Do You Take This Rebel?

“I know,” Cassie said, defeated. Nobody knew better than she did about fresh starts and living down past mistakes. Even so, it wasn’t as easy as Joshua made it sound. She didn’t bother to explain that her mother was all the family they’d have in Winding River and that friends there were few and far between. She had a stronger support system right here. Unfortunately, Joshua clearly didn’t want to hear that.

“I’ll think about it,” she said eventually. “I promise.”

But going home for a few days for a class reunion was one thing. Going back to live in the same town where Cole Davis and his father ruled was quite another.

Unfortunately, though, it sounded as if circumstances—and the well-intentioned sheriff—might not be giving her much choice.

“Blast it all, boy, I ain’t getting any younger,” Frank Davis grumbled over the eggs, ham and grits that were likely to do him in. “Who’s going to run this ranch when I die?”

Cole put down his fork and sighed. He and his father had had this same discussion at least a thousand times in the past eight years.

“I thought that was why I was here,” Cole said. “So you could go to your eternal rest knowing that the ranch was still in Davis hands.”

His father waved off the comment. “Your heart’s not in this place. I might as well admit it. It could fall down around us for all the attention you pay it. You spend half the night locked away in that office of yours with all that fancy computer equipment. For the life of me I can’t figure what’s so all-fired fascinating about staring at a screen with a bunch of gobbledy-gook on it.”

“Last year that gobbledy-gook earned three times as much as this ranch,” Cole pointed out, knowing even as he spoke that his father wouldn’t be impressed. If it didn’t have to do with cattle or land, Frank Davis didn’t trust it. Cole had given up expecting his father to be proud of his accomplishments in the high-tech world. He got higher praise when he negotiated top dollar for their cattle at market.

“All I have to say is, if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have been so quick to break up you and that Collins girl. Maybe you’d have been settled down by now. Maybe you would have a little respect for this ranch your great-grandfather started.”

Cole was not about to head off down that particular path. Any discussion of Cassie was doomed. He remembered all too clearly what had happened the minute his father had learned that the two of them were getting close. He had packed up Cole’s things and shipped him off to school weeks before the start of his junior year.

To his everlasting regret, there hadn’t been a thing Cole could do about it. At that point he’d wanted his college diploma too much to risk his father’s wrath. That diploma had been his ticket away from ranching. He’d sent a note to Cassie explaining and begging for her understanding. Her reply had been curt. She’d told him it didn’t matter, that he could do whatever suited him. She intended to get on with her life.

Ironically, the ink had barely been dry on his diploma when his father had suffered a heart attack and pleaded with him to return home. Now here he was, spending his days running the ranch he hated and his nights working on the computer programming he loved. It wasn’t as awful as it could have been. The reality was he could design his computer programs anywhere, even in a town where he had to dodge old memories at every turn.

By the time he’d come back to Winding River, Cassie Collins had been gone, and no one was saying where. Up until then her mother had been kind to him, standing in for the mother he’d lost at an early age. But when he’d gone to see her on his return, Edna Collins had slammed the door in his face. He hadn’t understood why, but he hadn’t forced the issue.

Over the years he’d heard Cassie’s name mentioned, usually in connection with some wild, reckless stunt that had been exaggerated by time. He’d debated questioning her best friends when they occasionally passed through town, but he’d told himself that if he’d meant anything at all to Cassie, she would have responded differently to his note. Maybe she’d just viewed that summer as a wild fling. Maybe he was the only one who’d seen it as something more. Either way, it was probably for the best to leave things as they were. Wherever she was, she was no doubt happily married by now.

When he was doing some of his rare soul-searching, Cole could admit that the romance had been ill fated from the beginning. He and Cassie were as different as two people could be. Until they’d met, he’d been the classic nerd, both studious and shy. Only an innate athletic ability and the Davis name had made him popular.

Cassie, with her warmth and exuberance and try-anything mentality, had brought out an unexpected wild streak in him. He would have done anything to earn one of her devastating smiles. The summer they had spent together had been the best time of his life. Just the memory of it was enough to stir more lust than any flesh-and-blood woman had for quite some time.

He brought himself up short. Those days were long past, and it was definitely best not to go back there.

“Well?” his father demanded. “Don’t you have anything to say about that?”

“Leave it alone, Pop. The quickest way to get rid of me is to start bringing up old news.”

“I hear she’s coming back to town for this big reunion the school has planned,” his father said, his expression sly. “Is that news current enough for you?”

Cole didn’t like the way his pulse reacted to the announcement. It ricocheted as if he’d just been told that his company had outearned Microsoft.

“That has nothing to do with me,” he insisted.

“She’s not married.”

Cole ignored that, though he was forced to concede that his heart started beating double time at the news.

“Has a son she’s raising on her own,” his father added.

“You know, I think you missed your calling,” Cole said. “You should have started a newspaper. You seem to know all the gossip in town.”

“You saying you’re not interested?”

Cole met his father’s gaze without flinching. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

Frank gave a little nod. “Okay, then. How about a game of poker tonight? I could call a few men. Have ’em out here in an hour.”

Though he was relieved that his father had suddenly switched gears, Cole’s gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you want to do that?”

A grin spread across Frank Davis’s face. “’Cause a man who can lie with a straight face the way you just did is wasting it if he’s not playing a high-stakes game of cards.”

Chapter Two

As she and Jake drove through the Snowy Range toward Winding River two months later, Joshua Cartwright’s words played over and over in Cassie’s head like the refrain from some country music tune. Going home, even temporarily, wasn’t nearly as simple as he’d made it sound, which was why she’d flatly refused to pack up everything she owned and bring it with her. Once she decided whether to stay—if she decided to stay—she would go back for the rest of her belongings.

Meantime, with every familiar landmark she passed, her pulse escalated and her palms began to sweat. Time hadn’t dulled any of her trepidation.

Jake, however, had no such qualms. He was literally bouncing on the seat in his enthusiasm, taking in everything, commenting on most of it until she wanted to scream at him to be quiet. Nerves, she told herself. It was just nerves. Jake wasn’t doing anything wrong. In fact, it was good that he was so excited. There had been far too few adventures in his young life. And it had been four years, she reminded herself. He’d been only five on their last brief visit. This all seemed as new and exciting to him as it was terrifying to her.

“How far now?” he asked for the hundredth time.

Cassie managed a thin smile. “About ten miles less than the last time you asked. We’ll be there by lunchtime.”

“And all these ranches, the great big ones, belong to people you know?”

“Most of them,” she conceded.

She dreaded the moment when the wrought-iron gate for the Double D came into sight. Frank Davis had named it that the day his son was born, anticipating the time when the two of them would run it together. He’d never envisioned his son bringing home the daughter of a woman who took in mending. If anything, he’d wanted Cole to marry someone whose neighboring land could be added to the holdings of the Double D.

Unfortunately for him, Cole had never looked twice at their neighbors’ daughters. She wondered, though, if that had changed, if Frank had gotten his way.

As the road twisted and turned, the snow-capped mountains gave way to rolling foothills. Black Angus cattle dotted the landscape. Bubbling streams and a broader, winding river cut through the land, the banks lined by thick stands of leafy cottonwoods.

Eventually the road dipped, went over a narrow span of bridge, and there it was, the town in which she’d grown up, complete with the water tower she’d once climbed and repainted shocking pink. It was a pristine white now, with flowing blue script proudly spelling out Winding River and, beneath that, in bolder letters: WELCOME.

A sign by the side of the road proudly announced the population at 1,939. If she decided to stay, would it soon be altered to say 1,941? Cassie wondered. Or would the ebb and flow of births and deaths, departures and new arrivals, keep it forever the same?

“Mom, look,” Jake said in an awestruck tone.

“What?”

“Over there,” he said, pointing to something she’d never seen before.

It was an airstrip, not much by big-city standards, but there were half a dozen very fancy private planes parked outside the hangar. Obviously over the past ten years some folks with money had settled in Winding River. Years ago a few of the ranchers, Cole’s father among them, had kept small planes for making rapid inspections of their far-flung land, but nothing like these.

“Awesome,” Jake declared, his eyes as big as saucers.

“Awesome,” Cassie was forced to agree, even as she wondered at the implication.

Her mother hadn’t mentioned anything to suggest that big changes were taking place in town, but then Edna Collins wasn’t the kind to take stock of her surroundings or to comment on them. She stayed mostly to herself, spending her time on the mending she did to make ends meet and on church work. Because she was relieved to no longer be the target of it herself, she didn’t indulge in gossip. Cassie regretted not asking more questions since her last trip home. Even her mother had to have noticed an influx of wealthy newcomers.

“Can we drive through town before we go to Grandma’s?” Jake pleaded. “I’ve forgotten what it was like. Besides, I’m starved. Grandma won’t have anything but peanut butter and jelly.”

“Which she is expecting you to eat,” Cassie reminded him, grateful for the excuse to put off the moment when she would have to start seeing people, facing their curious stares and blunt questions.

“We’ll go into town after lunch,” she promised, grinning at him. “You can have ice cream for dessert.”

The promise was enough to pacify Jake, and it bought her some time…time to ask questions, time to brace herself for the possibility of running into Jake’s father.

Time to get used to the increasingly likely possibility that this was going to be home again.

Cole was mending fences near the highway when the old blue sedan sped past. It said a lot about his state of mind that he even looked up. Usually his concentration was intent on the task at hand, but ever since his father’s sly comment about Cassie’s return, passing cars had caught his interest.

This time there was no mistaking the thick brown hair caught up in a ponytail and pulled through the opening of a baseball cap. Cassie had worn her hair exactly that way on too many occasions, making his fingers itch to free it and watch it tumble to her shoulders in silky waves. His belly tightened and his hand trembled unmistakably, either at the memory or the glimpse of her. Maybe both.

He forced his attention back to the fence, aimed his hammer at the nail with too much force and too little concentration and caught his thumb instead. His muttered expletive carried across the field to his father, who stared at him with that smug expression that had become increasingly familiar lately.

“See something interesting?” his father inquired tartly.

“Not a thing,” Cole insisted, though the image of Cassie with the breeze stealing wisps of hair to tease her cheeks was firmly planted in his head. If a glimpse could tie him up in knots, what would seeing her up close do to him? He didn’t want to find out.

He just needed to make himself scarce for a few days and she’d be gone again, back to wherever she lived, taking that mysterious boy of hers with her. Then his life would return to normal. His days would be uncomplicated. His nights…well, they might be boring from a social perspective, but they would be rewarding financially. He did his best work in the middle of the night when the day’s stresses faded and his mind could wander.

“You going into town this afternoon?” his father asked, his expression neutral.

“Hadn’t planned to.”

“We could use an order of feed.”

“Then pick up the phone and order it,” Cole retorted, refusing to take the less-than-subtle bait.

“Just thought you might have other business to see to.”

“I do,” he agreed, tossing his tools into the back of the pickup. “If you need me, I’ll be at the house.”

His father stared at him with a disgusted expression. “Working on that blasted computer, I suppose.”

“Exactly.”

With any luck he could create a computer game in which the meddling owner of a ranch was murdered by his put-upon son and nobody caught on.

From the moment she drove into the driveway at her mother’s place, Cassie was taken back in time. Nothing had changed. The little white house, not much more than a cottage, really, still had a sagging porch and needed paint. As always, there was a pot of struggling red geraniums in need of water on the steps. A swing hung from a sturdy but rusting chain. The white paint had long since chipped away, leaving the swing a weathered gray.

Inside, the walls were a faded cream, the drapes too dark and heavy, as if her mother was determined to shut out the world that had never been kind to her. A sewing basket, overflowing with colorful threads, sat beside the worn chair where her mother liked to work under a bare hundred-watt bulb.

They left Jake glued to the TV and went down the hall with the luggage. Cassie discovered her room still had posters of her favorite musicians on the walls and a Denver Broncos bedspread on one twin bed. She’d bought that navy-blue and orange spread as a rebellion against the pink paint and ruffled curtains her mother had insisted on. The second bed still had a frilly, flowered spread on it. Cassie suspected its mate was still shoved in the back of the closet, where she’d put it years ago.

“I haven’t changed anything,” her mother said, twisting her hands nervously. “I thought you’d like to know that home was always going to be the way you remembered it.”

Cassie didn’t have the heart to say that some things were best forgotten. Instead she gave her mother a fierce hug. For all of her flaws this woman had done her best to give Cassie a good life. She’d lost her husband in a freak accident at a grain elevator when Cassie was little more than a toddler, but she’d found a way to be a stay-at-home mom and keep food on the table. And despite her private disapproval of her daughter’s behavior and the occasional long-suffering sighs, she hadn’t turned her back on Cassie, not ever.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said, finally acknowledging what was long overdue.

Her mother looked startled and faintly pleased, but her face quickly assumed its more familiar neutral mask. “Will you and Jake be okay in here? You won’t mind sharing a room?”

“Of course not. This will be fine. We’re just glad to be here.”

“Are you?” her mother asked, peering at her intently. “It’s been a long time.”

“Too long,” Cassie agreed, studying her mother’s face and seeing new wrinkles. There was more gray in her hair, too. “Jake and I have missed you.”

That pleased look came and went in a heartbeat. “Will your friends be home for the reunion?” Edna asked, retreating as always to a less emotional topic.

“I haven’t spoken to any of them recently. I hope so. It would be wonderful to see them again.”

Her mother shook her head. “I can’t imagine what Lauren must be like. Do you suppose all that fame has gone to her head? She certainly hasn’t spent a dime of the money she’s making on her folks. That house of theirs is tumbling down around them.”

“Don’t blame Lauren,” Cassie said. “Her parents wouldn’t take anything from her. They said an acting career was too precarious and she needed to save every last cent in case it didn’t last. Lauren hired a carpenter and sent him over, but her parents just sent him away.”

“That father of hers always was a stubborn old coot,” Edna said. “Still, all the attention she gets from TV and the newspapers must have changed her some.”

Cassie chuckled. “Lauren never cared about fame or money. I’m sure she’s as surprised as the rest of us about the turn her life has taken.”

“Well, Hollywood has a way of changing people. That’s all I’m saying,” her mother replied, disapproval written all over her face.

“Not Lauren,” Cassie said with absolute confidence. If any of them had her head on straight, it was Lauren. She was always the one to express caution when a prank threatened to get out of hand, always the one who came up with a thoughtful gesture to make amends when someone’s feelings were hurt.

“I suppose you know her better than I do,” her mother said, though her doubts were still evident. “Are you hungry? I’ve made some sandwiches, and there are cookies. Mildred brought them by this morning. Oatmeal-raisin. Your favorite, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Mildred’s oatmeal-raisin cookies were always the best,” Cassie enthused. And their neighbor had always come up with excuses for bringing over a plateful to share with a little girl whose own mother rarely baked. Those treats had earned Mildred a special place in Cassie’s heart. “I’ll have to stop by later to thank her.”

“She’d like that. She doesn’t get out much these days. Her arthritis makes it difficult for her to get around. Jake can stay with me while you and Mildred visit.”

Cassie’s gaze narrowed. “Don’t you think Mildred would like to see your grandson?”

“There’s nothing for a boy to do over there. He’d be bored,” Edna responded.

She said it in a hurried way that told Cassie she was only making up hasty excuses. “Mom, I can’t keep Jake hidden away in the house while we’re here.”

For an instant her mother looked ashamed. “No, of course not. I never meant to imply that you should.”

“Surely people have gotten over what happened by now.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re right. It’s just that…”

Cassie met her gaze evenly. She had known they were going to have to face this. Now was as good a time as any. “What?” she asked, prepared for battle.

“He looks so much like his father now.”

That was the last thing Cassie had expected her mother to say, but it was true. Jake did look like Cole, from his sun-streaked hair to his blue eyes, from those freckles across his nose to the shape of his mouth. Even the glasses were a reminder of the ones Cole had worn until high school, when he’d finally been persuaded to trade them for contacts.

Cole had been a self-described skinny, awkward geek until he’d gone away to college. There he’d begun to fill out, his body becoming less awkward and lanky. And after a summer at home working the ranch, his lean body had been all hard muscle by the time they’d started dating in earnest. Cassie imagined the same thing would happen to Jake one day, and that he would be breaking girl’s hearts just like his daddy had.

The shock, of course, was that her mother could see all that. “You know,” Cassie said flatly.

It was her mother’s turn to look startled. “Did you think I didn’t?”

“You never said a word.”

Her mother shrugged. “There was nothing to say. What was done was done. No point in talking about it.”

Cassie sank down on the bed, her thoughts in turmoil. All this time her mother had known the truth. She met Edna’s gaze.

“Is Cole…?” Her voice trailed off.

“He’s here,” her mother said tightly. “Has been ever since college. He came back to help out when Frank had a heart attack. If you ask me, the man talked himself into getting sick just to manipulate that boy, but they seem to be getting on well enough out there.”

Another secret kept, Cassie thought, just as she’d kept Cole’s identity a secret from Jake. Why did it surprise her that her mother could be reticent about something so important? Edna had always kept her own counsel, never saying more than the situation required for politeness. Even now she didn’t elaborate. If Cassie wanted to know more, she was going to have to ask directly.

“Is he married?” she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“No.”

Relief warred with surprise. Cole must be the county’s prize catch. How had he managed to elude all the single women of Winding River and their ambitious parents, especially with Frank Davis no doubt pressuring him to produce an heir?

It didn’t matter, she told herself sternly. It had nothing to do with her, except that it complicated her situation that Cole was still living right here. How could she possibly keep him from finding out that Jake was his son if he was practically underfoot? And if he did figure it out, what would his reaction be? Would he pretend ignorance or would he want to claim his son? She wasn’t sure which thought terrified her more. Explaining to Jake that his father was here when she’d always been so elusive about his whereabouts wouldn’t be any easier.

“Hey, Mom, can we eat? I’m starved.”

Jake’s voice cut into her thoughts. Struggling with the unexpected taste of fear in her mouth, Cassie stayed silent a minute too long, drawing a puzzled look from her son and an understanding one from her mother.

“I’ll get him his sandwich,” her mother offered. “You spend a few minutes unpacking and getting settled.”

She followed Jake from the room, then turned back. “Give some thought to what I said. The Davises are powerful people, and Cole’s got a streak of his daddy in him—no matter how you once thought otherwise. They take what’s theirs.”

Cassie understood the warning and all its implications. If Emma, now an attorney was coming to the reunion, Cassie would talk to her the second she arrived. Surely Emma would be able to give her some advice on how to protect her rights where Jake was concerned.

And if what her friend had to say wasn’t reassuring, Cassie would take her son and leave. Perhaps she couldn’t go back to work for Earlene, but they could move someplace entirely new. Cheyenne, maybe. Or Laramie. Maybe all the way north to someplace like Jackson Hole. A fresh start in a whole new town wouldn’t be easy, but if it was necessary to keep her son away from Cole, Cassie would do it and never look back.

Just then the phone rang, and a moment later her mother poked her head into the bedroom. “It’s Karen. She heard you were back. Somebody in town must have seen you drive through.”

A smile spread across Cassie’s face as she walked down the hall to the little alcove where the old-fashioned black phone still sat on a rickety mahogany table. The first of the Calamity Janes was checking in.

“Hey, cowgirl, how are you?” she asked Karen. “And how’s that handsome husband of yours?”

“Working too hard. We both are.”

“But you’ll be here for the reunion?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“And the others? Have you heard from any of them?”