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He'd insisted she stay in school through exams and let him handle all the arrangements to get their parents’ remains back to Montana.
She’d taken her tests in a daze. Then in the middle of test week, she’d gotten a phone call from Penny’s mother. The woman had been beside herself. Penny had called to say she’d left LA and would be home in two days. Five days passed. Penny still hadn’t arrived home and wasn’t answering her cell phone.
Cassie had called Sheriff Barron. He’d contacted the LA Police department and placed Penny on the NamUs database.
How Cassie had passed her test, she wasn’t sure. At the end of that semester, she’d left school and come home to Eagle Rock and the Double D Ranch with no intention of returning any time soon. She’d told the registrar she needed to take a leave of absence while she sorted through her parents’ estate.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever return to law school. After the funeral, she’d taken a job at the sheriff’s office, hoping to help others while searching for her friend Penny. Having lost her parents, she realized it was just her and her brother Richard. And her friends. They were her bonus siblings. She wanted to continue to be a part of their lives.
Penny had been one of her close friends. Cassie, Molly, Dizi, Liza and Bella had drinks once a week to brainstorm more possibilities of where Penny might be.
Four months had passed since Penny had disappeared, and they were no closer to finding her. Cassie felt like she’d failed her sister.
“We’re doing fine,” she told the sheriff. “Richard takes care of the ranch operations. I help whenever he needs me.” Which was often. Between Richard and their two ranch hands, who had been working at the Double D for as long as Cassie could remember, there was always more work than the three men could handle.
Cassie helped haul hay, mend fences, muck stalls, feed horses, cattle, pigs and chickens. She didn’t have time to barrel race between working on the ranch and her work with the sheriff’s department.
She climbed into her vehicle, waved at the sheriff and drove away from the lodge. Her thoughts went to the woman in the hidden room and the man who’d found her.
Butterflies fluttered against the empty wall of her stomach. She would meet Drake at the tavern that night. It would be her first date in over a year.
Cassie shook her head. “It’s not a date,” she said aloud. “We’re just sharing conversation over a couple of beers.” She wasn’t sure she was ready to start dating again.
Her last relationship had been with a man who had wanted her to fit his idea of perfection. She’d fallen into the trap of trying to please him without realizing it, sacrificing her own needs and desires to make him happy. In the process, she’d made herself unhappy, having lost who she was and what she wanted out of life. Her grades had suffered, and she’d begun questioning her chosen career path.
When he’d asked her to change her hair color from brown to blond, it had been the final straw that broke the camel’s back. She’d asked him what he did like about her. Everything he’d named had been something she’d changed about herself to make him happy.
She’d ended the relationship and focused on her studies, learning how to make herself happy alone.
Maybe she shouldn’t go out with Drake. She’d finally reached a point in her life where she was comfortable in her own skin. Why complicate things?
Because she longed for more. The touch of a strong but gentle hand. Someone to hang out with.
Sex.
“That’s what vibrators are for,” she muttered and turned up the air conditioner on her vehicle, aiming the vent at her face that had suddenly flushed with heat.
The heat spread through her body and pooled low in her belly. She was in the prime of her sexual life. It was natural to want intimacy. She didn’t have to give up her independence to make love with someone.
Not that she planned to make love with Drake. Conversation over a beer. That was all.
Sigh.
Maybe they could move beyond just talk on their next non-date.
In the meantime, she had to grab a few hours of sleep, or she’d be dragging her ass to the Blue Moose Tavern later that night. Not a good first impression for a first non-date.
Cassie lifted her chin. Then again, she wasn’t out to please anyone but herself.
Her inner self reminded her that she appreciated a healthy sex life with a human partner, not a battery-powered substitute.
Part of attracting a partner was to be at least somewhat attractive.
Cassie glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror and almost missed the turn for the ranch. Damn. Dark circles marred the skin beneath bloodshot eyes.
Sleep. She needed sleep.
And how was she supposed to do that when there was a case to solve, a friend to find and a sexy stranger to meet later that evening?
