The Parent Plan

Back to the womb, so to speak, though, technically, her first home had been a bleak apartment above a pizza parlor. It was all that her parents, Sylvia and Fred Moore, had been able to afford on his resident’s salary.

After pulling the keys from the ignition, Karen glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes past two. If running true to form, Sylvia would be waiting with a full pot of freshly ground French roast and a tray of pastries she’d picked up from the bakery near the bank where she had worked her way up to the position of vice president. One of the perks of her job was being able to take off unannounced for a couple of hours to spend an afternoon with her daughter.

Karen slipped from the car and trotted up the shrubbery-lined walkway to the wide front porch, where she pressed the buzzer twice to herald her arrival before using her key. The silence of the huge old house settled over her like a soothing cloak as she slipped off her jacket and slung it over an arm of the antique coat tree.

“Yoo-hoo, Mom?”

Sylvia pushed through the louvered double doors that led from the dining room into the large living area adjacent to the tiled entry. In her slender, well-tended hands, she balanced a silver tray, steam rising from the coffee urn to create smoky ribbons before her finely sculptured face.

“Hello, sweetheart,” she called as she bent to set the tray on the coffee table. “A visit from you today is just what I needed.”

Karen crossed the living room to give her mother the expected hug and peck on the cheek, her mind strangely detached from Sylvia’s cheerful chattering. Karen accepted a cup of coffee, which she cradled absently between her cold palms as she wandered aimlessly around the living room. Her mother, enthroned in her favorite damask-covered chair near the fireplace, watched her pace.

Very little had changed over the years. A fire had been expertly laid in the stone fireplace, ready to be kindled the instant her mother felt the slightest chill. Snapshots in silver frames had pride of place on the ornate oak mantelpiece, chronicling her life from infant to bride. Pain shafted through her at the memory of those carefree days. With her life full to bursting these past few years, she’d pretty much lost touch with almost all of those friends smiling at her with the naïve happiness of the young and privileged. Even Eve Stuart, who used to be her “best friend in the whole wide world,” had all but drifted out of her life before leaving Grand Springs for good six years ago. Though Eve was back now and living with her new husband, Rio Redtree, and their daughter, Molly, Karen never seemed to have a moment to spare for socializing with her.

She wanted to blame Cassidy for that, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. She had been the one to refuse invitations for lunch or bridge and casual get-togethers, even though it had hurt her keenly.

“Is something wrong, darling? You look a touch sad this afternoon.”

At the sound of concern in her mother’s voice, Karen glanced over her shoulder and shook her head in what she hoped was a reassuring denial. “I’m just tired, that’s all. One of the other residents is off sick, and I’m working part of his hours as well as my own.”

Sylvia Moore pleated her patrician brow in a troubled look Karen knew foreshadowed a bout of maternal probing. “Winter’s officially over in three days. Perhaps you’ve a touch of spring fever,” Sylvia suggested with just a hint of a smile, her cup clinking softly as she returned it to the saucer on the piecrust table at her elbow.

“Could be. I admit I’ve just about had it with fighting my way from the house to my car in knee-high snow more mornings than not.”

She gave a dramatic shiver before turning back to continue her study of the framed photos. Since she’d been old enough to climb on a chair in front of the fireplace, she’d been fascinated by the people in those pictures, many of whom had faces very much like hers. Her father’s, especially. Karen always felt a tingle of recognition when she studied his likeness, which reminded her so much of her own.

She’d been only three when he’d kissed her goodbye that fateful morning and driven off to work. Ten minutes later, his life had ended in a car crash. A broken neck, according to the reports she’d read. Just like that, and her mother had been a widow with a child to raise by herself.

Kari and I raised each other, Sylvia invariably declared when anyone remarked on the unusually close relationship between mother and daughter.

Smiling to herself, Karen let her gaze move farther along the display of photographs. Her mother was there, too, as well as a steady progression of photos of Karen. As a bald baby in a flowery headband. As a Brownie and then a Girl Scout, her sash covered with merit badges. As an honor student and valedictorian of her class at Colorado State.

There were other pictures, too. Silly ones. Special ones. Her first day of medical school with her arms full of bedding and her roommate mugging in the background. Posing in her brand-new uniform as an LPN at Vanderbilt Memorial, where she’d worked double shifts in order to earn the money for the next term. Sunbathing in the backyard with her first boyfriend, Squirrely Miller Greavy. Her entire life, captured on glossy paper and framed with her mother’s impeccable taste.

Her breath hitched as she finally allowed herself to look at the large, formal photo in a priceless antique frame that sat all alone on one end of the crowded mantelpiece. Her wedding picture.

Her very own fairy-tale fantasy done in the colors of the sun and swirls of pixie dust.

It had been Indian summer, and the sun had bathed the small chapel in gold. Cassidy had worn the rented tux with an authority that had taken her breath away. Not even her mother’s friend and long-time beau, Frank Bidwell, in custom-tailored Armani had been as impressive.

Smiling, she traced the majestic line of those wide, wide shoulders with her blunt, unpainted nail. Clark Gable shoulders, she used to tease, just to watch him scowl. He’d been scowling when they’d met, too, between colorful curses that had questioned the paternity of the two ranch hands who had hauled him into the ER on a hot day in July.

“He’s all yours, ma’am,” one of the crusty hands had declared prophetically before hurrying to the safety of the waiting room.

“Best not try to take his pants,” the younger cowpuncher had counseled, before he, too, had abandoned her.

A wild stallion Cassidy had been set on breaking had tried to return the favor, and Cassidy had ended up at the receiving end of the horse’s flashing, steel-shod hooves. Still wearing his chaps over frayed jeans and dusty boots, he’d been all but out of his mind with pain from a gash in his forehead, a severe concussion and four broken ribs, one of which had been dangerously close to puncturing a lung.

While Karen helped the nurse with his vitals, he’d told them in no uncertain terms what they could do with their pain medication, threatened Karen with unspeakable horror if she so much as reached for the buttons on his fly and worked hard on turning the air blue in the small treatment cubicle, earning him a severe rebuke from a tough ex-army nurse by the name of Helga Tutt. He’d also gone down in history at Vanderbilt Memorial as holding the unofficial record for consecutive curses without a single repetition.

It had been love at first sight—on her part, at least. But when they’d started dating, Cassidy’s motivation had been far more direct—he’d wanted to take her to bed. While she’d been weaving romantic dreams, he’d been skillfully knocking down her virginal defenses one by one. And yet, when she’d told him about the baby, he’d kissed her with great tenderness before informing her in his usual brusque manner that they would be getting married as soon as the law allowed.

“You were beautiful that day, Kari,” her mother remarked quietly, drawing Karen’s gaze. “Truly radiant.”

“I was scared to death!”

“So was Cassidy. I’ve never quite seen that shade of white in a man’s face before.”

Karen felt a lump forming in her throat as she recalled the possessive note in his voice as he’d repeated the vows. Her own voice had been barely audible and more than a little shaky. At one point, she’d stumbled over the words, and Cassidy had given her icy hand a reassuring squeeze that had calmed her.

She’d been giddy with happiness for a long time after that. Cassidy had made no secret of his determination to grant her every wish, and he had, she reminded herself as she settled in the chair opposite her mother’s—until she’d made the decision when Vicki was nearly three to return to medical school for her final two years.

He’d changed after that. Each day he’d seemed to draw more tightly into himself until she’d come to feel as though she were living with a taciturn, polite—and terribly remote—roommate instead of the man she adored.

After taking a sip of the now tepid coffee, she asked brightly, “So what did you decide to wear to the reception tomorrow night?”

Her mother tossed her a saucy grin that took years from her face. “What else? My little black dress and pearls.”

“Of course.” Karen recalled with fondness the hours of her youth that she and her mother had spent discussing fashion and style.

“I wish Olivia was going to be at the party,” Sylvia murmured after a long moment of silence. “She and I used to tease each other about who wore pearls most often.” Sylvia drew a sad breath. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

Karen toyed with her coffee cup, centering it on her knee, tracing the handle, then repositioning it on the chair arm. Olivia Stuart and her mother had been friends for years—since the days when their girls had been in grade school together and almost as close as sisters.

Now pictures of Eve’s mom flitted gently though her mind. For all her grace and innate charm, Grand Springs’ mayor had been a strong advocate for the underdog. She’d also been a wonderful role model, especially for young women and girls, like Vicki and Olivia’s own beloved granddaughter, Molly.

“It doesn’t seem possible that a wonderful person like her should have been murdered.”

Her eyes dulled by sadness, Sylvia shook her head. “I talked to Rio the other afternoon when he came in to make a payment on his truck loan. He said that the police have pretty much exhausted the leads in the case.”

Karen heaved a weary sigh. As a doctor, she dealt with death nearly every day, in one way or another, but that didn’t make it any easier when the Grim Reaper struck so close to home.

“I’m sure Eve and Rio will be at the party. Maybe Rio’s work at the Grand Springs Herald has turned up new information.”

Sylvia let out a long breath. “If there is any new information. It seems to me things like this go on forever, and sometimes they’re never really satisfactorily solved. That disturbs me almost as much as losing Olivia did.” She shrugged a slender shoulder. “What a pathetic tribute to someone’s life.” She crooked her elegant fingers to indicate quotations marks. “‘Case pending.’ No sense of closure. No sense of justice being done. It makes a person wonder what it’s all about. You know?”

Karen understood, perhaps better than her mother realized. What was it all about? She’d been asking herself that question a lot lately. She had no answers.

As if Sylvia sensed how gloomy her daughter was feeling, she declared firmly, “Enough depressing stuff. Tell me about your new dress. You never did tell me what you bought.”

“Probably because there’s nothing to tell. I don’t have anything new.”

Sylvia arched an eyebrow. “But I thought that’s the reason you and Vicki made a special trip to the mall last month.”

Karen grinned and rolled her eyes. “That was the plan, yes, but remember me, the mother of a precocious soon-to-be nine-year-old? I’d swear she was thirteen going on twenty-five, listening to her talk. Barbie dolls are definitely behind us, I’m afraid. Now she’s lusting after makeup and heels with a gleam in her eye that will probably throw Cassidy into cardiac arrest when he realizes what’s on her mind.”

Sylvia chuckled. “She is shooting up fast, isn’t she?”

“Yes, scary, isn’t it? Anyway, by the time we settled on the absolutely perfect party dress, we’d run out of time to look for something for me.”

This time Sylvia’s cup clattered impatiently when she returned it to its saucer. “For heaven’s sake, Karen, why didn’t you tell me you were short on time? You know I leap at any opportunity to shop. I’m sure I could have found you something appropriate.”

“And expensive, no doubt,” Karen returned with a rueful shake of her head.

Sylvia arched a graceful brow again as she said airily, “Of course. After all, you’re the wife of one of our area’s most successful ranchers. You deserve the best, my sweet. Something with enough sizzle to make that tall, dark and handsome husband of yours want to rip it right off you when he sees you wearing it.”

Karen nearly choked on her coffee. “Mother!”

“Don’t ‘Mother’ me, Karen McCormick Moore Sloane. As you just said, Vicki is going to be nine at the end of April. It’s time she had a baby brother or sister to spoil. Otherwise, she might end up as set in her ways as you are.”

“If only it were that easy,” Karen muttered, dropping her gaze. She would not cry. She simply would NOT.

There was a weighty silence before her mother said softly, “Darling, I was just joking. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended.” Karen closed her eyes against the sudden sting of hot tears.

“Karen? What’s wrong?”

Her mother’s soft cry shredded Karen’s brave front “Oh, Mom, I’m so scared. I think my marriage is in terrible trouble, and I don’t have a clue what to do to fix it.”

Sylvia uttered a soft sound of dismay. “Oh, dear.”

Karen lifted a hand to dash away the tears trembling on her lashes, then steeled herself to meet her mother’s gaze.

“Cassidy blames me for Vicky’s accident. He’s been punishing me for it ever since.”

Sylvia’s disbelief was almost palpable. “You must be mistaken.”

“I wish I were,” Karen declared with weary vehemence before repeating Cassidy’s words to her on that awful night in June. “I thought it was just a form of shock, that he’d lashed out because he was hurting.”

“Your father was like that,” her mother stated firmly. “So was my father. I’ve often thought it must be some kind of a defense against feeling things too deeply.”

“Oh, Cassidy feels things, all right. Resentment, anger, contempt.” Karen wiped the tears from her cheeks with quick angry strokes of her cold fingertips. “These days he scowls more than he smiles, and the hands are threatening to force-feed him patience. As for me, I can’t seem to do anything right anymore.” She drew a breath. “And the only time he smiles is when he’s talking to Vicki.”

“Karen, Cassidy’s never been a man to smile easily, which isn’t surprising, given the fact that he’s virtually been on his own since his father killed himself.”

That was certainly true enough, Karen reflected with a frown. Cassidy had been barely seventeen and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he’d come home from football practice to find his father dead by his own hand. Since his parents had been divorced for many years by then, the grim details of his father’s burial had been left to him. As soon as he’d graduated, he’d sold the house and the few other possessions his father had left him, put the money and a small insurance settlement into a savings account, and enlisted in the army.

She knew very little of Cassidy’s family history—only the names of his parents and a few sketchy details of his growing-up years. He’d had a brother who died before the age of five and a mother who’d left ten-year-old Cassidy and his father shortly thereafter. All of which had given him a deep-seated need to be in control of his own destiny. Very early in their relationship, she’d realized that she was wasting her time trying to pry open a door to his past that for reasons of his own, he’d locked and bolted tight.

“There are other changes, too. More…intimate ones.”

Karen felt her face growing hot. Though she and her mother had always been close, they had only discussed sex in impersonal terms. To her credit, Sylvia had always been quite open about what she called bedroom romps, the hotter the better. Karen had been the one to shy away from the explicit details.

“In other words, you’re not sleeping together?”

Karen hated the wave of weary bitterness that passed over her. It was becoming as much a part of her as the indecision about her marriage.

“Oh, yes, we’re sleeping together,” she admitted, watching a cloud drift across the frame formed by the living room’s large bay window. “On our own separate sides of the bed.”

Karen mentally cringed at the memory of the last time she’d tried to snuggle up to Cassidy while he’d been sleeping. He’d jerked away from her violently, as though she’d attacked him.

“Forgive me for asking, darling, but have you considered that the problem might be…physical?”

“If you’re asking me if he’s impotent, he’s not.” The idea was laughable. Cassidy was an intensely virile man with a strong sex drive. “We still have sex now and then, but it’s mechanical. A quick, impersonal screw when he’s horny. Nothing more than physical relief.”

“And you believe Cassidy is to blame for that?”

“He resents my career and I resent him for resenting it.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “How’s that for complex?”

“But typical of you, my darling daughter. You always were able to see two or three layers deeper than anyone else. It’s part of your physician’s gift, I think.”

“I’m beginning to think it’s more like a curse.” Karen lifted a hand to rub at the beginnings of a headache behind her eyes. “Tell me the truth, Mom. If you were in my place, would you give up medicine in order to save your marriage?”

Sylvia inhaled a quick, nervous breath. “Surely it hasn’t come to that?”

“Not yet, but I have a terrible feeling that’s where we’re headed.” Karen sat forward, her hands wrapped tightly around the delicate Spode cup. “You haven’t given me your answer. Would you give up part of your soul to keep the man you love?”

“I don’t know, Karen. Thank goodness that was one particular dilemma I never had to face. And before you tell me that’s not an answer, I agree. Mostly because there is no one answer.”

Karen sighed. “Coward,” she grumbled.

Laughing softly, Sylvia glanced down at the worn gold band she had never once removed since her nervous groom had slipped it onto her finger almost thirty-five years ago. “Darling, forgive me for saying so, but I really think you should be having this conversation with Cassidy, not me,”

“I’ve tried, Mother. But the moment I bring up a topic that remotely has to do with his feelings, he just ices over.”

“Perhaps if you persisted. Gently, of course.”

“It’s difficult to persist when the person you’re talking with gets up and leaves the room.”

“And you let him get away with that? Tsk, tsk, Karen, I’m surprised at you. You never used to be so tractable.”

“Mother, there’s no ‘letting’ Cassidy do anything. Once he’s gotten it in his head to do something, nothing will stop him.”

“Do what, exactly?”

“Put me through hell until I agree to give up medicine.” She exhaled angrily. “But I won’t be blackmailed like that, Mother! I love him with my whole heart and soul, but a part of me is so angry, so…so disappointed that he’s behaving like some kind of feudal throwback.”

“Hmm, lord of the manor. Or in this case the ranch he loves so much. That does rather describe Cassidy, doesn’t it?”

Karen nodded, her burst of temper ebbing as quickly as it had come. She drained her cup before putting it aside. These days she always seemed to be running behind. As for catching up, forget it.

“I have to go,” she said, flexing her shoulders.

“I’ll see you Saturday night, then.” Her mother rose as well. “If you need anything before then, just call.”

“I will,” Karen promised, giving her mother a hug. “And I apologize for unloading my problems on you. I know I have to find a way to solve them myself.”

Her mother’s still-pretty face took on stern lines. “Karen, asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, just the opposite.”

To placate her mother, Karen smiled. “Don’t worry. If I need you, I’ll holler.”

“Sure you will,” her mother said with a little shake of her head as they walked out to the car together. “Mind how you go,” she said as Karen climbed into the driver’s seat.

“I will,” Karen said before reaching for her seat belt. As she drove off, she prepared herself mentally for the hours ahead. At the end of this shift, she would be one day closer to the end of her residency. Eight more months of brutal hours and unending stress before she could take a few months off to rest, and maybe make a start on another baby, then ease into a private practice where her time would be her own. Things between her and Cassidy would be better then.

They had to be.

Chapter Two

Cassidy had started his day in a decent enough mood, mostly because the tattered feed-store calendar hanging inside the barn doors said it was the first day of spring and there was a hint of warmth in the morning air. The land was coming alive again.

By the end of the day, his good mood had soured. Early spring thaws had left his beautiful ranch a sloppy, ugly mess, and everywhere he’d ridden, he’d seen wind-toppled scrub oaks torn from the ravaged earth as though by some angry hand. With a resignation born of ten winters in this part of the west, he calculated he had miles of fence to repair. Worse, the melting snow had turned the pretty little creek meandering across the north pasture into a frothing torrent of muddy water. At last count the Lazy S had lost six prime heifers to the flood, with the tally far from finished. And if the fat black clouds hugging the treetops let go, it was bound to be a rotten night to be on the road. But in a couple of hours that’s exactly where he and his ladies would be, heading for the fairgrounds on the far side of Grand Springs where tonight’s so-called celebration was being held.

Much as he hated the thought of hauling out his party manners and shining the almost new boots that still pinched his toes, it suited his sense of irony that the party to celebrate the town’s recovery from the June blackout was occurring on a night when the weather was nearly as brutal.

He’d been saddle sore and weary when he rode in from the pasture, a long list of urgent jobs for his men already taking shape in his head. As he hurried toward the house, he’d been desperate for a hot shower, a gallon of steaming coffee and, maybe, just maybe, a quick bout of loving from his wife. Tired as he’d been, he’d gotten hard at the thought. He and Karen hadn’t had sex for weeks, and he was about as frustrated as the wild stallion he’d glimpsed racing the wind on the horizon a few hours earlier.

But, when he reached the house, he found Vicki in tears, Wanda June at her wit’s end and Karen running late—as usual. It had nearly torn him apart to see the disappointment in his little girl’s big brown eyes when she’d come racing out of her bedroom at the sound of the back door closing, only to find him standing. According to Wanda June, Vicki had been waiting for the better part of an hour for her mother to get home.

It had taken him five harrowing minutes to narrow the problem to a hem that needed to be pinned up and sewed in place. Wanda June had offered to help, but Vicki had wanted her mom to do it. Like they’d planned, she kept telling him, her eyes flashing with impatience at his failure to understand.

He’d wanted to smash a fist into the nearest wall. Instead, he swallowed the anger that flared inside him like a familiar stab of pain and offered himself as a substitute. Which was why he was presently standing like an awkward, barefoot idiot in his own dining room, one hand clamped on a patch of flimsy cotton skirt, the other awkwardly trying to retrieve yet another tiny dressmaker’s pin from the small plastic box on the table. He’d rather eat dust and wrestle fifty terrified calves on branding day than pin up a damned skirt hem.