Friendly shook his head. “Not that I know of, but that young detective, Richardson, plays his cards pretty close to his vest.”
“I suppose that’s best.” Karen glanced around. At six-three in his boots, Cassidy had the advantage of height on most of the males in the room. Her spirits drooped even lower when she realized he wasn’t in sight.
“Shall we?” Friendly asked, offering his arm.
As Karen slipped her hand into the crook of the councilman’s elbow and allowed him to lead her through the throng, she couldn’t help thinking about the early days of her marriage when nothing short of a cataclysm would have pried Cassidy from her side.
Chapter Four
By eight-thirty, the formalities had been concluded, which for most of the attendees meant that the real party could start. Slim-Boy Brown and the Old Time Fiddlers tuned their instruments and a couple of slicked-up, freshly barbered and cologned cowboys eager to dance with the pretty ladies cleared a space near the bandstand.
With a whoop of excitement, one of Cassidy’s hired hands led a shy, freckled teenager onto the floor, and Slim-Boy shouted for the dancing to commence. Like a restless herd surging toward an open gate, couples spilled into the cleared area, some in jeans and boots, others in suits and sleek cocktail dresses, while friends and strangers alike cheered them on.
Across the cavernous hall, barbecued ribs and chicken sizzled on the grill of a huge old-fashioned chuck wagon while the caterer and her staff of gingham-clad cowgirls ladled up coleslaw and potato salad by the gallon. Nearby, bartenders in flannel shirts and derby hats served beer and wine to thirsty customers. As the bottles and kegs emptied, the noise level rose.
In the midst of the gaiety, Cassidy stood alone near the open doors of the main entrance, the silk tie he’d carefully knotted two hours earlier now wrenched free of the stiff collar, his patience thinned to tissue paper.
“Somethin’ tells me you’d rather be out chasing strays than proppin’ up the wall,” Travis Stockwell commented as he ambled Cassidy’s way.
Cassidy straightened, and for good measure, gave the knot of his tie another jerk. “You got that right,” he said as he saluted the younger man with the can of soda he’d been nursing for the past hour.
“‘Pears to me you’d do better to grab you one of these,” Travis advised, indicating the long-necked beer bottle in his big hand.
Cassidy gave it some thought. He hadn’t been drunk since the night of his father’s funeral. Now, on the rare occasions that he indulged, he limited himself to two beers. Eight years of watching his old man dive deeper and deeper into a bottle had made him cautious.
“Guess I’ll stick with the soft stuff,” he said, taking a swig. “Got me a mare ready to foal any minute now.” He’d been right to call Russell. Golden Girl had gone into labor an hour after they’d headed for town.
Travis nodded, one cowboy to another. “The bay?” he asked after taking a long pull on the bottle.
“No, the palomino, Golden Girl out of Goldenrod.”
“I’m guessin’ she’s a maiden, for all the worryin’ you’re doin’.”
“You guess right.”
Travis acknowledged that with an understanding nod. “Is that the mare you bred to that wild stallion I been hearing about?”
“Yeah. Took me two years to finally get a rope on that big white hellion. Bred him three times, last time to the Girl. Damn near lost two men trying to control him.”
Travis’s brown eyes gleamed. “Heard you set him free after he covered your mares.”
Cassidy nodded. He’d seen the stallion a time or two since, racing the wind across the wildest part of the Lazy S. As free as God made him.
“Word is you had a couple of sweet offers to take him off your hands, provided, of course, he was green broke.”
“One or two.”
“You figure he couldn’t be broke?”
Cassidy shrugged. “Didn’t seem right to try.”
Travis digested that in silence, then nodded. “You thinkin’ to sell the palomino’s foal?”
“Not unless I care to spend the rest of my life explainin’ my reasons to my daughter.”
Travis snorted over the sound of nearby laughter. “Yeah, I know what you mean. My sweet Virginia’s only a little past nine months and already she’s got me bustin’ my butt to make her happy. Peggy says I’m spoiling both my kids.”
Cassidy heard the note of self-conscious contentment in Travis’s voice and felt a sharp pang of envy. From rodeo gypsy to family man in the wink of an eye. A hell of a transition, he decided, but it seemed to suit Travis damned well. At least he had had a choice about becoming a father, Cassidy thought, then felt like an ass. Karen hadn’t gotten herself pregnant all by her lonesome.
“You still intending to take your family with you when the tour starts up again?” he asked during a lull in the music.
“Yep. Got me a honey of an RV and Peggy loves it. She’s got it all decorated real pretty, even has a corner fixed up like a nursery for the babies. Says it’s like taking her nest with her wherever she goes.”
Cassidy took a long breath. He and Karen had worked for days on the baby’s room, racing to get it done before Karen’s due date. Damn, if they hadn’t had fun, too. His heart ached at the memory of his new bride’s laughing eyes when he’d swung her off the ladder and kissed her senseless. They’d ended up making love on the floor amid paint cans and roller pans. He shifted, frowned. The hardness that had subsided started to throb again and he cursed the idiots who’d come up with the idea for this bash in the first place.
“Sounds like Peggy’s not planning on going back to work anytime soon.” Travis shook his head. “No way! She’s got all she can handle with me and the twins.”
Cassidy hid his jealousy behind a grin. “Guess it’s a toss-up who demands the most TLC, you or the babies.”
Travis chuckled. “You could say that, yeah. Course, me being the easygoing sort, I don’t take a lot of care. Mostly just the tender lovin’ part.”
After giving an obligatory chuckle, Cassidy took another sip of soda pop and let his gaze wander over the crowd. The dancing had started again, and he let his attention linger for a moment on one of the couples, friends of Karen’s from the hospital. Noah Howell and his wife Amanda. Both doctors.
The last time he’d done time in this suit and tie, he’d been attending their wedding. From the way they were squeezing up to each other tonight, their thighs rubbing in time with the waltz, he figured the honeymoon was far from over.
Give ’em another few years and the groom would be leaning against a wall and wishing he could go home while the happy bride was off on her own, gossiping with her friends. Like Karen, he thought as he shifted his gaze to the cluster of tables to his left where she was laughing with a sleek blonde in a filmy dress the color of wood smoke. It took him a moment to place the face. Olivia’s daughter, Eve, had come home for the funeral, and a few weeks later she’d up and married one of his poker-playing buddies, Rio Redtree.
Weddings and babies. Hell, it was an epidemic.
Karen said it was all due to the horrendous spring storm, and that a sociologist from Denver was doing a study to see if the increase in life-altering changes was the result of heightened emotions.
Emotions. Hell, he thought. It was sex that produced weddings, just like it produced babies. The hot, steamy kind of sex that took a man by storm and messed up all his well-ordered plans.
His body stirring once more, he watched Karen laughing at something Eve had just said and brooded on the long restless nights he’d spent lately staring at the ceiling, his body hard and aching to be buried in his wife’s soft warmth.
Before he’d met Karen, he hadn’t known he had any real tenderness in him. The women he’d cared enough about to take to bed had excited other things in him. Hot, turbulent needs that settled as quickly as they rose. Dark, angry emotions that set his teeth on edge, even as he exerted a will of iron to keep his hands from
bruising and his need from galloping out of control.
But somehow, with Karen, the ferocity of his needs was tempered by the greatest contentment he’d ever known. Somehow, when he was holding her in his arms, his sated body still sheathed by hers, the accusing voice inside his head was silent, allowing him peace.
He’d been shaken right down to his boots to realize he’d wanted her love desperately, wanted something he’d stopped believing in on his tenth birthday. Wanted what he, himself, was no longer able to offer a woman.
He drew a breath and watched her lift her wineglass to her lips. He longed to feel that lush, sweet mouth on his, opening eagerly, her hands clutching at his shoulders as she made soft pleading noises in her throat.
Even now, when a part of him hated her for being so stubborn, he wanted her more than any other woman he’d ever known. His sweet wife, the mother of his child. The hottest lady in the room, bar none.
A need to hold her tore through him, as raw as a bloody gash left by a brush from a rusty barb. It wasn’t safe to let himself think about loving her. It would never be safe. The closest he came was a fierce desire to protect her and spoil her and make love to her so thoroughly she would forget to notice he’d never said those three little words that came so easily to her lips.
Lost in his brooding thoughts, it took him a moment to realize Travis had asked him a question. “Sorry, run that by me one more time?” he said as he shifted his gaze Travis’s way.
A strange look came and went in the other man’s eyes before Travis’s mouth sidled up into a smug half smile. “I was just asking if things are any better between you and Karen, but from the droolin’ you been doin’ just watching her across the room, I gotta figure they are.”
Cassidy scowled. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon you keep your figurin’ to yourself.”
Travis lifted the bottle for one long, last swallow before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Take the advice of an old married guy like me, Cass. Point those shiny Sunday boots of yours toward that pretty lady in blue yonder and ask her to dance.” He chuckled. “Better yet, hustle her on home so you can finish the evening off right, just the two of you.”
Cassidy restricted his response to a shrug. “Can’t leave until the kid with the camera takes our picture for the Herald. Hell, he even wanted Rags in the shot. Vicki’s got him all prettied up and smelling like a whorehouse pet for the occasion.”
“Hell of a note, ain’t it. A man’s got his mind set on a soft bed and an even softer woman, and some darn photographer wants to snap his picture.”
Travis slapped Cassidy on the back before shoving his hat back another fraction of an inch. “Time for this old boy to snag himself another cold one. You sure I can’t bring you one?”
Because he was suddenly tempted, Cassidy shook his head. “I’ll stick with colored water for a while longer.”
Travis nodded. “Tell you what. If I see that photographer, I’ll herd him your way.”
Cassidy grunted something noncommittal and Travis shrugged before slipping back into the crowd, leaving Cassidy alone with his thoughts—and regrets.
Across the room, Karen finished her second glass of white wine, then sat playing with the empty goblet, her foot tapping in time to the fiddle music. A smile played across her lips as she remembered her stint in dancing school. She’d had two left feet and a determination to lead, which had added a certain element of conflict to the traditional box step.
With Cassidy, however, there’d been no contest. No chance to exert her own will. Even if she’d tried, he wouldn’t have allowed it. Cassidy danced as he made love, demanding her submission even as he made her tremble with longing for more.
How long had it been since he’d pulled her into his arms and swept her into a whirl of pleasure? Months? Years?
A wave of pure jealousy swept over her as she watched Noah and Amanda cuddle in time to the music. It was obvious that Noah adored his new wife. Karen already knew how Amanda felt about her husband. No one who’d spent any time at the hospital these past months could fail to know.
The woman was over-the-moon in love.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m crazy about happy endings,” Eve murmured as she, too, watched the Howells swaying in time to the music.
Karen nodded, her smile tinged with an envy she was too weary to hide. “Speaking of happy endings, I would say that yours is right up there with the best of them.”
“Definitely at the top of the list,” Eve replied with a grin. “I still wake up every morning and pinch myself to make sure I’m not trapped in my own personal fantasy.”
“If you are, Rio and Molly seem to be pretty content to be trapped in there with you.”
“Thank goodness.”
Eve took a sip of her wine, while at the same time casting a hopeful look at the nearby faces. Looking for the man she loved, Karen suspected, just as she’d searched earlier for a glimpse of Cassidy.
“If you’re craning your neck in order to find that handsome husband of yours, I saw him over by the speaker’s dais about twenty minutes ago,” Karen teased before she, too, let her gaze wander. A smile curved her lips as she caught a glimpse of Vicki and Rags talking with Elizabeth Lindstrom Bennett before the crowd shifted, blocking her view.
“Poor Rio,” Eve said with a sigh. “While everyone else is playing, he’s working.”
“Covering the reception for the Herald?”
Eve nodded. “And he is not happy about it. He told the editor he’s the assistant editor now, not a social columnist.”
Karen laughed at the image of hard-bitten Rio Redtree waxing lyrical over Edna Friendly’s hot pink cocktail frock.
“Don’t laugh,” Eve muttered, her blue eyes dancing. “Molly and I threatened to brain him with his precious iPad if he didn’t stop grousing.”
“Sounds totally reasonable.” Karen drew a breath, then leaned forward slightly. “Speaking of investigations, has Rio come up with anything new about your mother’s murder?”
Eve’s blue eyes clouded. “Nothing he’s willing to make public.”
“What about the police?”
“They’re still trying to find Dean Springer. Rio’s pretty sure he’s out of the country by now, especially since he must have read about the Jackson case in the paper. As a matter of procedure, though, the police have people checking the airports and the borders.”
Karen nodded. “Who is this Joanna Jackson?”
Eve shrugged. “No one really knows. And that might not even be her real name.”
“It doesn’t seem right that the district attorney would let a woman like that make a deal.”
“I agree. I was beside myself when I first heard about it.” Her eyes grew sad. “No matter what they do to her, though, it won’t bring Mother back.”
“My mother misses yours terribly. We all do.”
“Molly still talks a lot about her Grandma.” Eve squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “But at least she has another grandmother now. And I have a mother-in-law.”
“How’s that going?”
“Up and down, like most things.”
Karen commiserated with a glance. “That’s one problem I never had.”
“Cassidy’s mother is dead?”
“No, missing.”
Eve blinked. “Pardon?”
“She left Cassidy and his father on Cassidy’s tenth birthday.”
“Good heavens. How terrible for Cassidy!”
Karen’s gaze was caught by a tall man with black hair standing near the bar, and she started to smile, only to be disappointed when the man turned his head, showing a profile that was far less rugged than Cassidy’s and a chin that was decidedly weak.
“A great example of motherly love, isn’t it?” Karen muttered before shifting her gaze to the man in bartender’s garb standing a few feet away, waiting to be noticed.
Although Martin Smith was Noah’s patient, Karen had been present during some of his e
xaminations. Blond and blue-eyed, he was as fair as Cassidy was dark, but there was something about the angle of his jaw and the set of those big shoulders that reminded her of her husband.
Alpha males, one of her psychology professors had called men like them. Assertive, protective and powerful. Superior specimens.
Did Martin have a wife waiting for him somewhere? Wondering and worrying? Grieving? Did he have children praying every night for their daddy’s safe return? It broke her heart to imagine how Vicki would feel if her father should suddenly disappear from her life.
“How are you feeling?” she asked Martin when the three of them had exchanged greetings.
“Antsy to find out the name of the guy behind this face.” His grin, like everything else about him, was controlled. Though she had no hard facts to back her up, she would bet a year’s salary the man didn’t earn his living behind a desk.
“It will all come back to you, Martin,” she reassured him. “You just have to be patient until it does.”
He nodded, but she sensed the weight of the despair he must be feeling. “The caterer asked me to play waiter for a while.” His startlingly blue eyes flickered to Karen’s empty wineglass. “Care for another?”
Karen started to refuse with thanks, then changed her mind. “Sure, why not?” Drowning her sorrows in Chardonnay might be tacky, but at the moment, she didn’t care. Besides, she had tomorrow off. A perk of being one of the town’s honored guests tonight.
“Make that two,” Eve said with an airy grin. “Rio is the designated driver for this evening.”
Karen drew a breath. “I never thought to check with Cassidy.” Why should she when she’d never once known him to have more than a beer or two, and that rarely.
“Where is Cassidy, anyway?” Eve asked, her gaze idly roaming from group to group. “I haven’t seen him all evening.”
“Oh, he’s around someplace.”
Her fingers toyed with the napkin beneath her empty wineglass, and the tiny diamond in her engagement ring caught the light, flashing blue fire. She’d been over-the-moon ecstatic when Cassidy had slipped it on her finger.
The Parent Plan Page 6