Winter Dreams

by Robyn Neeley

  The red-headed man, Clay, took a sudden interest. “You’re a cook?” He studied Casey from the top of her chestnut head to the tips of her high-heeled pumps. “You don’t look like any cook I ever saw before. Are you as good as Julia Child?”

  Casey smiled from the depths of a cabinet. “Wait and see.”

  Clay took his cell phone from his pocket and tapped on it. Casey hid a shudder and tried not to think of her own cell phone, lying dead in a charity collection bin in New York. She hated that phone. It symbolized everything she disliked about the city.

  Clay looked up from the tiny screen and stared at Casey with the expression of a man who has come across a strange new specimen of womanhood and assessed her thick, wavy hair, large gray eyes, and slender, small-boned figure one more time.

  “You’re for real. You managed Chargois in New York.”

  “You’re going to stay in here?” Merrick asked him and shot Casey a warning glance. “All right. I’ll be right back.”

  Casey ignored the pair and opened each cabinet in turn, then studied the contents of the freezer. She abstracted a box of frozen puff pastry and laid it on the cabinet to defrost.

  “You aren’t going to be any fun for the rest of the night,” Bonnie complained. “Aren’t you even going to use a recipe?”

  “If I were you,” Casey said, from deep within the recesses of a tall cabinet, “I’d go visit in the living room for a while. I’m going to be busy for the next hour or so.”

  “I’d rather visit with you.” Bonnie sat down at the table.

  Casey came out of the cabinet clutching a box of cake flour. “I’m about to produce something that will be worth the wait.”

  “You’re going to bake a cake?” Clay regarded the cake flour with awe as Casey seized a measuring cup and poured out exactly two cups of flour.

  “I’m going to bake a gateau.” Casey set a pan of water on the stove and turned on the gas. “I don’t think anyone here has ever eaten a French gateau.”

  Bonnie stared. “Well, I’ll be.”

  Clay’s green eyes followed Casey. “Ah. Now I know who you are. You used to date Kalin McBryde, didn’t you?” His tone let Casey know Merrick had been talking.

  “That was back when Bonnie and Merrick and I were in high school.” She smiled and measured sugar, then stood on the tips of her toes to reach a copper bowl hanging on the wall, which she took to the sink and cleaned carefully with salt and vinegar. “Are you in law school with Merrick?”

  Clay declined to answer.

  Merrick entered the kitchen and ran a red-tipped hand through her silvery hair. Upon seeing Casey cracking eggs into the copper bowl under the interested gaze of her current flame, she said, “What’s up, gang?”

  “We were determining who was in law school with you.” Casey poured in sugar, set the copper bowl over the pan of now-boiling water on the stove, and beat it energetically with a wire whisk.

  “You’re making a cake like that?” Merrick watched the operation, then seated herself beside Clay and sighed with overdone nostalgia. “I remember when my cousin Kalin used to take loaves of homemade bread Casey had baked back to school with him. Kalin is Walter McBryde’s son. You know, the great criminal attorney.” She looked at Bonnie.

  “We know.” Bonnie managed not to laugh.

  “Casey, did you know Kalin just sold a book?” Merrick asked. “He told Dad last week. I didn’t even know he wrote. Did you?”

  “Casey used to read all his manuscripts,” Bonnie said.

  Merrick’s eyes opened wide, and she looked with disbelief from Bonnie to Casey.

  Casey’s heart leaped with an emotion she tentatively identified as joy. She tested her batter by lifting the whisk and allowing a trail of batter to fall. “That’s wonderful news, Merrick. I’m very happy for him.”

  She fought to blank out the image of Kalin, black brows drawn together in a straight bar, eyes blazing, clutching a thick stack of paper and arguing with her over whether or not his cowboy hero should have a girlfriend.

  Clay glanced at his cell phone. “No wonder the poor guy can’t make a go of his practice. He should have gone to work for one of the big law firms if he can’t cut it on his own.”

  “I can’t understand him.” Merrick frowned. “With his name and connections, he could be as rich and powerful as his father.”

  Casey switched off the heat and transferred the copper bowl to the table, where she continued to whisk. “Kalin always said he couldn’t defend a client he suspected was guilty.”

  She smiled at the memory of Kalin getting into trouble when he refused to lie about running his Viper over a flowerbed.

  “Cheez,” Clay said beneath his breath.

  “Most of us have to remind ourselves that in our legal system, each person is entitled to the best representation,” Merrick hastened to explain.

  “Kalin never wanted to go to law school in the first place,” Casey said. An image of Kalin’s hopeful, tanned face and bright blue eyes as he’d told her his plans for writing several Western novels a year overlaid the thick foam she was whisking.

  Merrick stood, thinning her reddened lips angrily. Her chair scraped the floor as she shoved it back. “That’s ridiculous, Casey Gray. The truth is, you were holding him back. It’s a good thing he realized that before it was too late.”

  Merrick, Casey remembered, truly believed law school was the culmination of a worthy upbringing, reserved for the select few with the money and connections to get in. The attitude had reaped a lot of good-natured mockery for Merrick in high school.

  Casey sifted flour over the thick foam in the copper bowl and folded it in, French-style, with her fingers, well aware that Merrick felt personally attacked. She poured the batter into a springform pan she had sitting ready with a steady hand.

  “In that case, it doesn’t matter, does it?” she said. “Kalin went to law school and can now rise as far as his ability takes him.” She popped the pan into the oven she had preheated, then cleaned her fingers without concern.

  Placated, Merrick returned to her chair. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He simply refuses to work at it. What did you do to him?”

  “What did I do to him?” Casey repeated, amused. “I haven’t seen Kalin in five years, so if he isn’t progressing as you think he ought, it’s by his own choice.” She gathered up bowls and the whisk and carried them to the sink. Poor Kalin. Why was he practicing law when he disliked almost everything having to do with it?

  She’d known this party would be difficult. Busying herself with familiar tasks in the kitchen helped, but with Merrick discussing Kalin, not even the kitchen was a haven.

  “I’ve always wondered, Casey,” Merrick said, after sitting a moment in thoughtful silence. “We thought you weren’t leaving for culinary school until the fall, but instead, you left the summer you graduated from high school. Did you leave early because Kalin broke up with you?”

  Despite a lifetime of knowing Merrick’s tendency to tread in areas angels avoided, Casey hadn’t expected anything this nosy. She saw only one way to stop the discussion. “Of course.” She smiled and rinsed out the copper bowl. “I thought it would be better all the way around if I left early. That way, Kalin wouldn’t have to run into me every time he came to Winnie to go fishing or hunting with your dad.”

  Merrick went speechless for once as she belatedly sensed her audience’s discomfiture.

  “Wise move.” Clay stared at Casey after according Merrick one bored glance. “Obviously, McBryde is hopeless.”

  Casey measured eggs, milk, and sugar into a pan with great outward calm and applied the wire whisk to the mixture.

  “That was very thoughtful of you, Casey.” Merrick’s face glowed bright red.

  Casey bit her lip and maintained a straight face. To the accompaniment
of dead silence, she took a wooden spoon from a drawer, transferred the pan to the stove, and stirred.

  “By the way, Merrick.” Casey took pity on the blond. “Did you make it to the Rice Festival? Who won the cooking contest?”

  “Heavens, I have no idea.” Merrick looked relieved. “I was busy in school, so I didn’t come home, but I did hear Teddy Buckley won the Rice Eating Contest. Isn’t that about like him?”

  Casey, pleased with the success of her diversion, kept stirring while Merrick and Bonnie exchanged reasonably friendly comments on Teddy Buckley.

  Merrick looked up suddenly. “You know, Casey, it’s really amazing how little you resemble your father.”

  At that, Bonnie prepared to wade into Merrick, and Casey gave her a warning glance. “I hope I don’t resemble him at all.”

  It was hard to tell whether Merrick was trying to deliberately humiliate Casey, or whether she was being her usual tactless self. Casey reflected with inward laughter that it was a good thing she had prepared herself to deal with Merrick’s habit of dredging up one’s darkest secrets for discussion. Merrick’s boyfriend, Clay, was likely to transfer to another law school very soon, judging from his expression.

  “Well, why on earth not?” Merrick leaned forward. “He was so handsome, besides being a movie star. Unless, of course, he wasn’t your father. Did you ever contact him before he died?”

  “I was too young then.” Casey’s tone reflected major disinterest. She bent to peer in the oven window at her cake.

  Bonnie took the cue. “How’s the cake, Casey? Are you sure you didn’t leave something out? Like the baking powder?”

  Casey smiled. “This cake won’t need any.”

  “Her father was a movie star?” Clay let his eyes wander appreciatively over what could be seen of Casey beneath the big apron. “I believe it.”

  “Derrick Davenport.” Merrick looked proud to be the one revealing this tidbit. “Casey’s mother, if you can believe it, went to Hollywood when she was about eighteen to become an actress. Instead, she wound up pregnant and publicly begging Derrick to marry her. He got out of it, which always made me wonder. Did he leave you anything in his will, Casey?”

  Clay stared at Casey’s profile. “She must have been very beautiful.”

  Casey remained unmoved. “No, he didn’t leave me a thing, which is just as well. I wouldn’t have taken it.”

  Merrick clearly found this hard to believe. “Do you think he really was your father, or was your mother just making it up?”

  “I don’t know,” Casey said in non-encouraging tones. “He never had anything to do with me, nor I with him. So far as I’m concerned, both my parents died at my birth.”

  “That’s a healthy attitude,” Merrick said. “If I thought my father was Derrick Davenport, I’d be telling the world. I couldn’t believe it when I found out you had never told Kalin, as close as you two had been.”

  Casey shrugged. “Since a court of law had determined Mr. Davenport innocent of fathering me, in spite of the DNA evidence, what good would it have done to claim otherwise?”

  “She has his eyes,” Clay said suddenly.

  The group stared at Casey’s face, and Casey was hard-put to keep stirring without reddening. She had long ago realized that she did indeed possess Derrick Davenport’s distinctive, sparkling gray eyes framed with the same dark, curly lashes. That discovery, however, instead of making her proud, had shamed her.

  “Casey’s right,” Bonnie said quickly. “What good does it do at this late date?”

  Clay nodded and fingered his phone, still staring at Casey.

  Merrick looked at him. “Kalin always talked about how beautiful Casey’s eyes were. He was furious when he learned who her father was. Allegedly was, that is.”

  Casey removed her pan from the heat, extracted her cake from the oven, and flipped it expertly upside down onto a cooling rack.

  “McBryde was always weird,” Clay pronounced.

  Casey glanced up and smiled.

  “Well, you can’t blame him,” Merrick said, in the judicious tones of one who has thought things over very carefully. “When he broke up with her, Casey made a public scene begging him not to leave her. What else could he think but that she was doing the same act her mother had? At that time, the McBrydes were wealthy, you know.” She added, “Of course, anyone who has known Casey as long as I have knows that she’s not the type to try and shame Kalin into marrying her. But it was embarrassing, all the same.”

  Casey adjusted the oven temperature and unrolled a sheet of puff pastry onto a piece of waxed paper. As she worked it over with a rolling pin, a vision of the last time she’d seen Kalin McBryde arose in her mind. She had been practically on her knees, begging him just to listen to her.

  Even the bare memory was a knife-like thrust to the heart. But she had known that scene would be mentioned tonight. She had performed about one thousand creative visualization exercises in order to be able to deal with it. She could handle it.

  Bonnie sat up straighter and glared at Merrick. “Don’t you think you ought to change the subject? After all, it’s none of our business in the least.”

  Casey turned away to search the cabinets quickly and returned with a package of dried beans. She fitted a piece of tin foil into the pastry, filled it with dried beans and ran it into the oven. Concentrating on every practiced movement helped her maintain her composure. By the time she returned to the table, Merrick sat in depressed silence while the other two enthusiastically discussed their plans for the upcoming Christmas holiday.

  Casey fetched her cake from its cooling rack and picked up a long, thin knife. “Merrick, don’t you usually go skiing over the holidays?” She removed the cake from its pan.

  “Not this year.” Merrick looked thankful. “I’ve got to study. If you do go to law school, you’ll find out what I mean.”

  “I’m sure I will.” Casey expertly sliced the single cake into three thin layers.

  Clay stared. “You’re really planning on going to law school?”

  “You needn’t sound so astonished,” Casey said, tongue-in-cheek. “Merrick is one of the best salespeople a law school could have.”

  “I believe in what I’m doing.” Merrick tossed back her silvery hair, seemingly unaware of the humor in Casey’s voice. “Does Kalin know you’re planning on going to law school, Casey?”

  “You’ll have to be sure to mention it to him.”

  “I know you’re still in touch with him,” Merrick said. “I saw the Christmas card you sent him on his coffee table last week. It’s too bad things didn’t work out between the two of you. You were so well-suited.”

  Casey turned away to check her pastry shell. Merrick trying to make amends was almost as bad as Merrick putting her foot in her own mouth. Thank goodness she had chosen the Christmas card in question for its lack of a meaningful message. Merrick had probably peeked inside the card.

  She opened the oven door and leaned in to prick a bubble of pastry with a fork, hoping the heat would explain her face. Since Kalin insisted on sending her cards at every excuse, along with occasional letters, she tried to reciprocate often enough to foster the idea that she regarded him as an old and dear friend.

  Bonnie glanced at Casey. “It’s Kalin’s loss.”

  Casey steadied her reeling senses and crossed the white tile floor to the refrigerator with the cake layers. She returned to the table with a pound of butter and began heating another saucepan containing sugar and water.

  “Anything between us was over years ago,” she said. “After all, I was only eighteen then, and he was twenty-two. We both had lots of growing up to do.”

  Clay said, “I’ve always suspected McBryde wasn’t all there.” His eyes were fixed on Casey’s face as she plugged in the electric mixer and began beating the butter.


  Clay’s obvious admiration couldn’t help but lift Casey’s spirits. She smiled at him and asked if he’d like to help her make the icing for the cake.

  “Anything for you, babe. What do I do?”

  Soon Clay was bending over the pan on the stove, monitoring the temperature of the candy thermometer Casey had placed in the boiling sugar syrup.

  “We’ll all help, Casey,” Merrick said belatedly. “What can I do?”

  “Could you bring me the cake layers in the fridge?”

  Casey took the pan of syrup and poured it gradually into the butter with the electric mixer going full blast. The resulting frosting caused the three watching to squabble amicably over licking the bowl and the knife Casey used to spread the concoction over the cake. The cake gained almost an inch in height before she was through.

  She had just accepted a taste of her own creation off Clay’s finger when she noticed Bonnie staring rigidly at something in the doorway behind her. She turned to look as a deep, masculine voice said coolly, “Hello, Casey.”

  Casey froze and licked the icing carefully off her lips. “Hello, Kalin,” she said slowly. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Chapter 2

  Kalin stared keenly at her, tight-lipped. He was six feet tall and had the easy, arrogant carriage of an athlete, and the tanned skin and steady gaze of an outdoorsman.

  He stood just inside the door, dressed in dark trousers and a pale blue shirt open at the neck, and leaned against the doorjamb with the air of one who has come to stay a while.

  Casey, who figured the only thing different about herself was her hairstyle, noted that although Kalin’s physical attributes hadn’t changed, something else had. The Kalin she’d known was open, honest, and loving. This man looked hard, almost intimidating.

  She surveyed him, gave him a formal smile, and returned her attention to the knife full of frosting in her hand. The sight of him had caused a strange contraction in the vicinity of her heart and the feeling that her surroundings were whirling and closing in on her. It annoyed her because she thought she had prepared herself for this meeting.