“Your father was like that,” her mother stated firmly. “So was my father. I’ve often thought it must be some kind of a defense against feeling things too deeply.”
“Oh, Cassidy feels things, all right. Resentment, anger, contempt.” Karen wiped the tears from her cheeks with quick angry strokes of her cold fingertips. “These days he scowls more than he smiles, and the hands are threatening to force-feed him patience. As for me, I can’t seem to do anything right anymore.” She drew a breath. “And the only time he smiles is when he’s talking to Vicki.”
“Karen, Cassidy’s never been a man to smile easily, which isn’t surprising, given the fact that he’s virtually been on his own since his father killed himself.”
That was certainly true enough, Karen reflected with a frown. Cassidy had been barely seventeen and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he’d come home from football practice to find his father dead by his own hand. Since his parents had been divorced for many years by then, the grim details of his father’s burial had been left to him. As soon as he’d graduated, he’d sold the house and the few other possessions his father had left him, put the money and a small insurance settlement into a savings account, and enlisted in the army.
She knew very little of Cassidy’s family history—only the names of his parents and a few sketchy details of his growing-up years. He’d had a brother who died before the age of five and a mother who’d left ten-year-old Cassidy and his father shortly thereafter. All of which had given him a deep-seated need to be in control of his own destiny. Very early in their relationship, she’d realized that she was wasting her time trying to pry open a door to his past that for reasons of his own, he’d locked and bolted tight.
“There are other changes, too. More…intimate ones.”
Karen felt her face growing hot. Though she and her mother had always been close, they had only discussed sex in impersonal terms. To her credit, Sylvia had always been quite open about what she called bedroom romps, the hotter the better. Karen had been the one to shy away from the explicit details.
“In other words, you’re not sleeping together?”
Karen hated the wave of weary bitterness that passed over her. It was becoming as much a part of her as the indecision about her marriage.
“Oh, yes, we’re sleeping together,” she admitted, watching a cloud drift across the frame formed by the living room’s large bay window. “On our own separate sides of the bed.”
Karen mentally cringed at the memory of the last time she’d tried to snuggle up to Cassidy while he’d been sleeping. He’d jerked away from her violently, as though she’d attacked him.
“Forgive me for asking, darling, but have you considered that the problem might be…physical?”
“If you’re asking me if he’s impotent, he’s not.” The idea was laughable. Cassidy was an intensely virile man with a strong sex drive. “We still have sex now and then, but it’s mechanical. A quick, impersonal screw when he’s horny. Nothing more than physical relief.”
“And you believe Cassidy is to blame for that?”
“He resents my career and I resent him for resenting it.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “How’s that for complex?”
“But typical of you, my darling daughter. You always were able to see two or three layers deeper than anyone else. It’s part of your physician’s gift, I think.”
“I’m beginning to think it’s more like a curse.” Karen lifted a hand to rub at the beginnings of a headache behind her eyes. “Tell me the truth, Mom. If you were in my place, would you give up medicine in order to save your marriage?”
Sylvia inhaled a quick, nervous breath. “Surely it hasn’t come to that?”
“Not yet, but I have a terrible feeling that’s where we’re headed.” Karen sat forward, her hands wrapped tightly around the delicate Spode cup. “You haven’t given me your answer. Would you give up part of your soul to keep the man you love?”
“I don’t know, Karen. Thank goodness that was one particular dilemma I never had to face. And before you tell me that’s not an answer, I agree. Mostly because there is no one answer.”
Karen sighed. “Coward,” she grumbled.
Laughing softly, Sylvia glanced down at the worn gold band she had never once removed since her nervous groom had slipped it onto her finger almost thirty-five years ago. “Darling, forgive me for saying so, but I really think you should be having this conversation with Cassidy, not me,”
“I’ve tried, Mother. But the moment I bring up a topic that remotely has to do with his feelings, he just ices over.”
“Perhaps if you persisted. Gently, of course.”
“It’s difficult to persist when the person you’re talking with gets up and leaves the room.”
“And you let him get away with that? Tsk, tsk, Karen, I’m surprised at you. You never used to be so tractable.”
“Mother, there’s no ‘letting’ Cassidy do anything. Once he’s gotten it in his head to do something, nothing will stop him.”
“Do what, exactly?”
“Put me through hell until I agree to give up medicine.” She exhaled angrily. “But I won’t be blackmailed like that, Mother! I love him with my whole heart and soul, but a part of me is so angry, so…so disappointed that he’s behaving like some kind of feudal throwback.”
“Hmm, lord of the manor. Or in this case the ranch he loves so much. That does rather describe Cassidy, doesn’t it?”
Karen nodded, her burst of temper ebbing as quickly as it had come. She drained her cup before putting it aside. These days she always seemed to be running behind. As for catching up, forget it.
“I have to go,” she said, flexing her shoulders.
“I’ll see you Saturday night, then.” Her mother rose as well. “If you need anything before then, just call.”
“I will,” Karen promised, giving her mother a hug. “And I apologize for unloading my problems on you. I know I have to find a way to solve them myself.”
Her mother’s still-pretty face took on stern lines. “Karen, asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, just the opposite.”
To placate her mother, Karen smiled. “Don’t worry. If I need you, I’ll holler.”
“Sure you will,” her mother said with a little shake of her head as they walked out to the car together. “Mind how you go,” she said as Karen climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I will,” Karen said before reaching for her seat belt. As she drove off, she prepared herself mentally for the hours ahead. At the end of this shift, she would be one day closer to the end of her residency. Eight more months of brutal hours and unending stress before she could take a few months off to rest, and maybe make a start on another baby, then ease into a private practice where her time would be her own. Things between her and Cassidy would be better then.
They had to be.
Chapter Two
Cassidy had started his day in a decent enough mood, mostly because the tattered feed-store calendar hanging inside the barn doors said it was the first day of spring and there was a hint of warmth in the morning air. The land was coming alive again.
By the end of the day, his good mood had soured. Early spring thaws had left his beautiful ranch a sloppy, ugly mess, and everywhere he’d ridden, he’d seen wind-toppled