by Dahlia West
Sawyer tossed a few empty bags into the trash bin and turned on the water in the shower to wait for it to heat up. In the mirror, he discovered that he could use a shave, too. His wavy, dark hair was getting just a tad long, but not enough to warrant heading into town for a trim just yet. His eyes were dark, almost black, just like all his brothers.
Thirty minutes later he put on a fresh pair of blue jeans and a button-down denim shirt and sat on the bed in his small sleeping quarters to pull on his dress boots. The carved chocolate-toned leather gleamed in the overhead light. After Cash, they were the most expensive things he owned, and he polished them as often as he could.
He checked his watch and discovered it was close enough to dinnertime to head up to the Big House. After they’d all eaten, he picked up his plate and carried it into the kitchen after Sofia and Dakota.
Court had already kissed Willow good-bye and was rinsing off his plate.
“Are you staying?” Sawyer asked hopefully. In his opinion, hiding out at the Folly was doing the man no good. No good at all.
Court, as expected, shook his head. “No. I’m headed back up there now.”
Sawyer frowned. “It’s already almost sunset,” he argued.
His younger brother shrugged, and Sawyer knew it was a dumb argument. Any one of the Barlows, Gabe, and even Dakota could recognize any square foot of their miles-wide spread, even at midnight.
“I’ll send Gabe back down in the morning.” He turned and headed for the back door.
“I’m going to The Spur tonight,” Sawyer announced, watching the door slam in Court’s wake. “Anyone want to come?” He turned to Sofia and Dakota and waggled his eyebrows at them. The older woman laughed.
“Stop being silly!” she admonished.
“Come on, now,” Sawyer teased, grabbing Sofia and twirling her around the kitchen floor. “You’ve still got some moves.”
She laughed but took a turn with him around the room before swatting him with a dishtowel. “Silly,” she admonished, but she was smiling.
It was good to see her happy since Manny’s unexpected death had hit her so hard.
“I’ll come,” Dakota replied.
Sofia clucked her tongue but didn’t tell her daughter to stay home.
Sawyer’s eyes skipped to Walker, who’d appeared in the doorway on the other side of the room. His older brother’s expression had turned dark. Sawyer suppressed a grin. Casually, he asked Walker, “So are you coming, too?”
“Yes,” Walker told him in his deep baritone.
Sawyer didn’t have to ask why Walker was going. In fact, Sawyer himself could relate. Beautiful women were always a temptation. And there were plenty of women at the Silver Spur in Star Valley, but he was only hoping to see one in particular.
Chapter Two
‡
CASSIDY CONROY WAS up just before her alarm. Snuggling down further into her blanket, she stretched and glanced at the clock. It was only 9:00 a.m.. Her hair appointment wasn’t until after noon, so she could relax. She reached for the nightstand drawer and slid out a well-thumbed copy of Lolita and opened it to the bookmarked page. She still preferred actual books to e-readers, though she didn’t have many. They were all stacked around the room, but she doubted anyone knew about them. The only other person who came in here was Julia, the maid.
Outside, she was certain everyone else had already started their day. Their hired hands were up tending to the herd in the east pasture. Dad would be downstairs in his office, probably making plans. Always making plans. Cassidy preferred plans in which she herself didn’t feature heavily, or at all. Unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case. God knew where Palmer was, which was just as well. Her older brother was a constant irritant, a thorn in her side.
Karen, her stepmother, would be somewhere doing whatever it was that Karen did. Cassidy didn’t know or care about that, either. All she cared about was Humbert Humbert and his obsession with young Dolores Haze. Even at the age of twelve, Dolores was the object of so many people’s desires. Cassidy could relate. She’d strutted on stage at the ripe old age of two and a half and never looked back.
The bedroom was still littered with sparkling rhinestone tiaras on shelves and faded sashes on hooks that declared her Lincoln County Fair Queen. She might have thrown them out at this point, seeing as she was twenty-three years old now, but the truth was that they were the only indication that Cassidy Conroy had ever done anything with her life, had ever existed at all. She had to live in the past. She was a woman with no future.
A few hours later she forced herself to close the book and slid out of bed. She showered quickly and drew her long brown hair back into a ponytail. Her face took work, though. Few people would guess how much time she actually spent in front of a mirror becoming Cassidy Conroy. She was used to it now, going through the motions by rote. She only paused at her eyes, every now and then. They were bright blue, like her mother’s had been.
Cassidy ignored the familiar pangs of longing today because she had somewhere to be and headed downstairs after closing her bedroom door shut firmly behind her. She hesitated in the kitchen doorway once she realized Karen was in the room. Instinct told her to turn around and walk away, but she squared her shoulders and ventured inside. Karen and Cassidy’s father had been married for five years, but Cassidy never missed a chance to remind the woman that this was her house and had been long before Karen had ever come along.
The older woman looked up from her magazine as Cassidy strode into the room and plucked the last croissant from a plate on the island. Karen had her own, slathered in butter, sitting next to the magazine. She glanced up at Cassidy.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Cassidy, drawing out her words in a sickly sweet tone. “Did you want this one, too?” She held out the croissant to Karen and eyed the woman’s stomach. “Eating for two.” She smiled while Karen frowned.
“I’m not pregnant, Cassidy,” Karen snapped.
Cassidy pretended to be surprised. “Oh! Oops. My mistake.”
Karen tossed her half-eaten piece of bread in the trash and stormed out.
“Maybe I can get you a gym membership for your birthday!” Cassidy called after her then pulled up a stool. She slid Karen’s magazine over and flipped through the pages while munching on the last of the baked goods.
She was as pretty as any model looking back at her from the glossy pages, and sometimes she wished that Mom had whisked her away when she was little, to New York or LA or maybe even Paris, so she could be more than the Lincoln County Fair Queen. And the best part would’ve been that Mom would still be alive to share it with her.
Mom had died, though, during Cassidy’s sophomore year of high school—flipped her BMW on a backcountry road in midwinter. Sometimes Cassidy wished she’d been in the car.
Surprisingly, she heard Dad’s voice wafting in from the living room. She abandoned her perch in the kitchen and headed that way. As she got closer she could hear Karen’s muffled complaints. Cassidy couldn’t hear exactly what the woman was saying, but she had no doubt what the subject was.
As she peered around the doorway, Dad looked bored as he listened to Karen’s diatribe. When she finished, he merely shrugged, and Cassidy had to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Apparently Cassidy wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that Karen had been putting on weight. Her stepmother turned and fled up the staircase, presumably to puke up the rest of the croissant. Cassidy grinned at the thought of the image.
She stepped out from the kitchen, ready to listen to a lecture for torturing her stepmother, if Dad cared enough to dish one out. He didn’t, though. He just glanced at her and then turned away, toward the office where Palmer was exiting, wearing dirty overalls and a filthy John Deere hat.
The conversation they’d apparently been having picked up right where it had left off before Karen’s whine fest. As always, Cassidy’s presence went unnoticed. She might as well not have even been in the room.
“Get the fertilize
r order from the Feed and Seed,” Dad ordered. “And pick up the antibiotics from Doc Chambers on your way back here.”
Bill Chambers had been their veterinarian of record for Cassidy’s whole life. The man was kind hearted and always had a lollipop to give her whenever he paid a visit to the ranch. His daughter, Skye, had been just two years ahead of Cassidy’s class at school. Cassidy liked her well enough, and if she didn’t already have a hair appointment, she might offer to pick up the medication herself, just to have something to do.
Dad headed outside, leaving Cassidy and Palmer alone in the living room. Cassidy’s lip curled in distaste. Palmer’s look toward her wasn’t much better. “Picking up fertilizer today, errand boy?” she asked. “That seems fitting.” She turned on her heel and headed for the front door as well, leaving Palmer behind. She hated having her brother back from college. Everything was so much better when it was just her at home.
Now Dad and Palmer spent all their spare time with their heads together, or more accurately with Palmer’s nose firmly up Dad’s butt, and there was no room for Cassidy in the conversation, not that there ever had been. She didn’t know much about ranching or business plans, and that seemed to be all Dad ever wanted to talk about.
Outside, there was no sign of Dad. He must’ve already made it to one of the barns. Cassidy was more than happy to be alone on her walk to her Mercedes, parked in the driveway. A few of the hired hands stopped to stare at her as she passed them, but she ignored them entirely. They knew better than to catcall her, but she could feel their eyes on her anyway.
She slid quickly into her car, shutting them out, and started the engine, to leave Conroy Cattle behind entirely—at least for a little while.
The trip into town only took fifteen minutes. The Conroys owned most of the land south of Star Valley. She crossed the city limits and pulled into a parking spot on Main Street in front of the hair salon. Becky LaRoe had been Cassidy’s stylist from her pageant days, and though Cassidy wore her hair sleek now and not teased, she still let only Becky touch it. It might have been more to preserve a memory, of her mother sitting next to the chair, directing Becky’s hair pick, getting Cassidy ready to win yet another title.
Inside the salon, she was irritated to see Jill Sykes sitting in one of the chairs, getting a trim. Cassidy and Jill had competed against each other in every pageant since they were both toddlers, and Jill had never forgiven Cassidy for winning—every single time. It didn’t help matters that Jill’s fiancé, Wayne Horvath, was Cassidy’s castoff. The woman practically seethed behind that lip-glossed smile as Cassidy came through the door.
Cassidy returned a fake smile of her own, though just for a second, before turning to Becky and ignoring Jill completely, which was probably just fine with Jill. As it turned out now that their pageant days were over—and Cassidy no longer had to ask Jill who had stolen her makeup and spanx, again, in the dressing area—the two women had surprisingly little to say to each other.
Easing into the chair, Cassidy closed her eyes and listened to the idle chatter of ranchers’ wives and women looking to become ranchers’ wives. She supposed this would be her future, discussing country club dinners, church socials, and school fundraisers with women who were smiling at each other while secretly tallying herd counts and market prices along with acreage to see who in the room had the most money.
Cassidy’s family always had always done well for themselves, as well as the Barlows, and so she was a nonentity in these conversations, left out because no one but the Barlows could compete with the Conroys and therefore kept the competition mostly amongst themselves. Jill was blathering away as though she and Wayne were already married. Wayne Horvath had a nice spread out on Mile High Road, and so Cassidy supposed that Jill was at the top of the ladder in this little room, if you didn’t count the fact that she wasn’t actually married yet.
Of course, Cassidy wasn’t married, either, and she often wondered what people said about that when she was out of earshot. She sighed, knowing that would change soon. Becky took the noise for one of relaxation and contentment and smiled down at her as she rinsed her hair. Cassidy smiled back, because it was reflexive at this point, and because there were worse things, she supposed, than being married to a rancher.
After more than an hour of brushing and blowing, Cassidy emerged from the swivel chair with perfectly waved long, dark locks that hung around her shoulders. Surely enough to snag any man’s attention, especially in a tiny town like Star Valley. Jill sniffed, and Cassidy wondered if she was remembering each and every time she’d been forced to stand next to her on stage while Cassidy was being crowned. Oh, well. At least Jill had a lifetime’s worth of high-end makeup that she’d stolen over the years to comfort herself.
Cassidy paid Becky and over tipped, as usual. In her mind, you couldn’t put too high a price on a happy memory. Becky smiled and thanked her, and Cassidy never knew if the woman really liked her or just the money. It probably didn’t matter. There was no difference between Cassidy and her money. She left Jill and the other Real Housewives of Star Valley behind and stepped out underneath the ringing brass bell that hung from the top of the door.
Outside, she spotted an all-too-familiar face and groaned. She darted down the sidewalk quickly, hoping to make it to her car before being caught, but fate, it seemed, was not on her side today. Behind her, she heard the thud of heavy boots and stifled an outraged cry as she was shoved into the small alley between the salon and the diner.
It had been a few months since she’d been face to face with Wayne Horvath, and honestly, Cassidy could say she hadn’t missed him a bit. It had been worth it to endure her father’s wrath to finally cut Wayne loose. A lifetime of waking up beside this mouth breather? No, thanks. Wayne didn’t have nearly enough land or money to make up for having to deal with this manwhore.
“I’ve tried calling you,” he snapped.
Cassidy shrugged and adjusted her purse strap. “What part of I’m done didn’t you understand?”
He stepped forward, narrowing his eyes. Cassidy nearly laughed in his face. If that was his attempt at intimidating her, he was going to have to try harder than that. A lot harder. She knew men who were far more frightening. “You didn’t even tell me why!”
“I don’t have to tell you why,” she shot back. “I’m not interested. It was fun for a while.” Ugh. Even having to say that much tasted like dirt in her mouth. Wayne Horvath had not been fun. Once upon a time, before she’d really gotten to know him, she had felt sorry for him. But being with him had never been fun. “But I got bored,” she finished. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
Wayne grabbed her arm. “You owe me a hell of a lot more than that,” he insisted and moved in, trying to kiss her.
Cassidy yanked her arm back hard, along with the rest of her body, forcing him to let go. “It’s over, Wayne,” she hissed. “Go back to your fiancée.” She stomped off, toward her car, leaving him standing alone on the sidewalk. It was hard to feel sorry for Jill, sitting on her own inside the salon, probably waiting on Wayne to pick her up. As far as Cassidy was concerned, the two deserved each other.
On some days, she was glad that she’d ended things with Wayne before they’d gone too far. He didn’t know he’d dodged a huge bullet, and she wasn’t about to tell him, but she did feel proud of herself for doing the right thing by breaking up with him. On other days, she saw him for the slimy bastard he was and wouldn’t feel a bit sorry if the man got royally screwed—by somebody—so long as it wasn’t her.
She left him behind, standing on the sidewalk, watching her drive away, and headed back home to change for the evening. She laid out all her options on the bed—skirts, dresses, jeans that took half an hour to squeeze into. Nothing seemed right, but there wasn’t enough time to drive to Jackson Hole to go shopping.
She made do with a silk blouse and a short denim skirt, a good mix for the Silver Spur. Enough leg showing for the cowboys but enough polish to remind them who she was. Pas
sing over multiple sets of cowboy boots, she plucked a pair of black high heels out of the closet, instead. She needed to do everything she could to stand out in the crowd. And besides, boots were silly. Cassidy had never ridden a horse.
She skipped dinner, too busy to eat and none too enthused about the proposed company, anyway. Karen could bitch at Palmer all she wanted across the table. Cassidy didn’t need to be there to listen to it. With one last look in the mirror, she picked up her purse off the bed and headed down the stairs.
She’d hoped to slip out of the house unseen, but Palmer appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, beer in hand. He curled his lip at her before he took a long pull from the bottle. After he swallowed, he asked, “Where are you going in such a rush?”
She could feel heat creep up her cheeks. He knew exactly where she was going and why, and she could tell by the smug look on his face that he was just rubbing it in. She wanted to hurl something at him—a lamp or a vase.
Dad answered for her, but it was just as humiliating. “Cassidy has her job, you have yours,” he declared sharply.
She’d hoped, at least, that the barb was for Palmer, but it seemed to be more directed at her, judging by the harsh look Dad was giving her. The message was clear. This was her last chance to do what was asked of her. Cassidy’s job, such that she had one, was to look good. That had been the only thing anyone had expected of her from as early as she could remember. Although it was frustrating at times, there was also a little freedom in it.
It seemed that now that she was a fully-fledged adult, the job had other responsibilities—ones she didn’t like very much. Saying no wasn’t an option anymore, though. Cassidy ducked her head to avoid her father’s stern gaze and moved for the front door, leaving her father and brother behind on the way to the Silver Spur. She knew exactly who she was hoping to see.
