When Last We Loved Read Online Free Page B

have obligations, too. And if I don't use my voice and whatever talent I have, something inside me will wither and die. I can't have it all, and that breaks my heart. But I have to go after what's best for me.”
    “It's been a long time since a woman has led me around by the nose.” He flashed his white teeth but the smile was humorless.
    “I wasn't stringing you along, Hoyt. But if it makes you feel better to believe that, go right ahead and believe it.” Cassie smiled at the idea. If anything, she'd been fooling herself. “We don't have enough in common to sustain the kind of relationship we both deserve. When the fire started dying, we'd be strangers, hating and blaming each other for a dead-end affair, when neither of us was really at fault.” The tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks.
    “Well, I guess you won't be using this to put a deposit on a place in town.” His mouth settled into a grim line and he pulled a yellow piece of paper out of the chest pocket of his chamois shirt. “Your severance pay.”
    “I don't want it,” she sobbed. “It would be like— like accepting blood money.”
    “You ungrateful little bitch!” Hoyt yanked her into the steel trap of his arms. “Measure this on the applause meter sometime.”
    Cassie reacted instinctively. She raised her petal-soft lips to meet his demanding ones. The salty taste of her tears mingled with their kiss. The smell and feel of him flooded her senses. She melted against his hard body and his hands found the pearlized snaps on her shirt
    Hoyt's mouth traveled a familiar path to her neck, igniting a brushfire that threatened to rage out of control when he nibbled at the sensitive hollow of her throat.
    “No, Hoyt, please!” Her strangled protest was barely audible. He ignored her softly whimpered plea and crushed her body against his. Cassie stopped straining against the prison bars of his hold and clasped her arms around his neck. It felt so right, so good...
    Hoyt released her abruptly and she stumbled backward.
    “I still don't know what you'll search for in Nashville that I can't put at your disposal right here, but I hope to hell you find it.” His face was void of emotion. He tossed the check onto the kitchen table and it floated across the chipped surface. Its Diamond T symbol was a taunting reminder that she was finally free, that she had nothing further to lose.
    A careless word, the wrong look— either would have detonated the charged silence as surely as a match dropped into a powder keg.
    Hoyt spun on his heel and left Cassie alone in the old house. She picked up the check and shredded it with trembling hands.
     
     

Chapter 3
    “GLO-ree HAL-lay-LEW-ya, brothers and sisters!”
    Cassie punched the radio dial, cutting off the jake-leg preacher in the middle of his sermon. She tuned in a station playing an Eddie Rabbit hit As she drove toward the better days promised in the pulsating song, a glimmer of excitement began to edge out her sadness.
    A dusty pink haze had colored the flat Texas horizon this morning when she'd carried the boxes packed with her belongings out of the dilapidated farmhouse. She'd studiously ignored the deep ruts in the front yard where Hoyt had always parked his Jeep. If she didn't notice them, she rationalized, she wouldn't hurt. Her strategy hadn't worked.
    The dark blanks of the shuttered windows reminded Cassie of the way Hoyt's eyes had accused her yesterday. She'd closed the door firmly and gone to the car to arrange the bulging cardboard cartons she'd used because she didn't own a suitcase.
    Her thick ebony hair was French braided off her face, trailing down her narrow back like an exaggerated exclamation point She'd pulled on a sleeveless cotton shirt in anticipation of the inevitable noon heat. Yellow streamers of sunshine bounced off the hood of her road-spattered automobile when she pulled onto the four-lane asphalt ribbon and headed east. Cassie rolled down her window and rested her arm on the