CASSIDY HARTE AND THE COMEBACK KID

by Reanne Thayne

  She froze for an instant, then turned toward him with something like resignation in her eyes. "Zack. Isn't it past your bedtime?"

  "Probably. The night was too gorgeous to ignore." And so are you, he thought, and unfolded his length from the rocker to go to her. When he joined her at the railing, he was heartened considerably when she moved aside to make room for him.

  For a moment they were silent, both contemplating the mysteries of the heavens, then she sent him a sidelong look. "Why do we always keep meeting in darkness?" she murmured.

  He was going to say something flip, but stopped and gave her question a little deeper consideration. "Maybe it's easier facing each other and ourselves at night than in the harsh glare of daylight."

  She lifted one slim, dark eyebrow. "That's very philosophical, Slater. And surprisingly insightful."

  He shrugged. "I'm just chock-full of surprises, Cassidy Jane."

  "Yes. I'm beginning to see that," she murmured.

  Just what did she mean by that? he wondered. Before he could ask, she spoke again.

  "I heard quite an earful about you today from Amy Carlson on the ride down the mountain. She read all about you in the business section of one of the Denver papers, apparently."

  "Oh, no." His oath was low and heartfelt.

  Her soft laugh drifted over him like imported silk. "It was very educational, I must admit. I never would have pegged you for such a philanthropist."

  "Have I just been insulted?" he asked, with an inward curse at the business reporter at the Post for being so damned good at his job and ferreting out that closely held secret.

  She laughed again. "I don't know. Maybe. Sorry. You know, in all these years, I just never pictured you as a pillar of the community, giving bundles of money away like some modern-day Robin Hood."

  He couldn't control the sudden tension rippling through him. He hated talking about this. What the hell was the point of giving anonymous donations if they weren't going to stay that way?

  So what if he contributed to a few causes he cared about? That didn't make him any kind of hero. Just a man with astonishing good luck in a lot of ways that seemed hollow and unimportant unless he could share that luck.

  He blew out a breath, turning away the conversation before it became any more uncomfortable. "How did you picture me?"

  "Oh, plenty of ways. All of them very creative, you can be sure. I believe staked out naked on an anthill somewhere with buzzards circling around your head was always a personal favorite."

  He heard the humor in her voice. But he also heard the thin thread of pain woven through it, like a pale, out-of-place color on a rich tapestry. Regret washed over him again, bitter guilt that he had been the cause of that pain.

  He shifted to face her, leaning a hip on the railing. A wild yearning to reach out and caress that face, to touch her soft skin, welled up inside him. He almost did it but checked himself at the last moment, afraid she would shy away from him like an unbroken colt.

  "I never meant to hurt you, Cassie. I should have hightailed it out of Star Valley the minute things started to get serious between us. Before everything went so far."

  She didn't answer him, just watched him out of those solemn blue eyes that had always seen deep inside his soul.

  "I thought about leaving a hundred times but I couldn't do it. For once in my godforsaken life, something right had happened to me. Something real and beautiful. I was too selfish to give that up—to give you up—even though I knew I would end up hurting you in the end."

  "But you did give it up. You left and you never looked back."

  "I left," he allowed. "But I've spent every day of the last ten years looking back, Cassie. Knowing I made the biggest mistake of my life walking away from the only woman I have ever loved. And wondering how I could ever make it right with her again."

  After he finished speaking, her eyes turned murky and dark. A second later one fat tear slipped out. Dismayed, he stared as it caught the moonlight, wanting to call back whatever he'd done to make it appear.

  His Cassie hardly ever cried. He couldn't bear this, the heavy, unforgiving weight of knowing he had hurt her. Not just once, but a thousand times over the past ten years. Self-disgust filled his chest, his throat, even as he had to force himself not to reach for her.

  She didn't want him here. He was only hurting her more every day by his stubbornness.

  "Don't cry, sweetheart. Please. I'm sorry. I should never have come back. I'll leave in the morning, I promise. I won't bother you again."

  She swiped at the tear and glared at him. "Don't you dare walk away from me again, Zack Slater. Not when I was just trying to gather the courage to give you another chance."

  He froze, afraid to believe what he thought he just heard her say. It took every ounce of energy within him to remember to breathe. "You mean that?"

  "I must. Why else would my legs be shaking?"

  A shocked joy exploded inside of him, fierce and bright and buoyant. He drank in her tousled beauty, wanting to burn every second of this into his brain.

  Her smile trembled just a little, like a small, tender wildflower in a mountain breeze. With a groan, he reached out and clasped her face in both hands and lowered his mouth to hers.

  He kissed her slowly, reverently, savoring every inch of her mouth. She kissed him back, this time with no hesitation or wariness. Her lips moved under, opened for him.

  Welcomed him home.

  He wanted to weep from the torrent of emotions gushing through him. This was where he belonged. Right here, with her arms around him and her mouth soft and giving beneath his.

  This was where he had always belonged.

  Entwining his hands in her sexy little cap of hair, he deepened the kiss. Her breathy sigh of response acted on his already inflamed body like a rush of hot wind on a grass fire.

  Her arms pulled him closer, then closer still, until he could feel her soft curves through the thin cotton of her robe. He folded her against him, marveling again at how perfectly they fit together.

  Gradually, through the haze of joy and desire engulfing him like coastal fog, he realized she was shivering against him, ever so subtly but enough to make him draw away. "Is that from the cold or from nerves?"

  She blinked at him. "What?"

  "Your legs aren't the only thing shaking, sweetheart." He looked closer and realized she had come outside with no shoes. The wooden porch slats must be freezing beneath her bare feet.

  "No wonder you're trembling. Here, let's get you inside."

  He picked her up and opened her door. The soft glow inside came from a trio of slim candles she had left burning on the mantel.

  "You didn't have to do that. I'm not helpless."

  "I know. You've always been so strong and determined. It's one of the things I love most about you."

  Strong? He must have her mixed up with another woman. She had been anything but strong in those days and months after he had left, when she had kept herself from shattering apart only because Matt and poor Lucy needed her.

  In the intervening years she had cowered in her safe little life like a rabbit in a hole. And like that rabbit, while she might have felt free from the danger of heartache in that insular world, she had also been slowly starving to death.

  Depriving herself of the very things she needed to survive.

  Even knowing that—even with the vow she had made to herself that morning—she didn't feel very strong right now. A low, constant fear hummed through her but she refused to give in to it.

  The simple truth was, she believed him. About Melanie. About the crime ring he stumbled onto. About how he thought he was doing the right thing for her by leaving.

  She would never agree with the choice he had made. But that morning as they had ridden through the mountains where she had fallen in love with him so long ago, she had finally come to understand it.

  Maybe he had to leave so that he could finally learn to see himself the way she always had—as a good, decent
, honorable man who deserved whatever happiness life had in store for him.

  The candles' glow burnished him in gold, catching in his hair and the gold flecks in his eyes. That beautiful, sculpted face she had loved for so long.

  She smiled suddenly. She could be stronger than fear.

  She would be.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him fiercely. He remained still for one instant then he groaned and dragged her against him, his mouth ardent and demanding as he pressed her down to the plump cushions of her couch.

  Eventually kissing wasn't enough. It had been too long and her emotions were too raw, too close to the surface. She gasped when his hand shifted from the skin at her hip until he was barely touching the curve of her breast. Heat pooled in her stomach, in her thighs, and she arched against him.

  He groaned against her throat and trailed kisses along her jawline, then back to her waiting mouth while his fingers touched her.

  Oh, dear heavens, she had missed him. Missed this. The fire and the closeness and the sweet churn of her blood.

  Only with Zack had she ever felt so stunningly alive, and she wanted it to go on and on forever.

  His fingers danced over her nipple, and the shock of it was like leaping into an icy mountain lake without testing the waters first. She couldn't seem to catch her breath, and for a moment she was afraid she was in way over her head.

  "Zack, stop," she gasped.

  The slow torture of his fingers stilled instantly. Wariness crept into his eyes.

  "I'm just not... I don't think I'm ready for...for more. Not yet."

  He gazed at her for a moment, his eyes glittering, then he drew in a ragged-sounding breath. "I can understand that. I'm sorry. I've just dreamed of touching you for so long."

  He stepped back from the couch and raked a hand through his sun-streaked hair. When she saw his hand trembling slightly, she had to admit to a certain completely feminine sense of power.

  "Thank you for understanding," she murmured. "We rushed into things before. I don't want to make that mistake again."

  "You're right. You're absolutely right." With a lopsided smile he reached out and grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. "Slow and easy. I can handle that."

  He kissed her forehead and wrapped his arms around her tightly. At the feel of that hard, muscled body against her, she suddenly wasn't so sure "slow and easy" would be enough.

  * * *

  The next week was as close to heaven as she could imagine.

  The pace of life in the Lost Creek kitchen didn't slow at all just because she and Zack were busy rediscovering each other. She still put in long hours cooking for the ranch guests, ordering supplies and training Claire Dustin to take over for her.

  Zack was busy, too. Although he didn't put it in so many words, she had a feeling his continued absence from his business interests in Denver was causing problems, because a few days after that momentous kiss at her house, he moved his office to one of the extra rooms in the ranch, installing computers, phone lines and a crisp, efficient, somewhat snooty assistant named Claudia.

  While she devised menus and tested out recipes, his days were filled with conference calls as he ran his little empire in absentia.

  And it was an empire, she was coming to realize. It was one thing to know in the abstract that Zack had built his own very successful business from the ground up. It was quite another to watch him in action, with his sleeves rolled up and a pair of wire reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose as he talked on the phone about capital outlays and IPOs.

  She had to admit she found the contrast between the rough-edged cowboy she had known and this high-powered executive very sexy.

  Even with their respective workloads, they still tried to spend every available moment together. In the past week they had managed to squeeze time to go riding together several times, to take moonlit hikes into the mountains around the ranch, and the night before they had taken a drive through the massive splendor of Grand Teton National Park to have dinner at Jenny Lake Lodge inside the park.

  Although they spent long, drugging hours kissing and rediscovering each other, he always stopped before things went too far. While she was touched—and amazed—at his restraint, she was also growing increasingly frustrated.

  She was falling for him again, and hard. A part of her still quaked at the thought, but the rest of her couldn't deny that she was happier than she had been since she was that fresh-faced eighteen-year-old girl head over heels in love.

  Just now they were on their way to the Independence Day parade in Salt River, set to begin in just under fifteen minutes.

  She had almost said no when he'd suggested it after breakfast that morning. Not because she didn't want to go—the small-town parade was usually one of the highlights of her year—but she was fairly sure gossip about poor Cassidy Harte and her long-lost fiancé was still running rampant around town. She wasn't sure if she had the fortitude to face the inevitable stares and whispers.

  Small-town life definitely had certain advantages over living in a big city. But the endless buzzing grapevine—where everyone thought they had a God-given right to dabble in everybody else's business—wasn't among them.

  Most people in Star Valley still believed Zack Slater had run off the week before their wedding with her brother's wife. What would they think when they saw the two of them together?

  Trying not to pay attention to the butterflies step kicking in her stomach, she folded her hands tightly together. She didn't care what anyone said. She was strong. She could handle a few stares and whispers.

  If she was going to show up in the middle of the Independence Day parade with Zack Slater, she wasn't going to have much of a choice.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  « ^ »

  It wasn't quite as bad as she had feared.

  Once they'd walked the short distance from their parking space to the parade route, her nerves had settled somewhat. They still received their share of raised eyebrows, and she could hear more than a few whispers behind their backs. But no one was outright rude to them.

  Either Zack didn't notice or he didn't care. He placed a hand at the small of her back as they looked for a spot to watch the parade, both to guide her and to stake his claim, she suspected.

  He looked gorgeous, as usual, in weathered boots, faded jeans and a tailored short-sleeved navy cotton shirt that stretched over the hard muscles of his chest. Her mouth watered just looking at him as he set up the folding lawn chairs they had borrowed from the Lost Creek at an empty spot in front of the grocery store.

  She settled into the chair and tried to put the murmurs and prying looks out of her mind, content just to bask in the moment.

  She enjoyed all of Salt River's little celebrations—from the summer concerts in the park to the homecoming football game to the Valentine's Day carnival at the elementary school—but the Independence Day parade was always a highlight.

  Folks here took their patriotism seriously. They hadn't been sitting for five minutes when one of the elderly American Legion members rushed over with a couple of small flags for them to wave along with everyone else.

  Cassie smiled as she took it, scanning the crowd for some sign of her brothers. She couldn't see them and wasn't sure if that little fact relieved her or disappointed her.

  Jesse would be busy directing traffic away from

  Main Street

  , she remembered. But Matt and Ellie and the girls were probably planted somewhere along the crowded parade route, Sarah watching along with them.

  She hadn't seen them in a week. Guilt pinched at her as she realized how isolated she had become from them, how she had ducked out of their regular Sunday barbecue and had declined Ellie's invitation to go to the annual rodeo with them later that night.

  Although she winced at the realization, she was too terrified about their reaction if they saw her with Zack. She still hadn't told her family the two of them were in the slow process
of renewing their relationship. She couldn't. Not yet.

  She might have forgiven Zack for walking away ten years ago but she was fairly certain her overprotective brothers wouldn't be so quick to let bygones be bygones.

  Not when it came to Zack Slater.

  But since they were nowhere in sight, she didn't have to worry about it right this minute. She had a parade to enjoy.

  Half an hour later she was smiling at the antics of a couple of clowns who looked remarkably like Reverend Whitaker and his wife when she happened to glance at Zack. He was watching her intently, an odd light in his hazel eyes.

  Heat soaked her cheeks. "What's the matter?"

  He gave her one of those soft, beautiful smiles that made her catch her breath and feel more than a little light-headed. "Nothing. I just like watching you."

  What was she supposed to say to that? She could feel more heat crawl up her cheekbones and figured she was probably as red as the stripes on her little flag.

  "You belong here, don't you?" he asked quietly.

  "Jeppson's? Well, I do spend plenty of time inside yelling out my produce order."

  He smiled, then turned serious again. "No, I mean all of it. Salt River. The whole small-town thing. You're very lucky."

  "Lucky? Because I've never been anywhere in my life?"

  "Because you're part of this and it's a part of you. You belong," he repeated.

  She narrowed her gaze, giving him a closer look. That odd light in his eyes was envy, she realized. He was envious of her? A woman whose entire life had been spent within a sixty-mile radius? Who couldn't walk a block through town without having to stop and visit with at least three or four people along the way and who had to schedule at least an extra half hour for any shopping trip just because she knew she was bound to run into someone who wanted to chat?

  Zack had never had any of that. She was barely aware of the high school band passing by with its enthusiastic rendition of "Stars and Stripes Forever." Instead she remembered his childhood. His drunk saddle bum of a father with the itchy feet, who had dragged his young son from ranch to ranch across the West, never content to stick long in any place.