The Texan's Tennessee Romance / The Rancher & the Reluctant Princess: The Texan's Tennessee Romance / The Rancher & the Reluctant Princess

“Very much so, thank you. It’s a lovely cabin.”

“It will be when we’ve finished the renovations.” He glanced at Casey with a wry half smile. “And if I can keep my cousin-in-law, here, from flooding the place.”

“Cousin-in-law?” she repeated, glancing at Casey, who stood quietly behind the man who was probably his senior by a decade. “You’re Molly’s cousin?”

He nodded. “On my father’s side. My last name is Walker, which was Molly’s maiden name.”

“I didn’t realize.” But it explained a lot, she decided. She knew now how he’d gotten the job.

He grinned as though he had somehow read her thoughts. “Gotta love nepotism, right?”

Her lips twitched with a smile she had a hard time containing. At least he admitted he hadn’t been hired for his maintenance skills.

“Molly told me to ask you to dinner,” Kyle said, shifting a heavy toolbox in his left hand. “Maybe Friday night?”

Though she still wasn’t feeling very social, it seemed ungracious to decline. “I’d like that. Tell her I said thank you.”

He nodded again. “She’ll be pleased. Since Micah was born, she hasn’t been able to get out much. She spends a lot of time with the kids and with Jewel, but she’ll enjoy having someone new to talk with for a change.”

Because she’d been so busy with her career the past few years, Natalie hadn’t been able to visit her aunt and uncle much. She had met Molly only a few times, but she liked Kyle’s bubbly, redheaded wife quite a bit. The young mother of three-year-old Olivia and two-month-old Micah had an infectious smile and an inviting Texas drawl. She seemed to have a knack for putting people at ease within minutes of meeting her. She had certainly done so with Natalie.

Leaving the men to work in the big, eat-in kitchen, Natalie returned to the bedroom she’d been sleeping in since she’d arrived four nights ago. This was the only real bedroom, though the couch in the large living room was a sleeper that pulled out into a queen-sized bed. The cabin had two bathrooms, a smaller one with a shower off the living room, and the master bathroom with a shower-tub combo. The master bath was also being renovated during this off-season remodel. A new toilet, sink and countertop had already been installed. There was no mirror in the bathroom now, though she could see that one had hung above the sink.

She’d been told that a new mirror would be installed within the next few days. In the meantime, she was able to use the mirror over the bedroom dresser for applying her makeup and doing her hair.

Like the rest of the small, older vacation cabin, the bedroom decor was country casual. A big iron bed was covered with a hand-pieced quilt for a bedspread and lots of comfy pillows. Matching oak nightstands topped with a pair of antique lamps sat on either side of the bed. Country prints hung on the log walls. What appeared to be homemade lace curtains framed the window that looked out over the mountaintops. Too bad she hadn’t been able to really appreciate the stunning view while she’d been here.

Her laptop sat on the tiny writing desk in one corner of the room. The screen saver had activated, and colorful animated fish swam across the screen. She’d always wanted a real aquarium, but her demanding career had taken so much of her time that she wouldn’t have been able to maintain or enjoy one.

She had time for an aquarium now, she thought glumly. Not that she would be able to afford one once her savings were depleted, as they would be rather quickly if the private investigator she had hired recently didn’t come up with some answers soon.

A flick of the wireless mouse made the screen saver disappear, replaced by a list of her former associates in the large Nashville law firm where she had worked for the past four-and-a-half years. It was a lengthy list—thirty-five members, seventy-five associates, and fifteen staff attorneys, which didn’t even count all the clerical staff. A big firm. A lot of suspects. And she could rule out only about half of them. She wondered if Rand Beecham, the rather eccentric P.I., had had any more success in the week that had passed since her last update from him.

She heard a clang from the kitchen, and a curse that sounded like Casey’s voice, followed by a quick laugh that might have come from Kyle. She glanced that way, then looked back at the names on her screen, her slight smile fading. Someone on this list had set her up, framed her for leaking confidential client information to the media in return for under-the-table payments. Because of that untrue accusation, she had lost a position she’d spent several long, hard years working to achieve. Until she proved her innocence, her career—her very life—was on hold.

“So, when are you coming home?”

Leaning back in a patio chair on the deck of the tiny, A-frame cabin in which he was staying—one of the two cabins currently under renovation and not rented during this off-peak season, the other being Natalie’s—Casey gazed at the wooded path stretched in front of him, and tried to come up with a satisfactory answer to his cousin’s question. “I don’t know, exactly,” he said into the cell phone he held to his ear. “A couple more weeks, maybe.”

“You’ve been there almost two weeks already,” Aaron Walker complained. “What are you doing there all this time?”

“Kyle and Mack are renovating two of their vacation cabins during the off season, and I volunteered to give them a hand.”

“You’re doing carpentry work?” Aaron made no effort to hide his skepticism.

“Yeah. And a little plumbing. Some painting. Cleaning gutters. That sort of thing.”

“You. Plumbing. That can’t be good.”

Casey was glad Aaron couldn’t see him wince as he remembered the way he’d soaked Natalie with a spray of cold water. Wouldn’t Aaron and his twin, Andrew, have gotten unholy delight out of that scene? Not to mention their slightly older cousin, Jason, who was always commenting on the younger trio’s proclivity for trouble.

Maybe he’d tell them about his first real attempt at plumbing sometime. But not now. “I’m doing okay. Kyle said I’ve been a lot of help.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve had your vacation and you’ve gotten to play with tools. So, don’t you think it’s time to come home now? Everybody’s asking about you. And this hiatus can’t look good to the powers that be at your firm. If it weren’t for the family connections, there’s no way they’d have let a junior associate take off this long without repercussions.”

Casey scowled in response to the reminder of those “family connections.” It was true that his paternal aunt Michelle D’Alessandro was one of the firm’s wealthiest and most prestigious clients. And that his maternal grandfather was a nationally known and admired prosecutor in Chicago, who’d roomed with the senior partner in Casey’s Dallas firm years ago back in their college days and had maintained that friendship ever since. And that Casey’s father was a partner in the largest and most respected private investigation and security company in Dallas and his mother the CEO of an acclaimed accounting firm. All of which might have gotten him hired in the first place, but he’d worked damned hard to justify that decision. He’d earned every dollar of his generous paychecks.

At least, he’d thought so until he’d lost the first truly high-profile case he’d been assigned. Not only had it been a defeat, it had been a particularly painful, public and humiliating one. His friends and family had rallied around him, assuring him that every attorney suffered losses, but there had been more than a few in the Dallas legal community who had taken great pleasure in seeing “the wonderboy,” as they had dubbed him, taken down a few pegs.

A week after that loss, he had suffered a second career blow. Only that time, at the hands of an arrogant young man Casey had successfully defended in a previous charge, an innocent person had died. And Casey still wondered if he was at least partially to blame for that tragedy.

“I just needed some time off,” he insisted to his cousin. “I haven’t had a break in—well, ever. Working every summer during high school and college, straight into law school, and from there directly into the job at the firm. I always meant to take a vacation, but the time never seemed to be right.”

“And you think it’s right now?” Aaron asked skeptically. “After—well, you know?”

“After I lost the Parmenter case, you mean? Yeah. I think I need this vacation now more than I’ve ever needed it before.”

There was a long pause, and then Aaron spoke again, an uncharacteristic note of caution in his voice. “Um, I suppose you’ve heard that Tamara and Fred have been getting a lot of face time around town lately?”

“Yeah, I heard they’ve been seen together at every highbrow event in Dallas for the past few weeks. And that they have an uncanny talent for being in exactly the right place every time a flashbulb goes off so their picture makes the society pages the next day.”

“Carly said she and Richard attended a charity thing this past weekend and Tamara was there flashing a doorknob-sized diamond ring. No official engagement has been announced, but…well, Carly said Tamara was looking very much like a canary-eating cat.”

“That I can believe.”

“So, uh, if they are engaged—how do you feel about that?”

“Honestly, I don’t care. If Tamara wants to marry Fred, more power to her. I hope they’ll have a great life with a couple of McMansions, two perfect kids, and a permanent spot on the social registry. That’s what she always dreamed of.”

“And she thought she was going to get there with you.”

“I guess. Until she decided that Fred will get her there faster, already being a partner in a rival firm and all.”

She had made that decision, at least openly, right after Casey’s big courtroom loss. Apparently, she’d been debating it for some time before that. And she had explored her options by seeing Fred behind Casey’s back, a juicy tidbit that had been discussed in the break rooms and around the water coolers for several weeks before Tamara had bothered to bring him into the loop. She had done so with a blunt announcement that their long-standing, though unofficial, engagement was at an end.

It took a great deal of effort, sacrifice and ruthless calculation to make it to the very peak of the social heap, she had informed him entirely without irony. She had at first thought he was willing to invest himself fully in that mission, but lately she’d been having doubts. She had no such reservations about Fred, who cared every bit as much about status and image as she did.

“You really should come home,” Aaron urged again, breaking into Casey’s grim memories. “Be seen around town with a couple of hot women. Andy and I just happen to know a few to introduce you to. Show Tamara, and everyone else, that you’re not sitting around pining for her. Get back to work, win a couple of big cases, prove you’ve still got the stuff, which we all know you do. Have some fun, raise some hell on the weekends. Just like the old days, you know?”

Casey knew what “old days” his cousin referred to. In their teens, he and the twins had been known in the family as “the terrible trio” because of the lengths they had gone to in pursuit of a good time. Practical jokes, daredevil escapades, impulsive road trips. Weekends had been their time to raise some hell. And they had excelled at that as much as they had in their separate educational pursuits.

“I’ll be home soon,” he said, unwilling to commit any more than that. “Besides, Molly and Kyle really do need my assistance for a little while longer. Their regular maintenance guy won’t be back for several more weeks. Kyle and Mack stay busy all the time trying to keep up and it helps that I can do some of the easier stuff. Gives Kyle a little more time to spend with Molly and the kids.”

He knew that was one argument Aaron would have a hard time contesting. All the cousins had a soft spot for Molly. Not to mention that family always came first for the entire Walker clan, so giving a father more time with his wife, toddler daughter and infant son would be something they’d all consider worth the effort.

Sure enough, Aaron didn’t seem to know quite what to say, except “Well, try not to destroy anything there, okay? You’re a lawyer, not a carpenter. And don’t stay too long. Frankly, I seem to be more worried about your career than you are.”

“Says the guy who is thinking of making a big job change.”