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from Black Jack and rushed forward as one of Lucifer’s hooves slipped over the edge.
“No!” Mason caught hold of her booted ankle. Her thigh wrenched and popped, burning with new, searing pain. Blackness threatened her vision.
Lucifer found his footing and reared, trying to shake himself free of the dead weight still attached to his saddle.
“Hang on!” Mason ordered. His grip was slick. Her weight pulled her ever downward as her fingers found no purchase on the rough stone.
“Mason!”
“I’ve got you.”
Steel-shod hooves glimmered as lightning flashed.
One hoof struck Mason in the temple. Crunch. He toppled, his fingers refusing to give up their grip.
The second hoof hit him in the side and Bliss began to slide over the edge even farther. Something deep inside her tore. His fingers relaxed, and the boot was slipping from her foot. She knew in that instant that she was about to die.
“I love you,” she tried to say, but the words caught in her throat. She heard noises. Voices. Panicked voices. Her father? Mason? She couldn’t tell as she reached upward, hoping to find his hand but grabbing only air as she began to slide downward.
CHAPTER ONE
Now
Bliss snapped off the radio as she wove her convertible through the slick streets of downtown Seattle. Traffic was snarled, horns blared and she couldn’t stand to listen to Waylon Jennings talk about cowboys—a breed of man she knew more than a little about.
Hadn’t her father started out as a range rider? Not to mention Mason. Not for the first time she wondered what had happened to him. He’d married, of course, and had a child—her heart bled at the thought. In her schoolgirl fantasies she’d imagined she’d be the mother of Mason’s child; and in that dreamworld, her mother was still alive—an adoring grandmother—and her father and Mason had reconciled because of the baby.
But of course that would never happen. Her mother had already died and now her father was battling for his own life. As for Mason…well, he’d just turned out to be her first love. Nothing more.
Stepping on the gas as the light turned green, she shoved all thoughts of Mason from her mind. Her Mustang convertible surged forward toward the freeway entrance. She didn’t have the time or patience to reminisce about a love affair gone sour.
Her windshield wipers slapped rain off the glass as she maneuvered through the traffic. In the distance lightning flashed, and again she thought of that long-ago storm and how its fury had changed the course of her life forever.
She’d never seen Mason after that day.
“Don’t think about it,” she warned herself as she headed toward the hospital where her father had been a patient for nearly a week, ever since he’d returned to Seattle to sign papers on some property he’d sold. “It’s over. It’s been over for a long, long time.”
Within minutes she’d exited the freeway and was winding through the wet side streets surrounding the hospital. She nabbed a parking spot not too far from the main entrance of Seattle General and braced herself. Her father, irascible and determined, would demand to be released. And would probably insist upon returning to his ranch in Oregon, though he still owned property here. She, as strong willed as he, would insist that he abide by his doctor’s orders.
“Give me strength,” she muttered under her breath as she locked her car and sidestepped puddles as the wind tugged at the hem of her raincoat and rain pelted her hair.
Inside the hospital, she ignored the sense of doom that threatened to settle in her heart. Barely three months before, in this very facility, Margaret Cawthorne had lost her battle with cancer. Bliss had been at her side.
But it wouldn’t happen again! Not this time. Her father was too strong to let some little heart attack get him. She punched the elevator call button and shook the rain from her hair.
On the third floor, she headed straight for her father’s room and found him lying under a thin blanket, his face pensive, turned toward the window. His television was on, the volume low, tuned in to some golf tournament in progress. Flowers, cards, boxes of candy and balloons were crammed onto every inch of counter space.
John Cawthorne looked thinner and more frail than she’d ever seen him. Hooked up to a heart monitor and an IV, he was nothing like the man she’d grown up with, the tough-talking, badgering cowboy-turned-real-estate-mogul. At the sound of her footsteps, he glanced her way and a half grin teased the corners of a mouth surrounded by silver beard stubble.
“I wondered if you were gonna stop by,” he said, pressing a button on a panel of the bed in order to raise his head. The electric motor hummed and he winced a little as his stitches pulled.
“I wouldn’t miss a chance to see you cooped up, now, would I?” she teased.
His blue eyes twinkled. “I hate it.”
“I know.”
“I’m not kiddin’.”
