When Last We Loved Read online

  That he loved his work was evidenced in the calm, serious line of his profile; in the care he took when tackling even the most monotonous chore; and in his quiet, justified pride in the beauty of his land.

  “Hand me those wire snips, will you?” Hoyt reached out and she placed the tool in his gloved hand.

  She felt a twinge of nostalgia for those sharing times that had satisfied her both physically and emotionally. The familiar routine of working beside him again bred its own special brand of contentment.

  “Neon lights sure can't hold a candle to sunshine.” She lifted her chin to meet the warm rays. Her time on the Diamond T had dwindled, and she and Hoyt still hadn't discussed her career. She was reluctant to believe that he hadn't been serious in his overtures about managing her, and she wondered how long she could live in this limbo of uncertainty. “Scrappy called last week.” A little prodding couldn't hurt. “The Twisters should be in Nashville by now— greener pastures, you know.”

  “Are you ready for lunch?” Hoyt wasn't the pushing kind. He wouldn't talk until he was good and ready. He slapped his hands together and the sawdust flew from the creases of his leather gloves.

  “I'm starved!” Her attention turned to her hunger pangs.

  “I've got the spot all picked out.” Hoyt saddled up.

  Cassie hurried to mount so she wouldn't be left behind.

  “Do you want to race?” He smiled. His big bay trotted in the direction of a stream they'd crossed earlier that morning. Cassie shook her head, content to follow at a slower pace. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd felt such inner peace, and she wanted to enjoy it for all it was worth.

  “You look good with that color in your cheeks,” Hoyt commented while he shook out an old saddle blanket and spread it on the ground.

  “I'm glad you suggested this. I was beginning to feel like a loaf of stale bread.” Cassie knelt, lifted the lid off the wicker basket, and began unwrapping the sandwiches.

  Hoyt crouched beside the small fire he'd built. Flames licked a well-used, blackened pot as the aroma of coffee filled the air. Cassie wrapped her hands around a tin mug and sipped the steaming brown brew, letting its warmth thaw the chill in her bones.

  “Have a sandwich,” she suggested. “Mrs. Morton got up early just so she could make this ham salad fresh.”

  “You sure have won her over.” There was a hint of admiration in Hoyt's sidelong glance. “I'd swear the old battle-axe had tears in her eyes when I told her you'd be leaving soon. She tried to insist that it was a speck of dust, but I told her that wouldn't wash.”

  “Well, she sure thinks the sun rises and sets with you,” Cassie observed.

  Hoyt grinned. “She's not such a bad old gal herself.”

  “Do you realize we haven't had one fight in all the time I've been here?” Cassie's laugh was as crystal clear as the weather. “We haven't gotten along this well since— ” She cut her sentence short. Damn! she cursed silently, lowering her head and welcoming the black curtain of hair falling across her face. What had caused her to slip like that?

  Hoyt was beside her. He tipped her chin and looked at her intently. She met his steady indigo gaze with unflinching pride.

  “Do you miss those days?” His voice was husky with the memory of them. His lips grazed hers, fanning the flames of a slowly uncoiling desire that spread with the radiance of a fever. There was no haste in him. Hoyt knew her pace.

  “Yes and no,” she answered candidly when his mouth left hers to explore the graceful curve of her neck. “I wouldn't trade even one of my tomorrows for the worrying I did. But I have missed you... ” The throb of need choked off any further reply as she tilted her head back to allow him whatever access pleased him.

  Hoyt zipped her jacket open and slid his arms around her waist. His male heat staved off the autumn chill and his mouth roamed possessively in lazy, stimulating circles. She locked her arms around his neck and shuddered her surrender.

  “Have you ever made love outdoors?” His whisper was warm, so warm, against the creamy hollow of her throat

  Cassie shook her head, too caught up in the wonder of what was happening to speak. She felt the imprint of his hard body and his heart beating against hers, saw the frank desire lighting up his eyes and heard the love words he murmured in her ear. His hand pressed flat against the small of her back, massaging the sensitive spot with sure strokes. She answered his sensual message with trembling lips, molding herself closer to the source of this furnace-like heat.

  “It's been a long time.” Hoyt nibbled on her naked shoulder and she wondered when and how her shirt had come unbuttoned. “Too long.” His voice vibrated with silver-tongued sweetness on the softness of her skin. “I want you, Cassie. And I know you want me.” He kissed her with probing intensity as he lowered her down to the blanket.

  A faint moan escaped her lips when he slipped her shirt off all the way and cupped the swelling curves of her breasts. Cassie framed the clean contours of his face between her hands, spellbound by the deep blue desire in his eyes.

  Hoyt stripped away the denim and leather barriers of their jeans and boots. The perspiration that bathed their bodies denied the harvest season's nip. Cassie traced his male shape, caressing the flat, smooth muscles of his stomach and the hard wall of his chest. His shoulders cast broad shadows over her alabaster curves.

  “Love me, Hoyt.” Her aching sigh echoed like a breeze through the cottonwoods and mesquites that intertwined like lovers beside the stream. She strained against him as a sudden urgency flared in her veins. Wild and wonderful feelings swept over her when he lowered his weight into her welcoming softness. She was drowned in a whirlpool of ecstasy, clinging for dear love to the sinewy flesh and demanding lips that lifted her to delirious heights.

  The cook fire burned low long before their passion did. Cassie drifted slowly back to earth from the heavenly rapture, content to lie in the shelter of Hoyt's strong, warm arms. A hawk drifted through the sky in ever-widening circles and Cassie shivered in the chilly air that invaded their love nest.

  The tattoo of a horse's hooves approaching threw Cassie into a panic. “Someone's coming!” Her voice cracked as she pushed away from Hoyt and jumped up to dress.

  Hoyt's bay nickered nervously and its nostrils flared as it searched the wind for a familiar scent. Cassie tucked her blouse into the waistband of her jeans and combed her hair with nervous fingers.

  “You missed a button,” Hoyt observed, already dressed and leaning back on his heels to watch her hasty grooming efforts.

  "There you are!” Dee Dee reined her horse up short as Cassie finished arranging her clothes, and it was obvious the blonde had missed no detail of her disarrayed appearance. “The hands told me you were mending fence, and I rode out to keep you company.”

  Dee Dee glared at Cassie, making it clear she blamed her, not Hoyt, for whatever had happened. “You look tired, honey. Maybe you're trying to do too much too soon.” Her voice held that long-suffering quality that said it was easy to forgive a good-timing man when he took what was handed to him.

  Dee Dee glided off her dainty roan to help Hoyt gather up the remnants of the picnic. “You shouldn't have kept her out so long,” she scolded Hoyt. “We don't want her to suffer a relapse now, do we?”

  A crooked smile was Hoyt's apology as he stood and offered an arm to pull Cassie up off the blanket.

  “Dee Dee's probably right,” Cassie conceded as she brushed herself off and moved toward her horse. “I am a little tired after the fresh air, and a nap sounds good. I'll find my way home.”

  The naked trees cast sorry shadows as she mounted her mare. The day had suddenly lost its lovely glow.

  “Zip up your jacket, honey.” Dee Dee shook her head arrogantly and her mane of wind-whipped hair blew across her deftly made-up face. Her shrewd green eyes flashed, but her voice was as sweet as sugar. “We don't want your resistance to get any lower than it already is.”

  Cassie spurred her horse in the direction of
the house.

  Chapter 10

  Within a couple of weeks of her arrival, Cassie and Pops had established the habit of whiling away the evenings playing gin rummy in front of the fireplace. Pops would reminisce about long-ago nights when he and his wife, Mattie, had played cards together the same way.

  “She was a good woman to put up with me the way she did,” he said the evening following Cassie's picnic with Hoyt “You remind me of her in a lot of ways— and I mean that as a compliment.” His eyes narrowed under white-tufted brows as he leaned toward Cassie to emphasize the point. “I can't understand why a pretty filly like you is still running around fancy free. Why, if I was thirty years younger... ”

  Cassie feigned interest in her cards. Her long lashes shadowed the secret in her lilac eyes.

  “She's too busy chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to have time for a man, Dad,” Hoyt said, adding his two cents’ worth from the depths of the armchair where he sat looking over the ranch's accounting ledger. “Cassie's going to be Coyote Bend's first singing star.”

  She flushed. “There's more security in chasing rainbows than there is chasing most of the men I've met,” she countered.

  Hoyt's attention returned to the columns of figures he was reviewing, and Pops chuckled at the verbal duel he had unwittingly instigated.

  That spat was as close as they'd come to discussing their rudely interrupted picnic, and it was almost too close for Cassie's comfort.

  The next morning she was awake early enough to beat Mrs. Morton into the kitchen. She was listening to the coffee perk and watching the sun rise over the plains when footsteps caught her attention.

  “Good morning, Sunshine.” Hoyt stood in the doorway, smiling broadly. Dressed in the clothes he wore for meetings in downtown Dallas, he was a handsome picture. He tossed his sedately styled Stetson onto the counter and helped himself to a cup of coffee.

  “Anything I can pick up for you while I'm in town?” He glanced at her over the rim of his cup. “A box of chocolates from Neiman-Marcus?” The teasing twinkle in his blue eyes soothed her leftover irritation about his remarks the night before.

  “I've outgrown my sweet tooth,” she pertly assured him. “But those playing cards of your dad's look like something the dog's been chewing on. Why don't you pick him up a couple of new decks?”

  “I'll do that.” Hoyt kissed the tip of her nose and grinned as he left the kitchen.

  Cassie spent the day in the gazebo, curled up in the oak swing with a striped wool serape wrapped around her to ward off the nippy autumn air. She was almost finished with another new song when she heard Hoyt's sports car roaring up the driveway. She closed her note pad and a feeling of warmth crept through her at the thought of the blue-eyed cowboy who'd inspired so many of her lyrics.

  “Here are your cards.” Hoyt met her in the hallway and tossed a package to her. They laughed together as the serape slipped from her shoulders as she tried to catch the cards and still hold onto her notebook and pencils. “If you promise not to mark them, I'll take on the two of you for some serious poker tonight,” he added. “I think Lady Luck is smiling on me right about now.”

  “Put your money where your mouth is, Pilgrim.” Cassie's amethyst gaze tracked him as he took the stairs two at a time. She was fully recovered now and it was past time for her to start thinking about moving on. She shook off a sudden sadness and crossed the dining room to help Mrs. Morton prepare dinner.

  * * * *

  “Don't say I didn't warn you,” Hoyt teased as he shuffled and dealt the cards with expert ease. “I'm playing to win tonight.”

  And he was true to his word. The stack of red, white, and blue poker chips by his elbow grew larger with each hand. Pops finally bowed out, surrendering to fatigue and his dwindling pile of chips.

  “I've had enough,” the old man said. “You young folks keep on playing, but I'm going to bed.”

  Hoyt helped him to the door and called the nurse, who sat reading in the living room.

  “He seemed stronger tonight than he has since I've been here.” Cassie was clearing off the table when Hoyt returned to the den.

  “I know. But don't expect it to last.” His grim expression foreshadowed certain sorrow as he explained to Cassie that the doctor had recently told him Pops’ heart couldn't hold out much longer.

  A tear traced a path down Cassie's fire-warmed cheek as she boxed the cards and chips. The old man was like a father to her, and she wondered if she was forever destined to lose the ones she loved. She left Hoyt in the den, unwilling to let him witness her tears

  * * * *

  Dee Dee was never shy about inviting herself to dinner, and she was a frequent guest at the Temple table. In view of their past tangles, Cassie usually found an excuse to stay up in her room, but when the blonde appeared a few nights later, Hoyt made her promise that she would join them.

  “Why should I let her intimidate me?” Cassie asked herself while she soaked in a steaming tub of bubbles in the terra-cotta-tiled bathroom. She'd washed her hair and wrapped it turban style in a thick towel. “Because she's everything I'm not.” She was brutally honest about the advantages that Dee Dee had had, which she had not.

  “I wonder whether I can stand an entire evening of that perpetual Sun Belt smile.” Cassie made a face in the mirror, imitating Dee Dee's friendly mask

  “Well, if that's what Hoyt wants, he's welcome to it.” She slipped into a clinging blue sweater and a clean pair of jeans. A light coating of mascara emphasized her naturally thick lashes. She brushed her hair dry and the rich length of it cloaked her shoulders like a black velvet cape.

  “Why am I putting myself through this torture? Why don't I just pack up and catch the first bus to Nashville?” Despite Cassie's solemn-sounding questions, a hint of mischief sparkled in her violet-eyed reflection. “Because I'm not going to let him forget me that easily,” she vowed. “Because every time he looks at her, I want him to remember what we almost had.” Cassie pinched her cheeks to heighten the rosy blush that already contoured her oval face.

  “Not bad for a sodbuster.” She was as ready as she'd ever be to match wits with the fluffy-headed female who seemed determined to trap Hoyt in a snare of perfume and pouty pulchritude.

  Dee Dee and Hoyt were talking in the den when Cassie joined them. Hoyt poured himself a second whiskey from the cut-glass decanter he took from the recessed bar. Dee Dee was curled up in a corner of the leather sofa, impatiently swirling the liquid in her old-fashioned glass with an impeccably manicured hand.

  “Come on in,” Hoyt invited. Cassie's pulse raced at the sight of that reckless smile.

  Dee Dee's ample bosom strained the buttons of the red silk blouse she had tucked into her tightly cinched designer jeans. Her long, lacquered fingernails reminded Cassie of the talons of a hawk as it swooped down on its unwary prey.

  Cassie accepted the glass of white wine that Hoyt handed her. Her fingers tingled when their hands brushed accidentally during the brief exchange, and she quickly lowered her lashes so that she wouldn't betray her inner turmoil. Cassie perched on the edge of an easy chair directly across from Dee Dee— right in the line of fire, she thought, relishing the certain eye-to-eye combat.

  Hoyt raised his glass and drained the fiery amber liquid in one neat swallow.

  “You haven't forgotten that the Sisters of the Sovereign State are hosting their fund-raising party for the orphanage in two weeks, have you?” Dee Dee queried.

  “I haven't forgotten, but I doubt that I'll be there,” Hoyt answered. “We've just about got the details of Cassie's booking at the Petroleum Club worked out, and the way it looks now, she'll begin her engagement that weekend.” He shrugged his broad shoulders and smiled, unaware of the way Cassie's heart was somersaulting at his news.

  “I'm dying to get back on stage,” she put in, trying for nonchalance. But pretense went against her grain and Cassie's sparkling eyes told the tale of her excitement. She missed the energy that rushed at her
from an enthusiastic audience, spurring her to give her best when she performed. “My hands are just itching to get hold of a guitar.”

  “Among other things,” Dee Dee interjected sourly. “How is it going to look if I miss the party, Hoyt? I'm on the refreshment committee!” Her heavily glossed lips pouted as she threw Cassie a withering glare.

  If looks could kill, Cassie knew she'd be dead on the spot.

  “Cassie and I have business to discuss this evening, Dee Dee.” Hoyt cut off arguments at the pass. “I explained that to you when you invited yourself to dinner, and you promised to leave chitchat in the barn.”

  Hoyt outlined his plans for Cassie's comeback then, and she admired his thoroughness. “When we hold your press conference, we'll invite the media to your opening and pick up their tabs.” His enthusiasm told Cassie how much he was enjoying this fresh challenge.

  “What about a band?” She wasn't sure that she would be able to develop a rapport with another group on such short notice, but she was certainly willing to try.

  “Last week I lined up the best group this side of Nashville, so that's all taken care of.”

  “Won't that be awfully expensive?” Cassie was panic stricken as she added up figures in her mind. Maybe Hoyt didn't realize what it cost to put a good act together. “What if they throw me out on my ear?” she demanded. “I'll be stuck paying the band through the expiration of the contract.”

  “Hell, I've lost that much on one poker hand.”

  “All of us weren't born with silver spoons in our mouths,” Cassie reminded him.

  “Trust me,” Hoyt insisted. “They'll love you.”

  “Dinner is ready.” Mrs. Morton interrupted the discussion. Dee Dee leaped to her feet and planted herself next to Hoyt, seizing the opportunity to end her exclusion.

  “I could eat a horse and still have room for a sliver of possum pie.” Cassie's spirits were soaring when she bounced into the dining room.