Her father’s voice whispered in her ear. “Cowgirls don’t cry, baby. Ya gotta pick yourself up and ride.”
She blinked against the stinging tears and felt his sharply indrawn breath all the way to her toes. Then silence. He was gone. That quickly. Two blinks of her eyelids, his sharply indrawn breath, and the great bear of a man who’d been her father existed no more.
“You okay, baby girl?” Boots was back on the line.
Cass dashed at her eyes with the back of her hand. Hell no, she wasn’t okay. But she had to be. She had to take care of things. Whether she wanted to or not. “I’ll be there as soon as possible, Uncle Boots. I’m stuck here until the blizzard lets up. Couldn’t even get back to my apartment, so I’m spending the night in a hotel here at O’Hare.” Her voice remained steady. She couldn’t lose it. Not yet.
“I’ll be on the first flight out in the morning. I’ll call to give you my arrival time.” She cleared the lump forming in her throat. “Will you call the funeral home for me? To pick him up. I... Don’t let them cremate him until I get there, Uncle Boots. I...I need to see him. To say goodbye. Okay?”
“Sure, baby girl. I’ll take care of it.”
“You know where he stashed the good stuff. Go home and toast the stubborn old coot for me.”
“Sure thing, sugar. Now get your tail home. We’ve got work to do.”
“I love you, Uncle Boots.”
“Love you, too, baby girl.”
She tapped the red end call bar on her phone and slipped it into her pocket. Damn, damn, damn. How could she absorb the enormity of this event and not let it drive her to her knees? She closed her eyes against the prickle of tears. She didn’t cry. Not in public. Hadn’t she learned that from her dad? Cowgirls were tough. Well, dammit, she wasn’t a cowgirl. Not anymore. Not for a long time. Cass continued to rest her hot forehead against the cool glass.
She’d left the ranch behind ten years ago. With dreams of making her mark, she’d chased life in the big city, where stars in the night sky were outshone by light from skyscraper windows, and the rumble of traffic sounded like far-off thunder.
Ranch life was hard. Early mornings. Late nights. Worrying about the weather—searing heat, freezing cold, too much rain or not enough. Early frosts. Diseases that could wipe out a herd in a heartbeat. Rodeo was even harder. Her dad had loved the rodeo. She had, too, once upon a time when she was a little girl insulated from the reality of it all.
Cass did not want to go home. She didn’t want to say goodbye to the man against whom she measured every boyfriend. Even hurting him as she had, and regardless of his disappointment in the choices she made, he had continued to love her. And now her dad was gone.
She squared her shoulders and decided she needed to go to bed, despite the allure of another martini. Or a bottle of whiskey. Not that it would help. Booze wouldn’t touch the ache in her heart, wouldn’t numb the pain like a shot of Novocain administered to an abscessed tooth. That’s what her heart felt like. A deep, throbbing abscess full of decay and vile selfishness. She hadn’t been back home for a year. And now it was too late.
She reconsidered getting another drink. Or ordering a bottle from room service. She knew that wasn’t the answer. Plus, there were other drawbacks. Fighting the crowd at the airport and dealing with things at home while nursing a hangover just didn’t appeal.
Cass turned —and buried her nose in a starched white shirt.