AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’ll be all right,” Helen Lafferty had said, her chin held high, her nose and eyes red from endless nights of crying. Mason had heard the fights, listened to his mother beg his dad to stay—to keep the family together, to stay with them. She’d forgive him the drinking. Forget the other women. Ignore his gambling.
But he’d left just the same.
“You go on to bed, Mason,” she’d said, swiping at her tears. “I’ll rock Patty to sleep out here on the porch.”
Only years later did Mason realize that Albert Lafferty couldn’t handle responsibility, a family or just plain settling down. He’d never seen his father again and hadn’t missed him.
“Yeah, right,” he told himself now. His mother had never remarried and when she’d discovered she had breast cancer the year that Mason turned eighteen, she’d taken matters into her own work-roughened hands. Without insurance or a nest egg, she couldn’t afford the operation that probably wouldn’t have saved her life anyway. So, stoically, with no word to her children, Helen Lafferty had opened a bottle of sleeping pills, swallowed every one and never woken up. She’d left Mason and Patty a simple note asking them to forgive her and begging Mason to look after his younger sister.
Well, he’d made one hell of a mess of that. Patty, he suspected, was in more trouble now than she’d ever been, and trouble, it seemed, was her middle name. As for Mason himself, his life had never been more complicated. He was considering suing Terri for custody of Dee Dee, Patty and old Isaac Wells were missing, he’d bought half the ranch and had old John mad as a hornet at him, and, to top matters off, now Bliss Cawthorne, “the princess,” had strolled right back into the middle of his life.
His back teeth gnashed together as he locked the door of his apartment behind him.
He wouldn’t have believed that seeing her again would bring back a rush of memories he’d hoped to have forgotten. It seemed unfair to be haunted by the past, but then, he’d learned a long time ago that life was neither fair nor easy. Growing up in poverty, he’d developed a keen understanding of the fact that in order to even out the stakes in this life, a man had to have money and lots of it. His old man, when he’d been around, had taught him well. A few years later John Cawthorne had only reinforced that theory.
“Jerk,” Mason growled and wondered where was the sense of satisfaction he’d been hoping to feel, why had the warm knowledge that he was finally getting even escaped him. Somehow, he suspected, this all had something to do with Bliss and how he felt about her, how he’d felt about her in the past, and what the future might hold for them.
Snorting in disgust at the turn of his thoughts, he headed down the stairs and to a space near the street where he’d parked his rig. Traffic was sparse on the quiet streets of town.
He should forget Bliss. She’d stumbled into his life at a time when the last thing he’d needed was involvement with the boss’s daughter, but she’d been the most incredible woman he’d laid eyes upon in a long time and fighting his attraction to her had failed miserably.
Then he’d nearly killed her. He should never have let her take off on that horse in the middle of a storm. He should have risked her wrath and refused to let her saddle Lucifer. It would have been better to risk the old man’s anger and lose his job than to have Bliss’s life endangered.
But then, he’d never been smart when it came to John Cawthorne’s daughter. He hadn’t been then; wouldn’t be now.
Ten years after the accident, he was still drumming up excuses to see her, to be alone with her. Even as he climbed into his truck and silently swore that he’d keep his hands off her, he already knew that he was only kidding himself. Before the day was out, he’d find a reason to see her again.
“Hell, Lafferty,” he told the eyes glaring back at him in his rearview mirror. “You’ve got it and you’ve got it bad.” He threw his pickup into reverse, backed out, then nosed the truck onto the dusty pothole-strewn avenue. “Real bad.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Crossing the fingers of one hand, Bliss silently prayed and pushed a button on her new fax machine. “Let this work,” she muttered as the machine hummed obediently. She’d tried to transmit the bid she’d been working on for two days to her office in Seattle with no success. This time she was in luck. “Thank you, God of All Things Electronic,” she said as she filed her original away and heard the phone ring down the hall.
“For you!” her father yelled.
“Got it,” she sang back, conscious of the irritation in John Cawthorne’s tone. He and Brynnie were speaking again, but the situation was still tense and the wedding plans, though progressing, were in a constant state of flux. “Hello,” she called into the extension.
“Bliss, hi, this is Katie Kinkaid. I, uh, thought you might want to meet for coffee or lunch or…well, whatever.”
No time like the present, her mind prodded her, although, deep down, she wanted to avoid this meeting like the plague. “Sure, I can meet you, or you might want to come out here. Delores made a killer batch of pecan rolls and I brought some French-roast coffee from an espresso shop in Seattle.”
“You’re on,” Katie said with a lot more enthusiasm than Bliss felt. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Great.” Bliss hung up and told herself it was time to get to know her half sister, whether she wanted to or not. She straightened the den and told her father goodbye, as he and Brynnie were off to talk to the preacher, who, Bliss hoped, was a decent premarriage counselor.
By the time Katie wheeled into the drive, Bliss had heated the gooey rolls, made a fresh pot of coffee and was halfway through the newspaper.
Katie rapped hard on the screen door, then let herself in, meeting Bliss in the hallway to the kitchen. She had curly auburn hair, pink cheeks and green eyes. “Hi.” She seemed a little nervous but managed a cute grin. Extending her hand, she took Bliss’s fingers in a crushing handshake. “I know this is hard for you. Jeez, it’s hard for me and I really don’t know what to say to you, but I think—I mean, the best thing is for us to get to know each other.”
“I suppose,” Bliss acquiesced, ambivalent. What do you say to someone who is the product of your father’s infidelity? How do you accept them or they accept you?
“The truth of the matter is,” the redhead said with refreshing honesty as she sailed down the hallway as if she’d done it a hundred times before, “I’ve been torn. From the minute I heard about you and realized that you were my sister, I wanted to meet you but was afraid and embarrassed and, oh, it’s just so damned complicated.”
“Isn’t it?” Give the woman a chance, Bliss. She’s obviously struggling with this as much as you are.
In the kitchen Katie paused and eyed the rolls that Bliss had put on the table. “Mmm, smells great.”
“Good. Sit, sit.” Bliss waved her into a chair and poured them each a cup of coffee. She handed Katie a mug and watched as the younger woman spooned two teaspoons of sugar into her brew. “When Mom told me that John was my father, I thought we should get together to shake our heads at our parents’ stupidity if nothing else.” She rolled her large eyes. “And I thought kids were hard to understand. You know, sometimes adults are ten times worse.”
