She had to be beet-red, she realized, if he could notice it in the dim stable light. Primly, she insisted, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop saying things like that to me.”
He shrugged. “You can ask,” he replied, then started to leave the stable.
“Wait a minute!”
Cassie hurried after him, then came around to block his way when he stopped at the entrance to the stable. Unfortunately, she brought her blush with her, which was much more discernible in the chilly afternoon sunlight. But she wouldn’t think about that, or his improper remark, which he had probably only made to shut her up. Too bad for him. If he couldn’t stand questions, he ought to be more informative to begin with.
“What took you so long to get back here?” she wanted to know. “You were gone more’n four hours.”
He tipped his hat back with a sigh. “You should have warned me you were a nag as well as a meddler.”
She bristled. “If you weren’t so close-mouthed—”
“All right.” He gave in. “I took a ride over your neighbors’ land counting heads.”
That surprised her. “Cattle?”
“Hired hands,” he corrected her. “It pays to know what you’re up against. I counted twelve hands on the Catlin side.”
Cassie agreed with his reasoning, so decided to be helpful. “They’ve got more’n that. Some must be in town today.”
“And about fourteen on the MacKauley side.”
“Whatever the number’s up to, it’s guaranteed to be the same. Whenever the Catlins hire a new man, the MacKauleys do, too, and vice versa. It’s like they want to be assured of even odds for the day it comes down to outright war.”
“Has it ever?”
“No. But every time I went to church with the MacKauleys on the one side and the Catlins on the other, it seemed like it would at any moment, so many hateful looks kept crossing the aisle. It was experiencing that unpleasant tension every Sunday that put the idea in my head to ease it, especially after I noticed that the looks passing between Jenny and Clayton weren’t hateful at all.”
“If you ask me, you only hurried things along a mite.”
“Now why would you say that?”
“We’d already heard that Clayton is having second thoughts. Appears Jenny might be, too, since, according to her brother, all she does is cry these days.”
“But that’s terrible!”
Angel shrugged. “Depends on what she’s really crying about. Could be those two young ‘uns might have got together eventually without your help. If their kin would leave them alone, they still might.” That brought a thoughtful frown to Cassie’s brow that was easy to interpret. “Don’t even consider it, lady. Hell and your mama should have broke you of that meddling habit of yours.”
She gave him a sour look. “It’s just not fair that Clayton and Jenny are caught up in that feud, that it’s keeping them apart. Do you know, they don’t even know why their folks despise each other.”
“But it’s not your business, they’re not your business, and you aren’t going to interfere again, are you?”
His expression was so intimidating, Cassie said, “Well, when you put it that way, I guess not. But tell me, after meeting her, do you think Dorothy Catlin might be willing to talk to me now?”
“Not a chance. But I did tell her you wouldn’t be leaving until your pa returns. I don’t think you’ll be having any more trouble from that side.”
Cassie smiled slightly. “I guess it didn’t hurt for you to pay them a visit after all. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Well, I’ll let you go.” She started backing away from him toward the house, but added before turning around completely, “Since the other two hands have been staying out on the range, you’re welcome to have dinner at the house.” Emanuel had brought his meal to the bunkhouse last night.
“Is that an invitation?”
His surprised tone flustered her. “No—I mean—yes, it is, but not the way you’re implying.”
“You mean you haven’t started liking me yet, honey?” he asked with a grin.
That teasing question didn’t deserve an answer, but it did get another blush out of her as she whipped around to hurry from his sight. She was beginning to wonder if Angel didn’t have as bizarre a sense of humor as Frazer MacKauley.
Chapter 12
Cassie didn’t change her clothes again for dinner that night, which she would have done if her papa had been there, since both he and her mama adhered to the more formal proprieties of the East, even though they’d lived more than half their lives in the West. If she did change, she was afraid Angel wouldn’t see it as a mere formality and might think she was trying to impress him, and that was the last thing she wanted him to think.
But she really wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Maria noted her nervousness and reminded her that Angel could eat in the kitchen with her and her son. That had actually been the idea when Cassie had made the offer. But after Angel’s misinterpretation, real or feigned, he’d think she was still frightened of him if she refused to eat with him. Whether that was true or not, she’d prefer he didn’t think it. And after all, he wasn’t a hired hand. He was a guest—uninvited, but still a guest.
And he was late. Maria had been holding dinner for fifteen minutes when Angel finally showed up at the front door. But Cassie didn’t mention his tardiness, even though Emanuel had been sent to tell him what time dinner was usually served. She was too surprised by his appearance to say much of anything at first.
He wasn’t wearing his mackintosh. He’d exchanged it for a black jacket that revealed a sinewy musculature previously hidden by the shapeless yellow slicker. His clean black shirt was buttoned to the collar with a string tie instead of his bandana. He removed his hat immediately. His black hair was still damp from a bath, thick and parted to fall near his shoulders, though there was a perfect neatness to it. But like most men who spent a lot of time outdoors, he was obviously letting it grow long for the winter, to protect his neck and ears from the cold.
There was no overlooking his handsomeness this time. It was blatantly there, and it flustered Cassie as much as his dangerous reputation did. She caught herself simply staring at him. Fortunately, he didn’t notice. He was too busy looking around him.
“You locked her up?” he asked after she closed the door behind him.
“Who—oh, you mean Marabelle? She’s in the kitchen. Don’t worry, I’ve asked Maria to keep her there while you’re in the house.”
“Appreciate it,” he replied.
His wariness of her large pet should have amused her, but she was too cognizant of the fact that the man wore his gun even to come to dinner, so Marabelle, despite her lack of aggression, wasn’t safe around him.
With visions of a disastrous evening ahead of her, Cassie led Angel down the hall to the double doors on the right. The long, formal table held two place settings. Seeing them together, Cassie wished she had thought to tell Maria to arrange them at opposite ends of the table, rather than both at one end as was the custom when she dined with her papa. It seemed a much too intimate arrangement under the circumstances, but she’d insult Angel now if she tried to change it.
She stepped toward one chair and was surprised to feel him behind her, moving the chair out to seat her. She hadn’t expected refined manners from him.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling even more flustered when he made no reply but took the seat directly across from hers.
Maria, having heard Cassie’s voice, stuck her head in the side door, then moments later began serving. Angel made some remark about the room’s fine furnishings, and Cassie was relieved to have something neutral to converse about. She explained how every piece in the house was the same as in her home in Wyoming, how her papa had gone to the same store in Chicago where all the original pieces had been bought. Some had no longer been available, so he’d commissioned to have them replicated.
“Why?” Angel asked when sh
e had nearly depleted the subject.
“I never asked,” she admitted. “There are certain things I don’t discuss with my papa. Anything that has to do with my mama, or what I even suspect might have to do with her, isn’t broached.”
“Why not? Just because they’re divorced—”
“They’re not.” When he lowered his fork to just stare, she added, “I guess most folks assume that, but neither one of them ever got around to it. Living at different ends of the country seemed to satisfy them both.”
“What if one of them wants to get married again?” he inquired.
Cassie shrugged. “Then that person will probably do something about ending the first marriage.”
“Would that bother you?”
“In my whole life, my parents haven’t spoken directly to each other. Why should it bother me if either one of them wants to have a normal marriage?”
Angel shook his head before continuing his meal. “I don’t think I really believed that they hadn’t said a word to each other in all these years. That must have been difficult for you growing up.”
She grinned. “Actually, I was seven before I found out that everyone’s parents didn’t behave that way. I thought it was normal. Now why don’t you tell me something about yourself, Angel?”
She blushed the moment she said his name. It was the first time she had, and it hadn’t occurred to her how intimate-sounding it was, especially with a woman saying it.
He noticed. “What’s the matter?”
“Is there—ah—something else I can call you?”
He didn’t actually smile, but she could tell he was amused by her discomfort. “You were doing fine with ‘mister,’ ” he told her.
But that was hardly appropriate at this point, and “Mr. Angel” didn’t work, either, since “Angel” wasn’t his surname. He appeared indifferent to resolving the problem for her, which annoyed her enough to ask, “Whatever made you pick the name Angel?”
One black brow went up. “You think I would pick a name like that?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Hell, no. It happens to be the only name I remember my mama calling me, so it’s the only name I could give the old mountain man who raised me when he asked. He thought it was hilarious, as I recall.”
It took her only ten seconds to think about that and remark, “But that was probably just a pet name your mama used, like ‘precious’ or ’honey.‘”
“I finally figured that out, but by the time I did, I was stuck with the name. And it didn’t matter all that much to me. When you go as long as I did thinking that was the name I was born with, you get used to it. Anything else wouldn’t sound right to me now.”
What about folks who weren’t used to it? she wanted to ask, but was more curious about what he’d inadvertently revealed. “Had your mother died? Is that why you were raised by a mountain man?”
“He stole me.”
Cassie was the one to lower her fork this time. “I beg your pardon?”
“Right out of St. Louis,” he continued as if she weren’t sitting there with her mouth open. “I was five or six at the time. Don’t remember which.”
“You don’t? Are you saying you don’t know how old you are now?”
“I don’t.”
That seemed so sad to her, she automatically reached out to pat his hand in sympathy. She snatched her hand back when she realized what she’d almost done. He noticed, and that flustered her so much, she took three quick bites of Maria’s spicy chicken so she couldn’t say another word.
But after she had swallowed, she did speak. “How could a child be taken from a town that large? Wasn’t any effort made to find you?”
“Since I wasn’t found, I couldn’t say. And I spent the next nine years so high up in the Rockies, we never saw an Indian, much less another white man.”
“Didn’t you ever try to escape?”
“A few months after we got to that cabin up in the mountains, I wandered off too far from it. When Old Bear found me, he chained me out in his yard for three weeks.”
Cassie was having a difficult time accepting what she was hearing. The last appalled her. “He left you out in the elements?”
“I guess I can be grateful it was summer at the time,” Angel said offhandedly, as if the subject weren’t bringing back terrible memories. “But I didn’t wander off again after that. And it was nearly five years before he let me go with him to the settlement where he sold his furs. It took a week just to get there.”
“You didn’t tell anyone there?”
“He’d cautioned me to keep my mouth shut. By then I was used to obeying him. Besides, those folks knew Old Bear. Wasn’t anyone there who would have gone against him to help me get back to St. Louis.”
Cassie wished she’d never asked him about his name, yet she couldn’t seem to drop the subject it had opened up. “Do you know why he took you? Did he want a son?”
“No, just company. Said he got tired of talking to himself.”
Just company. A small boy had been taken from his family in order to keep an old man company. She’d never heard of anything so pathetic and sad—and outrageous.
“Where is he now?” she asked.
“Dead.”
“Did you—?”
“No,” he replied, explaining, “He got his name because there was always one or two bear hides in the furs he sold. He loved pitting himself against bears, the bigger the better. But he was getting too old to go after ‘em anymore. The last one survived, he didn’t.”
“And you left?”
“Soon as I buried him,” Angel said. “I was fifteen—or thereabouts.”
“Did you go back to St. Louis to find your folks?” Cassie asked next.
“First thing. But no one remembered my mama, or anything about a missing boy. ‘Course, St. Louis wasn’t my real home. I remember a train ride to get there, and Old Bear took me soon after that.”
“You don’t mention a father.”
“Don’t recall much about one. There was a man who called himself my pa, but I only remember seeing him once or twice. Whatever job he had, it kept him away from home for long stretches at a time.”
“But didn’t you ever find them?”
“Didn’t know where to look.”
He said that so indifferently, like it no longer mattered. Cassie was having as much trouble with his attitude as she was with his tale.
“Chase Summers never knew his father, either,” she told him. “But he knew his name, which made him easy to find when Chase went to Spain to search. But there are men trained to find people, who know how to go about sifting through clues long buried or thought forgotten. We could hire one to find your folks, if you’d like.”
“We?”
She blushed and reached for the wine bottle to refill their glasses. His had hardly been touched. She should have had Maria try to locate a bottle of whiskey for him, she supposed, if there was any in the house—her papa didn’t drink—though the thought of Angel intoxicated was a frightening one to contemplate.
“I guess my meddling instincts are showing,” she admitted, hoping her pink cheeks weren’t showing, too. She didn’t think she’d ever blushed so much in her life as she had since he’d shown up. “You’ll have to forgive me. I can’t help it if I like to help people.”
“Even when they don’t want it?”
That should have shut her up, but she wasn’t done making excuses for her irritating habit. “Sometimes people need a little help figuring out what they really want.”
Angel conceded that point by saying no more. He wished he could find his folks. He’d never had anyone love him, and they were about the only two people who might. Love was something he’d missed in his life, and not just the parental kind. Since the time he’d seen Jessie and Chase Summers together, the way they touched frequently and looked at each other, the way their love blazed between them, he knew he’d like to have that for himself, that closeness with another person, the caring,
the tenderness, things he’d never had, or had experienced so long ago he had no memory of it.
But he had given up finding it for himself. Good women shunned him because of his reputation. Bad women liked his reputation and welcomed him to their beds, but got scared at the first sign that he might want something more serious than a good time.
Now, what was it about Cassandra Stuart that made him think of that? No, not her, but her dredging up all his years of loneliness.
“I’m sorry,” she said, drawing his eyes back to her. “I think you just—well, surprised me with your revelations. I thought I knew a lot about you, but I’d never heard anything about your early years before.”
He’d told Colt about Old Bear, but he’d never told anyone else—until now. And for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he’d told her. Possibly because she was disconcerting him, sitting there looking so prim and proper, and prettier than she’d looked at any other time. And that didn’t make sense, because there was nothing different about her.
She was even wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing earlier.
However, it was the first time he was seeing her without a coat, jacket, or shawl covering up her figure, and he had been somewhat surprised to find that she had a nicely shaped body, with well-rounded breasts that would be a handful, and a sharply curved waist. In the candlelight, she was soft and creamy-looking, her gray eyes like liquid silver. And those lush lips...
He couldn’t count how many times tonight his eyes had kept returning to that mouth of hers as she talked and ate and pursed her lips to sip her wine. He’d barely had a taste of her when she’d bestowed that kiss on him, but what he had tasted had been so incredibly sweet.
There was no use denying it any longer. He wanted another taste. And as his eyes dropped down to her breasts, then slowly lifted to her soft mouth, his body started telling him he wanted more than that.
Angel’s unexpected reaction to her so startled him, he reached for his wineglass and drained it. When he lowered the glass, he saw Cassie staring at his scarred jaw. He knew she’d seen the scar before, though she hadn’t asked about it. It ran just under his jawline, so you saw it only when he tilted his head back or at a certain angle. And the way she quickly looked down at her plate told him she wasn’t going to ask now, either.