RaeAnne Thayne - Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid

He couldn’t imagine the alternative.

Zach had made mistakes—he would be the first to admit them. But he had paid dearly for them. Could he make it right with her? What were the chances that Cassidy would ever be able to find it in her heart to forgive him?

Well, he would just have to do his best. He had to do everything to make this work. To take this chance.

To see if somewhere inside this hurt, self-protective woman still remained any shred of the one person in the world who had seen something in him worth loving.

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lives in a graceful old Victorian nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honors, including several Romantic Times Readers’ Choice Awards and a RITA ®nomination from the Romance Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com or at P.O. Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341.

To Angela Stone and her band of angels, especially Merrilyn Lynch, Dorothy Griffiths, Terri Crossley and Leslie Buchanan, for nurturing my family when I couldn’t.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Forget bad hair days. Cassidy Harte was having a bad everything day.

The ancient commercial-grade oven had been giving her fits since lunch; the owner of the small grocery in town had messed up her order, as usual; and her best assistant had decided to run off to Jackson Hole with a hunky, sweet-talking cowboy.

And now this.

With a resigned sigh, she set the spoon down from her world-famous, scorching-hot chili bubbling on the stove and prepared to head off yet another crisis.

“Calm down, Greta, and tell me what’s happened.”

One of the high school students Jean Martineau had hired for the summer to clean rooms and wait tables at the Lost Creek Guest Ranch looked as if she was going to hyperventilate any second now. Her hair was even spikier than normal, her eyes were huge with panic behind their hornrimmed glasses, and she was breathing harder than a bull rider at the buzzer.

“He’s here. The new owner. A whole week early!” she wailed. “What are we gonna do? Jean and Kip took the guests on a trail ride before dinner, and there’s no one else here but me and I don’t know what to do with him,” she finished on a whimper.

Is that all? From the way the girl was carrying on, Cassie would have guessed a grizzly had ambled into the office and ordered a cabin for the night. “It’s okay. Calm down. We can handle this.”

“But a whole week early! We’re not ready.”

It was pretty thoughtless of the Maverick Enterprises CEO to just drop in unexpectedly like this. But the man hadn’t done anything in the usual way, from the moment his representative had made Jean Martineau an offer she couldn’t refuse for her small guest ranch in Star Valley, Wyoming.

All of the negotiations had been handled by a third party—the few negotiations there had been, since the company hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow at Jean’s seven-figure asking price.

She turned her attention back to Greta. “We’ll just have to do our best. Don’t worry about it. Maverick has made it clear it wants the ranch pretty badly. The company has already invested buckets of time and money into the sale. As far as I know, it’s basically a done deal. Even if we tried, I don’t think we can possibly blow it at this late date.”

The girl still had the wide-eyed, panicky look of a calf facing a branding iron. “You know how much I need this job. If he doesn’t like the service here, he could still fire every single one of us after Maverick takes over. I don’t want to go back to making ice-cream cones at the drive-up.”

True. And Cassie would really hate to lose her job cooking meals for the guest and staff at the ranch. Finding a well-paying job she was qualified for in rural Wyoming wasn’t exactly easy. Especially one that included room and board.

She knew she could always move to a bigger town but she didn’t want to leave Star Valley. This was her home.

If she had to, she knew she could really go home, to her family, but the idea of crawling back to the Diamond Harte appealed to her about as much as sticking one of those branding irons in her eye.

Besides that, she loved working at the Lost Creek. These last few months on her own had been so rich with experiences that she couldn’t bear the idea of losing it all, just because some spoiled, inconsiderate executive decided to drop in on a whim.

She sighed. What a pain in the neck. He’d ruined her plans. With a twinge of regret she remembered the great menu she had planned for the new boss’s first night at the ranch—rack of lamb, caramelized pearl onions and creamed potatoes, with raspberry tartlets for dessert.

Tonight’s dinner was good, hearty fare—chili, corn bread, salad and Dutch-oven peach cobbler—but it was nothing spectacular. It would have to do, though. She didn’t have time to whip up anything else.

“You have to help me,” Greta pleaded. “I don’t know what to do with him and I’m afraid I’ll ruin everything. You know how I get.”

Cassie winced at the reminder. Two weeks before, the president of a fast-food chain from back east had rented the entire ranch for a family reunion. In the midst of a severe case of nerves, Greta had ended up accidentally short-sheeting his bed, leaving out towels altogether and overcharging his credit card by a couple of extra zeros. Then at breakfast she’d topped it off by spilling hot cocoa all over his wife.

“Where is the new guy now?”

“I left him in the gathering room. I didn’t even know which cabin to put him in, since that doctor and his family have the Grand Teton for another two nights.”

Their best cabin. Rats. “What’s left?”

“Just the Huckleberry.”

One of the very smallest cabins. And the one next to hers. She blew out a breath. “That will have to do. He can’t expect to drop in like this and have the whole world stop just for him. Check to make sure the cabin sparkles and then send one of the other wranglers up the trail after Jean. I’ll go out and try to keep him busy until she gets back.”

With a last quick stir of the chili—and a heartfelt wish that she were wearing something a little more presentable than jeans and a T-shirt with her favorite female country band on the front—she headed for the gathering room.

It didn’t matter what she was wearing, she assured herself. He was probably a rich old man who only wants to play cowboy, who wouldn’t notice anything but the ranch unless a stampede knocked him over. He had to be. Why else would his company go to so much effort to buy the Lost Creek Guest Ranch?

The ranch consisted of a dozen small guest cabins and the main ranch house that served as lodge and dining hall. The centerpiece of the split-log house was the huge two-story gathering room, with several Western leather couches set up in conversational groups, a huge river-rock fireplace and a wide wall of windows overlooking the beautiful Salt River Mountain Range.

At the doorway Cassie found the new owner standing with his back to her, gazing out at the mountains.