Chapter 4
You think by leaving people behind you’ll find freedom. But the ghosts of men you betray haunt you at night.
Cassidy was still on a high when she got back to Austin’s house for dinner that night.
“I got it!” she announced as she walked in the door.
“Dessert?” Carson asked from the couch, sounding worried.
Her whole family was at Austin’s for dinner tonight, including Dalton.
She always loved their family dinners. They reminded her of the best times of her childhood, but now the table was even fuller, with her brothers’ partners and kids.
These gatherings felt so stable, so permanent.
She could always breathe a little bit easier when everyone was home.
“No,” she said, “I didn’t make dessert.”
“Oh. Well. I mean, keep practicing and all.”
Cassidy was a terrible cook. Carson was trying to be nice, but she was aware that she was pretty much batting a zero on culinary achievement. She’d thought—for a while—that maybe the way to Dalton would be through his stomach.
She had figured out that while some women might be able to seduce men that way, she couldn’t. And she really should never try. She had other skills. Which she’d just proven today.
Jessie Jane popped out of the kitchen. “West texted me. He said you did great.”
An uncomfortable pang hit Cassidy in the chest. She couldn’t quite figure out why for a second, and then she understood. Jessie was lying. Or at least, she was editorializing. “He did?” She stared at Jessie Jane.
“Well. I texted him and he said that he hired you.”
“Hired? Am I getting paid?”
Jessie Jane nodded. “Oh, you’ll get paid.”
“Oh. I was just … wanting to help out.” Of course, West hadn’t actually texted to tell Jessie that he’d chosen Cassidy. And of course he hadn’t said she’d done great. She’d probably gotten the job by the skin of her teeth, and only because he didn’t have another candidate at the ready.
“We don’t need charity,” Jessie said, and right then she reminded Cassidy a lot of West. A little bit haughty, a lot stubborn.
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Dinner!” Austin shouted, coming in through the front door with a tray of steak.
Which sent everyone clamoring into the kitchen to sit around the table, the clattering of dishes in the small, immaculate kitchen a merry sound to Cassidy.
Cassidy leapt toward the basket of rolls at the same time as Dalton, their fingers brushing, and she could feel her face heating up.
She wished she wasn’t so obvious. But maybe she needed to be? Maybe she needed to think differently.
Because she was done playing it safe where he was concerned. Although she wasn’t ready to show up at his front door naked under a raincoat or anything.
The very idea sent a spiral of horror down her spine.
She cleared her throat and looked down at her plate, letting her brothers take over the small talk, which was mainly about cows—from Austin and Carson—and elk—from Flynn. She looked up and caught Millie’s eye, and then Perry started to laugh.
“What?” Carson asked.
“Your rancher talk is boring,” Perry said.
“I don’t mind it,” Jessie Jane said, looking at Flynn as if he’d hung up the moon and stars.
“Give it time,” Millie said, sagely.
“I’ve given it so much time,” Perry said.
She’d been Carson’s best friend since childhood.
They’d navigated college, deployments, Carson marrying someone else, Carson becoming a widower, and the world’s most painful, dramatic transition to becoming lovers, then a couple.
Yet even after all those years of friendship, Cassidy had a hard time believing that they’d ever been just friends.
Perry had been the only real stable feminine influence in her life, and she’d been a little bit of a brat about the Perry and Carson hookup, because she’d been afraid. Afraid of losing Perry if things went south. Afraid of bursting the glorious bubble of stability they had here.
It was why she’d spent so much time not making a move on Dalton. Because he was part of that. Her stability. The beautiful life she loved.
But Perry and Carson’s happy ending made her wonder if taking a risk on Dalton would be worth it. They seemed so, so happy now.
She wanted to be happy like that.
She just didn’t want the pain they’d had to go through to get there. By contrast, Millie and Austin’s romance had seemed lovely, and Flynn and Jessie Jane’s had been desperately romantic—fake dating to real life fiancés? It was basically a Hallmark movie.
She could use a little Hallmark in her life. And hey, ’twas the season.
“So when do you start?” Austin asked, directing the question at her.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “I guess he thinks I can learn some more advanced tricks, because I wouldn’t say it was, like, an amazing audition or anything.” Except she had been kind of amazing.
“I’m sure you were fabulous!” Perry said.
Cassidy beamed.
“I can’t wait to see the show!” Dalton said, and Cassidy thought she might die of happiness then and there, and no one would ever get to see it because she would have expired before she could even learn the routine.
She smiled and managed to not die.
They finished dinner, with dessert provided by Perry, which was infinitely better than anything Cassidy could have whipped up.
Then afterward, she volunteered to do dishes while everyone else filtered into the living room and Dalton hung back.
“Want some help?” he asked.
She nodded. “Thank you.”
He was so thoughtful, not at all like West, who was so abrasive.
She frowned as she moved to the sink and started running water over the dishes.
Was West like that with everyone? She’d watched him pick a woman up at The Watering Hole a few months back.
She’d been fascinated by his approach, actually.
Because he wasn’t especially charming, and yet that woman had folded like a house of cards when he’d turned his attention on her.
He had smiled at her. Cassidy remembered that clearly because she had never really seen West Hancock smile before.
He’d certainly never smiled at her.
“You feel confident?”
She jumped and splashed water in Dalton’s direction. She’d been so lost in her thoughts about West, she’d nearly forgotten Dalton was standing there.
“Um. Yeah, I guess.”
“This is something you need to be confident about,” he said, his forehead creasing. “It could be dangerous.”
“I know. But I thought you were in support of my autonomy and stuff.”
“I am. But you look worried.”
“I’m more worried about dealing with West than doing the tricks. He’s kind of a dick.”
Dalton laughed. “I’m familiar, yeah. And I’d agree.”
“You guys all used to bar fight and stuff back in the day, right?” She regretted saying that the moment the words came out of her mouth, because it drew a line under their age difference, and that was never a good idea.
Not that it was a huge gap. He was nearly five years older than she was.
So it was more about the fact that she’d been nine when he’d met her, and he’d been newly fourteen and had seemed like a man to her; she was sure she’d seemed like a child to him.
Well. She’d been a child.
West was way older than Dalton. He was somewhere around Austin’s age.
“Yeah, I guess we did,” he said.
“There’s some apocryphal tale about Carson getting thrown through a window?”
“They both went through it, so neither one is going to claim to be the one who got thrown. Flynn and I weren’t inside—we were too young to have a believable fake ID, but we saw them both hit the street in a rain of glass and keep on fighting.”
“That’s … Wow.”
“You know, Austin had such a chip on his shoulder about the Hancocks. We all did. And I think we were wrong about Jessie Jane. But West? I don’t think we were wrong about him. He’s just …”
“It’s not like he’s a serial killer.”
“There’s a lot of ground between being a decent human and being a serial killer.”
She laughed. “Well. Granted. But still.”
“So I know you just picked up this new job …” he said, abruptly changing tone.
“Yes.”
“But if you have a couple of days in the middle of the month, I’d like it if you could come with me to look at a new horse. I don’t know anyone who’s better with horses than you.”
Dalton was … inviting her on a trip? For … a couple of days?
Overnight.
Dalton was inviting her on an overnight trip.
For a moment, she forgot all about West and the show and everything else except this. Except the fact that she’d manifested this invitation. Because she had, right? She had wanted things to change between herself and Dalton. An overnight trip …
Well. That indicated maybe he wanted a change too?
For one second, she thought about sticking her head into the living room and saying: Hey! Dalton and I are going out of town—who wants to come?
Getting even for his inviting everyone to the bar.
But …
But no, of course she wouldn’t do that. She would go with him. Away. Out of town.
“Yeah. Where?” she asked, trying to look casual and not weird.
“Hillsboro. We’ll drive up one day and back the next. It won’t be very long.”
“I’m sure I can get the time.”
“Great.”
A litany of worries rolled through her mind. What would her brothers think?
What would they say? And did she care?
They had never seemed to be worried about her being an adult or having adult relationships. She just never had because she had been hung up on Dalton for so long. Pining, even.
Well, maybe the pining was about to end. She really wanted the pining to end.
“It sounds really good. And I’m excited. Looking forward to it.”
“Great,” he said.
She tried to imagine asking West for days off. He was going to look at her with those stern blue eyes. Why was he so stern? He was supposed to be a bad boy. But there was a strange kind of rigidity to him that she couldn’t …
He didn’t make sense.
“Looking forward to it,” she reiterated. Then she looked over at Dalton, and he smiled. She had seen him smile hundreds of times.
Because he smiled easily.
He was a good man. And he was good to her.
That was why she had decided so many years ago that she loved him.