When she opened the screen and stepped back Tanner moved through the doorway. She closed both doors behind him and suggested they go into the living room. The dog trailed her and Tanner hung back for a moment. He finally followed her down the hall and remained by the doorway when she entered the front room.
Tanner watched her. She looked cautious. On edge. Out of sorts.
Suspicious.
The room had altered a little since the last time he’d been in it. There was some new furniture, new rug, different paintings on the walls. There was a fireplace with one of those fake heaters and a photo on the mantel caught his attention. Doug. In uniform. The face seemed as recognizable as it did unfamiliar. When he was young he’d worshipped Doug.
But things had a way of changing.
“That’s quite an animal you have there,” he said.
“Mouse,” she replied and ushered the dog to sit on a rug near the fireplace. The animal gave Tanner a wary once-over before curling on the mat.
“Mouse?”
She smiled a little. “The idea was to make him seem less intimidating.”
When the dog was settled, Tanner crossed the threshold. “How are you?”
She nodded. “Fine.”
“And the—your son?”
“Oliver,” she said, as though he didn’t know the child’s name. “He’s asleep.”
He took a few steps and noticed how her gaze fell to his uneven gait. She knew about the accident that had laid him up in hospital for over a month. It was the reason he hadn’t made it to Doug’s funeral.
“And are you well?” he asked and moved behind the heavy sofa.
“I said I was.” She looked him over. “More the point, how are you?”
Tanner tapped his thigh. “Better. Good as new.”
Her brows came up. “Really?”
He shrugged. “Maybe not exactly like new. But I’m getting there.”
“I should have called,” she said quietly. “But after Doug...you know...and the baby came...and by then I didn’t have time to think about anything but Oliver.”
He understood. And he hadn’t expected her to call. They weren’t friends. They weren’t anything. She was Doug’s woman. The mother of his brother’s child. It didn’t matter that her blue eyes and soft smile invaded his dreams. Wanting her was pointless. He’d never act on it, never give in to it. Never put himself through the inevitable humiliation of her rejection. Staying in South Dakota and living his life far away from her and Doug had been the sensible option.
“It’s okay, Cassandra. You don’t have to—”
“Cassie,” she said, correcting him. “No one calls me Cassandra.”
Tanner lingered over the thought. He’d always called her that. Funny how he’d never picked up that she didn’t like it. “All right...Cassie.”
She smiled a little and sat on the sofa. “Would you like coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“You can sit down if you want.”
He nodded and moved farther into the room. She watched him intently as he eased into the opposite chair and stretched out his left leg. She couldn’t have missed the way he favored the one side when he walked.
“Are you in pain?” she asked.
Tanner shrugged. “It was a long trip.”
The suspicion in her gaze didn’t abate. “You said in your email that you wanted to talk. So, what did you want to talk about?”
In normal circumstances it might not have sounded like a fraught, loaded question. But nothing about the situation was normal. And they both knew it.
“Don’t look so wary, Cassie. I would have been here eight months ago if it hadn’t been for the accident. I finally got the all clear to travel and came as soon as I could.”
“For what?” she asked quietly, but she was clearly on edge. “Doug’s dead. Anything that needs to be sorted could be done through lawyers.”
Silence stretched between them like frayed elastic. She doesn’t want me here. He ignored her mention of lawyers. There was time to get to all of that. “You’re right,” he said, consciously keeping his voice light. “Doug is gone. But his son is very much alive.”
Her pale eyes widened. “You came to see Oliver?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
Tanner sucked in a heavy breath. “Because he’s the only family that I have.”
* * *
Family.
Cassie almost choked out a sob the way he said the word. She longed for Oliver to have a family. But this man was a stranger. Unknown. Someone she’d met a couple of times and who had always managed to unnerve her even though they’d barely spoken. She wasn’t sure why, but knew it wasn’t simply a reaction to his handsome face. There was something about Tanner...something that almost felt familiar...as if they were connected somehow. It was stupid, of course. There was no connection...no common link other than Doug.
Still...he was extraordinarily handsome—dark brown hair, eyes the color of warm toffee and he possessed a strong, muscular frame. Features that made him impossible to ignore. He was taller than Doug had been, and leaner in the waist and hips and broader through the shoulders. He was the kind of man who’d look good in jeans, chambray shirt and cowboy boots, or a suit and tie.
Tanner McCord was gorgeous, no doubt about it. But she wasn’t about to get caught up in his good looks. She took a deep breath and spoke. “I didn’t realize family was so important to you.”
It was a direct dig and he obviously knew it. “Doug and I had different lives,” he said and stretched back against the chair. “Which doesn’t mean we didn’t care about each other.”
“I know how Doug felt about you,” she replied carefully. “He told me how he looked after you when your parents died.”
Tanner’s eyes darkened. “He did, that’s right. I was nine years old. Doug was twenty-one. I lived with him for three months before he joined the army.”
Cassie frowned. She knew Tanner was about to turn thirty-one and born the same year she was. “I thought Doug went into the army when he was twenty-three?”
There was another stretch of silence, longer this time, as though he was working out how to answer her. “No. Twenty-one.”
“And where did you live then?”
“Boarding school,” he replied. “He visited when he could.”
It wasn’t quite the story she’d heard. Doug hadn’t mentioned sending his younger brother away to school at such a young age. “Well, of course he would do that, being Doug,” she said, and ignored the tiny stab of disapproval tapping in her head. “So, how long are you staying in town?”
“Awhile.”
How long was “awhile”? “To see Oliver?”
“If that’s okay?”
She wondered how her cheerful, lovable son would take to the man whose eyes were just like his own. No, they’re Doug’s eyes. But she didn’t have any reason to refuse his request. “You can see him tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Cassie.”
She looked at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly eight o’clock. Early.