Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid Read Free

had changed.
    What had he expected in ten years? Time didn’t stand still except in his entirely too-vivid imagination. There, Cassidy Harte had remained as fresh and innocent as she’d been at eighteen, when she had stolen his heart with her mischievous smile and her boundless love and her unwavering loyalty.
    That Cassie—the one who had haunted his dreams for so long, through the dark months when he had nothing else—had worn her hair long, in a sleek ponytail he used to love to pull from its binding and twist his fingers through.
    Sometime during the long years since, she had cut it off. He wondered when, and felt a little pang of loss he knew he had no right to.
    Her hair was still as dark and luxurious as it had been ten years ago—as glossy and rich as fine sable—but now she wore it in a sexy little cap that, on any other woman he might have called boyish.
    There was nothing remotely boyish about Cassidy Harte, though. From her high cheekbones to her full lips to her body’s soft, welcoming curves, she was one hundred percent woman.
    Her eyes were the same. Blue as the spring’s first columbine, fringed by long thick lashes that didn’t need any kind of makeup to enhance their natural beauty.
    Ten years ago those eyes would have softened when he walked into a room, would have lit up with joy just at the sight of him. Now they were hard and angry, filled with a deep betrayal he had put there.
    This had to work.
    He shoved away from the couch and turned back to the mountains, looking out at the magnificent view with the same yearning he imagined was in his gaze when he looked at Cassie.
    It had to work. He couldn’t imagine the alternative.
    He had made mistakes—he would be the first one to admit them. But he had paid for them, and paid dearly. Could he make it right with her? What were the chances that she would ever be able to find it in her heart to forgive him, after the hurt he had caused her?
    Slim to none, he figured.
    He rubbed a hand over the ache in his chest. He would just have to do his best. No matter how tough, how seemingly insurmountable the task might seem, he had to do everything he could to make it work.
    No matter the risk, he must take this chance.
    To see if somewhere inside this hard, angry woman still remained any shred of the one person in the world who had seen something in him worth loving.

Chapter 2
    I t was true. All of it.
    To her shock and dismay, it turned out he was telling the truth this time. By some sadistic twist of fate, Zack Slater was indeed the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the West—and the man who would be signing her paycheck from here on out.
    What kind of warped sense of humor must Somebody have to mess up her life so completely? Just what, exactly, had she done to deserve this?
    She tried to be a good person. She didn’t lie, didn’t cheat on her income taxes, didn’t swear—much, anyway. She obeyed the Golden Rule, she was kind to the elderly and small children and she really made an effort to go to church as often as she could manage. And for all her effort, this is what she got?
    She should have raised a little hell when she had the chance.
    Jean Martineau, steel-gray hair yanked back into herusual ruthlessly tight braid, frowned at her with concern in her snapping brown eyes. “I had no idea, Cassie. I swear I didn’t. The man who signed the papers went by William Z. Slater. Other than the last name bein’ the same, why would I have any reason to think for one minute that he might have anything in common with Zack Slater, the no-good drifter who caused Star Valley’s biggest scandal in years?”
    Thank you so much for bringing that up again. Cassie pounded out more of her emotional uproar on the hapless ball of dough for the next morning’s sweet rolls. At this rate, the poor things would be as tough and stringy as cowhide.
    â€œIt’s not your fault,” she