Cole was not about to head off down that particular path. Any discussion of Cassie was doomed. He remembered all too clearly what had happened the minute his father had learned that the two of them were getting close. He had packed up Cole’s things and shipped him off to school weeks before the start of his junior year.
To his everlasting regret, there hadn’t been a thing Cole could do about it. At that point he’d wanted his college diploma too much to risk his father’s wrath. That diploma had been his ticket away from ranching. He’d sent a note to Cassie explaining and begging for her understanding. Her reply had been curt. She’d told him it didn’t matter, that he could do whatever suited him. She intended to get on with her life.
Ironically, the ink had barely been dry on his diploma when his father had suffered a heart attack and pleaded with him to return home. Now here he was, spending his days running the ranch he hated and his nights working on the computer programming he loved. It wasn’t as awful as it could have been. The reality was he could design his computer programs anywhere, even in a town where he had to dodge old memories at every turn.
By the time he’d come back to Winding River, Cassie Collins had been gone, and no one was saying where. Up until then her mother had been kind to him, standing in for the mother he’d lost at an early age. But when he’d gone to see her on his return, Edna Collins had slammed the door in his face. He hadn’t understood why, but he hadn’t forced the issue.
Over the years he’d heard Cassie’s name mentioned, usually in connection with some wild, reckless stunt that had been exaggerated by time. He’d debated questioning her best friends when they occasionally passed through town, but he’d told himself that if he’d meant anything at all to Cassie, she would have responded differently to his note. Maybe she’d just viewed that summer as a wild fling. Maybe he was the only one who’d seen it as something more. Either way, it was probably for the best to leave things as they were. Wherever she was, she was no doubt happily married by now.
When he was doing some of his rare soul-searching, Cole could admit that the romance had been ill-fated from the beginning. He and Cassie were as different as two people could be. Until they’d met, he’d been the classic nerd, both studious and shy. Only an innate athletic ability and the Davis name had made him popular.
Cassie, with her warmth and exuberance and try-anything mentality, had brought out an unexpected wild streak in him. He would have done anything to earn one of her devastating smiles. The summer they had spent together had been the best time of his life. Just the memory of it was enough to stir more lust than any flesh-and-blood woman had for quite some time.
He brought himself up short. Those days were long past, and it was definitely best not to go back there.
“Well?” his father demanded. “Don’t you have anything to say about that?”
“Leave it alone, Pop. The quickest way to get rid of me is to start bringing up old news.”
“I hear she’s coming back to town for this big reunion the school has planned,” his father said, his expression sly. “Is that news current enough for you?”
Cole didn’t like the way his pulse reacted to the announcement. It ricocheted as if he’d just been told that his company had outearned Microsoft.
“That has nothing to do with me,” he insisted.
“She’s not married.”
Cole ignored that, though he was forced to concede that his heart started beating double time at the news.
“Has a son she’s raising on her own,” his father added.
“You know, I think you missed your calling,” Cole said. “You should have started a newspaper. You seem to know all the gossip in town.”
“You saying you’re not interested?”
Cole met his father’s gaze without flinching. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
Frank gave a little nod. “Okay, then. How about a game of poker tonight? I could call a few men. Have ’em out here in an hour.”
Though he was relieved that his father had suddenly switched gears, Cole’s gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you want to do that?”
A grin spread across Frank Davis’s face. “’Cause a man who can lie with a straight face the way you just did is wasting it if he’s not playing a high-stakes game of cards.”
As she and Jake drove through the Snowy Range toward Winding River two months later, Joshua Cartwright’s words played over and over in Cassie’s head like the refrain from some country music tune. Going home, even temporarily, wasn’t nearly as simple as he’d made it sound, which was why she’d flatly refused to pack up everything she owned and bring it with her. Once she decided whether to stay—if she decided to stay—she would go back for the rest of her belongings.
Meantime, with every familiar landmark she passed, her pulse escalated and her palms began to sweat. Time hadn’t dulled any of her trepidation.
Jake, however, had no such qualms. He was literally bouncing on the seat in his enthusiasm, taking in everything, commenting on most of it until she wanted to scream at him to be quiet. Nerves, she told herself. It was just nerves. Jake wasn’t doing anything wrong. In fact, it was good that he was so excited. There had been far too few adventures in his young life. And it had been four years, she reminded herself. He’d been only five on their last brief visit. This all seemed as new and exciting to him as it was terrifying to her.
“How far now?” he asked for the hundredth time.
Cassie managed a thin smile. “About ten miles less than the last time you asked. We’ll be there by lunchtime.”
“And all these ranches, the great big ones, belong to people you know?”
“Most of them,” she conceded.
She dreaded the moment when the wrought-iron gate for the Double D came into sight. Frank Davis had named it that the day his son was born, anticipating the time when the two of them would run it together. He’d never envisioned his son bringing home the daughter of a woman who took in mending. If anything, he’d wanted Cole to marry someone whose neighboring land could be added to the holdings of the Double D.
Unfortunately for him, Cole had never looked twice at their neighbors’ daughters. She wondered, though, if that had changed, if Frank had gotten his way.
As the road twisted and turned, the snowcapped mountains gave way to rolling foothills. Black Angus cattle dotted the landscape. Bubbling streams and a broader, winding river cut through the land, the banks lined by thick stands of leafy cottonwoods.
Eventually the road dipped, went over a narrow span of bridge, and there it was, the town in which she’d grown up, complete with the water tower she’d once climbed and repainted shocking pink. It was a pristine white now, with flowing blue script proudly spelling out Winding River and, beneath that, in bolder letters: WELCOME.
A sign by the side of the road proudly announced the population at 1,939. If she decided to stay, would it soon be altered to say 1,941? Cassie wondered. Or would the ebb and flow of births and deaths, departures and new arrivals, keep it forever the same?
“Mom, look,” Jake said in an awestruck tone.
“What?”
“Over there,” he said, pointing to something she’d never seen before.
It was an airstrip, not much by big-city standards, but there were half a dozen very fancy private planes parked outside the hangar.