by Robyn Neeley
“Did you? You had more faith in me than I had in myself. My family never could understand why I wanted to do something as chancy as write Western novels. Neither could I, when I got my first effort back by return mail.”
“You reworked it and sent it back out, I hope.” Casey leaned her head back to rest it on his shoulder.
“Not right away, I’m afraid. I’d thought it would sell instantly. It was a crushing disappointment when it didn’t. Plus, I was in law school at the time and hardly had time to lament, so I set it aside until I graduated.”
“I’ve had recipes like that.”
“I know you have, darling.” He laughed tenderly and tightened his arms around her. “Remember how hard you used to work on a recipe? You’d test it and retest it, then if it still didn’t win the contest or wow the tasters, you’d sit up half the night evaluating it and trying to find out what had gone wrong.”
“You thought I was crazy, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes,” he admitted. “But I figured that if that was what it took, then I’d be crazy, too. What was really behind your success as a cook was a lot of planning and hard work and learning from your mistakes.”
“I’ll say,” Casey agreed.
“I keep your picture by my computer to remind me of that. So you see, you’re the real reason I sold my book.”
Casey stared at the picture and swallowed. Of all the scenarios she might have predicted, she had never expected Kalin to admit that he thought of her the whole time she was gone.
“Say something, darling.” He sounded concerned.
She gulped and blinked rapidly, finding herself quite incapable of admitting she had thought of him equally as often. “I used to dream that after I had become a world-famous chef, I’d perfect a new cheesecake or something you really, really loved, and name it after you.”
“Why?” Kalin chuckled and rocked her in his hold.
“For the same reason you kept my picture on your computer, of course. You inspired me.”
Kalin whipped her around to face him, laughing. “Casey Gray, I’m going to have to punish you for that remark.”
“Does this punishment have anything to do with scaling fish or defeathering ducks?”
“No way.” He walked her backward toward the bed.
“In that case, do your worst.”
Kalin shoved her back and fell beside her on the bed. “You lack a proper attitude of respect for outdoor pursuits.”
“You insult my copper bowls all the time.”
He leaned over her. “That is not on a par with baiting a fish hook with a leaf when the fish are lining up to bite.”
Casey propped her arms between them and pretended to try to hold him off. “You’re right. Insulting a cook’s copper bowl deserves the death penalty. How would you like to die?”
“In your arms.” Kalin kissed her.
Casey took fire instantly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and moaned deep in her throat as Kalin kissed her and crushed her down into the mattress.
The swiftness of her own response startled her. She had let herself fall back into loving Kalin and had forgotten the need to maintain control over her traitorous body at all times.
She tried, but it was no use. She couldn’t think while she was in Kalin’s arms — her body ruled her mind.
Kalin had responded to her soft moan with shuddering pleasure, and now he kissed her again while lying fully on top of her and pressing her into the mattress with his weight. She dug her nails into his shoulders and arched her back, gasping. Every vestige of her control fell away.
He stroked his hands down the front of her pink silk blouse, undoing buttons. The moment he touched her bare skin, Casey arched toward him, using her body to beg for his possession in all the ways she’d once enticed him. Kalin removed her bra and blouse. She cried out and twisted wildly beneath him, while he used his mouth to tantalize her with a foreshadowing of what was to come.
She acquired a grip on his hair that he didn’t loosen as he worked off her skirt and slip. Kalin managed to sit up and admire the slim body he had undressed without dislodging her fingers. He stripped off his own clothing swiftly and lay beside her, still entwined in her arms and wearing nothing but the tan that stopped at his waistline.
Casey, enthralled with the sensations flooding every nerve ending, ran her fingers down his back and encountered no clothing. The discovery electrified her. She explored him with her hands in all the ways he explored her.
“Casey,” he whispered. “You make me go crazy.”
His voice shook as much as he did. The sound of it made her want to cry with ecstasy.
“Please, please do,” she said, and groaned.
Now was the time for him to draw back if he intended to. In some dim corner of her mind, she waited for him to push away from her, but this time he didn’t.
This time, he took her all the way, and Casey almost cried with the ecstasy they created together. For all the dreaming she had done about making love to Kalin, none of her daydreams came anywhere close to the real thing. She knew now she had never felt anything as powerful as the intimacy of being with him like this or the knowledge of being one with the man she loved.
Surely, she thought, in the warm aftermath, with his arms around her and her head lying on his shoulder, Kalin still loved her.
She still loved him. She admitted it to herself, lying beside him in the deepening twilight. She wondered if anything would ever come of it.
Not likely, she decided, struggling to be realistic. Probably, he just wanted to prove to her, and to himself, that she was not irreparably damaged by the events of five years ago.
If she had any sense at all, she told herself, she would make it as easy as possible for Kalin to fade out of her life now that he had proved his point.
• • •
Casey spent the next morning in the kitchen under Lydia’s worshipful eye, concocting a dessert she claimed would win worldwide fame for Cap’n Bob’s.
“It’s a recipe I’ve saved for years.” She crumbled chocolate cookies with a rolling pin. “That man from Beaumont, the one who beat me in the Rice Contest, invented it. He called it ‘Deep Dark Secret,’ and I think I’ll keep the name.”
Lydia stared at the yellowed newspaper clipping Casey consulted. “So that’s him. Wow. This recipe is really rich.”
“People love cheesecake — the richer, the better. Just wait until tonight. I’ll have to cut slices so thin … ”
Lydia grinned. “Too bad Kalin’s not here. He loves cheesecake.” She looked up, suddenly serious. “I’ve never said this to anyone, Casey, but I was glad when my father died. Then I felt guilty for feeling relieved and went to pieces, in Kalin’s arms, unfortunately. He … he was very … upset.”
Lydia’s hesitant words, and her woebegone expression suddenly struck a chord in Casey. She stopped crushing cookies. “Have you been feeling all this time that it was your fault Kalin broke up with me?”
Lydia’s soft eyes filled with tears despite her brave attempt to cover them. “Well, wasn’t it? I think he could have faced all the bad things my father had done in business, but when I told him all the things Dad had been saying to me and to Mom, he … he … ” She stopped and turned away.
Casey reached out at once. “Lydia, it wasn’t your fault Kalin got mad at me. There were a lot of things wrong between us.” She drew the younger woman close and hugged her.
“Things like who your father really was?” Lydia buried her face against Casey’s neck and hugged her back. “I wish Derrick Davenport had been my father. It’s better never to have known him than to have to remember him saying terrible things. I almost hated him by the time he died.”
It seemed Kalin had told his family all about her, so much so that they considered her one of the fa
mily.
“I doubt your father knew what he was saying. He must have been sick for some time before he died. And don’t blame yourself anymore. Our breakup wasn’t your fault at all.”
It was her own, Casey realized, as she taught Lydia the art of creaming sugar and butter and cream cheese. She had been determined to prove she wasn’t like her mother, and rather than tell Kalin why she felt so driven, she’d concealed her history from him until the tabloids exposed it at the worst possible time.
She poured the cheese batter into the large, three-inch tall casing she’d prepared. Kalin had understood her motives better than she had. She dealt with other responsibilities and thought about it all morning. The impression she received of herself was not a pretty one.
“Your office phone has been ringing off the hook,” Lydia said later. “So I answered it. It’s Kalin, and he’s fussing a blue streak, but I can’t understand a thing he’s saying. Something about did you open a Christmas present last night.”
Casey smiled and wiped cookie crumbs off her hands. “I didn’t have time.” Because she had driven in from Houston early that morning and stopped only long enough to change clothes.
Memories of the night before brought a smile to her lips as she hurried to her little office and grabbed the receiver. She nearly dropped it when Kalin’s angry voice spoke in her ear.
“It’s about time you answered the phone, Casey Gray. Where the hell have you been? Hiding out?”
He sounded furious. Casey felt as if her heart froze into lifelessness. “I was in the kitchen making a cheesecake. Why?”
“I gather you haven’t read the latest issue of Star Shines,” he said in tones Casey last heard five years ago.
Star Shines was a garish tabloid dedicated to the lives and scandals of celebrities, especially Hollywood stars.
Casey noted the contempt and fury that mingled in his voice. “I never read it,” she said. “Why … ? Oh.”
The Davenport death anniversary. She had forgotten it.
“That’s right,” Kalin said. “Oh.”
“What did they say?” She ignored hollow emptiness in her stomach. Or was it her heart that had suddenly gone empty?
“What didn’t they say is more like it. I should have thought once was enough for you. What I want to know is why did you have to drag me into it?”
At that moment, Bonnie appeared in the office door with a copy of Star Shines in her hand, open to a page headlined, “Davenport Love-Child Retains Lawyer: Plans to Sue Davenport Estate.”
Casey grabbed for the paper. “Just a minute, Kalin.”
“Is this your way of increasing the business at Cap’n Bob’s?” Kalin snapped.
Casey scanned the headline and photos. Hers hailed from her high school annual, and Kalin’s seemed to be of the same order.
“What do you mean?” She couldn’t seem to think.
“If you think you’re going to involve me in any of your future plans, you’re crazy.”
He drew in a breath to say more, but Casey’s brain finally caught up with her ears.
“Go to hell, Kalin McBryde.” She slammed down the phone.
“Oh, wow,” Bonnie murmured, exchanging glances with Lydia.
Casey scowled. “Just look at this nonsense.”
“Casey,” Bonnie said, in an insistent voice.
The telephone rang once more.
Casey picked it up, her attention still focused on the story. “Cap’n Bob’s. Drop dead, Kalin.” She slammed the phone down.
She realized suddenly that Bonnie had collapsed into the one chair the office boasted, covering her face with her hands and moaning with laughter. Glancing up, Casey froze. Elizabeth McBryde and Annie Johnson stood just outside the door. Both looked enthralled.
Casey set her chin and glared once more at the story.
The premise was simple, although it required several columns of lurid type to spell it out. Casey, who now called herself Casey Davenport, had retained the son of famous criminal attorney Walter McBryde to sue the Davenport estate. She intended to dispossess Davenport’s widow of every penny and get herself recognized as Davenport’s daughter and legal heir. If McBryde failed to win her inheritance, she intended to become a lawyer herself and spend the rest of her life attempting to right a great wrong.
“Oh, no.” Casey gasped, forgetting her audience. “It says I intend to avenge my teenage mother for the way Davenport treated her by disinheriting his legal wife.”
The telephone rang once more. Casey reached behind it to unplug the plastic connector. The phone fell silent.
“You may as well talk to him,” Elizabeth McBryde said. “Kalin will call every telephone in your vicinity until you do.”
“I’m never speaking to him again.” Casey frowned fiercely.
“Oh, yeah?” Bonnie grinned and winked at Lydia.
“I mean it,” Casey said through clenched teeth. “How dare he suggest I told a reporter all this — this nonsense?”
“Did he say that?” Bonnie rolled her eyes. “Poor old Kalin must be in total shock.”
Casey remembered Kalin’s mother and flushed. “Well, so am I. I’m sorry about this, but I had nothing to do with it.”
She had no real hope of being believed, but Elizabeth stunned her by saying, “He knows that. Or he will when he calms down and starts thinking. Kalin has always hated this kind of thing.”
Casey recalled that Elizabeth McBryde’s father had been Conrad Kalin, a maverick congressman from West Texas whose claim to fame was his resistance to the McCarthy era probes.
The unexpected kindness undermined the remains of her bravado. Tears fell on the paper in her hands.
Lydia offered Casey a tissue. “The dining room phone is ringing now. How much do you want to bet it’s Kalin?”
One of her new waiters appeared in the doorway. “There’s a man on the phone out front. He says you’d better come talk to him or else.”
Casey reared up her head. “Tell him he’s fired. I’ve decided to become a lawyer myself so I can sue both him and the Davenport estate.”
Chapter 10
Casey left her cheesecake unfinished and her duties at the restaurant unattended. She wanted to inform her grandmother of the article before her afternoon visitors arrived.
As for Kalin McBryde, she swore she was never speaking to him again as long as she lived.
So much for sex, she thought, blinking away more tears. Wonderful as it was, it sure hadn’t solved the problems that kept Kalin from loving her again. She needed to forget him and get back to her original dream.
Whatever it had been, she thought, passing the spreading rice fields she had loved since childhood. All her dreams now seemed to include Kalin, and she had no idea how that had happened.
Alice insisted upon having the entire piece read to her. Casey did so, careful to keep any emotion out of her voice.
When she had finished, Alice studied Casey thoughtfully. “Have you informed that young man about it?”
“Actually, he informed me.”
“Is that so?” Alice smiled grimly. “Took in bad part, did he? Well, you can’t blame him. Figuring in the tabloid press isn’t what the McBrydes are used to.”
Casey forbore mentioning the constant harassment of Conrad Kalin and his family during the McCarthy hearings. “No, Granny.”
“You didn’t talk to these people, I hope.”
“No, Granny.”
Alice sighed. “Well, Casey, I’m sorry for you. It looks as though you’ll suffer for your mother’s sins after all, in spite of all I did to keep you out of it.” She turned her head to look at her granddaughter. “I’ve never had to be ashamed of you. Ewing and I have always been proud of you.”
“Have you, Granny? I’m glad.” Casey’s voice was
husky with feeling. “I used to long to hear you say that.”
“And now that you’re hearing it, you’d rather not?” Alice regarded her with grim humor. “My time here is short. Every night I dream of Ewing. Yes, and of Cynthia. It’s time you knew that you made up to us for any suffering Cynthia caused us. We were both terrified when I walked in the house with you in my arms twenty-three years ago. We’d just buried our only child, who’d brought us nothing but grief, and there we were, beginning all over again with Cynthia’s baby.”
Casey had never thought of her childhood from this angle. No wonder Alice and Ewing had been so strict with her, and so determined to teach her values and good work habits.
“You were a good child. Not like Cynthia.” Alice’s eyelids began to droop. “Maybe we were too lax with her.”
“I can’t imagine you being lax, Granny.”
“I don’t suppose you can,” Alice said. “We didn’t think we could afford to be with you.”
Casey swiped away tears and said nothing.
“I always hoped you’d marry that young man and live here,” Alice went on. “He loved the country, and once, he loved you.”
“I know, Granny,” Casey said.
“You killed his love for you.” Her eyes closed. “I tried to warn you. Work has its place, but a man expects to come first.”
Casey winced at the thought that she had killed Kalin’s love for her. “If I didn’t work, I would turn out like my mother, so I worked too much.”
Alice went on as if she hadn’t heard. “A young man needs to know he’s Number One. It’s part of his makeup as a man. You never gave him that.”
Casey said nothing, but memories of arguing with Kalin over taking a day off from her job arose in her mind.
“I saw it coming,” Alice said. “It was an explosive situation for a young man in love, and you were too busy with your own plans to give him what he needed. I was sorry to see it, but you deserved what happened, Casey.” Alice’s eyes closed, and she appeared to be drifting off to sleep. “You kept on talking about cooking school. As if that would keep you warm on a cold night.”