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Jarrod shook his head. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but you were bound to find out sooner or later. I was just letting you know that she’ll be back. She’s still a good-lookin’ woman—or so her old man brags—and still gonna inherit a pile of money, so if you’re not interested, I’m sure a lot of other men around these parts would be.”
Jealousy, his old enemy, seeped into Mason’s blood. “Including you?”
“Maybe,” Jarrod admitted with that lazy smile still fastened on his face. “You know it’s nice to keep it in the family, and now she’ll be my what? Stepsister?”
“If the wedding of the century ever comes off.” He knew that Smith was needling him, and yet he couldn’t take anything when it came to Bliss lightly. Even after ten years.
“See ya around.”
“Right.”
Jarrod left the door open when he left. Mason watched as his friend, wearing jeans, cowboy boots with worn heels and a faded denim jacket, sauntered out of the exterior office, stopping long enough to say a few words to Mason’s secretary, Edie, to make her blush.
Jarrod Smith had a knack for breaking women’s hearts. Though he owed the man his life, Mason didn’t like the idea of Jarrod being anywhere near Bliss Cawthorne. She deserved better than to be another of Smith’s conquests.
Oh, right, because you were so good to her.
Frowning, he picked up his coffee cup and scowled as the weak, cold brew hit the back of his throat.
Bliss Cawthorne.
The princess.
The one woman he could never quite wedge from his mind, even though he’d married another.
In his mind’s eye, he saw her again at the edge of the cliff, slipping from his grasp. He heard the sound of his own terrified scream, felt that same horrifying certainty that she would be dead in an instant.
But her old man had shown up just in time.
Thank God.
John Cawthorne had arrived on horseback, his foreman with him.
“What’s going on here?” Cawthorne had shouted, then reached around Mason and grabbed hold of Bliss’s leg just as his own grip had given way.
“Hang on, Blissie—for the love of God, man, pull! Pull!”
Mason’s ebbing strength had revitalized. Though pain jolted through his arm, he caught hold of her free leg and yanked. The two men dragged her back to the ledge, where she lay, eyes closed, blood streaming from the cuts on her head.
“Ride like hell to the truck, call the police and get a helicopter for her,” John commanded the foreman. Rain dripped from the brim of his hat; mud oozed around his boots. His face was etched in fear and his eyes, two smoldering blue coals, burned through Mason with a hatred so intense it nearly smelled. “You miserable son of a bitch, you nearly killed her.” He bent down on one knee and touched his daughter tenderly on the cheek. “Hang on, honey. Just hang the hell on.”
The minutes stretched on.
Mason was in and out of consciousness and barely heard the helicopter or the shouts from the pilots. Nor did he feel the whoosh of air as the rotor blades turned above him and bent the wet grass skirting the ledge.
All he knew was that when he awoke, battered and broken, the helicopter had taken Bliss away and left him alone with John Cawthorne and the older man’s festering hatred. A half-smoked cigarette bobbed from the corner of Cawthorne’s mouth.
“Now, you lowlife son of a bitch, you listen to me,” Cawthorne commanded in a voice barely above a whisper. His face was flushed with rage, his hands clenched into hard, gnarled fists. “You stay away from my daughter.”
Mason didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Pain screamed up his left arm where the horse had kicked him and his chest felt so heavy he could scarcely breathe. Rain, in cold, pounding sheets, poured from the sky, peppering his face and mud-caked body as he lay, faceup, at the edge of the ravine.
“Bliss is half-dead, Lafferty, all because of you. You nearly cost me my best stallion as well as my daughter’s life. If I had the balls, I’d leave you here for the buzzards.” The cords of his neck, above his grimy slicker, were taut as bowstrings. “It would serve you right.” He wiped his face with a muddy hand, leaving streaks of brown on his unshaven jaw as he glared up at the heavens. “But you’re lucky. Instead of letting you die like you deserve, I’ll cut you a deal. Twenty-five thousand dollars over and above your medical bills if you walk away.”
Mason blinked, tried to speak but couldn’t say a word. His arm wouldn’t move and his breath came in short, shallow gasps that burned like hell and seemed to rip the tissue of his lungs.
“You leave Bittersweet, never contact Bliss again and marry Terri Fremont.”
What? His head was heavy, his mind unclear from the raging pain, but he didn’t understand. “No way. I can’t—” he forced out in a bare whisper.
