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Her father laughed. “Fire Cracker looks docile enough now, I suppose, but she’s got a little bit of the devil in her.” He slid his daughter a kind glance. “Like someone else I know.”
Bliss rolled her eyes. “That was high school, Dad. I’m pure as the driven snow these days.”
“Not if you’re any daughter of mine,” he said and slapped the top of the fence. “I’d better go see about the tractor. Seems to have a problem with the clutch.”
“Just take it easy, okay?”
He waved off her concerns as she watched him walk back to the equipment garage, a tall shed of sorts where tractors, plows, harrows, bailers and God-only-knew-what-else were stored. As he disappeared into the interior, Bliss bit her lip. John Cawthorne was and always would be her father. A man she’d been able to depend upon. A man she loved.
A man who had lied over and over again. A man who, until recently, had led a secret life. A man she’d trusted.
She wondered if she ever would again.
Even though she was disgusted that he’d been such a liar as well as a cheat, she’d somehow ended up with a couple of sisters. How many times had she, as an adolescent, wished and prayed for a close sibling, someone to share dreams and worries with, a friend to shop and gossip with, another teenager who was as confused as she when she tried to understand the incomprehensible world of adults? Now, as a woman, wouldn’t she love a new companion, another person who understood her hopes, dreams, ambitions and concerns? Someone closer than a friend, a woman bound to her by blood?
Two, she reminded herself. Two women bound to her by blood.
But would either Tiffany or Katie want anything to do with her? Did she really want them to? She frowned as she finally managed to work the sliver free from her fingertip.
There was only one way to find out. Bliss would have to take the initiative and meet both her half sisters, whether they wanted anything to do with her or not.
* * *
Mason drummed his fingers on his desk in his den, which was really the second bedroom of his apartment. Tonight the room with its glowing computer monitor seemed empty. Hollow. Like his own damned soul.
It had been his night to see Dee Dee, but Terri had come up with another excuse to keep him from his daughter. Only half a mile away and it might as well be half a continent.
Just like Bliss—so near but so damned far. Completely out of reach.
“Where she should be,” he reminded himself as he refocused on the illuminated screen, but try as he might, he couldn’t concentrate on the spreadsheet for his ranch in Montana. Tonight he didn’t give a damn. The numbers didn’t mean anything to him now. Nothing did. Not when his daughter was being kept from him.
Or when Bliss Cawthorne was less than twenty minutes away.
“Stop it,” he growled at himself and blinked to clear his head.
Restless by nature, he could never sit for long and had always worked off his excess energy in physical labor. But this evening had been different.
After his telephone conversation with Terri, he’d kicked off his boots and jeans, donned sweats and running shoes and jogged six miles across hilly terrain. He’d returned sweating and overheated, his blood pounding, and had taken a cold shower, letting the needles of water spray against his skin as he’d rested his head against the tiles and willed his thoughts away from Bliss.
So what if she was close by? So what if she was still as intriguing as ever? So what if he still wanted her so badly he felt himself stiffen at the thought of her? She was still John Cawthorne’s daughter and still off-limits. Way off-limits. He had enough problems in his life without the complication of a woman—especially that one.
Now, as he sat in his boxer shorts, a half-drunk bottle of beer in one hand, he stared at the ledgers on the computer screen and wondered how his life had careened so far out of control.
Oh, come on, Lafferty—it’s your fault. You’re the one who sent her out riding in that storm ten years ago, you’re the one who took her old man’s money and you’re the one who got Terri pregnant. If your life’s on an unwanted path, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.
He took a draft from his long-necked bottle. Ever since seeing Bliss again, he’d been distracted. Half a dozen times he’d reached for the phone to dial her number, only to stop before he picked up the receiver. Why call her? What could he say? The old torment gnawed at his soul. You nearly killed her.
He snapped off the toggle switch, felt a sense of satisfaction as the screen faded and took another long
swallow. He remembered the first time he’d seen her as if it had been yesterday.
She’d been the boss’s daughter, a pretty girl of nearly eighteen, who had come to spend a few weeks on her old man’s ranch. He’d been twenty-four at the time, old enough to know better, young enough not to give a damn.
At first he’d wanted nothing to do with Cawthorne’s daughter, or so he’d tried to convince himself. She’d been trilingual, for Pete’s sake, danced ballet, rode polo ponies, played tennis, sailed and was rumored to have a portfolio of investments that would have made a stockbroker’s mouth water. In short, she hadn’t been his kind of woman. No way. No how.
But she’d been fascinating. No doubt about it. And it hadn’t just been her beauty. No, there was something more, something deeper that he’d sensed in her; and whatever that female essence had been, it had scared him. It had scared the hell out of him.
With eyes as blue as a mountain lake, cheekbones that a model would have killed for, pouty lips and an easy smile, she had caused most of the men who had worked for her father to think about risking their employment for a few hours alone with her. Including Mason.
