The Calamity Janes: Cassie & Karen: Do You Take This Rebel?

“Leave it alone, Pop. The quickest way to get rid of me is to start bringing up old news.”

“I hear she’s coming back to town for this big reunion the school has planned,” his father said, his expression sly. “Is that news current enough for you?”

Cole didn’t like the way his pulse reacted to the announcement. It ricocheted as if he’d just been told that his company had outearned Microsoft.

“That has nothing to do with me,” he insisted.

“She’s not married.”

Cole ignored that, though he was forced to concede that his heart started beating double time at the news.

“Has a son she’s raising on her own,” his father added.

“You know, I think you missed your calling,” Cole said. “You should have started a newspaper. You seem to know all the gossip in town.”

“You saying you’re not interested?”

Cole met his father’s gaze without flinching. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

Frank gave a little nod. “Okay, then. How about a game of poker tonight? I could call a few men. Have ’em out here in an hour.”

Though he was relieved that his father had suddenly switched gears, Cole’s gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you want to do that?”

A grin spread across Frank Davis’s face. “’Cause a man who can lie with a straight face the way you just did is wasting it if he’s not playing a high-stakes game of cards.”

2 (#ulink_594bf9a3-5da4-57dc-b207-36b694f84226)

As she and Jake drove through the Snowy Range toward Winding River two months later, Joshua Cartwright’s words played over and over in Cassie’s head like the refrain from some country music tune. Going home, even temporarily, wasn’t nearly as simple as he’d made it sound, which was why she’d flatly refused to pack up everything she owned and bring it with her. Once she decided whether to stay—if she decided to stay—she would go back for the rest of her belongings.

Meantime, with every familiar landmark she passed, her pulse escalated and her palms began to sweat. Time hadn’t dulled any of her trepidation.

Jake, however, had no such qualms. He was literally bouncing on the seat in his enthusiasm, taking in everything, commenting on most of it until she wanted to scream at him to be quiet. Nerves, she told herself. It was just nerves. Jake wasn’t doing anything wrong. In fact, it was good that he was so excited. There had been far too few adventures in his young life. And it had been four years, she reminded herself. He’d been only five on their last brief visit. This all seemed as new and exciting to him as it was terrifying to her.

“How far now?” he asked for the hundredth time.

Cassie managed a thin smile. “About ten miles less than the last time you asked. We’ll be there by lunchtime.”

“And all these ranches, the great big ones, belong to people you know?”

“Most of them,” she conceded.

She dreaded the moment when the wrought-iron gate for the Double D came into sight. Frank Davis had named it that the day his son was born, anticipating the time when the two of them would run it together. He’d never envisioned his son bringing home the daughter of a woman who took in mending. If anything, he’d wanted Cole to marry someone whose neighboring land could be added to the holdings of the Double D.

Unfortunately for him, Cole had never looked twice at their neighbors’ daughters. She wondered, though, if that had changed, if Frank had gotten his way.

As the road twisted and turned, the snowcapped mountains gave way to rolling foothills. Black Angus cattle dotted the landscape. Bubbling streams and a broader, winding river cut through the land, the banks lined by thick stands of leafy cottonwoods.

Eventually the road dipped, went over a narrow span of bridge, and there it was, the town in which she’d grown up, complete with the water tower she’d once climbed and repainted shocking pink. It was a pristine white now, with flowing blue script proudly spelling out Winding River and, beneath that, in bolder letters: WELCOME.

A sign by the side of the road proudly announced the population at 1,939. If she decided to stay, would it soon be altered to say 1,941? Cassie wondered. Or would the ebb and flow of births and deaths, departures and new arrivals, keep it forever the same?

“Mom, look,” Jake said in an awestruck tone.

“What?”

“Over there,” he said, pointing to something she’d never seen before.

It was an airstrip, not much by big-city standards, but there were half a dozen very fancy private planes parked outside the hangar. Obviously over the past ten years some folks with money had settled in Winding River. Years ago a few of the ranchers, Cole’s father among them, had kept small planes for making rapid inspections of their far-flung land, but nothing like these.

“Awesome,” Jake declared, his eyes as big as saucers.

“Awesome,” Cassie was forced to agree, even as she wondered at the implication.

Her mother hadn’t mentioned anything to suggest that big changes were taking place in town, but then Edna Collins wasn’t the kind to take stock of her surroundings or to comment on them. She stayed mostly to herself, spending her time on the mending she did to make ends meet and on church work. Because she was relieved to no longer be the target of it herself, she didn’t indulge in gossip. Cassie regretted not asking more questions since her last trip home. Even her mother had to have noticed an influx of wealthy newcomers.

“Can we drive through town before we go to Grandma’s?” Jake pleaded. “I’ve forgotten what it was like. Besides, I’m starved. Grandma won’t have anything but peanut butter and jelly.”

“Which she is expecting you to eat,” Cassie reminded him, grateful for the excuse to put off the moment when she would have to start seeing people, facing their curious stares and blunt questions.

“We’ll go into town after lunch,” she promised, grinning at him. “You can have ice cream for dessert.”

The promise was enough to pacify Jake, and it bought her some time...time to ask questions, time to brace herself for the possibility of running into Jake’s father.

Time to get used to the increasingly likely possibility that this was going to be home again.

* * *

Cole was mending fences near the highway when the old blue sedan sped past. It said a lot about his state of mind that he even looked up. Usually his concentration was intent on the task at hand, but ever since his father’s sly comment about Cassie’s return, passing cars had caught his interest.

This time there was no mistaking the thick brown hair caught up in a ponytail and pulled through the opening of a baseball cap. Cassie had worn her hair exactly that way on too many occasions, making his fingers itch to free it and watch it tumble to her shoulders in silky waves. His belly tightened and his hand trembled unmistakably, either at the memory or the glimpse of her. Maybe both.

He forced his attention back to the fence, aimed his hammer at the nail with too much force and too little concentration and caught his thumb instead. His muttered expletive carried across the field to his father, who stared at him with that smug expression that had become increasingly familiar lately.

“See something interesting?” his father inquired tartly.

“Not a thing,” Cole insisted, though the image of Cassie with the breeze stealing wisps of hair to tease her cheeks was firmly planted in his head. If a glimpse could tie him up in knots, what would seeing her up close do to him? He didn’t want to find out.

He just needed to make himself scarce for a few days and she’d be gone again, back to wherever she lived, taking that mysterious boy of hers with her. Then his life would return to normal. His days would be uncomplicated. His nights...well, they might be boring from a social perspective, but they would be rewarding financially. He did his best work in the middle of the night when the day’s stresses faded and his mind could wander.

“You going into town this afternoon?” his father asked, his expression neutral.

“Hadn’t planned to.”

“We could use an order of feed.”

“Then pick up the phone and order it,” Cole retorted, refusing to take the less-than-subtle bait.

“Just thought you might have other business to see to.”