her own distance. He’d found her hiding in the stables late one fall afternoon. And after that, she hadn’t been nearly as afraid or lonely as before.
A lot had happened since then.
But she wouldn’t be scared anymore. She had a lot of questions.
Beginning with one.
“Teresa, after I visit with Daddy, I want you to explain to me what Cal Collins is doing back at Camellia.”
And why no one had bothered to warn her about that.
CHAPTER TWO
CASSIE ENTERED THE darkened room, her heart whispering a silent warning. The ceiling-to-floor windows across one wall of the big square room usually showed a panoramic view of the sloping backyard and the pool area. But today, the heavy beige drapes were drawn shut, causing patches of desperate sunshine to break through like lurking spotlights onto the high ceiling.
It took her a while to focus and get her bearings. The hospital bed had been set up in the corner where her father’s big oak desk used to be. The desk was gone but the sitting area remained the same, centered around the brick fireplace across from the bed. The row of bookshelves surrounding the fireplace remained full of volumes of various sizes and types, reminding Cassie of what a bookworm she’d always been in school.
Until that summer when Cal had brought her out of hiding and brought the world to her with all his talk of traveling and buying up land and…so many other dreams.
It felt surreal, being here in this room, hiding in darkness, shaking away in this atmosphere of sickness and death.
She didn’t want to advance toward the bed in the corner, toward the still, skeletal man lying in that bed. He didn’t look like the father she remembered.
Marcus Brennan had been larger than life—a rancher, a cowboy, a hunter and sportsman, a businessman and a gentleman with impeccable manners when around ladies and a brawling disregard when he went hunting or fishing with his cronies. He ruled this part of the state of Georgia and people either feared him or respected him.
At times, Cassie had felt both. Right now, she wasn’t sure what to feel, or what to say. So she just stood, her prayers centered on the next step. Then she heard her father’s voice for the first time in twelve years.
“Cassie?”
Cassie gulped back a silent sob. She wouldn’t cry now, not when she’d cried so many tears she’d probably be able to fill the Chattahoochee River. Not now, after she’d had to endure seeing Cal with her nemesis, Marsha, the woman who’d managed to break them apart even after Cassie’s powerful father had tried and failed.
Not now. Not now.
“Cassie, come over here and let me look at you.”
She advanced a step, then another, until she was at the foot of his bed. “Hello, Daddy.”
Marcus was propped up with pillows, his frail hand reaching toward her then falling away, back to the folds of the dark comforter covering his lower body.
“You came home.”
He said it in a way that ripped at her heart, his voice soft with yearning and awe. Had he expected her to ignore him?
“Yes, I’m here. How are you feeling?”
The cliché was the only thing that came to her mind, emerging through the unspoken, unasked questions that held her in a tight spasm of pain and fear.
His chuckle sounded like jagged rocks hitting against each other. “You see how I look. I feel about twice as bad as that. I guess I’m done for, girl.”
Cassie gripped the cold steel of the bed. “Teresa didn’t explain exactly what…what kind of illness you have. I’ve talked to several of your doctors since she called me regarding your health, but they didn’t want to discuss your medical condition with me.”
Another rumbling, hacking chuckle. “I’m dying. What does the rest matter?” He let out a rasping sigh. “I’ve drank too much, smoked too much, and seen and done too much. I have cancer and several other maladies with names longer than my seventy-nine vintage Cadillac.”
Cassie let that declaration take hold, willing herself to remain quiet and still. He appeared so fragile, so deathly, she was afraid to move, afraid her touch on his arm might shatter him. “I understand you have nurses?”
“Day and night. Draining me dry, too.”
Her father was a very rich man, so she doubted that. “Where is your nurse right now?”
“Told her to come later this afternoon. Wanted some time alone with you. They hover over me, drives me nuts.”
Cassie could only imagine that and pity the nurses who had to deal with Marcus Brennan. “Do you need anything?”
“I need to go back about fifteen years, is all.”
Don’t we all, Cassie thought, one single tear escaping down her face. Grabbing at courage, she moved around to the side of the bed. “Why am I here, Daddy? Why did you wait so long to call me home?”
“Why did you wait so long to come home?” he countered, his expression creased with frustration and too much time alone.
Cassie didn’t know how to answer that question. She’d called home time after time, especially during that first rough year of college. Teresa would take her messages but she’d never hear back from her father. After the first awkward, awful Thanksgiving and Christmas here when her father didn’t even bother to eat meals with her or exchange gifts, either, she’d swallowed back the pain of holidays spent alone or with friends, with long nights of worrying and praying for things she couldn’t have. After a few months, she’d given up, her heart breaking into brittle little pieces each time her messages were not returned.
“I’m here now,” she said, blinking back the stubborn tears. “I’m here, Daddy.”
Marcus gazed up at her, his shrewd brown eyes hollow and hard-edged, his mouth open in a rasping for each breath. “As pretty as ever.” He swallowed, closed his eyes for a moment. “You are the image of your mother.”
And that was why he’d hated her so much, Cassie realized.
CAL STOMPED INTO THE kitchen, searching, the scent of Cassie’s perfume lingering in the air like a low-hanging flower, teasing him while he searched for her.
“Where is she?”
The housekeeper who also served as his sometime-therapist and wise counselor said, “In with her daddy.”
“How is she?”
Teresa automatically filled a glass with ice and poured him some sweet tea. “Shaky. Confused. Wanting to know why you’re back here and why her daddy called her home.”
Cal lowered his head, his hand absorbing the condensation on the crystal glass. “Did you tell her anything?”
“Not yet. She went straight in. Poor girl. She looked
