by Quinn Wilder
This book made available by the Internet Archive.
CHAPTER ONE
' 'Damned cowboy. ' '■
Cadence Copperthorne was angry. Furiously, savagely, dangerously angry. She slammed her car door so hard that the windshield rattled. Then she paused, and glared up the wide, long, paved path that led to the sprawling mansion that was home.
She pictured herself striding up the walk, her fury unmistakable in her every step. She wanted to take the four marble steps two at a time, cross the wide veranda in one angry stride, have the satisfaction of seeing servants scurrying out of her way...
"Damned cowboy," she muttered again, unwilling to let her anger become defused by the effort it was going to cost her to get up the path and then up the stairs that led to the front entrance of the pillared plantation-style monstrosity that was home.
Panting slightly, a few moments later, she paused in the shadow of the veranda. For a moment she gazed off into the distance. The sky was intensely blue, and cloudless. The countryside was still the vibrant green of the first fresh days of summer. The leaves on the massive maples around the house whispered against each other in the peaceful stillness. The lush Southern Alberta hills rolled gently toward the smoky blue of the distant foothills, the towering Rockies.
For an unguarded moment, the tranquillity of the scene nibbled tentatively at Cadence, some memory of contentment calling to her. But it was
followed relentlessly by a more precise memory of the long hay-scented days of summers past, of hard, satisfying work, of her horses.
She turned her head and her gaze moved, against her will, to the area to the side of the house. The white-fenced riding school was empty. The practice jumps had been put away. She could just see a comer of the stable, gray with white trim. It seemed oddly ghostly and silent in the summer sun, though she knew her horses were in there.
Not Storm, though. He must be in the paddock on the other side of the stable. If he was in a box stall, she would hear him, restless, snorting. A pain, so strong it seemed physical, twisted at her heart, but she brushed the feeling savagely away. She had other things to deal with! Her anger was giving her blessed respite from her hurt, and she planned to use that to full advantage.
She swung her eyes abruptly away from the riding school, and looked west, toward another world, shamelessly stoking the angry fire within her. Her eyes narrowed on the barns, which formed the border of the ranch side of this huge holding of her father's.
Two worlds gently coexisted on one gigantic property. The house, her stables and riding area, the pool, the formal gardens made up one world. One of refinement and elegance. And not a stone's throw away was the other world. Located far enough away that the smells and dust couldn't offend the senses of those in "the castle," as this monstrosity of a house was affectionately referred to by the locals. And close enough that her father still felt he had a hand in running the place, which was something of a laugh.
The seemingly odd combination coexisted harmoniously. Cadence had always liked the sight of the barns. There was energy down there; dust rising; the timbre of masculine voices raised above the sounds of cattle and horses. There was a raw beauty in the pure physical strength and stamina that was required of the men who worked the ranch part of her home.
"Stupid, ignorant cowboy," she muttered, eyeing the distant red of the barns. Voicing the words gave her a satisfying surge of energy. She stamped across the last stretch of porch, went in the door and slammed it so hard that the beveled glass rattled in its frame.
"Timothy!" she yelled. She moved gracelessly across the wide entrance hall and went through the french-pane doors and into the book-lined sitting room next to it. "Timothy!"
She eased onto a dainty silk-covered antique sofa. Her need to be careful with her hip, injured four months ago in a riding accident, thwarted her need to be aggressive. She made up for it by throwing the hated cane halfway across the polished mahogany floors. Now there was a noise that satisfied her!
Timothy was in the doorway, and had witnessed the action. Good, she thought. He would know she was not to be trifled with, and certainly not to be pitied. His face was impassive. She saved him the awkwardness of a greeting.
"Get me the barns on the phone."
"Barns?" he asked, his voice smooth and calming and professional.
"The cattle portion of Mr. Copperthorne's empire," she replied coolly. She had grown up with
this man overseeing the needs of this rather ridiculous house. He was not an employee. He was family. And if she let down her guard for a minute his sympathy would ooze all over her, robbing her of her pride.
In a small book-lined alcove to one side of a grossly formal fireplace, a paper rustled. She glanced over, to see her father peering a trifle timidly at her over the top of the paper.
His look satisfied her. At least it was obvious she was angry. Maybe that would give her a break from the painful caring in his eyes, the sadness.
"Is there a problem at the barns, Cadence?"
She went rigid. "Don't call me that, please."
"We're all trying to remember you prefer Cade now. However, you must make allowances. Timothy and I have been calling you Cadence for twenty-two years."
She closed her eyes against him. Against his hurt. Against his pleading. His eyes always seemed to beg her, Be what you were—Cadence. The name said it all: a young woman who had moved with the strength and grace of a top athlete. A young woman whose soul had danced to the energetic tattoo of her dreams.
She opened her eyes, only to look directly into the photographic portrait he refused to take down from the mantel. It had been taken very shortly after a winning ride, and it had captured the Cadence she had used to be. She was in her riding habit, the black velvet of her jacket making her hair seem like flame—dancing, untamed waves of orange and gold and red. The only thing she had ever detested about her sport was that she had had to tame her hair.
It had become her trademark that, after a victory, she pulled off her helmet and impatiently yanked the ribbon from her hair, giving her head a shake so that her wild mane sprang free. The photographer had captured that moment, captured the lingering laughter and excitement in her eyes... captured her cadence.
Cadence. Yes, once it had been her name, and she had loved having a name like that. Loved the ring of it over the raspy old loudspeakers of a thousand riding arenas. "And now we have Cadence Copperthorne riding..."
Now, the name only mocked her. She had shortened it, first to Cay, but, finding that too plain, she had finally settled on Cade.
"Is something wrong at the barns?" her father repeated.
Timothy slipped in with the phone. "I have Mr. Jones on the line. He's the foreman "
She snatched the phone. "Sloan? It's... Miss Copperthorne here." Out of the corner of her eye she saw the surprise register in both Timothy's and her father's eyes. Okay, she wasn't always that certain what to call herself any more, either. But Sloan wouldn't know who Cade was, and she couldn't introduce herself as Cadence after she'd just dressed her father down for calling her that.
Besides, it wouldn't hurt the old cowpoke to realize she'd grown up. She was no longer the little girl who sneaked down to his barns, who'd been the recipient of his gentle gifts... sleigh rides for her and her friends on crisp winter nights, a beautiful white kitten with six toes—"the Finns say they're lucky, miss." He was the man who'd teased her gently when she'd taken up her "fancy-pants"
riding, and yet often come up to the fresh white-painted paddocks, so different from his own worn and wiied-together corrals, to watch her. He'd even told her once she had a damned fine way with a horse. It was about as high a compliment as he gave.
But he was just one more person on a long list of people who belo
nged to the past now, who belonged to Cadence, a Cadence who was no more.
"There's a cowhand headed in from the west section. Is he there yet?"
"No," and then a slight hesitation. "Ma'am."
Sloan had always called her Princess. She had wanted him to realize she was grown up, but now she was a little sorry that he had. Well, he'd probably be just like Timothy, if she gave him the opening, oozing unwanted sympathy all over her.
"He should be there any minute. When he gets in, you tell him I want to see him at the house. Pronto."
His hesitation was loaded with unvoiced questions. Once he would have asked them. Now he just said, "Yes, ma'am," and hung up.
She slammed the receiver back onto the phone, and looked out of the window, fuming.
"Is there a problem—er—Cade?" her father asked.
The way he said it, heavy with reproach, was almost worse than being called Cadence. Almost. Not quite.
"I don't have a problem. There's a cowboy out there riding for home who has a few seconds more to be blissfully unaware that he has a problem."
"Who is it?"
She frowned. Once, she had recognized everyone who worked on her father's distinctly divided
property, from gardeners to cowboys. She had known everyone's names. But that was a long time ago. Before she had become so totally engrossed in the pursuit of her own dreams.
"I don't know. He was quite a distance away, but I'm pretty sure it was nobody I've ever seen before."
Pretty sure? Now that was an out-and-out lie. She had been driving, recklessly fast, home from a session of physiotherapy. Out of the corner of her eye she had seen him, slammed on the brakes, and got out of the car. Leaning her weight on the hood she had watched him, transfixed.
The man and horse had been far enough away that they would probably not even notice her, this arresting pair, the black horse going flat out, the lean rider who sat him with such incredible confidence. It seemed, somehow, that she had been transported into an earlier age. An age of hard men and hard horses, an age of sweat and leather, an age where men were born to horses and saddles, and celebrated the freedom of their lives just like this—by racing the wind across an undulating, unbroken sea of green grass. His ruggedness and his freedom had communicated across the distance, and had arrested her. She had appreciated the scene with her whole heart and soul, had become totally absorbed in a moment of untamed magnificence.
And then the illusion of an endless sea of green grass, of an earlier, wilder, freer time, had been shattered. The horse and rider had been approaching a fence. He would, she'd known, become an ordinary man in an ordinary time, tamed, confined by an ordinary fence. She had started to turn away, not wanting to see that transformation.
Wanting, instead, to keep the picture of him, untamed, in her mind. Not wanting to see him do something as mundane as slow his horse and get off, and open the gate in the fence and lead his horse through and get back on.
She had been lowering herself back into the driver's seat of her car when, out of the corner of her eye, she'd noticed that he was not slowing down. Utter disbelief had seemed to stop her heart. She'd levered herself back out of the car and stared at him with horror. He couldn't possibly be planning to take that fence. Not at that speed. Not on a stocky little cow horse. Not with a stock saddle.
And then, impossibly, he'd been sailing. Up and up, frozen for that exhilarating second at the top of the jump and then going down. He hadn't missed a stride, and he hadn't looked backward at the fence he had just conquered with such total assurance.
In a way, it was the sheer beauty of it that had made her so angry. Not the fact that he'd been reckless, but the fact that he'd been reckless with a confidence that had crossed the distance and touched her like a physical touch. He had never slowed down. Not before the fence and not after it. He didn't even know what he had. He didn't know it was a gift to be able to leave the bonds of earth, even for a few split seconds.
What had stirred in her was a rage of envy that he had something that she had lost.
"What exactly did he do?"
Her voice crackled with indignation as she answered her father's question. "He jumped a stupid little fence, and he did it with a stupid little cow pony in a stupid big stock saddle."
She was aware that she actually hated this man whom she had caught such a brief and golden glance of. Damn it all, she did not want to be reminded that such effortless grace still existed in this world. He was soaring with eagles, while she was earthbound, a captive of her broken wings.
"What exactly do you plan to say to him?"
"I plan to tell him he should be shot for riding a horse that doesn't belong to him so recklessly. I may fire him."
She looked warningly at her father, who looked as if he might be about to mention that firing cowboys was not exactly in her jurisdiction.
"Well, if it's all the same to you, perhaps I'll just leave you to it." Her father gathered up his paper nervously and left the room. He could not bear confrontation. She knew the whole community speculated on how such a meek and mild man had survived her firebrand mother, and now herself.
Behind the door, she was irritated to hear her father and Timothy exchanging remarks about her.
"Did you see her eyes, man?" she heard her father reply to something Timothy had said that she hadn't quite caught. "She lives!"
"So I saw, sir," came the muffled reply, and she could hear a contented note in it.
She groaned with frustration. This was exactly the type of thing she hated about having a handicap. Nobody took a rage seriously.
Or maybe, she considered slowly, it had just been so long since she had had one of her rather famous fits of temper that they took it as a sign they were getting her back after all. Lord almighty, she wished they would let Cadence die in peace.
Still, throwing a regretful look at where she had thrown the cane, she managed to get herself up and used the furniture to move around to the mirror.
There was a sparkle in her brown, gold-flecked eyes that hadn't been there for a long time. And banners of good healthy angry color had chased that invalid pallor from her cheeks.
''Unfortunately, I think I am going to live," she admitted to the mirror. She inspected herself slowly. She was looking much better. The dark circles of pain were gone from underneath her eyes, the gauntness was disappearing from her cheeks.
In fact... She stepped back from the mirror and squinted hard at herself. Her tough training had always made her lithe and muscular. She had rarely carried more than a hundred and ten pounds on her five-foot-seven frame. But the weeks of inactivity were showing.
She actually looked vaguely curvaceous. "Good Lord, Cade," she muttered to herself, "are you running to fat?"
Too late, she realized that her reflection had been joined by another one. He had entered the room silently and stood just inside the door, his eyes meeting hers in the mirror. Though his eyes were shadowed by the brim of a Stetson, they were unmistakably and astonishingly indigo.
"Well, certainly not from this angle," he drawled with dry appreciation, his eyes flicking insolently to her derriere, and then coming to rest, expressionless, back on the reflection of her face.
He took off the cowboy hat, ran a hand through a tangle of dark curls. "Afternoon, ma'am."
His voice was as soft and sensuous as velvet being rubbed along the back of her neck. There was a
faint drawl around the edges of his words, but no nasal rawness. His tone was deep and smooth—so there was no reason at all for the sound of it to make her nearly jump out of her skin. The start sent a piercing shaft of pain through her hip.
She turned with slow dignity, her eyebrows arched coldly at the intruder, her pert nose tilted a little higher than normal to cover her pain and her awkwardness. She had planned to be sitting for this interview. Now she was going to be forced to stand—or give a demonstration of how she hobbled around the furniture like an eighty-year-old grandmother. Dammit! How could she
allow herself to get caught like this?
"How did you get in here?" she snapped, hating him for wrecking the cool scenario she had planned for dressing him down. "How dare you act like a...a Peeping Tom?"
A thick black eyebrow arched upward. "The
door was open... ma'am. I knocked, but " He
shrugged with a certain arrogance, as if he had better things to do than wait around for doors to be opened for him. "Had I known you were deep in conversation with yourself, I wouldn't have interrupted. As it was, I thought you were asking my opinion."
She knew he had thought no such thing. Imagine the nerve of him, spying on her, and then turning it around so that she looked like Narcissus.
"Well, I wasn't asking your opinion," she snapped. It was now apparent to her that nothing was going to go according to her plan. This was no meek, humble cowboy who was going to let her vent her temper on him. Who was going to stammer an apology, agree never to jump the cow horses
again, and then run for his life back to the safety of his cattle.
He was a big, hard man, with whipcord muscles, a stern, impassive face that tended toward dangerous because of the unconscious glitter of sensuality in his eyes. She severely doubted that he was going to be intimidated by her—and was rather annoyed to discover she was somewhat intimidated by the sheer rugged masculinity of him.
He had obviously ducked his head under a tap before he ventured up to the big house. His black hair, too long, and yet attractively roguish, curled damply around his ears. The hollows of his cheeks, the square of his jaw, were faintly whisker-shadowed—one of those men who would have to shave twice a day if he were in a more civilized line of work. But his work, and the physical toll of his work, were stamped on to his face—his nose had the sudden jut of a break, and a thin scar divided one of his dark, wickedly arching eyebrows in half. The weathered bronze of his skin made the hue of his eyes seem hauntingly deep, the color of a summer midnight, a blue that ranged somewhere between purple and black.
