SOL slammed through the house and out of the back door to the veranda. Gripping the railing, he hauled in a breath. Then another. Half an hour. He’d been back half an hour and already he was dying to get out of here. Nothing had changed.
For Pete’s sake, you’d think after ten years…
He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension that had them wedged up tighter than double-lapped dovetail joints. His eyes swept across the backyard. What a mess. The fence needed mending, the lawn needing mowing, and the—
Cassie’s tree.
His angry thoughts slammed to a halt. He squinted into the afternoon sun, but two giant oleanders on the other side of the fence prevented him from making out much of the house in the yard beyond. Did Cassie Campbell still live there?
Cassie Parker, he amended. She’d married ten years ago.
And had been widowed for eighteen months. Some things had changed.
He dragged a hand down his face. Cassie wouldn’t live there now. She’d live in the centre of town with the rest of the Parkers. She didn’t need to live on the outskirts any more. And since her mother had died…
An ache hollowed out his chest. He hadn’t come back for the funeral. He hadn’t come back for Brian’s funeral either.
He stared hard at what he could see of the house and yard, trying to imagine someone else living there, but he couldn’t. His gaze came back to the tree squatting in the corner. His lips curved upwards and the tension seeped out of him. Back then the only thing that had kept life bearable around here was Cassie Campbell.
Cassie Parker, he reminded himself, and his smile faded.
He clenched the veranda railing again. What did he think he was doing? Trying to catch a glimpse of her? He had an insane urge to butt his head against a veranda post. He’d left all thoughts of Cassie behind ten years ago.
Yeah, right. Which is why you’re craning your neck over her back fence with your tongue hanging out.
He made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. It wouldn’t even be her fence any more. He went to turn away when a leg dangled out of the tree—a long, lean, female leg. He blinked and shaded his eyes.
Cassie?
His breath hitched, but curiosity propelled him down the back steps and across the yard all the same. That was a damn fine leg, and he was real curious to see who lived in Cassie’s old place now.
A mumbled half-smothered expletive drifted out of the tree as he drew near, and for some reason it made him grin. He quickened his step and, without waiting for his eyes to adjust to the shade, glanced up. The breath was punched out of him and a strange choked noise emerged from the back of his throat. He couldn’t have uttered a single coherent sound if his life had depended on it.
Dancing violet eyes swung around to stare down at him. They raked across his face, then generous lips formed a perfect O. ‘Good Lord, if it isn’t Sol Adams, home for Christmas at last.’
Cassie Campbell!
His heart started to pump hard and fast. He swallowed. The sound rolled in the spaces beneath the tree, loud in the summer afternoon. ‘Hey, Cassie,’ he finally managed to get out.
‘Hey, Cassie?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘After ten years that’s all you can think to say?’
Then she smiled. Really smiled. Cassie had always put her whole heart into a smile. It outshone the hot summer sun. He blinked, but he couldn’t look away. His groin ached. The entire surface of his skin tightened, as if he’d grown too big for it.
Her smile wavered. ‘You didn’t even say goodbye.’
Her soft words speared through him, and in that moment he’d never regretted anything more in his whole sorry life. If in this very instant he could go back ten years—
She grinned suddenly, and every thought in his head fled.
‘Help me out here, will you, Sol?’
Help…? With…? Then he noticed the kitten clutched in her arms.
She bent down and handed it to him. ‘Don’t you let it go,’ she warned, as she disappeared back along the branch. She returned with a second kitten that she promptly handed to him. Disappeared again. In a daze he took a third, until his arms were nothing but a wriggling, curling mass of kitten.
She grinned. ‘It doesn’t look as if you have a spare hand to offer the lady.’
Her skin had the look of soft pink rose petals, and Sol wanted to reach out and take her hand, help her down. Touch her. He wanted to know if she felt as cool and soft as she promised. He tried to rearrange the bundle in his arms but it kept changing shape.
‘Don’t you let those kittens get away, Sol Adams.’
‘No ma’am,’ he said weakly as she leapt down beside him. Her fragrance filled his nostrils. She smelt of something flowery, tropical, like frangipani. He wanted to bury his face against her neck and inhale.
‘I’ve been jumping out of this tree for more years than I can count. Do you seriously think I need a hand?’
‘You are wearing a skirt,’ he pointed out. And it fitted her like a dream. It swished around her thighs as if dancing in joy because it was wrapped around Cassie Campbell.
Parker, he amended.
He reckoned he’d be pretty darn happy if he were wrapped around Cassie like that. He blinked at the thought. ‘I—umm.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It could, uh, hamper your tree-jumping, is all. That’s what I meant.’
She grinned and lifted the skirt and his eyes near bugged clean out of his skull. How the hell did she expect him to keep hold of an armful of kitten when she—
Bike shorts! He let his breath out in a whoosh. She was wearing bike shorts under the skirt.
Her eyes twinkled mischief before she dived to her knees by the fence and pushed a loose paling to one side. Another kitten, smaller than its siblings, poked its head through the gap. ‘Well, come on, then,’ Cassie patted her knee. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
Man, she wouldn’t need to call him twice, Sol thought.
Without further ado, the kitten squeezed through the gap and flew straight to her lap. Sol didn’t blame it.
Cassie picked the kitten up and rose to her feet. ‘C’mon, then.’ She hitched her head in the direction of Sol’s back veranda and he followed in a daze. Once there she closed the little gate, popped her bundle on the floor, then plucked the kittens from his arms one by one to join it.
Sol glanced at them, then grinned. ‘Jeez, Cassie, these are the ugliest batch of kittens to ever grace the earth.’
She drew herself up to her full height of five feet ten inches. ‘Ugly?’
Sol was one inch over six feet. Most women had to throw their heads back to look him in the eye. Cassie didn’t.
He got a crick in his neck from kissing most women. He wouldn’t get a crick in his neck from kissing Cassie.
As if she’d read that thought in his face, Cassie let her gaze drop to his lips and Sol held himself rigid. Nothing moved except the pupils of her eyes, dilating and contracting. Then she shook her head and stepped back, and Sol heard the soughing of the breeze in the trees again, and the wings of a flock of rosellas as they swooped through the yard and over the house.
‘Ugly?’ Cassie’s voice was strong, dragging him back into the present. ‘What would you know about the matter, Sol Adams? These kittens aren’t ugly; they’re beautiful.’
He made himself look at one. Boy, she was stretching the truth there.
‘I love these kittens.’ She hitched up her chin. ‘And when you love something it’s beautiful. So you keep your ugly comments to yourself.’
He glanced at the kittens again. Okay, maybe ugly wasn’t the right word. Maybe—
Cassie seized the littlest one and pushed its face close up to his. ‘Look at it,’ she ordered. ‘Can you seriously call that ugly?’
It mewed plaintively and he couldn’t help it. He reached out a finger and ran it across the tiny head. ‘It’s cute,’ he finally mumbled, when Cassie kept eyeing him with that ferocious glare. On the spur of the moment he cupped his hands around hers and rubbed his cheek against the kitten’s fur. Cassie’s skin felt warm and alive. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at something you love.’
Her eyes widened. Something arced between them. Something sweet and pure he couldn’t put a name to. She stepped back and he let his hands drop.
‘Hey, Alec,’ she called through the back screen door.
Alec wheeled to the door. ‘You’re early, missy.’
Sol stared at Cassie. Early for what?
‘I haven’t come to see you.’ She winked at Sol. ‘But make yourself useful and bring us out some drinks. It’s hot.’
Sol’s jaw dropped.
‘Get them yourself, you hussy. I’m in a wheelchair.’
‘Don’t go playing the invalid with me. You know how to drive that thing. I’m timing you,’ she called back, settling herself in one of the two chairs that sat either side of a small table.
Sol glared at the screen door, then at Cassie. ‘Since when have the two of you been so chummy?’ This was Alec, the man who’d raised him. Not someone Cassie would usually laugh with or joke with. He scowled and lowered himself to the other chair. At least she wouldn’t have ten years ago.
Violet eyes surveyed him across the table. She rested her chin on her hand and for a long moment she didn’t speak. ‘So…’ she said at last. ‘He finally talked you into it, huh?’
Her long dark plait had gone, replaced with a sleek bob that brushed her shoulders. When she moved a certain way a curtain of hair fell across her face, dark and shiny. His fingers itched to run through it, to find out if it were as—
He shifted, hoping he hadn’t been staring. ‘Talked me into…?’
‘Coming home for Christmas.’
She frowned when he remained silent. ‘He didn’t?’
‘No.’
She shot a glance at the door and sighed. ‘He’s his own worst enemy, you know?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he’s been whingeing and moaning at me for months now that you never come home.’ Her eyes started to dance. ‘I told him it served him right. I told him if I was you I’d never come back either.’
That jerked him around. ‘You didn’t?’
‘Yes, I did.’ She folded her arms and lifted her chin. ‘I told him he was a mean old man.’
She had. She would. Sol suddenly threw his head back and laughed. It shifted something inside him too long held in check. He glanced at her, and a surge of affection shot through him. Cassie might have changed her name, but she was doing what she’d always done—making bad situations not so bad, making them bearable.
Her smile faded. ‘Now he’s just a scared old man.’
‘Scared?’
The back screen door slammed open and Alec wheeled out, a tray balanced on his lap. ‘Mind my kittens,’ Cassie warned. ‘I’ve brought them for a visit.’
Alec grumbled, but kept his eyes fixed on the floor. He dumped a jug of iced water and two glasses on the table. Sol blinked. The jug contained slices of lemon and ice cubes. Surely Alec hadn’t—?
‘You’re not joining us?’
‘I’m watching the test match, as you well know, missy.’
‘Well, don’t let me keep you.’
Sol watched in amazement as a reluctant grin spread across Alec’s face. He couldn’t remember Alec smiling for…well, he guessed it’d be eighteen years.
‘Watch your back around this one,’ he told Sol. ‘She’s just as likely to stick the knife in and twist it as not.’
It was the longest sentence Alec had uttered in the last half an hour. Sol had been gone for ten years. Ten years. But when he’d walked through the front door Alec had glanced up and muttered, ‘So you’re back, then,’ as if Sol had just returned from the corner shop.
He’d been tempted to walk back out and book into a motel.
‘And don’t you forget it.’ Cassie laughed as Alec wheeled back inside. She poured out two glasses of water and pushed one towards Sol. ‘He’s getting better. He didn’t bellyache at me about the kittens.’
‘Why do you say he’s scared?’
She frowned, as if he’d disappointed her. ‘Wouldn’t you be scared if you were dying, Sol?’
He stared back, speechless. Ice trickled down the collar of his shirt and dripped down his backbone.
Cassie’s eyes widened, then her hand flew to her mouth. ‘You didn’t know?’
Nope. Nobody had bothered mentioning that.
‘But isn’t that why you’re home? I thought you’d talked to Dr Phillips.’
‘I did.’ He dragged a hand down his face. ‘All he said was Alec needed to go into the nursing home. And that he expected a spot to become available after Christmas.’
Air whistled between her teeth. ‘Of all the spineless…Wait till I get hold of him. I’m sorry, Sol, I’d never have blurted it out like that if—’
‘It’s not your fault, Cassie.’ It was his. He’d stayed away too long. Questions clamoured through him, but as a kitten used his leg as a scratching post one of the least pressing popped out of his mouth. ‘What are you doing with all these kittens?’
‘They’re Christmas presents for my senior citizens.’
Who were her senior citizens? Water sloshed over the sides of his glass as he dropped it back to the table. ‘Good God, you’re not giving one to Alec, are you?’
‘What do you think?’ she snorted. ‘Besides, you can’t have pets at the nursing home.’
A hard ball settled in the pit of his stomach as he watched a kitten attack the shoelaces on one of her sneakers. A sneaker attached to a long, lean leg. His eyes travelled upwards. Man, did she have great legs or what? They were firm and shapely, as if she got enough to eat these days.
She hunched over and smoothed the skirt of her dress over her knees. ‘You never called him Dad, did you? You always called him Alec.’
The huskiness of her voice hauled him back. His lips twisted as he met her gaze. ‘Nobody could ever accuse Alec and me of being close, now, could they?’
‘No,’ she agreed. She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. Condensation gathered beneath it. ‘He’s changed, Sol.’ Her finger stilled. ‘He hasn’t had a drink in two years.’
Was she serious? The hard ball in his stomach grew. Was it the drink that had made him sick? Why else would she…? ‘What are you trying to say, Cassie?’
She hesitated, then her lips twisted into a wry smile. ‘Have you come home to make your peace with him, Sol?’
‘Or?’
‘Or to gloat?’
He leapt to his feet. ‘You think I’ve—’
She held a finger to her lips and hitched her head in the direction of the door. ‘Mind the kitten.’ It scampered between his feet and settled under his chair. Another one joined it. Gingerly he lowered himself back to his seat, but he couldn’t unbend his backbone.
‘Look, Sol, I do understand.’
He wished to hell he did.
‘I had a mother like Alec, remember?’
Yeah, he remembered. Some days he wished to hell he could forget. ‘And you always called her Mum. Did you make your peace with her before she died?’
A curtain of hair fell across her face, hiding her eyes, and he immediately regretted his harshness. He shouldn’t take this out on her. She was the last person who deserved it.
‘No, I never made peace with my mother. She never stopped drinking long enough for me to try it.’
Hell, she wasn’t going to cry, was she? Cassie never cried. He hadn’t—
‘And now she’s dead.’ She smiled at him. A sad little smile that speared right through the centre of him.
He reached out and covered her hand with his. ‘You didn’t deserve that, Cassie.’
She turned her hand over and squeezed. ‘Neither did you.’
A great hole opened up inside him when she tugged her hand free.
‘I hear you’re a hotshot architect these days.’
She didn’t want to talk about the past. She’d moved on. He set his shoulders. So had he.
‘Have you come home to build me that tree house?’
Her words startled a laugh as memory flashed through him. ‘I’d forgotten all about that.’
‘I hadn’t.’
Something in her tone had his eyes swinging back to hers. She had the most amazing eyes—violet, with the deep, soft texture of velvet. He had a feeling she remembered everything. He shied away from the thought. ‘I even drew up plans for that tree house.’ How could he have forgotten? He’d slaved over those drawings for weeks.
‘I remember those too.’ Her laughter engulfed him in warmth. ‘We couldn’t find a tree big enough to house it.’
‘I aimed high.’
‘And you succeeded.’
Her words were soft and spoken with real pleasure. It made him ashamed of avoiding…
He drew in a deep breath. ‘I heard about Brian. I’m real sorry, Cassie.’
That curtain of hair fell across her face, hiding it. Her hands trembled and a shaft of pain shot straight through him.
Cassie’s insides knotted and twisted. Her face tightened. None of the platitudes she normally mumbled rose to her lips or to her rescue. She tried desperately to untwist, unknot, unwind herself.
Idiot. Did you really think you could get through an entire conversation without Brian being mentioned?
She flicked her hair back, recognised the concern in Sol’s eyes and hated it. For a moment she was tempted to let her hair fall back to hide her eyes, to help her lie, but she couldn’t lie—not to Sol. He’d know.
‘Last Christmas was hell.’ That at least was the truth. She twisted her wedding band round and round her finger. ‘So, I’m making doubly sure this Christmas isn’t.’
Gratitude surged through her when with one curt nod he let the subject drop. She cleared her throat.
‘What are your plans? Are you staying for Christmas?’
‘Yep.’
Delight tiptoed through her. ‘But that’s fabulous.’ Christmas was only nine days away. She risked a glance at his face but she couldn’t read it. It brought her up short for a moment, then she shrugged. Ten years was a long time. ‘What will you do on Christmas Day?’
He raised an eyebrow, took one look at her face, then grimaced. ‘Sorry to burst your bubble and all, but Christmas is just like any other day as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Is that so?’ She folded her arms.
He shifted in his seat. ‘Look, I—’
‘It used to mean a lot when we were kids and we didn’t get a Christmas.’
‘Is that why you have to have a Christmas now?’ he shot at her.
‘Is that why you don’t?’ she shot back, just as quickly.
They stared at each other for a moment, then laughed. But she settled on one thing then and there. Sol was having a Christmas this year whether he said he wanted it or not. Everyone needed a Christmas.
And Sol hadn’t had one since he was twelve.
She glanced across at him. Man, oh, man, it was good to have him home. She drank in the sight of him while he stared out at the yard with that shuttered half-gaze she remembered so well. Sol had always been a good-looking boy. But that was what he’d been when he’d left. He had certainly changed since then. He had grown up now.
He was a man. And what a man.
A pulse started to throb at the base of her throat. He was every kind of hunk she could think of and then some. He was going to set the female population of Schofield on its collective head.
His eyes hadn’t changed, though. Still black, still piercing, still kind. And given half a chance they could probably still see right through her. She lifted the kitten clambering up her leg into her lap. She couldn’t give Sol that chance—not even a quarter of that chance. The kitten settled into her lap, purring.
She glanced around the Adams’ back veranda. It and the attached laundry ran the length of the house. She sprang to her feet and walked its length, glancing right and left then swung back, clutching the kitten to her chest. ‘Sol, I need a favour.’
‘Anything.’
A shockwave rippled through her at the promptness of his reply, at its certainty. ‘Is that wise?’ she demanded. He chuckled, and the sound of it washed over the surface of her skin with the velvet warmth of hot chocolate. She wanted to stretch and purr beneath it.
‘I may not have clapped eyes on you for ten years, Cassie Campbell…Parker, but I still know you.’
‘I might have changed.’
He paused. His eyes raked over her and darkened. ‘You have at that.’
Cassie fell back into her chair. She crossed her right leg over her left. Her foot bounced and wouldn’t stop. She set it on the floor, but that set her knees jiggling. She crossed her legs again and let the foot bounce.
‘Lookin’ good, Cassie.’
Her foot stopped mid-bounce. His eyes roved over her face, and her skin flushed everywhere his gaze touched.
‘Real good.’
‘Thank you,’ she croaked. She seized her glass. ‘You’re not looking too bad yourself.’ But she didn’t look at him as she said it. She took swallow after swallow of cold water, but it didn’t cool the heat rising through her.
‘What’s this favour?’
The favour. Right. She set her glass down. ‘Would you babysit my kittens?’
‘Babysit?’
‘Until Christmas?’
‘Christmas!’
‘I can’t take them home because Rufus will eat them. I’ve kept them locked up in the laundry of the old place—’ she nodded across the yard ‘—while it’s between tenants, but it’s so tiny, and it’s mean keeping them there for such long periods. They won’t be any trouble, I swear.’
He looked sceptical, and she didn’t blame him. ‘You don’t need to do anything. I’ll come over every evening to feed them.’
‘You will?’
‘Then I’ll lock them up in your laundry for the night.’
‘You’ll come over every evening?’
‘Every evening,’ she assured him. ‘So all you need to do is let them out of the laundry each morning. That’s it.’
‘That’s it, huh?’
‘That’s it.’ She shrugged, then slanted him a grin. ‘Though even if you say no I’ll still be here each evening. I’m Alec’s home-care help.’
‘Home-care help?’
‘It’s a community-based programme designed to help people stay in their own homes longer by helping them out with housework, meals and stuff.’
‘You do that?’
She shrugged, abashed by the warmth in his voice. ‘I love it.’
‘How long have you been doing it?’
Her eyes slid from his. ‘Ten years.’
There was a long silence. Finally Sol asked, ‘How long have you been helping Alec?’
‘Two years.’
‘Two years?’ He jerked around to face her fully. ‘He’s been sick for two years and he never told me?’
‘He’s being looked after.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘But what? You’d have come home, seen he was getting the right kind of care, then left again.’
He raked a hand through his hair. ‘How long has he got?’
‘You’re a better man than I if you can get a straight answer to that one,’ she sighed.
He stared back out at the yard and Cassie’s chest ached. Why did it have to be such hell sometimes? Who had decided Sol should draw the short straw where family was concerned—the shortest of short straws—when Brian had had so much?
She froze that thought. Brian was dead. He didn’t have anything any more.
‘Why didn’t you let me know, Cassie? You could’ve rung or written.’
‘It was Alec’s choice. His decision to make.’ Her hands twisted together in her lap.
‘And?’
His eyes didn’t leave her face. It was almost frightening the way he could still read her. ‘And you didn’t answer the last time I wrote to you.’
His eyes darkened, then shuttered, and something inside Cassie squeezed painfully.
‘I would’ve come back for this.’
But her wedding hadn’t been important enough? It was as if he’d wiped Schofield from his mind completely. And her with it. ‘You left this town and all of us in it far behind.’ And maybe it had been for the best. ‘I never thought you’d come back. Ever. I didn’t try and get in touch with you because I thought hearing from me, hearing from anyone in Schofield, would be just about the last thing you’d want.’
His hands clenched into fists as he turned and stared at her. ‘Then you were wrong.’
‘You could’ve let me know that ten years ago.’
He stared back out at the yard and Cassie shivered. She’d never seen his eyes so dark…so…
Her mouth went dry. ‘Why have you come back, Sol?’
He shrugged. ‘Curiosity, I guess.’
He met her eyes, but the darkness still lurked in them and Cassie knew he was lying. She just didn’t know why.