Small Town Romance Collection: Four Complete Romances & A New Novella

by Brown, Carolyn

Cassie opened her eyes, and woke up all the way, looking at him with wide eyes. The intimacy of their embrace, his semi-naked state, and her ardent response, must be giving him the wrong idea entirely.

  But why did it feel so right?

  Cassie had been kissed before, by the only boy brave enough to try it behind Cecil's back, but it hadn't felt like this. Warm, trusting, loving, sensual . . . Oh, Lord. This was farther than she wanted to go right now. Cassie sat up and wriggled out of his arms. Ted looked disappointed and relieved all at the same time.

  And maybe just a little bit confused. She couldn't blame him. Cassie reached out and patted his cheek tenderly, and they sat there, awkwardly silent for a moment or two.

  "Um—" Cassie said.

  "I didn't mean—" Ted said quickly. "I didn't mean to interrupt you. What were you going to say?"

  "Nothing."

  "I guess I shouldn't have come in."

  "That's all right. You—we—didn't do anything wrong."

  "I was on my way to the kitchen," he said, which was true enough. "I was—hungry. There's still cake and milk." He stumbled over his explanation, feeling like a fool. "Want to go downstairs with me and have some?"

  She nodded. "Maybe I'll have some coffee instead." Feeling still half-asleep, she didn't quite trust herself to be alone with him. Cuddling up had felt like heaven—the kind of heaven she'd never imagined she'd find. Cassie had concentrated on working hard for most her young life, and romance hadn't been part of her game plan. When he wasn't around, she didn't think about Ted too much. Well, not all day, anyway.

  But when he was close to her, as he was now, the romantic notions she was able to dismiss in broad daylight seemed dangerously real. And almost intoxicating.

  A cup of good strong coffee would definitely do her good.

  Ted tried not to look her up and down. The situation they'd found themselves in seemed definitely compromising, and her sleepwear was doing wonders for his sex drive, even though it didn't show all that much of her.

  But she looked adorable. Cassie had on pink flannel pajamas that were at least three sizes too big for her. The sleeves and pants legs were rolled up, and the top fell practically to her knees. Ted thought she looked a little less scared, especially once he got her into the kitchen's enveloping warmth, and he was secretly pleased that he'd been able to reassure her.

  Ted helped himself to another slab of chocolate cake and poured a glass of milk while she microwaved a cup of water for instant coffee. "Have bad dreams often?" he asked. He perched on a stool beside the bar dividing the dining room and the kitchen. He'd been careful not to touch her or brush against her as they'd moved about preparing their snacks, but it hadn't cooled him off a whole hell of a lot.

  Making small talk wasn't going to be easy.

  Cassie didn't seem to notice his discomfort, fortunately. She thought for a moment before answering his question.

  "Oh—I've had them since I had to go live with Cecil. And after I ran away. They seem silly when I wake up, but they're awfully scary when I'm asleep. Do your dreams ever bother you?"

  The kind of dreams he'd been having about Cassie most definitely did bother him. But he knew her just well enough to keep his mouth shut about them.

  "Oh, sometimes," he said casually. "But not tonight. I was just hungry, that's all."

  "Do you get hungry in the middle of the night very often?" She stirred her coffee to cool it, and looked at him, wide-eyed.

  Ted couldn't stand it. He knew she was just trying to make small talk, just like him, but if she asked him one more leading question, he was going to . . . do nothing. There was nothing he could do.

  "Yeah," he said finally, roughing up his hair as if to get rid of the wayward thoughts that wouldn't stop coming. "I get hungry." He poked at his cake with a fork. She looked so sexy he had almost lost his appetite. They had to get onto safer ground. There had to be topics of conversation that didn't sound so suggestive . . . especially when she talked to him in that sleepy-sweet voice. It was a voice that was meant to be heard from one pillow away, and he couldn't take it another second.

  "Let's talk about something else," he said briskly.

  She raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Okay. Pick a topic."

  He talked to her about his brief stint at the agricultural college and his return to his father's business, and the ins and outs of oil well machinery, until her eyes began to glaze over with boredom.

  Cassie took the conversational lead then, steering him towards livelier subjects until two hours had passed and they seemed to have talked about everything under the sun. One subject led naturally to another and yet another, until it began to look as if a friendship—and a budding romance—might be born out of a nightmare and a hungry stomach.

  There, in the big old farmhouse kitchen, Ted finally confided a lifelong dream of his to Cassie . . . to build his own house someday, on the adjoining land that his father had given him.

  A two-storey log cabin, no less.

  Cassie smiled. It seemed more like a little boy's odd notion than anything else. She'd never heard of a log cabin that had more than one room, or more than one storey, for that matter. She couldn't resist the temptation to tease him a little.

  "A two-storey log cabin? What for? You don't need a house of your own. You'd probably come here to eat anyway." Her eyes were bright with laughter, and Ted felt a little annoyed.

  "Oh, I can cook if I have to. It's not all that hard. After all, you and my mother do it every day. How difficult can it be?"

  "That's exactly my point. You've never done it for yourself." Cassie's cheeks pinked up. She could feel an argument coming on, and she felt practically powerless to stop it.

  "Hey, if nothing else, I can always open up a can of beans."

  "Sounds wonderful. Eating beans in your great, big log cabin, all by yourself. How are you ever going to find a woman who'll like living that way?"

  "I can manage on my own, thanks."

  Cassie couldn't resist another dig.

  "Planning to be a hermit, huh?"

  "Probably, until I'm about thirty-five."

  She studied him for a moment, with her chin propped in her hands and her coffee cup forgotten in front of her.

  "What happens when you're thirty-five?"

  "I don't know. Just sounds more grown-up than twenty-one, that's all. I figure when I'm thirty-five, I'll know what I want to do, and who I want to really marry, and stuff like that," he finished lamely.

  "Ah. A real marriage. To a real wife, right?" Cassie said wryly.

  "Yeah. A real wife. What's wrong with that?"

  Cassie slid off her stool, and sauntered around the kitchen. Ted couldn't fathom how she could be so annoying and so attractive at the same time—and do it in pajamas that were baggy enough for the center ring.

  No question. This girl got to him like nobody ever had. But he didn't like the way she seemed to be making fun of his dreams for a house, and a life, and a real wife . . . maybe because those dreams had begun to include her.

  "What exactly is a 'real' wife, anyway?" Cassie asked pertly. His vision of domestic bliss seemed pretty old-fashioned, if he wanted her opinion. Which she very much doubted he did.

  "A real wife would want lots of kids, and she'll love them and she'll love me. And she'll stand on the front porch every day to wave goodbye when I go to work." Ted stubbornly defended his idea of what marriage should be, even though it sounded half-baked, even to him.

  "Wait a minute." Cassie held up a palm toward him. "First of all, why does she have to stand on the porch like a puppet and wave to you? She's going to have a hard time doing that with a baby on each hip, and another on the way. What if she wants a career—and children, too? Would you help?"

  "I guess so," Ted said cautiously. "As much as I could. But I don't want a woman who thinks more of her damned job than me and the children."

  "That won't necessarily be true," Cassie argued. "It's possible for a woman to love her husband and her children,
and still hold down a job. There's daycare. Your mother would love to help raise a grandchild."

  "I won't have my children in daycare and my mother has raised her kids and she did the best job ever, but she isn't going to raise mine, too."

  His voice had risen to just below a yell.

  Cassie was well aware that this argument was entirely theoretical—even ridiculous—but she stuck to her guns.

  "Don't you yell at me!" she yelled.

  "Don't you tell me how to raise my kids!" he yelled even louder.

  They were nose to nose, milk and cake and coffee forgotten in the heat of the silly argument.

  "Ted Wellman, you don't even have any kids. You aren't mature enough to be a real father. Or even a real husband."

  "Hush! You're going to wake up the whole damn house!"

  Cassie folded her arms across her chest and dropped her voice to no more than a belligerent whisper. "So?"

  He sucked in a deep breath, and tried to stare her down. Lord, but her green eyes were even more gorgeous when she got really mad.

  She turned away and wouldn't even look at him. His powerful arms were folded across his chest, and his natural musculature, developed to perfection by hard work in the fields, was unnerving to see. How could a man who had cradled her so tenderly against that very same chest, held her in those arms, yell at her like this?

  If either of them had any sense, they would knock off this silly quarrel and just go upstairs and do what came naturally. The sexual tension between them was making them act plumb crazy, and Cassie knew it, young as she was.

  She sighed.

  Was it worth her while to make him listen to reason? They seemed to have gone well beyond reason, she thought, as she finally met his gaze.

  He almost gave in. But some devil in him made him have to have the last word.

  "You know something, Cassie? You're too inexperienced to understand anything about love and marriage."

  "I know what I feel," she said stubbornly. "Which is more than you can say."

  She regretted the words the minute they were out of her mouth, but there was no taking them back.

  "Don't be so sure of that, Cassie." Ted's voice was dangerously, sexily low. "I know what I feel about you."

  She walked over to him and stood less than an inch away from his half-naked body as if daring him to touch her.

  He didn't.

  He wouldn't give her that satisfaction. Or the satisfaction of winning this argument.

  "It's your bedtime, little girl. Just remember something. You're much too young to be anybody's real wife."

  Cassie saw red, and she had the sudden urge to knock him off his feet and into the middle of next week. But she controlled herself somehow, if only for the sake of the rest of the family, who didn't need to hear any of this.

  She took a deep breath.

  "I may be younger than you, Ted Wellman, but not by much. And I've seen more of life than you will ever see. You don't know everything there is to know, no matter how loudly you yell."

  He looked at her without replying. Cassie continued.

  "By the way, don't tell me who I am and what I should be. You're not in charge of me, or my life—any more than that tyrant Cecil is."

  That stung.

  Was she actually comparing him to that nasty man she was afraid of—the one who'd treated her like a slave? Ted had been kind, he knew that much. Hadn't he gotten her out of trouble with the law? He'd married her, hadn't he, and wasn't he putting up with a lot of hateful sass right now?

  "Oh, quiet down." He was nose to nose with her once more, but she had to stand on her tiptoes to face him down, so Ted figured that gave him a slight advantage. "Don't you compare me to that Cecil. I mean it, Cassie. Damn it all to hell, I've done a lot for you. I don't care how mad you are, don't you dare say I'm like him. Or else."

  "Or else what?" she taunted him. "Hellfire, I'll talk as loud as I want!" Her concern for the family was momentarily forgotten. "Ted, you couldn't see my point if you wanted to because whatever I say goes in one ear and out the other. There isn't anything in your hollow head to slow it down. I'm going back to bed. I wouldn't ever be your wife on anything but paper. And I wouldn't wish that awful fate on my worst enemy, either, and that's a fact!"

  She stormed out of the kitchen just as the clock chimed five times.

  Chapter Six

  "Maria, do we have to use the yellow placemats today? I don't feel so cheerful," Cassie said when she set the table for breakfast a couple of days later.

  "What has Ted done to make you angry?" Maria asked bluntly.

  "How did you know?" Cassie was amazed.

  "Because mothers know," Maria said calmly. She didn't add that only a person you care about—or even love—can take the sunshine from your heart. Or that for the past two days Cassie had been as friendly as ever with everyone in the family—but when Ted was there the sparks flew until they were almost visible.

  "Your son is a—" Cassie stopped herself. She couldn't bear to tell this wonderful woman just how immature Ted could be, or how protecting him from his feelings for so many years had kept him from growing up.

  "My son is a wonderful, caring man who is just learning to love again." Maria finished Cassie's sentence for her to save her new daughter-in-law the trouble of eating a lot of unkind words later.

  "Well, it's plain enough that he doesn't love me." As soon as she'd spoken, Cassie wished she could take the words back and choke on them. All the Wellmans knew that Ted thought she was too young to be a "real wife" by now. What did she care whether he loved her or not?

  Maria bit the inside of her lower lip to keep from laughing. So it had been a lover's quarrel after all. She and Maggie had both figured it had to be, but they weren't exactly certain when it happened. How absolutely wonderful!

  "Good mornin', Momma." Ted sat down at the table. "Where's Uncle Brock?"

  "In the living room with your Poppa, reading the paper. You just walked through there. Didn't you notice them?" Maria loved it.

  "Guess I haven't been sleeping so well," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Red placemats? Momma, you know I hate red," Ted grumbled.

  "I told Cassie to put red on the table this morning," his mother replied. "Stop complaining. You sound like a little boy," she added, chiding him in a gentle voice. "Run and get Alicia out of bed and tell your dad and Brock that breakfast is ready. I think I just heard Ash and Maggie open the front door."

  All three of the Wellman brothers—Bob, Brock, and Ash—came to the table together. Cassie sat across from them, smiling politely while she made small talk and tried desperately to ignore Ted, who sat right beside her this morning.

  The telephone rang, providing a merciful interruption in the somewhat strained atmosphere.

  Bob grabbed for the extension on the bar, said "Hello," and handed the receiver to Brock. "For you," he said tersely. "So do you think this oil well commission is going to work with us this time?" He continued his business conversation with Ash.

  "Hope so."

  "Gotta run." Brock dabbed his mouth with a red napkin and left half his breakfast on his plate. "Dorena Jackson is ready to deliver." He dashed out before Cassie could ask him for a ride.

  "Where's Alicia?" Maria inquired.

  "Note on her door said there were teacher's conferences today and there's no school. She's sleeping 'til noon. Do not disturb," Ted said in a flat voice.

  "Excuse me." Cassie laid her napkin beside her plate. Brock had left and Alicia wasn't going to school It would take her at least forty-five minutes to get ready and walk to the clinic, and she would sit on a barbed wire fence before she'd ask Ted to take her to work. She went up the stairs two at a time.

  Everyone at the table was quiet until they heard her shut her bedroom door upstairs. Maria looked at Ted. What had he said to hurt Cassie's feelings so? The girl hadn't eaten more than two bites of breakfast in a couple of days now—just when she was beginning to fill out a bit, too.

  Ash l
ooked at Ted. Lord, he'd worried about that boy ever since the day they'd called him and said John was dead. Ted had just shut down from that day on. Oh, he'd gotten dutifully through his responsibilities around the farm, and pitched in the family oil business, but his nephew had scarcely shown a flicker of emotion since.

  Until the night he'd called Ash from Texas to say he was married all of a sudden, and Ash had heard the excitement in his voice . . . hell, Ash had figured Ted would turn into a cantankerous recluse who would never really trust or love another soul. But Cassie had changed that.

  Bob looked at Ted. His only living son was as smart as a bullwhip. He'd taken over the business management of the farm and everything was kept in perfect order. He owned his own equipment, plowed his own land, brought forth bountiful crops . . . but if the boy was so damned smart, why was he cutting off his nose to spite his face? This little redheaded gal his son had rescued had sorta rescued him, the way Bob saw it. So he and Cassie had had a little spat. Didn't Ted know how to apologize?

  Ted looked up from his plate. "Hey, what'd I do?" he mumbled. "Why is everyone looking at me like that?"

  "What did you do to Cassie?" his father asked.

  "Huh? Dad, why don't you ask what she did to me?" Ted was upset, and his voice betrayed his feelings.

  Maria wanted to cry for joy. Her son, who hadn't raised his voice in years, was actually showing emotion. Even if it was anger, it was still emotion, and it might start the healing process he needed so badly.

  "Well, you obviously hurt her feelings," his father pointed out. "What did you two fight about, anyway?"

  "We didn't fight." Ted pushed his chair back so fast his napkin fell on the floor and he knocked his juice over. Cassie is as stubborn as a mule—and she's childish. She has to have her way about everything!" He got up and faced his family with an unmistakably mulish expression of his own.

  "You're not all that grown-up yourself, you know," his Uncle Ash said. "It's not fair of you to judge her so harshly. You're both kids, really."

  Ted glared at him, and the others.

  "Thank you everybody, for your unanimous vote of confidence. Just tell me one thing. Why are all of you on her side? I'll be damned glad when this six months is over and she gets out of my life."