A Rancher to Remember--A Clean Romance

by Karen Rock

  “Here’s ten more,” Travis said behind her. He bore a metal tray crammed with fragrant pies. “Where would you like them?”

  She shot him a grateful smile and pointed to a lower shelf in the glass cabinet. How kind of him to help while in the middle of an intense cattle rustling investigation. How thoughtful of all of them. Even Amberley Cade, Jared Cade’s wife, canceled a barrel-racing tour date to bake alongside her husband. Cole Loveland’s wife, Katlynn, had flown in from LA between show tapings to babysit the Cade and Loveland little ones while Cole and Noah manned the petting zoo. On the opposite side of the store, recently married and newly pregnant Brielle Cade, Justin’s wife and the head of a local mental health and rehab facility, checked out customers purchasing dry goods and produce while Justin hovered protectively.

  It was a far cry from the tropical forests of the Philippines and the arid landscapes of Sudan...but it fulfilled another of her needs, one she hadn’t fully realized she wanted—no, needed—until now...family, community and... She glanced out the window again and returned Daryl’s wave before he restarted the tractor engine...

  ...love.

  Was she falling in love with him again? Her head throbbed along with her heart. Daryl offered the kind of family she wished for but was incapable of having. She eyed the bustling Cades and Lovelands, who exchanged smiles and good-natured barbs in equal measure. What would they think of Daryl if he moved on so soon after losing Leanne...? If he was ready to move on...

  Either way, she didn’t dare go further with her feelings. Instead, she’d help Daryl recover his old self, rather than their old relationship, and leave Loveland Hills, leave Daryl and his children stronger than when she’d arrived. Seeing her work pay off was a start. If the store stayed as busy, it’d help the Lovelands gain even more financial stability—or at least pay for their recent legal fees and medical costs.

  If only she felt as stable with the rest of her life, her traitorous heart and the mystery surrounding the crash. She was falling for this loving family. Was she in danger of heartbreak again if she lingered too long?

  * * *

  THE INSTANT DARYL ducked inside Silver Spurs later that night, his eyes automatically scanned the packed crowd for Cassidy. Perspiration gathered at the base of his throat and slicked his body beneath his button-down shirt. He peered through the gloom, listening to Heath’s deep voice pouring through wall-mounted speakers. When Daryl spotted Cassidy, his heart shifted into another gear.

  Standing on the dance floor’s edge between Sierra and Jewel, she looked stunning in a deep rose, off-the-shoulder dress revealing her creamy shoulders and curvy legs. The stage’s bright lights picked up the honey-colored strands in her wavy hair and illuminated her beautiful face and sparkling eyes. He barely heard the song Heath belted out. The room, the world—heck, even the universe—shrank down to this one incredible woman.

  Cassidy had been a blur of action today as she’d labored to bring Leanne’s vision to life, creating a legacy for his children. When he’d left them with Joy for a sleepover, they’d barely had time to hug him good-night in their excitement to chatter on about their exciting day with Javi, who’d also been invited to the impromptu get-together. Emma, especially, had bragged about how many coats they’d distributed. Many Hands, Doing Good gave her a purpose, a direction, an outlet for her grief. He couldn’t be more grateful to Cassidy, yet deep down, gratitude vied with other, stronger emotions he refused to examine too closely.

  “Hey,” he said by way of greeting when he joined the women.

  Jewel nodded without taking her eyes from Heath. Her engagement ring sparkled as she pumped her fist while her fiancé ripped through a guitar solo. Sierra moved aside, making room for him to stand beside Cassidy, and her fetching smile sent his pulse zipping through his veins.

  “Where are the kids?” she shouted in his ear.

  Her exotic floral scent curled beneath his nose and his body tightened in awareness. “Joy invited them for a sleepover.”

  Her eyes widened. “You mean they’re gone...all night?”

  “That’s usually how it works.”

  Her heart-shaped mouth dropped open and the temptation to sample it seized him. Hard. Did she still taste as sweet? The urge to kick himself followed. He turned to leave, but Sierra blocked his exit.

  She cupped her hands around his ear and hollered, “Where are you going?”

  “Anywhere else.”

  Sierra followed his gaze to Cassidy, then swerved back to his face. “I warned you what would happen if you moved her in.”

  “And I promised I wouldn’t get attached.”

  Sierra’s eyes narrowed, and she sniffed his neck. “Then why are you wearing cologne? And an ironed shirt?”

  Warmth flushed his face. He tugged at his restrictive collar. “No reason.”

  “Uh-huh.” She pursed her mouth, skeptical. “Be careful.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t.” Sierra followed his gaze to Cassidy, who, like Jewel, applauded wildly when the Outlaw Cowboys ended their song. “I just hope no one gets hurt.”

  “Too late for that,” he said darkly.

  Sierra rose on her toes, kissed his cheek and hugged him. “Forgive your overprotective sister?”

  “Always.”

  Sierra and Jewel headed to the ladies’ room, leaving him alone beside Cassidy.

  “Thanks for your help today.” She smiled up at him. “I didn’t expect such a big turnout.”

  “Driving a tractor wasn’t much. You deserve all the credit.”

  Her eyes widened and so did her smile, sending his heart careening in his chest. “It was a group effort.”

  “You look beautiful,” he said as the band struck up the opening notes to the next song.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Would you like a drink?”

  Before she could answer, Heath shouted, “I need everyone on the dance floor for this next song I wrote. I’m debuting it here and it’s called ‘Loved You First.’” Heath pointed at Daryl. “Come on out. Don’t make me insecure about this one, now.”

  Jewel returned, alone, and shoved Daryl onto the dance floor. “You heard my man. Get dancing, you two.”

  “People will talk.” Cassidy raised her voice as Heath began to sing.

  Jewel shrugged. “If they’re pathetic enough to gossip about two people dancing, then who cares what their itty, bitty brains are thinking? Or not thinking since, you know, they only have about three brain cells to rub together.”

  Daryl grinned and extended a hand to Cassidy. “Shall we?”

  “I guess we must,” she said breathlessly as he swept her into his arms and slowly danced her around the crowded floor.

  She smelled so good. He closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet scent rising from her neck. The way her small hand wrapped around his, the other resting on his shoulder, stirred his blood. His heart lifted. His spirit soared.

  Euphoria.

  Then reality slammed him back down to earth. It didn’t matter that she fit in his arms like she belonged there. He knew better. She belonged to journalism, to the career she loved, and he had no place in that world, even if he was free to pursue her. As for him, he was a single father with two kids, a cowboy with a modest life, a widower still grieving the woman he’d come to love and had somehow driven away.

  Was it possible to love two women at once...in two different ways?

  Until Leanne pulled away from him and the kids, he’d felt content with the quiet life they’d built together. Cassidy, on the other hand, left him unsettled, on tenterhooks, never knowing what came next, but excited to discover it nonetheless. She was exuberant. Unrestrained. A migrating butterfly you were lucky to see and wrong to capture.

  His hand slid up from her tiny waist to her back, pressing her closer as he swept her in slow circles. He didn’t
want to think about the future or their past. All he wanted to do was savor this sweet, blissful now. He accepted this was the most he could ever hope for.

  The most he deserved.

  And in that acceptance, he found an odd kind of peace. He felt as if he was floating, drifting on the high of the moment. Tomorrow didn’t exist. For this brief span of time, she was his and they were one. He gazed down at her rosy mouth and wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to breathe.

  “Heath’s really good,” Cassidy said directly in his ear as he rocked her back and forth. “When did he start writing songs?”

  His muscles clenched at the delicious feel of her lips whispering across his ear. “He always has, but he signed a studio contract a year ago.”

  “So Travis is the county sheriff, Maverick is a professional bull rider, Heath is a songwriter and Sierra is a wildlife veterinarian, right?”

  He pulled back to stare down into her flushed face. “Right.”

  “Everyone pursued their own dreams but you and Cole.”

  His shoulder lifted and fell beneath her hand. “Cole always wanted to be a rancher.”

  “And you?”

  “It’s not important.”

  She angled her head to catch his eye again. “Yes, it is. You always wanted to be a photographer.”

  “And a husband and a father.” His hand slid farther up her back to bury itself in her glossy waves. “I got what I wanted.”

  “Not all of it.” She brushed the back of his neck with her fingertips. His heartbeat thudded loud in his eardrums.

  “No one gets everything they want.” His voice was husky now. Her touch was messing with him. Bad. “I’m lucky to even have this much.”

  “Why do you think that?” Her hand stilled, and a line formed between her brows. “You deserve to be as happy as your siblings.”

  He looked away.

  “Don’t you?”

  When the music ended, he led her to a small table in the corner of the bar. “What would you like to drink?”

  “Why won’t you answer the question?”

  Air rushed between his clamped teeth. “Because I’m not like them.”

  “How?”

  He whisked the empties from the table and placed them on an empty booth nearby. “I’m adopted.”

  She gasped. “You never said... Why didn’t you... I don’t understand.”

  He clenched his hands as an uncomfortable feeling knotted up inside his chest. “It’s not something I talk about.”

  “I can’t believe you never told me.” Her betrayed expression cut him straight through.

  “It’s not important.”

  “Yes, it is,” she fired back, indignant now. “You said it’s the reason you don’t deserve to be as happy as your siblings.”

  Daryl frowned. “I am happy. Or I was, before...”

  “You didn’t go to college to be a rancher,” Cassidy cut in.

  “I went to college because Pa was able to spare me those four years.” He signaled to a waitress carrying a laden tray.

  “Why go at all if you intended to stay on the ranch?”

  “Because I wanted to...I don’t know...experience more.”

  “So did I,” she said simply and their gazes snapped together. They’d both wanted to mold their lives into something different then.

  In that moment of awareness, he felt the click—the reconnecting of the bond that had once been severed. Something shared. They were connected in a way he’d never connected with anyone else. Not even his wife, much as it pained him to even think it.

  Cassidy tapped her chin, a faraway look in her eyes. “What if I had a way for you to experience more, without leaving the area?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes” came the instant answer; it shook him that he didn’t even have to think about it.

  Her smile was big and bright. It electrified him. “Do you still have your Canon?”

  “What are you planning?”

  She lifted a brow. “Let’s just say it’s time I reminded you of who else you are...besides dad, sibling, son, rancher.”

  “That’s who I am. There’s no one else.”

  “Oh, yes, there is,” she countered. “I knew him once. I’d like to know him again.”

  The waitress stopped by their table, took their order and hustled away. He opened his mouth to ask for more details, intrigued, when one of his friends shuffled up to their table.

  “Stopped by your country store.” Dan Cooke yanked his red ball cap off his perspiring, shaved head, then resettled it, cupping the brim. “Couldn’t find where you were selling your moonshine.”

  “We don’t have our liquor license yet,” Daryl drawled, sarcastic.

  Dan hooted, slapping Daryl on the back. “Let me know when you do.”

  When he ambled away, Cassidy shot Daryl a quizzical look. “What’s he talking about? You don’t drink hard liquor.”

  “I didn’t used to. A lot’s changed in ten years. I’ve changed.” He expected to see disapproval on her face, or the very least, disappointment. But when Cassidy’s eyes met his, that wasn’t what he saw.

  She looked sympathetic. Understanding. It took him aback. “Why haven’t I seen you drinking it now?”

  He thought back over the past several weeks, realizing he hadn’t even thought of the flask tucked in his saddle bag. “I don’t need it anymore.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly, and her eyes swerved to the waitress delivering their drinks. “Then maybe you haven’t changed as much as you think. And I have a plan to remind you.”

  He clamped his mouth shut to keep from saying more. The Daryl who’d fallen in love with her wasn’t the same man sitting across from her now. He’d experienced too many disappointments, made too many compromises, suffered through too much loss. Besides, he knew better than to drop his emotional armor around Cassidy. To allow her inside his fortress. They’d damaged each other once upon a time, and he was still leery.

  Yet she captivated him. Not only because of her stunning uniqueness but also by the way she made him feel unique. Special. “Chosen,” not “adopted.” Around her, he wasn’t just an unwanted child, a brother, son, father, rancher... She made him want to know himself again, the man whose dreams he’d forgotten.

  He was falling for Cassidy, he realized as he wrapped his hand around his sweaty soda can...

  ...while acknowledging at the same time she might break him all over again. Would he be content with his insular life, his old self when she inevitably left him again?

  CHAPTER TEN

  CASSIDY LIFTED HER Canon Rebel T5i, sighted through its viewfinder and snapped pictures of worn garments swaying from a clothesline stretched between abandoned factory buildings. Despite the frigid morning temperature, shouting children played keep-away with a can. Some didn’t wear coats, others were missing hats and gloves. A couple were in stocking feet. Her throat swelled at the juxtaposition of innocence and desperation, joy and despair.

  It’d been two weeks before she’d been able to coordinate a date for her and Daryl to document struggling Westerners left behind by relocating manufacturing plants. Her blood fired, despite the chill in the air. She sensed the deeper story: proud workers stuck in the industrial past, unable to find their place in the technological present.

  She blinked stinging eyes. So much for staying detached...but among her own people, she felt more connected than ever to her subjects and their suffering. The need to tell their story clenched her belly and gripped her heart. America had the second-highest poverty rate among rich countries. A living example of a wrong in need of being made right stood before her.

  “This isn’t legal,” Daryl cautioned beside her, clicking away on his old college Canon.

  Despite his warning, his voice cra
ckled with energy. Fire. This was the Daryl she remembered, intense, focused, passionate. He was as affected by this human tragedy as she. Yet the new, mature Daryl, who admitted his imperfections and accepted them in himself and others, drew her just as much. He balanced his work with his family, something she’d never been able to do.

  “Trespassing? Since when has that ever stopped us?” Cassidy trained her camera on a group of men hunched around a rusted barrel. They held their hands over the dancing flames inside it, their lined faces gray with exhaustion and poor health. The stench of burning rubber and garbage stung her nose. “Besides, don’t we have connections with the county sheriff?”

  “Travis doesn’t have jurisdiction here.” Daryl swapped his lens for a wider angle and began firing off shots of the entire tableau, the playing children in the foreground, their weary parents watching in the background, the wasteland of the factory looming over them all.

  “We can handle ourselves.” She clicked a photo of the building’s crumbling brick exterior and the inlaid granite sign reading Great Western Sugar Co.

  “Let’s talk to them.” Daryl lowered his camera and nodded at the men who’d been casting wary glances their way. “We need to hear their story.”

  She nodded, pleased by his zeal. “You sound like a photojournalist, not a rancher.”

  “I’m a human being.” Daryl stowed his camera. “No one should live in these conditions. Especially children.”

  “Agreed.”

  He stopped her. “Thank you for bringing me. For showing me what I’ve been missing.”

  A lump clogged her throat. “And what’s that?”

  “Life,” he said simply.

  Together they approached the adults and a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed her.

  On their first assignment for their college newspaper, she and Daryl had teamed up. They’d planned to investigate rumors of undocumented workers who’d been falsely promised good jobs in America, then been forced to work without pay or risk deportation. When Daryl discovered children working alongside their parents with dangerous equipment, he’d transformed from laid-back cowboy to avenging citizen. He called Border Patrol and the American Civil Liberties Union, confronted the owner, then restrained the man when he tried escaping.