Authors: Joanne Kennedy
They didn’t leave the hospital until well after midnight. Kelsey and Mike fell asleep in the backseat, snuggled together beside Katie’s car seat. They’d been holding hands, Kelsey’s head resting on Mike’s shoulder. It had actually made Sarah smile. Maybe her heart was thawing a little where Mike was concerned.
She and Lane made small talk on the way back to the ranch, mostly about Kelsey. Sarah filled him in on what the doctor had said. It wasn’t a stroke, just an especially severe migraine that had tightened up some capillaries. The doctor gave her migraine medication, much to Sarah’s satisfaction, and ordered her to take it. Lane actually seemed to care, which would have warmed her heart if she’d been able to forget about the horse. How had he ended up with Flash’s colt? Had he been the buyer, the person who put the last nail in the coffin of her family’s ruined life? She counted surreptitiously on her fingers. He was six years older than her, so that would have made him twenty-one when it all happened.
It could easily have been him.
He pulled the Malibu to a stop outside the Love Nest. She opened her door, then closed it again. She’d never been so emotionally exhausted, but there was no way she could sleep until she found out if Lane had bought Flash.
She didn’t know what she’d do with the information. She knew the buyer shouldn’t bear the blame for the loss of the ranch. But all her life, she’d nursed a burning resentment toward the person who had profited from her family’s misfortune.
She turned toward him, bending one leg and tucking it beneath her. There was no moon tonight, so she could barely see his face.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she asked. “That bought Flash.”
“Yes.”
“You stole him. You know that, right?”
“I put up my hand. It’s not my fault nobody else did. I would have paid more if anyone else had bid.” He reached over and stroked her arm. “What happened to your family wasn’t my fault.”
She knew he was right. But blaming the shadowy buyer had always been easier than blaming herself. It had been up to her to help the family recover from the perfect storm of disaster that had struck them when they least expected it. And she had failed.
“If nobody had bid, I could have gotten him back,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I could have worked with him more, settled him down, taken him to the rodeo a few times. We could have gotten triple that price for him. I just needed a little time to get over things.”
“Do you really think anyone would have let you do that?” he asked. “You were a kid, Sarah. From what I heard, they wouldn’t even let anyone open the trailer.”
“They,” she said bitterly. “There was no
they.
It was my mother that locked him in there.”
“Look, Sarah, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anything about all this when I bought the horse.”
“Just like you didn’t know Two Shot didn’t have a doctor,” she mumbled.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything,” she said. “It’s how you operate. You say you like the dust and dirt, but you don’t know what it’s really like. So you just ignore the reality and tell yourself you’re one of us just because you can ride a horse and get some dirt under your nails once in a while.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not how it is.”
“Then how is it? You didn’t think about the fact that someone was depending on the sale, just like it never occurred to you that people in Two Shot had to drive an hour for medical care.”
“Forty-two minutes,” he said. “I’m sorry, Sarah.”
“Sorry won’t bring back Roy,” she said. “He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They didn’t know what to do for him. Sorry won’t bring back the ranch, either. The bank took it when we couldn’t pay the mortgage. And it won’t bring back my mother, who drank herself to death and left me and my sister alone, in that damn gossip-ridden town, with everyone pointing their fingers and judging us.” She sniffed. “And it won’t get me back my horse. Dammit, I loved him, Lane. I was the only one who could ride him, you know that? And he raced for me. He went all out, just for me.”
To her horror, she realized she was crying, tears streaming down her face.
“What happened to Flash?” she asked.
“I had him about five years,” he said. “He got colic. He’s gone.”
She knew it. She’d known the horse she’d worked with yesterday couldn’t be Flash. He’d been too pure, too clean. When she’d worked Flash, she’d felt his secrets like a tangle of wires in his head, complex and impenetrable. The horse she’d worked yesterday was a blank slate. It was as if someone had taken Flash and wiped his mind clear of whatever was wrong with him.
She glanced out the window, the long span of sage and rock blurring as the tears tried to come back. She’d known it couldn’t be Flash. But some little light had burned on in the depths of her heart, hoping it was her horse.
***
Lane watched Sarah struggle to control her emotions. Why couldn’t she just cry? Why did she have to be so strong all the time? She’d had a hard life. But why did she have to hold herself so firmly in check when she was with a man who…
Who loved her. He didn’t want to finish that thought, but the truth wasn’t something he could deny anymore. He loved her, and she thought he’d destroyed her life.
Great. This might be the one fight he couldn’t win.
“I’m sorry, Sarah. I wish—I didn’t know. Nobody bid on the horse. For all I knew, he had nowhere to go. You know where those horses end up when nobody wants them.”
She looked away and he knew he’d struck a nerve. But he didn’t want to hurt her. He wasn’t here to make her face facts; he was here to help her any way he could.
“The horse you worked yesterday is named Cinnamon Chrome.”
“Cinnamon Chrome,” she muttered. “Son of Coppertone Flash.”
He nodded. “We call him Cinn, and believe me, it fits. He’s got the devil in him, but you were great with him.” He paused. “He’s yours if you stay.”
“Stay?” She looked at him like he’d suggested she go get a knife and stab herself. “
Stay?
”
“Sure.” He pretended he didn’t notice the pallor that had washed over her face, followed by a flood of color that made him wonder if she was going to explode like a human volcano. “Trevor can do ground work, but he can’t ride.”
She turned to him suddenly as if she’d just woken from a deep sleep.
“Why does he work for you?”
“He doesn’t just work for me. He owns half the operation. That’s why it’s called the LT. Lane, Trevor.”
“You gave him half your land?”
“Not the land. The operation. The cattle, and the horse revenues.”
“Why?”
“Because I owe him.” Now it was his turn to stare moodily out the window. “The night Trevor had that accident, he and I were partying together. I knew he was too drunk to drive, but I was too busy talking some buckle bunny into my bed to stop him.”
“That doesn’t make you responsible.”
“Friends look out for each other. And I didn’t. He’d be his old self today if I hadn’t let him walk out that door.” He turned to look at her. “How come you take care of your sister like you do?”
“Same thing.” She fooled with a button on her shirt, avoiding his eyes. “After Roy died, I went off to college. Left her with Mama and nobody to take care of her.” She heaved a heavy sigh and he wondered how those slim shoulders supported so much weight. “She turned to Mike, and when he left—I thought maybe I could make up for the way I’d left her.”
“She seems to be doing okay now,” he said.
“No thanks to me. I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”
“Who hasn’t? Maybe you ought to stop trying to fix the past and take care of yourself.”
A faint smile gave her face a little of its old glow. “Maybe you should too.”
“We could do it together. I’m serious. Come work at the ranch. If you could ride that hellion of a stallion, you can ride anything. Cinn would be your signing bonus.”
It was a ridiculously generous offer, and judging by her expression, she knew it. But just when he thought she might say yes, she looked away. He caught the glimmer of a tear on her lower lashes.
“Lane, you don’t understand. I can’t.”
She was right. He didn’t understand. Something was still holding her back—some hidden fear he hadn’t found yet.
“So where are you going to go?”
She looked over at the darkened Love Nest.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll think of something.” She faced him, and a small spark of the old Sarah leapt in her eyes. “It’s not really your concern, okay?”
“No, it’s not. But I want it to be.”
She started to speak, but he held up one hand in a “stop” gesture.
“Look, I know that’s the last thing you want right now. But I want to help.”
“Then leave me alone.”
He took a deep breath. “Actually, I can do that. I need to get on the road and build up some points if I’m going to make the finals this year anyway. Frankly, I should have gone to Amarillo. And then—then you made me want to stay.”
He remembered the softness of her skin in the dark, the glow of her eyes when he made love to her, and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. She looked up at him and there was no trace of that passion in her eyes now. She was still processing the fact that he’d been the man who bought Flash. He’d lost her for good, all because of something he’d done ten years earlier.
All he’d done was buy a horse. Anyone would have done it. But she was right—it had never occurred to him to wonder about Roy’s family, or the fact that his good fortune was someone else’s disaster.
And she was right about another thing. He liked playing cowboy, but he didn’t know a damn thing about what that life was really like. He hung out with the young guys and shared their carefree hours at the rodeo, but when they got in their trucks and went home to their wives, with or without prize money, he really had no idea what happened. He might as well be his brother, perched on his leather throne looking down on the streets of Casper. He didn’t know a damn thing about real life, any more than his brother did.
“I’ll be on the road for a week, maybe two,” he finally said. “Hell, I could stay out for three. Trevor can handle things here. So you’re welcome to stay in the cabin a while.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Sarah, you’ve had a shock. I hate to think of you hitting the road like this.”
“Like what?” She shoved out her chin, trying to look tough.
“Like a basket case.” She shot him a dirty look, but she couldn’t deny it was true. “Stay as long as you need to. Take a little time to think. A couple days, a couple weeks… Whatever you need.”
She looked from him to the window, then back at the man. She really didn’t have any place to go, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
“I can take care of myself,” she said. “Don’t do me any favors.”
“Hitting the road isn’t doing a favor for most women.” He did his best to resurrect his usual cocky grin. “Most of ’em want me to stick around.”
She didn’t answer and he opened the car door. “Stay, Sarah. At least for today, tomorrow, as long as it takes to work things out. And if you’re still here when I get back, the job offer’s open.”
“I’ll be gone,” she said as he opened the door. “I might stay the night. I need to make some plans. But you can come back after that. And you won’t hear from me again.”
***
Sarah woke in the morning with an emotional hangover. She felt drained, as if someone had wrung out her heart and left just a shriveled husk behind.
The day before had been like the world’s wildest bronc ride. She’d had that magical moment of reunion with the horse she’d thought was Flash. Then the near-disaster with Kelsey, and the realization of her own shortcomings. And to top it off, she’d discovered that the man she—loved, maybe—was the villain in the life story she’d constructed to cope with her own shortcomings.
She felt like she’d been dropped in the dirt by the ultimate bucking horse. She could feel the fall in her bones; it was like she was bruised right down to her soul.
Rifling through the unfamiliar cupboards, she finally found a coffee cup. Like the rest of the cabin’s meager supply of dishes, it was made of heavy white china decorated with ranch brands and rodeo scenes. She poured herself a cup of the coffee she’d set brewing the night before and took a long sip while she pondered her future.
At least her lack of material goods made her mobile. As she headed for the front porch, she started to formulate a plan. She’d stay at Kelsey’s for a while. Mike would just have to put up with her, because she needed to regroup, redesign, and restore her life. Getting fired from Carrigan wouldn’t help her professional reputation any, but she’d only been there a few months. Maybe if she just left the job off her resume entirely…
Kind of like she’d left any reference to Two Shot out of her conversations about her past. Yeah, that had worked out just great.
She leaned against the log wall and scanned the prairie, drinking in the long, featureless vista as she sipped her coffee. Maybe it was time to stop the sins of omission and face the truth. It wasn’t like the truth was so terrible. She’d gone from relative poverty to success in the business world. That was something to be proud of, right? Anyone could be born to success. It took a special kind of determination to claw your way up from poverty. She was a small-town girl who’d made good—or at least that’s what she’d been yesterday.
Today, she was a small-town girl who’d failed. She was right back where she’d started—in Two Shot country. And she could moan and cuss about that all she wanted, but the truth was, it was time to start clawing her way to success again.
The view from the porch was bleak, just a flat plain scattered with rocks and sage, but the longer Sarah looked the more she felt like she belonged here. This was the landscape she’d grown up with. The subtle greens and golds broken by gold and gray rocks and pale, parched earth were the colors of home.
It was a good day for horses, the kind of day she’d loved as a girl. The heat of the sun was tempered by a gentle, lilting breeze, just enough to cool the skin without raising dust. The Wyoming sky was a hard gemstone blue, and the grass glistened like gold tinsel. It would be a perfect day to spend with Flash Junior. What had Lane called him? Cinnamon Chrome. Cinn.
She squinted at the dusty, disreputable car parked in the drive, with all her earthly possessions jammed inside. She was in transit, moving from her old life to something new and unknown. This wasn’t the destination she had in mind, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t pause and rest, let herself out to play like a dog taking a roadside break on a long car trip.
She checked her watch, thinking of Roy as she always did when she looked at the no-frills Timex with its bold, simple numbers. It was early, not even six yet. She was hungry, and she didn’t have the energy to cook. In any other town, she’d have found a diner and gone for breakfast.
She took a long sip of coffee and set the empty cup on the porch rail, glancing down at the watch again. Her stepfather would have told her to stick it out in town, force them to respect her. He would have been ashamed of the way she’d turned tail and run. Gentle as he was, he’d had a core of iron, and he’d wanted Sarah to have that inner steel too.
“All right, Roy,” she muttered, stepping off the porch and heading for the car. She didn’t know for sure what her future held, but she knew she was going to be in Two Shot for a while if she stayed with Kelsey. Sooner or later, she’d have to tackle Suze and her customers. She might as well do it now.
The trip to town went far too fast. Parking spaces were in surprisingly short supply, and she was forced to pull in almost two blocks from the diner and walk. Her experience the other day had grown in her mind to the point where she fully expected to hear hissing from the few cars that passed by, but everyone was just going about their business.
She swung into the diner and slid into a booth near the door, glancing around the room. Joe was at the counter again, but it was early and only two members of the poker gang sat in the corner booth. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to her, so she slid the menu out from behind the napkin holder and perused the familiar offerings.
“Can I get you something? Coffee to start?” Sarah looked up and was relieved to see that Suze wasn’t her waitress this time. Instead, a white-aproned teenager stood over her. The girl had lovely clear skin and flushed cheeks, but she was tall and raw-boned, a farm-girl type clearly going through an awkward stage, and her thick wire-framed glasses didn’t help. Judging from the way she held the order pad just inches from her nose, they didn’t do her much good.
“Cheese omelet,” Sarah said. “And does Eddie still make those home fries with onions and peppers?”
“Yup. Home-style potatoes.” The girl scribbled down the order with her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth. “Something to drink?”
“Coffee and a small orange juice, please.”
“Okay.” The girl lowered the order pad but didn’t leave the table. She stood over Sarah, shifting awkwardly from one foot to another.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” she finally said. “The girl who got that scholarship and left.”
Sarah swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, and nodded. For a little while there she’d thought she might get through breakfast without any complications, but clearly her reputation had preceded her.
She met the girl’s eyes, which wasn’t easy since they were flicking nervously around the room, lighting on everything but Sarah. They looked foggy and misshapen behind the thick glasses. “Yes, I did.”
To her surprise, the girl slid into the booth across from her and leaned forward eagerly. “I want to go too,” she said, clasping her hands together. “I want to leave so bad.”
Sarah looked again and saw past the tawdry uniform, the unkempt hair tumbling out of a tightly rubber-banded bun, and the thick glasses. She caught a glimpse of her old self in the girl’s breathless anticipation of a world full of wonders beyond Two Shot.
“How are your grades?”
“They’re good. I’d have straight As if it wasn’t for Phys Ed.” She made a wry face and Sarah was reminded of Carol Burnett, only this girl wasn’t playing her awkwardness for laughs. “I got a C in it last semester. We did volleyball, and I’m scared of the ball. Same thing with basketball. I try to catch it, but I flinch and then it’s gone. Or it hits me.” She put a hand to her chest as if remembering the ball’s last assault.
Sarah hadn’t been much for team sports either, but there had been other options that worked for her.
“Have you tried track?”
The girl sighed and gazed out the window, her cheeks flushing again. “My legs get tangled up and I fall down.”
Sarah suppressed a smile. The girl was long-limbed as a colt, and apparently just as clumsy. “It’ll change. You’re going to be pretty when you grow up.”
“Oh, no.” The girl’s blush looked almost painful now as it suffused her neck and chest. “I’m homely, and my eyes…” She made a helpless gesture toward the glasses. “But I’m smart.” She said the last line with a hint of defiance. There might be hope for her despite her lack of confidence.
“You’re not homely. You’re just young. What grade are you in?”
“Tenth.”
“Have you looked at scholarships? Thought about where you want to go to college?”
“I want to go to Vassar,” the girl said, looking away and twirling a wayward strand of hair around one finger. “Like you did.”
“That C in gym might keep you from being able to do that.” The girl’s face fell, and Sarah hurried to turn the conversation to something positive. “But there are lots of good colleges out there. What do you want to study?”
“Science.” The girl’s voice had dropped almost to a whisper and she glanced around the room as if afraid someone might hear. “Maybe engineering.”
“They have a good program in petroleum engineering at UW.”
“No. I want to go someplace better. Someplace further away.”
Sarah looked into the girl’s glowing face and saw her old, hopeful self, setting off into a world that had proven to be as much of a struggle as life in Two Shot.
The girl straightened self-consciously, clearly forcing herself to be brave. “Don’t tell me I can’t. That’s what everybody says.” She tugged at her hair so hard Sarah winced. “I can do it.”
“I know you can,” Sarah said. “Just don’t forget what matters, okay?”
“Grades?”
Sarah shook her head, smiling. “Home. The people who love you. Don’t leave them too far behind. And don’t ever forget where you came from.”
“I’m from
Two
Shot
,” the girl said scornfully. “What good is that?”
“You might be surprised.” Sarah stifled a smile. “It could come in handy sometime.”
The swinging doors thwapped across the room, revealing Suze with her hands on her big hips, glaring at the waitress. The girl flinched guiltily.
“Emmy?” Suze’s tone was harsh. “What are you doing?”
“Sorry, Suze, it’s my fault,” Sarah said.
“Don’t you be filling her head with your Carrigan crap,” Suze growled.
“I don’t work for Carrigan anymore.”
“Oh? How come?” Suze swung one hip sideways to rest against the table and casually considered her fingernails as if checking her polish. The move was so absurdly feminine and out-of-character that Sarah knew immediately that Lane was right about those phone calls.
Sarah narrowed her eyes as Suze’s glanced flickered up to her face, then back down to her nails. She’d been bold enough to leave anonymous phone calls, but she couldn’t look Sarah in the face.
Sarah thought back to those long conversations she’d had with Suze when she was still living in Two Shot. Suze had always argued passionately for animals, for conservation, for the environment. Sarah should have realized she’d be against the drilling. Why had she assumed it was Lane?
“Apparently, some people in Two Shot don’t want Carrigan here.” She struggled to keep her tone conversational instead of combative.
“Those rigs are ugly,” Suze said. “I like my plains unspoiled. I like to look out and see for miles, the way you can now, without a house or a factory or even a phone pole in the way. There’s hardly anyplace left in the world like this anymore.” She waved toward the window with such an expansive gesture that Sarah looked out and half expected to see Venetian canals or craggy Alps instead of a line of empty storefronts and crumbling garages.
“But people need jobs,” Sarah said. “Do you really think your pretty view trumps making a living?”
Suze glowered at her a moment, then focused on the waitress and twitched her head toward the double doors. “Back to work.”
The girl scurried off, and Suze started to follow. Impulsively, Sarah reached out to stop her. She didn’t really mean to grab the tie of the woman’s apron, but the knot unraveled as the woman whirled to face her.
“Sorry,” Sarah said. “I just wondered if you could sit a minute.”
“Nope.”
“Please. You lost me my job, Suze. I need to know why.”
“Wasn’t just me.”
“Are you saying you didn’t orchestrate the whole thing? I know who holds the power in this town. Just talk to me a minute.”
Suze was the least vain person Sarah had ever met, but the mention of power made her sigh like a beleaguered starlet as she plumped down into the booth across from Sarah. “Okay. What?”
Sarah gazed pointedly around the diner. “Not many people here this morning.”
Suze shrugged. “Some days are busier than others.”
“I noticed that Best’s Store is boarded up.”
Suze shrugged again, her heavy shoulders rising and falling with exaggerated carelessness.
“If something doesn’t change, Two Shot’s going to die,” Sarah said.
“We get by. There’s ranching, in case you forgot.”
“It’s harder and harder to make a living that way. Who do you know that ranches without a day job to pay the bills? You know what they say. Behind every great cowboy is a wife who works in town.”
Suze snorted. “Maybe. But there are jobs. They can always work for me.”
Sarah nodded toward the kitchen. “You think that girl should wait tables all her life?”
“She could.”
“Not much of a future for a bright kid.”
“Good enough for most people.” Suze shot a disdainful glare across the table. “Not good enough for you, I guess.”
“But Carrigan would bring something better. They’d…”
“Don’t tell me what they’d do.” Suze snorted and everyone in the diner turned as if a volcano had erupted in the corner. “You think they’d give the jobs to Two Shot folks? They bring in out-of-towners for those rigs. I know. I met some of ’em. A bunch came through here on their way to Casper. Caught Emmy out back after her shift and teased her ’til she cried. Don’t know what they woulda done to her if Eddie hadn’t happened to go out there.” She pressed her lips together. “They gave Eddie a hard time too, but they finally left.”
“They’re not all like that.”
“Don’t care. Two Shot’s not ready for change.” She nodded toward the door again. “Emmy’s not ready.” She jabbed a finger toward Sarah. “You tell her to go to UW, ’cause if she goes out of state folks’ll eat that girl alive.”
“She’ll learn.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Suze’s expression softened and for a moment she looked almost motherly. “It’s not just the view I want to save. I want the people to stay the same too.” She settled deeper into the booth, her hostility fading. “I been all over before I got here. Two Shot people’s good folks. There’s not many like ’em left in the world.”
Sarah looked around at the other customers—the poker group in the back in their striped cowboy shirts and Carhartt jackets, Joe sitting at the counter in a T-shirt and worn denim overalls, his battered cowboy boots propped on the rail. Eddie was at the counter, his simple face creased in concern as he watched Suze and Sarah argue.
The place was pretty much the same as it had been when she’d left all those years ago. She felt a sudden wave of warmth curl around her heart. She’d longed to leave Two Shot, but it wasn’t such a bad place to come back to, even when it didn’t want you.
At least she knew what to expect. All the time she’d been gone, Two Shot had hung in the distance like a safety net poised to catch her if she fell. It really was like a family. That’s why it had hurt so much when they’d been so cold the day before.
But looking at Suze, she knew that like a family, they’d all forgive her eventually.