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Shadows lengthened across the dry acres that made up Isaac Wells’s spread. Mason kicked at a dirt clod, then scoured the darkening sky, as if in reading the stars that were beginning to wink in the purple distance, he could find clues to the old man’s disappearance. Of course, there were none. Nor were there any celestial explanations for why Mason seemed destined to deal with Bliss Cawthorne again. He couldn’t stop himself, of course, and truth to tell, he was inwardly grateful that she hadn’t married another man and had a couple of kids.
Like you did.
He’d been foolish enough to think that by seeing her again he’d realize that what he’d felt for her all those years ago—some kind of schoolboy infatuation wrapped up in guilt—had diminished; that he’d see her and laugh at himself for the fantasies that had haunted him over the years.
“Moron,” he growled as memories of his youth, of that time in his life when he was searching, hoping to find something, anything to cling to, flitted through his mind. Boy, had he made a mess of it. He stretched out his left hand, felt the old scar tissue in his arm tighten and was reminded of the horrid, black afternoon when she’d almost died. Because of him. Though John Cawthorne didn’t know the whole story and probably never would, the God’s honest truth was that Mason had nearly killed her.
He shoved a wayward hank of hair from his eyes and silently leveled an oath at himself. He’d been the worst kind of fool.
She’d turned into the beauty her youth had promised. Her hair was still a streaked golden blond, her eyes crystal blue, her lips as lush as he remembered. Her body was thin in the right places and full where it should be. Yep, she’d matured into what he suspected was one hell of a woman, and the defiant tilt of her chin as she’d challenged him today in the barn had only added to her allure.
He looked around the outside of the small house, noticed the faded real-estate sign planted firmly in the grass and frowned. Who would want this scrap of worthless land?
“Damn it all to hell,” he muttered as he headed back to his rig. He had enough problems in his life. Running his businesses, trying to convince Terri that Dee Dee was better off with him and hoping to find his flake of a sister were more than enough. Now, like it or not, he would have to deal with Bliss.
Life had just gotten a lot more complicated.
* * *
“You know, Dad, I’m still having trouble with all this.” Bliss slid a pancake onto the stack that was heaped on the plate before her father. She’d slept fitfully last night, her dreams punctuated with visions of her father strapped to an IV, of meeting women she didn’t know and introducing herself as their sister, and, of course, of Mason. Good Lord, why couldn’t she get him out of her mind? It had been ten years since she’d been involved with him. A decade. It was long past time to forget him.
“What kind of trouble?” Her father slathered the top pancake with margarine, then reached for the honey spindle. Drizzling thick honey over his plate, he looked up at his daughter as if he expected her to accept the turn of events that had knocked her for such an emotional loop.
“You know with what. Brynnie. My half sisters. The whole ball of wax, for crying out loud. It’s…well, come on, Dad, it’s just…well, bizarre, for lack of a better word.” She shook her head, then winced as she poured them each a cup of coffee. After setting the glass pot back in the coffeemaker, she settled into the empty chair across from him.
“Not bizarre, honey. It’s right.”
“Right?”
“For the first time in a lot of years, I…I feel free ’cause I’m not livin’ a lie.” Blue eyes met hers from across the table. “Your mother was a fine woman—I won’t take that away from her—but we weren’t happy together. Hadn’t been for a long time.”
“I know.” A dull pain settled in her heart. She’d felt the tension between her parents, known that theirs wasn’t a marriage made in heaven, but still, they had been married and Bliss, though she hated to admit it, still believed in “till death us do part.”
“She’s gone, honey,” her father said. “I would never have divorced her, you know.”
“Only cheated on her.”
He looked down and sliced his hotcakes with the side of his fork. “Guess I can’t expect you to understand.”
“I’m trying, Dad,” she said, unable to hide the emotion in her words. “Believe me, I’m trying.” Resting her elbows on the table, she cradled her cup in two hands. Through the paned windows she could see the barn and pastures. White-faced Hereford cattle mingled with Black Angus as they grazed on grass sparkling with morning dew.
The silence stretched between them, with only the ticking of the clock, the low of cattle, the rumble of a tractor’s engine in the distance and an excited yip from Oscar as he explored his new surroundings breaking the uneasy quietude.
John washed down a bite of pancake with a swallow of coffee. “Since I had the heart attack and looked the Grim Reaper square in his black eyes, I’ve decided to do exactly what I want with the few years I have left.”
“And that includes marrying this…this Brynnie woman.”
“Believe it or not, Bliss, she’s got a heart of gold.”
“And a string of ex-husbands long enough to—”
“She made some bad choices, I know. So did I. And if it’s any comfort to you, I never ran around with another woman while I was married to your mother.”
“Just Brynnie.” Bliss couldn’t hide the bitterness in her voice.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t she enough?”
