He studied her like she was evidence in a hotly contested case and debated how to phrase his opening argument. She ordered another martini and when the drink was served, he watched her long fingers play with the plastic pick and all but gulped as her full lips slid over the ripe, green olive stuffed with a cocktail onion. His groin tightened as his mind conjured up sexy images. A one-night stand wouldn’t hurt, and he’d certainly be in a better mood to deal with the old man when he got home.
Thoughts of his father, Cyrus Barron, intruded at the worst possible times. Probably because he was a force of nature. Oil. Land and cattle. Politics and media. Name the pie, and Chance’s old man owned most of it. Too bad he was such a jackass. He delighted in setting his spurs in the hides of his sons, and Chance was no exception. He had his own law firm, though the family was a big client. He certainly wasn’t in charge of the ranch’s breeding program but his father had sent him on a fool’s errand looking for a stud colt that didn’t exist in the state of Illinois. And now he was stuck in the Windy City during a freak March blizzard.
The waitress approached, an interested smile curling her lips. He declined her offer for a refill and handed her a crisp fifty dollar bill to cover his tab and tip. “Keep the change, hon,” he drawled. He slid out of the booth and homed in on the bar—only to realize his quarry had escaped.
“Damn.” His muttered curse was lost in the clatter of glasses and hum of conversation as he pushed toward the exit. She couldn’t have gone far. He’d find her and argue his case for keeping each other warm tonight.
* * *
Cassidy Morgan leaned against the window in the hotel lobby, her cell phone pressed to her ear. Outside, fat cotton balls of snow drifted across her view—like staring into the heart of a giant snow globe. Dizzy and a tad claustrophobic, her equilibrium thrown off both physically and emotionally, she closed her eyes.
“I’m not going to make it in time, am I?” The words spoken quietly into the phone were ripped from the depths of her soul.
“No, darlin’.” Baxter “Boots” Thomas didn’t believe in sugarcoating things. “The doctors don’t know how he’s hung on this long.”
She heard the muted sounds from the heart and respiration monitors beeping in the silence that followed on the other end of the line. And she recognized both the exhaustion and surrender in the voice of her father’s best friend.
“Will you put the phone next to his ear? I know he can’t hear me but...” Her throat closed, and she blinked hard to clear her vision. She pictured Boots’s actions from the rustling sounds and then she heard his muffled, “Go ahead.”
She talked. She reminisced. In the end, her voice broke and she cried. When her mother died of pneumonia, Cassie had been three, so young the emotional pain was lost on her. But this? This hurt far more than she had ever imagined it could. She wanted to be there. Wanted to hold his hand as he passed. He’d always been there for her. And she’d always managed to fail him, the disappointment in his eyes apparent to her every time she’d seen him over the past ten years.
Her father’s voice whispered in her ear. “Cowgirls don’t cry, baby. Ya gotta pick yourself up and ride.”
She blinked against the stinging tears and felt his sharply indrawn breath all the way to her toes. Then silence. He was gone. That quickly. Two blinks of her eyelids, his sharply indrawn breath, and the great bear of a man who’d been her father existed no more.
“You okay, baby girl?” Boots was back on the line.
Cass dashed at her eyes with the back of her hand. Hell no, she wasn’t okay. But she had to be. She had to take care of things. Whether she wanted to or not. “I’ll be there as soon as possible, Uncle Boots. I’m stuck here until the blizzard lets up. Couldn’t even get back to my apartment, so I’m spending the night in a hotel here at O’Hare.” Her voice remained steady. She couldn’t lose it. Not yet.
“I’ll be on the first flight out in the morning. I’ll call to give you my arrival time.” She cleared the lump forming in her throat. “Will you call the funeral home for me? To pick him up. I... Don’t let them cremate him until I get there, Uncle Boots. I...I need to see him. To say goodbye. Okay?”
“Sure, baby girl. I’ll take care of it.”
“You know where he stashed the good stuff. Go home and toast the stubborn old coot for me.”
“Sure thing, sugar. Now get your tail home. We’ve got work to do.”
“I love you, Uncle Boots.”
“Love you, too, baby girl.”
She tapped the red end call bar on her phone and slipped it into her pocket. Damn, damn, damn. How could she absorb the enormity of this event and not let it drive her to her knees? She closed her eyes against the prickle of tears. She didn’t cry. Not in public. Hadn’t she learned that from her dad? Cowgirls were tough. Well, dammit, she wasn’t a cowgirl. Not anymore. Not for a long time. Cass continued to rest her hot forehead against the cool glass.
She’d left the ranch behind ten years ago. With dreams of making her mark, she’d chased life in the big city, where stars in the night sky were outshone by light from skyscraper windows, and the rumble of traffic sounded like far-off thunder.
Ranch life was hard. Early mornings. Late nights. Worrying about the weather—searing heat, freezing cold, too much rain or not enough. Early frosts. Diseases that could wipe out a herd in a heartbeat. Rodeo was even harder. Her dad had loved the rodeo. She had, too, once upon a time when she was a little girl insulated from the reality of it all.
Cass did not want to go home. She didn’t want to say goodbye to the man against whom she measured every boyfriend. Even hurting him as she had, and regardless of his disappointment in the choices she made, he had continued to love her. And now her dad was gone.
She squared her shoulders and decided she needed to go to bed, despite the allure of another martini. Or a bottle of whiskey. Not that it would help. Booze wouldn’t touch the ache in her heart, wouldn’t numb the pain like a shot of Novocain administered to an abscessed tooth. That’s what her heart felt like. A deep, throbbing abscess full of decay and vile selfishness. She hadn’t been back home for a year. And now it was too late.
She reconsidered getting another drink. Or ordering a bottle from room service. She knew that wasn’t the answer. Plus, there were other drawbacks. Fighting the crowd at the airport and dealing with things at home while nursing a hangover just didn’t appeal.
Cass turned —and buried her nose in a starched white shirt.
“Easy, darlin’.”
The man’s large hands gripped her biceps and kept her upright despite the fact her knees had turned to jelly. She tilted her head to look up. Quite a ways up. She took in the chiseled jaw shadowed by dark stubble, eyes the color of amber and dark hair—thick, silky and worn just a little long so that it caressed the man’s wide forehead and kissed the collar of his crisp shirt. She swallowed. Hard.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were standing there.” At least she didn’t stammer. Two points for her. But she cringed inside at how breathless her voice sounded. It was surprise. That’s all. She didn’t want or need the complication presented by this sexy man right now.
“S’okay, hon. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She backed away from him and shook his hands free. “Scare me?” Her brow quirked as she lifted her chin. “I don’t scare, mister.” Now that she had a good look at him, her brows narrowed in speculation. “You look sort of familiar. Have we met before?”
Cass managed not to blush as those wolf-like eyes traveled over her body from head to toe and back again. A smile she could only describe