Casey's Courage

by Neva Brown

  Wrapping the afghan around her, she went to the windows to watch the lazy flakes continue to fall, but her attention was drawn to a slight movement under a holly bush in a big clay pot on the deck. A bedraggled cat with its eyes closed crouched under a holly bush seeking protection from the snow.

  Casey hurried to the mudroom, slipped her feet into overshoes and grabbed a towel. Dropping the afghan, she pulled on an old coat hanging on a peg next to the door. Rushing back, she opened the door onto the deck letting in icy cold air.

  Wading through the foot-deep snow, she wrapped the animal in the towel. Back in the house, she rubbed its fur briskly. Only the slightest of breathing let her know the marmalade cat was alive. Laying it on the warm hearth, she took wood from the rack to rebuild the fire. Flames from the hot embers licked up around the new logs giving welcomed warmth. The central heat had kept the house warm, but the fireplace gave off the glowing heat needed. Casey sat on the hearth gently massaging the pitiful animal as she talked.

  “I guess the storm caught you by surprise, too. As soon as I get you dry, I’ll wrap you in a fresh towel and we’ll go to the kitchen and warm some milk. Something warm in your stomach should make you feel better. Think you can wake up and drink a little milk?”

  She grimaced. “Casey, you have made the transition to true spinsterhood. You are living alone and talking to an unconscious cat.”

  Carrying the cat like a baby, she warmed milk in the microwave and sat down at the bar. With infinite patience she spooned drops of milk between the limber feline’s clenched teeth then rubbed its throat. Finally, she felt a tiny volunteer swallow.

  It was mid-morning by the time she had her furry patient comfortable in a wicker basket in the utility room with a box of saw dust for a litter box nearby. She’d just showered and dressed when a loud knock at the front door startled her.

  “So much for isolation,” she grumbled. “Not here twenty-four hours and I’ve already had two visitors.” Hurrying to the door, she caught a glimpse of a man, long past retirement age bundled in a cashmere overcoat, hunched over against the cold. She opened the door. “Come in and get warm.”

  His lips, stiff from the cold, seem to have trouble forming words. “Ma’am, I’m Doyle Warren. I need help. My car slid into the ditch as I was trying to get my wife to the hospital. My cell phone won’t work up here in this weather. Do you have a vehicle that could pull us out?”

  He stood just inside the door, dripping on the terrazzo floor. Imploring eyes, in a face pinched with cold, peered out from a narrow space between the turned-up collar and the brim of his expensive hat.

  Casey’s indecision was only momentary. “There is a Jeep in the garage. I’ll go see if I can find chains and other equipment to get your car out. I just arrived yesterday afternoon, so I’m not sure what is here. Come in and get warm while I look.”

  “I’m okay. I’ll help you. My wife may die if I can’t get her to the hospital. She has a heart condition and her blood pressure is alarmingly high.”

  In the garage, they found emergency equipment and gear hanging in orderly rows along one wall. Casey put insulated coveralls on over her jeans and sweater. They were too big but manageable. By leaving her house shoes on, she made the lace-up boots fit, after a fashion. She tugged an earflap cap down on her head as she dashed back into the kitchen for her own gloves snatching up her purse that lay beside the gloves.

  Returning to the garage, she saw Mr. Warren had loaded most of the equipment. He breathed like a struggling steam engine. Casey speculated manual labor was foreign to him, but admired his efforts as she took a quick inventory of what he had put in the vehicle.

  Satisfied they had the necessities; she climbed into the Jeep. As Mr. Warren got in she started the engine, opened the garage door with the remote and backed out into the foot-deep snow with flakes falling steadily. Feeling the all-weather tires on the vehicle take hold made Casey feel more confident.

  Driving on snow was not her strong suit, but she had managed her pickup and horse trailer in the snow a few times when she’d traveled the circuit.

  With slow, steady acceleration she eased the Jeep down the crooked driveway and onto the farm-to-market blacktop. Less than a mile down the road, they arrived at the sedan with its nose stuck firmly in the snow-filled ditch. As soon as she stopped, Mr. Warren was out the door plowing through the snow to see about his wife.

  Grabbing a shovel and chains, Casey went to the back of the car. She scooped the snow away, making room to get under the car to hook the chains on the frame. Her hip, even after all the rehab, ached from the strenuous work and the cold. She stopped and raised her head as Mr. Warren’s anxious voice asked, “What can I do? We need to hurry. Martha is barely breathing.”

  “Hand me that short chain. Maybe I have enough of the snow out of the way to get my arm in far enough to hook it.”

  Flat on her back in the snow, she inched her way under the vehicle straining to reach the frame. After what seemed like forever, she worked the chain around the heavy metal and secured the hook firmly to a link. She wiggled out from under the car. “Let’s hook the other end to the jeep. Then you need to get in the car and start the motor and guide it as I drag you out onto the road.”

  The tires on the jeep spun and smoked at times but managed to gain purchase and gradually moved the big car back to the road. Once Mr. Warren had the car steered straight in the road, Casey set her emergency break and waded through the snow to tell him she would stay hooked to the car, but for him to drive slowly while she kept the chain taut in case he began to slide again. With steady progress, they made it to the main highway that the snowplow had cleared. Pulling into the slushy parking lot of the convenience store at the crossroads, they made short work of undoing the chain.

  “I’ll follow you on into Ruidoso to the hospital. There may be some slick spots on the highway.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” he said as he slid into the car seat and patted his wife on the hand. “We’re nearly there, Martha. Hang on.”

  Chapter 17

  While Casey struggled in the snow to help the Warrens get to the hospital, Tres was flying his father and Leila to Dallas. He piloted the Cessna through the high, clear Texas sky berating himself for using Casey as a buffer against the matchmaking he had wanted to avoid. His desire to head off any attempts his father would make to set him up with a ‘suitable’ woman had backfired. The desolation in Casey’s eyes as she listened to Jordan and Leila demean her made him feel like a sheep-killing dog. He had watched the light die in her eyes.

  They’d become opaque and flat as she stepped away from him, only a few feet, but she might as well have been on the other side of the world. For months, he had watched her fight back from the brink of death, but he’d never seen the raw pain that shot through her eyes before she became rigidly controlled and walked away. He struggled to understand what had really happened. Hateful as the words had been, they were not vicious enough to trigger Casey’s reaction, he told himself. She appeared stunned, like a person who’d just learned of a loved one’s death.

  As he neared Dallas, he pushed his uneasy thoughts to the recesses of his mind. With practiced skill, he landed the plane then helped get luggage into the rented Mercedes waiting at the airstrip. He left Jordan and Leila in the capable hands of the concierge at the hotel where Jordan’s brokerage house kept a suite of rooms for VIPs. After strained but polite goodbyes, Tres slid into the Mercedes and made his way back to the airport.

  Piloting the plane through a clear, star-studded night, Tres tried to sort out his feelings. He knew he had allowed his life to become enmeshed with Casey’s. It felt good to have her companionship, but other issues lurked, even though he’d sworn to keep them at bay. He wanted to make love with her, but his big-brother feelings made him feel guilty. Knowing the time had come to find out how Casey felt about a sexual relationship, he’d shied away from the remarks about their worlds being poles apart. After all, in this day and age, such things were not
a big deal, he told himself. He knew his world felt right when he was with her, so why shouldn’t they enjoy each other? Granted, she was more than a decade younger than he, but they were both adults now.

  He circled the landing strip to make the motion lights come on so he could see to land. He taxied the plane into the hanger and made short work of getting to the Mansion. Maybe Casey would still be awake, but he found the house quiet. Everyone had retired for the night. He thought about knocking on Casey’s door but she’d had a rough day. They’d get things back on track in the morning. Besides, his desire to be with her, hold her, touch her was too strong for intelligent conversation to take place tonight.

  Tres arrived in the kitchen just as Rosalinda started the coffee the next morning.

  “I didn’t know you needed to get an early start this morning,” she said.

  “I was awake and decided I might as well get up. I’m not in a hurry. When Casey gets up, would you ask her to give me a call on my cell?”

  Rosalinda raised a brow. “Didn’t you know? She left yesterday.”

  “What do you mean she left? Did she go to her folks?”

  “I don’t think she was going to Jake and Pauline’s. She came in looking like she had cried a week. But she was calm and said she needed to go away by herself for a while. I sent Lara up to help her pack, but they mostly just crammed her stuff in that fancy pickup and she left. I don’t know where she went.”

  The hollow feeling Tres felt made him know he had made another bad decision yesterday by not taking care of Casey before his father and Leila. She was not like the worldly-wise women he had associated with. He’d misjudged the depth of her anguish. What had he missed? “What else did she say?”

  “Not much, just that she’d get in touch with Mattie Lou in a few days.”

  “Did she look sick?”

  “Not the way you mean. But she looked like she would break in a thousand pieces if one more thing happened.”

  Tres’ concern accelerated. Had that episode in the solarium triggered something in her head like she had experienced as her memory returned?

  “Did she seem overwrought, or maybe not thinking clearly?”

  “Oh, she was distraught all right, but more brokenhearted than crazy.” Rosalinda glared at him as she thumped down a cup of coffee onto the table in front of him. “I probably shouldn’t say so, but she’s in love with you and has been for years. Something must have happened to reaffirm what her folks have drilled into her since that summer you worked over at the old headquarters.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rosalinda sat down with her cup of coffee and looked him in the eye. “Tres, you’re a rich man and Casey is the daughter of a man who works for you. Maybe from where you sit it doesn’t seem to be a problem, but it is. Things are better than they used to be, but the fact still remains, the rich marry the rich.”

  The anger he had tamped down yesterday boiled up and threatened to choke him. His first thought was to set Rosalinda straight about how he could take care of his own affairs. But he realized that would just be killing the messenger, so to speak. “Rosalinda, I’m Tres. Not just some rich man and I am not marrying anybody as far as I know. I need to find Casey and makes things right.”

  Rosalinda shrugged and got up from the table. “It’s too early to start. I’ll fix you some breakfast. My guess is you didn’t eat much yesterday or sleep much last night so you’ll need fuel for today.”

  Tres sat as if he had been coldcocked. He’d spent so many years avoiding getting trapped in a relationship that demanded more than he wanted to give, he hadn’t given a thought to what Casey’s emotional expectations might be. He knew he had no claim on her, but he had to know she was all right. He ate the food Rosalinda put in front of him without noting what it was.

  Lara came into the kitchen as he drank his after-breakfast cup of coffee. “Casey left this note for you,” she told Tres as she handed him a folded piece of paper.

  He studied the hastily scribbled message.

  I’m going away to be by myself to figure out what to do with my life. I’ve been drifting along, taking the way of the least resistance for some time. Now it’s time for me to put away my childish dreams and get on with my life. There is no way to thank you enough for all you’ve done for me, but, please know that you will always have a special place in my heart. Don’t worry about me anymore.

  I wish you the best.

  Casey

  Without thinking, he blurted out, “Just who does she think she is telling me not to worry? She has no business going off without making arrangements.” Shoving his chair back from the table, he stormed out of the room.

  “Serves him right,” Rosalinda said. “He should’ve paid attention to what was going on right under his nose. Men!”

  Tres paced the floor in his office. His temper boiled and churned. Why the hell hadn’t J.D. had some kind of written contract with her so everybody knew where they stood? She was on the ranch insurance as an employee, but she had never received a salary. What kind of way was that to tend to business? He picked up the phone to call Jake, telling himself he’d find her and give her something to worry about, going off like this.

  Jake’s response to Tres’ inquiry about Casey was terse.

  “When Casey called, Pauline and Maria were in Cielo Alto so all we got was a message on the answering machine saying she would be away for a while. Said she’d be in touch later.”

  “Did she leave an address where she can be reached?”

  “No, she’s lost all sense of responsibility. Never thought she’d turn out like this. I’m sorry for all the trouble she’s caused you.”

  “No need to apologize for Casey. She’s had lots of trauma to overcome in the past few months. We may have expected too much from her too soon. If you hear from her, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.”

  Jake’s remarks irritated him almost as much as Rosalinda’s message. Didn’t they realize how fragile Casey was? His thoughts stopped dead in their tracks when he recognized he had been just as guilty as they were, if not more so. He had expected her to carry off a charade of romance, knowing she had limited experience.

  The phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. “One of the bulldozers clearing Dark Canyon unearthed some Indian ruins,” Dan said. “If you have time, we need to go talk to the contractor. It seems like there’re government rules about dealing with things like this.”

  His first thought was to tell Dan to take care of it, but he knew he needed to distance himself from his anger with his father and Leila, as well as Casey who had breached his defenses. He forced himself to concentrate on what Dan was saying about getting an expert from the University of Texas to fly in and cordon off the area so the dozers wouldn’t disturb any more of the ruins.

  “I’ll be ready in ten minutes. Can you pick me up, or do I need to meet you there?”

  “I can pick you up. We can talk as we drive over there about the best way to keep the work going without getting cross ways with the authorities,” Dan said.

  Ranch business demanded Tres’ attention, but concern for Casey nagged at him. A hollow feeling inside dimmed the joy of meeting and beating the challenges of the day. Did he need to give Casey some time, or did he need to get a private investigator on the job looking for her to be sure she was okay? By the time he sat down to dinner with Mattie Lou that evening, he knew he needed to worry about Casey from afar for a few days.

  “I had an email from Casey today,” Mattie Lou said. “She apologized for not being here to help with the Thanksgiving Day gathering, but said it was necessary for her to be away for a time.”

  “Was she all right?” Tres asked, noting the way his heart beat spiked and palms had started sweating. She just had to be safe.

  “She didn’t say,” Mattie Lou said. “I guess so. There was nothing unusual about the message. I hope she comes back soon. I hadn’t said anything, but I’ve been making plans to spend some time in Scotland with relatives ove
r Christmas. I’d thought Casey would be here so you wouldn’t be alone. Now I’m not sure I should go.”

  “Of course you should go if you want to,” Tres said. “When did you get this idea?”

  “Some of my cousins wrote earlier asking me to come after I wrote to one of them saying it would be difficult to have Christmas without J.D. here at Spencer Mansion. Then Janelle’s niece, who has been here for a visit, suggested I travel with her back to Scotland. She has done a lot of traveling and said she would see me safely to my cousin’s estate near Edinburgh. But I’d have to leave the week after Thanksgiving if I go with her.”

  “This sounds like a perfect opportunity for you to go and not have to hire someone to travel with you and have to make accommodations for her while you visit with your family.”

  “To be honest, I’d just about decided I couldn’t go. I think I’d be too afraid to go by myself at this stage in my life.”

  “Don’t give a thought to my being here with or without Casey. I’m used to fending for myself, as you well know. Is there anything I can do to help you get ready to go?”

  “The only thing I can think of is helping make the Thanksgiving Day gathering a success. It’s always been so important to J.D. and is somewhat of a tradition for the ranch.”

  “You just tell me what is needed and I’ll try to do it,” Tres said as he found himself railing silently at Casey for having gone off at this time. Didn’t she realize she was needed here?

  He pulled himself up short. Once again he, just like others, wanted Casey to do something for them, without giving her needs consideration. I’m just as bad as Jake and J.D., expecting her to fall in line with my plans.

  How the hell was he supposed to deal with the hollow feeling Casey’s leaving caused and still present a happy front for everybody that showed up for Thanksgiving? He didn’t like himself or his thoughts very much at the moment.