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Oscar didn’t seem to care. He was up for the adventure. His brown eyes sparkled with an excitement Bliss didn’t share, and with a red handkerchief tied jauntily around his neck, he looked ready for ranch life.
Bliss’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She’d changed her mind about driving to Oregon six times during as many days. Her father had recuperated and left Seattle two weeks earlier, then just this past week had called to tell her he was being married at the end of June. He wanted her to come spend some time with him, meet her new family and be a part of the festivities.
Great.
And what about Mason? her wayward mind taunted. What if you run into him?
“The least of my worries,” she lied as she stepped on the gas to pass a log truck. She planned to avoid Mason Lafferty as if he were the plague. Her hands on the wheel began to sweat, and she bit down on her lip. She was over him. Had been for a long time. So what if he’d been her first love? It had been ten years ago—a decade—since she’d last seen him or felt his fingers moving anxiously against the small of her back.
At the old erotic memory, goose bumps broke out on her skin and she closed her mind to any further wayward thoughts. Mason had never loved her, never cared. He’d left without a second glance. Hadn’t even had the decency to stop by the hospital where she’d fought for her life after the accident. Hadn’t so much as sent a card. In fact, he’d cared so much for her that he’d married another woman. He was the last man on earth she wanted.
An old Bruce Springsteen song, one she’d heard that painful summer, pounded through the speakers.
She snapped off the radio in disgust.
She wouldn’t think of Mason. At least, not right now. Besides, she had other worries. What about the two women who were supposed to be her half sisters, for crying out loud? A nest of butterflies erupted in her stomach when she thought about the women she’d never known. Did she really want to know them? “Give me strength,” she muttered under her breath.
She exited the freeway, her stomach tightening in painful knots. Memories, vivid and painful, slipped through her mind. The hills of pine and madrona looked the same as they had ten years ago. The landmarks—an old trading post and an abandoned schoolhouse—hadn’t changed much. Barbed-wire fences surrounded fields lush with the spring rains, where cattle grazed lazily.
After a final rise in the road, the town of Bittersweet came into view. She passed by the old water tower that stood near the railroad station. Nearby, a white church spire, complete with bell and copper roof, rose above leafy shade trees surrounding the town square. Fences ranging from white picket and ranch rail to chain link cordoned off small yards within which bikes, swings and sagging wading pools were strewn. The homes were eclectic—cottages and two-story clapboard houses intermingled with ranch-style tract homes and tiny bungalows.
In the central business district she drove past the old pharmacy where she’d ordered cherry colas one summer. She slowed to a stop at the single blinking red light in the center of town and noticed that the old mom-and-pop grocery store, once owned by an elderly couple whose names she couldn’t remember, had changed hands. It was now a Mini-Mart. Time had marched on.
And so had she.
She hadn’t belonged here ten years ago. She didn’t belong here now.
Thoughts a-tangle, she drove on into the country again and slowed automatically at the gravel lane that cut through fields of knee-high grass. The gate was open, as if she were expected, and the curved wooden sign bridging the end of the lane read Cawthorne Acres. Her father’s pride and joy.
John Cawthorne called this spot “heaven on earth.” She wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t seduced by the scents of honeysuckle and cut hay, nor did her heart warm at the sight of the horses milling and grazing, their tails swishing against flies. Nope. She was much happier as a city girl. Margaret Cawthorne’s daughter.
She slowed at the barn and parked near the open door. Oscar jumped out his side of the car. She reached into the backseat for one of her bags.
“Look, I thought I made it clear that I wasn’t interested!” John Cawthorne’s angry voice rang from the barn.
Bliss’s shoulders sagged. The last thing her father should be doing after his surgery was getting himself all riled up. She dropped the bag, opened the car door, climbed out and shoved the door shut with her hip. “Dad?” she called as she walked into the barn. Dust motes swirled upward in air thick with the odors of dusty grain and dry hay.
“Bliss—?”
Her eyes adjusted to the dim light and she saw her father leaning heavily on his pitchfork. His jaw was set, his face rigid, and he was glaring at a man whose broad-shouldered back was turned to her and whose worn, faded jeans had seen far better days.
“I think you probably remember Lafferty.”
Bliss’s stupid heart skipped a beat and her throat went dry. “Lafferty?” she said automatically, then wished she could drop through the hay-strewn floor. What was he doing here?
In the shadowy light, he glanced over his shoulder. Gold eyes clashed hard and fast with hers.
She froze.
Gone was any trace of the boyish charm she remembered. This man had long ago shrugged off any suggestion of adolescence and was now all angles and planes, big bones, hard muscle and gristle. A few lines fanned from his eyes and bracketed his mouth. His hair, though still blond, had darkened and was longer than the style worn by most of the businessmen in Seattle.
“Well, what do you know?” he taunted, turning on a worn boot heel and giving her an even better view of him. The skin of his face and forearms where his shirtsleeves were pushed up was tanned from hours in the sun and the thrust of his jaw was harsher, more defined and decidedly more male than she remembered. A day’s worth of whiskers gilded a chin that looked as if it had been chiseled from granite. “It’s been a long time.”
Not long enough! Not nearly long enough. “A good ten years.”
“Good?”
“The best,” she lied. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d hurt her.
