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all.
    â€œCrying won’t help.”
    â€œI’ve just lost my husband,” Gussie wailed into her tissue. “And I adored him!”
    That might have been true, but it seemed to Bess that all the affection was on her father’s side. Frank Samson had worshipped Gussie, and Bess imagined that Gussie’s demands for bigger and better status symbols had led her desperate father to one last gamble. But it had failed. She shook her head. Her poor mother. Gussie was a butterfly. She should have married a stronger man than her father, a man who could have controlled her wild spending.
    â€œHow could he do this to us?” Gussie asked tearfully. “How could he destroy us?”
    â€œI’m sure he didn’t mean to.”
    â€œSilly, stupid man,” came the harsh reply, and the veneer of suffering was eclipsed for a second by sheer, cruel rage. “We had friends and social standing. And now we’re disgraced because he lost his head over a bad investment! He didn’t have to kill himself!”
    Bess stared at her mother. “Probably he wasn’t thinking clearly. He knew he’d lost everything, and so had the other investors.”
    â€œI’ll never believe that your father would do anything dishonest, even to make more money,” Gussie said haughtily.
    â€œHe didn’t do it on purpose,” Bess said, feeling the pain of losing her father all over again, just by having to discuss what had caused his suicide. “He was taken in, just like the others. What made it so much worse was that he talked most of the investors into going along with him.” She stared at her tearful mother. “You didn’t know that it was a bogus company, did you?”
    Gussie stared at her curiously. “No. Of course not.” She started weeping again. “I simply must have the doctor. Do call him for me, darling.”
    â€œMother, you’ve had the doctor. He can’t do anything else.”
    â€œWell, then, get me those tranquillizers, darling. I’ll take another.”
    â€œYou’ve had three already.”
    â€œI’ll take another,” Gussie said firmly. “Fetch them.”
    Just for an instant Bess thought of saying no, or telling her mother to fetch them herself. But her tender heart wouldn’t let her. She couldn’t be that cruel to a stranger, much less her own grieving mother. But as she rose to do what she was asked, she could see that she was going to end up an unpaid servant if she didn’t do something quick. But what? How could she walk out on Gussie now? She didn’t have a brother or a sister; there was only herself to handle things. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d felt so alone. Her poor father—at least he was out of it. She only wished she didn’t feel so numb. She’d loved him, in her way. But she couldn’t even cry for him. Gussie was doing enough of that for both of them anyway.
    She went to bed much later, but she didn’t sleep. The past couple of days had been nightmarish. If it hadn’t been for Cade, she didn’t know how she and Gussie would have managed at all. And there was still the funeral to get through tomorrow.
    Her thoughts drifted back through layers of time to the last day Cade had been teaching her how to ride. He’d grown impatient with her attempts to flirt, and everything had come to a head all too quickly.
    He’d caught her around the waist with a strength that frightened her and tossed her down on her back into a clean stack of hay. She’d lain there, her mind confused, while he stared down at her from his formidable height, his dark eyes glittering angrily. Her tank top had fallen off one smooth shoulder, and it was there that his attention wandered. He looked at her blatantly, letting his gaze go over her full breasts and down her flat stomach to the long, elegant length of her legs in their tight denim