to shatter your illusions, sweetheart, but it’s true. Do you want the number to my office so you can check it out?”
In the face of his cocky attitude, her assurance wavered. This couldn’t be happening. He had to be lying, didn’t he?
“Why should I believe anything you say?” she finally snapped. “You don’t exactly have the best track record around here. I made the mistake of trusting you once, and look where it got me.”
He shifted his gaze away, looking out at the mountains once more. After a moment he turned back, his expression shuttered and those long, dark lashes shielding his vivid eyes.
“Would it help if I said I was sorry for that?” he asked quietly.
For what? For leaving her practically at the altar…or for asking her to marry him in the first place?
She gazed at him, words choking her throat like Western virgin’s bower around a cottonwood trunk. Did he honestly have the gall to stand in front of her and apologize so casually, as if he’d simply bumped shopping carts or pulled in front of her in traffic?
She thought of her oldest brother and those first days after, when Matt had walked around in a state of dazed disbelief. Of a tiny, frail Lucy, just a few months old, wailing shrilly for the mother who would never come back.
Of her own shock and the agonizing pain of complete betrayal, those days and months and years when she knew the whole town looked at her with pity, when the whispers behind her back threatened to deafen her.
Sorry? Zack Slater could never be sorry enough to make right everything he and Melanie had destroyed.
“You’re about ten years too late.”
Zack winced inwardly at the bitterness in her voice, though it was nothing more than he expected. Or than he deserved.
He wanted to kick himself for blurting that out so bluntly. He should have slowly worked up to his apology, waited until she had time to get to know him again before he tried to explain away the decisions he’d made that summer.
But since the moment she had walked into the vast room with its cozy furniture and spectacular view, his brain seemed about as useful as a one-legged chicken and he had to fight with everything inside him not to reach for her.
And wouldn’t that have gone over well? He could just picture her reaction if he tried to pull her into his arms. Knowing Cassie, if he tried it, she would probably scratch and claw and aim a knee at a portion of his anatomy he was fairly fond of.
She said he was too late for apologies, for explanations. He hoped not. He really hoped not, or all his work these last few months would have been for nothing.
Before he could answer, she drew herself up with the unconsciously sensual grace that had been so much a part of her, even as an eighteen-year-old young woman just growing into her body.
Eyes glittering with fury, she faced him. “I don’t know what kind of scam you’re trying to pull here, Slater. But I’ll warn you, Jean is not some feeble-minded old lady to sit by and just let you waltz in and swindle her out of the ranch she has loved all her life. And even if she were, you can bet, I’m not. Jean has people who love her, who look out for her. Whatever twisted scheme you’ve come up with, you won’t get away with this.”
At that, she stalked out of the room, her wildflower scent lingering behind her.
He blew out a sharp breath. So much for a warm welcome. Not that he’d expected one. But then, he’d never imagined Cassie would be the first one to greet him when he arrived, either. He’d thought he would at least have had a little more time to prepare for the shock of seeing her.
She had changed.
What had he expected in ten years? Time didn’t stand still except in his entirely too-vivid imagination. There, Cassidy Harte had remained as fresh and innocent as she’d been at eighteen, when she had stolen his heart with her mischievous smile and her boundless love and her unwavering loyalty.
That Cassie—the one who had haunted his dreams for so long, through the dark months when he had nothing else—had worn her hair long, in a sleek ponytail he used to love to pull from its binding and twist his fingers through.
Sometime during the long years since, she had cut it off. He wondered when, and felt a little pang of loss he knew he had no right to.
Her hair was still as dark and luxurious as it had been ten years ago—as glossy and rich as fine sable—but now she wore it in a sexy little cap that, on any other woman he might have called boyish.
There was nothing remotely boyish about Cassidy Harte, though. From her high cheekbones to her full lips to her body’s soft, welcoming curves, she was one hundred percent woman.
Her eyes were the same. Blue as the spring’s first columbine, fringed by long thick lashes that didn’t need any kind of makeup to enhance their natural beauty.
Ten years ago those eyes would have softened when he walked into a room, would have lit up with joy just at the sight of him. Now they were hard and angry, filled with a deep betrayal he had put there.
This had to work.
He shoved away from the couch and turned back to the mountains, looking out at the magnificent view with the same yearning he imagined was in his gaze when he looked at Cassie.
It had to work. He couldn’t imagine the alternative.
He had made mistakes—he would be the first one to admit them. But he had paid for them, and paid dearly. Could he make it right with her? What were the chances that she would ever be able to find it in her heart to forgive him, after the hurt he had caused her?
Slim to none, he figured.
He rubbed a hand over the ache in his chest. He would just have to do his best. No matter how tough, how seemingly insurmountable the task might seem, he had to do everything he could to make it work.
No matter the risk, he must take this chance.
To see if somewhere inside this hard, angry woman still remained any shred of the one person in the world who had seen something in him worth loving.
Chapter 2
It was true. All of it.
To her shock and dismay, it turned out he was telling the truth this time. By some sadistic twist of fate, Zack Slater was indeed the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the West—and the man who would be signing her paycheck from here on out.
What kind of warped sense of humor must Somebody have to mess up her life so completely? Just what, exactly, had she done to deserve this?
She tried to be a good person. She didn’t lie, didn’t cheat on her income taxes, didn’t swear—much, anyway. She obeyed the Golden Rule, she was kind to the elderly and small children and she really made an effort to go to church as often as she could manage. And for all her effort, this is what she got?
She should have raised a little hell when she had the chance.
Jean Martineau, steel-gray hair yanked back into
