by Susan Stoker, Cristin Harber, Cora Seton, Lynn Raye Harris, Kaylea Cross, Katie Reus, Tessa Layne
“Food’s on the stove,” Cass told Sadie. “The shower and window are already taken care of,” she told Brian.
Ah. Of course; Cass didn’t want his help with the house. Brian wondered if she thought she could drive him away by refusing to let him take on any tasks and boring him to death. It could work, he decided, given how eager he’d been to leave USSOCOM.
“There’s nothing wrong with the house at all,” Lena stated firmly.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jo said, entering the room, rubbing her hair with a towel, Tabitha following close at her heels. “I just short-circuited the bathroom—again. It happens every time I blow-dry my hair.” She, too, stopped in her tracks when she spotted Brian near the stove. “But I fixed it,” she stammered. “It’s fine now.”
“Of course it’s fine,” Cass said. “Everything is fine. There is not one single thing wrong with this house!”
“Except the roof,” Alice murmured, wandering in reading a book. She glanced up. “Hi, Brian.”
“For God’s sake,” Cass exploded. “What is wrong with all of you?”
“Maybe they’re hoping I’ll actually fix the place.” Brian carried his plate over to the table and sat down. Cass looked like she wanted to throw the rest of the breakfast at him. He watched her master her anger, waiting to see if she’d charge off like she had the night before. She took a step toward the door, then whirled to face the stove again.
Brian had the feeling if Cass ever got really mad, she’d be a force to reckon with. Not that he couldn’t handle it. But he was beginning to wonder if she ever let her feelings out. Keeping them all bottled up couldn’t be easy.
“I’ll get started right after breakfast,” he added, waiting to see if she’d blow. Cass simply pushed the hash browns and sausages viciously around in the pan with her spatula.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Lena asked.
“What’s that?” Brian tucked into his meal.
Lena waggled her fingers at him. “A ring, Casanova. What kind of fiancé doesn’t buy his lady-love a ring?”
“Lena!” Cass’s spatula clattered against the cast-iron griddle.
“Just kidding,” Lena said sweetly, but when Cass turned away she waggled her fingers at Brian again. “Make it big,” she mouthed at him. “Cass likes them really big,” she added out loud.
“Lena Reed!” Cass came at her. Lena laughed, grabbed an orange from the bowl on the table and scampered out the back door. “I don’t like them… big,” Cass said to Brian primly, returning to the stove. “Whatever she meant by that.”
Sadie and Jo snorted, then broke into peals of laughter. Even Alice’s lips twitched.
Brian couldn’t help himself. “Oh, don’t worry,” he told Cass’s sisters. “It’ll be big—when Cass agrees to marry me, she’ll find that out for herself.”
Too late he remembered he wasn’t in a war zone joking with his buddies, and Cass wasn’t the kind of woman you teased like that. He’d hoped she’d crack a smile, too. Instead, she stiffened, and slowly turned. “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth. I won’t marry, period. Because men are idiots. Reckless, selfish, asinine idiots who make it their life’s work to screw everything up and let you down when you need them the most.” She dropped the spatula on the counter, turned off all the burners and walked straight out the back door.
Brian’s heart sank as he took in the pained expressions of her sisters. Cass had scored a direct hit, as much as he hated to admit it. Maybe all men weren’t idiots, but the men in his family were. They were reckless and selfish, too.
And they let their women down.
He never wanted to follow in their footsteps.
Would that happen if he kept pursuing Cass?
While Cass itched to pull out the real pyrotechnics, she didn’t want to call attention to herself. Armed with two M-80s this time, she drove past her usual spot, far into the heart of the ranch where no one would think to look for her.
Her hands shook as she readied the firecrackers and lit their fuses. She forced herself to remain calm as she moved the required distance away. She could hardly wait for the explosions to rip away the uncomfortable feelings clawing at her throat. How dare her sisters make fun of her predicament? How dare Brian come and disturb her peace, just when she’d gotten rid of Bob and had things under control… mostly? How dare he joke about marriage while he sat at her table and ate her breakfast, looking like some kind of poster child for the US Navy? Every time he came near she got fluttery and silly, about to go off half-cocked like a firecracker with a short fuse.
One of the M-80s exploded with a bang that made her nerves jump. The second one followed with a satisfying crack. But Cass didn’t feel her usual relief. Instead, a longing filled her she could hardly name.
Scratch that.
She knew exactly what it was.
Cass likes them really big. Lena was in deep shit for that remark. She didn’t know what had sparked Lena to say it, and she hated the images her words had conjured up.
Brian.
Naked.
Ready for her.
Oh God, she was losing her mind over that stupid man. She needed to get rid of him before her hormones, apparently unleashed at the worst of times, dragged her over the abyss and into some kind of illicit relationship with the SEAL.
He wants to marry you. That’s hardly illicit, her mind reasoned with her.
Cass paced in a circle. It was too illicit. She’d just proved to herself she wasn’t made for marriage—or men. When she thought about what she could have lost if she’d gone on to marry Bob—it simply wasn’t worth it.
But Brian is.
No. No, he wasn’t. Not in the slightest—
God, she wasn’t… attracted to Brian… was she?
Funny how just a few weeks back she had thought Bob was the one. Now she knew how wrong she’d been about him—and Brian’s arrival put her crush on Bob in all too stark a perspective. She’d wanted attention before, and Bob had been handy and willing to give it to her. He’d slaked her need for a little romance in her quiet, retiring life.
But Brian affected her far more deeply, eliciting a desire she’d never had to deal with before. The fact he could joke about marriage made the circumstances all too cruel. She’d wanted a husband once—a family.
To have Brian arrive just when she’d decided that those things weren’t for her wasn’t fair.
But that was life, wasn’t it? She headed back to her truck.
Setting off fireworks hadn’t fixed any of her problems.
She blamed the Navy SEAL for that.
CHAPTER FIVE
As Brian inspected the house, he realized the General wasn’t amiss in sending someone to repair it, even if that was a ruse for a far more devious plan. The house was old, and time and weather had taken its toll. He spotted several places where Cass had patched and repaired things that had fallen apart, but it was clear she was struggling to keep up.
It also became clear as he went that while Cass had done a fine job for an amateur armed with basic tools and an impressive set of how-to books, she didn’t have the expertise for some of the jobs. Since he didn’t share Cass’s reluctance to hit her father up for money, and he knew his way around construction work, he figured he could help a lot. He decided to start with the shower Lena had complained about, but when he’d gathered the tools he’d already purchased as part of his cover story, he found Cass there, pulling tiles off the soggy drywall.
“I can take it from here,” Brian said, edging into the small room.
Cass glared up at him. “I told you I don’t want help. I’ve got this covered. It was on my list for today.”
When she leaned forward over the edge of the tub to pull off another tile, Brian got a wonderful flash of cleavage. Last night he’d had plenty of time to think about Cass and their situation. It was one thing to consider marriage in the abstract. Another thing altogether to meet the woman in question for the first time
. He liked everything he saw, and he had to admit the idea of getting intimate with her intrigued him.
He’d had a hard time taking any of this too seriously until he arrived at Two Willows. Now he found himself questioning the way he’d always thought about how people met their partners. He’d seen it as a kind of sifting process—that one part of the brain was always considering and discarding possible mates. Now he really thought about it, however, it occurred to him how few women he’d gotten to know over the course of his adult life. If it was possible to find a life partner in a field so small, what did that mean about love—and marriage?
He wasn’t sure.
His case was different, too. Cass wasn’t one of the women who’d come into his life by accident; she’d been put there by the General. That meant his field of possible partners included all the women the General knew, too. Other people had set him up once or twice. Brian had tried to add them to the equation. Just how big was his field of possibilities when you took into consideration that friends and family might be searching for him, too?
Love was a strange calculus, he decided. However it worked, here he was, and here was Cass. And his gut told him she could be the one. Not just because she came with an incredible ranch.
Because she was herself. The woman he was supposed to meet.
The woman for him.
He leaned against the built-in cabinets and watched her work. “Your father sent me here so you wouldn’t have to do this stuff.”
“The General sent you here to spy on me. Don’t even try to pretend otherwise.” She reached for another tile. Each inch she stretched forward heightened the view. Was Cass always this prickly, he wondered, or did she soften in a man’s arms?
He’d like to find out.
“Isn’t it weird to call your father that?”
“The General?” Cass sat back on her heels, her brow furrowed. “We’ve always called him that.”
“Even when you were little?”
“He’s been a general for as long as I can remember.” She got back to work.
It was Brian’s turn to frown. Had the man made his girls call him that? It seemed awfully cold. His dad, as big of a shit as he’d turned out to be, had always been approachable when he was a kid.
He knelt down beside Cass, reached past her and began to peel the tiles quickly off the wall. “I’ll get some backerboard to replace this drywall.”
“I’ve already got it.”
“Fine. Just tell me where it is and I’ll take care of it. Why don’t you go take a rest?”
She shouldered him aside, grabbed the tiles from his hands and dropped them in the box she was using to collect them. “I said I’ll handle this. You go take a rest. You’re the guest.”
“I don’t intend to be for long. I already told you that.” He was much bigger, and his shoulders were much wider than hers. It was easy for him to push her gently away. He got back to work until Cass shoved him—hard. He slammed into the vanity and scrambled to regain his balance.
“I fix the house,” Cass exclaimed, waving a tile at him. “That’s my job and you can’t have it!”
Brian kissed her. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t know why he did it. She was there, she was impassioned and angry, and so damn beautiful he couldn’t help himself.
Cass slapped him. The sound reverberated in the small space. She scrambled back, breathing hard. A strand of hair had come down from her ponytail, and he resisted the urge to tuck it behind her ear. The slap hadn’t fazed him, but it had shaken her up.
After a long moment, Cass lurched to her feet and pushed past him out the door. He heard her footsteps hurry off toward the kitchen. A moment later, the back door slammed shut.
Where did Cass go when her feelings got the better of her? He’d have to find out one of these days, but that kiss had been enough for now. It had obviously rattled her, and if he was telling the truth, it had shaken him, too. His entire body had reacted to the brush of his mouth over hers. It wasn’t just libido. All of his senses had activated. He wanted more of what he’d gotten. A lot more. He hoped he could convince Cass she wanted that, too.
A minute later, without warning, Cass re-entered the room, surprising Brian. He hadn’t heard the back door open again, or any footsteps to warn of her approach.
“You can’t run me off. Not with your… kisses. This is my job and I’m going to do it.” She was flushed and breathing hard as if she’d run back to confront him.
“I wasn’t trying to drive you off. I’d prefer it if you stayed,” he said honestly.
“I am staying, but you need to go. This is my house, my bathroom, my tile job.” Her voice rose with every word.
Uh oh. Was that the glint of tears in her eyes? It was—and Brian didn’t deal well with female tears. He found himself on his feet before he knew what he was doing.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll check the boiler in the basement. I haven’t done that yet. How does it run?”
“I… I don’t know,” Cass admitted. “It did all right last winter.” She recovered herself. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“I know, I know—your house, your boiler,” Brian said. “Happy tiling.”
He escaped from the bathroom before she started to cry. He hadn’t pegged Cass as one to indulge in tears, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe that’s what she did every time she slipped away.
Once Brian located the stairs to the basement, he pulled a flashlight from his tool box, just in case, flicked on the light and headed down. The lights worked and the boiler seemed functional. It was old, but had a few more years in it. The rest of the room was unremarkable as far as he could see. A washer and dryer, out of date but still working, hunkered in one corner. The far end of the room was cloaked in shadows. Brian clicked on the flashlight, went to check it out and breathed a sigh of relief several minutes later when he found the foundation, while ancient, was holding strong.
He went upstairs, noting jobs as he spotted them, but it wasn’t until he reached the attic that he found the worst of the problems. Buckets were positioned around the large, open space, and when he peeked into them they all held water.
Now he had a real job ahead of him.
He’d kissed her. He’d just reached out and kissed her like he had every right to—which according to the standing stone, he did.
Cass fought the urge to toss away the bathroom tiles and drive far out onto the range to express herself more explosively. She was burning through her supplies of fireworks too fast. She had to find another way to regain control. And she had to finish this job before Brian came back. If there was no work for him to do, he couldn’t stay long enough to… to do whatever it was the stone thought he would do to win her over.
It galled her that there was even the possibility that could occur.
But there was.
When she’d walked away from Bob, she’d thought she’d walked away from any desire to be with a man again. The burn of humiliation she felt every time she thought about the overseer was as scorching today as it was when she’d discovered his theft. For a few short months she’d thought Bob was the answer to all her prayers. He’d doted on her, coming by the house every night, spending time with her and her sisters. She’d thought—
Cass bit her lip, ashamed at what she’d thought. After a decade of keeping the General at arm’s length, furious at him for what he’d done to her and her sisters, she’d thought maybe it was time to reconcile. Maybe by marrying the man he’d chosen to be overseer she’d bridge the chasm that had formed between them. She’d almost convinced herself the General had handpicked Bob for that very reason.
Which just showed how wrong she was about everything.
She pulled more tiles off the wall and tossed them into the box she’d brought into the bathroom to hold them. What a stupid, stupid plan. What a betrayal of everything she and her sisters had fought to gain until now. After denying them the chance to run the spread themselves—telling them time and time again it took
a man to do the job—the General had gone and put a thief into the position, and Bob hadn’t just run off with thirty thousand dollars.
He’d stolen first her heart—and then her self-esteem.
How had he fooled her so badly?
Cass couldn’t stand knowing she’d been such an easy mark. When she’d thought of the times they’d made love—thankfully there weren’t many of them—she wanted to throw up. He’d been siphoning money off the spread right from the start, and she’d been too busy fawning over him to notice.
Now Brian had kissed her and she’d felt a spark that put anything she’d ever felt for Bob to shame.
She wouldn’t put up with a rebellion from her body again. Not after what had just happened to her. Hadn’t she learned anything from that fiasco?
But the Navy SEAL was unlike any man who’d ever shown an interest in her before.
Not for the first time she cursed the crazy childhood that had kept her so close to home when most young women got to practice dating in casual ways. Maybe if she had a wealth of experience to draw on she wouldn’t be so susceptible to every man who gave her a second look. Brian was handsome, but what did that mean at the end of the day? If she wanted a husband—which she damn well didn’t—he’d have far more qualities than good looks.
He’d be kind, for one thing. He’d think about other people, not just himself. He’d fall in love with Two Willows and be willing to work with her, rather than dictate to her how it should be run. He’d care about her sisters as well as her. Watching out for them had always been her job, and she’d want a husband who shared that responsibility. Maybe they were as grown up as she was; that didn’t mean she’d ever stop worrying about them.
She had to be careful whom she allowed to be close to her. When she’d dated Bob, she’d nearly let him steal the ranch away from all of them. The General would never tolerate that kind of incompetence. He’d follow through on his threat to kick them off the ranch…
Cass didn’t know what would happen then. To her and her sisters—and to him.
