A Second-Chance Proposal

He pulled himself upright, then gave Cascade a pat on her flank. “We’ll talk more later,” he promised. He brushed the straw from his jeans and put on a clean shirt from his backpack. Carrying both his hat and his shaving kit, he tugged open the barn door, then strained to close it behind him.

Outside he paused, pulling in lungfuls of the crisp mountain air and scanning the landscape. Cathleen’s property sat on the northern edge of Thunder Valley, tucked in a vee, with the Three Sisters Mountain to the southeast and Mount Lawrence Grassi to the southwest. North lay the Bow River, then the Trans-Canada Highway, which linked Canmore to the bustling city of Calgary, one hour east.

When the property had come on the market more than two years ago, Cathleen had immediately been taken by the possibilities of the house. He’d loved the land it sat on and that it was adjacent to the Thunder Bar M. He’d hoped to one day combine the two properties. But that was a distant dream now.

He rubbed his chin, then headed for the house. Looking up, he wondered which bedroom window belonged to Cathleen. God, the sight of her getting out of that hot tub last night was something he’d never forget. Trust her to have the nerve. They’d pulled some crazy stunts together when they were younger, and Cathleen had never been able to resist a dare. So that much hadn’t changed.

But, as she’d pointed out last night, lots else had. Maybe he should’ve hiked back to Canmore and tried to find someplace else to stay. He had to admit their reunion scene hadn’t gone as well as it could have. He’d kind of hoped she would yell at him and throw a few dishes around the place, then let him pull her into his arms and make it all up to her. But she’d been worse than angry. She’d been cold and aloof. How was he supposed to deal with that?

He stopped at the outdoor tap to brush his teeth and shave—a pain at the best of times, miserable when all you had was cold water. This day wasn’t off to the best of starts. He didn’t like his odds at being offered breakfast, but he’d settle for a good, hot cup of coffee. Hat in hand, he stepped up the painted boards of the porch steps—she’d replaced the former rotting structure—then knocked at the screen.

The wafting scents were tantalizing. Eggs and coffee and something baking.

He tapped on the wooden frame again. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” An elderly woman flipped the latch on the screen door. Her impossibly red curls were tied back with a turquoise scarf that matched her belted pantsuit. She had on bright red lipstick and a generous dash of perfume. “Cathleen said you’d be up any minute. You’re that man who ran out on her the morning of your wedding, aren’t you? Cathleen told me the story.”

He ran a hand over his face, expecting recriminations. None came.

“Sit down, son. I’ll make you some breakfast.”

Dylan scratched the top of his head, slightly bewildered. Why was this woman offering to cook him breakfast? And where was Cathleen?

He sat, though, after tucking his denim shirt into his jeans. It seemed wiser to go with the flow for the moment. No sooner was his butt in a chair than a mug of steaming coffee was set in front of him, along with a muffin and a sectioned grapefruit. He appreciated the coffee. Wasn’t so sure about the muffin. After giving it a prod, he tore off a smidgen and slipped it to Kip. The dog gobbled it as if it were a prime cut of steak.

“Um, thanks. Is Cathleen…?”

“She’s outside doing something with the hot tub. Checking pH levels and adding chlorine, I think. She’ll be right in. Now, how do you like your eggs?”

“Eggs?”

“Breakfast is—”

“The most important meal of the day.”

Sunshine suddenly blazed through the doorway as Cathleen sailed into the room. Just the pleasure of seeing the smile she blasted in his direction was reward enough for this bizarre homecoming of his. For a moment he let himself pretend that the past two years had been a dream. That they were married and that she was smiling because she loved him and was happy to see him.

Cathleen straddled the chair opposite his and rested her chin in her hand. “You two have met each other?”

Dylan glanced at the woman by the stove. “Sure have.”

“Good. Thanks, Poppy,” she added as the woman placed a muffin, grapefruit and coffee in front of Cathleen.

Dylan found the whole scene confusing. Cathleen seemed perfectly content to be waited on by her elderly paying guest. “I’ve never heard of a bed-and-breakfast where the guests served the owners,” he commented.

Cathleen held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “She wakes up before I do, gets behind the stove and then won’t budge.”

“I’m a born cook,” Poppy declared, dropping a pat of butter into a warmed frying pan. “And I need to test my recipes on someone. Besides, I’ve lived on my own for so long it’s wonderful to have people to cook for again.”

“No family?” Dylan asked.

Poppy’s inner glow dimmed. “Not anymore…. Now then,” she said briskly. “Something tells me you’re a sunny-side-up man.” She raised an egg over the frying pan. “Am I right?”

Generally he was a three-cups-of-coffee-and-nothing-else man, but he had to admit all this food smelled pretty damn good. Besides, a good breakfast might help compensate for his sleepless night. Between agonizing over the things he had said—all of them stupid and wrong—and imagining Cathleen alone in her bed, no wonder he hadn’t been able to drop off.

He eyed her in her casual riding gear—jeans and boots and a Western-style shirt—and couldn’t help mentally stripping her down to the outfit she’d worn last night.

She kicked him under the table just above his knee. He choked back a surprised grunt. The damn woman always had been able to read his mind too easily.

“I phoned Kelly last night,” she said.

The sister who worked for the RCMP. He didn’t have to think too hard to figure out what they’d been talking about. “So what did Kelly have to say about the investigation?” he asked.

“Doesn’t sound like there have been any new developments in quite some time.”

Cathleen sipped coffee, and he stared openly. She didn’t share Kelly’s perfect bone structure, or have especially pretty features like Maureen. Still, of the three sisters, she was the one who stood out in a crowd. Was it the model’s wide smile, her confident dark blue eyes, those long, luscious legs…?

“What’s this about?” Poppy asked, jarring him back into the here and now as she slid two perfectly cooked eggs onto a plate, along with slices of toasted multigrain bread.

After a few moments of silence Dylan realized that Cathleen was waiting for him to answer Poppy’s question.

“A couple of years ago there was a showdown on my family’s ranch. My stepfather was having some petroleum company executives over for a barbecue. I’d organized a group of environmentalists for a peaceful demonstration. But events got out of hand. People started yelling and shoving. Then someone lit off a firecracker. It exploded with a burst of light and noise, of course, and the next thing we knew, the daughter of one of the oilmen, Jilly Beckett, had collapsed into her father’s arms. She’d been shot.”

The sixteen-year-old’s stricken face burned against his eyes, as if branded there. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he felt his share of responsibility for leading the protest. Not that he’d had any idea a kid was going to be present.

The person he’d wanted to hurt—though not in a physical sense—had been his stepfather. The bastard had decided to allow several oil wells to be drilled on McLean property; or more precisely, he’d persuaded his wife that she should sign away her mineral rights for this purpose.

Dylan still cursed the day of their wedding. His mother had asked him to participate in the ceremony, but he never would have cooperated if he could’ve guessed the changes Max Strongman and his son, James, would bring to his life.

Even now his throat thickened with the resentments that had piled up over the years, the worst from those few weeks before his scheduled wedding to Cathleen. Was he wrong to blame Rose for allowing her new husband so much control over land that had belonged to her first husband, Dylan’s father? Dylan had been raised to consider the ranch his birthright, his and his cousin Jake’s. But Max had other ideas.

Oil, and the money he would earn through royalties, had been Strongman’s priority. Dylan could believe it, too, after years of watching his stepfather try to operate the three-thousand-acre ranch. Max had no appreciation for the beauty of the land and no respect for the creatures—either human or animal—who tried to live off it.

“The police never found the gun,” Cathleen said into the quiet. “And no one on the scene saw who shot Jilly.”

“Whether it was planned or not, the firecracker made an effective decoy,” Dylan added.

Poppy paused in between bites of bran muffin. A tangible change had come over her while she’d processed the information. The new wariness in her eyes was one Dylan understood all too well. Being a suspect in a murder case didn’t put him high on anyone’s popularity list.

Cathleen seemed to have picked up on Poppy’s altered mood, too. Typically, she addressed the situation head-on. “Some people assumed Dylan was guilty because he’d organized the demonstration. Plus, his differences with his stepfather were no secret. But no one ever found any evidence.”

She faced Dylan. “And since nothing new has turned up in the past two years, Kelly says she doubts anyone will ever be arrested.”

The look Cathleen was giving him now was almost sympathetic. “Even if Max is guilty, what can you possibly do about it?”

“I have no idea. But I’ve got to help my mother somehow.” He finished off the coffee and gave her a smile that he hoped belied the insecurities that kept him awake at night. “And I’ve got to clear my own reputation, as well. Cathleen, darlin’, I don’t expect you to marry a man with a sullied reputation.”

Poppy’s eyebrows angled upward with alarm. “Marry?”