The Rancher's Wedding

by Diana Palmer

  Cary flushed. He tugged at his collar. “Listen, I never meant—”

  “I wish we were in a less public place,” Cassie said. “I’d put you on the floor and stomp on you!” Her lower lip trembled. “You worm. You despicable worm!”

  JL’s dark eyes were full of ice. “Cary isn’t the one living a lie,” he said to her. “I think it’s time you went home, Ms. Reed.”

  Cassie wanted to argue, to plead, to explain. JL was so rigid that she knew it was hopeless. The light went out of her eyes. The evening that had begun with such promise had ended in tears.

  “Okay,” she said quietly.

  He moved away and signaled the driver, who was sitting with a book in the corner.

  The man came at once.

  “Drive Ms. Reed home, if you please,” JL told the man. He didn’t look at Cassie. He didn’t offer to go with her. He didn’t say another word.

  Music was playing and one couple was already on the makeshift dance floor. JL took Marge by the hand and led her out into a two-step. He smiled at Marge, his attention completely on her.

  Cary drew in a breath. “I’m . . .” he began.

  “Spare me,” Cassie said coldly. “Someday you’ll get what you deserve, Cary. I won’t be around to see it, but your day’s coming.”

  She turned on her heel and walked out the door, with the driver right behind her.

  * * *

  When she walked in the door, her father knew immediately that something terrible had happened.

  “What is it?” he asked gently.

  She fell against him, tears blinding her. “Cary brought JL’s ex-fiancée to the party,” she sobbed. “I know her. She works in advertising and her company did a campaign for Warlocks and Warriors. She told JL all about us.”

  “I should hire a hit man for JL’s cousin,” he muttered, patting her on the back. “I’m so sorry!”

  She had to get through the tears to speak rationally. When she was calmer, she made coffee and they sat at the kitchen table together.

  “We have to go back,” he said after a minute. “I spoke to Jake just before you came home. He’s got solid evidence that Trudy’s done this before, and he has witnesses who’ll testify. He’s filing suit against her in my behalf for defamation of character and making malicious false allegations that cost me my job and held me up to public embarrassment. One of her victims is coming all the way from LA to testify.” He smiled sadly. “The network has also been working behind the scenes to substantiate her allegations and their investigations have cleared me. It looks as if I’ll go back to work. If that happens, you can also go back to work. With Frank gone, you’ll be welcomed with open arms. I’m sure of it.”

  She thought of the restaurant where she’d worked, the nice people who’d been so good to her. She thought of JL and Bessie and the dreams that had made a silver web around her as she contemplated a beautiful future on that ranch with the man she loved. All of that would be left behind.

  JL, of course, wouldn’t miss her. He was hurt and angry and wouldn’t even speak to her. He’d gone straight to Marge, probably to wound his cousin for bringing her. Maybe they’d end up back together after Cary’s mischief. Maybe they’d be happy.

  She hoped sincerely that someday Cary fell in love with a woman who tore him up like Marge had torn up JL. There had been too many lies. Too many false statements and cruel words.

  None of that helped her situation. She couldn’t stay here. Not now. Everybody would know the truth. It would be hard to live down in a small town. First her father had to prove his innocence, beyond a shadow of a doubt. When he did, and it was publicized, perhaps people here would think kindly of the strange Easterner and his daughter who’d lived among them for such a short time.

  “I’m going back with you,” Cassie said quietly. “There’s nothing left for me here.”

  “JL might listen to you when he cools off.”

  She laughed hollowly. “He looked at me as if I were dirt, and then he made a beeline right back to his ex-fiancée, if only to put the knife in his cousin’s ego. No,” she added softly. “He’d never trust me again. He’ll think I lied about everything deliberately. You can’t build a life on lies. We’ve certainly found that out, and so will Trudy Blaise. Besides,” she said firmly, “it will be nice to get back to work, doing what I do. JL thought of me as a plain, no-frills country girl. I’m not. He never knew the person I am. It’s just as well.” She forced a smile. “If we can get Trudy Blaise in as much trouble as you were in, that will be worth giving up Benton, Colorado,” she said with a cold laugh.

  “That much, I think I can promise you.” He grimaced. “I’m so sorry, Cassie.”

  She fought tears. “Me too. Life happens. Then we pick up the pieces and go on.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We do.”

  * * *

  After all the turmoil of the past few months, the solution to Cassie’s and Roger’s problems came quickly and all the furor died abruptly. Trudy Blaise was actually arrested on charges of embezzlement, of all things. She’d created a false vendor account, with the help of her attorney (who was facing disbarment), and pocketed assets to which she wasn’t entitled. As it turned out, she’d done the same thing in LA, as her former boss testified to a grand jury. She hadn’t been prosecuted for that crime, but she would face charges for it after an investigation had uncovered her illegal enterprise as producer of another program originating in LA.

  Not only was she facing jail time for conversion of property, but she was also looking at defamation charges from both Roger and three other men. As part of a plea deal, she agreed to go on the air and refute her charges against Roger and her former boss, and make apologies on air as well as in all her social media accounts.

  Roger was cleared in a firestorm of political activism. At least one group made a public apology for its part in the death of Mrs. Reed. The others, of course, conceded only that occasionally, very occasionally, charges were made erroneously. It was politics as usual.

  Cassie did return to work as a writer for Warlocks and Warriors, but she moved back to Atlanta, into an apartment complex where she’d lived before she bought the house that she’d put on the market when the scandal broke.

  Sadly, she had to part with her dog, whom she’d left with a neighboring family once the scandal forced her to leave town. The apartment allowed only for dogs under thirty pounds, and hers had been a beautiful purebred neutered German shepherd named Josh who weighed over ninety pounds.

  Happily, however, the family who adopted her pet promised to let her visit Josh when she wanted to.

  She settled back into her job and watched spring become summer without any particular enthusiasm. She hadn’t kept in touch with people in Benton because she didn’t want to hear about JL and Marge. She was certain that they were back together now, if only to pay Cary back for his interference.

  It had been such a sweet dream, thinking that she and JL would get married and live happily ever after on the ranch. A silly dream, as it turned out. She should have told him the truth in the very beginning. But they hadn’t been headed for anything more than friendship when it started, and she was reluctant to clutter up their relationship with painful revelations about her father’s past.

  She was lonely. Lonelier, now, with memories of happier times stabbing her in the heart. She’d been so excited when her father told her about JL buying a diamond ring.

  Marge was probably wearing the ring by now.

  * * *

  She had to go to New York for a writers’ discussion about Warlocks and Warriors. She arranged to have lunch with her father at the Four Seasons near his office. He was back in charge of the hit show about a seventies singing group’s rise to fame. He’d been completely exonerated of any charges relating to Trudy Blaise, who had plenty of problems of her own making, and he told Cassie that he wasn’t even speaking to women on his staff unless it was work-related and in the company of coworkers. She thought how sad the world had become.
Harassment was terrible. But so was creating an atmosphere of artificial coldness that denied any warm human feelings at all, in the effort to head off charges of misconduct. Lies and malice were toxic, and could ruin everything. She’d seen it with Trudy Blaise, with Cary lying to his cousin . . . and worst of all, she blamed herself for not being upfront with JL.

  Cassie sat listening to her colleagues go over a necessary plot change because one of their actors had been injured in an accident. They’d have to write around him while he got through the aftermath of the mishap and into a cast for his broken leg. They solved the problem with a created injury in the series to compensate for his lack of mobility.

  “And aren’t we the creative geniuses?” Derry, a female coworker chuckled as they finalized the change.

  “We’re writers,” Cassie said with a wicked grin. “It’s who we are.”

  “Most of us,” Ted, another writer, murmured dryly.

  Angela, the live wire of the group, gave him a mock glare. “I am so a genius,” she shot back. “In fact, I can prove it. Only this morning at a coffee shop, I instructed a barista in how to make change from a five without taking off her socks.”

  Everybody roared.

  “And for that,” Ted countered, “you could be sued for character assassination.”

  He realized belatedly that Cassie was in the group, and remembered what she and Roger had been through. “Sorry,” he said at once, and grimaced.

  “I am not politically correct,” she assured him with a warm smile. “And I haven’t ever sued anybody in my life. Yet.”

  He stood and bowed. “Thank you, my lady, for your kind regard.”

  She stood and curtsied. “My knight!”

  Everybody groaned.

  “Peasants,” Cassie said huffily.

  “And on that note,” Angela, who now led the writers’ room, said with a grin, “we’ll adjourn to lunch. Cassie, coming with us?”

  “I’m meeting Dad at Four Seasons,” she replied. “But thanks! Rain check?”

  “Next time you come to New York,” Ted said. “Why don’t you move up here? Hot as hell in Atlanta!”

  “You get used to it,” she said with a lazy smile. “Besides, we have a huge lake nearby. Sailing, hiking, picnic spots, fishing . . .”

  “Fishing!” Angela groaned. “Who goes fishing, for God’s sake?”

  “Me,” Cassie said, laughing. “Actually, it’s great fun. Yellow flies, mosquitoes, water moccasins, copperheads, smelly worms . . .”

  “Please,” Angela said. “I’m headed for a restaurant!”

  “And speaking of restaurants,” Cassie said, “I’m going to have fish!”

  “You can’t reform misplaced New Yorkers,” Ted said, shaking his head. “Fishing!” He rolled his eyes.

  “To each his own,” Cassie said with a flash of white teeth.

  Chapter Ten

  Four Seasons was crowded, but her father had reservations, so they went right in. Cassie was wearing navy blue slacks with a perky white-and-blue silk blouse and a white sweater. Her hair was up in a complicated hairdo, her small ears dripping gold earrings in a medieval design. She wore small stacked high heels, because everything in Manhattan was a long walk, even after riding around in a company-provided limo.

  Roger Reed, in a blue business suit and patterned tie, looked every bit the producer as he rose to greet his daughter, smiling. She hugged him and sat down.

  “How’s it going?” he asked after they’d ordered.

  She smiled. “Fine, fine. We’re looking forward to the next season. Lots of twists and turns and surprises for the fans.” She glanced at him. “How’s your show going?”

  He chuckled. “Better than ever. The staff was so happy to have me back that they bought a cake and party hats.”

  She smiled. “I could almost feel sorry for Trudy Blaise.”

  “I couldn’t,” he said flatly. “Her lies caused your mother’s death and tainted the reputations of several of us. She’ll get what’s coming to her. In fact, she’s already had to close down her social media accounts. The people who attacked us are now attacking her.”

  “Tit for tat,” she said quietly. “But all the hate in the world won’t bring Mama back.”

  He nodded, his face sad. “It’s been an ordeal. I’m happy things are back to normal. Although, I have to confess that I do sort of miss Benton, Colorado.”

  Her fork slipped at the mention of the town where she’d left her heart. She picked it back up and didn’t look at her father. “I miss Mary and Agatha,” she said. “They were kind to me.”

  He nudged a perfectly cooked piece of steak with his fork before spearing it into his mouth. He sipped red wine before he spoke. “I had a phone call today.”

  “Did you?”

  “From Colorado.”

  The fork jumped again, but this time she didn’t drop it. “Oh.”

  “From Cary, of all people.”

  “Cary?” Disappointment welled up in her. Cary had called her father? “How would he have your number?”

  “His friend, JL’s former fiancée, gave it to him.”

  The mention of Marge Bailey closed her up like a sensitive plant. She didn’t say a word. “What did he want?”

  “To apologize.”

  She laughed shortly. “He’s always sorry after he does something unspeakable.”

  “This time, he’s really sorry. He’s living in Denver. His cousin, who really is his last living relative even if not by blood, won’t speak to him or have him on the ranch. He’s lost his livelihood, his job, his prospects, pretty near everything he had.”

  “JL didn’t seem that vindictive to me,” she replied, surprised.

  “It wasn’t JL. It was the citizens of Benton.”

  She stopped eating and just stared at him.

  “When the truth got out, about what Cary did to you and JL, the whole town turned against him. Nobody in Benton would sell him so much as a cup of coffee. He left in self-defense.”

  “Well!” She hesitated and lowered her eyes. “What about JL? Are he and Marge married now?”

  “Marge is back in New York,” he said. “She’s still with the advertising agency, but your executive producer and the higher-ups at the network have switched their account to a rival agency.”

  Her lips parted on a shocked breath.

  “You have friends in high places,” he mused. “It wasn’t Marge’s fault, really, but they couldn’t get to Cary.”

  “This gets stranger and stranger,” she remarked, sipping wine. “Did JL come with her to New York?”

  “He went off on an extended business trip to the Middle East, to talk to his partners in the oil business. At least one major newsmagazine has carried photos of him being entertained by some members of Arab royalty.”

  “I suppose he’ll make even more money,” was all she said.

  “He phoned me, too.”

  She dropped the glass. It was unfortunate, because she was wearing a lacy white sweater over her silk blouse and it stained at once. She wiped at it and just gave up, when she saw the hopelessness of it all.

  “He said he might come back to the States if he thought there was any chance that you could forgive him for the way he treated you,” he continued, as if the accident hadn’t happened. “He said it wasn’t all Cary’s fault. He should have realized that Cary was getting even. He should have spoken to you before he sent you home.”

  “Yes, he should have,” she said with some heat.

  “He did mention that if you hadn’t kept secrets from him, none of it would have happened the way it did. I was forced to agree with him. I did suggest, if you remember, that it wasn’t a good idea not to tell him.”

  “I was afraid to,” she replied. “You know I was, and you know why.”

  “Yes, I do. But he didn’t.”

  She drew in a long breath. She’d missed JL terribly in the time she’d been back at work. She was empty and cold and alone. She lived in Georgia, all by herse
lf. She came to New York when she had to, for her job, which was why she was in the city right now. She came to see her father. But even writing, which she loved, was no substitute for the tall rancher who’d been a part of her life for such a short time.

  “New York and Colorado aren’t that far apart by plane,” he said. “You could commute from there as easily as you can from Georgia. JL has a private jet, which would make the trip even easier.”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “I’m not pushing,” he said gently. “But JL is a fine man. He has wonderful qualities. He was shocked and upset by what Cary said and did that night. It doesn’t excuse it, but it does explain it. Nobody’s so perfect that they can’t be allowed a second chance. That is, if you wanted to give him one.”

  She looked up, her eyes sad and quiet. “Maybe he just wants to apologize and nothing else, you know,” she ventured.

  “He could do that in a letter. He wants to see you.”

  She drew in a long breath. It was a terrible chance to take. She might get over him, in time. She had her work. It was almost enough.

  She looked down at her hands and thought how happy she’d been the day her father relayed the gossip that JL had bought a diamond ring for her. She thought about her finger being ringless for the rest of her life.

  “You can always tell him to go home.”

  She looked up at his amused expression. “Yes. I guess I could.”

  “There’s a nice symphony concert tomorrow night. They’re playing Debussy. I understand that he likes Debussy very much, and that he has two tickets up front.”

  “Oh, he does, does he?”

  “He only lacks the right partner for the event. And I believe you bought a new gown to wear to the opening of the arts center next month . . . ?”

  She laughed, the first humor she’d felt in a long time. “Yes, I did.”

  “So he said that, if you were willing, he could pick you up at my apartment about six tomorrow evening? He mentioned supper at the Plaza. He has reservations for that, too. And he also mentioned that he was going to look really stupid with empty seats beside him at both those events. He’d be such an object of pity that he might never recover.”