Nobody's Dream (19 page)

And then it was too late.

Luke had only wanted his wife to be happy and doing what she loved most. Yeah, and doing what she loved wound up killing her, their unborn baby, and Angel’s dad.

He scrubbed his hand down his face. He didn’t like thinking about that day and all the mistakes he’d made.

Bottom line, he needed to be needed. His caregiving tendencies had come out again this spring with Angel when she left Marc and needed a place to lick her wounds. If Cassie needed a friend, then couldn’t she see he was standing right in front of her?

Because she seemed content to live up here alone. This refuge enabled her to shut out the world. No wonder he’d upset her when he crashed into her life. Now she had to deal with her brother’s invasion, too.

Whatever Cassie was running away from only made him want to know her better. What if it was something he could help her overcome?

Why did he have such a strong compulsion to rescue wounded creatures?

Casarse.

Her brother pushing her toward marrying him wasn’t the way to breach Cassie’s walls. Perhaps Luke could assure her that, if it would make peace with her brother, he’d agree to some kind of temporary arrangement. Both could keep their own places and their separate lives but still form a legal bond that would appease Eduardo and her parents. Who knows? Affections might grow into something more—or they could obtain an annulment after Eduardo left if Lucas found someone else.

Could he forego sex if that was what she disliked most about the thought of marrying? She sure didn’t like being touched, but since he’d been up here, there had been a few times where she had tolerated him. Maybe he was growing on her. Hell, he’d gone without intercourse for eight years. When he missed Maggie, it wasn’t sex he missed most, but all the little things like time spent together, fleeting touches, and being tangled up in bed.

Of course, he and his wife did have sex. Being around Cassie and not being able to touch her would be frustrating in the extreme.

But look at all they had in common. Loneliness was at the top of the list, but also art and their animals. As friends, they could help each other out when needed and just give each other someone to talk to or have dinner with now and then.

Hell, draw up a companionship contract, Denton. That’s not what marriage is about.

Yeah, what was he thinking? People didn’t get forced into shotgun weddings nowadays. Hell, most didn’t marry at all. They just lived together. In that thinking, he and Eduardo had something in common. Luke was old school when it came to making a commitment to a woman.

If he spoke vows to Cassie, he would damned well mean every single word.

He opened the door of the Tahoe and stepped down, nearly buckling under his own weight. Hell, he was still too damned weak to think or walk straight anymore.

He’d best keep working on finding a way off this mountain and back to his horses. At least he understood them a little better.

The only way he could make Cassie López happy was to vamoose out of her life.

*     *     *

After spending time with Milagrosa and Graciela, Cassie’s nerves calmed somewhat, but soon fear encroached again. Her psyche had been battered and bruised. Tonight, she would escape into her art, just as she had hidden there all afternoon preparing to work on a piece that called to her. She should be working on the final piece for the gallery exhibition, but this one needed to be done first. It would not be for sale, though.

Immersing herself in the creative zone helped to ground her. The sound of her Tahoe’s snowblade scraping against the ice kept distracting her and pulling her focus away. Someone was attacking the snowpack with a vengeance. Most likely, Lucas was trying to dig himself out of this prison. However, it was only a prison to him. She preferred her solitary confinement here. Only now, too much of the world was on the wrong side of the perimeter wall she had erected.

Her hand shook, and she pulled the brush away to stare at the watercolor. Muddy, gray colors. A single aspen leaf swirled against a bombarding wind. Startled black birds flew away to seek shelter as a thunderhead loomed over the scene. She had not permitted such darkness into one of her paintings since coming to her mountain.

Her mountain?

No, she held no claim on any part of this mountain. Not even squatters’ rights.

Her gaze moved to the flock of birds. Wings. Freedom. They could seek new shelter and safety without worry.

But the leaf had no choice. No control. It could only drift on the wind until falling to the earth to lie in the mud…perhaps trampled upon by careless or uncaring footsteps. Worse yet, to decompose unnoticed back into the earth.

I am the leaf.

Cassie blinked away the sting in her eyes. Her mountain home had given her so much peace and solace—until now. Perhaps her art would be her legacy, rather than having children. All the more reason to suffer through gallery showings. Hiding away, she would never make a difference in anyone else’s life, but through her art, she could provide others with a new way to interpret their own world.

Finished with as much as she could do today, she cleaned the brushes and moved toward her altar in the corner of the studio. Let her brother say what he wanted about her. Let him plan her future until he was blue in the face. Cassie dashed the tears from her cheeks. She stared at the meditation blanket, but refused to kneel. Now more than ever she needed to find her center, but she would not enter her sacred space filled with such foul and negative thoughts.

Restless, she walked over to the oil painting she had completed in anticipation of Eduardo’s visit. An anniversary gift for her parents. She flipped on the track lighting and lifted the gauzy dust cloth that had kept it clean while the oils hardened.

Her parents’ eyes stared out at her. Did they forgive her for never returning home? For leaving them without explanation? Every time they spoke via Skype or e-mail,
Mamá
begged her to return home, even for a visit.

Papá
just stared out from the painting with those intense eyes, blaming her for making
Mamá
so sad. Her vision blurred as her chest tightened.

But she refused to go anywhere near the three men who had raped her ever again. She might be able to avoid Diego and Luis by staying in her village, but
Mamá
had told her Pedro had taken over managing his father’s mines, so he would still be living near her parents.

A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts, but she did not respond. She glanced away from the painting and tried to find something that could help ease the pain and shame she felt, but nothing here offered her any comfort. Or hope.

“Cassie, you okay?”

She shook her head. Dead. She felt dead.

“Open the door, darlin’. I won’t invade your space. I just need to make sure you’re all right.” He paused a moment. “Your brother, hell, he’s just trying to intimidate us, but
we
know nothing happened. Don’t let him upset you.”

Cassie fought a sudden and irrational longing to feel Lucas’s arms around her the way he had held her in her dream. She yearned to rest her forehead on his solid chest and feel the steady, strong beat of his heart.

No!
She could not allow him to come that close again. Not only would Eduardo interpret such a scene as damning evidence, but it would give Lucas the wrong idea, as well.

She sought comfort, not intimacy.

Men did not understand a woman’s needs and desires. They thought only of their base carnal drives. Better not to put herself in a position for him to misinterpret what she wanted.

“I am fine. Please, Lucas, go back to the cabin. I need to be alone. I will sleep here tonight.”

Her words met silence. After several minutes, she decided he had done as she asked.

Good.

He had not forced himself into her personal space or disregarded her need for solitude. Since the rape, she had tried to keep her distance from people, especially men. Sometimes even being with Kitty was too painful, especially now that she had found love and happiness with Adam Montague. She had been mourning the loss of her closest friend since Kitty became serious about him. The loss of Kitty’s brother last year had changed her. When she had invited her friend to leave New York City and come to Colorado to grieve, Cassie never imagined she would inadvertently reunite with the Marine who had rescued her friend when she was sixteen and trying to run away from home.

In some ways, Cassie was jealous of her friend’s good fortune in life and love. Kitty had only ever been with Adam. Cassie’s virginity, on the other hand, had been stripped away from her, leaving her empty inside and too damaged for any honorable man to want her.

Not that she sought to have that kind of relationship with a man. She needed to keep her distance from them all. Throughout her teens, she had been warned that boys could not be platonic friends. Hormones,
machismo
, and seeing women as good for only one thing came into play. Every innocent touch, word, and gesture was misconstrued to mean something vile. Something
sexual
. As they grew older, it worsened. No, men did not know how to simply be friends with women.

Better to send Lucas away and resume her life the way it was intended to be—alone. Perhaps there were lessons to be learned in living this way.

Yet Lucas had far exceeded her low expectations of men. They had been thrown into situations where he easily could have taken advantage of her, but he had not. He was the first man in five years she wanted to spend time with. How had he breached the wall so easily?

She shook her head. What was the matter with her? She did not want a husband, but a friend. A companion. Talking about their shared love of animals and art was not what marriage was based on. Given time, though, he would interpret familiarity and affection to mean something more and would encroach on her personal space.

Would she never learn that men’s personalities could change at the drop of a hat? She would not allow herself to be duped again.

Cassie crossed the studio to the sleeping area near a wall of windows. The sun had long since dipped behind the mountains forcing her to turn on more lights so she could see without bumping into anything. Outside the French doors was her hot tub. The oval tub was only big enough for two—nothing like the one she, Kitty, and Angelina had used at Adam’s place last fall—but she only needed enough space for one as she performed some of her spiritual ceremonies, most often her cleansing one.

No way did she intend to use the tub with Lucas and her brother around even though they would have to work awfully hard to see her in it, because it was on the far side of her studio.

She crossed the room to the dresser and pulled out a nightgown before stepping behind the privacy screen in the corner. No one could see inside the window, but at night, she imagined dozens of eyes peering in at her just the same.

Lucas and Eduardo could fend for themselves in the house. The fridge was filled with leftovers if they were hungry. It wasn’t until she turned down the covers on the bed that she stopped short.

“My babies!” She had never forgotten her alpacas before and quickly donned socks and boots again. She put on her poncho covering most of her because she did not have time to dress again. She was hours late for their evening meal. This would only take fifteen minutes at most. She picked up her flashlight.

Opening the door to the studio, she admitted feeling relief that the path to the shed was empty in the beam cast from her flashlight. Lucas had not lurked outside her studio on the chance she might answer the door eventually.

The wind whipped at her bare legs as she ran as quickly as possible, catching herself as she slipped a couple of times. Light showed around the cracks of the shed’s door. Had she left it on?

The sound of a deep voice singing reached her ears at the same moment she yanked open the door. Her gaze met Lucas’s as he stopped singing and turned away from filling Graciela’s feed bin. He sang to her girls?

His eyes lit up before he gave her a slow once-over and smiled.

“Good to see you’re okay, darlin’.”

“I, um, told you I was fine.” She folded her arms, trying to shield herself from his scrutiny, even though she wore a heavy poncho.

“Yeah, but I’d rather see for myself.” He lowered the feed bucket to his side. “Better close that door before you let out all the heat.”

Lucas did not like being cold. Why he chose to live in the Rocky Mountains puzzled her. She contemplated whether she should run back to the studio or stay and help. Obviously,
he
had not forgotten her animals. But they were her responsibility. While deciding what to do, she pulled the door closed.

Surprisingly, no sense of fear arose at being alone with him. Lucas had torn down some of her self-preservation barriers. She reminded herself she had not known him long enough to trust him, though.

Cassie kept a safe distance from him and crossed the shed to the water faucets. “Who still needs water?”

“They all do, but why don’t you take care of this while I fill the water buckets?”

He closed the gap between them, and the air seemed to disappear from the shed. He simply handed her the feed bucket, still half full. Their fingers brushed on the handle, and a jolt of electricity ran up her arm. Not like the discharge of static. More potent. She pulled away, taking the bucket with her.

“Which ones have been fed?” Her voice sounded husky.

“Gracie and Tika. I also brushed Tika down. She was a mess from her little adventure last night.”

Mortified that she had neglected her babies today, she skirted him, leaving plenty of space between them while ignoring the way her stomach clenched at his scent.

Musky.

Soapy.

All man.

Her heartbeat accelerated.

Dangerous. Stay away from him
.

They worked together in silence with as much distance between them as the small shed allowed. Cassie finished filling the other bins and came over to visit with Graciela a minute before Lucas entered the small space to fill the trough with fresh water.