Do You Take This Rebel?

“I only have eyes for one woman here.”

“Oh? And who would that be?”

“You.”

A shiver washed over her, despite herself. “Cole, don’t.”

His expression sobered. “There’s unfinished business between us, Cassie. You know there is. I think it’s about time we dealt with it.”

“I can’t think about that now. I can’t think about you,” she said fiercely, scrambling to her feet.

“I’ll still be here when you get back,” he reminded her. “And nothing will have changed.”

Cassie didn’t care. She needed time to figure out why Cole could still get to her.

“You do whatever you want to do,” she told him. “You always have.”

That said, she fled. Thinking about the man couldn’t get her into that much trouble.

Being with him could be disastrous.

Do You Take This Rebel?

Sherryl Woods

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the Potomac Sunrise gang—Carolyn, Jim and

Diane—for helping me to keep my stories on track and

for sharing their own fabulous writing with me. And a

special thanks to Carolyn, who rose to the challenge

and came up with the title for The Calamity Janes.

SHERRYL WOODS

has written more than seventy-five romances and mysteries in the past twenty years. And because she loves to talk to real people once in a while, she also operates her own bookstore, Potomac Sunrise, in Colonial Beach, VA, where readers from around the country stop by to discuss her favorite topic—books. If you can’t visit Sherryl at her store, then be sure to drop her a note at P.O. Box 490326, Key Biscayne, FL 33149.

Winding River High School

Class of '91

Welcome Home—Ten Years Later

Do You Remember the Way We Were?

Cassie Collins—Ringleader of the Calamity Janes. Elected most likely to land in jail. Best known for painting the town water tower a shocking pink and for making the entire faculty regret choosing teaching as a profession. Class record for detentions.

Karen (Phipps) Hanson—Better known as The Dreamer. Elected most likely to see the world. Member of the 4-H club, the Spanish and French clubs, and first-place winner at the county fair in the greased pig contest.

Gina Petrillo—Tastiest girl in the class. Elected most popular because nobody in town bakes a better double chocolate brownie. Member of the Future Homemakers of America. Winner of three blue ribbons in the pie-baking contest and four in the cake-baking contest at the county fair.

Emma Rogers—That girl can swing…a bat, that is. Elected most likely to be the first female on the New York Yankees. Member of the Debate Club, the Honor Society and president of the senior class.

Lauren Winters—The girl with all the answers, otherwise known as the one you'd most like to be seated next to during an exam. Elected most likely to succeed. Class valedictorian. Member of the Honor Society, County Fair Junior Rodeo Queen and star of the junior and senior class plays.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Prologue

The thick white envelope had all the formality of a wedding invitation. Cassie weighed it in her hands, her gaze locked on the postmark—Winding River, Wyoming. Her hometown. A place she sometimes longed for in the dark of night when she could hear her heart instead of her common sense, when hope outdistanced regrets.

Face facts, she told herself sternly. She didn’t belong there anymore. The greatest gift she’d ever given to her mother was her having left town. Her high school friends—the Calamity Janes, they’d called themselves, in honor of their penchant for broken hearts and trouble—were all scattered now. The man she’d once loved with everything in her…Well, who knew where he was? More than likely he was back in Winding River, running the ranch that would be his legacy from his powerful, domineering father. She hadn’t asked, because to do so would be an admission that he still mattered, even after he’d betrayed her, leaving her alone and pregnant.

Still, she couldn’t seem to help the stirring of anticipation that she felt as she ran her fingers over the fancy calligraphy and wondered what was inside. Was one of her best friends getting married? Was it a baby announcement? Whatever it was, it was bound to evoke a lot of old memories.

Finally, reluctantly, she broke the seal and pulled out the thick sheaf of pages inside. Right on top, written in more of that intricate calligraphy, was the explanation: a ten-year high school reunion, scheduled for two months away at the beginning of July. The additional pages described all of the activities planned—a dance, a picnic, a tour of the new addition to the school. There would be lots of time for reminiscing. It would all be capped off by the town’s annual parade and fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Her first thought was of the Calamity Janes. Would they all be there? Would Gina come back from New York, where she was running a fancy Italian restaurant? Would Emma leave Denver and the fast track she was on at her prestigious law firm? And even though she was less than a hundred miles away, would Karen be able to get away from her ranch and its never-ending, back-breaking chores? Then, of course, there was Lauren, the studious one, who’d stunned them all by becoming one of Hollywood’s top box-office stars. Would she come back to a small town in Wyoming for something as ordinary as a class reunion?

Just the possibility of seeing them all was enough to bring a lump to Cassie’s throat and a tear to her eyes. Oh, how she had missed them. They were as different as night and day. Their lives had taken wildly divergent paths, but somehow they had always managed to stay in touch, to stay as close as sisters despite the infrequent contact. They had rejoiced over the four marriages among them, over the births of children, over career triumphs. And they had cried over Lauren’s two divorces and Emma’s one.

Cassie would give anything to see them, but it was out of the question. The timing, the cost…it just wouldn’t work.

“Mom, are you crying?”

Cassie cast a startled look at her son, whose brow was puckered by a frown. “Of course not,” she said, swiping away the telltale dampness on her cheek. “Must have gotten something in my eye.”

Jake peered at her skeptically, but then his attention was caught by the papers she was holding. “What are those?” he asked, trying to get a look.

Cassie held them out of his reach. “Just some stuff from Winding River,” she said.

“From Grandma?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.

Despite her mood, Cassie grinned. Her mother, with whom she’d always been at odds over one thing or another, was her son’s favorite person, mainly because she spoiled him outrageously on her infrequent visits. She also had a habit of tucking money for Jake into her dutiful, weekly letters to Cassie. And for his ninth birthday, a few months back, she had sent him a check. There’d been no mistaking how grownup he’d felt when he’d taken it into the bank to cash it.

“No, it’s not from Grandma,” she said. “It’s from my old school.”

“How come?”

“They’re having a reunion this summer and I’m invited.”

His expression brightened. “Are we gonna go? That would be so awesome. We hardly ever go to see Grandma. I was just a baby last time.”

Not a baby, she thought. He’d been five, but to him it must seem like forever. She’d never had the heart to tell him that the trips were so infrequent because his beloved grandmother liked it that way. Not that she’d ever discouraged Cassie from coming home, but she certainly hadn’t encouraged it. She’d always seemed more comfortable coming to visit them, far away from those judgmental stares of her friends and neighbors. As dearly as Edna Collins loved Jake, his illegitimacy grated on her moral values. At least she placed the blame for that where it belonged—with Cassie. She had never held it against Jake.

“I doubt it, sweetie. I probably won’t be able to get time off from work.”

Jake’s face took on an increasingly familiar mutinous look. “I’ll bet Earlene would let you go if you asked.”

“I can’t ask,” she said flatly. “It’s the middle of the tourist season. The restaurant is always busy in summer. You know that. That’s when I make the best tips. We need the money from every single weekend to make it through the slow winter months.”

She tried never to say much about their precarious financial status because she figured a nine-year-old didn’t need to have that burden weighing on him. But she also wanted Jake to be realistic about what they could and couldn’t afford. A trip to Winding River, no matter how badly either of them might want to make it, wasn’t in the cards. It was the lost wages, not the cost of the drive itself, that kept her from agreeing.

“I could help,” he said. “Earlene will pay me to bus tables when it’s busy.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I don’t think so.”

“But, Mom—”

“I said no, Jake, and that’s the end of it.” To emphasize the point, she tore up the invitation and tossed it in the trash.

Later that night, regretting the impulsive gesture, she went back to get the pieces, but they were gone. Jake had retrieved them, no doubt, though she couldn’t imagine why. Of course, Winding River didn’t mean the same thing to him as it did to her—mistakes, regrets and, if she was being totally honest, a few very precious, though painful, memories.

Her son didn’t understand any of that. He knew only that his grandmother was there, the sole family he had, other than his mom. If Cassie had had any idea just how badly he missed Edna or just how far he would go for the chance to see her again, she would have burned that invitation without ever having opened it.

By the time she found out, Jake was in more trouble than she’d ever imagined getting into, and her life was about to take one of those calamitous turns she and her friends were famous for.

Chapter One

Nine-year-old Jake Collins didn’t exactly look like a big-time criminal. In fact, Cassie thought her son looked an awful lot like a scared little boy as he sat across the desk from the sheriff, sneaker-clad feet swinging a good six inches off the floor, his glasses sliding down his freckled nose. When he pushed them up, she could see the tears in his blue eyes magnified by the thick lenses. It was hard to feel sorry for him, though, when he was the reason for the twisting knot in her stomach and for the uncharacteristically stern look on the sheriff’s face.

“What you’ve done is very serious,” Sheriff Joshua Cartwright said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Jake’s head bobbed. “Yes, sir,” he whispered.

“It’s stealing,” the sheriff added.

Jake’s chin rose indignantly. “I didn’t steal nothing from those people.”

“You took their money and you didn’t send them the toys you promised,” Joshua said. “You made a deal and you didn’t keep your end of it. That’s the same as stealing.”

Cassie knew that the only reason the sheriff wasn’t being even harder on Jake was because of her boss. Earlene ran the diner where Cassie worked, and Joshua had been courting the woman for the past six months, ever since Earlene had worked up the courage to toss out her drunken, sleazebag husband. The sheriff spent a lot of time at the diner and knew that Earlene was as protective as a mother hen where Cassie and Jake were concerned.

In fact, even now Earlene was hovering outside waiting to learn what had possessed Joshua to haul her favorite little boy down to his office. If she didn’t like the answer, Cassie had no doubt there would be hell for the sheriff to pay.

“How bad is it?” Cassie asked, dreading the answer. She didn’t have much in the way of savings at this time of year with the summer tourist season just starting. The total in her bank account was a few hundred dollars at most. That paltry sum was all that stood between them and financial disaster.

“Two thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars, plus some change,” the sheriff said, reading the total from a report in front of him.

Cassie gasped at the amount. “There has to be some mistake. Who in heaven’s name would send that much money to a boy they don’t even know?” she demanded.

“Not just one person. Dozens of them. They all bid on auctions that Jake put up on the Internet. When the time came to send them the items, he didn’t.”

Cassie was flabbergasted. The Internet was something she had absolutely no experience with. How on earth could her son know enough to use it to con people?

“I started getting calls last week from people claiming that a person in town was running a scam,” the sheriff continued. He shook his head. “When the first person gave me the name, I have to tell you, I almost fell off my chair. Just like you, I thought it had to be some mistake. When the calls kept coming, I couldn’t ignore it. I figured there had to be some truth to it. I checked down at the post office, and Louella confirmed that Jake had been cashing a lot of money orders. It didn’t occur to her to question why a kid his age was getting so much mail, all of it with money orders.”

Ignoring the dull ache in her chest, Cassie faced her son. “Then it’s true? You did do this?”

Defiance flashed briefly in his eyes, but then he lowered his head and whispered, “Yes, ma’am.”

Cassie stared at him. Jake was a smart kid. She knew that. She also understood that his troublemaking behavior was a bid for attention, just as hers had been years ago. But this took the occasional brawl at school or shoplifting a pack of gum to a whole new level. His behavior had gotten worse since she had refused to consider going to Winding River so he could spend some time with his grandmother.

“How did you even get access to the Internet?” she asked him. “We don’t have a computer.”

“The school does,” he said defensively. “I get extra credit for using it.”

“Somehow I doubt they’d give a lot of credit for running cons on some auction site,” the sheriff said dryly. He glanced at Cassie. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing to keep a kid from putting something up for sale. Most sites rely on feedback from customers to keep the sellers honest. As I understand it, most of Jake’s auctions ran back-to-back within a day or two of each other, so by the time there was negative feedback, it was too late. He had the money. The auction site manager called this morning, following up on the complaints they had received, and looking for their cut, as well.”

“What kind of toys were you promising these people, Jake?” Cassie asked, still struggling to grasp the idea that strangers had actually sent her son over two thousand dollars. That was more than she earned in tips in several months.

“Just some stuff,” Jake mumbled.

“Baseball cards, Pokémon cards, rare Beanie Babies,” the sheriff said, reading from that same report. “Looks like he’d been watching the site. He knew exactly what items to list for sale, which ones would bring top dollar from kids and collectors.”

“And where is this money?” Cassie asked, imagining it squandered on who knew what.

“I’ve been saving it,” Jake explained, his studious little face suddenly intense. “For something real important.”

“Saving it?” she repeated, thinking of the little metal box that contained his most treasured possessions and those dollars that his grandmother sent. Had he been socking away that much cash in there? All of his friends knew about that box. Any one of them could steal the contents.

“Where?” she asked, praying he’d put it someplace more secure.

“In my box,” he said, confirming her worst fears.

“Oh, Jake.”

“It’s safe,” he insisted. “I hid it where nobody would ever find it.”

There was a dull throbbing behind Cassie’s eyes. She resisted the temptation to rub her temples, resisted even harder the desire to cry.

“But why would you do something like this?” she asked, still at a loss. “You had to know it was wrong. I just don’t understand. Why did you need so much money? Were you hoping to buy your own computer?”

He shook his head. “I did it for you, Mom.”

“Me?” she said, aghast. “Why?”

“So we could go back home for your reunion and maybe stay there for a really long time. I know you want to, even though you said you didn’t.” He regarded her with another touch of defiance. “Besides, I miss Grandma.”

“Oh, baby, I know you do,” Cassie said with a sigh. “So do I, but this…this was wrong. The sheriff is right. It was stealing.”

“It’s not like I took a whole lot from anybody,” he insisted stubbornly. “They just paid for some dumb old cards and toys. They probably would have lost ’em, anyway.”

“That’s not the point,” she said impatiently. “They paid you for them. You have to send every penny of the money back, unless you have the toys to make things right.”

She figured that was highly unlikely, since Jake spent his allowance on books, not toys. She met the sheriff’s gaze. “You have a list of all the people involved?”

“Right here. As far as I know, it’s complete.”

“If Jake sends the money back and writes a note of apology to each one, will that take care of everything?”

“I imagine most of the people will be willing to drop any charges once they get their money back and hear the whole story,” he said. “I think a lot of them felt pretty foolish when they realized they were dealing with a third-grader.”

“Yeah, well, Jake is obviously nine going on thirty,” Cassie said. At this rate he’d be running real estate scams by ten and stock market cons by his teens.

This was not the first time she had faced the fact that she was in way over her head when it came to raising her son. Every single mom struggled. In all likelihood, every single mom had doubts about her ability to teach right and wrong. Cassie had accepted that it wouldn’t be easy when she’d made the decision to raise Jake on her own with no family at all nearby to help out.

And it should have been okay. They might never be rich, but Jake was loved. She had a steady job. Their basic needs were met. There were plenty of positive influences in his life.

Maybe if Jake had been an average little kid, everything would have been just fine, but he had his father’s brilliance and her penchant for mischief. It was clearly a dangerous combination.

“If you’ll give me that list of names, Jake will write the notes tonight. We’ll be back in the morning with those and the money,” she said grimly.

“But, Mom,” Jake began. One look at Cassie’s face and the protest died on his lips. His expression turned sullen.

“Jake, could you wait outside with Earlene for just a minute?” the sheriff said. “I’d like to speak to your mother.”

Jake slid out of the chair and, with one last backward glance, left the room. When he’d gone, Joshua faced Cassie, eyes twinkling.

“That boy of yours is a handful,” he said.

“No kidding.”

“You ever think about getting together with his daddy? Seems to me like he could use a man’s influence.”

“Not a chance,” Cassie said fiercely.

Cole Davis might be the smartest, sexiest man she’d ever met. He might be the son of Winding River’s biggest rancher. But she wouldn’t marry him if he were the last chance she had to escape the fires of hell. He’d sweet-talked her into his bed when she was eighteen and he was twenty, but once that mission had been accomplished, she hadn’t set eyes on him again. He’d gone back to college without so much as a goodbye.

When she’d discovered she was pregnant, she was too proud to try to track Cole down and plead for help. She’d left town, her reputation in tatters, determined to build a decent life for herself and her baby someplace where people weren’t always expecting the worst of her.

Not that she hadn’t given them cause to think poorly of her. She’d been rebellious from the moment she’d discovered that breaking the rules was a whole lot more fun than following them. She’d given her mother fits from the time she’d been a two-year-old whose favorite word was no, right on through her teens when she hadn’t said no nearly enough.

If there was trouble in town, Cassie was the first person everyone looked to as ringleader. Her pregnancy hadn’t surprised a single soul. Rather than endure the knowing looks and clucking remarks, rather than ask her mother to do the same, she’d simply fled, stopping in the first town where she’d spotted a Help Wanted sign in a diner window.

In the years since, she had made only rare trips back to visit her mother, and she’d never once asked about Cole or his family. If her mother suspected who Jake’s father was, she’d never admitted it. The topic was off-limits to this day. Jake was Cassie’s alone. Most of the time she was justifiably proud of the job she’d done raising him. She resented Joshua’s implication that she wasn’t up to the task on her own.

“Are you saying Jake wouldn’t have done this if his father had been around?” she asked, an edge to her voice. “What could he have done that I haven’t? I’ve taught Jake that it’s wrong to steal. The message has been reinforced in Sunday school. And, believe me, he will be punished for this. He may well be grounded till he’s twenty-one.”

Joshua held up his hand. “I wasn’t criticizing you. Kids get into trouble even with the best parents around, but with boys especially, they need a solid male role model.”

Cassie didn’t especially want her son following in Cole Davis’s footsteps. There had to be better role models around. One was sitting right in front of her.

“He has you, Joshua,” she pointed out. “Since you’ve been coming around the diner, he’s spent a lot of time with you. He looks up to you. If anyone represents authority and law and order, you do. Did that help?”

“Point taken.” He regarded her with concern. “Are you going to take that trip Jake was talking about? Obviously, it’s something that he really cares about.”

“I don’t see how we can.”

“If it’s a matter of money, the way the boy said, it could be worked out,” he said. “Earlene and I—”

“I’m not taking money from you,” she said fiercely. “Or from Earlene. She’s done enough for me.”

“I think you should consider it,” Joshua said slowly. His expression turned uneasy. “Look, Earlene would have my hide if she knew I was suggesting this, but I think you might want to give some thought to staying in Winding River when you do go back there.” He said it as if their going was a done deal despite her expressed reluctance.

Cassie stared at him in shock. “Are you throwing us out of town?”

Joshua chuckled. “Nothing that dramatic. I was just thinking that it might be good for Jake to have more family around, more people to look out for him, lend a little extra stability to his life. It would be a help to you and maybe keep him out of mischief. This latest escapade can’t be dismissed as easily as some of the others. Sometimes even kids need a fresh start. I’ve heard you tell Earlene yourself that he gives his teachers fits at school. Maybe a whole new environment where no one’s expecting the worst would help him settle down. Better to get him in hand now than when he hits his teens and the trouble can get a whole lot more serious.”