by B. J Daniels
“You?” she asked with a laugh.
“I worked in the prison cafeteria before I got on at the ranch,” he said. “You’d be surprised at all my talents.”
Did she blush? She pointed him toward the coffeepot while she went to close the blinds. As she was closing the last one, he saw her hesitate and looked past her to see Blaze sitting in her office across the street obviously waiting for someone. Guess who.
Task completed, Cassidy turned back to him.
“Where do you want to sit?”
She pointed to a booth, waited as he slid in, then sat down across from him. Their knees bumped. She jerked as if hit with a cattle prod. Or maybe she was just startled and he’d imagined the electrical current that shot through him.
“Did something happen today since I’ve seen you?” she asked, sounding worried.
“It’s been quite the day,” he said. He recounted what his brother Brandon had said about Forrest’s gambling. He told her about his visit to the VanHorn Ranch and Kelly, leaving out how he’d gotten Kelly to talk to him. And finished up with his visit to Les Thurman at the Mello Dee.
“He told me you were right about the guys at the bar egging me on during the fight.”
Cassidy nodded. Was that what he’d wanted to tell her? That she’d been right?
He looked at her across the table. “Cassidy—” The coffee machine shut off noisily.
It was a knee-jerk reaction. She started to slide out of the booth to go get the coffee.
“Let me,” he said, and got up.
Slowly she lowered herself into the booth again. Her heart was hammering in her chest. What had he been about to say?
“Here,” he said, returning with the pot and two cups. He filled hers, then his, and took the pot back.
She cupped her hands around the cup, needing the warmth. She was staring down at the coffee when he returned. She didn’t look up until the silence was too much for her. “You were saying?”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t remember or it didn’t matter anymore. She felt her heart drop. She had a feeling it did matter. A lot.
“Mason VanHorn was at the Mello Dee,” he said.
She knew about the bad blood between the families. Not what had caused it, just that Asa and Mason couldn’t be in the same room together.
Rourke seemed to hesitate. “My father called a family dinner tonight to make an announcement.” He drew away to stare down into his coffee but not before she’d seen that instant of vulnerability in his blue eyes.
So unlike Rourke, she told herself she must have imagined it. “What was the announcement?”
“He didn’t get to it before my mother walked in.”
She stared at him, not sure if it was some kind of morbid joke or she just wasn’t getting it.
“You heard me right. My mother. Shelby Ward McCall. It seems her death was exaggerated.”
Cassidy gasped. “But your brothers put flowers on her grave every Sunday.”
He nodded. “I guess she and my father cooked up her death thinking it would be better for us kids to believe her dead than divorced.”
“That’s screwball thinking if I’ve ever heard any,” she said, then wished she could bite her tongue.
He laughed. “My thought exactly.” He shook his head, his gaze moving gently over her face. “I would suspect my father paid her to go, threatening to take us kids and leave her penniless. That sounds more like him. You want to hear the real kicker? Dusty is theirs. She’s our biological sister. It seems at some clandestine meeting to discuss finances, Dusty was the result.”
Cassidy wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t been Asa McCall. “Amazing.”
Rourke nodded in agreement.
“Why did she come back if they had an arrangement?”
“That is the question, isn’t it,” he said with a shrug. He looked worried.
“Didn’t she say?” Cassidy asked.
“Not really, but my father didn’t seem all that surprised to see her.”
“Maybe they’re getting back together,” she suggested.
Rourke let out an oath. “I hope not. I was pretty young when she supposedly died, but I remember how the two of them fought. I could barely remember what my mother looked like, but I remember their infamous arguments. My father said they had a love-hate relationship. I doubt that has changed.”
She sipped her coffee. “Good.” She motioned to the coffee when he seemed confused.
He nodded and they fell into an uneasy silence.
Had he just wanted to tell her about his mother coming back from the dead? Or was there something else on his mind?
“I’m sorry,” he said after a few minutes.
She looked up in surprise.
“I was so quick to blame you for what happened eleven years ago,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She waved off his apology. “I would have thought the same thing. I did some investigating on my own today,” she said. He seemed surprised. “I went out to see Cecil.”
“Cassidy, you shouldn’t have—”
“I figured it might be safer for me to talk to Cecil Danvers than for you,” she said. “He was the one who’d goaded me about you and Blaze that night at the bar. He left when the fight broke out, which is odd in itself, but today he told me that he got a ride partway home.”
Rourke put down his coffee cup.
“Cecil says he caught a ride with Blaze,” Cassidy said.
Rourke stared at her. “That’s not what he said in court. Not what Blaze said, either.”
She nodded. “He could be lying. But I thought it was interesting because he said she dropped him off on the highway at the turnoff to her father’s ranch—just up the road from Wild Horse Gulch.”
Rourke let out an oath.
“There is just one problem. If Cecil is telling the truth, then the woman Forrest was talking to on the pay phone at the Mello Dee after your fight couldn’t have been Blaze.”
“He was meeting someone else,” Rourke said, and let out a laugh.
She nodded. “It could explain why Cecil didn’t wait around for a ride home with him.”
“You think Cecil knew who his brother was meeting?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I wonder why Blaze lied about going straight home.”
Rourke let out a low whistle. “If Cecil is telling the truth, this puts a whole new spin on things.”
“You believed, the past eleven years, that Forrest was meeting Blaze, too,” she said in surprise.
“Knowing Blaze, it was definitely a possibility. Especially after I heard that Forrest had come into some money.”
Cassidy laughed. “Maybe you know Blaze better than I thought.”
“You think Blaze could have killed Forrest?” he asked.
“I think she’s capable of it. Aren’t we all?”
He raised a brow. “I can’t imagine you hurting a fly.”
“You think I couldn’t kill someone who was hurting someone I loved, well you’re just wrong, Rourke McCall.”
“Whoa,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Sorry for even insinuating you weren’t a killer.”
She took a breath, regretting her outburst. “It’s just that people in this town think I’m a Goody Two-shoes without any of the normal feelings that everyone else has.”
He laughed. It was a wonderful sound that she realized she had missed desperately. “I don’t think of you as a Goody Two-shoes.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
He laughed again. “You are one strange woman, Cassidy Miller. Strange and quite…unique and wonderful.”
Her cheeks flamed. She lowered her eyes then felt his fingers, warm under her chin as he raised her face again.
“I mean it,” he said. “There is no one like you.”
Not exactly what she’d hoped to hear him say all these years. She returned to their discussion. “What makes you so sure Blaze didn’t kill him?”
“Does Blaze need a reason?”
He smiled at that. “Believe me, if Blaze killed him, she had her reasons.”
“Maybe he was threatening to tell you about the two of them,” she suggested.
“Then why dance with him at the Mello Dee?” Rourke said, shaking his head. “Blaze loves to make men jealous.”
He had a good point. “You suspected Forrest and Blaze were sneaking around, didn’t you.”
His eyes narrowed, a muscle in his jaw tightening. “I know you think I’m a complete fool, but I’m not so dumb that I didn’t suspect she was seeing Forrest behind my back.”
She shook her head. “That’s why you were just spoiling for a fight when you tried to cut in on the dance floor.”
“I’m not that man anymore,” Rourke said, realizing it was true. The man he was now wouldn’t fight over Blaze or go chasing after her up Wild Horse Gulch or any other place. He got up to refill their coffee cups. “I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the days leading up to the murder and that night, and I need you to be honest with me.”
“I thought I’ve been painfully honest with you.”
He smiled. “Very painful. You’ve made me take a hard look at the person I used to be.”
“But you still aren’t sure I didn’t frame you,” she said, her voice sounding small.
He shook his head. “I wanted to believe it, because it made things easy. I don’t anymore.”
“What changed your mind?”
“You.” His gaze locked with hers. “I never knew you, Cassidy. If I had…” He waved a hand through the air. “I was obviously oblivious to a great deal. I can’t help but wonder what else I missed, you know?”
She nodded slowly. She had a great face, big brown eyes and a smile that had a stunning effect.
“So where do we start?” he asked her.
“I guess with what we know. Whoever killed Forrest didn’t do it on the spur of the moment,” she said. “The killer planned it maybe even before he or she took your gun.”
“Planned for me to take the blame—if not get even with me,” he said.
She nodded. “It would help if you knew when your gun went missing.”
“The night of my birthday party, everyone who was at the Mello Dee the night Forrest was killed, was also in the house.” Not to mention that Blaze had access to it in the weeks before the murder since he’d kept the gun on a shelf in his bedroom. How stupid that he hadn’t realized the gun could be more than a sentimental souvenir to someone with murder on his mind. Or her mind.
“Didn’t Blaze throw that party for you at your ranch?”
“You make a good argument,” he admitted. Maybe he had been blind when it came to Blaze.
“The party was a week before the murder,” Cassidy said. “Let’s say that was when the gun disappeared. So our suspects are those same people who were at the Mello Dee the night of the murder, because no one else could have known about Forrest’s plans to go up Wild Horse Gulch.” Cassidy frowned. “I take that back. Blaze’s stepbrother Gavin wasn’t at the party now that I think about it.”
“You’re right. I vaguely remember something about a fight?”
Cassidy nodded. “At the bunkhouse out on the VanHorn ranch where Forrest and Gavin had both been working.”
“So Gavin Shaw couldn’t have taken the gun at the party.”
“But he was at the Mello Dee that night,” she said.
“The only other person we can’t be sure about is whomever Forrest called from the Mello Dee pay phone and asked to meet him up the gulch,” Rourke pointed out.
“So the people who were at my party and the bar were Blaze Logan, Easton Wells, Cecil Danvers and Holt VanHorn,” Cassidy said.
“What we don’t have is motive.”
“But we do know that the killer is patient,” he said. “He stole the gun, waited at least a week until he saw his chance. He doesn’t do things on impulse. Or she,” he added. “Doesn’t sound like Blaze, does it?”
“No. But I really am worried about you, Rourke. If that rattlesnake had come out while you were driving, you could have wrecked the truck and been killed.”
He shook his head. “It was just a warning. The killer is waiting to see what we come up with. I’m not sure he has the stomach to kill again. Remember, he has to find someone to blame it on again.”
“How do you know the killer hasn’t been planning this for eleven years?”
“I don’t know what I would do without your help. I mean it. For eleven years, I couldn’t even imagine that Forrest’s death was about anyone but me, because it sent me to prison. But I was the perfect scapegoat, wasn’t I.”
“The wild McCall?” she asked with a laugh. “Every father in this county warned his daughters about you and your brothers.”
“You didn’t listen, did you?”
She sat back down and dropped her gaze to her lap. He’d embarrassed her. It surprised him the way her cheeks flushed, and when she looked up, her eyes were bright. He felt his breath come a little quicker.
She looked away and bit her lower lip.
“Anyway, thanks to you, I feel like we’re making progress,” he said into the tense silence that stretched between them.
“Just be careful,” she said, finally looking at him again.
“Don’t worry.” He reached across the table to cover her hand with his, then pulled it back as if he thought better of it. The gesture lasted only an instant, making Cassidy not sure she’d imagined the shock that made her hand tingle and her heart race.
He got up. “It’s late,” he said, leaning down to peer through the blinds out into the night.
It was dark, the street empty except for an occasional car that passed.
“Why don’t I help you close up and walk you to your car,” he said.
“Really, that’s not necessary—”
“I insist.”
THE MOON WAS JUST COMING UP as they stepped outside the café. Cassidy breathed in the night air, too aware of Rourke’s presence next to her.
It suddenly felt awkward between them. As if they’d been on a date and she wasn’t sure if he was going to kiss her or not.
She fumbled for her car keys, dropped them. They both leaned down at the same time to pick them up. He got to them first and looked up at her, both still squatting down, so close she could smell his faint aftershave, feel the heat of his body warming the already warm night.
In the moonlight his face seemed softer, almost tender, and she was reminded of the boy who’d kissed her in the barn all those years ago.
At that moment, she couldn’t have denied him anything.
He started to hand her the keys. His smile set her heart to pounding. So did the look in his eyes.
As their fingers met, he grasped her hand and pulled her toward him. His lips unerringly found hers, his mouth covering hers and, for a few fleeting seconds, she was lost in his kiss—just as she’d been in the barn.
And then as if history were destined to repeat itself, he pulled back. “Sorry.” He pressed her keys into her hand before she could tell him he had nothing to be sorry about.
But she could see that, like her, he didn’t want to break her heart again. He wasn’t through with Blaze and they both knew it.
She nodded, unconsciously touching her tongue to her lower lip. It still tasted of him. Turning, she practically ran to her car.
She had opened the car door and started to get in, when she spotted the piece of folded paper stuck under the windshield.
Rourke must have been watching her because, in two long strides, he was at the car and plucking the note from under the wiper.
Cassidy watched him unfold the paper. He leaned toward the open car door to read it in the glow of the interior light.
She read over his shoulder,
“Stay out of this if you know what’s good for you or you will end up like Forrest.”
The handwriting looked scribbled as if someone was purposely trying to disguise the penmanship.
Cassidy felt the blood rush from her head. She looked at Rourke. He didn’t seem surprised and she knew at once why. “You’ve already gotten one of these, haven’t you.”
He looked from the note to her and nodded. “One. Pretty much the same message. Same handwriting.”
He carefully folded the note and put it in his shirt pocket. “I’ll take this note to Cash. Maybe you shouldn’t go home tonight.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t like the idea of you staying at your place alone tonight.”
What was he suggesting? Whatever it was, it was with obvious hesitation.
“Why don’t you come with me?” he suggested, not sounding thrilled by the idea. “I’m staying out at the family cabin on the lake. There are two bedrooms but I don’t use either—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It was just a silly note. Like you said, whoever is doing this isn’t serious.” There was no way she was going to his cabin. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t fall for Rourke all over again. Ultimately, he would break her heart. Look how he kept defending Blaze. No matter what he said, he wasn’t over her. And Cassidy wasn’t going to let the two of them break her heart again.
“I’m quite capable of taking care of myself,” she said. “Anyway,” she added, glancing toward Antelope Development Corporation, “I have a pretty good idea who is behind this.”
“You aren’t suggesting that this is Blaze’s doing?”
“No, I’m not suggesting. I’m telling you this has Blaze’s style written all over it,” Cassidy snapped. She felt her temper rise, angry at Blaze, at him. “You still have illusions about her.” Cassidy shook her head and looked away, wanting to shake him. “Men.” She got in and started her car.
He hadn’t moved. He seemed unsure what to do next. He motioned for her to roll down her window.
She sighed and did, telling herself she was damned glad the kiss hadn’t gone any further than it had. The man was an idiot. Why had she thought, when Rourke got out of prison, he might have matured, might finally see Blaze for what she was?
