by Lisa Jackson
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson comes a fan-favorite story of giving your first love a second chance…
Bliss Cawthorne had once pictured herself as Mason Lafferty’s wife. That is, until the wealthy rancher broke her heart and married another woman. Now, thirteen years later, Bliss is back in town and refuses to allow Mason to woo his way into her heart again. But can she resist her old flame’s charm the second time around?
Years ago Mason was told that he wasn’t good enough for his boss’s daughter. So, reluctantly, he had let Bliss go—for love’s sake. But he wouldn’t make the same mistake now that she was home...
“What we had was over a long time ago. I don’t believe in reliving the past.”
“How about changing the future?” Mason asked.
Bliss’s heart stopped for a crazy minute, and in her mind’s silly eye, she saw herself walking down an aisle in a white dress, swearing to love him for the rest of her life, becoming his wife and bearing his children. Mason’s babies. A part of her heart shredded when she remembered he already had a child, one who had nothing to do with her.
Her heart twisted at the thought of children. Someday, she silently told herself. Oh, sure, and when is that going to happen? Remember, Bliss, you’ve got a long way to go. You’re twenty-seven years old and still a virgin…
Also By Lisa Jackson
The McCaffertys: Slade
The McCaffertys: Matt
The McCaffertys: Thorne
The McCaffertys: Randi
Lone Stallion’s Lady
Proof of Innocence
A Twist of Fate
The Millionaire and the Cowgirl
Sail Away
Tears of Pride
Secrets and Lies
Million Dollar Baby
Obsession
A FAMILY KIND OF GUY
LISA JACKSON
The books in the FOREVER FAMILY miniseries are dedicated to my family, those who are living and those who have passed on. I was lucky enough to have lived an enchanted childhood thanks to my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and sister. My adulthood has been blessed with two incredible sons, a fabulous niece, three great nephews and a host of new members.
Thank you all.
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
PROLOGUE
Bittersweet, Oregon
Ten years past
She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes upon and she was mad. Mad as hell. At him. He had the sting of her slap to remind him. “Just listen—”
“You listen, Mason, okay? I love you and I don’t want to. That’s the bottom line.”
Blue eyes snapped furiously above cheeks that were flushed in anger. One fist clutched the reins of her intended mount’s bridle; the other hand looked as if it itched to slap him again.
“You don’t.”
Thin lips compressed and she hooked a thumb at her chest. “Don’t tell me what to feel, okay? Or what to say or do. Got it?”
“Yes, princess.”
She stiffened. “And don’t ever, ever, call me that again.” She stepped forward a bit, dragging the pinto’s head with her. “And get this straight, okay? You can’t tell me what to do, Lafferty,” she said in a voice that reminded him he was but a hired hand and she was, in fact, “the princess”—the daughter of his millionaire boss. “Don’t even try.” She placed one small, booted foot in the stirrup and hoisted herself into the saddle, then yanked on the reins. “A-di-os.” The horse whirled before Mason had time to grab hold of the reins.
“Bliss, come on. Don’t be a fool.”
“Too late for that, don’t you think?” she asked with more than a trace of irony. The anger drained from her face and was replaced by sadness. “Way, way too late.”
The sky was dark, threatening, the air hot and cloying as a storm brewed over the hills. Clouds moved in the barest of breezes, and Mason wished that he could shake some sense into her.
“Wait a minute, Bliss.” Again he reached for the bridle, but she was quick. Too quick. She slapped Lucifer on his rump.
“Just stay away from me!” Leaning forward, she pressed her knees into the pinto’s sides. “Hi-ya!”
“No—”
Ears flattened to his head, the colt bolted forward at a dead gallop. His hooves flung mud and dirt. Aptly named Lucifer, the demon tore across the paddock and through the open gate to the grassy fields beyond.
Mason’s back teeth ground together. He was torn. Bliss Cawthorne was a stubborn, prideful creature who deserved to get caught in a downpour, but then again, the storm might be worse than just a summer shower.
I love you. Words he’d longed to hear but which scared the stuffing out of him. There was no future for them; there never would be.
You can’t tell me what to do, Lafferty. Don’t even try! Just stay away from me!
As if he could. Hadn’t he spent the past weeks trying to do just that?
Thunder rumbled over the surrounding hills and he silently cursed himself up one side and down the other. He shouldn’t have let her go. Should have physically restrained her, but short of hog-tying her, there’d been no way to keep her at the house.
You could have told her you loved her, too, and right this minute you might finally be in bed with her, feeling her hands on your body, kissing those pouting lips and making love to her.
Hell. He didn’t love her and wouldn’t lie, so he’d been between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Eyes narrowing against the first spattering of rain, he rubbed his jaw where she’d slapped him as he’d argued with her. The skin stretched over his cheek still stung, but he’d been turned on by the fury in her eyes. “Dammit all.” He kicked at a rock and sent it careening into the fence post, but his gaze was fixed on Bliss again, now far in the distance astride Lucifer.
Just the sway of her rump as the horse loped gave him an arousal that ached against his fly. What the devil was wrong with him? The boss’s daughter was off-limits. Way off-limits. No one who worked on the ranch knew it better than he, yet he’d found excuse after flimsy excuse to be next to her or close enough that he could watch her.
The smell of her skin aroused him. The way she angled her chin and wrinkled her nose caught him off guard and was sexy as all get-out. But why?
Sure, she was pretty with her pale blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes. Her cheekbones were high, her jawline strong, her eyebrows arched, but, come on, Lafferty, there were lots of pretty women in the world. Yet this woman—no, make that girl; she wasn’t quite eighteen yet—was different and appealed to him on another level, a level that scared the living tar right out of him.
She was like no other.
For a fleeting second, he thought of Terri Fremont, the girl he’d dated before Bliss had come to visit her father this summer. At twenty-one, Terri still looked like a pixie. Petite with freckles, short brown hair and huge brown eyes, she’d chased Mason down mercilessly and vowed to love him despite the fact that he had, at the time, been dating several women.
A little prick of guilt jabbed at his brain because he knew in the deepest parts of his soul that he’d never cared for Terri the way she’d cared for him. He’d tried to explain it to her, over and over again, but she had refused to listen, assuring him instead that he would “learn to love her” as muc
h as she loved him.
She was wrong and he’d been forced to break it off with her. They had no future. He had dreams and they didn’t include a wife. He glanced at Bliss’s form again, just as horse and rider disappeared into the dark shadow of pine trees that skirted the base of the hills. Maybe a woman like Bliss would eventually change his mind. But not now.
The rain began in earnest. Thick, fat drops shimmered from the dark, foreboding sky. In the next field, the horses, sensing the change in the atmosphere, lifted their heads, noses to the wind, nostrils quivering in anticipation. This storm would be a bad one. And Bliss Cawthorne, headstrong fool, was out in the middle of it.
He had no choice but to follow her and haul her back to the ranch.
Just stay away from me.
“No way, lady,” he growled, as if she could hear him. He squared his hat on his head and whistled sharply to Black Jack, a rawboned, ebony gelding blessed with the speed of Pegasus and the temperament of an angel.
“You and me, partner,” he said as he hitched Black Jack to the fence, ran to the stables for a bridle and threw it over the gelding’s head. He buckled the leather straps with deft fingers and climbed onto the beast without a saddle. “Let’s go,” he said, digging in his heels as Black Jack took off.
Lightning sizzled above the hills.
Great. “Come on.”
The horse’s strides lengthened and they were through the open gate, flying over the bent grass and wildflowers mashed by the rain. Thunder rumbled ominously through the dark heavens.
He should never have let her go and he silently swore at himself as the wind pressed hard against his face and the downpour flattened his hair. There were too many things he shouldn’t have done to count them all.
He’d had no right to touch her. No reason other than lust to kiss her. No sane excuse for taking off her clothes and… “Oh, hell.” This wasn’t the time to think about how yielding she’d been, or how, out of some vague sense of duty, he hadn’t, when offered the chance, made love to her.
“Come on, you miserable piece of horseflesh!” His knees prodded his mount as rain drenched his shoulders. Maybe he should have made love to her and been done with it, but he’d realized, almost too late, that Bliss Cawthorne wasn’t the kind of woman to love and leave. Nope, she was the type of female who crawled into a man’s blood and settled there—the kind of woman who spelled trouble with a capital T.
He gave Black Jack his head and the game horse flattened his ears, stretched out his neck and sprinted through the fields, his legs eating the sodden ground in quick, even strides. Wind tore at Mason’s face and hands and he smiled grimly to himself. Bliss Cawthorne, princess and only daughter of John, was in for one hell of a surprise when he caught up to her.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, swiping at the water on his face. He glanced at the spot in the trees where she’d vanished, then cursed himself for being a fool. Bliss wasn’t his kind of woman; but then, no one was. He’d make sure of it.
* * *
Bliss ignored the rain. She dug her knees into Lucifer’s sides and urged him ever upward along the old cattle trail. The colt, incited by the storm, streaked forward, his hooves digging into the soft mud, his sides heaving with the effort. Bliss felt free and unfettered, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Her hair, bound in a ponytail, streamed out behind her.
The rain fell more steadily, in thick, heavy drops, sheeting in the distance. Still she didn’t stop. If she got a little wet, so what? Her anger was slowly dissipating, but the thought of Mason with his arrogant high-handedness telling her what to do after…after… Oh, Lord, she’d nearly made love to him just last night; practically begged him to take away her virginity when he, poised above her, muscles straining, sweat dampening his brow, had rolled away.
“Bastard,” she muttered. “Come on, come on,” she urged. The pinto, wide-eyed, with nostrils quivering at the smell of the storm, began to lather. Grasshoppers scattered. A startled pheasant flew away in a rush of glistening feathers. Bliss yanked out the rubber band restraining her hair as she leaned over Lucifer’s shoulder, encouraging him to speed even faster along the path—upward, through thickets of spruce and oak toward the cliffs that guarded the river. “Run, you devil.”
The horse responded, his legs a flash, the wind causing tears to run from her eyes and fly off her cheeks with the rain. Trees were a blur.
The crest was close, just through this last copse of trees. As the saplings gave way, she pulled back on the reins and looked over the valley, this southern part of Oregon her father often called his home. Lucifer, tossing his head, slowed to a mincing walk.
“Thata boy.” She was winded and breathless, her heart drumming, exhilaration replacing anger. Who cared about Mason Lafferty, anyway? If she had any brains at all, she would forget him.
Telling herself that she’d get over the creep, she urged Lucifer to the crest near the edge of the ridge. From that vantage point she could see for miles, over the tops of the surrounding hills, past wineries and ranches and toward the town of Bittersweet.
Lucifer was spooked and blowing hard; the storm was getting to him. She’d only stay for a few minutes, then double back. By then she wouldn’t have to race Mason again. At that thought her heart wrenched and she silently called herself a dozen kinds of fool.
She’d get over him. She had to. When she got back to Seattle—
A sizzling streak of lightning forked from the sky, singeing the air.
Lucifer reared.
“Whoa—” Bliss slipped in the saddle.
Thunder cracked, reverberating through the hills.
“It’s okay—”
With a panicked shriek, Lucifer stumbled.
Bliss, already unbalanced, tumbled forward. “Hey, wait—” The reins slipped from her fingers. “Damn.”
Crack! Thunder crashed, snapping through the forest and reverberating against the outcropping of stone.
Lucifer shied.
The saddle seemed to shift.
She started to fall, grabbed for the pommel and missed. The rain-washed world spun crazily. She scrabbled for the reins. “Whoa—oh, God.”
With a wild, terrified whinny, the horse stumbled again. Bliss pitched forward. Wet strands of his mane slid through her fingers.
“Stop! Please—Lucifer!” The ground rushed up at her.
Thud! Pain shot through her shoulder, jarring her bones. Her head smacked against the ground. Lights exploded behind her eyes. Her boot, still caught in the stirrup, twisted, wrenching her leg.
A shaft of lightning struck, sizzling and sparking. Crack! An old oak tree split down the middle. Fire and sparks spit upward to the heavens.
Half the tree fell. The ground shook. Bliss screamed as she tried to free herself from the horse and saddle. Lucifer, spooked, bolted.
“No—no—oh, God!” she cried. Frantically she struggled to wiggle out of the boot or yank it from the stirrup as the frightened horse dragged her along the trail near the edge of the ravine.
Hot, blinding pain seared up her leg as she tried to grab at something, anything that she could find with fingers that were bleeding and torn. Still the horse ran forward, bolting at a fever pitch along the jagged edge of canyon that dropped hundreds of feet to the riverbed below.
“Stop! Lucifer, for God’s sake…”
A blast—a loud, eerie whistle—pierced the sodden air just as some of the rocks beneath them gave way. Through horrified eyes she saw the river, winding silvery and snakelike what seemed a million miles below.
For a second, day turned to night. Another piercing blare of the whistle. Lucifer shuddered to a stop. Bliss’s head slid over the edge of the canyon. Hair fell in front of her eyes. She was going to die.
She blinked, rolled over and clutched the rimrocks. Through a heavy curtain of raw pain she saw the vision of a rain-soaked cowboy atop a black stallion. Mason’s face, white with fear, came into view.
“For the love of God!” He jumped do
wn from Black Jack and rushed forward as one of Lucifer’s hooves slipped over the edge.
“No!” Mason caught hold of her booted ankle. Her thigh wrenched and popped, burning with new, searing pain. Blackness threatened her vision.
Lucifer found his footing and reared, trying to shake himself free of the dead weight still attached to his saddle.
“Hang on!” Mason ordered. His grip was slick. Her weight pulled her ever downward as her fingers found no purchase on the rough stone.
“Mason!”
“I’ve got you.”
Steel-shod hooves glimmered as lightning flashed.
One hoof struck Mason in the temple. Crunch. He toppled, his fingers refusing to give up their grip.
The second hoof hit him in the side and Bliss began to slide over the edge even farther. Something deep inside her tore. His fingers relaxed, and the boot was slipping from her foot. She knew in that instant that she was about to die.
“I love you,” she tried to say, but the words caught in her throat. She heard noises. Voices. Panicked voices. Her father? Mason? She couldn’t tell as she reached upward, hoping to find his hand but grabbing only air as she began to slide downward.
CHAPTER ONE
Now
Bliss snapped off the radio as she wove her convertible through the slick streets of downtown Seattle. Traffic was snarled, horns blared and she couldn’t stand to listen to Waylon Jennings talk about cowboys—a breed of man she knew more than a little about.
Hadn’t her father started out as a range rider? Not to mention Mason. Not for the first time she wondered what had happened to him. He’d married, of course, and had a child—her heart bled at the thought. In her schoolgirl fantasies she’d imagined she’d be the mother of Mason’s child; and in that dreamworld, her mother was still alive—an adoring grandmother—and her father and Mason had reconciled because of the baby.
But of course that would never happen. Her mother had already died and now her father was battling for his own life. As for Mason…well, he’d just turned out to be her first love. Nothing more.
