by Lisa Jackson
“Same here,” Bliss said, though what she’d found out about this woman had been recent and she wasn’t holding her breath that the story her father gave her was the entire truth. Besides, not only had Brynnie wed more than her share of husbands, but she’d been a married man’s lover. That thought was sour, no matter how hard Bliss tried to swallow it.
John captured Brynnie in a bear hug and, with his arm still slung over her shoulders, led them all through the kitchen and onto the back porch. A sweating pitcher of iced tea and several glasses were waiting on the picnic table.
“Looks like you were expecting me,” Brynnie said.
“All Bliss’s doin’.”
“Thoughtful.”
“Thanks.” Bliss didn’t know what to say. This was, after all, the woman with whom her father had been involved in an affair, the woman who had knowingly cheated on Margaret Cawthorne, the woman who had gotten pregnant with John’s child while he was married.
Forcing a smile she didn’t feel, Bliss told herself that discretion, if she could find it, was the better part of valor. Her mother was dead, had known of the affair and dealt with it in her own way. Somehow Bliss should do the same. But as she poured the tea into glasses, watching the slices of lemon dance, she felt a stinging loss, a pain deep in her heart, and she nearly slopped tea onto the table.
They sat in deck chairs in the shade of a larch tree. A breeze moved across the rolling acres, stirring the leaves and bending the grass of a field of hay not yet mown. The sound of sprinklers jetting water to irrigate the surrounding pastures vied with the distant hum of traffic far off on the highway.
“I know this is hard for you,” Brynnie ventured as she set her glass on the table. Her fingernails were long and squared off and matched the peach gloss of her lips.
“Very.”
“It’s hard on everyone,” John said thoughtfully, a hint of regret in his voice.
“Well, here goes.” Brynnie looked Bliss straight in the eye. “Look, honey, I’m not proud of everything I’ve done in my life. Lord knows, I’ve made more than my share of mistakes and I’ll probably make a few more before they bury me.
“Gettin’ involved with your dad was inevitable, believe me, but our timing was always wrong. Well, maybe there never could have been a good time. But you have to believe me when I tell you that I never meant to hurt your ma.”
Bliss didn’t say anything. Her throat was too tight and her eyes stung with unshed tears.
“From all I’ve heard, she was a good woman. Deserved better.” Brynnie’s brown eyes shadowed with a pain she’d borne for years, but still, Bliss wasn’t completely moved.
“She deserved the best,” Bliss said. She slashed a glance at her father and noticed the hardening of his jaw, the determined set of his chin. Her mother had always said he was a stubborn man.
“I’m making no excuses, Bliss. Never claimed to be a knight in shining armor. Sure, I’ve made my share of mistakes just like Brynnie said. But then, what man, or woman for that matter, hasn’t?”
Bliss cast a mental glance at her own fractured love life. Her first and, really, only love had been Mason Lafferty, and surely that relationship had been doomed from the start. With trembling hands, she lifted her glass and took a sip of tea. The cool liquid slid down her throat as she pushed Mason from her mind and concentrated on her father, who had taken out his pocketknife and was avoiding her gaze as he cleaned his fingernails with a sharp blade.
“Unfortunate as it is, Blissie, your ma’s gone now and Brynnie’s divorced. Seems as if we’re finally gettin’ a break and this time we’re gonna grab it. It’s about time.”
“Amen,” Brynnie said and reached over to pat John’s hand. Her rings sparkled in the sunlight and Bliss couldn’t help but wonder how many of the jeweled bands had been given to her on her various wedding days by her ex-husbands and which, if any, had been gifts from her secret lover.
Brynnie’s smile seemed genuine and for the first time Bliss caught a glimmer of what her father saw in a woman who was so unlike her socially upstanding and rigid mother. Brynnie seemed like someone who could roll with the punches and always land on her feet. Nonjudgmental. No false sense of pride. No matter what challenges life tossed this woman’s way, Bliss guessed that Brynnie handled them and managed to end up grinning.
“I, uh, I hope you’re happy,” Bliss said, more for the sake of conversation than from conviction. In truth, hadn’t everyone suffered enough? Reluctantly she conceded her father his point. It was time to make a stand, to recognize his other daughters, to find a place for all his family. She just wasn’t sure that she could be a part of it.
“We will be happy, won’t we, darlin’?” Her father nodded and his mouth turned up at the corners.
“Absolutely. That’s all there is to life, isn’t it? Being happy.” Brynnie appeared to relax a little, although she avoided looking directly into John’s eyes.
“As long as you don’t hurt anyone in the process,” Bliss interjected.
“Never intend to.” John was adamant.
“Never,” Brynnie agreed, clearing her throat.
Bliss couldn’t remember when she’d been more uncomfortable. She took another long swallow of the tea and watched several honeybees flit from one opening rose blossom to the next. In the lacy branches above them a squirrel scolded noisily, and off in the distance a horse’s whinny sounded over the rumble of a tractor chugging through the fields.
“You know, there’s someone who’s pretty darned anxious to meet you.” Brynnie reached into a worn suede bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?” she asked, and Bliss shook her head. “Good. I know it’s a nasty habit and I should quit, but…oh, well, what can I say? I just love to smoke.” She shook out a long white filter tip, lit up and waved out her match. “My daughter, Katie, is dying to talk to you.”
“Is she?” Bliss’s stomach knotted. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To see her half sister, even if it meant coming face-to-face with the fact that her father had been unfaithful to her mother. She found a little bit of pride deep in her own innards and managed to force some starch into her backbone. “I’d like to meet her, too.”
The minute the words were out, Bliss regretted them. This was all happening way too fast. She sensed that she’d just hopped aboard an emotional freight train that was suddenly careening out of control.
“Good.” Brynnie’s grin was infectious. “I’ll let her know and we’ll set something up. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to know her son, Josh, as well.” Brynnie’s eyes sparkled. “My first and only grandchild so far, though I’m counting on a dozen more.” She sighed and tapped ash onto the lawn. “I’m afraid that Josh, devil that he is, has got Grandma’s heart twisted around his little finger.”
“Several times,” John said with a chuckle as the telephone rang.
“I’ll get it,” Bliss said, starting to stand, but her father, already on his feet, waved her back to her chair.
“Stay put. I’m expecting a call.”
As she watched Bliss’s father close the screen door behind him, Brynnie drummed her fingers nervously on the armrest of her plastic deck chair. “I worry about him, you know,” she admitted, then dragged hard on her cigarette. “He makes light of that heart attack, but you can’t convince me it was nothing. If it was nothing, he wouldn’t have had to suffer through that god-awful surgery.” She eyed the glowing end of her cigarette, then frowned regretfully. “I’ll have to give these up,” she decided, her brow furrowing. “I hate to, but I can’t have them around the house tempting him.” She slid Bliss a conspiring glance. “I guess I’ll have to sneak one now and again. Just because I’m gonna get married, I can’t give up all my vices.” She bit anxiously on the corner of her lip. “This place…all the worries and work here, it’s too much for him, don’t you think?”
“I guess so. But he loves it.”
“Lord, don’t I know? But his health is the main thing, my big worry. He can’t ex
pect to put in fifteen- or even ten-hour days around here.”
‘‘No…” Bliss agreed, wondering where the conversation was leading.
“He’s just got to sell.” She took another nervous puff.
Bliss laughed. “I thought you knew him better than that.”
“He just needs to be convinced.” Brynnie licked her lips. “I guess that’s my job. Uh-oh, now who’s riling him up?” she asked as John’s voice filtered through the screen door.
“Dammit!” The receiver crashed into its cradle and the door was flung open so hard it banged against the house. “What the hell’s going on?” John demanded.
“Now, honey,” Brynnie said as she squashed her cigarette in the grass with the sole of her sandal.
“I can’t believe you went behind my back,” he charged.
“Oh, Lordy.”
“So it’s true!”
“John, just listen,” Brynnie placated.
“To what?” Bliss was missing something—something important.
“I got off the phone with my attorney and he’s been checking some things out with the county—the deeds and titles and records.” Her father’s expression was thunderous and he looked more like the hard-driven man she’d known as a girl. “It seems that my fiancée here has been doing some business that I didn’t know anything about.”
“I can explain,” Brynnie said.
“You sold my ranch to Lafferty.”
“My half,” she said, standing and lifting a reddish eyebrow that dared him to argue the point. “And I’d do it again. Like that!” She snapped her fingers.
“Wait a minute,” Bliss interjected. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple. I deeded over part of the ranch to Brynnie for her and Katie—security if anything happened to me—and now I find out that she sold her parcel to Lafferty.”
Bliss didn’t move.
“John, now, don’t get upset,” Brynnie suggested.
“I’m already upset. Way past it, in fact. I think it’s time you told me what the hell’s goin’ on.” His face was a mask of raw anger, his lips tight over his teeth.
“I—I had to do something. While you were in Seattle, in a hospital bed because of your heart, I had a lot of time to think,” Brynnie began, her fingers nervously scratching her throat. “Oh, Lord, I need another cigarette.”
“Just finish.” John scowled darkly, as if he were already reading his fiancée’s mind.
“All right, I will. The truth of the matter is that I’ve spent too many years waiting for you as it is and I don’t want to lose you. That heart attack scared me and I thought, well, I knew, that you’d come back here and work yourself to death, so I…I knew that Mason was moving back here to be closer to his daughter. He’d always been interested in the place, so I called him up and sold my part of the ranch to him.”
“Just like that,” he challenged.
“Just like that.” Brynnie didn’t back down.
“I expected as much from him, but not from you, Brynnie. Never you. He hornswoggled you, didn’t he?”
Brynnie swallowed back the tears in her throat. “No, John,” she said. “This was all my idea.”
John lowered himself onto a bench pushed up against the house. “But you know how much this place means to me.”
“I’m hoping I mean more,” Brynnie said, her chin trembling as she dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips.
John shook his head and Bliss decided they needed to be alone to sort this all out. “I need to drive into town,” she said, “for some supplies. I’m setting up an office in the den and this looks like a good time. You two need to talk. Alone.”
“No, please,” Brynnie said. “Don’t run off. We’ll work this out—”
Bliss smiled and lied through her teeth. “I’m sure. Listen, it was great to finally meet you, but, really, I’ve got to go. Bye, Dad.” With a wave, she hurried into the house and grabbed her purse.
She was going to drive into town, all right, but her trip had nothing to do with supplies. Nope. She was going to track Mason Lafferty down and get the straight story.
If the man was capable of anything other than lies.
CHAPTER FIVE
Bliss jammed on the parking brake in the shade of an ancient oak tree and as the engine of her Mustang cooled, she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. Some of her anger should have dissipated during the drive into town, but it hadn’t and even though she took the time to call the phone company and locate Mason’s apartment, here in this huge Victorian manor, she was still ready to read him the riot act.
Who was he to think that he could deal with Brynnie behind her father’s back? Why in the world was he so interested in the ranch? For once John Cawthorne was right. There were dozens of other ranches Mason could purchase; all he had to do was talk to a real-estate agent or two.
“Bastard,” she muttered as she climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut. She strode up the front walk, past a rose garden and a sign that advertised an apartment for rent. On the front porch, she punched the bell and heard the peal of melodic chimes.
Footsteps scurried inside the house and within seconds a little girl of about three yanked open the door. “Mommy,” she called over her shoulder just as a woman with her black hair clipped into a makeshift French braid appeared. She was wiping her hands on a towel and smiled when she saw Bliss.
“Just a second.” With a disapproving look at the little curly-haired imp, she said, “Christina, you know better than to open the door without me.”
“But—”
“We’ll talk about it later.” She picked up the pouting child, balanced her on a hip and turned all of her attention back to Bliss. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m Bliss Cawthorne…a friend of Mason Lafferty’s.” That was stretching the truth just a little, but it didn’t matter, did it? From the look on this woman’s face, though, she might have said she’d just flown in from Jupiter.
“His…friend,” the woman, obviously stunned, repeated. Maybe she had a thing for Mason, or was already involved with him. So who cared? Right now, all Bliss wanted to do was take Mason to task.
“I have his address, but not which apartment is his.”
“Cawthorne?”
“John Cawthorne’s my father,” Bliss answered automatically, and wondered at the tension tightening the corners of the woman’s mouth.
“He rents a unit in the back,” the woman said, still eyeing Bliss with a sense of horror—or was it just curiosity?—for she managed a thin, though certainly not warm, smile again. “Upper level of the carriage house.”
“Dee Dee’s daddy?” the cherub with the dark curls asked.
“Mmm.”
Dee Dee’s daddy. The thought of Mason fathering a child did strange things to her. “Thanks,” she managed to say, though she barely noticed what happened to mother and daughter as she walked around the corner of the house and along a tree-lined drive.
Would she ever have a child of her own? A baby? “Stop it,” she muttered, ignoring that empty barb that pricked her soul as she thought about her childless state. She wasn’t a hundred years old, for crying out loud. There was still time—plenty of it. She just had to find the right man. Oh, right. Like that’s going to happen anytime soon.
Rounding the corner of the main house, she spied a second tall building with paned windows, black shutters and the same gray siding as the main house. A private staircase led to the second story, and despite the perspiration on her palms, she marched up each step. She rapped on the door and was rewarded with Mason, all six feet of him looming directly in front of her.
“Well, Ms. Cawthorne,” he drawled, his gold eyes silently appraising. “What brings you here?”
“We need to talk.”
“Do we?” His smile slid from one side of his square jaw to the other.
“About Dad.”
He leaned a shoulder on the doorjamb. “Come on, Bliss. I bet if you think real hard, you ca
n come up with a better topic than that.”
“Do you?”
With that same amused, cocky smile, he stepped out of the doorway. “Come on in.” As she passed, he added, “How about something to drink? Soda? Coffee? Something stronger?”
“I don’t think a drink is the answer,” she said as she tossed her purse into one of the few chairs in a room with glossy wood floors, windows opened slightly to let in the hot summer breeze and walls paneled in yellowed knotty pine.
He left the door ajar, allowing a bit of cross ventilation as Bliss realized they were alone for the first time in a decade. Goose bumps rose on the back of her neck and the fragrances of honeysuckle and rose swept through the narrow room.
“Let me guess. You’re here because I bought part of the ranch from Brynnie,” he said, as if he’d been expecting her.
“Right out from under Dad’s nose.”
“She approached me.”
“And you just couldn’t say no, could you?” Bliss said, folding her arms over her chest.
“I didn’t want to.” The smile fell from his face and she noticed the fans of crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. “I’ve always liked the place. Dreamed of owning it years ago.”
“And now there’s a chance to get back at Dad.”
“That wasn’t the intention.”
“Sure.”
He crossed the room and stood directly in front of her. She’d forgotten how intimidating he was, hadn’t remembered that the scent of him sent unwanted tingles through her blood. The temperature in the carriage house seemed to shoot upward ten degrees, and she found drawing a breath much harder than it had been. “Why, exactly, did you come over here?” he asked.
No reason to avoid the truth. “I think you manipulated this—this ridiculous situation. Somehow you convinced Brynnie that she needed to sell.”