Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid

After a pause he sent her another one of those blasted smiles and obediently trotted for the door. As he walked out into the cool June night toward his own cabin next door, she couldn’t help wondering if she had just made the second biggest mistake of her life.

He was already up and dressed when he heard her leave her cabin an hour before sunrise.

From his comfortable spot in the old wooden rocker, Zack listened to the squeak of her screen door, her footsteps on the wooden planks of her porch, then her sleepy, muffled curse as she stumbled over something in the predawn darkness.

He grinned into the hidden shadows of his own front porch. His Cassidy Jane had never been much of a morning person. Apparently, she hadn’t changed much in the past decade.

His smile slid away. Wrong, he reminded himself again. Maybe she still wasn’t crazy about getting up early, but she was no longer the same girl he had loved ten years ago. Everyone changed. He couldn’t come back after so long and expect her to have waited for him in suspended animation like some kind of moth trapped in glossy amber.

She was a different woman, just as he had changed drastically from that wild, edgy ranch hand. The only thing they shared was a bittersweet past ten years old.

But last night in her house he had seen glimpses of the girl she had been, like some kind of ghostly reflection shimmering under deep, clear water. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear. The stubborn jut of her chin as she had argued with him. Those luminous blue eyes that showed every emotion.

She was the same but different, and he wanted to find out all the ways she had changed over the years.

He would see this through. He had come too damn far to back down now. If nothing else, he could at least explain to her why he had left. He owed her that much.

On impulse, he rose from the comfortable old rocker and followed her on the gravel pathway toward the lodge, maintaining a discreet distance between them.

The early-morning air was cool, sharp and sweet with pine pitch and sagebrush. He inhaled it deeply into his lungs, listening to the quiet. He had missed this place. More than he realized, until the day before when he returned.

He bought his own ranch in the San Juans a few years ago and he escaped to it as often as he could manage, but it wasn’t the same. Western Colorado had never felt as comfortable to him as Star Valley.

As right.

The months he spent working the Diamond Harte were the best of his life. Not just because of Cassie, although he had watched her and wanted her for a long time before that fateful trip into the high country when he had kissed her for the first time.

Cassie was a big part of his bond to this place, but there was more. Her brother Matt had treated him well, far better than any other man he’d worked for over the years.

Wandering ranch hands without their own spreads generally had a social status roughly equivalent to a good cow dog. He’d become accustomed to it as a boy following his father from ranch to ranch across the West. He didn’t like it but he accepted it.

At the Diamond Harte, everything had been different. Zack had been given more responsibility than he’d ever had before. He’d been treated as an equal, as a trusted friend.

And he had repaid that trust by abandoning the boss’s sister a week before their wedding.

He frowned and pushed the thought away, concentrating instead on moving quietly several yards behind her. By now they had reached the lodge. Instead of going in the main door, Cassie slipped around the back of the big log structure and unlocked a door on the side, going straight into the kitchen, he assumed.

After a moment’s debate as to the wisdom of another confrontation with her so early in the game, he gave a mental shrug, twisted the knob and walked inside.

He found her standing across the large, comfortable kitchen with her back to him, her arms reaching behind her as she tied on a crisp white apron.

She didn’t bother looking up at his entrance. “I’m glad you’re on time this morning, Greta. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us for breakfast if we’re going to do this right today. As much as I would love to serve a steaming bucket of slop to Zack Slater, I can’t do that to Jean.”

He paused several seconds, then couldn’t resist. “I appreciate that,” he drawled. “How about we save the bucket of slop for tomorrow? I think I’d prefer bacon and eggs this morning.”

She whirled around at his voice, her blue eyes going wide. Color soaked her high cheekbones but she didn’t apologize, just tilted her chin a little higher as her cool beauty punched him hard in the gut. “You’re up early.”

He leaned a hip against one of the wide counters. “I spent too many years as a ranch hand. Old habits, you know. It’s tough for me to sleep past six these days.”

“It’s only half past five,” she pointed out. “You have another half hour to laze around in bed.”

“Must be all this fresh, invigorating mountain air.” Or something.

“Well, I’m afraid you’re too early for breakfast.” Her voice was sharp as she reached for a metal pan on a shelf. “We don’t start serving until seven.”

“I can wait.”

She studied him for a moment, then pursed her lips together. “If you’re starving, there might be a few muffins left over from yesterday. And the coffee will be ready in a few moments.”

Despite the grudging tone of voice, her words still reached in and tugged at his heart and he saw another ghostly reflection of the woman he had loved, the soft-hearted nurturer who hated to see anybody go hungry on her watch. Even him.

“I’m fine,” he assured her. Better than fine. He thoroughly enjoyed watching her bustle around the kitchen, even though her movements were jerky and abrupt, without her customary elegant grace.

His presence unnerved her. He could see it in the way she fumbled through drawers and rummaged blindly in the huge refrigerator.

Under ordinary circumstances she probably knew this kitchen like she knew her own name, but you’d never be able to tell by her movements this morning.

He found it very enlightening to see her composure slip. Enlightening and entertaining.

Somewhat ashamed of himself for finding secret pleasure in the knowledge that he could fluster her so much just by invading her space, he straightened from the counter. “Can I help you do something?”

She peered around the chrome door of the refrigerator to stare at him. “You mean like cook?”

He shrugged. “I have been known to rattle a few pots from time to time.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Why would the CEO of Maverick Enterprises volunteer to cook breakfast for ten hungry families?”

Because the CEO of Maverick Enterprises has spent ten years mooning over the chef. “Maybe I’m bored.”

“Don’t you have some kind of leveraged buyout or hostile takeover to mastermind somewhere?”

“I’m all leveraged out this morning. And I’ve found takeovers to be generally much less hostile once I’ve had my morning coffee.”

She didn’t return his smile, just watched him with that suspicion brimming out of her blue eyes. Finally he decided not to argue with her. Instead, he picked up a knife and went to work cutting up the green peppers she’d pulled from the refrigerator.

“Am I doing this right?”

She watched him for a moment, a baffled look on her features, then she shrugged. “You’re the boss. If you want to play souschef, don’t let me stop you. Dice the pieces a little smaller, though.”

She returned to rifling through the refrigerator, and they worked in silence for a few moments, the only sounds in the kitchen the thud of the knife on the wooden cutting board and the delicate shattering of eggshells from across the room.

He had a quick memory of other meals they had cooked together, when he had been free to sneak up behind her if the mood struck him. When he could wrap his arms around her and lift her long, thick hair to plant kisses on the spot right at the base of her neck that drove her crazy, until she would turn breathlessly into his arms, the meal forgotten.

They had ruined more than one meal at the Diamond Harte together. He smiled at the mental picture, and of the slit-eyed look her older brother would give him when he would come in and find something burning on the stove and the two of them flushed and out of breath.

Not caring for the direction of his thoughts or the awkward silence between them, he looked for a distraction, finally settling on what he thought would be a benign topic of conversation.

“So how’s your family these days?” he asked.