Cowgirls Don't Cry(122)

“Know what I never understood? Why Casper hated me so much in the first place.”


Joan drained her coffee and walked to the kitchen. Almost on automatic, she poured herself another cup, but it sat cooling untouched on the counter for several excruciating minutes while she stared out the front window.

Jessie followed her, a feeling of dread settling in her bones. “Joan? Is everything all right?”


“No. I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong it is. All of this.” She braced her hands on the counter in front of the sink. “Casper hated you because your bun-in-the-oven marriage to Luke reminded him of me. Of us.”


Okay. That was news. Luke had ever mentioned it. Or maybe Luke hadn’t known. “Yours was a shotgun wedding?”


“Yes. Are you shocked?”


Jessie had to tread lightly. This was the most Joan had ever opened up to her. “Yes. I am.”


“Because Casper ended up with someone like me?” Joan asked, not bothering to hide her petulance.

“No. The opposite. I can’t fathom how a woman like you ended up with a man like him.”


“You really are sweet,” Joan murmured. Then she sighed. “The truth is, at one time, Casper was considered quite a catch. He came from a good family. His future was set as part of the ranching McKays.

He was good-looking, charming, fun, wild as hell, but that bad boy side is always so appealing, isn’t it?

Why do women have this overwhelming desire to tame a bad boy? Then we’re shocked when that taming doesn’t happen. Or worse, when it does stick we lament the man they used to be.”


Joan seemed lost in thought so Jessie stayed quiet. But she hadn’t seen Luke as the bad boy to tame.

Brandt was the polar opposite of a bad boy, so it wasn’t a female mindset she understood, but she’d seen friends drawn to that type of man again and again and it rarely ended well.

“Anyway, I wasn’t particularly pretty. I wasn’t particularly charming. I wasn’t particularly clever. I was actually pretty plain. I knew plain, shy and boring would never catch the eye of a dynamic man like him. And I wanted him more than anything on earth.”


As hard as she tried, Jessie couldn’t make the connection between that man Joan was describing and the Casper she knew.

“Casper had half a dozen girls on the string at any given time. So I became the type of girl he couldn’t resist.” She paused for effect. “Easy. He’d come to me after his pretty, clever, charming little girlfriends wouldn’t put out. He came to me often because I’d do anything in bed he wanted. Any time, any place.

“This went on for about six months. At first I believed I could get him to fall for me. That our bedroom romps would make him like me. Would make him willing to have me on his arm in public, instead of just his dirty little bedroom secret. I dreamed he’d take me dancing. Or out for dinner. But like most nineteen-year-old girls, I was na?ve. I’d heard a rumor from my friends that Casper was getting serious with a woman from Spearfish. One night I snuck into his favorite bar and watched them. She was one of those beautiful blondes, curvy body, perfect face, life of the party. She was everything I wasn’t. I knew Casper was head over heels in love with her. I knew after the first time he took her to bed I’d never see him again.”


Jessie held her breath.

“So I lied. I told my father I was pregnant. Told him I’d been sneaking around with Casper McKay for months. My father went directly to Jed McKay and demanded his son do the right thing and marry me.”