The Parent Plan Part 3. Paula Riggs Detmer
“Who else would I be talking about?” he asked with a bland look that made her scowl.
“Haven’t a clue,” she said, struggling against a leaden need to throw her tired body into his arms and absorb some of his strength, the way Vicki ran to her father for comfort.
“Mother said you’re trying to talk her into a June wedding,” she said, deliberately changing the subject to one less troubling. “Again.”
“Yeah, well, sooner or later she’s going to get it into her head that I’m not giving up, no matter how many jumps she puts me over.”
Karen felt the skin of her face pulling into a frown. “Are you saying that my mother is deliberately keeping you…uh—?”
“Dangling.” His voice blended a wry humor into the firm declaration.
“Now, that’s flattering,” she grumbled.
His eyes crinkled as he dug into a drawer for a wooden spoon. “I’m in love with your mother, Karen. I’ve been in love with her for years, but I’m not blind to her faults.”
“Faults? My mother?” She clucked her tongue. “Shame on you, sir.”
His grin flashed. “A stubborn streak a mile wide,” he said in his rough baritone as he pulled open the door to the fridge and took out a gallon of milk. “A tendency to fuss over the smallest things, a penchant for worrying about people she loves.” The door closed with a quiet thump as he added softly, “And a deep-seated fear that if she lets herself love me, she’ll lose me.”
Karen rubbed at her suddenly cold cheek. “Because she loved my father and he died, you mean?”
“Smart girl. Excuse me, woman. I’ve spent five years proving to that woman she’s stuck with me, no matter how hard she tries to drive me away.”
“But Mother loves you.”
“Sure she does, but that doesn’t mean she can keep herself from testing me.” He measured the cocoa by his own mental rule and added milk before turning on the burner. Only then did he turn to look at her. “She’s a special lady, my Sylvie. And dammit, she’s going to marry me if I have to toss her over my shoulder on June 1 and carry her to Judge Patrick’s chambers kicking and screaming every step of the way.”
Karen laughed at the image of her impeccably groomed mother dangling upside down over Frank’s broad shoulder. “If you do, promise me you’ll give me enough notice so that I can find a ringside seat.”
“You got it,” Frank said, grinning as he stirred the cocoa that was already beginning to smell sinful. He would make a wonderful husband for her mother and a great stepfather, she decided, watching him lift the wooden spoon to his well-shaped mouth for a taste.
At least, she was pretty sure of that—though she’d heard someone say once that he’d been a real hell-raiser as a young man. Abandoned at an early age by his teenage mother, he’d grown up in series of foster homes—until he’d slugged one of his foster “fathers” for taking a belt to one of the other kids. After that, he’d lived on his own, supporting himself by working in one of the silver mines that had been prevalent in the area thirty years ago.
Though he was nothing like the image she held of her own gentle, intellectual father, he’d knocked around enough in his early years to acquire a rough sort of charm that Karen found endearing. Add to that the fact that he was sensitive, funny and a whiz at making her mother blush, and you had one terrific man. Even dressed casually in jeans and a luscious burgundy-and-cream cable-knit sweater that probably cost more than she made in a month, he exuded a quiet air of authority that had nothing to do with his well-padded bank account. Immediately she thought of Cassidy and waited out the fast little flurry of pain that always accompanied thoughts of him.
“So how’s it going?” he said, turning down the heat before leaning against the counter and crossing those huge miner’s arms.
“Do you want the truth or a soothing evasion?”
He lifted one silvered brow. “Let’s go for the truth first.”
She dropped her fork onto her plate and pushed it away. “Vicki’s miserable, I’m miserable, and Rags is driving everyone crazy with his own version of misery.”
Raised from a tiny pup on the ranch, the sensitive shepherd had developed signs of severe homesickness almost immediately. Night after night he sat in the backyard and howled. When he wasn’t howling, he was barking or trying to dig himself an escape route under the tall redwood fence. Sometimes he barked and dug simultaneously.
Sylvia had already received two complaints from neighbors and a not-so-veiled threat to call Animal Control from old Mr. Hornutt on the corner. They’d tried bringing Rags into the house, but the independent canine hated confined spaces and nearly wore himself out pacing from the front door to the back. It seemed he was only happy at the ranch.
“You neglected to mention Cassidy.”
Karen swiveled to the side and hooked her sock-clad toes onto the rung of the chair. “Cassidy is…like those big old boulders on that ranch he loves so much. It would take an earthquake to move him so much as an inch.”
“Obstinate, is he?”
“You have no idea,” she assured him with a heavy sigh.
A twinkle appeared in his sky blue eyes. “Oh, I think I have a glimmer,” he said before reaching into yet another cupboard for a bottle of very old, very expensive brandy that her mother kept just for him.
“You think I’m being too hard on him?”
He poured the now steaming chocolate into the cups. “What I think is, I’d be ten kinds of a fool to answer a question like that,” he said as he rinsed out the pan and upended it in the drainer.
“Coward,” she accused with a fond smile.
“Absolutely.” He added a generous amount of citrus liqueur to two of the cups, then, bottle poised over the third, lifted a brow in question.
“Sure, why not?” A nice little alcohol buzz might let her sleep through the night for once without dreaming of Cassidy.
“Not on duty tomorrow?” He poured the same amount into hers before corking the bottle and returning it to the cupboard.
“I’m working swing this month,” she said, thanking him with a smile as he set the steaming mug in front of her. The rich scents of chocolate and citrus curled upward, and she inhaled with pleasure.
“Lovely,” she murmured after taking a sip.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said with a dip of his silvered head.
“Welcome,” she managed to say before treating herself again. The taste was both tart and sweet—and just a little wicked. Exactly like Cassidy’s kisses.
Seconds ticked by, unnoticed, until finally she realized Frank was watching her. No, measuring her. She lifted her brows and tilted her head.
Frank seemed oblivious to anything but her. Finally he sighed heavily and straightened those big shoulders. “Karen, did you know that my company had the listing on the Barlow ranch before Cassidy bought it?”
She shook her head, puzzled that he would bring that up now.
“He still had his army haircut when he showed up with everything he owned in the back of a third-hand pickup and a chip on his shoulder the size of Pikes Peak.” Frank wrapped his big hand around the mug and brought it to his lips for a quick sip. “He had no credit, no friends to recommend him and, sadly, not nearly enough cash to cover the down payment Sue Ellen Barlow was demanding for her daddy’s place.” His mouth twitched. “I took one look and told myself I’d be crazy to waste my time trying to put together a deal that didn’t have a chance in hell of getting past a reputable loans officer.”
She must have looked bewildered because