Montana Hearts (19 page)

Sammy Jo frowned. “If you love me—­”

“Don't even try to play that card,” Luke said with a shake of his head.

“You'll leave my father out of this,” she finished.

Luke winced, but the faces of his own family flashed through his mind—­Ma, Dad, Grandma, Bree, Delaney, and . . . little Meggie with her marshmallow shooter. His jaw tightened as he took in Sammy Jo's pleading expression, but the only answer he could give her was, “I can't.”

“Then it looks like we just joined the family feud,” Sammy Jo shot back. And the look of pain on her face as she slammed the window shut was almost his undoing.

 

Chapter Fifteen

S
AMMY
J
O STARED
at her cell phone, but all she saw was a blank screen. Bree used to tease her that if she ever had a day without any text messages it would be like facing her worst nightmare. And it was.

She thought about texting her friends to find out what was going on, but for the first time ever, she didn't know what to say. And it was obvious none of them wanted to talk to her.

What had Luke told them? Were Bree and Delaney siding with their brother? Would they ever speak to her again?

Sammy Jo rolled off her bed to a sitting position and dialed Jesse's cell number.

“Hey, girl, what's up?” Jesse asked.

Sammy Jo summoned a smile and taking a deep breath she said, “I just wanted to check in on the girls and see how everything was going at the fairgrounds.”

“We won the poster competition! The girls were very excited, but disappointed you weren't there.”

“Yeah, me, too.” She tried to keep her voice vibrant and pumped, but her tone dropped off on the last word. It seemed like she was missing out on everything at the moment.

“They can tell you all about it next time they see you,” Jesse promised. “Oooh, I've got to go. We've got to get the horses back into the arena for another showing in twenty minutes.”

Sammy Jo ended the call, wishing they could have talked longer. She could go over there and join in the fun, but she was afraid she wouldn't be able to keep up the happy charade for very long and didn't want the girls to see her upset.

Instead, she dialed the number of the only other person who could possibly understand how she was feeling. Her mother.

“
Mom,”
she cried after telling her mother what happened with Luke and her father. “You were
right
—­I can't make Luke love me.”

“I'm so sorry, baby,” her mother said, the commiserating ache in her voice palpable.

Sammy Jo sniffed. “But I was so sure Luke had fallen for me. I
wanted
him to love me.”

“Did he ever tell you he loved you?”

An onslaught of tears flowed freely down her cheeks, leaving her face a sloppy mess. “Noooo,” she wailed, and knew she sounded like little Meghan or the overly emotional teenage Walford twins, but she couldn't help it. “And I can't force him to feel something he . . . just . . .
doesn't
.”

“I couldn't make your father love me, either, baby,” her mother said softly. “I waited and waited, thinking he might change over time. I thought if I kept house, cooked all his favorite meals, stayed with him long enough . . . that one day he'd forget about his old crush on Loretta and his eyes would light up when he saw
me
enter the room.”

“Dad doesn't know what love is,” Sammy Jo said, wiping her nose with a nearby tissue. “He never should have let you go.”

“But I had to let
him
go,” her mother said, the ache still in her voice.

“And you think that's what I have to do with Luke?” Sammy Jo choked on another sob, unable to fathom life without Luke.

Maybe she'd overreacted when he said he couldn't leave her father out of the prosecution of the rustlers. Maybe he did love her but just couldn't go against his own family any more than she could. But he'd never
once
told her he loved her. Not once. And here she was hoping for a marriage proposal? When they'd never even
dated
? She let out a hysterical laugh that came out as a half sob, half shriek.

“Are you okay, baby?” her mother asked with concern.

“Yeah, I will be,” Sammy Jo promised, and let out a deep sigh. “How did we ever become so delusional?”

“I don't know.”

She heard a sniff from the other end of the line. “Mom, are you crying now, too?”

“I've gotta go. But I'll call you soon. Maybe you can come visit.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

But leaving Fox Creek was the last thing she wanted to do right now. All she wanted was Luke. She hung up, her heart wrenching from the memory of the look on Luke's face when he'd turned away from her window.

Her biggest fear wasn't a blank screen on her cell phone. Or losing Luke for six months. No, her biggest fear, her worst nightmare, was the possibility she'd lost him
forever
.

L
UKE WALKED OUT
the door of the main house, and made his way down the path past the row of cabins on his left. The teen Travel Light Adventure girls hung out on the front porches, their joyful giggles grating on his nerves. Despite their claims of enduring great hikes and camping experiences, it appeared their most thrilling “adventure” was flirting with Devin, who the Collinses had hired on full-­time as a ranch hand now that the cabins were done.

Devin tipped his hat in greeting as he passed by the girls, which made them giggle all the more . . . and the nearby Walford twins clench their fists.

Luke veered away from them, wishing his camp on the other side of the property was still intact, a place he could go to be alone. He chose the next best place, the barn. But before he could enter, Ryan's son, Cody, cut him off as he chased Meghan around with the marshmallow shooter until she laughed so hard she fell down.

Seemed like everyone was happy today. Drawing in a ragged breath, he tried to recall one of his own happier times. Pushing images of Sammy Jo's smiling face aside, his mind latched on to a memory from his younger days, involving their infamous marshmallow wars.

He didn't wish harm to come to his family and certainly didn't want their cattle and other belongings stolen, but he had to admit that hiding out and keeping watch for the rustlers this past month had brought back a certain kind of sharp, focused intensity to his life. The kind he used to have with his childhood friends, or while conquering bulls in the rodeos, and then with his buddies in the military.

He liked being part of a team and liked leading one even more. But he was afraid his leadership had cost him something he valued even more than his love of covert “missions.” Protecting his family, his new team, may have cost him the love of his life.

Luke wondered what Sammy Jo was doing at that moment. Would she ever forgive him for turning in her father?

He walked into the barn and led his horse out into one of the grassy paddocks. Running his hand down the sleek coat of Phantom's neck, he said, “You don't have to change for me. It was silly for them to ever think they could teach you to bow.”

Upon saying the last word, the horse twitched his ears and dropped his front legs down to the ground, then lowered the front of his body as if to roll. But he didn't. Phantom looked at him with big, brown, expectant eyes, as if waiting for his next command.

Luke didn't want to disappoint. He slid onto the horse bareback and gave him a pat and the accompanying order, “Up.”

Holding on to a section of Phantom's mane, he shifted his weight to maintain his balance as the gelding rose up to his full height on all four legs. Funny, this time, getting on had hardly even hurt. He gave the horse another encouraging pat and grinned.

She taught you to bow.

And she'd taught him how to live again.
Really
live.

When he'd found out his best friends he'd left behind in the military got killed, he'd been so upset he'd been reckless. He'd driven his motorcycle too fast on the wet pavement that night, not knowing if he wanted to live or die.

Afterward he drifted, still not knowing what he wanted to do. When his father's accident called him home and Grandma offered to split the ranch between them all if he stayed, it seemed like a good idea.

But it wasn't until Sammy Jo started following him around with that big flirtatious smile on her lips, and challenged him to get up on the horse, and kissed him, that he realized . . . he wanted to live.

“Bet Phantom's glad you're back,” his father said, coming up and leaning over the fence. “How's the leg?”

“Not bad,” Luke admitted. “It's been getting lots of exercise lately.”

As Luke led Phantom into a walk around the paddock, his father said, “You did right, turning in that tape to the sheriff. I know how hard that must have been for you, considering . . . Sammy Jo.”

Luke didn't say a word, but tapped his foot against Phantom's side to take him into a slow jog.

“I'm sorry I yelled at you over the results of the final inspection,” his father continued. “It wasn't your fault. You weren't the one who was wrong.
I
was.”

He was apologizing?
Luke frowned and rode his horse closer. His father had never apologized to him before, but his face looked contrite, his tone sincere.

“I never should have let this feud thing come between you and Sammy Jo either,” his father continued. “You need to go after her, Luke. Make things right between you.”

Luke set his jaw, wishing it were that easy. “I let her down.”

His father grinned. “Well, you can't please everyone all the time, can you?”

Luke held his father's gaze a moment and knew his ole man was referring to the fact he'd made it hard for Luke to please
him
.

“No, it seems I can't,” Luke admitted.

“But that doesn't mean we should hold on to our grudges forever, does it?” his father asked, then looked him in the eye. “Don't push away the ones you love like I did. You don't want those kinds of regrets.”

Touched by his father's rare moment of candor, Luke thought of Sammy Jo and said, “You're right, I don't.”

A shrill
ring!
echoed from the inside of Luke's shirt pocket. He took out his cell phone and looked at the caller ID, hoping it was Sammy Jo.

But it wasn't. His gaze jerked toward his father. “My friend A.J. says he was using the latrine at the café and overheard one of Harley's men say they've got our cows in a new holding facility twelve miles outside of town off Route 106. Because the sheriff brought several of Harley's gang in for questioning today, they're planning to put them on the train and ship them out by dawn.”

“We've got to stop them,” his father said, a growl returning to his voice.

Luke gave a nod. “You can call the sheriff, but I'm going after what's ours.”

He expected his father to argue, call him a hothead, or too impulsive. But his father gave a nod, his face tense, and replied, “I'm going with you.”

S
AMMY
J
O SAT
in front of the living room TV watching the video Luke had given her. It was a copy, which meant that by now the Collinses must have handed in the original to the sheriff.

The lighting was dim but there was no mistaking her father's image as he came up around the side of the rustlers' pickup. They didn't have the trailer with them this time, so she imagined they'd planned to try to sneak into the main house again and then make a fast getaway.

Her father motioned to Harley and the other rustlers, clearly recognizable without their black ski masks, and they all came toward him. Her father bent down and pointed in different directions as he spoke to the other men in the huddle. Then all except her father pulled on the masks and ran across the field toward the Collins house. Obviously they still didn't know about the Collinses' newly installed security cameras.

In the next set of frames Sammy Jo watched her father jump into the driver's seat of Harley's truck, start the engine, and drive off toward his own property. The rustlers approached a side window of the Collins house by the garden but appeared to trip over a low-­lying wire. No doubt Luke's grandma had been responsible for that.

Then other figures appeared—­the Tanner brothers from one side, and the Collinses from another. Sammy Jo hadn't been there that night, as it was supposed to be her and Luke's night off. She'd heard the rumble of a truck drive through her property, but had no idea it had been her own father driving it out to the road.

The video ended, but she had heard that the Tanners and Collinses had managed to chase the rustlers off.

What if she
had
been there that night . . . and had come face-­to-­face with her father? What would she have said to him? What was she to say to him now? Had he also been there the night she was threatened? Is that why he knew about it? But then why hadn't he confronted her about it sooner?

He couldn't have been there. No matter how he had gotten mixed up with these rustlers, he would never allow them to point a gun at her. She had to believe that. In fact, by driving the rustlers' truck away, her father had left the guys without a ride. Had he intended for them to get caught? Or did he plan to drive around and pick them up from the road?

She needed answers.

Going from the living room into her father's adjoining office, she opened the appointment book on his desk. She flipped through the pages and saw a date circled in red pen, the same date the video had been taken. Obviously he'd planned to meet them there. But why? She couldn't believe her father had been engaged in criminal activity.

She riffled through the stacks of papers on his shelves, trying to find information showing why he might have been at the Collinses' that night. One document in particular caught her eye. An invoice with the name of a Canadian slaughterhouse in the heading. Apparently her father . . . was selling them two dozen Black Angus cows. The invoice was addressed to him. Except he didn't own any cows . . .

Her stomach lurched and for a moment she thought she would be sick. Dread shimmied up her spine. Her chest tightened. Her head spun with images of her father smiling at her over their home-­cooked dinners, cheering her on at all of her rodeos, and happy times in the past when her mom was still around. Did her mother know what kind of man he was? Did
she
? Sammy Jo took a ­couple deep breaths to steady her nerves and realized that if her father could do such things to the Collinses, then she didn't know him at all.