“I've wanted you for a very long time.” His voice was husky. “And you're everything I expected.” All the while, his lips and hands were adding fuel to the fire raging inside her.
“Make love to me, Hoyt,” she whispered haltingly as she laid her head on his shoulder. Her mind was free of doubt. This moment was her only reality.
Cassie was sinking into the unfamiliar depths of desire. Their bodies melded in a whirlwind of passion that swept her up, up, up.
“Hoyt.” She breathed his name as their lovemaking lifted her to heights of pleasure she had never imagined. Cassie was oblivious to everything but the strong body guiding her to an exquisite crescendo of sensations.
“I like pleasing you, Cassie.” Hoyt cradled her in his arms as they lay side by side, completely satisfied, their two hearts beating as one.
“You sure know how!” Cassie blushed pink at her unexpectedly bold response.
Hoyt laughed heartily, but an uncertain smile touched her sensuous lips. Cassie closed her eyes, fending off the approaching sense of sadness and disquiet
“Tell me more about San Francisco.” They lay tangled in the muslin sheets, quietly talking and listening to the whippoorwills until the moon hung in the sky like a big butterscotch drop. Cassie rested her head on Hoyt's chest and he spun another story In his gently resonating baritone. Cheyenne, Tucson, New York City— he'd introduced her to an exciting world that she fully intended to challenge.
Cassie had watched her parents grow old before their time, baffling the whims of nature and the cracked brown earth while juggling the exorbitant payments their anxious creditors demanded. She'd worried with them over red-ink crops, and had seen them do without too often to let herself become snared in the same hopeless trap. Her talent was her ticket out of Coyote Bend, and heaven help anyone who tried to keep her from cashing in on it.
“I've worked up an appetite, but not for those things.” Hoyt always brought her a box of Godiva chocolates from Neiman-Marcus after his trips into Dallas. A smoldering smile creased his handsome face when he refused her offer to share the candy. Cassie tried to ignore the welcome-home heat that warned her she'd missed him too much, that she'd become too dependent on the bright splashes he painted in the monochromatic pattern of her life.
Secure in the knowledge that Hoyt desired her, that her pleasure was his, Cassie didn't question the fact that he never took her anywhere. She understood that they couldn't be seen together in public, but that didn't keep her from hating the employer-employee facade they were forced to present in town. When Hoyt's frequent calls failed to trigger off the ugly gossip she'd feared, Cassie decided that the interest rate on borrowed trouble wasn't worth it and put her worries in layaway.
Lovely May mornings drifted into the firecracker swelter of July, and Cassie stored memories like a chipmunk preparing for the first hard freeze of winter.
“Something's bothering you.” Hoyt had cupped her chin in his hand, trying to decipher the sorrow in her eyes. Lightning presaged the summer storm that would soak the greening fields they'd worked. The electric bolts illuminated his hard male profile.
“We won't be able to see each other for a while.” Cassie had trained her gaze on the ceiling so that Hoyt wouldn't detect her lie. The stabbing pain in her heart was almost more than she could stand, but a million tears couldn't dull the ache of her dual-edged sorrow.
“Is it bad news about your mother?” Hoyt's concern was genuine, and Cassie was touched more deeply than she dared admit
She nodded her head. “Doc's going to stay with me from now on. The medicine isn't helping anymore and she needs shots every four hours.” She'd inhaled, mustering courage to begin severing her ties. “He says it's a matter of days, a week at the most.”
“I'm sorry.” His husky sentiment was comforting, but there was no way he could understand the full scope of her anguish. “Promise that you'll let me know what I can do to help. If you need money, an ambulance into Dallas, or just a shoulder to cry on, I'm available.”
Cassie nodded but she knew she wouldn't take him up on his offer.
“One thing you can do is start looking for some new tenants. I don't think I'm going to be able to afford you much longer.” She smiled at her feeble joke, relieved that she could lighten the mood.
“You're welcome to stay here until hell freezes over if you like.” His mouth teased her with soft kisses. “But I suppose it will be more convenient for you to live in town.”
Cassie's confession quivered on the tip of her tongue. She swallowed the words before she could tell him that she'd be leaving Coyote Bend. There was no sense in spoiling their last night with a futile argument
Their lovemaking was bittersweet, a spontaneous combustion that rivaled the storm raging at the windows. Cassie had tangled her fingers in Hoyt's hair, arching against him with a fiercely felt need to hold him as close as possible one last time. Dynamite blasts of thunder echoing through the tiny bedroom had drowned out her sobs. Passion was a bottomless pit that she plunged into with a wanton disregard for tomorrow's despair.
* * * *
The old tin sign banged against the building. Cassie ducked out of her memories and swerved sideways to avoid a blow to the head. Judge Foley's fin-tailed Cadillac was already parked in front of the drugstore when she pushed open the wooden screen door to keep her appointment with freedom.
The oak-planked floors were permeated with the aroma of freshly perked coffee mingling with the smell of yesterday's grilled onions. Dusty packages of pain relievers vied for shelf space with out-of-date greeting cards. Tanya Tucker's scorching desire to be laid to rest beneath Texas soil competed with the hissing static common to every radio station north of the Rio Grande.
“Morning.” Judge was hunched over a hand of cards and didn't look up to greet his client. Even though she was anxious to get down to business, Cassie knew better than to try to interrupt this daily ritual.
“I don't know how I'm going to get along without your famous chocolate shakes, Ray. Guess I'll just have to kidnap you and drag you with me to Nashville.” She hoisted herself onto one of the tall round stools covered with cracked brown vinyl and dangled her shapely legs as she rotated from side to side.
“Still bent on chasing that rainbow, are you?” Ray Fensom looked up from his hand of pitch and peered at her through the horn-rimmed bifocals perched near the tip of his bulbous nose.
“I'm going to give it my best shot,” she affirmed. “It's all I have left now.” Cassie knew his concern stemmed from the same paternal affection he'd showered on her since her father caught that stray bullet in a hunting accident two years ago. “It won't do any good for you to start lecturing me again, Ray, because I've made up my mind. It's something I've always wanted to do and I'm going to do it.”
The seeds of Cassie's aspiration had been planted in her childhood by her banjo-picking father and her hum-along mother, both of whom knew every rockabilly or western song played on the radio. Her parents had given her a secondhand, flattop guitar when she was sixteen, and she'd immediately devoted every spare minute to the music she loved. Church socials, square dances, and honky-tonks became the training grounds where she practiced projection and delivery. Like a butterfly emerging from its silky cocoon, Cassie's style developed with experience, and her honey-rich voice endeared her to the many small-town audiences who danced or clapped along with her.
“Well, you know my area code and phone number if you need anything.” Ray smiled as he shuffled the cards.
“Be with you in a minute, young lady,” Judge said without looking up from the cards fanned out in front of him. “I need just two more points to put this varmint in his place, and I'm the bidder.”
“Three.” Ray challenged Judge's bid and the game was on. Cassie watched as they slapped the cards onto the counter.
“High, low, jick, jack, and game.” Ray tallied his triumph and Judge grumbled as he threw the loser's thirty cents down to pay for the coffee that was cooling in thick china mugs.
“I haven't beaten him in a month of Sundays.” Judge winked. “Think I'll order me a new deck of cards out of the catalogue.” He smiled and pulled a sheaf of folded papers out of the chest pocket of his plaid flannel shirt. “Got the releases from the Temples yesterday, and the bank notarized the title to your daddy's car, so I think we've got everything in order here. Are you ready to wade through this pile of legal mumbo jumbo?”
“As ready as I'll ever be.” She reached for the documents that freed her from the hardscrabble life her family had led for two generations, and scribbled her name on the black lines without reading the contents. Judge knew the law as well as a Sunday-school teacher knew Bible verse, and she trusted him completely.
“I've gotta admit that I'm kind of looking forward to bragging to people that I knew you when.” Ray grinned and slid a freshly blended chocolate shake across the yellowed Formica counter.
“Don't count my chickens before they're hatched.” She handed the pen she'd used back to Judge. “I sure don't feel right about your waiving your fee.”
“Your folks did me plenty of favors, little lady. I'm just glad I finally got a chance to repay a few of them.”
“I hope you know what a hard row you've picked to hoe.” Ray polished a soda glass with a white cotton rag.
“No harder than what I've been doing all my life,” Cassie replied. Another family would move into the tired old farmhouse, sorely in need of a fresh paint job. Other women would work their fingers to the bone scrubbing faded linoleum, working the fields, and preparing the endless meals to feed a gnawing hunger that was never quite satisfied.
“When do you plan on leaving?” Judge struck a match on the sole of his shoe and lit his briarwood pipe.
“I'm going tomorrow morning.” Cassie folded the precious paper transferring title to the twenty-year-old sedan to her. “I thought that I'd try to get an early start. Maybe I'll miss the rush-hour traffic in Dallas.”
Actually, she planned to drive straight through to Texarkana, but she didn't admit it out loud. Judge and Ray would only caution her about the danger of pushing herself on the highway. But she didn't have the cash to spend too many nights in motels, even cheap ones.
“Have you got enough money to tide you over until you're settled in Nashville?” Judge scrutinized her with squinted eyes that had borne witness to the paltry sum she'd withdrawn when she closed her mother's bank account.
A hot flush warmed Cassie's cheeks. She'd sworn she wouldn't accept a penny from anyone.
“I'll make it all right,” she asserted. Her lips curved in silent thanks that Judge hadn't divulged the sorry state of her finances. “I'll probably have to get a job while I'm pounding the pavement and making the rounds of producers’ offices, but I'm sure I'll be able to find something.”
It was time to leave. She still had to pack and straighten the house for the new family. Cassie slid off the stool and walked around the counter to say good-bye to Ray.
“Let us hear from you once in a while.” He wiped his eyes with his polishing rag. “Speck of dust,” he muttered.
When Judge stood and shook her hand, Cassie swallowed hard to keep the tears at bay. Crying wouldn't help or change a thing. Whether she failed or succeeded, all of them knew that she would never return to Coyote Bend.
“Thanks for everything.” Her trembling voice affirmed her gratitude for favors large and small through the years. She turned and ran out of the drugstore before she burst into tears.
The oppressive heat hit her with full force when she stepped outside. Hoyt Temple's Jeep still occupied the space in front of the feedstore— a good omen. She'd never told him she was leaving.
She drove home without seeing the ramshackle buildings that punctuated the parched countryside or the brittle tumbleweeds that the wind blew across the road.
Cassie was tempted to stop and sit for a while in the small cemetery where her mother and father rested, but her foot remained glued to the accelerator and she sped on past. She'd said good-bye once, and she didn't think she could bear to see their graves again, or those of the babies born before herself that her mother had grieved over when she'd stooped to weed the trio of tiny tombstones every Sunday.
Chapter 2
As Cassie swept up the last dustpan of grit, her thoughts were hundreds of miles away. Willie Nelson and Ray Price harmonized over the radio, and she was so engrossed in completing her mundane chores that she didn't hear the front door opening or the boot-heeled steps that crossed her living room in familiar strides.
“What the hell is going on around here?” Hoyt grabbed her arm and spun her away from the chipped porcelain sink she was scouring. His level blue gaze said he'd learned about her plans.
“Hoyt, you scared me!” She'd never witnessed his anger and wasn't sure what form it would take. This was the good-bye she thought she'd successfully avoided. “I— I wasn't expecting company.” Her voice was brittle, as if it would splinter into a thousand pieces under the stress. She drew a steadying breath and forged ahead. “What do you want?”
“For openers, you can stop looking at me like a rabbit trapped on the wrong end of a shotgun muzzle,” he rebuked. “Then you can start explaining why I had to find out from strangers that you're skipping town.” His fingers dug cruelly into the tender flesh of her upper arm.
“I was only trying to spare us an ugly scene— like this one.” Cassie pulled out of his grasp and rubbed the bruised area his fingers had punished. She picked up a piece of lined paper that she'd laid on the kitchen table and handed it to him. “This is the note you were supposed to find.” She kept the tone of her voice casual, careful to betray none of the regret that dogged her.
He took the letter and scanned it with a puzzled frown. Pain clawed at Cassie's heart as she watched him, but her face wore a mask of quiet pride. She'd already invested more emotion in their affair than she could rightfully afford. Hoyt might not realize it, but she wore his brand as surely as if he'd used a hot iron on her.