CASSIDY TUGGED DOWN the hem of her saloon girl Halloween costume, then frowned at the cleavage the move revealed. With a sigh, she hauled up the neckline again. How had she let Sierra talk her into wearing this revealing outfit? She spied Daryl’s sprite-like sister line dancing in the cat costume she’d offered as well and shuddered. No way would she have squeezed her curves into that scrap of cloth with a tail. She was lucky to breathe in this costume as it was.
Cassidy backed farther into the shadows of the converted barn Sofia Cade used in her event planning business and let the cool autumn air pouring through an open window wash over her heated skin. Excited chatter, stomping boots and an Outlaw Cowboys’ rollicking song filled the crammed space. Line dancers twirled and clapped in time to the music.
Attendance at the fund-raiser party, thrown by Many Hands, Doing Good to raise money for the ex-factory workers, exceeded their expectations. Excitement bubbled. If they reached their financial goal, they’d begin renovating foreclosed homes next month for the families now working at Loveland Orchards to rent.
“You look beautiful.”
Cassidy jumped slightly at the deep rumble of Daryl’s voice near her ear. Perspiration broke across her brow. He offered a glass of punch and she shivered when their fingers brushed. Since the night by the fire, she’d avoided being alone with him. Her heart played his confession about missing her on a continuous loop. She’d never stopped missing him, too, and with each day she lingered in Carbondale, her fear of acting on her growing feelings intensified.
She raised the cup and sipped the strawberry concoction. “You don’t look half-bad yourself.”
Which was a huge understatement.
Wearing a low-slung gun belt around his narrow hips, a fitted black Western shirt revealing his broad chest and shoulders and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his deep brown eyes, he was the handsomest outlaw she’d ever seen.
“Not half-bad?” His white teeth flashed in a dangerous smile. “So what’s the other half?”
Gorgeous.
“Can’t tell you all my secrets,” she said, offhandedly, though she was dead serious. What would he say—do—if he knew her thoughts? Her lips still tingled with the remembered feel of his mouth, the soft tickle of his beard and how he’d simultaneously taken control of their heated moment, all while making her feel freer than ever before.
Her reaction when he’d shared his feelings terrified her. She’d leave the ranch, ASAP, if the country goods store no longer needed her oversight. Deeper still, her connection to her niece, nephew and Daryl fulfilled her in ways she’d never anticipated. A life without them became harder to imagine.
“How about a dance?” Daryl brushed back the damp tendrils sticking to her cheek. The tenderness in his touch matched the expression in his warm brown eyes. Butterflies took flight in her belly.
“I don’t remember how to do that one.” She nodded to the dancers’ synchronized moves.
“Boot-Scootin’ Boogie?” Daryl raised a dark brow. “Westerners come out of the womb knowing that one.”
She laughed.
Daryl’s lips twisted. “This doesn’t have to be so serious.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Us.”
“Oh. Uh—” Flustered, she downed the rest of her drink and set the cup on a high-topped table.
“Let’s forget everything and just have fun tonight.” He tipped up her chin until her eyes rose to meet his. His lighthearted expression momentarily dazzled her. She hadn’t realized just how haunted he’d looked until now. It was like the first warm spring day after a bitter winter. “We’ve been working hard. We deserve it.”
“Do we?” she asked a bit breathlessly. Given her traitorous thoughts, she doubted she deserved anything but a swift kick out of this lovely family. It belonged to Leanne. Not her.
No takebacks.
Daryl cupped her shoulder, then slid his calloused fingers down her arms to grip her hands. “Yes. We do. I did the investigation piece because you wanted to remind me of who I used to be. Dance with me. Let me remind you of your old self, too.”
She nodded, trying and failing to ignore the heat exploding from their linked fingers. It rose up her arm to suffuse her body.
Holding tight, she followed as he shouldered through the crowd and found a tiny space on the dance floor. The band lit into “Cotton Eye Joe” and Daryl, as comfortable in his own skin as ever, began slapping his pumping knees.
“Yeee-haaaw!” he hollered with a wink. He linked arms with her and twirled them in a fast circle that got her giggling. Technically, this was a round dance, not line dance, but the moves were still synchronized. Her body somehow remembered the steps, claps, lassos and turns, nevertheless, moving in time alongside Daryl until they hit the chorus again and he swung her around and around.
“I’m going to fall!” she laughed, flushed and slightly off-balance.
“Not a chance.” Daryl’s grip tightened, and he lifted her off her feet, spinning them.
“You’re terrible.” Shoving at his chest was like pushing a mountain, but he released her instantly. They resumed the heart-pounding dance until its breathless conclusion, raising several eyebrows and conversations behind lifted hands.
“Thank you!” Heath shouted into the microphone. “We’re taking a break for the costume contest judging. Please line up behind my lovely fiancée, Jewel, to enter, and good luck!”
“You’re pouting.” Daryl briefly pressed a finger to her mouth, and she fought the urge to close her lips around it.
“I’m not…” She caught his arch stare and gave up. “Fine. I wish they weren’t taking a break. That was fun.”
“There’s not much line dancing in the Philippines, huh?”
She rolled her eyes. “The only scootin’ I’m doing is out of the way of bullets.”
His smile faded. “It’s a dangerous job.”
“Somebody’s got to do it.” She forced a laugh, hating the concern in his eyes, knowing she’d put it there.
“You do it well.” He wrapped an arm around her and led her from the dance floor.
“Thank you.” She waited for him to say more but he only stared up at the sky when they stepped outside. A quarter-moon rose over Mount Sopris and stars dazzled, brilliant against the velvet black. She’d traveled the world and seen more than her share of beautiful spots, but none moved her more than the Rocky Mountains in her own backyard, standing next to her first love.
Her only love.
Would she ever give her heart to another the way she had with Daryl? Doubtful. It hadn’t been the same since he’d walked into her hospital room.
“Pa!” Emma charged up to them in a sparkling pink ballerina costume and cowboy boots. “Grandma Joy says we can come over for a sleepover with Javi. Can we?”
“Please!” wheedled Noah. He wore an orange T-shirt, shorts and socks with cardboard-painted “flames” attached to his back.
“Did anyone guess your costume yet?” Cassidy asked.
Noah crossed his arms. “Just Beuford. He licked me.”
“Can’t fool a dog.” Cassidy fussed with the costume she and Noah labored over last night. “He knew you were a Flamin’ Cheeto.”
“Pa.” Emma bounced in her boots. “We have to hurry because Grandma Joy is leaving soon. She said she’s tired.”
“Tired?” Daryl frowned. “Let me talk to your grandma and then we’ll see about you going over.” He turned to Cassidy. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll go with you,” she offered.
“No. Stay. I…” He peered up at the sky, then at her again with a toe-curling intensity. “I don’t want to waste this night. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.” Goose bumps rose on her arms. No denying she wanted to stargaze with Daryl. As she watched the trio disappear through the door, someone called her name.
“Hey, Sierra.” Cassidy wandered over to the picnic table where Daryl’s sister sat half in shadow. “What are you doing out here by your lonesome?”
“Getting some air.” Sierra waved a hand before her flushed face. “Too many people in there.”
“I think it’s starting to thin out.” Cassidy slid onto the bench seat opposite Sierra.
Sierra shrugged. “I’m more comfortable around the four-legged kind of company anyway.”
Cassidy dropped an elbow to the table and leaned her cheek into her palm. “How’s the orphaned bear cub doing?”
“Forest?” Sierra smiled. “He’s getting big. It’s hard not to get attached since I’ll be letting him go in a few months.”
“I bet.”
“What about you?” Sierra asked.
“Me?” Cassidy straightened in surprise.
“Are you getting attached?”
Cassidy’s heart momentarily stilled. “I’ve always been attached to Noah and Emma.”
Sierra brushed back her long blond bangs and studied Cassidy. “What about my brother?”
Cassidy’s mouth opened, then closed as she worked out a response. “I’m doing my best not to,” she confessed after an awkward beat of silence.
“It might be too late for Daryl.” Over Sierra’s shoulder a spruce tree’s bow shook when a barn owl swooped in and perched.
“W-what do you mean?”
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” Sierra reached across the table and briefly squeezed Cassidy’s cold hands. “I’d wager he’s as much in love with you as he’s ever been.”
“No. He loved my sister.” Cassidy cleared her clogged throat. “Loves.”
“Do you love Daryl?” The barn owl swiveled its heart-shaped face in every direction, as if looking for the elusive answer Cassidy sought.
She massaged her now throbbing temples. “I care about him. I don’t know if I’m in love with him.”
“Would it matter if you were?” Sierra pulled off her cat-ear headband and dropped it to the table. “Either way, you’re not planning to stay here, right?”
Cassidy shook her head slowly. It seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, nearly as much as her heart.
Sierra’s hopeful expression faded. “Will you promise me one thing?”
“Yes.”
“If you truly care for him, go before you hurt him. He’s already had his heart broken. Let us help put it back together before you shatter it again.”
Cassidy stared into Sierra’s anguished eyes, understanding a protective sister. She’d been one once, too…until she’d turned her back on Leanne without hearing her out…before she’d tried to understand…forgive.
If she’d chosen Daryl over Bosnia in the first place, and moved to Carbondale right after graduation, none of this mess would have happened. She would have been happy here…at least in the short term. Still, the chance existed her restless spirit could have been stifled.
Sierra was right. To protect Daryl and the children’s hearts she had to avoid getting too attached. After the harvest season, she’d take the next story assignment on offer and leave. “I promise,” she whispered, glancing at the doorway. “Can I ask a favor?”
Sierra nodded.
“Will you drive me to your place? I’d like to see Forest.”
“I have to be up early for the animals. Would you mind staying over and I’ll bring you home after my first feedings?”
Daryl emerged through the door, craning his neck, searching for Cassidy. The naked hope on his face, the yearning, mirrored her own.
Cassidy shoved away from the picnic table and linked arms with Sierra, her chest tight. “I think it’s for the best.”
* * *
“WHERE’S CASSIDY?”
Daryl turned and spied Maverick leaning in the doorway to the Halloween party. “She’s spending the night with Sierra,” he told his brother.
“Why?”
“Something about wanting to see the bear cub.”
“It’s something to see,” Maverick said mildly, striding to a discarded, empty soda can. After picking it up, he dropped it, along with a few others, into a recycle bin. Typical Maverick. He’d always been a caretaker, the family “fixer” who’d cleaned up the messes Daryl’s adoptive mother created when she spiraled, as opposed to Heath, who’d been their mom’s whisperer, soothing her erratic moods. Now that Maverick’s shoulder injury sidelined him from professional bull riding, and the ranch’s usual catastrophes had largely abated, he seemed a bit lost lately. Was Daryl his next “project”?
“I’d better go in and see if Jewel needs help with the costume contest judging.”
“Wonder Woman won.” Maverick dropped into one of the slatted rocking chairs grouped on the back patio and pointed to the empty seat beside him.
Yep. Daryl was Maverick’s next “fixer-upper.”
He smothered a sigh and sat. “Good for Amberley,” he said, referring to his legally blind stepsister-in-law.
Maverick nodded. “She’s a superhero, all right. One of the tour’s best barrel racers. You’d never know she had any kind of challenge.”
“Jared’s a lucky man.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it. He knew what he had to do to win her heart.”
Daryl nodded. “Don’t know many who’d walk away from a pro football comeback.”
“What about Cassidy?”
Daryl slid Maverick a side-eyed glance. Unlike most Lovelands, Maverick hit issues with blunt force. All the better to fix them, he claimed.
“What about her?” Daryl stalled.
“When’s she going back to her job?”
“She hasn’t said.” Just speaking those words released some of the hope locked away in his heart. Maybe she considered staying… One of these days, he said to himself, I’m going to tell her. Tell her I love her more than I could love any woman. Tell her that my life started when she walked into the college bookstore. But not yet. He didn’t want to back her into a corner and make her feel she had to either say she loved him, too, or run.
“Have you asked?”
Daryl shrugged.
Maverick’s chair creaked as he rocked it faster. “You’re afraid to.”
Daryl’s tongue suffered momentary paralysis. He gaped at his brother, mute.
“You’re afraid to ask because you don’t want her to go.” Maverick nodded without tearing his eyes off the distant moon. “Deny it. Go on. See if you can.”
Daryl’s nostrils flared with the force of his exhale. “Leave it, Maverick.”
“If I spotted you behind the wheel of a truck headed over a cliff, shouldn’t I try to stop you?” Maverick quit rocking. In the quiet, wings flapped as a barn owl soared from a nearby spruce.
“That’s what you think I’m doing?” Daryl’s fingertips dented his black slacks.
Maverick’s blue eyes, a deep cobalt unique to their family, pierced Daryl’s. “And your kids are in the back seat.”
An ache flared along Daryl’s clamped jaw. “Low, Mav.”
“Truth hurts, dude.”
“Haven’t done much but hurt since Leanne’s passing.”
Maverick’s thick eyebrows drew together. “Why add on more, then?”
“I’m not,” Daryl denied, though Maverick had a point. Spending time alone with Cassidy was playing with fire, yet he’d been hurrying back to see her when he darn well knew better.
“You don’t have feelings for Cassidy?” Maverick’s voice rose, skeptical.
Daryl hung his head. “She’s just going to leave anyway.”
“If you care for her, then convince her to stay,” Maverick surprised Daryl by saying.
Daryl’s head snapped up. “Tried that once.”
“All I remember is you letting her go, then hooking up with her sister.” Maverick peered steadily at Daryl from beneath the brim of his rancher’s hat.
Daryl flinched. The truth didn’t just hurt. It cut to the bone.
“You want something, you go after it and you don’t quit until you get it.”
“We’re not right for each other, even if I was free to woo her.”
“Last I checked, you’re single. Second, you two didn’t look wrong for each other on the dance floor.”
“You weren’t the only one watching us. I don’t want people talking.”
“Who cares? Besides, if you’re giving them a little joy in their boring lives, then you’re doing them a favor.”
“That’s one way to look at it.” Daryl chuckled.
“Are you in love with Cassidy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then convince her to stay long enough to find out. Show her all she has to gain with you.”
“I can’t offer her fame. Glory.”
“But you give love. Trust me. I’ve had fame. Glory. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Daryl nodded slowly. Maverick slapped his knee and they rose. “Your life with Leanne is over. Don’t lose this chance to start a new one with Cassidy.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Then you weren’t listening. It isn’t easy. It’s necessary. Take her out on her own or with the kids, on the town, in the wilderness…make her see that love is the greatest achievement.”
Daryl eyed his brother, the handsome face and brawny build that buckle bunnies flocked to see from show to show. Beneath his toughness beat a romantic’s heart. “How about you? Anyone special caught your eye?”
“Me?” Maverick scoffed, putting his brother in a headlock that transitioned into a bro hug. “Maybe once I’ve fixed all of y’alls’ lives, I might have time for one of my own. Right now, I gotta get rid of Neil, our wannabe uncle, and figure out why Joy’s taking afternoon naps again.”
“Do you think the cancer’s back?”
“Only one way to find out, but Joy’s being stubborn about seeing the doctor. Claims she always gets tired this time of year on account of losing her son Jesse.”
Daryl thought about Jesse, the Cade son who’d broken his family’s heart with his addiction and resulting death. “Could be true, but better safe than sorry. She’s made Pa the happiest I’ve ever seen him.”
Maverick rubbed his large hands together. “I’m calling a family meeting about it, and Neil, next week.”
“What are your plans for Neil?”
“If Travis will agree to look the other way, murder.”
Daryl laughed. “Can’t see him bending the law that far.”
“Sad but true. I’m thinking we can hire a PI to investigate Neil.”
Daryl turned with his brother and headed back to the party. An infectious beat pulsed from the open doorway. “I’d be on board with that.”
Maverick stopped Daryl with a hand on his shoulder. “What about the rest of my advice? You going to wimp out and let other people’s opinions, or your doubts, stop you from going after what you want?”
Daryl shrugged, noncommittal. “Better put your attention on Pa and Joy. They need your help more than me.”
Maverick leveled him with a penetrating stare. “Not true, but I won’t stick my nose in where it’s not wanted.”
“Since when’s that ever stopped you?” Daryl chuckled, and Maverick joined him.
“True.” He thumped Daryl on the back before disappearing into the party crowd.
Daryl stared after Maverick, grateful for his family. Yet they didn’t help him feel less alone. Only one person chased the emptiness inside away—Cassidy. Her spontaneity, her boldness, her crackling energy got his heart beating fast. Her passion, when he’d kissed her the other night, blew him away. He felt more for her than he’d ever felt for Leanne, and it scared him.
The side-eye looks he was getting from the townsfolk who noticed their closeness, however, reminded him not to stray from the straight-and-narrow path he’d followed to avoid being like his biological parents. He wasn’t born a Loveland, but he’d be the best one possible, a credit to the name they’d given him when he’d needed it most. It carried an expectation of high moral principles, strength of convictions, emotional fortitude.
Sacrifice.
Did that have to include his happiness? He’d given up Cassidy once to right the wrong he’d done. Now he had a second chance to have a relationship based on love, not obligation. How could he pursue a future relationship, though, when he still hadn’t figured out what went wrong in the past with his marriage? He’d failed Leanne somehow and until he understood why, he might repeat the same mistake with Cassidy.
And this time, he was determined to get it right. Maverick was right. Time to fight for what he wanted, and what he wanted was Cassidy.