Carla Cassidy - The Cowboy's Claim

Why, oh why, after everything that had happened, did her heart still lurch more than a little bit at the sight of his thick dark hair, his chiseled features and those amazing blue eyes?

She was so over him. She’d moved on, and he had no place in her heart, in her life. He deserved nothing from her but the plate of food she slid down in front of him along with the glass of milk and the edge of contempt that welled up inside her.

She started to leave the table but gasped in surprise as he grabbed her by the wrist to stop her escape. “It isn’t that busy,” he said. “Why don’t you sit with me for a minute or two?”

“Why would I want to do that?” she replied as she pulled her wrist from his grasp. Her need to escape was overwhelming, but she didn’t want him to see that he bothered her in any way, that he still had any power at all over her.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe we could catch up a little bit.”

“Why?” She forced a light laugh. “I mean honestly, Nick, what on earth would we have to talk about? You’ve been gone for two years. We’ve both moved on with our lives.”

He studied her intently, and she kept her features carefully schooled so as not to display any of the turmoil that twirled around in her stomach. “I should have called you,” he finally said.

Her stomach clenched. “Yes, you should have,” she agreed. “But, you didn’t, and time went by and life went on. It’s all water under the bridge. Now, is there anything else I can get for you?”

“Not at the moment,” he replied after a long hesitation.

She turned and left the booth, but she was aware of his gaze lingering on her, heating the center of her back. She escaped back to the safety of the kitchen and once again pasted a smile on her lips.

Instead of keeping Nick Benson in her mind, she thought of Grant Hubert, the man she’d been dating for the past two months.

Grant was everything Nick hadn’t been...dependable and mature. He was thirty-five, the vice president of the local bank, and he’d been the first man she’d allowed into her life in any way since Nick.

Grant didn’t stir in her the same crazy emotions that Nick had once evoked. Instead he felt solid and predictable, and that was exactly what she needed in her life at this moment.

She knew what had brought Nick back to town, but the Bensons weren’t the only ones who had gone through trauma in the past couple of months.

Certainly everyone had been shocked when Sam Benson had tried to kill Courtney’s friend and fellow waitress, Lizzy Wiles, but before that the entire town had been equally shocked when another waitress from the café had been brutally murdered.

That murder had not yet been solved and hadn’t been related to Sam’s attack on Lizzy. At the time, Courtney, Lizzy and Candy, the murdered young woman, had been living in three of the four little cottages just behind the café.

It had been Candy’s murder and the attack on Lizzy that had prompted Sheriff Cameron Evans to arrange for Courtney to move from the cottage to a nearby motel. In the past two months the motel room, with its kitchenette, had finally begun to feel like home.

Thankfully, when she returned to the booth where Nick had sat enough money to pay his tab and a generous tip for her was all that remained.

She rang up his order, pocketed her tip and told herself she absolutely refused to spend another minute of her time thinking about Nick Benson. Besides, there was plenty to do to prepare for the evening dinner rush. That would keep her mind sufficiently occupied.

Since the time she’d moved to Grady Gulch, she’d come to love the people of the small town. Even George Wilton, who complained about the bitterness of the coffee, the dryness of the meat loaf and the laziness of today’s youth, held a certain charm all his own.

The dinner rush that evening seemed busier than usual, and despite her desire not to think about Nick Benson, he seemed to be the topic of conversation on everyone’s lips.

“They’ve all come to bad ends,” Susan Walker said to her husband as Courtney served them the nightly special. “One dead, one a convict, one a drunk, and Nick always was a bit of a hellion.” She shook her head ruefully. “Guess that’s what happens to kids when their parents die too young.”

“All of them spent too much time down at The Corral,” David Bentz said to his wife as Courtney delivered their drinks to their table. “I heard through the grapevine that Nick has come back to somehow save Adam from himself.” David snorted. “That’s kind of like the pot calling the kettle to ask for advice.”

Courtney grimaced, fighting the impulse to say something in defense of all the Bensons. She’d never liked David Bentz much anyway. He always smelled just a little bit like cow manure.

“How are you doing tonight, Courtney?” Abigail Swisher asked as Courtney stopped at her table.

“Good. And where’s that handsome husband of yours?” she asked. It was unusual for Abigail to show up at the café without her husband, Fred.

“He’s on a business trip, and I decided I didn’t feel like cooking tonight. The house was just too darned quiet.” Abigail gave her a sweet smile and swept a strand of her light brown hair behind an ear. Courtney caught a pleasant scent of spring flowers wafting from the woman.

“Good for you,” Courtney replied. She knew the couple didn’t have children. Abigail had suffered a miscarriage, but rumor had it they were trying desperately for another child.

She took Abigail’s order, and by the time the dinner rush was over Courtney was sick of hearing all the negative stories about Nick—and even more sick that in each case she’d wanted to somehow jump to his defense.

It was after eight when Courtney finally sat down to take a break with fellow waitress Lynette Shiver. Lynette was twenty-three and had been working at the café for only about a month.

She’d been hired when Lizzy had quit her job as a waitress to move in with her future husband, Daniel Jefferson. Lizzy seemed perfectly content helping Daniel around the ranch and planning a wedding for the near future.

“Would you please tell me about the Benson family?” Lynette exclaimed. “That’s all I’ve heard about all night, and I didn’t know what anyone was talking about. Sounds like a nice plate of juicy gossip.”

“It’s actually a tragic story on several levels,” Courtney replied with a sigh of resignation. As much as she hadn’t wanted to talk about Nick, she knew there was no way she could avoid the topic while explaining to Lynette what had happened before she’d come to the small town.

“The Benson family consisted of Sam, who was the eldest, Adam, Cherry and Nick. Their parents died years ago, and Sam took the reins of the family ranch and worked hard to keep them all together. Then two years ago Cherry was killed in a car accident.”

Courtney took a sip of her iced tea and tried not to remember that night. She’d been in her bedroom in her parents’ house and had gotten a text from Nick to meet him at the place where they always rendezvoused away from prying eyes.

When she’d finally gotten to the old Yates place, she’d driven past the old house that had been foreclosed on years ago and never resold and drove straight down the lane that took her to the old barn.

Nick’s pickup was already there, and when she entered the horse stall that had been their special place for the past seven months, he’d grabbed her and pulled her to him as he wept.

They’d made love, silently, emotionally, and then he’d left the barn without saying a word. She’d known his grief was too great for words, and she’d let him go that night assuming they’d have time together the next day or the day after that. And then he was gone from Grady Gulch, from her.