CASSIDY HARTE AND THE COMEBACK KID

by Reanne Thayne

  At least he didn't spin her platitudes about how she wouldn't regret it. Instead his dazzling smile sent a chill of premonition scuttling down her spine. She ignored it and held the door open for him to leave in a blatant message even Zack Slater couldn't disregard.

  After a pause he sent her another one of those blasted smiles and obediently trotted for the door. As he walked out into the cool June night toward his own cabin next door, she couldn't help wondering if she had just made the second biggest mistake of her life.

  * * *

  He was already up and dressed when he heard her leave her cabin an hour before sunrise. From his comfortable spot in the old wooden rocker, Zack listened to the squeak of her screen door, her footsteps on the wooden planks of her porch, then her sleepy, muffled curse as she stumbled over something in the predawn darkness.

  He grinned into the hidden shadows of his own front porch. His Cassidy Jane had never been much of a morning person. Apparently, she hadn't changed much in the past decade.

  His smile slid away. Wrong, he reminded himself again. Maybe she still wasn't crazy about getting up early, but she was no longer the same girl he had loved ten years ago. Everyone changed. He couldn't come back after so long and expect her to have waited for him in suspended animation like some kind of moth trapped in glossy amber.

  She was a different woman, just as he had changed drastically from that wild, edgy ranch hand. The only thing they shared was a bittersweet past ten years old.

  But last night in her house he had seen glimpses of the girl she had been, like some kind of ghostly reflection shimmering under deep, clear water. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear. The stubborn jut of her chin as she had argued with him. Those luminous blue eyes that showed every emotion.

  She was the same but different, and he wanted to find out all the ways she had changed over the years.

  He would see this through. He had come too damn far to back down now. If nothing else, he could at least explain to her why he had left. He owed her that much.

  On impulse, he rose from the comfortable old rocker and followed her on the gravel pathway toward the lodge, maintaining a discreet distance between them.

  The early-morning air was cool, sharp and sweet with pine pitch and sagebrush. He inhaled it deeply into his lungs, listening to the quiet. He had missed this place. More than he realized, until the day before when he returned.

  He bought his own ranch in the San Juans a few years ago and he escaped to it as often as he could manage, but it wasn't the same. Western Colorado had never felt as comfortable to him as Star Valley.

  As right.

  The months he spent working the Diamond Harte were the best of his life. Not just because of Cassie, although he had watched her and wanted her for a long time before that fateful trip into the high country when he had kissed her for the first time.

  Cassie was a big part of his bond to this place, but there was more. Her brother Matt had treated him well, far better than any other man he'd worked for over the years.

  Wandering ranch hands without their own spreads generally had a social status roughly equivalent to a good cow dog. He'd become accustomed to it as a boy following his father from ranch to ranch across the West. He didn't like it but he accepted it.

  At the Diamond Harte, everything had been different. Zack had been given more responsibility than he'd ever had before. He'd been treated as an equal, as a trusted friend.

  And he had repaid that trust by abandoning the boss's sister a week before their wedding.

  He frowned and pushed the thought away, concentrating instead on moving quietly several yards behind her. By now they had reached the lodge. Instead of going in the main door, Cassie slipped around the back of the big log structure and unlocked a door on the side, going straight into the kitchen, he assumed.

  After a moment's debate as to the wisdom of another confrontation with her so early in the game, he gave a mental shrug, twisted the knob and walked inside.

  He found her standing across the large, comfortable kitchen with her back to him, her arms reaching behind her as she tied on a crisp white apron.

  She didn't bother looking up at his entrance. "I'm glad you're on time this morning, Greta. We've got a lot of work ahead of us for breakfast if we're going to do this right today. As much as I would love to serve a steaming bucket of slop to Zack Slater, I can't do that to Jean."

  He paused several seconds, then couldn't resist. "I appreciate that," he drawled. "How about we save the bucket of slop for tomorrow? I think I'd prefer bacon and eggs this morning."

  She whirled around at his voice, her blue eyes going wide. Color soaked her high cheekbones but she didn't apologize, just tilted her chin a little higher as her cool beauty punched him hard in the gut. "You're up early."

  He leaned a hip against one of the wide counters. "I spent too many years as a ranch hand. Old habits, you know. It's tough for me to sleep past six these days."

  "It's only half past five," she pointed out. "You have another half hour to laze around in bed."

  "Must be all this fresh, invigorating mountain air." Or something.

  "Well, I'm afraid you're too early for breakfast." Her voice was sharp as she reached for a metal pan on a shelf. "We don't start serving until seven."

  "I can wait."

  She studied him for a moment, then pursed her lips together. "If you're starving, there might be a few muffins left over from yesterday. And the coffee will be ready in a few moments."

  Despite the grudging tone of voice, her words still reached in and tugged at his heart and he saw another ghostly reflection of the woman he had loved, the softhearted nurturer who hated to see anybody go hungry on her watch. Even him.

  "I'm fine," he assured her. Better than fine. He thoroughly enjoyed watching her bustle around the kitchen, even though her movements were jerky and abrupt, without her customary elegant grace.

  His presence unnerved her. He could see it in the way she fumbled through drawers and rummaged blindly in the huge refrigerator.

  Under ordinary circumstances she probably knew this kitchen like she knew her own name, but you'd never be able to tell by her movements this morning.

  He found it very enlightening to see her composure slip. Enlightening and entertaining.

  Somewhat ashamed of himself for finding secret pleasure in the knowledge that he could fluster her so much just by invading her space, he straightened from the counter. "Can I help you do something?"

  She peered around the chrome door of the refrigerator to stare at him. "You mean like cook?"

  He shrugged. "I have been known to rattle a few pots from time to time."

  Her gaze narrowed. "Why would the CEO of Maverick Enterprises volunteer to cook breakfast for ten hungry families?"

  Because the CEO of Maverick Enterprises has spent ten years mooning over the chef. "Maybe I'm bored."

  "Don't you have some kind of leveraged buyout or hostile takeover to mastermind somewhere?"

  "I'm all leveraged out this morning. And I've found takeovers to be generally much less hostile once I've had my morning coffee."

  She didn't return his smile, just watched him with that suspicion brimming out of her blue eyes. Finally he decided not to argue with her. Instead, he picked up a knife and went to work cutting up the green peppers she'd pulled from the refrigerator.

  "Am I doing this right?"

  She watched him for a moment, a baffled look on her features, then she shrugged. "You are the boss. If you want to play souschef, don't let me stop you. Dice the pieces a little smaller, though."

  She returned to rifling through the refrigerator, and they worked in silence for a few moments, the only sounds in the kitchen the thud of the knife on the wooden cutting board and the delicate shattering of eggshells from across the room.

  He had a quick memory of other meals they had cooked together, when he had been free to sneak up behind her if the mood struck him. When he could wrap his arms around her and l
ift her long, thick hair to plant kisses on the spot right at the base of her neck that drove her crazy, until she would turn breathlessly into his arms, the meal forgotten.

  They had ruined more than one meal at the Diamond Harte together. He smiled at the mental picture, and of the slit-eyed look her older brother would give him when he would come in and find something burning on the stove and the two of them flushed and out of breath.

  Not caring for the direction of his thoughts or the awkward silence between them, he looked for a distraction, finally settling on what he thought would be a benign topic of conversation.

  "So how's your family these days?" he asked.

  The egg she had just picked up slid out of her fingers and landed on the floor. She made no move to clean it up, just stood across the kitchen staring at him with her eyes murky and dark.

  He only meant to make a casual inquiry. What had he said? "Was that the wrong question?"

  "Coming from you, yeah, I'd say it's the wrong question." With color again high on her cheekbones, she snapped a handful of paper towels off a roll and bent to clean up the egg mess.

  He set the knife down carefully on the cutting board and frowned at her. "What's that supposed to mean? I'm not allowed to ask how your brothers are doing these days?"

  She rose, her eyes hard, angry. "I will not let you do this to me, Slater. I can't believe you have the gall to show up here after all these years and act like nothing happened."

  While he was still trying to figure out how to answer that fierce statement, she shoved the paper towel in the garbage, then returned to cracking eggs with far more force than necessary.

  "My brothers are fine." Her voice was as clipped as her movements. "Great. Jess is the police chief in Salt River. He and his fiancé are planning a late July wedding. Matt remarried a few months ago, and he and his new wife are deliriously happy together. She's a vet in town and she's absolutely perfect for him."

  He wondered about the defiant lift to her chin as she said this, as if daring him to say something about it. "So he and—what was her name? Melanie, wasn't it?—aren't together anymore?"

  She didn't say anything for several moments. At her continued silence, he looked up from the cutting board and saw with some shock that she was livid. Not just angry, but quaking with fury.

  The woman he'd known a decade ago rarely lost her temper, but when she did, it was a fierce and terrible thing. He only had a second to wonder what had sparked this sudden firestorm when she turned on him.

  "No, they're not together anymore." Her voice sounded as if it was coated with ground glass. "They haven't been together since you ran off with her."

  He blinked at the cold fury in her eyes. "Since I what?"

  She turned away from him. "I'm really not in the mood for this, Slater. I have too much to do this morning if I'm going to feed your guests."

  His own temper began to spiral. "The hell with the guests. I want to know what you're talking about. Why would you say I ran off with Melanie?"

  "Hmm. Let me think. Maybe because you did?"

  "The hell I did!"

  "Drop the innocent act, Zack. People saw you. Jesse saw you. The two of you were making out in the parking lot of the Renegade. There are variations on the story but from what numerous people told me, she was climbing all over you like the bitch in heat that she was, and you weren't doing much to fight her off. Before Jess could beat the living daylights out of you, you and my darling ex-sister-in-law climbed into your truck and drove off into the sunset, never to be seen in Star Valley again."

  His mind reeling, he scrambled to come up with something to say to that stunning accusation.

  Before he could think past the shock, the side door swung open and the teenager who had greeted him the day before with such dumbstruck inadequacy whirled in, tucking a T-shirt into her jeans as she came.

  "Sorry I'm late, Cassie. I slept through my alarm again."

  The kitchen simmered with tension, with the fading echoes of her ridiculous claims. The idea that he would take up with that she-devil Melanie Harte was so ludicrous he didn't know where to start defending himself.

  "No problem, Greta. You can take over for Mr. Slater. He was just leaving. Isn't that right?" she challenged him, her lush mouth set into hard lines.

  He wanted to stay and have this out, to assure her he would rather have been hog-tied and dragged behind a pickup truck for a couple hundred miles than go anywhere with Melanie. He didn't want to do it in front of an audience, though. And since he couldn't figure out a polite way to order the poor girl out of the kitchen, he decided their shoot-out could wait.

  "This isn't over," he growled.

  Her eyes were still hot and angry. "Yes, it is, Zack. It was over ten years ago. You made sure of that."

  He studied her for a few moments, then set the knife down carefully on the cutting board and walked out of the room before he said something he knew he would regret.

  * * *

  As Cassie watched him leave, a vague unease settled on her shoulders like a sudden summer downpour.

  Why did he seem so astonished when she told him she knew he left with Melanie? Was he honestly dense enough to think they could both disappear on the same night and nobody would be smart enough to put two and two together and come up with four?

  He had definitely been shocked, though. That much was obvious. He couldn't have been faking that dazed, dismayed expression.

  She shrugged off the unease. She had too much work waiting for her, to sit here trying to figure out what was going through the mind of a man who was a virtual stranger to her now.

  "Do you want more green peppers?" Greta asked.

  She saw that Slater had diced a half dozen, far more than she really needed for the huevos rancheros. "No. That's plenty. Why don't you start putting together the fruit bowl?"

  While Greta moved around the kitchen gathering bananas and strawberries and grapes, she kept sending curious little looks her way. Cassie ignored them as long as she could, then finally gave a loud sigh. "What?"

  Greta yanked a grape off a cluster and popped it into the bowl. "Just wondering what that was all about. What's the story with you and the new boss?"

  For a moment she was surprised at the question, then she realized the teenager would have been only a child a decade ago, too young to hear about the biggest scandal in town. "Nothing. No story."

  Greta raised her eyebrows doubtfully. "What were you saying has been over for ten years, then?"

  She didn't want to talk about this. Especially not with someone who had a reputation for garbling stories until they had no resemblance whatsoever to the original.

  On the other hand, Slater's return was a rock-solid guarantee that the whole ugly business was going to be dredged up all over town, anyway. She might as well get used to answering questions about him. "It was a long time ago," she said tersely. "We were engaged, but it didn't work out."

  There. That was a nice, succinct—if wildly understated—version. It seemed enough for Greta. "You were engaged to the CEO of Maverick Enterprises?"

  "Like I said. A long time ago."

  "Wow! That's so romantic. Maybe he came back to try to win your heart again."

  When pigs fly.

  "I strongly doubt it," she murmured, then tried desperately to change the subject. "When you're done there, you can start squeezing the orange juice."

  Greta wasn't so easily distracted. "For what it's worth, I think he's gorgeous. Like some kind of movie star or something."

  Gorgeous he might be. But Cassie didn't have the heart to tell the starry-eyed teenager that beyond that pretty face, Zack Slater was nothing but trouble.

  She was telling the truth.

  Two hours later Zack poked at a runny omelette and half-cooked hash browns with his fork, trying hard to pretend he didn't notice the sullen whispers and the not-so-subtle glares being thrown his way by the Salt River locals.

  When he had lived here before, Murphy had a well-earned
reputation for good, hearty meals. Either the service and the menu had drastically gone downhill or Murphy was saving all the edible food for his other customers.

  He supposed he was lucky to get anything, given the overwhelmingly hostile atmosphere in the diner.

  When he walked into the café—with its red vinyl booths and mismatched paneling—the breakfast conversation of the summer crowd had ground to an awkward halt like a kid cartwheeling down a hill and hitting the bottom way too fast.

  At first he figured everybody focused on him only because he was a new face in town. It was a sensation he was well acquainted with after spending most of his life being the worthless drifter who would never quite belong.

  By the time the waitress slammed a menu down in front of him, the tension in the diner still hadn't eased a bit, and he began to suspect the attention he was receiving had its roots in something else.

  So a few people remembered him from a decade ago. Big deal.

  Soon the whispers began to reach him, and it didn't take long to hear his name linked with Melanie Harte's.

  Cassie hadn't been making it up. Judging by the reaction at Murphy's, everybody in town thought he had not only had been chicken enough to run out on his sweet, loving bride-to-be less than a week before the wedding but that he'd stolen her brother's wife in the bargain.

  The one taste of greasy eggs he'd managed to choke down churned in his gut.

  Son of a gun.

  He had known that leaving so abruptly a decade ago would cause a scandal, that Cassie would be hurt by it. He'd had his reasons for going, and at the time they had sure seemed like good ones.

  Hell, when it came right down to it, he hadn't really been given much of a choice, had he?

  At the time—and in the years since—he had tried to convince himself that leaving was the least hurtful option. He was going to break her heart eventually. He knew it, had always known it, even as they had planned their future together.

  This way was best, he'd decided. Better to do it quick and sharp, like ripping off a bandage.

  But he would have stayed and faced all the grim consequences if he had for one moment dreamed everybody would link his disappearance with a twisted, manipulative bitch like Melanie Harte.