A Second-Chance Proposal. C.J. Carmichael

of Dylan so easily? While I’d be the first to admit that mothers don’t always know their children as well as they think they do, they usually have a fundamental understanding of their character. If she thinks Dylan could have shot Jilly…”

      “Only because of her husband. Max Strongman is very domineering.” After today, she was almost positive he was abusive, as well. He’d been physical with Dylan, she knew, back in the early days when the two had lived under one roof. But she’d never guessed he might be hurting his own wife.

      “Well, Kelly seems to think—”

      “Poppy—” Cathleen held up her hand “—I love my sister dearly, but she’s a worrier. What does she think is going to happen? That Dylan will murder me in the middle of the night?”

      Poor Poppy quaked a little at that comment. “Oh dear, I hope not. Perhaps locks on the bedroom door wouldn’t be a bad idea. But truly, I think her main concern is for your…for your heart.”

      She’d spoken her last words tentatively, as if she sensed that Cathleen might object to this, most of all. Which only proved how well Poppy was getting to know her.

      “Poppy, do I look like a fool? My heart is perfectly safe.”

      “He’s a good-looking man. And a charismatic one.”

      “On the surface, yes,” Cathleen agreed. “But my mother taught me that it’s what men do, not say, that counts. My father is the perfect example. He always said he loved my mother, but every time she had a baby he ran out on her, only to return several months later. Two times Mom let him get away with this. Then, finally, when she was pregnant with Kelly, she told him that if he took off again, he shouldn’t bother coming back.”

      “And he left?”

      “You bet.”

      “That must have been very hard for your mother.”

      “Her mistake was not kicking him out the first time.”

      Back came those wrinkles. “You and Kelly wouldn’t have been born, then.”

      Cathleen had to concede that point. “I guess we were lucky our mother had a soft streak. With apologies to any unborn children out there, I don’t agree.”

      “Isn’t that a little harsh? People make mistakes. It’s part of the human condition.”

      “Depends what you call a mistake. Coming home late, forgetting a birthday—those are mistakes. Running out on a mother and her newborn baby…” Not showing up for your own wedding… “Well, that seems like more than a mistake to me.”

      The hesitation in Poppy’s smile told Cathleen she hadn’t quite convinced the older woman of her philosophy.

      “Listen, Poppy. I’m going to see how Dylan’s doing. Will you leave the dishes for me to do later?”

      Cathleen pushed through the screen door and found Dylan in one of her willow chairs, Kip at his feet. Slouched back, with his hat covering his face, he made the perfect picture of ease, but she knew better. Briefly, she rested a hand on his good shoulder, and found the muscles as tense as she’d expected. She went to the stairs and sat with her back against the railing, facing him.

      All morning she’d been fighting the way the man drew her in. Each time their glances connected, her chest tightened in an oh-so-familiar—and oh-so-dangerous—way. The emotion—the intensity and hopelessness of it—reminded her of her high school years. Dylan was three years her senior and hadn’t deigned to notice her until she’d turned eighteen. When he’d finally woken up and taken stock of the middle Shannon girl all the boys were talking about, they’d quickly become friends. She’d been too young for their relationship to be more than that, and he’d understood.

      She’d enjoyed dating boys her own age, playing the field. Her mother had warned all three of her daughters not to make the mistake of marrying too young. And Dylan had been content to wait.

      On her twenty-sixth birthday, everything had changed. Dylan didn’t want to wait anymore, and neither did she. All along, she’d known he was the one. And at last the time was right.

      That was when their relationship had taken on such passionate intensity that she’d realized just how inconsequential all her previous romantic entanglements had been. Two years later they’d become engaged.

      Inseparable.

      Until he took off the morning of their wedding.

      Slowly, Dylan’s right hand rose. He lifted his hat and settled it back on his head, then gazed off toward the mountains that dominated the southern boundary of her property. The peaks were old friends to Cathleen, and she knew they offered the same sense of timeless serenity to him.

      Dylan took a chest-expanding breath. “He’s hitting her.”

      The stark, simple statement pierced the afternoon quiet. “I know. I saw some bruises on her leg when her housecoat shifted.” They’d been the multicolored kind, ugly and raw-looking. At the time, Cathleen hadn’t been sure what could have caused such an injury. Now she was.

      “I wanted to pick her up and carry her out of that house,” Dylan said.

      “That wouldn’t work. Rose has to want to leave.”

      “I know.”

      “When did the abuse start, do you think?”

      Dylan frowned. “I was sixteen when they married and I left home at eighteen. During those years I was so busy fighting with Max I didn’t pay much attention to how he was getting along with my mother. She always backed him whenever we had a disagreement, so I guess I assumed she was happy in her marriage. I’m almost positive he wasn’t hurting her then.”

      Dylan had told her about those days before, but he’d glossed over the bad parts. “Why do you think Max disliked you so much?”

      “I used to ask myself that question all the time. He’d criticize everything about me, from the way I rode a horse to the way I fed the cattle… Finally, I realized there was just no winning with him. Once I gave up caring, it didn’t seem to matter so much anymore.

      “And that’s when I started feeling more sorry for James than I did for myself. Max didn’t fight with his own son the way he did me, but he was always belittling and caustic, which in a way must’ve been worse. Especially since James tried so hard to please the son of a gun.”

      Cathleen knew the situation had been bad enough that after grade twelve graduation, Dylan had been more than ready to move out and rent a place of his own. At first his plan had been to keep working at the Thunder Bar M, but the fighting between him and Max had made that impossible. Eventually he’d been forced to accept a foreman position on a property about fifty kilometers closer to Calgary.

      “Max has always been domineering,” Cathleen said, remembering the few social occasions when she and Dylan had been invited to dine at the ranch. “But your mother seemed to take his demanding ways in stride.”

      “I guess she was used to having a strong husband. She and Dad had a traditional marriage. When it came to ranch business, his word was law in our house. But he really loved her, and at heart had a real gentleness. Max, unfortunately, hasn’t got a soft side. At least not that I’ve ever seen.”

      “He’s been a controversial mayor, but he has his loyal supporters.”

      “Yeah, I bet he does. People with an eye on profits rather than the future of the land.” Dylan planted the heels of his cowboy boots into the planks of the porch and started his chair rocking. “But you raise a good point. With Max’s stature in this town, I’m going to have a hell of a time convincing the law that he was responsible for Jilly’s death.”

      “I know you hate him, and I know you have your reasons. But how can you be so sure that he was the one who shot her?”

      Dylan laughed bitterly. “I’ve had two years to mull this over. Ask yourself