“But inevitably.”
Cassidy thought he’d never seen his Kari looking more beautiful. Or more nervous. He took that as a good sign because to take it any other way was unacceptable.
“I, uh, thought we could set up the tables in the side yard, under the aspens. There’s good shade there, and the house will keep off most of the dust.”
“That’s a good idea.” She cleared her throat, and he thought it was the sexiest sound he’d ever heard. “I can hang the piñatas from the lower branches—unless you have time to help?”
He felt his stomach jerk. “I have time.”
She nodded, her teeth worrying the inside of her lower lip. When he found himself doing the same thing, he damn near groaned in embarrassment.
“I should clean up first,” he said, because that was the only coherent thought in his head.
“Don’t bother on my account.”
He shifted. “I smell like horse sh…dung.”
Her mouth softened into the first real smile she’d given him since she arrived, and he allowed himself a cautious moment to hope.
“How are you doing?” she asked softly.
“Okay.” He glanced down and concentrated on worrying his hat for a few seconds. “I’m not drinking.”
“I know. Billy told me.” She’d done her homework and learned that a person with a certain chemistry and a predisposition to alcoholism could become addicted after only a few heavy bouts of drinking, which is exactly what she suspected had happened with Cassidy.
Karen saw his shoulders tense and braced herself. When he simply nodded, she felt the awful band of uncertainty cinching her chest ease up a little. “Has it been rough?”
“Rough enough. I’m handling it.” He lifted his gaze to hers. His eyes were still dark, still rimmed with burnished gold around the edges. There was wariness there, and a fierce intelligence that she suspected would push the IQ charts to the limit. And for an instant, tenderness so overpowering it stripped her bare.
“I’m doing what you asked me to, Kari. I’m trying.”
Her lips parted in a shaky smile that tested his control more savagely than the craving for alcohol ever could. “I’m glad.”
“I can’t make any promises yet.”
“All right.”
He couldn’t stand it. He had to touch her. “Kari.”
Karen thought she’d never heard so much longing in one simple word. “Yes?” she whispered. The tenderness was back in his eyes, and along with it, a desire so strong it took her breath.
“You never said what you bought. In the mall,” he amplified when she frowned.
She let her lips curve just a little. It was going to be okay. She knew it. She felt it. And she wanted to shout with happiness. But all her instincts told her that she had to let Cassidy find his own way in his own time. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to give him a little nudge in the right direction. “A nightgown.”
His eyes heated. “Yeah?”
“In case there might be an invitation thrown my way to spend the night.” She gave him what she hoped was a sublimely innocent expression with just enough sass thrown in to get his thoughts moving in the right direction.
The heat in his eyes took on sizzling edges. “What color?”
“Black.”
He swallowed hard. “Silk?” His voice had a strangled quality that made her hum inside.
“Some silk. Mostly lace.”
His mouth twitched. “Don’t say any more. I’d hate to embarrass both of us in front of the hands.”
“Oh, please don’t hesitate on my account.”
He looked startled and just a little scared. “You said you wouldn’t come to me until…” He broke off, his gaze boring into hers.
“I changed my mind.”
Cassidy felt a door slam shut almost before he’d gotten used to having it open even a sliver. He’d come so close. So damned close to believing that she loved him in spite of all his emotional baggage. He should have known better.
Very slowly he straightened his shoulders. He would get through this, he realized with a grim certainty. And without diving back into a bottle. But it was going to be so damn hard—standing next to her at the important milestones of their daughter’s life. Seeing her smile, smelling her perfume, hearing the music of her laugh. Knowing just how special she is. How beautiful inside and out.
And that she’d once been his.
Karen had been enjoying the play of emotion over his face, the first tentative softening of a playful smile, the crinkle of sexual amusement in his eyes. The first cautious attempt at trust. And her heart had begun to soar.
Then suddenly, in the literal blink of an eye, it was gone. Wiped clean. She felt a chill, a shiver of fear as he took his time resettling his hat, angling the brim so that it hid his eyes. And then it hit her. He’d misunderstood her meaning when she’d told him she’d changed her mind. He’d thought she was turning away from him, rejecting him. And why not? It was exactly what she would have expected if she’d lived as he’d had to live.
Pride fairly crackled from him as he turned his gaze toward the house.
She felt a rush of anger at the thoughtless parents who’d failed him, followed by a deep tenderness for a scarred, wounded man who’d made himself into the kind of son any parents would be proud to claim.
“Stop looking so impatient, and look at me.”
That got his attention.
“What?”
“I swear, Cassidy Sloane, if you walk away from me while I’m still in the middle of seducing you, I’m going to strangle you with the aforementioned black nightie and then you’ll never get to see how stunning it looks on me.”
His head came up with a surge of power and outrage and his eyes snapped a savage challenge. “What the hell are you talking about?”
It wasn’t fair, blackmailing him with French silk and sex, but she would worry about that later.
“At the moment, I’m referring to my scheme to entice you into bed as soon as we can decently send our guests on their way, including our daughter, by the way, who is going to be taken to the circus by her doting grandparents.”
His gaze narrowed, but there was a mesmerizing glint flickering in the obsidian depths. “Scheme?” he repeated, as if testing the meaning.
“Well, more like a scenario. I brought extra whipped cream.”
“Whipped cream?” He stared at her warily as if he was forty spaces behind her and racing to catch up.
“Hmm. All week I’ve had this almost irresistible urge for whipped cream.” She took a step closer and lifted her hand toward his face. He jerked but stayed rooted, his strong legs braced squarely and his head high. “You have the most incredible mouth.” Fighting a sudden attack of acute vulnerability herself, she gave in to an urge to trace that hard mouth with her fingertips.
“Haven’t you ever wondered how skin would taste when it was covered with whipped cream?”
He made a strangled sound deep in his throat, and his hand shot up to manacle her wrists with hard, callused fingers.
“Are you trying to make me beg, Kari? Is that what this is all about?” His eyes glittered dangerously, but now that she saw him with different eyes, she was able to discern the terrible hunger buried beneath the white hot fury. The hunger of a caged prisoner who’s been shut away in the dark for so many years he was afraid to trust the sunshine pouring through a hole blasted into the side of his cell.
“Cassidy, I am trying to seduce you, but you’re being deliberately obtuse, and—”
“Obtuse?”
“Oh, hell,” she muttered before fisting her hand in his hair to steady herself as she arched into him and covered his mouth with hers.
He stood like a statue for what seemed like forever, then he groaned and dragged her against his hard chest. His mouth turned hot and hungry, and his arms were velvet-covered steel. As she molded her body to his, she could almost feel prison walls crumbling as a hard shudder ran through him.
L
ong moments later, Cassidy tore his mouth from hers, pulled her arms from his neck and stood looking down at her. “Run that by me again,” he demanded, every inch the powerful rancher. “Slowly this time.”
Karen was giddy with happiness, which was playing hell with her vaunted detachment. “Which part? The black lace nightie or the whipped cream?”
His mouth twitched, but the taut lines of his face still radiated tension that was painful to see. “The part where you told me you changed your mind about loving me.”
A warning bell set up a clamor in her mind, and she suspected he would have to accept her love in manageable bits, testing each one before he was ready for the next. “I said no such thing. Of course I love you. I was referring to that silly pronouncement I made about your having to come to me.” She lifted her hand again, until her fingers were flat against his hard cheek. “I know you already love me, and since it’s taking you an impossibly long time to realize it, I decided to help you.”
His throat worked. “Just like that?”
“I can make it a lot rougher on you, if that would make you feel better.”
“Rougher how?” he asked carefully. Warily.
“Well, in the lingerie store, they had this collection of imported…toys. And I remember watching you showing Billy how to use that old bullwhip you found in the loft. It was a hot day and you had your shirt off. I loved the way your muscles rippled, so—”
“God help me, you bought a whip?” He sounded outraged and adorably helpless. Lord but she was going to love teaching him to laugh.
“Just a little one, and the lashes are velvet. They came in a variety of colors, but according to my mother, black goes with everything.”
He blinked. His eyes narrowed, then filled with something fierce and hot and intimate. And yet, there were still troubling shadows lurking in the depths.
“Is this the way it’s going to be with us from now on, Kari? A series of one-night stands?”
Her happiness wobbled. “I’m not interested in an affair with you or anyone else,” she said quietly.
“Then what’s this about?”
“Commitment. Marriage.” She managed a smile. “Starting over.”
He drew a breath. “And medicine?”
“Is a part of me, just as the ranch is a part of you.” She hesitated, then realized that the next few minutes would determine if she and Cassidy had a future together or not. “I’ve done a lot of thinking, Cass. About what’s important and what’s not. I want us to be together more than just about anything else I can think of. I can compromise and I can bend. Instead of private practice, I can join one of the managed care groups, where the hours are far more normal. Other than a rotating on-call schedule, I’d be home at night and most weekends.”
“Would you be happy in that kind of situation? After all the hard work you’ve put in.”
She nodded. “What would make me unhappy is giving up medicine entirely.”
His gaze studied her, an unreadable expression in his golden brown eyes. “In other words, if I want you, I have to share your…love with your work?”
His voice was too quiet, too controlled. Her hopes plummeted. Why hadn’t she waited? Why did she have to push him now, when he’d obviously been trying so hard to change?
“Yes, just as I accept your love of this ranch and the work you do.”
He frowned, then dropped his gaze. “I’ve been a real ass, haven’t I?”
“At times, yes.”
His head shot up, and he gave her a startled look that almost instantly turned sheepish. “Guess this means you haven’t completely given up on me, huh?”
She felt the fear gripping her heart loosen its hold. “Not a chance, cowboy.”
Something stark and scary rose in his eyes. “I can’t promise not to backslide.”
“I can’t promise not to yell at you if you do.”
His shoulders rose and fell as he dragged in air. “But you won’t walk out, right? Not even if I let you down sometimes?”
The insecurity radiating from him nearly broke her heart. “Trust me, Cassidy Sloane, if I haul all my belongings and a ton of Vicki’s things all the way back here, I’m never leaving again.”
His mouth slanted a little. “No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
“Some folks might consider that a little crazy.”
“Some folks don’t know a good thing when they see one.”
The smile started in the deepest darkness of his eyes. And then he grinned, a lopsided, boyishly irresistible, unabashed smile that curled her toes. “What am I going to do with you, Dr. Sloane?” he asked in a thick voice.
She smiled. “Love me?”
When his face stilled, and the smile drained from those fathomless eyes, she felt a moment of stark panic. “Just a little to start with,” she hastened to amend, keeping her tone light.
His jaw worked. “What the hell,” he said gruffly. “Let’s go for the whole thing.”
He bent his head, wrapped those big arms around her and kissed her senseless. A long time later her husband lifted his mouth from hers. “I do, you know,” he said in a husky voice. “Love you.”
“And I love you.”
She heard a sound then, a shout. A chorus of shouts as rowdy and raucous as the cheering around the corral on the day Cassidy and Lucifer had fought to a draw. Cassidy twisted around, braced for a fight. Deciding it was unseemly for a doctor to get involved in a brawl, Karen contented herself with peeking over his broad shoulder.
They had gathered quite a crowd. Every one of the hands, and Vicki, front and center next to her mother and Frank. Money was changing hands, and everyone was grinning.
“Oh, dear,” she said, trying desperately not to laugh at the look on Cassidy’s face. “Don’t spoil their fun,” she said, her lips twitching.
“What the hell, wife. If they want a show, let’s give ’em one to remember.” As he bent his head, Cassidy Sloane finally realized that, in spite of the ten years he’d lived on this place he loved so much, he was finally coming home.
About the Author
Paula Detmer Riggs discovers inspiration for her stories in her varying life experiences. During the first five years of her marriage to a naval officer, she lived in nineteen different locales on both the East and West Coasts, including Southern and Northern California, the Puget Sound area and Newport, Rhode lsland. While acting as a docent in Old Town, California, she wrote and directed historic fashion shows, which led to a fascination with early California history.
In later years, she and her husband owned and operated a historic nursery in Oregon listed on the National Register of Historic Sites, and they are now happily living in the first territorial capital of Arizona—Prescott—which still possesses the flavor and fascination of the Wild West.
Paula writes romances because “I think we all need escape from the fast-paced, often stressful challenges of the twenty-first century lifestyles that confront us daily, and because I believe in true and lasting love—and, best of all, happy endings!”
ISBN-13: 9781460343197
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Paula Detmer Riggs for her contribution to the 36 Hours series.
The Parent Plan
Copyright © 1998 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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