“Really?”
“The cemetery is only about half an hour away. Dad and I plan to go to church then drive up together. We’ll have a late lunch at a little restaurant he likes then I’ll take off. I should miss the worst of the traffic.”
Then she’d kissed him goodbye. A quick peck on the lips that could have meant she was still mad at him or might have had something to do with the fact Red and Jimmy were watching.
He heaved a sigh. This was not how he’d seen his weekend unfolding. And now, he was on his way home, without Casey, to who knew what kind of reception. Of course, his mother would be glad to see him. When he’d finally gotten around to calling her last night, Joan had squealed in delight.
“I told Christine you wouldn’t miss Mother’s Day now that you live so close. She said you’d already been here over a week and hadn’t come to see us yet, but I know how busy you are.”
Thanks, Chris. At one time, Nathan and his sister had had a much more friendly relationship. But then she’d married a man with big dreams and a short attention span. Every new business venture brought more debt and crises that only Joan could help them get past. Finally, Nathan, who was helping his mother put her financial affairs in order, put his foot down. “Mother isn’t a bank, Christine, but if she was she’d have foreclosed on your overdue loans years ago.”
Chris hadn’t really talked to him since.
“Will Casey be with you?” his mother had asked.
He’d explained about them having two cars and Casey’s desire to visit her mother’s grave. “But you’ll see her soon,” he’d promised…and hoped.
Joan Kent had made it clear from the start that she didn’t approve of Casey’s independent style. “When I was a young wife, I gave up my career to support my husband and raise our children,” she’d said more than once. “I know that’s not a popular position these days, but unless you need to work to put bread on the table, you’re depriving your children of the best child care in the world.”
“We don’t have any children, Joan,” Casey had replied.
“Will you stop working once you have kids?” his mother had persisted.
“Isn’t that when the real work begins?”
Nathan smiled as he recalled his wife’s answer. Casey’s quick wit and diplomatic ability had always come in handy—whether with family or entertaining people from work.
A sudden idea grabbed him. Maybe Casey was feeling left out of the loop. She’d only met the people in the San Francisco office when they’d flown out to look for a place to live. Perhaps if she felt more like part of the team, she’d be less inclined to work for the opposition.
“A dinner party,” he murmured. “We could host a dinner party so she can get to know the people from the office.” Which included Gwyneth, he realized. That took a bit of the gloss off his idea.
He hadn’t been completely honest with Casey. True, he wasn’t seeking any kind of relationship with Gwyneth, but she’d made it clear she would welcome one with him. That kind of raw intensity was hard to resist. Plus, she had the body of a lingerie model. Every man in the Boston office had lusted after her.
He spotted the green sign indicating his exit. I-80 East would eventually take him to Reno. Hell, it went all the way to Chicago, where he could hook up with I-90 and before long he’d be back in Boston. He’d driven that route right after college, filled with dreams and ambition. His primary goal had been to make enough money to pay back his school loans, help his mother and siblings when they needed it and build the kind of security his father had never been able to provide for his family.
His journey had brought him full circle. He’d made it. Almost. Once he was a full partner in the firm, he could breathe a bit easier, but Nathan knew that offer wouldn’t come if Casey wasn’t on his side during this upcoming confrontation. He had a feeling logic and bribery weren’t going to help. Which left guilt, and that meant asking advice from a master—his mother.
CASEY WOUND UP following Red to the cemetery.
“It’ll save you driving all the way back to the ranch,” he’d told her.
He had a point, but she’d been planning on using the time together in the truck to pin him down on the specifics of his illness and treatment options. Now, that discussion would have to wait until they were at lunch.
She wasn’t looking forward to their upcoming talk, but she really needed to know how bad things were for him. She’d never felt more torn. Did she help her father or stand behind her husband?
She hated the way she and Nathan had left things this morning. Nathan probably felt betrayed because she hadn’t immediately jumped ship once he’d revealed his firm’s interest in the fight. But Casey had inherited more than a bit of her father’s stubbornness. And being told she couldn’t do something really irked her.
They had enough problems right now without a lack of loyalty being added to the mix. They were infertile, newly moved to a city she loved to visit but had no desire to call home, and then there was Gwyneth. Casey hadn’t brought up the subject with Nathan again because she didn’t want to seem jealous. But, darn it, the woman undermined Casey’s self-confidence faster than Red did.
She’d spent most of the night watching Nathan sleep. How could they make love with such tenderness and passion one minute then wind up yelling at each other the next? This wasn’t the way they operated. How had they gotten so far off track?
But by the time morning had arrived, her brain had been too tired to tackle such tough questions. She planned to get back to their apartment early enough to take a nap. Knowing Nathan’s family, he’d be tied up with his mother’s clinginess and his siblings’ minidramas until early evening. Maybe by then, she’d have figured out some kind of compromise they both could live with.
She returned her attention to the present when she saw her father’s blinker indicate it was time to turn. The metal gate was open so she followed the big white truck to a familiar spot in the far corner of the cemetery. The tiny graveyard was so radically different from where her aunt was buried in a centuries-old mausoleum surrounded by perfectly trimmed green lawn she almost laughed.
But she didn’t. Her mother and her aunt had been very different people. A wildcat and a lady, she’d privately called them. The two sisters had been born in Cheyenne. One went west with a cowboy who barely had two coins to rub together. The other went east to marry into old wealth the likes of which still boggled Casey’s mind.
Her aunt had provided abundantly for Casey in her will, but the vast majority of the Merryweather estate had gone to charitable causes that Meg and her late husband had supported.
“If I were in Boston, I’d be putting flowers on Meg’s grave,” she said as she joined her father in the shade of a scrubby oak. “It feels wrong to admit, but I miss her a lot more than I ever remember missing Mom.”
“You missed your mother real bad to start out. There were some days all we both did was cry. But you were six. You can’t be expected to remember that.”
She remembered some events from her childhood clearly. Too clearly. “I think a lot of my memories come from photos you’ve shown me. And I sorta recall her rubbing rose petals on my cheeks, but I could have made that up.”
Red gave a low humorless chuckle. “Abby always had the prettiest gardens wherever we lived. Most of her roses are gone, though. I didn’t know how to take care of ’em, and by the time I got around to figuring it out, they weren’t worth saving.”
“They used to grow along the fence, didn’t they?”
He nodded. “She wanted to be able to see them from the kitchen window. All summer long she’d bring in fresh-cut flowers to put on the table.”
Casey brought the bouquet of peach roses she carried to her nose and inhaled. They smelled fresh but not particularly fragrant. She’d bought them at Costco the same day she’d shopped for Joan’s gift. “I’m glad I chose roses. There were so many pretty flowers available, but this color reminded me of Mom for some reason.”
S
he let Red lead the way since she hadn’t been to the cemetery in years. A scattering of large oaks kept the enclosed area fairly shady. The weather was starting to warm up and several of the other visitors to the graveyard were dressed in shorts. Casey still had on the denim skirt and two-piece sweater and tank that she’d worn to church. The only dressy clothes in her suitcase. She’d have to bring some business suits with her next time, if she was going to handle the land use case.
If… Did she really have any choice? Her father had never asked for much from her. He needed her now. How could she turn her back on him?
“I…I was real sorry to hear about your aunt, Casey T.,” Red said after clearing his throat in an embarrassed way. “Meg and I might not have always got along so hot, but she was a good woman.”
She looked at him and smiled. “Yes, she was. And she pretty much said the same about you—being a good man, I mean. When she was dying she asked me to do something for her. Do you know what that was?”
He shook his head.
“To take care of you.”
Meg’s exact words had been: “Take care of Red, Casey. Your mother would have wanted you two to be close. I got a little greedy and kept you here with me, but you need to go home at some point.
“We all do,” she’d added cryptically.
Red frowned. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it back for her funeral. I figured I’d just be in the way since you had your husband. And I’ve never been very good with women’s tears.”
Maybe that explained why it was so hard for her to cry. She’d grieved deeply but privately when Meg died. She’d kept her sadness out of the public eye—even hidden from her husband.
“Meg had everything planned just the way she wanted. There wasn’t anything you could have done,” she told him. Which was true. Meg and Red had never been close even though they had—in essence—shared a daughter. To hear either of them speak, she was an uppity society broad and he was an illiterate cowboy who hadn’t deserved a woman like her sister. For the first time, Casey wondered if there was more to their story than either let on.
“I’ll give you a few minutes alone with your mom. Abby and me talk all the time. You know the way to The Bon Ton, right? It’s not fancy, but they make good pie.”
As Red left, Casey started to miss Nathan so much tears clustered in the corners of her eyes. He should be here with her. She should be at his side when he faced his family. She’d never felt more alone in her life.
She brushed away her tears with the heel of her hand, then stepped close to the headstone that bore the inscription: Abigail Dawson Buchanan and son, Roderick Buchanan, Jr. Too soon taken, but never forgotten.
She couldn’t look at her brother’s name without feeling a peculiar sense of envy. Junior. Why did that sound so appealing? So romantic? She knew the thought didn’t make any sense. Maybe she needed to see a psychiatrist.
Meg had suggested taking Casey to a therapist not long after Casey moved to Boston. The “threat” had been enough to shake Casey out of her deep despair. Somewhere along the path of growing up she’d embraced one truism: Buchanans didn’t talk to shrinks.
“No, we just slowly go crazy on our own,” she murmured.
And her father was completely and utterly bonkers if he thought she was going to drop the issue of his prostate cancer. The first thing she was going to do when she got back to San Francisco this afternoon was dig out her laptop. She felt naked and out-of-touch without the Internet. Red had a computer, but the modem was slow and annoying. She planned to upgrade his internet connection, too, when she returned.
Not if. When.
After some cautious snooping around Red’s desk while he was retrieving Nathan’s rental car that morning, she’d discovered a little business card with the date and time of his next doctor’s appointment. This coming Thursday in Fresno. She planned to be there, whether her father liked the idea or not. That gave her four days to convince her husband that she wasn’t siding with the enemy, she was honoring the promise she’d made to her aunt on her deathbed. “Take care of Red,” Meg had said.
Casey didn’t have any choice, but first she needed to spend some overdue time with her mother.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, placing the flowers beside the headstone. “Happy Mother’s Day.”
Thirty minutes later, Casey pulled into the parking lot of the building built around the time of western explorer and politico John C. Fremont. Red was standing beside the bed of his truck messing with something in the back.
As she got out of her car, Casey heard the sound of a metal hinge being lifted. A second later, the high-pitched yip of a young animal filled the air.
Curious, she thought, heading his way across the parking lot. Red had made a point of shooing the mob of dogs away from the truck when he’d gotten ready to leave the house that morning. Not even Betsy had been invited along for the drive. Had he left her so abruptly at the cemetery to pick up a new animal?
The moment she joined him, Red whipped a small, squirming handful of animal out of the back end of the truck and held it out to her. A tricolored fuzzy puppy with a coal-black nose, big ears and huge blue eyes squirmed and whined. “Here’s your Mother’s Day present. ’Cause I know you’re gonna be a fine one some day, Casey T.”
Casey’s heart got jump-started by a syringe full of hormones. The fat little beast’s back legs pedalled in the air, and suddenly a stream of yellow sprayed everywhere. “Dad,” she yipped, jumping back, “it’s leaking.”
“Oh.” Red whipped the animal around and set it down in the truck bed, which was equipped with a plastic liner. The poor pup couldn’t find purchase as it tried to escape back into its kennel.
Casey couldn’t resist. She looped her purse strap over her shoulder and picked up the puppy. A long pink tongue attacked her. “Stop, you wild and crazy thing.”
She petted and cooed until the puppy gave a long sigh and closed its eyes, burying its nose in the crook of her arm. The fuzzy ball’s resemblance to Betsy was uncanny.
“Shame on you, Dad. My husband will kick us both out if I show up with a dog. You heard him decline your offer this morning. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking you need a dog. The pup could stay down here with me when you’re up in the city. That house I built for you has a fenced-in yard.”
“The house where Jimmy is living?”
“Aw, that’s just temporary. Sarah’s going to be taking Jim back one of these days. Just wait ’n see.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’m still getting settled in the city, and my husband was right about one thing. It’s not a good place for a puppy.”
She handed the drowsing pup back to Red, who set her in the well-ventilated wire kennel and closed the hatch. Fortunately, the temperature wasn’t ungodly hot, so the dog would be fine in the shade while Casey and Red ate.
Their lunch went smoothly because they talked about what had been happening in the area while she was away. A little gossip. Who among his friends and acquaintances had passed on. Finally, over pie, Casey said, “I’ll be back here Wednesday so I can I go with you to your appointment on Thursday. Don’t even think about lying. I saw the note from your doctor. I want to help, Red, and I can’t do that if you shut me out.”
He took a bite of pie then said, “Want me to keep the pup till you get back?”
The smart answer was yes. The answer in her heart was no. “Has she had her shots?”
“Good question. I honestly don’t know. Just in case, I’d better take her to Doc and get her checked out.”
Casey nodded. She tried the pie. Flaky, moist crust and the filling was rich with cinnamon. “Um…good.”
“You got a name in mind?”
“For the puppy? How could I? You just showed her to me.”
“Names are funny things. You know in a blink. Just like I knew you were Casey T. when you first popped out. All red-faced and madder than hops. The nurse wrapped you in a blanket and handed you to me. The second I said
your name, you quit your squallin’.”
She smiled indulgently. “Maybe it was the tone of your voice. You told me you used to talk to me through Mom’s belly while she was carrying me. I probably recognized you, not my name.”
He snorted. “Believe what you want, but I knew.”
“How? Did I actually resemble this glorified bronc rider?”
“Casey Tibbs was more than that, little girl. He was my hero, the Joe DiMaggio of rodeo. My folks were dirt-poor ranchers in the west river area of South Dakota. Times were hard and one of the only forms of entertainment was the rodeo. Casey Tibbs made a name for himself long before there was a pap-a-razzi.”
Casey grinned. She knew her father could pronounce the word correctly if he wanted to, but his colloquialisms were part of his style…and charm.
“You still haven’t told me why you chose the name of a cowboy for your firstborn girl child.”
“’Cause it was your name. You were a scrappy fighter and you had your own style, right from the start.”
A scrappy fighter. Maybe that was what he was counting on when it came to battling land use issues. “So, Red, there’s something I need to tell you, but you have to promise to keep this between us. I mean it.”
His bushy white brow rose as if asking, “Do you doubt my word?”
“Nathan’s firm represents the turkey people.”
He nearly choked on his sip of coffee. “Damnation.”
“My sentiments, exactly. He’s distancing himself from the case, but any involvement I have with the opposition might jeopardize his job. He asked me to stay out of it.” Actually, he ordered me.
“What did you tell him?”
She sighed into her coffee cup. “We’re still discussing the matter. Part of my decision comes down to your health. If your doctor says you should begin treatment right away, then, of course, I will step in to take the load off your shoulders.”
“And if there’s no big rush, you won’t lift a finger?”
She made a face. “This is your ranch, Red. You made that clear when you sent me away. I never had a chance to learn the day-to-day operations at your side. You have Jimmy to take over when you’re not physically able. If you’re worried about leaving me a legacy, don’t be. I’m a lawyer, not a rancher.”
A Baby on the Way Page 11
