Do you take this rebel?

by Sherryl Woods

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” he lied cheerfully, then dutifully averted his gaze, at least until her back was turned.

  “You can’t have changed that much,” she retorted, shooting daggers at him when she caught the direction of his gaze.

  “Maybe I have,” he said. “You haven’t spent enough time with me to find out.”

  “And I’m not likely to,” she told him, slapping a wad of tape on the streamer, then sticking it to the wall before descending.

  Cole stood right at the bottom waiting for her, just far enough back to give her a little room to maneuver her way toward the floor. Then he braced one arm on either side of the ladder so that when she reached the last step she was all but in his arms.

  “Want to place a bet on that?” he taunted, his mouth next to her ear. She almost tumbled off the bottom rung and into his waiting arms, just as he’d anticipated. He was starting to enjoy keeping her off balance, literally and figuratively.

  “Back off,” she commanded.

  Cole recognized the heat in her tone. Cassie had always had a temper. It was slow to flare out of control, but once it did, it was as lively as the fireworks the town had planned for the Fourth of July. He’d missed that kind of excitement in his life.

  He stood his ground. “Not just yet.”

  She looked over her shoulder and straight into his eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  For the longest time he just lost himself in the depths of her furious, flashing eyes. He ignored the whisper of dismay in her voice, the cry of old wounds in his soul. Finally he sighed.

  “I wish to hell I knew,” he said softly.

  Then and only then did he take a step back and, after one last lingering look, turn and walk away.

  It was a strategic retreat, nothing more, he told himself. He needed to spend a little time getting his head together before he had that confrontation with her he’d been thinking about for the past two days.

  Otherwise he was liable to spend the time kissing her senseless, instead of getting the answers he wanted.

  Chapter Five

  Cassie hadn’t felt this jittery since her first date with Cole more than ten years earlier. After he’d walked away, when she finally managed that last shaky step from the ladder, her knees all but buckled. She grabbed her shoes and fled to the ladies’ room. She was splashing cold water on her overheated cheeks when Karen wandered in.

  “Here you are. Cole said you were around. How long have you been here?”

  “Too long,” Cassie muttered.

  “What?”

  “Oh, never mind. I never should have come back to Winding River.”

  Karen’s gaze narrowed. “Is Cole giving you a rough time? He hasn’t seen Jake, has he?”

  “Not yet, but wouldn’t you know my son spotted him yesterday and knew exactly who he was. Apparently Cole is some hotshot computer guy, total hero material to a tech-savvy nine-year-old. Jake is furious because I won’t introduce them.”

  “Oh, my,” Karen said, regarding her with sympathy. “That is a problem. Will Jake let it drop?”

  “Not a chance, which is why I’m getting out of town first thing next week.”

  “But your mom,” Karen began, then fell silent.

  Cassie seized on the inadvertent slip. “What about my mother?”

  “Nothing.” Karen turned away to concentrate on touching up her lipstick.

  Cassie regarded her with impatience. “Dammit, not you, too. Cole started this same tight-lipped routine with me yesterday. What is going on? The doctor’s out of town, so I haven’t been able to get any answers from him.”

  Karen sighed, then stepped away from the mirror to give her a fierce hug. “Talk to her.”

  Cassie’s heart began to thud dully. There was only one thing that would have Cole and one of her dearest friends tiptoeing around. She held on to Karen and looked straight into her eyes.

  “She’s sick, isn’t she?”

  “Just talk to her,” her friend repeated, then fell silent. A moment later, before Cassie could even attempt to persuade her to open up, Karen subtly sniffed the air.

  “School’s been out for a month. How is it possible that it still smells like sweaty gym socks in here?”

  Cassie chuckled despite herself, then gestured to the array of air fresheners around the room. “Don’t tell Mimi Frances. She’ll die of embarrassment. Evidently she thought she’d solved that particular problem.”

  Karen wrinkled her nose. “Not by a long shot.” She grabbed Cassie’s hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before the others come crowding in to see what’s wrong. I don’t know about you, but I do not intend to spend an entire evening in a room that stinks, not when there’s fresh air in the gym and a great band playing all our old favorites. I get my husband to myself too seldom as it is. I intend to make the most of it.”

  Back in the gym, they found most of the Calamity Janes already dancing. Caleb gave Cassie a quick kiss on the cheek, then snagged his wife’s hand.

  “Come on, angel, let’s see if you’ve still got those moves I remember,” he said.

  Cassie watched enviously as he spun Karen onto the dance floor. At least one of her friends had settled into a happy relationship, she thought. Caleb might be older than his wife, but it was evident that their match was heaven made. Once Karen had set eyes on the rancher, all her dreams of traveling the globe had taken a back seat to her desire to become his wife.

  Feeling blue and alone, Cassie wandered over to the bar and ordered a soda. Something told her she was going to need a clear head tonight, if not to deal with Cole, then certainly for that dreaded conversation with her mother.

  The fast song ended, and a slow, oldies ballad began. Memories of another night, hot and sultry and filled with promise, stole over her. She felt a hand on her waist, felt the whisper of warm breath against her cheek and knew it was Cole behind her.

  “Does it take you back?” he asked.

  To a place she didn’t want to go, she thought but didn’t say. “Nostalgia’s a funny thing,” she said instead. “It tends to take away all the rough edges and leave you with pretty images.”

  “Anything wrong with that?” he asked.

  “It’s not real. It’s not the way it was. Not all of it, anyway.”

  He stepped in front of her, his gaze steady. “Dance with me, Cassie.”

  “Cole…” The protest formed in her head, but she couldn’t seem to get the words out.

  “For old-time’s sake.”

  Drawn to him, caught up in the very nostalgia she’d decried, she slipped into his arms and rested her head against his chest. The feel of him, the clean, male scent, the weight of his arms circling her waist—all of it was incredibly, dangerously familiar. Their bodies fit together perfectly, moving as one to the music, connected in a way that hinted of another, far more intimate and never-forgotten unity.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” he said, his voice ragged and tinged with regret.

  Was it regret for time lost, though, or for emotions he couldn’t control? Cassie wondered.

  The music played on for what seemed like an eternity, but when it ended at last, she thought it hadn’t gone on nearly long enough. Cole released her, then captured her hand in his.

  “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.” He regarded her questioningly as they approached the bar. “Another soda?”

  She nodded. When he had her cola and his beer, he led her outside. She didn’t resist. She couldn’t. It seemed they were both caught up in some sort of spell. Reunions had a way of doing that, she supposed. They were intended to take you back in time, to a simpler era when nothing mattered but football victories and school dances. Unfortunately, for her those times were far more complicated.

  The heat of the day had given way to a cool breeze. The summer sun was just now sinking below the horizon in the west in a blaze of orange. They stood silently, side by side, watching as the sky faded to pale pink, then mauve, then turned dark as velve
t.

  “Quite a show,” Cole observed.

  “God’s gift at the end of the day, if you take the time to enjoy it,” Cassie said.

  “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Take the time to enjoy it? What have you been up to for the past ten years, Cassie?”

  “Working.”

  “Doing what? Where are you living?”

  Now there was the question of the hour, she thought. “I’ve been in a small town north of Cheyenne,” she said.

  “Doing?”

  “The same old thing,” she said, unable to hide a note of defensiveness. “Working in a diner.”

  “You were always good at that,” he said with what sounded like genuine admiration. “You had a way of making every customer feel special, even the grumpy ones.”

  She shrugged. “Better tips that way.”

  “Why do you do that?” he asked, regarding her with a puzzled expression. “Why do you put yourself down? There’s nothing wrong with being a damn fine waitress.”

  “No, there’s not,” she agreed.

  He grinned. “That’s better. Besides being a waitress, what have you been up to? I imagine raising your son takes most of your time.”

  She swallowed hard. Obviously he knew about Jake’s existence, so there was little point in denying it. “Yes.”

  “I saw him, you know.”

  Fear made her stiffen. “You did? When?”

  “The day you drove into town. I saw you go speeding past the ranch. He was with you.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. Only from a distance, then. He couldn’t have seen much, a glimpse at most.

  “How old is he?”

  “Nine.”

  “Then you must have had him not long after we broke up,” he said, his expression thoughtful. Then, as if a dark cloud had passed in front of the sun, his eyes filled with shadows. His gaze hardened. “You didn’t waste a lot of time finding somebody new, did you?”

  She wanted to deny the damning conclusion to which he’d leaped, but it was safer than the alternative, safer than letting him make a connection with the timing of their relationship. “Not long,” she agreed. She studied him curiously. “I didn’t think it mattered what I did, since you were long gone.”

  “So, we’re back to that,” he said, his tone cold. “I wrote to you. I explained that my father insisted I go back to college right then. I asked you to wait, told you I’d get home the first chance I got.”

  “And I’m telling you that I never got such a letter,” she said. “If I had, I would have waited.” She started to add that she had loved him, but what was the point of saying that now? Whatever she had felt had died years ago.

  “I would have understood,” she told him, her voice flat.

  “Oh, really? That wasn’t how it sounded in the letter I got. You sounded as if you didn’t give a rat’s behind what I did.”

  She looked him straight in his eyes as she made another flat denial. “I never wrote to you. How could I? I didn’t even know where you’d gone.”

  “I have the letter, dammit.”

  “I didn’t write it,” she repeated.

  He studied her unflinching gaze, then sighed. “You’re telling me the truth, aren’t you?” He stepped away from her and raked his hand through his hair in a gesture that had become habit whenever he was troubled. “What the hell happened back then?”

  Suddenly, before she could even speculate aloud, he muttered a harsh expletive. “My father, no doubt. He had something to do with it, you can be sure of that. He forced me to go, then made sure my letter never reached you. I’m sure he was responsible for the letter I got, as well.”

  “Wouldn’t you have recognized his handwriting?”

  “Of course, but he wouldn’t write it himself. He’d have someone else do his dirty work.”

  If that was true, Cassie didn’t know how she felt about it. It would be a relief to know Cole hadn’t abandoned her after all, but it didn’t change anything. Too much time had passed. And there was Jake to consider. Cole would be livid if he found out the boy was his.

  “It doesn’t matter now, Cole. It was a long time ago. We’ve both moved on with our lives.”

  He scanned her face intently. “You’re happy, then?”

  “Yes,” she said. It was only a tiny lie. Most of the time she was…content. At least she had been until Jake’s mischief had made it necessary for her to leave the home she’d worked so hard to make for them.

  “You didn’t marry your son’s father, though, did you?”

  “No. It wouldn’t have worked,” she said truthfully. “Jake and I do okay on our own.”

  He smiled. “That’s his name? Jake?”

  She nodded.

  “I like it.”

  She had known he would, because they had discussed baby names one night when they’d allowed themselves to dream about the future. Cole had evidently forgotten that, which was just as well.

  “He’s a good kid?”

  “Most of the time,” she said with a rueful grin.

  “Being your son, I’ll bet he’s a handful. What sort of mischief does he get into?”

  She found herself telling him about the computer scam, laughing now that it was behind them, admiring—despite herself—her son’s audacity. “Not that I would ever in a million years tell him that. What he did was wrong. That’s the only message I want him to get from me.”

  “We did worse,” Cole pointed out.

  “We certainly did not,” she protested.

  “We stole all the footballs right before the biggest game of the season, because I was injured and the team was likely to lose without me.”

  Cassie remembered. She also remembered that they’d been suspended from school for a week because of it. In high school she had loved leading the older, more popular Cole into mischief. It was only later, when he’d come home from college, that their best-buddy relationship had turned into something else.

  Thinking of the stunts she’d instigated, she smiled. “That was different. No one was really harmed by it. And they played anyway. The coach went home and found a football in his garage. The team was so fired up by what we’d done, by the implication that they couldn’t win without you, that they went out and won that game just to prove that they didn’t need you to run one single play.”

  Cole laughed. “It was quite a reality check for my ego, that’s for sure.”

  “Okay, so we chalk that one up as a stunt that backfired,” she said. “Anything else you remember us doing that was so terrible?”

  “There was the time you talked me into taking all the prayer books from the Episcopal church and switching them with the ones at the Baptist church.” He grinned. “Why did we do that, anyway?”

  She shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I think I was mad at my mom, because she kept pointing out prayers she thought I ought to be learning to save my soul from eternal damnation. I was tired of hearing the same ones over and over again, so I thought a switch would give her some new material.”

  The mention of her mother snapped her back to the present and the worries that had been stirred up about her health, first by Cole, tonight by Karen and even by that incident in town.

  Suddenly she simply had to know the truth. She handed Cole her glass. “I have to go.”

  “Where?” he asked, his expression puzzled.

  “Home. I want to talk to my mother before it gets to be too late.”

  The fact that he simply nodded and didn’t challenge her abrupt decision to leave confirmed her fear that something must be terribly wrong. Moreover, Cole obviously knew what it was. There was too much sympathy in his expression.

  “Give her my regards,” he said quietly.

  She considered trying to question him again about what he knew, but it was pointless. Cole could keep a secret as well as anyone, and it was evident he intended to keep this one out of loyalty to her mother.

  “I will,” she sa
id.

  She started across the parking lot, but he called out to her. “Cassie?”

  She turned back. “Yes?”

  He lifted his glass in a silent toast. “Thanks for the dance.”

  “Anytime,” she said.

  He grinned. “I’ll hold you to that. There will be a great country band at the picnic tomorrow, and I haven’t had a decent Texas two-step partner in years.”

  “You might still be saying that after tomorrow,” she retorted. “I haven’t been dancing in years.”

  And then, because she was far too tempted to go back and steal a kiss as she once would have done without a thought, she turned on her heel and strode away without another backward glance.

  At home Cassie kicked off her shoes in the living room, then noted with relief that there was still a light on in her mother’s room. She padded into the kitchen and brewed two cups of tea, then carried them upstairs. In her bedroom Edna was reading her Bible as she had every night before bed for as long as Cassie could remember.

  “I made some tea,” she announced.

  Startled, her mother’s gaze shot up. Worry puckered her brow. “You’re home awfully early. Weren’t you having a good time seeing all your friends?”

  “Cole was there,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  “I see.” Her mother set aside her Bible and patted the edge of the bed. “Come, sit beside me.” She smiled. “I remember when you used to come in here after one of your dates and tell me everything you’d done.”

  “Almost everything,” Cassie corrected dryly as she set the teacups on the nightstand and sat beside her mother.

  “Some things a mother doesn’t need to know.”

  Cassie leaned down and pressed a kiss to her mother’s cheek. “I’m sorry I made things so difficult for you.”

  “You were testing the limits. It was natural enough. So, tell me, did you and Cole talk tonight?”

  “Some, but I don’t want to get into that right now.” She took her mother’s hand in her own, felt the calluses on the tips of her fingers put there by mending countless shirts, sewing on hundreds of buttons and hemming at least as many skirts, month after month, year after year. “I want to talk about you.”