My Dearest Cal Read online

  That’s how the letter that caught Marilou Stockton’s eye began. As a postal worker in the dead-letter office, she knew she shouldn’t read more of this grandmother’s heart-rending missive, yet one glance convinced her she had to seek out the writer’s little grandson.

  But Cal Rivers was no child! He was a man - a sexy, stubborn rancher with no intention of honorably mending his fences. As far as Marilou could tell, all of Cal’s intentions were stricly dishonorable…and aimed at her! While his anger might be valid, she knew there was more to life than holding grudges. There was forgiveness…and love.

  Previously published.

  Sherryl Woods

  My Dearest Cal

  For Craig, Dianne, Michael and Kelly

  for all the holiday family dinners and for the insight into

  postal regulations. For Ken, Eddie, Matda, Fred and all the rest,

  who brighten the endless time an author seems to spend at the

  mailbox.And especially for Nona, with thanks for sharing your

  love of horses with me and in memory

  of your beloved and gallant Bolshoi.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Willow Brook Road by Sherryl Woods

  Chapter One

  April showers, Marilou thought with a disgusted sniff. She splashed through an ankle-deep puddle on her way to work. At this rate the poor May flowers would drown. She sneezed and shivered as a chilly Thursday morning wind scooped up the hem of her raincoat and lifted it just high enough to allow the rain to drench her new red skirt. Drown, hell. They’d probably freeze first.

  It must be warm and sunny someplace right now, she thought longingly as she trudged across the parking lot toward her office. Wherever it was, she would give anything to be there. Tahiti. Hawaii. Even the Sahara. It didn’t much matter as long as it was dry. And hot. The winter in Atlanta had been the pits. It was now one week into the dreariest, wettest April on record. Judging from the endless gray sky, spring obviously wasn’t going to be much of an improvement.

  A few minutes later, still sneezing and blowing her nose, Marilou settled into her cubbyhole in the U.S. Postal Service’s Dead Letter Office and grimly faced the stacks of unopened mail that had gone astray in the Southeast. Whole shelves around her held everything from lost keys to movie reels, all silent testimony to the carelessness of people in a hurry. A red bikini top dangled from a hook—the bottom had vanished. One of her co-workers had hung the provocative garment where he could see it as he worked. She had a hunch Matt thoroughly enjoyed imagining the woman who’d been wearing it and the no doubt fascinating story behind its loss and subsequent discovery in some corner mailbox.

  Normally Marilou started the day with enthusiasm, liking the challenge of reuniting letters and parcels with the intended recipients. She’d only been at it a little more than a year and a half, but so far she’d never found it tedious. It was a little like she imagined detective work would be. Getting treasured photos or a favorite teddy bear back to its rightful owner required the same kind of ingenuity and persistence it took to track missing persons or lost heirs. It was also emotionally rewarding, even if the person never knew about her involvement. Once in a while, like the time she’d gotten several thousand dollars worth of stock certificates back where they belonged, she’d received letters of praise and heartfelt thanks. This wasn’t the adventurous life she’d once envisioned for herself, but it was good.

  Usually, she amended with a sigh.

  Today, however, with her shoes soaked again and her feet icy cold, she was in no mood to be sympathetic to the people who’d forgotten to put return addresses on their envelopes. She was tired of trying to decipher ink that had run after getting drenched by rain. She was out of patience with people who stuck their bills in backward so that the company address wasn’t visible. And she’d had it up to her stuffed nose with idiots who figured they’d just send off their tax forms with no postage. As a protest against the IRS, it was useless. The forms went back to the sender, once she’d wasted half a day tracking them down. All in all, she felt like throwing the whole mess from her desk straight into the shredder, but she was too darned conscientious.

  She shivered, then took one last sip of hot coffee before reaching for the one envelope that showed any promise. Addressed by a seemingly shaky hand to a Mr. Cal Rivers, it had been sent to an address in Florida that apparently didn’t exist. “No such address” had been stamped emphatically across the front and again on the back.

  Palm Tree Lane. Oh, how she liked the sound of that. Where there were palm trees, there was probably sunshine. Maybe even temperatures above the freeze-your-butt variety. Honest-to-gosh spring temperatures. She paused a minute to savor the very idea of lying on some sun-kissed stretch of sand, baking until she could actually breathe again.

  When she finally got around to opening the letter, she was already feeling better just for having taken that brief mental vacation. But as she quickly scanned the thick vellum pages, filled with their crimped scrawl of words, her spirits sank once more. There was no return address anywhere. And although she wasn’t supposed to read the contents, one or two phrases caught her eye—“Never forget that I love you…so sorry we’ve never had a chance to get to know each other…I’m dying now…”

  Oh, my God. Dying! Knowing it was against every rule, Marilou went back to the beginning. “My dearest Cal…”

  Now that she knew the ending, every word was so poignant, it made her want to weep. It seemed to be a farewell letter from a grandmother to a grandson she’d never met. Filled with longing and regrets, it broke Marilou’s heart. The terrible, unexpected loss of her own parents was still new and raw, even after nearly eighteen months. There had been so many things left unsaid between them, so many arguments that would never be resolved. She ached at the thought that some little boy might have family he didn’t even know about. There had to be a way to see that this letter reached him, that the family was reunited before it was too late.

  Filled with determination, she hunted through the pile of phone books from every state in the region until she found the one she wanted. Please, just this once, let it be easy, she thought as she flipped through the pages to the Rs. Let this kid be named after his father. Or at the very least, let there not be twenty-five listings for Rivers. Rivas. Rivero—at least fifty of them. Then she found it. Rivers, Cal. Two-twenty-nine Palm Lane. Not Palm Tree Lane. What was the big deal? she thought indignantly. Some fool mailman couldn’t figure out what the dear old woman meant?

  Marilou reached for the phone, punched in the area code and number, only to hear the dreaded sound that always preceded some recorded message. With a sinking sensation, she anticipated this one.

  “…Has been disconnected.” Of course. No new number. Just disconnected.

  She flipped back through the directory for the phone number of the local post office, called and asked if there was any record of a Cal Rivers leaving a forwarding address.

  “It’s not in the computer,” the disinterested clerk told her eventually.

  “Maybe it just expired. There should be a record…”

  “I’m telling you it’s not in here. For all I know it was never in here.”

  “Couldn’t you…”

  “Lady, I don’t have all day to hunt for things that don’t exist.”
>
  “What about the carrier for that route? Maybe he’d remember.”

  “That’s probably Priscilla.”

  “Could I speak to her?”

  “She’s off today,” the clerk said in a tone that ended any further discussion.

  “Thanks for your help,” Marilou said sarcastically into the already-dead connection. Apparently sunshine wasn’t a guaranteed panacea for the ill tempers of the world.

  She put the letter aside and went through the remaining stack of mail. One after another she was able to identify either sender or recipient and get the mail back on track. Those that were hopeless, actually the greatest percentage, went into the shredder. But even as she efficiently handled her usual hundreds of letters, that one brief note from Cal Rivers’ grandmother began to haunt her.

  According to regulations she was supposed to dispose of the letter since her search for sender and recipient had been unsuccessful. Only when there was something of value was the post office required to hold it for a year. In her mind, though, there really was something of value—a link to family, a cry for forgiveness. It might not have a dollar value, but to her way of thinking there was nothing more important. She couldn’t bring herself to throw the letter away.

  She understood that her obsession had everything to do with those last few days with her parents, days clouded with petty arguments and misunderstandings. When they’d left on their vacation, tensions had been running high. Marilou was their much-loved and overly protected only daughter. They hadn’t wanted her to take off for Europe for a year without a job, without friends. Always skeptical that her photography was a sensible career choice, they’d been certain that she’d starve while trying to sell the pictures she shot on her travels. After a lifetime of secure government service, the concept of free-lancing was beyond them. Nothing she’d said had been able to persuade them that the time was right for a few risks, for one glorious post-college adventure before settling down.

  With the last bitter argument still fresh in her mind, Marilou had been devastated by the news that they’d been involved in a head-on collision with a stolen car filled with teenagers on a joyride. Her father had been killed outright. Her mother had lingered on for several horrifying weeks, never regaining consciousness.

  In the emotional aftermath of the tragedy and in an attempt to cheat fate, she had resigned herself to staying as safe as her parents had wanted. The bribe hadn’t worked, her mother had died anyway. When the family savings had been depleted by the exorbitant medical bills, and when the last of her energy was drained, the civil service job had been waiting for her, thanks to her father’s career with the post office and his compassionate supervisor. She told herself she should be grateful to have it.

  With an odd sort of lethargy, Marilou had settled down to a routine, but the longing for adventure, for a chance to use her photographic skills for more than holiday snapshots had never quite gone away. Every foreign stamp that crossed her desk stirred all of the old dreams of travel. Every letter gone astray reminded her of the mysteries that awaited. The plea for forgiveness from Cal Rivers’ grandmother tapped into every one of her secret longings and regrets.

  That night when a passing bus hit a giant puddle and soaked her from head to toe, she made up her mind. She had weeks of vacation coming. She had a healthy savings account again. She had a cold. And, most of all, she had those unfulfilled dreams.

  So, she decided impulsively, she was going to Florida in search of Mr. Cal Rivers and his little boy. That child probably needed a grandmother as desperately as that poor dying lady needed to be in touch with him. Marilou might not be able to get her own family back, but maybe she could give him his. If she got a taste of adventure along the way, so much the better.

  * * *

  “Crazy, obstinate, mule-headed son of a bitch! Get in here. What kind of genes do you have anyway? Any other fool would be dancing and prancing to get a chance to be with that gorgeous lady in there. That little gal’s folks paid a pretty penny for you to do your stuff, so get on with it.”

  “I think you’re going about this all wrong,” Cal Rivers said to the bowlegged man who barely reached to shoulder height next to his own six foot two. “How would you feel if some man came along and threw you into a cold, sterile room with a total stranger and told you to get to it, then stood by watching?”

  Chaney dragged a bright red bandanna from his pocket and wiped the sweat off his leathery face. He grinned. “At my age, I’d be damned glad of the chance. ‘Cept for the watching, of course. I don’t go in for none of that kinky stuff.”

  Cal laughed. “Come to think of it, you probably would, you old reprobate. Your courting technique doesn’t seem to appeal to your four-legged friend, though.”

  “Son, I know more about what appeals to horseflesh than you will if you stick around here for the next forty years. Devil’s Magic is as ornery and cussed as they come. Ain’t a danged thing I can do if this critter’s got it into his head to take the day off.”

  He glared at the huge black horse in disgust. “Ain’t a stallion in that barn I don’t understand, ‘cept for this one. If you ask me, winning all them races went to his head. Even that highfalutin stud you brought back from England ain’t as difficult as he is.”

  A faintly critical meow sounded from the corner, where a fat marmalade cat regarded them haughtily. Wherever Devil’s Magic went, that cat was sure to be close by. According to Chaney, the only way to get the horse into a trailer was to send the cat in ahead. At the sound of yet another meow, Devil’s Magic’s ears pricked up. As if he’d been waiting for a cue, he suddenly turned his attention to business. It appeared that the mare was just what he’d been looking for all his life, after all. With any luck, Mrs. Henry Robert Dolan’s prized Thoroughbred mare would catch and eleven months from now would drop a foal sired by one of the biggest money winners in Florida racing history.

  It went against Cal’s grain to stand by and watch Chaney do most of the work, but owning a horse-breeding operation was still new to him. He’d been raised in Texas, but about as far from horses as a man could get. The lack of knowledge wasn’t something that worried him, though. As he had with every business he’d ever bought he’d hired himself one of the best men he could find to run it with him. Chaney Jackson had a reputation as an intuitive, no-nonsense manager. He had set ideas about everything from feed to barn design, ideas his previous boss hadn’t given him the rein or money to implement. Cal was giving him both, and they’d improved both the buildings and the paddocks so much within the first three months that owners had been quick to move horses into the new barns.

  Once he’d taken care of the facilities, Cal had plunged into learning everything he could about Thoroughbred breeding and pedigrees, going straight back to the introduction of Arabian stock into England. The General Stud Book had become his bible. From the first, he was anticipating that day down the road when he’d have a string of the finest Thoroughbred stallions standing at stud. Devil’s Magic was at the center of his plans. If everything came together as he expected, by then the business would be ripe for a takeover and he would be bored again.

  It never took long for the restlessness to settle in. He was a quick learner and an instinctive entrepreneur. If he’d had more patience and more ambition, he’d be a billionaire by now, head of some international conglomerate and regularly quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Instead he’d been willing to settle for knowing that he had a few million in the bank, give or take the money he’d set aside to get Silver River Stables on its feet. It was more than enough to give him his freedom whenever he chose to take it.

  “Why’d you buy this place anyway?” Chaney asked later that night, when they’d settled down on the porch of the graceful farmhouse that sat amidst acres of some of the most beautiful horse country in Ocala, Florida. The night air was cool and rich with the scent of grass and horses, faintly reminiscent of some of those special days in his youth when his father had let him go alon
g with him on fruitless, humiliating job-hunting trips to ranches across Texas, ranches owned by men in the oil business who hadn’t lost their shirts the way Cal’s daddy had.

  “You don’t know a danged thing about horses, that’s for sure,” Chaney added with the bluntness Cal had come to admire. It was the first time, though, the older man had let himself ask a personal question, though Cal had no doubt at all the question had been nagging at him for months now. “All them books and magazines you read don’t make up for doing. Did you ever see a horse up close before you signed the papers to take over here?”

  Cal sipped on a beer and stared into the dwindling light as he considered the truth of Chaney’s statement and his understandable bafflement. He supposed his decision to buy a Thoroughbred stud farm did seem odd to a man like Chaney who’d spent his whole life around horses and understood that world the way Cal knew about investing and making money. Unfortunately he didn’t have an answer that made much sense. He’d been drawn to this place the first time he’d seen it. He hadn’t been able to explain it then and he still couldn’t. He settled for evasion.

  “I picked a winner once at Santa Anita,” he said. “A real long shot. Paid pretty decent money. I guess I got hooked.”

  Chaney snorted with disgust. “Big deal. I’ve picked a bundle of surefire winners. Don’t have to mean I know diddly about breeding.”

  “But you do,” Cal noted matter-of-factly.

  “I do, indeed.”

  “Which is why I need you.”

  “That’s the danged truth. I still don’t get it, though. This operation didn’t come cheap, even the way they’d been lettin’ it go. If you got enough money to buy this place and that new stallion you picked up over in England, you could do just about anything you wanted to. There’s things a whole lot less risky than breeding race horses.”

  “And I’ve already done most of ’em,” Cal said. “Every one of them required that I sit indoors all day long. No matter what the business, it was getting to be dull and predictable. I was driving around out here one day, thinking about the future, when I saw this place was for sale. I decided a good risk was just what I was looking for.”