And when she’d graduated with a degree in Media Arts and promptly landed an entry-level job at a Seattle TV station, he’d been thrilled for her.
So, she thought, re-entering the present moment, standing there in that familiar kitchen, with the linoleum floor cool beneath her feet, if he’d left her a horse as transportation that day instead of coming to fetch her himself, it was no big deal.
Suddenly, Cassidy’s eyes burned, and she sniffled.
Alerted by the sound, Duke set the casserole dish in the middle of the table, turned to her, and smiled, his handsome head tilted slightly to one side. “Hey,” he said. “You’re not crying, are you? Because there’s no crying in baseball.”
She laughed moistly at the old joke. “This is baseball?” she countered.
“Might as well be,” Duke replied. Then he put his arms out wide, and Cassidy went straight into them, held on tight.
He’d had a shower of his own, and exchanged his work clothes for a clean white shirt and jeans that looked new. He smelled of spray starch and sunshine and his chicken-and-wiener spaghetti casserole.
He propped his beard-stubbled chin on top of her head and said, “I’m glad you’re home, Little Bit. I am surely glad you’re home.”
“Me, too,” Cassidy said.
The hug ended, and she pulled back a chair at the table to sit.
Duke sat down across from her.
“Guess we’d better say grace,” he said.
“Grace,” Cassidy said, straight-faced.
They laughed again.
And that was the moment Cassidy truly came home.
G.W. felt uncharacteristically awkward, standing on the bumpy sidewalk outside Becky’s Coffee Bar, on Main Street, with his hat in one hand. Five minutes before, he’d dropped Henry off at Sandy’s mother’s place; the boy had sulked all the way into town, his accusation occupying the space between father and son like a third person.
Dad has a date.
“This,” G.W. protested now, under his breath, “is not a date.”
True, he’d asked Alice Fletcher to meet him at Becky’s for coffee at a specific time—tonight. He liked Alice; she was new in town, would be teaching fifth grade at the local elementary school in the fall. They’d met at the social gathering following a schoolboard meeting a few days before and G.W. had to admit, to himself if no one else, that he’d been attracted to the woman; she was pretty, she was smart, and she seemed like a good sport.
And he’d been feeling a mite lonesome lately.
Okay. He wouldn’t call meeting for coffee a date, but it was possible Alice might be of another opinion entirely.
He swore silently.
He’d been looking forward to this evening—until Cassidy McCullough came riding back into his life on an ancient horse named Pidge.
Something had shifted, the moment he caught sight of her. And that something, whatever it was, whatever it meant, had changed everything.
In the moment, all G.W. wanted to do was get back in his truck, drive over to Myrna’s place, rescue Henry from an evening of Dancing with the Stars, and head for home. Once he’d wrangled the boy through the evening ritual: bath, pajamas, bedtime story, prayers, and, finally, an exchange of ‘good-nights’, he’d be able to think.
G.W. always thought more clearly on his own land—riding fence lines, fishing down at the creek, standing under that familiar patch of stars arching between one red mesa and another.
He squared his shoulders, reached for the door handle. He couldn’t just walk away without an explanation; Alice had surely seen him by now. He might make some excuse, say he had trouble out on the ranch—a sick horse, maybe. Crazed cattle running amok. The crash of an alien spacecraft.
He opened the door and stepped inside.
The place was full but, then, it only had six tables, each one topped with Formica and surrounded by mismatched chairs. When it came to public gathering places, besides the churches and the schools, Busted Spur boasted one diner, three taverns, and Becky’s hole-in-the-wall java joint.
The aromas of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods greeted him right away, and, looking around, he soon spotted Alice. She was sitting alone at a corner table, her head bent over a book, the fluorescent light catching in her sleek cap of dark hair.
As G.W. approached, she looked up, closed her book, and smiled.
He smiled back. “Am I late?”
Alice shook her head. She had navy blue eyes, high cheekbones and very good teeth. “You’re right on time, G.W.”
He didn’t sit. There were no waitresses at Becky’s; if you wanted something, you went up to the counter, waited your turn, and asked for it.
The tabletop was clear except for Alice’s book and a glass of ice water.
“What can I get you?” he asked, with a slight nod toward the chalkboard menu on the wall behind the cash register.
“Just plain coffee,” Alice said. “I’ll doctor it myself.”
G.W. nodded again, made his way to the counter.
He ordered two coffees and, realizing he was ravenous, two good-sized cranberry scones as well.
Becky herself poured the coffee, placed the scones on separate plates, and asked if he wanted them ‘nuked’. G.W. had gone to school with Becky; she’d been Sandy’s best friend, maid of honor at their wedding.
G.W. said no, he’d just take the scones as they were, thanks.
Becky, a petit force-of-nature with a headful of red dreadlocks, a turned up nose and mischievous green eyes, pretended to peek around G.W.’s right shoulder for a look at Alice.
“It’s about time you got yourself a life, G.W. Benton,” she whispered, with a grin. “She’s pretty, that new teacher.”
Yes, G.W. thought, Alice was easy on the eyes, all right. Lots of other good things, too, probably.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t Cassidy.
CHAPTER TWO
Morning sunlight slanted through Cassidy’s bedroom window, found her face, turned the insides of her eyelids bright pink. She stretched, luxuriating in her girlhood bed, allowed herself to pretend, for just a few seconds, that she’d never left home in the first place.
A chirp from her cell phone wrenched her out of the brief fantasy; she sat up, scrabbled for the device on her nightstand, peered at the screen.
The text was from Michael Brighton-Stiles, the man she was going to marry.
Marry. The word fell through her brain like a dark meteorite, landed hard and spikey in the pit of her stomach.
She blinked a couple of times. Focus, she told herself. Focus. Although Cassidy was a morning person, she usually needed at least half an hour to resurface from the depths of sleep.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” the message read.
Using her thumbs and biting her lower lip, Cassidy fumbled out a response. “Easy for you to say. You’ve probably been up since the crack.”
After a brief pause, a line of smiley faces appeared inside a small comic-book style bubble on Cassidy’s phone. Then more words appeared: “I miss you.”
A lump formed in Cassidy’s throat, and she was glad the conversation was virtual. “Me, too,” she wrote. Not very romantic, she thought, but she was still shaking off last night’s dreams. Surely, that was it.
“I’ll call you later,” Michael ticked off, rapid-fire. He was a morning person, too, but he started early. “In a meeting now.”
“Okay,” Cassidy replied. Suddenly, she was almost overwhelmed by a strange, unfounded feeling of guilt, as if she’d lied.
A thumbs-up icon served as Michael’s good-bye.
She’d showered and dressed before the realization struck her--neither she nor Michael had used the word ‘love’, even once.
The backs of her eyes scalded.
Downstairs, the kitchen door opened and closed, and familiar voices rose through the planks of the floor.
Cassidy’s gloomy feelings evaporated instantly.
Grinning, she raced for the rear staircase, down the steps, into
the morning smells of coffee brewing, eggs frying, bread toasting.
Shelby, pony-tailed and beaming, was just looping the handle of her shoulder bag over one of the hooks beside the back door. Duke, looking as pleased as if he’d arranged the reunion personally, stood at the stove, spatula in hand, overseeing breakfast.
Shelby and Cassidy hugged, both teary, both laughing.
“Girlfriend,” Shelby trilled, “it is so good to see you!”
Cassidy hugged her friend again, too happy to speak.
Shelby smiled and cupped Cassidy’s face in her hands. “Repeat after me,” she said. “Say, ‘it’s good to see you, too, Shelby’.”
Cassidy smiled back. “What you said,” she replied.
Shelby rolled her dark brown eyes. “You haven’t changed a bit,” she said.
Duke set another place at the table, dished up the eggs. “I’d say she’s changed plenty,” he put in. His tone was amicable, but there was an edge to his words. “Time was, I thought Cassidy would get her fill of the bright lights and the big city and come on back to Busted Spur, where she belongs. Instead, she’s marrying some yahoo with a hyphenated last name.”
Cassidy glanced quickly at her uncle, and just as quickly looked away. “Don’t start,” she said evenly. “You don’t even know Michael, and Seattle happens to be a very beautiful place.”
Shelby’s gaze tripped from Cassidy’s face to Duke’s and then back again.
“Can we skip this part?” she asked.
“Sit down and eat,” Duke ordered gruffly, the underside of his jaw going red. He kept his eyes averted. “Both of you.”
Nobody argued with that.
The toast was buttered, then slathered with blackberry jam.
The coffee was poured.
The food was delicious, plentiful and loaded with fat grams.
Cassidy ate anyway. Normally, living her regular life in her tiny apartment in downtown Seattle, she’d break into a carton of Greek yogurt, the diet kind, and nibble at half a banana, saving the other half for a mid-morning snack at her desk. Michael was big on healthy choices.
“So, where do we start, with this wedding thing, I mean?” Shelby asked, when Duke left the table to answer the wall phone on the other side of the room. Although he was a technological wizard by anybody’s definition, there was one, count ‘em, one, landline in the entire house.
Again, Cassidy felt that dropping sensation, a sort of freefall from her head to her pelvis, but she answered blithely. “Let’s not worry about the wedding right now. I was thinking we could go for a horseback ride, or drive to Sedona and take in a movie or—“
Shelby’s eyes were solemn. “Or?” she prompted, when the silence stretched past the three-second mark.
“We have plenty of time to make plans,” Cassidy said, looking away.
On the far side of the kitchen, Duke was discussing the logistics of an upcoming expedition in search of his favorite monster, the legendary Bigfoot.
Shelby touched Cassidy’s hand. “Sure,” she agreed gently. “We have all kinds of time.”
The visit was supposed to last a week, and the proverbial clock was ticking. Not exactly an eternity.
Still, it seemed to Cassidy that a little procrastination wouldn’t hurt.
Duke finished his call, hung up, and returned to the table. Scraped back his chair. The look he gave Cassidy was sheepish, but there was a gleam in his eyes and his mouth tilted up at one side.
“When you marry this guy,” he ventured, “are you planning to hyphenate again?”
Cassidy relaxed. “Cassidy Brighton-Stiles-McCullough?” she said, as though trying out the name. “That would be a real mouthful.”
Duke chuckled. “That it would,” he agreed. Then, mercifully, he changed the subject. “I got the truck running this morning, by the way. Do you want me to pick up your stuff at the Gas & Grab, or were you planning on fetching it yourself?”
“On Pidge?” Cassidy rejoined. “At the moment, she’s all the transportation I’ve got.”
“We’ll use my Blazer,” Shelby said.
“Truck’s running again,” Duke reminded them both. “I’ll be glad to make the trip to town.”
“You just want an excuse to see Annabelle,” Cassidy teased.
Duke cleared his throat. “I happen to have an important meeting,” he said, very soberly. Then, like sunshine parting clouds, his grin flashed. “And I don’t need an excuse to see Annabelle.”
Thus, the matter was decided.
They finished breakfast, Duke left for town, and Shelby and Cassidy washed the dishes and tidied up the kitchen. After some discussion, they decided against both the horseback ride and the movie in Sedona and settled on going to Shelby’s place instead.
The buying trip to Nogales had been a good one, Shelby said, and she wanted to show Cassidy the loot.
Afterward, Shelby would whip up a batch of her famous nachos, and they’d talk and talk, catch up on everything that had been going on in their lives since the last time they were together.
No mention of the wedding was made.
G.W. still considered himself a rancher—he owned five hundred acres, maybe a hundred head of cattle, a sturdy house and a good barn—but ranching was a hardscrabble enterprise at best, there in the red-rock country of Arizona. He made most of his living by designing and building websites at one or the other of three computers set up in his home office and by investing and reinvesting his net profits.
He wasn’t rich, but he didn’t owe a dime to anybody, and Henry, at seven, already had a hefty college fund.
So far, so good.
That morning, with the first round of chores done and Henry clothed, fed and outside playing with Chip, the dog, G.W. was having a hard time keeping his mind on the business at hand. If he was going to be preoccupied, it seemed to him, he ought to be thinking about Alice.
Instead, he couldn’t get Cassidy out of his head.
Cassidy.
His best friend’s niece.
Until yesterday, he’d thought of her as a kid, if he’d thought of her at all.
He’d watched her grow up, for God’s sake.
As a child, she’d been a pesky little monkey, following him and Duke pretty much everywhere they went. Then, right on schedule, she’d morphed into a gawky adolescent, all knees and elbows, with braces on her teeth.
Naturally, Cassidy had gone right on evolving, transforming into a college co-ed, and finally, unquestionably, a woman.
He’d loved Sandy, worked hard building a life with her.
And then she died. After that, practically consumed by grief, G.W. had had all he could do just to keep getting up in the mornings. If it hadn’t been for Henry, he suspected, he might have shut down entirely, turned into one of those crusty old codgers who hoard catalogs and newspapers and soup cans until they have to make their way along winding paths to get from one room in their house to another.
Devastated as he’d been, though, throwing in the towel hadn’t been an option. He’d had a son depending on him.
So he’d taken hold.
Held on.
Always good with computers, he’d taught himself to build websites.
With Henry’s future in mind, he’d invested the proceeds from Sandy’s modest life insurance policy.
He’d herded cattle, hauled hay onto the range when the grass gave out, fed and exercised his horses.
Most importantly of all, he’d overcome an ongoing, bone-deep urge to withdraw into himself, close off his deepest emotions, and make sure Henry and everybody else in the world stayed on their own side of the barricade.
Making the decision to go on had been one thing, and living up to it had been another. It had been a process, not an event, a series of efforts, wrong turns, and fresh starts.
If it hadn’t been for Duke, showing up on his doorstep with a six-pack or a pan of that God-awful chicken-and-wiener spaghetti of his, inviting Henry to go fishing or camping or some such, thus ensuring tha
t he, G.W., would go, too, well, he still might have folded up.
Looking back now, G.W. knew he wouldn’t have looked twice at any woman during those years.
Over time, however, the wounds had closed. These days—and nights--he could remember Sandy without wanting drink himself stupid, drive his truck off the highest cliff he could find, or go outside, dig in his heels, and bellow insults at God until a retaliatory lightning bolt put him out of his misery.
He did the only thing he knew to do—he kept putting one foot in front of the other, literally and figuratively.
For all the healing he’d undergone, though, there were still scars.
G.W. loved Henry with his whole heart; it was involuntary, almost a reflex.
He’d loved Sandy in the same all-encompassing way.
And losing her had damn near killed him.
Love was a risky thing, he’d learned that the hard way.
He heard the back door open, heard Henry’s sneaker-padded steps and Chip’s toenails clicking across the kitchen floor.
“Dad?” The boy spoke from the doorway to G.W.’s office.
G.W. closed the program he’d been working on and swiveled in his chair. “That would be me,” he said, with a grin. When Henry was younger, he’d have hurtled across the room and flung himself into G.W.’s lap, but those days were already gone, apparently.
A shred of an old song played in G.W.’s head: turn around…
“Are you finished working yet?” Henry’s knees were grass-stained beneath the hems of his summer shorts and the laces of his seemingly oversized sneakers were untied.
G.W. shoved a hand through his hair, sat back in his chair. “Truth is,” he said, “I’m got getting much done. You hungry?”
Henry shook his head. Beside him, Chip, a lop-eared black Lab, watched G.W. with interest. “Could we go over to Uncle Duke’s?”
“Duke’s probably busy, and besides, he’s got company, remember?”
Henry’s grin practically blinded him. “Yeah,” he said. “Cassidy’s there.”
“Most likely, she’s busy, too,” G.W. said carefully.
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