“See ya around.”

“Right.”

Jarrod left the door open when he left. Mason watched as his friend, wearing jeans, cowboy boots with worn heels, and a faded denim jacket, sauntered out of the exterior office, stopping long enough to say a few words to Mason’s secretary, Edie, to make her blush.

Jarrod Smith had a knack for breaking women’s hearts. Though he owed the man his life, Mason didn’t like the idea of Jarrod being anywhere near Bliss Cawthorne. She deserved better than to be another of Smith’s conquests.

Oh, right, because you were so good to her.

Frowning, he picked up his coffee cup and scowled as the weak, cold brew hit the back of his throat.

Bliss Cawthorne.

The princess.

The one woman he could never quite wedge from his mind, even though he’d married another.

* * *

In his mind’s eye, he saw her again at the edge of the cliff, slipping from his grasp. He heard the sound of his own terrified scream, felt that same horrifying certainty that she would be dead in an instant.

But her old man had shown up just in time.

Thank God.

John Cawthorne had arrived on horseback, his foreman with him.

“What’s going on here?” Cawthorne had shouted, then reached around Mason and grabbed hold of Bliss’s leg just as his own grip had given way.

“Hang on, Blissie—For the love of God, man, pull! Pull!”

Mason’s ebbing strength had revitalized. Though pain jolted through his arm, he caught hold of her free leg and yanked. The two men dragged her back to the ledge where she’d lain, eyes closed, blood streaming from the cuts on her head.

“Ride like hell to the truck, call the police and get a helicopter for her,” John had commanded the foreman. Rain dripped from the brim of his hat, mud oozed around his boots. His face was etched in fear and his eyes, two smoldering blue coals, burned through Mason with a hatred so intense it nearly smelled. “You miserable son of a bitch, you nearly killed her.” He bent down on one knee and touched his daughter tenderly on the cheek. “Hang on, honey. Just hang the hell on.”

The minutes stretched on.

Mason was in and out of consciousness and barely heard the helicopter or the shouts from the pilots. Nor did he feel the whoosh of air as the rotor blades turned above him and bent the wet grass skirting the ledge.

All he knew was that when he awoke, battered and broken, the helicopter had taken Bliss away and left him alone with John Cawthorne and the older man’s festering hatred. A half-smoked cigarette bobbed from the corner of Cawthorne’s mouth.

“Now, you lowlife son of a bitch, you listen to me,” Cawthorne commanded in a voice barely above a whisper. His face was flushed with rage, his hands clenched into hard, gnarled fists. “You stay away from my daughter.”

Mason didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Pain screamed up his left arm where the horse had kicked him and his chest felt so heavy he could scarcely breathe. Rain, in cold, pounding sheets, poured from the sky, peppering his face and mud-caked body as he lay, face up, at the edge of the ravine.