Renegade Father (19 page)

“Annie. Miz Redhawk. She went in after the horses. They all came out but she didn't.”

He gave the kid a hard shake. “How long? How long has she been in there?”

“I don't know. Five minutes, maybe more.” He grabbed Joe's shirt suddenly. “I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt. You've gotta believe me. I just wanted to show I had what it takes to be a good foreman. It was all Mr. Redhawk's idea.”

“Charlie?” He should have known. Dammit, he should have known.

“He…he said if I went in to get the horses myself, I could be the big hero and Miz Redhawk would have to hire me. Just like roping that cow on the ice and nursing her dog back to health after I poisoned her. It was all to show her I could handle the job. But everything went wrong.”

“You did this? Set this fire?”

“I didn't know she would get hurt. You've got to believe me. I never wanted to hurt her.”

He didn't have time to listen to this. Later he would have time for vengeance but right now he had Annie to worry about.

Joe forced his frozen muscles to move and rushed toward the burning structure, stopping only long enough
to whip off his flannel shirt and drench it in water then wrap it around his face.

The heat nearly knocked him over and he couldn't see a thing through the smoke and the flames. He yelled her name but the only answer was the roar of the fire.

His head told him she couldn't possibly still be alive in this inferno. But his heart knew that if she died, he would die right along with her and he knew he had to do everything he could to find her.

Charging through the flames wouldn't get him very far, he knew. While he was trying to figure out what to do, he suddenly remembered a lecture C.J. had given him last fall during his school's Fire Safety Week about what to do if his house ever caught fire.

“Just fall and crawl,” C.J. had said proudly, then repeated the chant like a mantra.
Fall and crawl. Fall and crawl.
Scientific law. Hot air rises. The heat and smoke would drift upward, theoretically leaving a safe pocket of air down low.

He dropped to his stomach and dragged himself across the floor, not knowing where to even begin looking for her.

For once in his godforsaken life, fate smiled on him. He had slithered only a dozen feet or so when his hand touched something soft and out of place.

He scrambled up to get a better look through the smoke and flames and his heart nearly stopped when he saw her lying on the ground, crumpled and terribly, terribly still.

He thought for one heart-stopping moment that he was too late, and a howl of denial and grief built up in his throat. Before it could spill out he heard a soft, strangled moan.

She was alive! At least for now.

If he didn't get them both out of there soon, she wouldn't be for long. He scooped her up and, half running, half crouching, hurried for the door. They made it out into the healing air just as the first pumper truck pulled up, lights flashing and sirens screaming.

A
nnie watched the scenery between the clinic in Ennis and the Double C pass by in a blur. She was blind to the signs of spring they passed—the new leaves budding on the trees, the random, colorful patches of crocuses emerging from the cold ground, the songbirds flitting around.

None of it mattered. Not when she was so busy trying to hold back her tears.

“Are you all right?” Colt asked suddenly.

She glanced across the width of the truck. “Sure,” she said, although it was a lie. She wasn't all right, she was miserable. Joe was gone and she hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye. “Why do you ask?”

“Maybe because you nearly died last night, in case it slipped your memory,” Colt said dryly.

“How could it slip my memory when I just spent the night being reminded of it every five minutes?”

Despite all her protests that she was absolutely fine,
Colt's wife Maggie had insisted she stay overnight at the clinic for observation.

“You have a serious case of smoke inhalation and a possible concussion where that horse hit you,” Maggie had cautioned. “I'm sorry, Annie, but I can't let you leave.”

Since she couldn't quite picture herself trying to wrestle a set of car keys away from a pregnant woman—especially when said pregnant woman was not only her doctor but her good friend—Annie had been stuck all night, being poked and prodded and fussed over.

She wasn't about to endure more from Colt, even if he was doing her the favor of driving her home. “I'm fine,” she said. “You can all stop worrying about me now.”

“I doubt that,” Colt muttered. “You seem to have a knack for getting into more trouble than anyone else I know.”

She sniffed. “It wasn't my fault someone decided to burn down my barn.”

“No, but it was your fault you decided not to stick around and wait for the firefighters like a normal person would do.”

Here we go again.
“My horses were going to die. I don't think it was so very foolish to try to save them.”

He pursed his mouth but didn't push the matter. “Have you decided whether to press charges against the Mitchell kid?”

She shook her head. She still couldn't believe Luke Mitchell had confessed to anybody who would listen that he not only started the barn fire but poisoned Dolly, drove that cow onto icy Butterfly Lake, and did his best to sabotage the Double C any way he could.

She sighed. “I haven't decided what to do. What's your opinion?”

“It's a no-brainer. You were only a couple heartbeats away from dying in that fire. When I think of what could have happened, my blood runs cold. He needs to be punished.”

She didn't answer and Colt sent her a long, searching look across the width of the truck. “You're not seriously thinking about letting him walk, are you?”

“I don't know,” she mumbled. The decision to prosecute would have been an easy one—like Colt said, a no-brainer—if not for Charlie's involvement.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that Luke's biggest mistake had been the same one she had made at his age. Listening to the wrong person.

If he hadn't met up with Charlie at Lulu's the night after she told him she wouldn't hire him to replace Joe, he never would have been suckered into the plan in the first place. But Charlie, in typical malicious and manipulative fashion, had managed to convince Luke that the only way to show he could handle the foreman's job was to create situations where he could come out the hero.

Charlie must have been chortling with glee at finding somebody to do his dirty work for him, somebody who would do everything he could to make Annie's life more difficult without Charlie having to lift a finger.

Only trouble was, Luke had bungled every effort. He hadn't been able to rope that heifer after driving her out onto the ice while Annie wasn't looking, he had passed out from smoke inhalation before he could rescue the horses and he'd given Dolly too much of the slug bait Charlie had told him would only make the dog a little sick.

She was angry at him for his naiveté and for the harm he had caused. But how could she blame him? She had been caught up in Charlie's web herself.

Luke had come to his senses in time, though, and now was consumed with remorse. He had even told Sheriff Douglas where Charlie was holed up, in one of the vacation cabins along the Madison.

Charlie was now in custody and it was looking like he would be for a long, long time. For the first time, she truly felt safe. Maybe that's why Annie was more lenient toward Luke.

Or maybe it was because she had a hard time working up enough energy for anger or for retribution or for anything else but this deep, aching sense of loss.

Joe was gone and nothing else seemed to matter.

“Looks like you've got a welcoming committee,” Colt said and she realized he had pulled up in front of the ranch house.

Hanging across the posts on the porch was a wide banner with Welcome Home Mom written in fourteen different colors of crayon. Dolly was the welcoming committee Colt referred to. She was waiting on the front porch and when Annie opened the truck door she jumped up and raced over to them, barking and whirling in excitement.

Annie rubbed the little collie's ruff in greeting just as the front door of the house was thrown open with a bang.

“You're home!” C.J. yelled. He jumped the stairs two at a time and threw his arms around her.

Laughing, she hugged him back tightly. “I was only gone overnight, sweetheart.”

“I missed you
so much.
Are you gonna be okay?”

It must have been terrifying for him to be awakened
to the wails of sirens especially when she wasn't here to comfort him. She gave him another hug. “I'm fine. I was okay last night but Maggie just wanted to make extra sure.”

“Leah says the horses could have died.”

“Not just the horses. I said Mom could have died, too.”

Annie looked up and found her daughter watching them solemnly from the porch steps.

“Well, I didn't. Everything turned out okay, thank heavens. How's Stardust?”

Leah's face softened. “Still shaken up. Doctor Thacker says the burns on her flanks should heal in a couple of weeks. He gave me some stuff to put on it every day.”

“Good. I'm glad that's the worst of it.”

Leah came down the stairs and hugged her too. “Thanks for saving her, Mom. I'm glad you're okay.”

“Me, too,” Annie answered.

“Me, three,” C.J. chirped with a grin.

“Count me in, too.”

At the deep voice coming from the porch, Annie jerked her head up. Her heart skipped a beat when she found Joe leaning against a post, his arms folded across his chest.

She gaped at him. “You're still here.”

He shrugged. “I'm like the proverbial bad penny. You can't get rid of me.”

I don't want to. Oh, Joe, I don't want to.
“I thought you were leaving this morning.”

“I changed my plans a little. Called Waterson and told him what happened. I told him I couldn't take off until I knew you were going to be okay.”

Which meant now that he could see she was still alive
and kicking, he would be packing up his truck and heading out.

Her spirits plummeted. At least she would have a chance to say goodbye, although she wasn't entirely sure she wanted it now. Or that she could handle it without breaking down completely.

She forced a smile. “Maggie says I'm good as new.”

“I'm glad.”

The intensity in his voice and in his dark eyes sent a blush climbing her cheeks.

Colt cleared his throat and she jerked her gaze from Joe's to find him watching them both, an odd, amused look in his blue eyes. “Hey, who wants to show me where the fire was?”

“I do!” C.J. answered.

“Leah? How about you, too?”

“No thanks,” she answered.

In his typical nonsubtle way, Colt jerked his head meaningfully toward Annie and Joe and she felt her blush heat even more.

“Come with us,” he ordered Leah.

Her daughter must have finally clued in that there were undercurrents here she didn't understand. Her eyes widened as she looked between the two of them. “Uh, sure,” she finally said with a smile she hid behind her hand. “See you later, Mom.”

As soon as all three of them started toward the horse barn, Annie turned to him. “I…I'm glad I had a chance to see you again before you left. To thank you once again for coming to my rescue.”

He shrugged. “Let's just forget it.”

“I'm not going to forget it. You saved my life.”

“I'm just glad I was able to get there in time.”

That wasn't good enough. She wasn't going to let
him get away with clichés and his normal self-deprecating attitude.

She walked up the wooden steps of the porch so they were on level ground—as level as they could be, anyway, when he was almost a foot taller. She drew in a deep breath and met his gaze.

“Tell me the truth, Joe. Why did you do it?”

He frowned at her. “Do what?”

“Go inside that burning barn for me.”

“What do you mean, why did I do it? What kind of question is that? Why the hell do you think I did it?”

“Tell me,” she asked urgently. It was suddenly vitally important that she know.

He looked at her like the fire had shortwired her brain. “What was I supposed to do? Just stand outside twiddling my thumbs while you burned to death?”

“But what would possibly make you risk your life for mine like that? You could have been killed just as easily as me in there.”

He shoved away from the porch post. “This is stupid. What do you want me to say? I couldn't let you die, not if there was something I could do to prevent it.”

“That brings the total times you've saved my life to about a dozen, right? Two in the last few months alone, if you add that day at the lake.”

He shrugged. “Who's counting?”

“Me. I'm counting.”

All the anguish she had gone through these last few weeks—these last thirteen years, for that matter—broiled up inside her and she felt her temper spike right along with it.

She glared at him. “I'm counting,” she repeated. “And I want to know why it's so damned okay for you to put your butt on the line for me over and over again,
but when you find out I tried to do the same thing for you once, you act as if I committed some unforgivable crime.”

“It's not the same,” he snapped.

“It's exactly the same! You couldn't stand by and do nothing while I died in that fire. Fine. And I couldn't stand by and see you go to the gas chamber for a crime I knew you didn't commit. Not if I could prevent it.”

He stared at her, stunned by her words, by her logic. He had spent almost two weeks building a hard, stony wall of guilt and anger around his heart and now the first trickle of doubt at his position began to seep through.

“You want to know why I married Charlie?” she went on. “Because I love you, you stupid idiot. I have loved you all of my life. I would have done
anything
for you. Even marry a man I hated, if that's what it took to protect you.”

He felt frozen, locked into place by shame as the wall tumbled down around him.

He had been running from her love just as long as she had been offering it, so terrified that accepting it would make him weak, would make him need. In a few words, she had completely humbled him, shown him just how hollow a victory he had won.

He didn't deserve this courageous, beautiful woman who had sacrificed so much for him. Not because of his family or because people thought he had killed his father or because he had spent time in prison.

He didn't deserve her because he hadn't been willing to believe in her. Or in himself.

He knew he didn't deserve her. But dammit, he wasn't going to let that stop him this time.

“There. I've said it,” she mumbled, when he contin
ued to stand there and stare at her. “Now you can leave.”
Go. Please go. Before I make an even bigger fool out of myself.

“Annie.”

She looked up warily.

“I'm not going anywhere.”

She blinked at him. “You're…you're not?”

He shook his head.

“What about your new job?”

Waterson would be disappointed but Joe would just have to find a way to make things right with him.

“I've got a job. On a ranch I love.” He paused and the silence stretched out between them. “With the woman I love.”

For a moment she couldn't breathe, couldn't think straight, as a wild, frantic heat flared through her. He gazed down at her out of those serious dark eyes and the raw emotion in them made her feel as if a thousand butterflies were fluttering through her stomach.

Still, she didn't dare let herself hope. She had hoped too many times before. “What…what did you say?”

“I love you, Annie. I don't want to leave the Double C. I never did. I want to marry you. I want to go to sleep every night with you in my arms and wake up every morning the same way. I want to stay right here and be a father to Leah and to C.J., if you'll have me.”

Tears began a long, slow trickle down her cheeks as joy exploded in her heart. “Oh, Joe. Yes. Yes!”

An instant later she was in his arms, right were she had always belonged, and his mouth captured hers. It was a kiss full of healing, a kiss full of redemption.

A kiss overflowing with promise.

They had forever to show each other how wonderful
life could be. The possibilities staggered her and she sagged against him, feeling boneless, weightless.

He guided them both to the old porch swing then sat down and pulled her to his lap. “Annie, before we go any further with this, I have to tell you something.”

She drew back, concerned by that solemn look in his dark eyes. “What is it?”