It’d be easier for everyone if she was lying, if she was the fortune hunter his instincts insisted she wasn’t.
Rubbing a hand over his eyes, Zach frowned. When he opened them, she stood there, a vision of femininity.
He hadn’t heard her approach.
She was silhouetted by the morning sun streaming through the window. Her eyes were wide, focused on him and Billy. Her breaths came in short, uneven bursts, and a file was clutched against her chest, her fingers nearly white from the pressure she exerted.
Despite his earlier promise of not hurting innocents, Zach saw the darkness of distrust in her verdant eyes.
Suited him fine. It worked both ways.
Like a gauntlet, she placed the folder on the table. The manila was well-worn, he noticed, as if it had been handled hundreds of times. And what was in there that made her so certain the Harts owed her something? Words. Maybe pictures. Weapons to hurt, maybe destroy?
The baby stirred and Cassandra moved quickly. Her eyes narrowed a bit, reminding him of a mother protecting her young.
Realization hit Zach square in the heart.
He was determined to defend his family from a third attack. But Cassandra possessed powerful resolve to fight for her family, too.
The baby whimpered, and Cassandra unlatched the safety straps, scooping the infant from beneath his blankets, crooning as she studied the baby’s small features.
For a moment Zach stood there, transfixed. He had little experience with children, next to none with babies. But as tiny fingers closed around a long, slender one, an odd feeling, one he had no intention of naming or claiming, assailed him.
Just then a knock sounded on the door and Margaret entered, a smile for her son and another for Cassandra and the child.
“Welcome home, son,” Margaret said.
He wished he could say it was good to be here.
Cassandra looked at his mother, and Zach’s sixth sense raised yet another warning flag. A soft, apparently sincere smile crossed Cassandra’s features. Lord help her if it was fake, though—a front ultimately meant to harm. If that was the case, she’d need all the protection she could find. Because she sure wouldn’t be able to run, and he sure as hell wouldn’t allow her to hide from the swift wrath of his retribution.
“Oh my, is the little one finally awake?”
Cassandra nodded and asked Margaret, “Would you like to hold him?”
“May I?”
In his mother’s two words, Zach heard hope...hope and excitement.
Damn Cassandra Morrison’s hide, anyway, for doing this to him, to Chad, and worse, to their mother.
Margaret Hart had a soft spot inside for any cause, for any stray. Attachment to this new baby would spell emotional tragedy. A tragedy that pride bound him to avert.
Needing action, he grabbed the folder.
He wasn’t going to like what he saw, not if the tightening in his gut served as any indication.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed Margaret lower herself into a high-backed wing chair. Cassandra lovingly placed the bundle of blankets and baby in Margaret’s arms.
Focusing his attention away from the all-too-domestic scene, he thumbed back the corner of the file. Then he scowled. On the top, strategically clipped to the secured papers, was a picture of a woman smiling up at Chad. His arm was slung around her shoulder and he grinned at the camera. A cowboy hat rode low over his eyes and a championship rodeo belt buckle hung around his middle, along with the woman’s arm.
Zach’s jaw tightened. “Jeanie?” he asked unnecessarily.
Cassandra moved to stand near him, and he noticed the sheen of tears clouding her eyes. “Yes.”
“Except for the eyes, you don’t look alike.” He wondered if the difference extended to morals, as well.
He flipped the picture, found another beneath. Jeanie and Chad were out to dinner this time, a carafe of wine on the table, a long-neck bottle of beer in front of Chad—his favorite brand. This time their faces were close together and so were their lips.
He was aware of Cassandra’s perfume and another, more subtle scent—her anxiety.
“You’re not going to like everything in there,” she told him in a whisper, repeating the words he’d already told himself. Then she added, “I didn’t.”
He knew Chad wasn’t perfect. Hell, thankfully none of the Hart brothers had that heavy burden to bear. But they did know their obligations.
He skimmed the first report. Pertinent details leaped out, details that incriminated Chad.
Chad had been dating Jeanie. She’d been seen leaving his hotel room, a seedy little place off the highway in Montana, at seven o’clock in the morning. Chad’s team-roping partner called Chad’s room one night and the phone had been answered by a sleepy-sounding Jeanie.
“Well?”
Zach’s hope that Chad, and the Harts, would be completely cleared had vanished. Zach felt backed into a corner.
He despised corners.
Still, there was no proof. Circumstantial evidence didn’t hold much weight. And he clung to that.
Zach looked at Cassandra, his nostrils pinched. She appeared so expectant, so damn hopeful, it stuck in his craw. Everything and everyone seemed to recede, except them and their problem. “This report proves nothing.”
“Proves—” her hands fisted “—nothing?”
“Chad may have had some involvement with your sister, but apparently he wasn’t the only man she showed an interest in.”
Cassandra’s eyes lost some of their spark, and he hated himself for being the one to extinguish it. Still, if she caused any pain to his mother, he’d hate himself even worse. He wouldn’t back down, would do what he had to do. “The report states she was a rodeo groupie, that—”
“I’m well aware of every word in there.”
“In that case...” Zach saw his checkbook where he’d left it on the table, already open and waiting.
“You’re disturbing the baby,” Margaret reprimanded. “Go into your office, Zachary. I’ll baby-sit.”
The tone of his mother’s voice brooked no argument. With a tight nod, he said, “My office, Ms. Morrison.”
“But...”
“Young William will be all right with his granny,” Margaret assured Cassie.
Zach’s hold on his temper frayed at the edges. “My office. Now.”
“Maybe we can just—”
“Now.”
“Go on,” Margaret said. “His bark is worse than his bite. He’s harmless.” Looking at her son, she warned, “Zachary, behave yourself, young man.”
He held open the door for Cassandra, indicating she should leave the room. He led the way through the entryway and down the hall and she followed, her reluctance seeming to disappear as they drew closer to his office. When she brushed by him, her shoulders were squared in confrontation and not a single ounce of capitulation.
His pulse quickened. He looked forward to the challenge... and especially the triumph.
Two