The Pirate & The Adventurer & The Cowboy

walk out on him."

    "All right, all right, I didn't mean to put it that way." Bev held up one hand in a placating fashion. "Losing you did change him, though. I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Until you were gone, he was as driven to succeed as his father had been—more so because the stakes were higher after John died."

    Margaret frowned. "Rafe was trying to show that he could be as successful as his father?"

    "No, he was trying to rescue us from the financial disaster in which John left us." Bev's mouth tightened. "My husband was a good man in many respects, but his business was everything to him. He ate, slept and breathed Cassidy and Company. But shortly before he was killed in a plane accident, he suffered some enormous financial losses. You'll have to ask Rafe for the details. It had to do with some risky investments that went bad."

    "Was Rafe involved?"

    Bev shook her head. "No. Rafe had gone off on his own. He was too much like John in many ways and he knew it. He realized from the time he was in high school that he could never work for his father. They would have been constantly at each other's throats. They were both stubborn, both smart and both insisted on being in charge. An impossible working situation."

    "Did your husband accept that?"

    "To his credit, John did understand. He wished Rafe well when Rafe started his own business. But John always assumed that when he retired, Rafe would take over Cassidy and Company and then John was killed."

    Margaret watched Bev toy with her coffee cup. "Rafe did come back to take over Cassidy and Company, then, didn't he? Just as your husband would have wanted."

    "Oh, yes. Rafe took the reins. And that's when we discovered that John had been on the brink of bankruptcy. Rafe worked night and day to save the business and he did save it. Against all odds. You can be certain the financial community had already written off Cassidy and Company. We survived and the company is flourishing now, but the experience did something to Rafe."

    "What do you mean?"

    Bev poured more coffee. "Watching Rafe work to salvage Cassidy and Company was like watching steel being forged in fire. He went into the whole thing as a strong man or he wouldn't have survived. But he came out of it much harder, more ruthless and a lot stronger than he'd been before his experience. Too hard, too ruthless and too strong in some ways. His sister Julie calls him a gunslinger because he's made a habit of taking on all challengers."

    Margaret had never met Julie. There had been no opportunity. But it sounded as if the woman had her brother pegged. She looked down into the depths of her coffee. "He didn't like losing to Moorcroft's firm last year."

    "No, he did not." Bev smiled briefly. "And you can be certain that one of these days he'll find a way to even the score."

    Margaret felt a frisson of uneasiness go down her spine. She thought about her conversation with Jack Moorcroft shortly before leaving Seattle. "I'm glad I'm out of it."

    "What Rafe does about Moorcroft is neither here nor there. It's your relationship with my son that concerns me. Rafe put a lot of his life on hold while he worked to save Cassidy and Company. One of the things he avoided was marriage. Now he's nearly forty years old and time is running out. I think he realizes that. I want him to be happy, Margaret. I have come to realize during the past year that you are probably the one woman who can make him happy."

    Margaret stared at her helplessly. "But that's just it, Bev. I can't make him happy. Not as his wife, at any rate. I simply can't be the kind of wife he wants or needs. So I'm going to take your advice."

    Bev looked at her with worried eyes. "What advice?"

    "I'm going to try having an affair with him."

    "You mean you're not going to marry him?" Bev looked stunned.

    Before Margaret could respond, her father's voice bellowed over the patio. "What the hell do you mean, you're not marrying him? Cassidy swore he was offering marriage. That's the only reason I agreed to get involved in this tomfool plan to get you down here. What the blazes does he think he's trying to pull around here?"

    "Dad, hang on a minute." Margaret turned in her chair to see her father bearing down on her. "Let me explain."

    "What's to explain? I'll have Cassidy's hide, by God. I'll take a horsewhip to that boy if he thinks he can lead my little girl down the garden path."

    "Sit down, Dad."

    Bev