Courage Under Fire (Silver Creek #2) - Lindsay McKenna Page 0,37
the one, from the time she left high school, that has made this ranch bloom. Her ideas, her vision, have really made Three Bars a very special place, where environmental businesses can be showcased because they flourish here under her care, judgment, and intuition.” He smiled fondly. “I don’t profess to have my mother’s big picture and entrepreneurial skills. My father wasn’t an idea machine, either, so I guess I took after him.”
“But you have wonderful management skills, Chase. You know how to make things work, how to build a team of women and men wranglers, and get the job done on time and right. I don’t think you’re any less important to the success of Three Bars than your mother is. It takes two, a team, to make it work.”
He grimaced and started in on his second piece. “There’s the rub and there’s the prize.”
“What do you mean?”
“Finding the right partner.”
Her mouth twisted. “Oh, that. Yes, well, you are right. I’ve got a dismal track record.” She bit into her pizza and then wiped the corners of her mouth with the napkin.
“I don’t want to compare track records, but mine went bust, too.”
“Thank God I never married,” Cari said. “I was way too young, too green, and had no idea how men were. My father died when I was nine years old.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that . . .”
“It’s not something I tell everyone,” she admitted. “He was the light of my life, he adored me and I adored him. He taught me from early on how boys should respect me as their equal. My mother and he were so much in love. That’s where I learned what real love was, but I sure couldn’t repeat it, it seems.”
“I lost my father when he was forty-five years old,” Chase admitted, “so we sort of have a similarity there. I do understand how much of a loss a father is to your world.”
“That’s so hard on children, even if you’re an adult by that time. I always leaned on my father, and he had such a great sense of humor and such wisdom, plus patience, with everyone.” She finished her second slice and wiped her hands and mouth. “That’s why when my mother married Blake Bannock, two years after my dad died, I felt like I had been spun off into some other world, a very dark, horrible one. Dirk, his son, was twelve, and suddenly my wicked stepbrother. Dirk hated me on sight. I had done nothing to him, but he saw me as his enemy. I had this horrible feeling he wanted to kill me. It scared me so much that I was afraid to go to my mother about it because she was happily married to Blake. I couldn’t tell anyone. Dirk has black eyes. They’re probably dark brown, but to me, they looked black. And he’d give me this awful look, like he was going to come over and kill me, so I became a shadow in our household. I pretty much disappeared from their lives and had to stay a step ahead of Dirk. I lived in terror, Chase. I was so young, lost because of my father dying, and then my stepfather’s evil son, a year older than me, came into my life. It was so jarring. I don’t think I ever got over it.”
“I’m sorry, Cari. It’s tough to hear you say that and then to see how fey you are.” Chase managed a one-sided smile. “Fey meaning fairylike, vulnerable, fragile, and otherworldly.”
“My sun sign is Pisces and my mother always told me that I was the two fish, their tails tied together, each swimming in a different direction. And that I was highly creative, but that she saw me as an oyster without a shell and having to learn how to live down here on this Earth and survive without it. She always worried about my survival.”
“So did you,” he said, putting the last four slices of pizza into an awaiting box. “You had a stepbrother who saw you as competition, I’d guess. He didn’t want you to be there. His kind likes to be the center of attention, and he didn’t want to share it with anyone. Am I right?”
“So right,” she admitted faintly. Looking out the window, watching the traffic, she added, “Eventually, I did tell my mother, but I was going off to college by that time, and I would be out of the house and finally escape