“Not now, Cassidy,” she said, pointedly directing her attention—and his—to their daughter. By tacit agreement, they had tried to keep their problems from hurting Vicki. Problems that seemed to grow worse daily.
“Sweetheart, you look just as adorable in that dress as I thought you would. Lilac is definitely your color.”
Vicki glanced from one to the other, her brow knitted. “I wanted to wait to do the hem, but it was getting awfully late and Daddy said you wouldn’t mind if he helped out.”
“Of course I don’t mind.”
She draped Cassidy’s suit over the back of one of the chairs and dropped her purse onto the table. Something crunched under her sneakers and she glanced down.
“Oops.”
Vicki giggled. “Daddy dropped the pin box.”
“I think Daddy has done a terrific job,” she said, meeting Cassidy’s gaze. “I’m sorry I’m late, but Noah asked me to consult on a patient he’d just admitted. It was an emergency. I couldn’t very well say no.”
“It’s not hard, Karen. You’ve been saying it a lot to me lately.” She shot him a disgusted glance that had him kicking himself. “It’s getting late. I’d best take a shower while you finish up.” He grabbed his suit and headed for the back of the house.
* * *
Cassidy stepped buck naked from the shower, his skin tingling from the icy water. Scowling, he snagged a towel from the rack with one long arm and swiped away most of the drops clinging to his body before knotting the towel around his waist.
As he crossed to the sink, the sound of Vicki’s laughter floated through the closed door dividing the bathroom from the master bedroom. Apparently she and Karen were now involved in the more delicate work of sewing those baby stitches Vick had warned him about.
With a jerk of one powerful hand he opened the hot water tap, then reached for the ivory-and-steel straight-edged razor given to him during the last year of his hitch by a crusty sergeant who was retiring to Tahiti.
Damn the jackass who invented birth control, he thought as he slapped lather on a day’s worth of stubble. A woman with a houseful of kids wouldn’t have time to traipse off to work every morning.
A scowl tightened his face, and he paused with razor in hand to stare at the angry man in the mirror. Hell, he knew better than most how much it hurt to wait in line for a mother’s attention. He knew what it felt like to lie in bed at night and listen to his father beg his mother not to leave him. To beg God to help him control his temper and make good grades and remember to clean his room so they’d love him enough to stay together.
In the end, it hadn’t mattered. Johnny had died, and his mother had left.
Cassidy’s eyes burned with the sudden tears he’d refused to shed for a lot of years. His baby brother had been half Vicki’s age when he’d bled his life out in the middle of a Santa Fe street, his terror-filled eyes begging Cassidy for help. And God help him, there hadn’t been a day since that he hadn’t hated his mother for leaving her children alone that day.
And there hadn’t been a day since that he hadn’t hated himself even more, he thought with bitter anger as he swiped the wickedly sharp razor with long, sure strokes over his face. A sudden pain seared his jaw, and he bit off a curse. Blood dripped from the nick to drop on the sink, forming a shimmering spot of scarlet.
Shock jolted through him, and his breathing changed. He felt hot, then cold, and his stomach churned. Alone, where no one could see, he leaned over the toilet and was thoroughly, violently sick.
Chapter Three
Though the thunder rumbled steadily as Cassidy drove his family into town on Saturday night, the rain itself held off. Even the wind had abated, as though Mother Nature had decided to join in the spirit of the town’s celebration.
“Are we there yet, Daddy?” Vicki implored from the back seat of the truck’s extended cab. Cassidy glanced over his shoulder and grinned. Lights from a passing pickup revealed the starry-eyed excitement on her small face, and he felt a hard knot form in his chest.
“Five more minutes, peanut,” he told her, returning his gaze to the road ahead.
Vicki was silent for less than a mile before erupting again. “Drive faster, Daddy. We don’t want to miss any of the fun.”
Cassidy obediently nudged the speed up to the limit, though he would just as soon be heading the other way. Parties had never been his thing. The last one he’d willingly attended was his wedding reception. Even then, however, he’d been ready to leave as soon as they’d cut the cake and done the other folderol that Karen had set her heart on.
Just a few more minutes, she’d whispered, her face glowing. Those few minutes had stretched to the better part of three hours. Hours they could have spent alone, making love.
His loins ached at the memory of his restraint during the rest of that party. Karen had looked tired, but ecstatic, when he’d hustled her home to the ranch. The bed he’d bought especially for his new bride was waiting, made up with crisp new sheets that he’d picked out after a lot of second-guessing and embarrassment. Damn things had pink roses on them, the fluffy kind she’d talked about planting by the front door. He’d expected to feel like a sissy sleeping on flowers for the first time in his life. Instead, he’d lost himself so completely in Karen’s soft, lush body that he’d vowed never to sleep on anything else.
Their wedding sheets were worn thin now, but Cassidy had balked at letting Karen rip them into rags. Embarrassed to tell her the truth, he’d settled on the need to economize as the reason.
His face suddenly too warm and his collar too tight, Cassidy found himself sneaking a glance at his wife. Karen hadn’t said more than a few words since their talk in the dining room. He hated the tension between them, like a thorn buried too deep in his flesh to be easily removed.
Since this was her night, her party, he supposed he ought to apologize for being such a surly cuss. And then what? he asked himself sourly. End up like his father, a half-baked excuse for a man with no self-esteem and a spine about as stiff as a worn-out rope?
A familiar stab of disgust hit him squarely in his gut an instant before the truck rounded a curve, bringing the bright yellow lights of the fairground parking lot into view. Resolutely, he shut the door on his past and turned his attention to the evening to come. Two hours, three at the most, and he could hustle his ladies home, where they belonged.
“Turn here, Daddy,” Vicki ordered, beating him on the shoulder from her place behind him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his mouth twitching.
Vicki might look as delicate as a spring flower in her new party dress, but inside, she had the same single-minded determination as her mother.
“I told you, everybody’s already here,” Vicki wailed as Cassidy drove past row after row of mud-encrusted, well-used vehicles.
“Not everyone, darling,” Karen teased with a grin. “Otherwise, we’d be inside instead of out here, looking for a parking place.”
“Oh, Mommy,” Vicki protested, her tone long-suffering.
By the time Cassidy nosed his rig into a slot at the end of the second-to-last row, Vicki had snapped off her seat belt and was perched impatiently on the edge of her seat.
“You two stay put till I can help you out,” he ordered as he killed the engine and tossed the key into the empty ashtray.
“Oh, Daddy, Mommy and me aren’t helpless,” Vicki said in an outraged tone that had him grinning.
“I know that, sweetheart,” he said as he opened his door. “But you both look so pretty, I feel like playin’ gentleman, okay?”
Vicki