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Mason leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb.
“Since you and Brynnie are going to tie the knot, I thought you might want to retire, see a little of the world with your new bride, take it easy.”
“You mean the old stud should be put out to pasture?” With a hoarse laugh and a scrape of his fingers against his empty shirt pocket, where he searched by habit for a nonexistent pack of cigarettes, Bliss’s father shook his head. “One measly little heart attack isn’t gonna scare me away from doin’ what I want.” He rapped his knuckles against his chest. “The old ticker’s just fine and I’m gonna run this ranch like I always have.” Again his fingers scrabbled into his pocket and he frowned when he realized that his cigarettes were gone, as his doctor had insisted he give up smoking after the heart attack. Bliss suspected that he still sneaked a puff now and again along with his chew, but she’d never caught him with a cigarette. Not that she could stop him from smoking. No one had ever been able to tell John Cawthorne how to live his life.
Mason reached into his back pocket and drew out a long envelope that he slapped into John’s hand. “I think you’d better talk to Brynnie about this. In the meantime, here’s a formal offer—for the acres in your name.”
“In my name?” John questioned.
“Fair price. Good terms. Think about it.” Mason slipped his sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose.
“Don’t need to,” her father insisted, but he didn’t toss the envelope back at Mason as Bliss had expected. Instead, his bony fingers clamped over the manila packet.
Mason’s gaze centered on Bliss. “I’ll see you later,” he said through lips that barely moved as he glared through his sunglasses, and Bliss had trouble drawing a breath.
John wagged the envelope at Mason. “Just remember that a few years back we had a deal.”
“A deal?” Bliss repeated.
“That’s right. Signed, sealed and delivered.” Her father’s smile was shrewd and self-serving and Bliss felt a sliver of dread enter her heart.
“I haven’t forgotten.” Mason’s shoulders tightened. The skin over his face seemed to grow taut and his gaze, behind his tinted lenses, held hers briefly before he turned and strode back to his truck.
Oscar bounded along behind him and Mason paused long enough to scratch the dog between his shoulders before climbing into the cab of his Ford.
“Pushy SOB,” John grumbled as the pickup tore down the lane. He was already opening the envelope, anxious to explore its contents, which surprised Bliss. For someone who was so vocally against selling the ranch—especially to Mason—John Cawthorne was certainly interested in the bottom line. But then, he always had been. That was how he’d made his money.
Scanning the pages, he walked into the living room, picked up his reading glasses from the fireplace mantel, plopped them on the end of his nose and then settled into his favorite battered recliner.
“You know why he’s back in town, I suppose?”
“Other than to try and talk you into selling?” she bantered back.
“Seems he’s decided to settle down here, be closer to his kid.” He glanced up, looking over the tops of his lenses. “Can’t fault him for that, I suppose.”
“No.”
“But rumor has it he’s trying to get back with his ex-wife. You remember her? Terri?”
How could she ever forget? “Of course I remember.”
“Good.” He looked back to the pages again.
Why it should bother her that Mason was seeing Terri, she didn’t understand, but the old wounds in her heart seemed to reopen all over again. Straightening a hurricane lantern sitting on the mantel, she said, “Okay, so what was this business about a deal between you two? As far as I knew, you didn’t want anything to do with him.”
“Still don’t.” Her father hesitated a fraction. “I had to do something to get him out of town. So I paid his medical bills and gave him the old heave-ho.”
“Then he left to marry Terri Fremont,” she said, feeling an odd sensation that something else in the past wasn’t what she’d thought it was. But that wasn’t much of a surprise, was it? Hadn’t her entire life been a lie?
“I just gave him some extra incentive.” He cleared his throat. “It wasn’t too hard to figure out what was going on between the two of you and it worried me because I knew about the Fremont girl. So…I upped the ante a little, offered him a deal and he rose to the bait like a brook trout to a salmon fly.”
“No—”
His lips pursed in frustration. “It was for your own good, Bliss. That’s why I did it. Remember, he already had a baby on the way.”
Bliss rested her hands on the back of the couch. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
“He needed surgery on that arm of his and his kid needed a father.”
