When Last We Loved Read Online Free Page A

“Take a good look around you, Hoyt,” she ordered. He glanced lazily at the knife-nicked counters, the rickety table, the peeling wallpaper, and dismissed them as unimportant. “Don't you ever wake up in the middle of the night and wonder how you got mixed up with— with a dirt farmer's daughter?” The pain of what she had to say was etched in her eyes. “It's your turn to face facts, Hoyt. I'm nothing but a common sodbuster who's never going to amount— ”
    “Stop it!” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. “Who's feeding you these crazy notions?”
    “Nobody has said a word, I swear it.” Cassie blinked away the tears. Why did he insist on making this so damned difficult for her? “You're the finest man I've ever known, and I'll go to my grave cherishing the memory of what we had here. But I'm smart enough to know a bottle of champagne from a jug of home brew when I see it. There's only one place we're equal, Hoyt, and that's just not enough for me.”
    “Just when you think you've heard them all... ” Hoyt shook his head. “What in hell does that have to do with us?”
    “Plenty. Ask yourself what kind of a future is in store for us, Hoyt. Think about it honestly. I have.” Cassie knew what she was talking about. The grim vision had tormented her day and night, nicking away at the remnants of her pride.
    “This hasn't been an easy decision for me to make. I... ” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat to regain control. “Money isn't the only thing that makes you a wealthy person, Hoyt. Your life is rich with experiences and freedoms and opportunities that I've only read about in books or heard about secondhand. I'm just a tenant-farmer's daughter who's lived in the shadows of life. Why, I've never even been fifty miles from home!”
    “So I wear the blame for an accident of birth?” His gaze narrowed, accusing her in return.
    “Of course not!” She met his cynical stare. “Before I ever met you, I had a goal, a dream. And that dream was all I had to cling to when my father died, or when the plow broke down for the umpteenth time, or when the doctor said my mother wouldn't recover.”
    She felt the color flood into her cheeks as she realized how inane all of this must seem to him. “I'm going to be a singer, Hoyt. I can finally see that there might be a little sunshine in my future, the freedom to earn my own rewards or make my own mistakes.”
    “I suppose the next thing you're going to say is that I'm your first mistake.” His sarcasm was meant to sting, and it did.
    “In some ways, yes— and in some ways, no. I shouldn't have slept with you— I know that now. This wouldn't be such a miserable chore if I hadn't.” She'd come this far already and she was going to finish. “But when you turned this farm around, you proved to me there's no such word as ‘impossible.’ You made me believe in myself, in my abilities.”
    “Let me continue helping you, then. You'll have everything you think you've missed, and then some.” His voice grew husky with desire. “More important, we'll be together.”
    The battering-ram truth of his proposition shattered the composure she'd struggled to maintain.
    “We wouldn't be together, Hoyt. I'd be stuck in Coyote Bend, waiting for you to decide when and whether we'd sleep together.” Stubborn pride propelled her on. The canyon-sized crack in her heart threatened to spread to her voice. “For the last time, I won't be your mistress. I won't let you tuck me away all safe and sound in this— this dirt pile, while you come and go as you please. I want more than that out of life— I'm entitled to more than that.”
    She wanted to reach out and stroke that rigid jawline, to touch him one more time. But she kept her hands balled into tight fists and pressed them to her sides.
    “Whether you're willing to admit it or not, the Diamond T empire is your first love, and I respect the fact that you have obligations to it. But I