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“Don’t talk like that!”
“I’ve already had one heart attack. I think it’s time to live my life the way I want to.” He rubbed his jaw, scratching the silver bristles covering his chin. “Besides, you’ll like Brynnie, if you only give her a chance.”
Bliss wasn’t so sure. Brynnie, was, after all, her father’s mistress and even though Bliss had known that her parents had drifted apart over the years, she couldn’t just accept this other woman as part of her family. Bile climbed steadily up her throat, but she forced it back down.
“Your mother and I…well, we were never right for each other. We were from different worlds. I was at home in the saddle with a plug of tobacco, and she wanted to see the damned ballet.”
“I remember.” Margaret Cawthorne was from old San Francisco money. John had been a cowboy with a keen mind who had bought land during the recession and made a fortune. He’d split his time between Seattle, where he owned property, and Bittersweet, Oregon, where his ranch was located.
A cloud passed behind his eyes, as if he still felt some kind of regret.
“But you stayed married.”
“Believed in the institution. And there was you to consider.”
“You made a mockery of the institution, Dad. And of me.” Bliss stood, folded her arms over her chest, leaned against the cool wall and stared out the window to the parking lot three stories below. Rain drizzled from oppressive gray clouds, streaking down the panes. She could scarcely breathe. Her parents hadn’t loved each other? Her father had been and still was involved with another woman? How could she not have known or guessed? She swallowed against a suddenly thick throat. Everything she believed in seemed to be falling apart, and more rapidly by the moment.
“I always thought opposites attracted,” Bliss said lamely. Heat stole up the back of her neck when she thought of her one experience with a man as opposite from her once-prim city-girl ways as could be. Mason Lafferty, the randy, tough-as-rawhide ranch hand who had worked for her father the summer she was almost eighteen, had managed to steal her naive heart before her father had stepped in.
“I suppose there’s some truth to the saying, but not as opposite as we were. In the beginning, I guess we didn’t realize how different we were and then…well, I found Brynnie.…” He had the good grace to look sheepish and Bliss felt the bleak ache in her heart thud painfully. He’d cheated on her mother with this woman he intended to marry. He’d fathered a child with her. “Brynnie’s had her share of troubles, you know. Been married a few times and has some older boys that give her headaches you wouldn’t believe.”
From the half-open door Bliss heard the reassuring beep of heart monitors and the quiet conversation of the nurses busying around their station, from which the corridors fanned toward the private rooms on the outside walls of the building. A medications cart rattled by and the elevator call button chimed. Sighing, Bliss looked down at her father, her only living parent.
“Come down to the wedding, Bliss,” John said, his leathery skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. “It’s important to me. Damn it, honey, I know it will be hard for you, but you’re tough, like your ma. The way I see it, I’ve lost too much time already and I think we should start over. Be a family.”
“You and Brynnie and her children and me,” she clarified.
“And Tiffany.”
“Right.” She shook her head and blinked back her tears. “Dad, do you know how absurd this all sounds? It’s not that I don’t want to, but I need some time to catch up. I walked into this room an hour ago and didn’t know anything. Now you expect me to accept everything you’re telling me and be a part of a family I knew nothing about. I don’t know if I can.”
“Try. For me.”
She wanted to agree to anything, to promise this man who had nearly met his maker that she’d try her best to make him happy, but she didn’t want to lie. “I’ll give it a shot,” she said, wondering why she would even think of returning to Bittersweet, the place where, as far as she knew, not only her half sisters lived, but where she’d lost her heart years ago to a cowboy who had used her and thrown her away.
As if reading her thoughts, her father fingered the edge of his sheet and announced, “Lafferty’s back in Bittersweet.” His mouth tightened at the corners and Bliss’s heart lost a beat. “Lookin’ for property, the way I hear it.”
“Is he?”
“His ex-wife and kid are there, too.”
Wonderful, she thought grimly. “Doesn’t matter.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Just thought you’d want to know.”
“Why?”
“Well, you and he—”
“That was a long time ago, remember? He got married.”
“And divorced.”
She’d expected as much. Mason wasn’t the kind of man who could commit to one woman for very long. She’d found that out. The hard way. “I couldn’t care less,” she lied, and cringed inside.
“Good. You’ll have enough to deal with.”
“If I come.”
