struggling ranch.”

  “That was your past. You didn’t owe him your future. Your happiness.”

  “That’s not as important as—”

  “—doing what’s right.” Sierra rolled her eyes. “Take off the halo, Daryl. Stop playing the martyr.”

  “I’m no saint.” Not by a long shot. He downed the rest of his now tepid coffee. In the silence, another of Sierra’s cats stretched her paws forward on the rag rug beneath the table and yawned with a curl of pink tongue. A wall-mounted Audubon clock chirped eleven o’clock. Whatever Sierra believed, he knew the truth. His birth parents didn’t think him worth keeping, and the first woman to whom he’d given his heart had cast it, and him, away.

  If he was a poker hand, he’d be the discard.

  “What made you turn to Leanne?” Sierra dangled a length of yarn from her knitting basket to the swatting kitty below. “I never asked before because of the Loveland need-to-know information policy...but I have to understand how to help you.”

  “Cassidy needs help, not me.”

  “I disagree. You were crushed when you came home without her.” Sierra tugged at the yarn ball the kitty managed to drag from her grip. “All this time, I thought you’d broken up at college. Why didn’t you wait for her?”

  Daryl’s breath caught, and he swallowed back the black nausea, the bleakness of their parting. It was so fresh he could still taste it. “We’d never been apart a day let alone two months, and I got lonely. I kept running into Leanne at church functions, line dancing, fund-raisers, and she’d tell me stories about the two of them growing up. It helped.”

  Sierra arched a brow. “Meeting up with Leanne was just a coincidence?”

  “At first, but then we started hanging out. She was a shoulder to lean on and an ear to listen to my doubts.”

  “You could have talked to me.”

  “You were doing that internship in Yosemite.”

  “Right. Forgot.” Sierra waggled the string back and forth and the kitty’s head swayed with it, jaw clamped. “So how did you and Leanne—” she stopped and cleared her throat, her cheeks pinking “—uh—get together.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Come again?” Sierra quit pulling and, with a sigh, released the rest of the wool to the determined cat.

  He broke a cookie in half, dunked it in his coffee, then lifted it, dripping, to his mouth. While he chewed, he struggled to recall his limited memory of the night that’d changed the course of three lives... Four, counting Emma. “I was trying a new moonshine recipe and Leanne stopped by. Cassidy hadn’t answered my letters in over two weeks. The latest one came back return to sender. It felt like a rejection.”

  “And Leanne was there to listen.”

  “I rambled for hours, drowning my sorrows. Next thing I knew, I woke with Leanne in my arms. It was a big mistake that only worsened when Leanne became pregnant.”

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “Which one?”

  “Worse.” Sierra scooped up the cat, yarn and all, and settled it on her lap.

  “I don’t regret anything leading to Emma being born,” he said fiercely. He’d never put himself ahead of his offspring like his biological parents.

  “Of course.” A purr erupted from the cat as Sierra stroked its arching back. “But I bet you wished it was with Cassidy.”

  The statement was matter-of-fact and without any hint of censure, but Daryl felt his stomach churn with shame for being so foolish and careless. “Cassidy and I weren’t meant to be.”

  Sierra scoffed and shook her head. “How can you be sure?”

  “When Cassidy came home and found out we’d married, she wasn’t bothered.” The hollow feeling he associated with that moment returned. “In fact, she already had another assignment and was flying out the next day. I wasn’t her choice anyway.”

  Sierra pursed her lips. “Hmm...” The cat lifted a paw to bat at her long hair.

  “What?”

  “Why come home if she had to leave the next day?” Sierra gently tugged blond strands from the cat’s mouth, shoved them behind her ears and peered at him.

  “To break up with me?” Daryl shifted in his seat, pinned under Sierra’s direct gaze. “At least I spared her the task since I’d moved on.”

  “Did you?” Sierra probed.

  His eyes slid from hers. “When Lovelands commit—”

  “It’s forever. I know. Pa was a case in point.”

  “He’s honorable.” Their gazes collided, the memories of their erratic mother, who’d suffered from mental health and addiction before taking her life, an unholy bond. “If I’m even half the man Pa is, that’s an achievement. All my focus has been on Leanne and our family since we married, and I’ve worked every day to make her happy...and I still failed.”

  “Did you love her?” The cat’s collar bell jingled as it jumped back to the floor.

  “Yes.” His voice broke, and he looked down at his clenched hands. “A different kind of love.” It wasn’t the intense, electric, edge-of-his-seat, can’t-get-enough feeling he’d had with Cassidy, who’d always left him unsettled and wanting more. He, Leanne and their children had carved out a respectable, stable life that’d satisfied him most of the time.

  “And what about Cassidy? Did she find someone else?”

  “She’s on her own.” He ignored the relief accompanying her unattached status. It was none of his business.

  “If she was fine with you and Leanne, how come she never visited you when she came home?”

  “I destroyed her relationship with her sister. It’s unforgivable.” He’d hurt her. No matter how stoic she’d behaved when she’d learned of the shotgun wedding, he’d sensed her same despair, the loss behind her shuttered expression.

  Sierra leaned back in her chair and tilted her head as she contemplated that for a few beats. “What about Leanne? Did she feel bad about taking her sister’s beau?”

  “She said Cassidy wouldn’t have been content tied down in Carbondale, to me or the ranch and it worked out for the best.”

  Sierra wrinkled her nose. “If that’s what helped you cope.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “Do you?”

  “Carbondale couldn’t give her the excitement she wanted.”

  And neither could I.

  His need to do what was right, to follow the rules, had been a point of contention between them. His adoptive siblings knew their place in the world. Him? He’d had to forge his own path and found the straight-and-narrow one easiest to follow, even when it meant giving up what he really wanted to make correct choices...like Cassidy.

  “What about you?” Sierra challenged. “Did you get what you needed?”

  He rubbed his aching temples. “I wanted my kids to have a stable life. That made me happy. I thought that made Leanne happy, too. Then something changed a year and a half ago. Leanne started acting distant. Resentful. Nothing pleased her, and I worried the kids might lose her.”

  “Not you?”

  “And me,” he hastily amended, though it’d been the children he’d been co
ncerned about. He knew what it was like to be abandoned, rejected by the people who were supposed to love you.

  Sierra tipped her head to the side, her gaze reflective. “How does Cassidy figure into what happened to Leanne?”

  “I don’t know. The nurse said she may regain her memory over time, and I want her to be in Carbondale when she does, not thousands of miles away in some war zone.”

  “And you’re sure you want to take care of her?” Sierra leaned forward and touched his tense forearm.

  “Yes.” He owed Cassidy that.

  “Do you want my opinion?”

  Her question was so predictably rhetorical, he couldn’t help but smile. “Do I have a choice?”

  Sierra’s brief laugh trailed off, and her expression sobered. “If you bring Cassidy home, you won’t be able to let her go again.”

  “Not true,” came the automatic denial. “We’ve changed, grown up and want different things. I—I don’t love her anymore.”

  “Not sure if I believe you.”

  “Believe it.” He’d made his decision years ago and given his heart to the woman who’d wanted it: Leanne.

  “The goal when rehabilitating wild animals is to release them. You can’t get attached or interact too much or your heart will break when you let them go.”

  “Then why do you always cry when you release one?”

  Sierra sighed. “Because I’m a softie who doesn’t practice what she preaches. You, however, need to take my advice. Keep your distance, emotionally, at least.”

  He looked at his watch and stood. “I’d better hurry. Her discharge is at noon.”

  Sierra walked him to the door, then threw her arms around him. “You’re just as good a man as Pa, Daryl, halo and all. Please don’t add to your hurt.”

  “Not a chance.” He ignored the alarm bells shrieking in his ears, hugged Sierra, then jogged to his pickup. On the road, his mind raced along with his truck.

  Did Sierra have a point? If Cassidy could no longer affect him, then why had he never forgotten—or stopped missing—the relationship they used to have? Not a day passed without his thinking about the woman he’d walked away from.

  He’d tried pushing the painful memories aside because there was no way to go back and do things differently. But sometimes, deep in dreams, he’d imagined himself making a different choice. A smarter choice. And in those dreams, he held the woman he’d loved first and lost...

  And every time he dreamed of her, he’d awakened with such a heavy weight on his chest, he’d wondered how his broken heart still beat. Then he’d look at Leanne, asleep beside him, one or both kids nestled between them, and know he’d done the best he could. He’d grab some toast, head out to the range and throw himself into physical labor, as if driving cattle would somehow drive away his regret and guilt.

  His foot eased on the accelerator as he approached the hospital minutes later, doubts battering him from all directions. Why was he really doing this?

  Was he putting his already grieving heart in more jeopardy?

  His fingers remained on the wheel long after he’d turned off the engine. He was older now. Wiser. A father and now a widower. A long breath whistled from him. Regardless of his reasons for helping Cassidy, he was doing the right thing.

  Now how to convince her to come home with him... The pine-scented air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror caught his eye. It’d been a Father’s Day gift from the only two people Cassidy could not refuse. He checked the dashboard clock, started up the engine and sped from the parking lot. If he hurried, he’d return in time to stop Cassidy from leaving him.

  His sweaty palm slipped on the gearshift.

  Whoa. Where did that thought come from?

  He wanted to help Cassidy was all. When she left, he’d feel satisfied that he’d done right by her this time. Period. End of story.

  Sierra was wrong about his getting hurt.

  If he’d let Cassidy go once before, he could do it again...

  * * *

  “THE SWELLING’S GONE down quite a bit.”

  Cassidy winced when her mother gingerly touched her bruised eye, still healing from surgery five days ago.

  “But will she get her full eyesight back?” Her father, a stocky man with ruddy skin, thumped his cane on the floor as he paced beside her hospital bed. “It’ll break my heart if you can’t take more photos, bug. You’re the best in the world. You deserve one of them Pulitzers.”

  Cassidy hid another wince. Her father’s opinion meant everything. “The doctor said it’ll take some time.”

  “Wish we could bring you back to Aunt May’s with us.” Her mother poured Cassidy water and passed over the cup. A sad smile graced her pretty face, touched by years and love as she liked to say. “Your father and I only have one room and Aunt May’s kids, and their kids, are living with her, too.”

  “I’ll figure it out.” Cassidy’s mouth creaked into a smile reassuring enough to smooth her father’s furrowed brow.

  “Of course you will. No one’s as bright as you.” Her father limped to a nearby chair and lowered himself with his wife’s help. “Knew it when you began drawing those birds. No stick figures like the other kindergartners.”

  Cassidy met her mother’s slight eye roll as her father launched into one of his favorite stories. “You had all the colors right, the sizes and shapes, too. When you beat out fifth-graders to win the school art show, I said to myself, ‘Earl, whatever you do, give this girl every chance to reach her potential.’ The sky was the limit, and I’d do anything to help you reach those stars.”

  “Thank you, Pa.”

  Her vision blurred as she took in her father’s earnest face. He’d scrimped, saved and sacrificed to pay for college expenses not covered by her scholarship, helping her become the first to attend in her family. He’d rarely slept between back-to-back shifts and incurred a disabling spine injury for his efforts. All he’d ever wanted was to see her achieve her dreams.

  Her glory was his glory.

  What if she didn’t regain her full sight and resume the career she’d given up everything to follow...even love?

  Daryl’s concerned brown eyes returned to her, along with the feelings she’d thought she’d buried. She couldn’t think of him without hurting, or picture her sister, Leanne, gone, buried, beyond her reach, without crying.

  Would she ever regain her memory of their accident?

  “How are you two doing?” She set down her water and swung her legs over the side of her bed. Thanks to her mother, she wore a pair of new jeans and a soft pink T-shirt. The Jeep’s engine fire destroyed her luggage and, more troubling, her ID and passport. She was grounded in more ways than one.

  Her father gripped her mother’s hand. “We’re holding it together, bug. A parent should never have to bury a child.” Their youngest child at that.

  Her mother released a shuddering breath. “It was a lovely service. There wasn’t an empty pew in the church. I couldn’t get over how hard the Lovelands and Cades worked to make it special. Such good people. Leanne sure was loved, and my she had a beautiful family.”

  As her mother described the service, Cassidy wondered who’d come to her funeral since her demanding schedule meant she lived out of a suitcase and didn’t have time for close relationships. She recorded others’ lives but didn’t have one of her own.

  Cassidy tuned back in and heard her mother say, “Everyone asked about you. Daryl mentioned he was planning to visit.”

  “He did,” she replied, terse.

  “Honey, I think you should stay with him while you recover.” Her mother smoothed back a strand of Cassidy’s hair.

  She jerked away, then nearly cried out at the stabbing pain in her skull. “That’s a horrible idea. Back me up, Pa.”

  Her father sighed heavily. “Not this time, bug. Doctor says you have to be dischar
ged into someone’s care, and we’re not in a position to take you, as much as we wish otherwise.”

  “I’d rather sleep on the street. I’m used to it.”

  Her mother sucked in her cheeks. “We may not have had much, but we’ve never let you girls go homeless.”

  “I meant, when on assignments.”

  “You don’t have a place of your own,” her father said.

  “I’ll rent an efficiency.”

  “You’ll need ID for that.”

  Cassidy frowned as her father’s pronouncement sank in.

  “Which is why you should stay with Daryl,” her mother pleaded. “At least until you have your license and have healed a bit more.”

  “I don’t need him.” Cassidy slammed to her feet, felt the ground tilt beneath her and toppled backward into the bed.

  “That answers that,” her father stated.

  “Think of it this way, honey.” Her mother placed the back of her hand on Cassidy’s damp brow. “Emma and Noah need a mother figure, especially this time of year when Daryl will be working long hours bringing in the harvest.”

  Cassidy’s resistance melted a touch when she thought of her niece and nephew. Until her parents’ recent move away from their home outside Carbondale, she’d visited with them at least twice a year and they’d grown close. She loved those kids and would do anything for them... Did that include moving in, temporarily, with Daryl?

  Unthinkable.

  She didn’t want to recover in the home of the man whose memory she’d never outrun, no matter how far she’d traveled or how risky her environments. He’d destroyed her relationships with two of the people she’d loved most: him and Leanne.

  But her choices grew more limited by the minute. Her editor had offered Cassidy a room in her Hamptons home, but how to travel there without an ID? Other than her parents and aunt, she had no blood relatives in Colorado, except Emma and Noah.

  Her father glanced at his watch and frowned. “Bug, we’re supposed to catch a bus back to Phoenix soon. I have a bit of savings for us to get a hotel tonight, though, if you need us to stay while you make up your mind.”