Rebel Love. Jackie Merritt

been there, and it was beautiful, in wonderful condition. Cass had kept the same employees who had worked for her father, and everything was in perfect order.

      Gard smiled and nodded. “Fine. I’ll see you on Friday.”

      Cass acknowledged the agreement with a slight nod of her own, then turned to walk to the door.

      But then she made the mistake of stopping for one last look at Gard Sterling. The light flowing through the large windows behind him shadowed his features, but his height, his build and his long legs were all too visible. A choking sensation rose in her throat. Until this moment she’d been rather proud of her performance during their meeting, but now it was all she could do to restrain fourteen years of anger and resentment from spewing out of her mouth.

      “See you on Friday,” she mumbled, and all but ran from the room.

      Surprised by her hasty exit, Gard almost laughed. But then the impulse died a sudden death and he frowned instead. There was more behind Cassandra’s frosty attitude than that contract, probably something to do with the past. Gard groaned right out loud. What had he done to Cass Whitfield that he couldn’t remember but she, apparently, had never forgotten? His youthful “good times” had caused him problems several times in the past few years, and he had a hunch the worst was yet to come.

      He thought about that for a minute, then started for the door himself. Regardless of the past and its mysteries, he still wanted to know Cass better.

      And surely he could make amends. Whatever he’d done couldn’t be that bad.

      Two

      Cass awoke in a sweat, noticing on the digital clock next to her bed that it was 1:35 a.m. Whatever had awakened her eluded her, but now her eyes were wide open and didn’t seem inclined to close again. Sighing, she got up and went to the kitchen for a cup of cocoa. Using a mix, she was soon seated at the table with her drink.

      When Gard came to mind, she quickly put the blame for her interrupted sleep on him and the fact that she had agreed to meet with him on Friday. Then, to her intense annoyance, between her irritation and resentment was a memory: that infamous night at the dunes.

      Groaning aloud, Cass put her head in her hands. How could she have been so stupid as to actually have made love with Rebel Sterling? She’d been young and naive, yes, but had she also been dim-witted? She had been at the dunes that night, sitting in the moonlight and thinking, just thinking. Then he’d come along on his motorcycle, and she had been so thrilled by the coincidence that she had started thinking fate had intervened on her behalf.

      Dropping her hands, Cass picked up her cup with a cynical expression. If fate really had intervened that night, it had been a damned cruel trick, one she hadn’t deserved.

      Finishing off her cocoa, Cass rinsed out the cup, slipped it into the dishwasher and returned to her bedroom. Maybe she could sleep now, maybe not. But she was not going to spend the remainder of the night trying to second-guess fate. She had already played that futile game too many times.

      It irritated Cass that she was just as nervous about seeing Gard on Friday as she’d been prior to their first meeting. Again she went through her mental list of dos and don’ts. At the Plantation she had come closer to saying what was on her mind—what had been on her mind for fourteen years—than she liked. Fortunately only a small amount of her ire had escaped, and she felt pretty certain that Gard had thought it was all because of his indecision about the contract.

      There was irony in the situation. Without that old contract there was practically no chance at all that she and Gard would ever have seen each other again. It had probably never occurred to either his father or hers when they put that contract together that they had necessitated some sort of future relationship between their offspring. Without that accursed document, she would have put the Whitfield Land and Cattle Company in the hands of a real estate agent after her father’s funeral and gone home to Oregon. The place would sell, she was certain, and for her purposes, the sooner the better.

      But she was virtually stuck here until Gard made up his mind, which raised her hackles every time she thought about it. She wasn’t in the best of moods when he arrived on Friday afternoon, but she managed a cool smile as she let him in.

      “We’ll sit in the living room,” she told him, leading the way.

      “The place looks good, Cassandra,” he said as they sat down, he on the sofa, Cass in a nearby chair. His gaze went around the room, taking in the impressive, white rock fireplace and splendid furnishings. “Great house.”

      His gaze stopped on her. The “place” wasn’t the only thing looking good; Cassandra’s hair was down today, curled and swept back from the left side of her face by an amber comb. Her slacks and silk shirt were the same becoming shade of teal. She didn’t look “sassy” today, she looked controlled and dignified and...remote. Gard wondered what had happened to the young girl who’d had a bright, witty retort for every occasion. He’d been remembering little things, events, moments of conversation, where Sassy Whitfield had indeed lived up to her nickname.

      Of course, in those days he was usually half-sloshed, and even those facts he did remember had blurred edges.

      “Would you like something to drink?” Cass asked with a hint of snideness. Naturally he would choose a cocktail of some sort.

      “Wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee,” Gard replied smoothly, realizing that she’d expected a completely different answer. A chuckle remained inward and silent, but he truly enjoyed the startled expression on her face.

      “Coffee? I’ll get it.” Cass rose and left the room. Gard got up and walked around, pausing to admire knickknacks on tables and a glass case containing a collection of porcelain figurines. Then the painting over the fireplace caught his eye, and he moved closer to inspect it. It took a moment to grasp its subject, and even then he wasn’t sure if his interpretation was correct. It appeared to be a garden. The colors were wispy and dreamlike, and the foliage and flowers—if that’s what they were—were oddly depicted and even distorted. Nowhere could he pick out a rose, for example, or a carnation, and yet he had the impression of a dozen varieties of flowers. He was no connoisseur of oil paintings, of any kind of art, for that matter, and yet he felt this was a good piece of work.

      Then he spotted the initials in the lower right corner of the painting—CW—and comprehension dawned. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he mumbled under his breath.

      Cass returned with a tray. Gard turned. “Are you this CW?”

      “It’s one of mine, yes.” Calmly Cass poured coffee into two cups. She had no desire or intention to discuss her work with Gard Sterling. “Please...sit down and have your coffee.”

      “Thanks.” Gard sat and accepted the cup of coffee, but he was still thinking about that painting. “Is that what you do in Oregon, or is oil painting just a hobby?”

      Cass heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Gard, I don’t want to talk about me. I really don’t want to talk about you, either, except for one point. Have you come to a decision on that option?”

      His eyes narrowed on her over his cup. “You don’t like me, do you? Why not, Cassandra? What did I do to make you dislike me? I know something happened, but I can’t remember it for the life of me. I’ve tried since the other day at the Plantation, but I can’t come up with anything. You obviously remember what it was, so why don’t you fill me in on it?”

      The thought of sitting here and calmly narrating that night at the sand dunes nearly undid Cass. Her hand was suddenly shaking, and to avoid spilling coffee all over her own lap, she placed her cup on the table to the right of her chair.

      “It seems to me that you are looking for ways to avoid discussing that option,” she said accusingly. “I am not going to talk about old times with you, Gard, neither the good nor the bad. Just give me a straight answer. Have you made that decision?”

      The small crack in her rigid self-control made him