“You—ah—didn’t bring an army with you, did you?” Cassie asked.
“Just a few hands.”
“How many’s a few?”
“Fifteen,” Catherine said as she moved closer to the fire. She took off her hat, then gave Charles a brief glance before she whacked it against her riding skirt, creating a small cloud of dust that settled on his Oriental rug. “I left them in town for the time being.”
Watching her mother, Cassie groaned inwardly. It was starting already, the little things her parents did to irritate each other. They didn’t even try to be subtle about it because they knew neither one would say anything— at least not to each other. After ten years’ separation, you’d think they would have forgotten about that particular aspect of their rift. But no, it was as if they’d never been parted.
“I’m sorry to say you’ve come all this way for nothing, Mama. I was leaving tomorrow.”
“Then your problem did right itself?”
“With a little help from my guardian angel.”
“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t arrive in time, but at least Mr. Pickens did. And I’m delighted to have you come home—but why are you cutting your visit short?”
“You could say I’ve worn out my welcome in these parts,” Cassie replied, trying not to sound dismal about it. Explaining about Lewis Pickens’s substitute could wait.
“If you want to stay, baby, I’ll see to it,” was Catherine’s response.
Cassie quickly shook her head. “Papa already offered, but I don’t want to cause any more trouble. It’d be better all around if I go home.”
“Your papa actually offered to do something?”
There was too much derision in that question, not to mention feigned incredulity, for Charles to remain quiet. “You can tell your mama, Cassie, that I can take care of my daughter’s problems just as well as she can.”
“And you can tell your papa I said, ‘Ha!’ ” Catherine shot back.
Cassie looked at her parents with exasperation. When she was ten years old, their talking through her had seemed like a game. Now it seemed pretty ridiculous. Why hadn’t she ever tried to do something about it?
“Hell and you weren’t kidding, were you, honey?” another voice asked.
Cassie turned to see Angel in the open doorway, leaning against the frame, his arms crossed, his hat pushed back from his forehead and hooked on at the neck. He had on his yellow slicker. She was dying to know where he’d been, but...
“This isn’t a good time,” she was forced to say instead.
“This is the only time,” he replied. “Fact is, your reunion will have to wait.”
“Don’t I know you, young man?” Catherine asked.
Angel nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We met a few years back. Name’s Angel.”
Catherine’s surprise was evident. “That’s right, you worked on the Rocky Valley spread for a while, didn’t you? But what brings you this far south?”
Angel’s eyes met Cassie’s briefly before he answered, “Looking after your daughter as a favor to Lewis Pickens.”
Catherine glanced at Cassie. “But I thought—”
“Mr. Pickens couldn’t make it, Mama, so he sent Angel—and what can’t wait?”
The question was for Angel, and he abandoned his casual pose to reply, “You need to come with me.”
“Where?”
“Out to the barn.”
That wasn’t exactly what Cassie was expecting—or hoping—to hear. “What’s in the barn?”
“Some friends of yours, prepared to listen to you meddle one more time.”
Her eyes flared wide in understanding. “You didn’t! Both of them?”
“And then some.”
“Could you two maybe talk in plain English?” Catherine interjected at that point.
“Angel has managed to bring some MacKauleys and Catlins together under one roof so I can talk to them,” Cassie explained, and to Angel she added, “That is why you did it, isn’t it?”
“Figured I owed you that,” was all he said.
Cassie blushed and smiled at the same time—until another question occurred to her. “Did they come willingly?”
“I wasn’t going to waste my time asking.”
“Now just a minute,” Catherine demanded.
“Are you saying you brought these people here—at what?—gunpoint?”
Angel shrugged. “With this bunch, there wasn’t any other way, ma’am. You folks can come along or not, but Cassie has to come with me. And I reckon this is going to take some time, so don’t expect her back for a while.”
Charles finally spoke up. “You’re out of your head if you think I’m going to let you go off alone with my daughter, for whatever reason. Besides, I’ve got a thing or two to say to R. J. myself. Cassie, tell your mama there’s no need to wait up for us. She can make herself at home.”
“Cassie, tell your papa he’s out of his head if he thinks I’m staying behind,” Catherine retorted.
Cassie didn’t follow either order, but Angel issued a warning. “You enter that barn, folks, you’ll be playing by my rules. There won’t be no leaving until I say so. And I’ll take your gun, Mrs. Stuart. Mine is the only one that will be needed tonight.”
Catherine conceded that much, handing her weapon over, but she whispered in an aside to Cassie, “Just what does he think he owes you that he’s breaking the law for?”
“It’s personal, Mama.”
At which point silver eyes the same color as Cassie’s narrowed. “Am I going to have to shoot him before we leave here, baby?”
Cassie wished her mama weren’t serious, but she knew she was. “Please don’t go jumping to conclusions,” she told her. “I’ll explain everything once this is over.”
“It better be good, because I don’t think I like that young man.”
Cassie wished she still felt that way, too.
Chapter 26
Angel handed Cassie a knife as soon as they entered the barn. With several lanterns burning, she saw at a glance why a knife was needed. The look she gave Angel was definitely full of reproach.
He merely shrugged indifferently, saying, “Did you really think they’d be sitting around chewing the fat, just waiting for you?”
“I suppose not, but this isn’t going to make them very open-minded.”
“They won’t be leaving until they are.”
“Do you expect me to shove common sense down their throats?”
He actually grinned at her. “I expect you’ll give it a good try.”
She grinned back, because she would. But first she had some neighbors to cut loose. Her mother helped, since Angel hadn’t taken her only weapon. She still had a hunting knife she wore strapped to her boot, and she used it to release the MacKauleys. Cassie went straight to Jenny.
“I’m sorry about this,” she told her friend as she cut through the rope on her wrists.
“What’s going on?” was the first thing Jenny asked as soon as she pulled the gag out of her mouth.
“Angel heard me make that wish the other day and decided to grant it for me.”
“It won’t work, Cassie.”
“Let’s hope you’re wrong. Do you want to do the honors?” Cassie nodded toward Dorothy.
“I’d better. She’s liable to come loose taking a swing at you.”
Dorothy wasn’t quite that enraged, but she was definitely put out at being there. Embarrassment had a great deal to do with that, however, since Angel had collected her right out of her bed. She was in her nightgown, her blond hair loose and flowing around her. She actually looked years younger, and to a woman like Dorothy, who was used to wielding complete authority, that put her at a disadvantage and she knew it. But there was another consequence she hadn’t even noticed yet. R. J. couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.
He’d also been taken from his bed and was in his long underwear, red in color, but that wouldn’t bother a man like R. J. It was getting caught so unawares that had him s
teaming, and the fact that he was without a weapon, while Angel stood in front of the closed barn door, arms crossed, looking relaxed and removed from what was going to happen, but with his Colt in plain view to say otherwise.
The only MacKauleys and Catlins not present were Buck and Richard, who’d both been inaccessible due to having bed companions whom Angel hadn’t wanted to involve. Frazer came loose laughing, and was in fact the first one to say anything.
“I gotta hand it to you, Miss Cassie. Things sure have been interestin‘ since you showed up this time.”
His humor, as usual, got her dander up. “It wasn’t my intention to entertain you, Frazer.”
“Guess you just can’t help it, huh?”
She ignored that. R. J. didn’t. “Close it up, Frazer,” his father ordered, and said to Cassie, with all the belligerence he was capable of, “What in hell’s tarnation are you up to this time, little girl?”
Catherine, just finishing slashing through Morgan’s bonds, looked up to say, “Watch your tone when you talk to my daughter, mister.”
“Your daughter? Well, don’t that beat all. You’re a mite late, lady, in showin‘ up to take your girl in hand. You damn well shoulda—”
R.J. didn’t get any further. “You’ll watch your tone when you talk to my wife and my daughter,” Charles said as he stepped up to R. J. and planted a fist in his mouth.
The larger man staggered back two steps, shook his head once, then eyed Cassie’s father with surprised reproach. “Now what’d you wanna go and do that for, Charley? I thought we were friends.”
“After what you did to my daughter? You’ll be lucky if I don’t tear you apart.”
“What’d I do except hurry along what she was plannin‘ anyway?”
Hearing that, Frazer fell back onto a bale of hay, giving in to silent laughter. Only Cassie noticed, but didn’t have time to spare him a look of disgust. She thought she’d talked her papa out of taking on R. J. Apparently not, and their fighting wasn’t what she’d wanted to accomplish here.
“Papa—”
He didn’t hear her because he said at the same time, “What she was planning doesn’t matter, R. J., and you damn well know it.”
R. J. held up a hand when Charles took another step in his direction. “Now, come on, Charley. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
It was indicative of R. J.‘s confidence that he’d put it that way, and of Charles’s anger that he didn’t care. Charles raised his fist again, R. J. took a stance to block him, and Angel fired a shot into the roof above their heads.
A cloud of dust and wood splinters filtered down on the two men as they and everyone else turned toward the entrance. Angel was calmly slipping his gun back into its holster.
“I’m right sorry to spoil your fun,” he said in his slow drawl, “but if any violence is going to be committed here, it’ll come from me.” He looked directly at Charles to add, “If what MacKauley did was worth a fight, I’d have killed him already, so let it go, Mr. Stuart. For the time being, Cassie’s my responsibility, not yours, and all she wants is to say a few words to these folks.”
Charles lowered his fist and nodded grudgingly, though he gave R. J. a this-isn’t-finished look before he turned away. In the meantime, Catherine came up beside Cassie. “It appears something important didn’t get mentioned to me before I was invited to join this little party,” she said. “Would you mind telling me what your papa is so riled about, and why that hired gun thinks you’re his responsibility?”
“He’s my husband,” Cassie said in a whisper.
“He’s your what?” Catherine shrieked.
“Mama, please, this isn’t the time to explain.”
“Like hell it isn’t!”
“Mama, please!”
Catherine would have said more, a lot more, but Cassie’s expression stopped her. It wasn’t a pleading look she was getting, but one of stubborn determination that Catherine wasn’t used to seeing in her daughter. Cassie simply wasn’t going to discuss it now, no matter what Catherine said.
She wasn’t used to giving in, either, but in this case she did—for the moment. “All right, but as soon as you’re done here, we talk.”
“Fair enough,” Cassie replied, and turned to look at R. J. and Dorothy. She took a deep breath before she said to them, “I tried to apologize before, but I won’t again, because my intentions were good whether you think so or not. I thought a marriage between your two families would end the animosity you’ve been living with for so long. It should have—but you won’t let it, will you? And what’s ironic is you’ve both raised your children to hate and they don’t even know why. Why don’t you tell them why?”
R. J. went red in the face to be put on the spot like that. Dorothy turned her face away, refusing flat out to discuss the feud or anything else.
Cassie sighed. “You’re mighty stubborn, both of you, but haven’t you realized yet that that stubbornness is now hurting your children—at least Jenny and Clayton? If you folks would just leave them alone, they could end up with a happy marriage. Haven’t you figured out yet that they’re both miserable right now?”
“My boy ain’t miserable,” R. J. blustered. “And you ain’t got nothing to say that I want to hear, little girl, so tell that husband of yours to open up that door.”
“Not yet, Mr. MacKauley. You forced a wedding on me. I’m just forcing a little conversation on you.”
R. J.‘s answer was to turn his back on her, making Cassie grit her teeth in exasperation. But she’d known what she was up against. She’d never met anyone so bullheaded, so unreasonable, so plain-out ornery. But before she could even think of what to say that might break through his obstinacy, Dorothy Catlin spoke, and there was no doubt that she’d been caught by surprise from what she’d just heard.
“R. J., you didn’t. Again? You made the same stupid mistake again?”
“Now, Dotty,” R. J. began in what was clearly an attempt to placate, but he didn’t get far.
“Don’t you ‘now, Dotty’ me, you sorry son of a bitch. Tell me you didn’t arrange another wedding with a gun in your hand. Go on, tell me.”
“It wasn’t the same, dammit,” R. J. protested. “She claimed he was her fiancé.”
“And you believed that?” Dorothy exclaimed incredulously. “An innocent thing like her and a ruthless killer?”
Angel winced. Cassie cringed. The MacKauley boys were staring at the arguing pair in wide-eyed amazement, including Frazer, who couldn’t find anything funny about this—yet. But Jenny Catlin was getting mad, as certain things she’d heard over the years started clicking together.
“What do you mean again, Ma?” Jenny asked as she left Clayton’s side—no one had got around to untying him, so she had done it— and confronted her mother. “Who else did he force to get married?”
Dorothy’s fury was quickly replaced with defensiveness. “It’s not important.”
“Isn’t it? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Jenny—”
But Jenny was standing her ground for once. “I want to know what’s keepin‘ me from my husband, Ma. You’ve put me off every time I’ve ever asked, but not this time. It was you, wasn’t it? Is that what started this feud?”
Dorothy actually looked to R. J. for help. When Jenny saw that, she exploded. “Dammit, I’ve got a right to know! My baby has a right to know!”
“Your baby?”
Three people said it. Clayton added a whoop to his and rushed forward to swing Jenny around in his arms. She hadn’t meant to tell him this way. Actually, she hadn’t thought she’d get a chance to tell him. And his happiness dissolved some of her anger with their parents.
“A baby,” R. J. repeated and sat down on a wooden crate to digest the news. “If that don’t beat all.” And then he caught Dorothy’s shocked expression and grinned. “Did you hear that, Dotty? We’re going to share a grandbaby.”
Dorothy gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Who said anything about sharing? Your bo
y can come and live at my place.”
“Like hell!” R. J. shot back onto his feet. “Your girl will be havin‘ that baby at my place, or I’ll—” He had to stop, since there simply wasn’t a threat appropriate to this particular situation that he could think of.
Dorothy took advantage of his pause to advance on him. “So now she’s welcome?”
R. J. ignored that and stubbornly insisted, “A wife’s place is with her husband.”
Dorothy reached him and poked a finger so hard in his chest that he was pushed back down on the wooden crate. “Not if she’s divorced it ain’t.”
“Oh, hell, Dotty, you can’t still—”
“Can’t I?”
“Both of you stop it,” Jenny said as she pushed back from Clayton, though he retained an arm around her waist, clearly indicating they were a united front. “Where I have this baby is up to me, and I might not be having it in Texas at all if I don’t get some answers. The truth, Ma, and no more sidestepping ‘round it.”
Dorothy had turned around to face her daughter. R. J. grumbled behind her back, “Where the hell did she get so much gumption?”
“Where the hell do you think?” Dorothy replied for his ears only, before she squared her shoulders and started the explanation her daughter was demanding. “We were in love, that old coot and me.”
It was too much for Frazer, whose humor returned with a vengeance. Morgan leaned over to shut him up with a kick. That didn’t work, so Clayton went over and socked him one.
That got the quiet back, long enough for Jenny to express everyone’s amazement. “Not you and R. J.!”
“Yes, me and R. J.,” Dorothy said in pure disgruntlement. “Now, do you want to hear this or not?”
“I won’t interrupt again,” Jenny assured her.
“We were supposed to get married—”
“You and R. J?”
“Jenny!”
“Well, I can’t help it, Ma. You hate that man.”
“I didn’t always,” Dorothy said defensively. “There was a time when I would have shot the son of a bitch if he even looked at another woman. Trouble was, he was more crazy jealous than I was. And one day he came by and saw me sitting on the porch with my pa’s foreman, Ned Catlin. I was patting his hand in sympathy ‘cause he’d just had word that his ma had died and he was real broke up about it.