Return to Homecoming Ranch (Pine River) (17 page)

Something tweaked in Sam’s chest; it felt almost as if his heart was stretching a little. He felt for Libby, he truly did. “Most people don’t see ends like that coming.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve had more than my fair share of practice. I should have recognized what was happening.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Like when I was eight,” she said, lifting her gaze to his again, “my mom and dad got into some child-support tussle. She called his bluff and sent me out to California to live with him and Emma and her mother. Dad said, ‘oh we’re going to have fun, Libby. We’re going to do this and that, and you’ll be
so
glad you came,’” she said, with an airy flick of her wrist. “But really? My dad couldn’t handle the responsibility of raising me and neither could Emma’s mother. So he sent me back to Pine River. Only by then, Mom was with Derek and she was pregnant. Once the twins were born, I was the fifth wheel.”

“Oh yeah?” Sam said, curious now. He’d met Mrs. Buchanan a few times and liked her. “Your mom seems really nice.”

“Don’t defend her, I’m on a roll,” Libby said.

Sam couldn’t help a small chuckle. “By all means, roll on.”

“After that was Act Two with my dad,” Libby said with a sigh. “I’ll let you in on a secret—my dad was not a nice person. At least not to me.” She paused. “I think he had a soft spot for Emma, though,” she said thoughtfully. “Anyway, I tried so hard to know him, I really did. He wouldn’t have much to do with me, besides an occasional dinner. And even then, he talked more on his phone than he did to me. And when he got sick, I thought I could help by taking care of him. He needed someone, right? I was willing to do that, but he wouldn’t let me in. Not even for a moment,” she said, with swipe of her hand.

“That must have been rough,” Sam said, meaning it. His own father wasn’t the warmest guy in the world, but at least Sam knew that in his own way, he cared.

“And you know what else?” Libby said, suddenly sitting up. “He
never
told me about Madeline. Even in the hospital, he didn’t tell me,” she said, punching the table with her finger with each word for emphasis. “He never told me about Homecoming Ranch. All I ever tried to do was be a good daughter to him, but I always felt as if I was bothering him when I showed up.”

Sam didn’t know much about Grant Tyler, other than he’d been a big man in Pine River. Luke had told him that Grant had tried to help Bob Kendrick out with a loan against the ranch when he needed the money for Leo. But Sam also knew that Madeline hadn’t known him at all, much less that she had two sisters out in the world. Sam didn’t know how a man could father children and then be so utterly irresponsible with their souls.

Libby pushed her bowl away and slid down into her chair, bringing one leg up so that she could prop her knee under her chin. “And then there was Ryan. Boy, oh boy, did I fall hard for him. Totally, completely, head over heels in love with him.”

“We’ve been down this road,” Sam said, because he
didn’t want to hear again how in love she’d been with Spangler.

“You know I got fired because of him, right?”

Sam didn’t know it for certain, but he’d heard some talk. “How so?”

“When he . . . when he asked me to leave,” she said, swallowing hard on those words, “I started getting calls from school. ‘Who is picking Alice up today?’” she said, mimicking someone from the school. “It happened more than once. I started to worry about Alice and Max—Ryan couldn’t keep in mind Alice’s dance lessons or Max’s soccer games. One morning, Alice called me because she couldn’t find her backpack. It was eight forty-five and they were still at home and she didn’t know where her dad was. I freaked out, I admit it,” Libby said. “When I couldn’t get him on the phone, I left work to go and see if they were okay.”

“Were they?” Sam asked.

“Yes, they were fine,” she said with a sigh. “The reason Alice didn’t know where Ryan was is because his mother was keeping them. He’d gone on a hunting trip or something. I neglected to ask if anyone else was with them. But then, it happened again. The dance teacher called me one afternoon and said they were closing up shop but no one had come to pick up Alice. So I left work again.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “The long and the short of it is, I couldn’t stop worrying about the kids. I left work too many times to go and see about them, or to be at dance class or soccer, or just to make sure they were at school. I was fired for it. Me. Libby Tyler, the most punctual employee the sheriff’s office had ever had.
God
,” she groaned.

“Were the kids ever in true danger?” Sam asked.

Libby shook her head. “Nope. It was always me, assuming the world couldn’t spin without me. Ryan kept forgetting, and I kept hearing about it, and I kept imagining the worst. The
worst.
I remember sitting at my desk imagining someone luring Alice to their car with a puppy while she waited for her dad to show up.” She closed her eyes a moment. “I was a mess. Those two had been ripped from my life and I couldn’t handle it. Mom told me I had to do something useful and stop worrying so much, and when did I become such a worrier, and on and
on,
” she said. “When Dad died, and I found out about Homecoming Ranch, I thought,
this
is it! This is what I am going to do with my life! I have two sisters, and we can make this work!”

“You were thrown a pretty big curve ball,” Sam agreed.

“I thought two sisters was the best thing to ever happen to me. I thought we were going to live as one big happy family up here. It never occurred to me that Madeline and Emma wouldn’t want that.” She gave Sam a sheepish look. “There you have it, Lone Ranger, my life in a nutshell. One long road of disappointment.”

Those words resonated with him, because Sam had felt the same thing. So much hope put into a relationship, so much disappointment to come out of it. Disappointment in Terri, but mostly, disappointment in himself—for not seeing things he should have seen, for not being strong enough to fight alcoholism. He really wasn’t that different from Libby.

“Look, I know it’s been tough for you.” He was forgiving her, and he couldn’t stop himself. It was just too damn hard to be angry with Libby.

“You’re right, Sam, I hoped too hard. When Ryan told me he’d made a mistake, I hoped that maybe it
was
all a mistake, sort of like a bad dream. What I wanted, really wanted, was for him to say that he was sorry. I wanted him to say it out loud and grovel a bit, but I really wanted to hear him say he was wrong so I didn’t have to be wrong.”

“Okay,” Sam said, leaning forward and looking her in the eye. “I’ll let you in on a secret—Ryan isn’t man enough to admit he’s wrong. Be that as it may, no more talk of it tonight, okay?” He didn’t think he could hear another word without getting into his truck and going in search of Ryan, the snow notwithstanding. He picked up their bowls and stood. “I’ve got KP duty.” He started into the kitchen.

“But isn’t there something you need to say?” Libby asked.

“What’s that?”

“What you’re going to do with me. I mean, about the restraining order?”

That was a good question, and Sam really had no idea. But he wasn’t going to do anything tonight. “Depends,” he said. “Did you make dessert?”

A grin slowly lit Libby’s face. “No. But I bet I could find something to throw together.”

“Better make it good,” he advised her. “It could be the difference between freedom and a little cooling-off time in jail.”

“Wow.” Libby stood, her body almost touching his. “In that case,” she said, her gaze landing on his mouth and firing up his senses, “I really hope you have some sugar.”

NINETEEN

Libby watched Sam washing dishes, grateful that he’d let her talk, even offering a strong shoulder and a good ear. But give an inch and take a mile—Libby had dumped her entire life story on him, warts and all. Now, there was really very little Sam Winters didn’t know about her. She hadn’t told him that she’d once aspired to be a diplomat with spy privileges, but then again, she’d been ten years old.

Now, Libby wanted to know about him. She wanted to know what made him want to look after people no one else looked after. Or what romances in his life had taught him to kiss a woman so thoroughly she felt like she was floating. She wanted to know how he’d suddenly gotten so damn hot, and how she had failed to fully appreciate that in the past. She admired his trim waist, his broad shoulders, the way that loose pair of jeans rode low on his hips.

Sam noticed she was looking at him. “How about that dessert, Tyler?” he asked as he reached to put a pan away, revealing a glimpse of muscled abs.

“I’m thinking. You have to admit, your kitchen setup is pretty pathetic. You have cereal, and that’s about it.”

“Are you giving up? Opting for jail?”

“No way,” she said. “But I’m going to have to resort to a poor man’s dessert.”

“Syrup and bread?”

“
No
,” she said, horrified. “What sort of animal are you? Just stay here.” She picked up a big salad bowl she’d found, and brushed against him on her way out.

She stepped into the mudroom, gasping with shock at the cold. She stuffed her feet into the oversized boots again, stepped outside and, using her bare hands, filled the bowl with snow. She came back in, hopping around a little to stamp the chill from her bones.

Sam was leaning against the clean counter when she returned to the kitchen. He took a look at her bowl and said, “Snow ice cream.”

“Good guess!”

“Not really—it’s just that I’ve been a poor man.” He winked at her.

Libby grabbed milk from the fridge and measured it out, then looked in Sam’s cabinet. “I can’t believe you have vanilla extract. You have nothing else, but you have that. Why?”

He laughed. “Who knows?”

“It’s curious, Mr. Winters. You know so much about me now, and yet I don’t know anything about you. Hardly seems fair.”

“Fair has nothing to do with it. You’ve made it my job to know about you. I’m being paid to know about you and to keep you from adding to the tale.”

“Semantics. I think you are trying to avoid talking about
you
right now.” She pointed a measuring spoon at him. “If we’re going to be friends, I should get
some
details.”

“Are we going to be friends?” he asked.

He was looking at her in a way that made Libby’s pulse flutter. “Friends” sounded too soft for what she was feeling. She said, “It depends.”

His smile was slow and easy, and Libby felt another shiver course through her. “There’s nothing to know,” he said. “Life is pretty boring up here.”

“Come on,” she said, measuring vanilla now. “We’re stuck here. What else are we going to do? If you don’t talk, then I guess I can keep talking about me and where my relationship with Ryan went wrong—”

“God no,” he said, throwing up a hand and laughing. “Honestly, Libby, I’m not being coy. I go to work and I come home.”

“Well. What do you do when you come home?”

He frowned a little as if he was thinking about it. “Putter,” he said.

“That’s so lame!” Libby said laughingly. “You’re not playing the game correctly. Start at the beginning. Where did you go to school? When did you get married?”

She could see his entire body tense.

“I’m sorry,” she said, turning her attention back to the ice cream. “I didn’t mean to strike a nerve.”

“You didn’t strike a nerve,” he said, but it was clear she had. He again tried to brush it off by saying, “It was a long time ago.”

“Not that long,” she said. “You were married when you started at the sheriff’s office.”

“Yep,” he said, and pushed away from the counter. “I’m going to go tend the fire.”

Libby listened to him rummage in the wood caddy, more curious than ever. She finished making the ice cream and put it into two small bowls. With a pair of mismatched spoons, she followed him into the living room and handed him one. “Thanks,” he said.

“Welcome.” She crossed her legs and lowered herself to the ground, sitting before the fire. Sam sat on the edge of the couch.

Libby’s gaze flicked over him as she tasted the ice cream.

“What?” he asked, smiling uncertainly.

“Nothing.”

“It’s never nothing,” he said.

“You’re right. I was wondering what it is you don’t want to talk about.”

Sam groaned. “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

“Probably not. I’m curious.”

He sighed.

“Here’s a simple question, yes or no,” she said. “Have you ever been in a situation where
you
hoped too hard?”

“That is not a simple question,” he said. “But for the sake of peace, I probably did, yeah. Nevertheless, it was a long time ago, and I’d really rather not drag it all up again if it’s all the same to you. I’m going to enjoy my poor man’s ice cream.”

“Sure,” she said, and turned her attention to her ice cream. “Mind if I ask you something else?”

“About hope?” he asked suspiciously.

“No.”

His eyes narrowed. “Against my better judgment, okay. Ask.”

“What’s it like, being in recovery?”

This time, Sam clanked his spoon into the bowl. “Wow. Talk about skipping the salad and going right for the meat.” He put aside his bowl. He leaned forward, rested his hands on his thighs. “Libby . . . if I give you the Sam Winters rundown, will you stop asking so many questions?”

Libby thought about that a moment. “I don’t know if I can make that promise for all of eternity . . . but I could probably stop for the night.” She winked.

“I’ll take what I can get. So move over,” he said, nudging her with his foot, then dipped down, settling in front of the couch, his legs long in front of him, crossed at the ankles. “You want to know the truth about me, huh? Okay, here goes. I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for three years and thirty-two days.”

“Congratulations,” Libby said, uncertain what else to say.

“Thanks.”

“That must have been really hard,” she said.

“To quit?” he asked, and Libby nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It was the hardest thing I have ever done.”

“Is that why you . . . you know, split up with your wife?”

His gaze wandered over her face, and yet he didn’t seem to be looking at her, but rather something only he could see. “Alcohol was a huge problem in my marriage. On both sides.”

This was a whole new side to Sam Winters. Libby placed her bowl in his, put them on the end table, and turned to face him. “I’m a good listener, too.”

Sam chuckled. He casually touched the back of his hand to her face. “No you’re not. You’re possibly the worst listener I’ve ever known. But I’ll tell you anyway.”

He told her how he’d met his wife in college. Terri was her name, he said. A free spirit. Sam said he’d been enthralled, that he’d never known anyone like her. “We fell in love, and after college, we moved around to various jobs. She was always looking for a big cause to get involved with.”

When the jobs had ended up leading them nowhere, Sam brought her to Colorado Springs and joined the ranks of law enforcement, and eventually they ended up in Pine River. Terri, he said, had trouble keeping a job because she couldn’t stay sober, and by that point, he wasn’t much better.

“It snuck up on us,” he admitted. “I’d never been much of a drinker. My dad drank, and I didn’t want to be like him,” he said, shifting his gaze to the fire. “It made him as mean as Millie Bagley.”

“Oh wow,” Libby said. “I’m sorry. He was an alcoholic?”

“I’m sure,” Sam said. “But I never really thought of him that way. To me, he drank too much, that was it. I never thought of it as a disease, or that it could happen to me. And when I started drinking, it didn’t seem like a big deal—a drink here or there, that was all. I guess I fooled myself. I remember justifying it by telling myself it wasn’t like I had to have it. I had myself convinced I was very different than dear old Dad, you know? Terri and I drank to unwind after class. She’d binge drink on the weekends, but you know, it was college, and a lot of people did that. I was naïve.” He glanced at his hand.

There but for the grace of God, Libby thought. When she first started working at the sheriff’s office, there had been some wild parties. On a couple of occasions, she’d had far too much to drink. She’d even known in the moment she was drinking too much, but alcohol had a way of making her believe she was okay. “When did you realize you had a problem?”

“Not until it was too late,” Sam said with a snort. “By the time I graduated and we got married, Terri and I would have a drink at the end of the workday together. And then, it began to roll into the dinner hour, changing to wine. And somewhere along the way, it became a cocktail, wine with dinner, brandy or port after that.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Libby said. “I know a lot of people who relax with a few drinks.”

“They’re probably not alcoholics,” he pointed out. “I remember the first time I put whiskey in my morning coffee. I remember standing at the kitchen sink telling myself it wasn’t that big of a deal. That was my life—a constant state of rationalization. I refused to acknowledge that my life and my marriage were unraveling into one tangled string of drinks. Terri and I were of one mind—any excuse for another drink.”

It was hard for Libby to imagine it. It was hard to look at Sam, a stand-up guy by anyone’s measure, and imagine him in the grip of addiction.

“I tried to talk to her about it. I told her we should get help, but it’s easier to talk about than it is to do.” He paused, glanced at his hands again, stretching his fingers wide. “I tried to stop drinking. I tried to be a good husband even though Terri had abandoned any pretense at being my wife. She drank in front of me, and I couldn’t vanquish the temptation to drink with her. I was losing everything. I knew it, I could see it, and still, I couldn’t stop drinking.”

“Wow,” Libby said softly. “I’m sorry, Sam. It must have been so difficult for you.”

“You have no idea,” he said with a wry laugh. “I tried everything, but I still found myself pulling off the side of the road while on patrol and digging a bottle out from beneath the seat.”

Libby knew something like that had happened—everyone knew Sam had been drunk on the job. But looking at him now, the strong, kind man that he was, she couldn’t picture it. She couldn’t guess how hard that must have been for him, to be that strong and yet unable to defeat his biggest adversary.

“I started missing work with some pretty spectacular hangovers. When I was at work, I chewed gum like a maniac to keep the smell from my colleagues, but they knew. Everyone knew. I’ve smelled it on drunks myself—once alcohol gets into your blood, there’s no masking it.

“It caught up with me. At the time, I thought it was the end of everything, but it ended up being my salvation. If it hadn’t caught up with me when it did, I could very well be dead now.”

That was painful and sobering to hear. “What happened?” Libby asked. “I only know that you were asked to go.”

“Nothing splashy, no wrecks or shootings, thank God,” Sam said. “What happened was that I picked up a kid for burglary. Caught him
right there, with the stuff in his truck. But I was drunk, and the paperwork was incoherent, and so was I. The kid was savvy, too, and he kept accusing me of being drunk. Loudly. Yelling at other officers that I was drunk, and he was right. I had plenty of excuses for it—long shift, no sleep, whatever—but it was apparent to everyone by then. I was a drunk.”

“And the sheriff fired you?”

“No,” Sam said with a shake of his head. “What he did was give me a chance, and for that, I will always be grateful. He called me into his office the next day. I’ll never forget it; all the top brass were there. His chief deputy, the head of human resources, the attorneys. Basically, he gave me an ultimatum: either I went for treatment at the facility the department had already arranged and get sober, or I would lose my job. Plus, he said he would see to it that I never worked in Colorado law enforcement again. But if I did as he asked and went for treatment, maintained sobriety, and proved I could be trusted, he’d find a job for me. He kept his word—that’s why I have this position now.”

“Oh, Sam,” Libby murmured. “It was brutal, wasn’t it? Treatment, I mean. It’s such a depressing place to be.”

“It is definitely that,” he agreed. “The drying out wasn’t as bad as the therapy, and facing things you don’t want to face. All those old childhood hurts and traumas you didn’t even know you had, but somehow drink to numb them. I never knew what an issue I had with my old man until I went to therapy, for example.”

Libby smiled ruefully. “I remember lying on this cot. I felt like I was literally on the floor, and I kept telling myself, if I could just peel one shoulder up, just one, I could get up and make it right. But there was some invisible weight on me and I couldn’t even do that.”

Sam took her hand in his. “I know, it was hard as hell. But in the end, I can say it was the best thing to happen to me. The sheriff was being a friend, and to tell you the truth, I was actually a little relieved. I was at the bottom, and I knew it. I just didn’t know how to crawl out of that hole, and he offered me a rope.”

“What happened to Terri?” Libby asked.

Sam’s expression changed. He looked sad. “She still refused to admit she had a problem, or quit, even though she was going through a fifth of vodka a day. And when I came out of treatment ninety days later, sober, and ready to reboot my life, she wouldn’t stop drinking. She wouldn’t or couldn’t do that for me, or for herself. And I . . .” He closed his eyes as if the memory pained him. “I left her. I couldn’t stay married to her. It was either me or booze, and she chose booze. I chose sobriety.”

“Heartbreaking,” Libby murmured.

Sam smiled and lazily traced a line down to her wrist. “You know when you go to a concert in the park, and everyone is sitting on blankets, but it seems there is always one person up front, totally into the music, dancing alone, like they are the only person there?”