B.J. Daniels - The Cowgirl in Question

“What’s ADC?” he’d questioned, frowning.

“Antelope Development Corporation. Mostly they deal with landowners and coal-bed methane gas well leases.”

“Our old man must love all those wells everywhere around the property,” Rourke had said. Asa McCall would shoot anyone who even suggested doing anything to his land but farming and ranching it.

“There’s money in that gas,” Brandon said. “A whole lot of money. You can’t believe the wells that have gone in around the county.”

“Blaze seeing anyone?”

Brandon would shrug. “You know Blaze.”

Yeah. He knew Blaze, he thought as he pulled into a space in front of the Longhorn Café and sat for a moment trying to see inside the café through the front window. The afternoon sun made the glass like a mirror, reflecting him and his old pickup.

He’d been waiting for this day for so long he could hardly believe it had finally come. He got out, slammed the truck door and walked toward the entrance to the café. Town seemed a lot busier than it had eleven years ago.

He saw people he used to know, but he didn’t acknowledge them. Most just stared. He knew he’d changed in the past eleven years. He told himself maybe they didn’t recognize him. Or maybe they didn’t want to. Maybe they were afraid of him.

He pushed open the door to the Longhorn. The bell tinkled and he stepped into the café, and was hit by the mouthwatering smell of freshly baked bread.

His stomach growled and he realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He took a stool at the counter. The café was empty this late in the afternoon except for one couple he didn’t recognize at a booth. He could hear voices in back, the clang of pots and pans, the creak of an oven door opening and closing.

He picked up a menu, telling himself that Cassidy probably wasn’t even here. The menu covers were the same plastic with a local color photograph of red bluffs, tall blue-green sage and a longhorn steer in the foreground. It had been a shot of the McCall Ranch. He liked that she hadn’t changed it. And wondered why she hadn’t, given how at least one McCall felt about her.

The McCall Ranch was the only one around that raised longhorns. There was no money in anything but beef cattle, but his father kept some longhorns, raising them as his great-grandfather had. A reminder of what had started the ranch, a link to the past that Asa hadn’t been able to let go of.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cassidy come out of the back of the café. She didn’t recognize him at first. Not until he looked up from the menu and his eyes met hers.

CASSIDY STOPPED dead in her tracks. Although all day she’d been expecting to see him walk into the café, she was shocked to see Rourke sitting at the counter, shocked that after all these years, he really was free and home.

Her heart thudded in her chest so loudly she swore he had to have heard it. Except he wouldn’t know why. He’d think it was out of fear.

Her biggest shock was how much Rourke had changed. He’d been more of a boy than a man when he’d left, tall and lanky, not yet filled out at twenty-two.

Now there was no doubt that he’d become a man, from his strong jawline to his broad, muscular shoulders. But there was a coldness to him that showed in the pale blue of his eyes, a hardness that hadn’t been there before. Bitterness and anger showed in the hard set of his jaw, in the way he carried himself, a wariness, a spring-coil tension like a wild animal that knew he had predators nearby.

Her heart dropped at the thought. Rourke believed she was one of those predators. She shuddered to think what his life had been like the past eleven years in prison. And the part she’d played in sending him there.

“Rourke,” she said, and forced her feet to move toward him, careful to keep the counter between them. She put down the rack of glasses she’d been carrying, shoving her shaking hands deep into her apron pockets so he wouldn’t realize how much just seeing him affected her.

She glanced past him to the street and beyond it to the large window of the ADC where Blaze was standing, watching them. Her stomach churned. Blaze was hoping for a show. What did Rourke have planned?

“Cassidy.” There was a softness to his voice that belied the icy malice in his expression.

His voice was the only thing about this man that was the same as the boy she’d been unable to get out of her thoughts for years. She hated what just the sound of that voice did to her.

“I heard you were released,” she said, needing to say something. “I’m glad you’re back.”

He smiled at that. “I’ll bet.” He looked down at his menu.

“Rourke, I—”

“I’ll have the same thing I used to.”

A hot roast beef sandwich, a coffee and a salad with blue-cheese dressing.

She stared at him. “I was hoping—”

“You do remember what I used to order when your mother worked here, don’t you?”

Fumbling, she pulled her pen and order pad from her pocket and wrote down his order, writing fast so he wouldn’t see how her hands shook.

He smiled a smile that had no chance of reaching his eyes.

There was so much she wanted to say to him, but she could see he wasn’t going to let her.

Back when she and Rourke were teens, Cassidy’s mom would have taken Rourke’s order. Cassidy would have been bussing tables, lurking in the kitchen so Rourke wouldn’t see her, feeling ashamed to be caught sweaty, in her white uniform, her apron soiled from clearing dirty tables.

He was looking at her as if he knew her deepest, darkest secrets, knew that she hid in the kitchen when he came in, and listened to him talking and joking with her mother.

“Anything else?” she asked, looking down at the scribbled order on her pad, then up at him.

“No.” His expression was colder than the grave.

She stared at him, confused. She’d expected him to lay into her the moment he saw her. She wished he had. His silence was more frightening. Tension arced between them like a tightwire. She felt as if she were balancing on it, unsteady, ready to fall any moment.

“I’ll put your order in,” she managed to say.

He picked up the menu to look at it again, then without a word turned away from her to stare out the front window, toward ADC and Blaze? He was enjoying her discomfort. He wanted to make her suffer, drag this out.

She turned and walked back to put in his order, trying hard not to run. She wished Kit would come in for her shift, but Cassidy knew she wouldn’t leave anyway. She couldn’t escape Rourke. Not in a town the size of Antelope Flats. Not even in a state as large as Montana.

Needing desperately to keep busy and yet not wanting to hide in the kitchen, she returned to the counter with more clean glasses and utensils.

She could feel his attention on her, hard as stones, but he didn’t say a word. Nor did she try to talk to him. It was clear Rourke was calling the shots.

Kit came in finally, passing Cassidy and making big eyes at her as if to say, Did you see who’s sitting at the counter?

“You want me to wait on him?” Kit whispered on one of Cassidy’s trips to the kitchen.

“No. I have it covered,” she said, wondering if Rourke was straining to hear their conversation, just as she had strained to hear his so many years ago.

She returned to the counter to refill the sugar, salt and pepper containers. The one time she looked in his direction he was smirking at her as if he knew what she was up to and it didn’t fool him for a minute.

She should have picked another task to do. She spilled sugar, knocked over salt and pepper shakers, fumbled and dropped things. Come on, Rourke. Just get it over with.

The bell dinged that his order was up. She hurried back to get it, so nervous she felt nauseous.