by Leslie North
"But the way things turned out for you after…" he said uncertainly, his hands finding their safe space in his pockets. He didn't want to hurt her by bringing up their painful past, but he was also having a hard time believing what he was hearing, and he had to know.
"…was because I made some poor decisions," she finished for him, nodding decisively. "That's not on you. You can't save everyone."
"Doesn't stop me from wishing I could," he said quietly, the image of Heather's laughing face that night in his kitchen swimming into his mind.
Her next words surprised him. "Who is she?" Sacha asked kindly, finally letting her hands drop from his face.
"She's new in town," he said, his cheeks burning. "And she doesn't want anything more to do with me, last I checked."
"Do you think there's a connection there?" Sacha pressed earnestly. "Between the two of you?"
"I do," he said, nodding. This conversation was surprising him more than he could have imagined. He was humbled that she would take the time to try and help him after everything that had happened between them, not to mention after so much time gone by.
"Then talk to her," Sacha said softly. "Talk to her, and do whatever you can to make it work. Things like that don't come along every day. When they do, you have to keep close for as long as you can." She glanced at her watch. “But I’m going to be late for dinner with my aunt and uncle... Can we have breakfast at the diner, day after tomorrow? Talk some more?”
After agreeing to a meeting time, they shared a parting hug, and Randy drove back to the ranch much more slowly than he’d driven to town, his thoughts tumbling.
14
For a full day and night, Heather was too shaken, too frightened, by Brad showing up at her front door to leave her house for anything other than the care of her animals. Aside from her children, seeing to the animals’ needs had become a source of comfort, the only times of day when she could distract herself from the nightmare her life had become. She had become more attached to them than she had realized and had missed them while living at the McCall ranch. Randy had insisted on caring for them, even when he’d been run off his feet with veterinary emergencies, and she had allowed herself to be convinced. Now, she found their company to be greatly soothing.
Outside of that, she couldn't eat, could hardly sleep, was absent-minded with the twins, and too often found herself pacing back and forth in front of the windows and looking for the boogeyman around every corner. In retrospect, she felt like a complete fool for ever thinking she could find safety from Brad by moving across the country. Now she knew for sure that some men would never give up.
If the situation had a silver lining, it was that having Brad show up at her front door made her see her interaction with Randy in a new light. She understood now that she had made a mistake in lashing out at him and trying to blame her problems on him. Yes, she would have preferred him to be forthright about all the details of the work he was doing on the farm, but now that she was calmer and willing to be more honest with herself, she understood that there had been nothing malicious in his behavior. He had only been trying to take care of her, and if she was ever going to settle down and be happy with another person, she was going to have to learn how to let that kind of thing happen.
"Right," she said, nodding firmly to herself after clearing away their breakfast dishes. "It's time to make things right."
"What you saying, Mamma?" Andy, ever the curious one, asked, looking up at her expectantly with his wide blue eyes.
"I’m saying we're going to take a little car ride," she said, scooping up her bag and her keys. "We're going to go talk to Randy. What do you guys say to that?"
The twins met the question with a resounding chorus of cheers, and for the first time in what felt like days, Heather smiled. With every passing second, she regretted more the way she had uprooted them all from Randy's farm. Not only had it not been fair, but she hadn't only affected herself. She had taken Andy and Amelia from their newfound sense of comfort, too, and that was simply not okay.
She kept reminding herself of that dawning understanding as she drove to the ranch, drawing strength from it as she got her children out of their safety seats so that the three of them could march up the steps to Randy's front door. Even so, she was almost sick with nervousness. She had no guarantee that he would even listen to her, let alone accept her apology and give her another chance. She hadn't made it easy for him from the start. Even good men had their limits.
"Hey, Heather, what can I do for you?" Carson asked with a smile, opening the front door before she could knock. Rollie bounced out of the house, tail wagging wildly, and began to exchange enthusiastic greetings with the twins.
"Oh, Carson!" she exclaimed, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. She hadn't considered the possibility of Randy's brother answering the door. She couldn't help wondering what he thought of her after the way she had behaved.
"Are you here to see Randy?" he asked, his tone light and conversational. She searched his face for any sign of disapproval but, surprisingly, found none. She could only hope that Randy was as forgiving as his brother.
"That's right," she said, her voice starting to tremble. "I think I owe him an apology, truth be told. Is he around?"
"No, I'm afraid he's gone into town," Carson said with a wink at Andy and Amelia that made the two kids giggle. "But it's not like it's a big place. Why don't you go on down there, see if you can find him? I'll even watch these two hooligans."
"Are you sure?" Heather asked doubtfully. Even back in San Francisco, before her family had broken up and everything had fallen apart, Heather had never been one to go off and leave her children with any regularity. The thought of doing so now, with Brad possibly in the area, made her nervous. Not to mention the fact that the women of Winding Creek appeared to have about as low of an opinion of her as it could get.
On the other hand, Carson wasn’t exactly a stranger, and there was a certain appeal to the idea of getting the chance to talk to Randy alone. And as for the women? She would have to put her fears aside. Some things were just too important.
"Totally sure," Carson said, nodding his head vigorously.
After glancing down at the two small faces and seeing them both looking back at her with pleading, expectant expressions, she finally smiled and turned to Carson with gratitude. “Okay…”
He was grinning at the twins. "I happen to know a certain horse of mine that's been missing his buddies while they've been away. I was thinking the three of us, and Rollie, could pay him a visit, what do you say?"
Both of her little people responded with an enthusiastic yes, and Carson nodded significantly in the direction of Heather's car. After a final moment of hesitation, a pang of nerves at the thought of having them out of her sight when Brad was still somewhere on the loose, she hurried to slide into the driver's seat and turned the key in the ignition.
The whole way into town, Heather tried to get clear in her mind what on earth she could say by way of atonement. After all, she knew better than most that some behaviors were simply unforgivable. Although she didn't think this was necessarily one of them, she and Randy hadn't known each other all that long. He had told her straight out that he wasn't good at relationships, and she had gone ahead and acted like a lunatic anyway. It was entirely possible that he wouldn't want to get involved with someone who came with as much baggage as she did after the way she had behaved.
And if he didn't? "I wouldn't blame him one bit," she said morosely to herself as she spotted an empty parking spot fortuitously located right beside Randy's truck. "I—"
She stopped abruptly, her mouth snapping shut even as she put her car into park. Considering how surprised she was by what she was seeing, it was a wonder she didn't keep on driving, right up onto the sidewalk and through the window of the diner. As it was, all she could do was stare, her mind moving at a mile a minute, every word of her half-formed apology instantly forgotten.
There was Randy, on th
e sidewalk in front of her, so close, she could almost hear his voice as he spoke.
He wasn't alone. A pretty, petite woman was with him, currently standing on tiptoe to fit more easily in Randy's arms as the two of them embraced. That hug didn't look to Heather like the kind that happened between casual friends, either. If anyone should recognize romance between the man she loved and another woman, it would be Heather. She'd been through it often enough, back when she and Brad had still been married.
She remained in her car, her fists clenching her steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles started going white, as Randy and his paramour separated, ending up holding each other's hands. Heather sat stiffly, facing straight forward, not willing to get out of her seat but seemingly incapable of throwing her car into reverse and getting the hell out of there.
She stayed that way until Randy, turning back to his truck, noticed her there. His eyes widened with surprise, and then, incredibly, he gave her a tentative smile. When she saw the smile, she suddenly knew she was going to let him have it.
By the time he’d made it around to her car door, she already had her window rolled down. "I'm not getting out of this car, just so you know," she hissed before he could say so much as hello. "And you can go right ahead and wipe that smile off of your face."
"Wipe...what?" he asked, frowning with confusion. "What do you mean? Heather, I—"
"I saw you with your girlfriend," Heather interrupted, angry tears welling up and spilling over onto her hot cheeks. "The two of you looked quite happy together. A very tender moment. You've obviously known her since before you met me, haven't you? Does she know about our little tryst in the kitchen?"
"Whoa," he said in alarm, holding up his hands in a warding-off gesture. "You've got this all wrong. It's not what you think."
"Please," she snorted angrily, her right hand moving for the gearshift. "Save it, okay? I've already heard every lie in the book when it comes to this sort of thing. My ex used them all, and I won't fall for it again. I can't believe I was coming here to apologize, you know? I can't believe I thought you were worth it."
Randy reached out as if he were going to take hold of her car door, but she shook her head violently, her hair whipping around her face and making her imagine she looked every bit as out of control as she felt. Before he could reach so much as a finger onto her chipped, peeling paint, she threw the car into reverse, not even bothering to see if any traffic was headed in her direction.
"Heather, wait!" Randy shouted, stumbling into the spot where her car had just been. "Please, you've got it wrong! Just come back and talk to me, will you? I'll explain everything!"
But she ignored his pleas, ignored the sound of honking cars behind her, ignored absolutely everything, wanting only to get back to the McCall ranch, retrieve her children, and get as far away from Winding Creek as she could possibly manage.
15
A week went by, and Randy did his best to forget. He had never been particularly good at forgetting. He still had nightmares about the death of his favorite horse and his perceived role in the tragedy, and until his talk with Sacha, he hadn't been able to dismiss that dismal failure from his mind, either. He had always been the kind of guy to hang on to things and let them stew long past the point when other men might let bygones be bygones.
With Heather, forgetting seemed to be coming even harder than usual. Having his hopes built up while conversing with Sacha over breakfast, only to see them dashed so immediately after was a hard pill to swallow. That it had happened because of a misunderstanding, one he'd never had a fair chance to explain, was the kind of pill a person was like to choke on. He honestly thought that if she could only have calmed down enough to listen, Heather would have come around and believed him—eventually. As it was, he wasn't sure he would ever see her again. He had a feeling that if he were to show up at the farm unannounced, she might greet him with a shotgun instead of an understanding ear.
Nor did it help matters any that he kept stumbling over reminders of her and the twins. Every day, it seemed that the house found a new way to bring to mind what he had so briefly possessed and had now lost forever. A solid sharpness underfoot proved to be a Lego, while behind a couch, he discovered one of Amelia's sticker books. When he found one of Heather's old, pilled t-shirts in a freshly washed pile, a lump formed in his throat, and he had to abandon the idea of folding laundry altogether. It wasn't even finding her shirt that did him in but the fact that he had washed it. If he'd caught it before it went into the suds, at least he could have held on to her sweet scent, if only for a little while.
"You're losing it, man," he warned himself, balling the shirt up and tossing it across the room.
Losing it was exactly what he was doing, and with each passing day, he thought he understood the why of it a little more clearly. It was unlikely, incredible even in such a brief time, but he was almost certain that he was in love with Heather Browning. Too bad he hadn't realized it before he pissed her off and lost her forever.
"What is it, brother?" Carson asked, stopping in front of the laundry room and eyeing Randy with a carefully neutral expression. "Everything okay in here?"
"Honestly?" Randy asked, wondering if the pain was as evident on his face as the acute ache he felt in his heart. "No, I really don't think it is. I need to go and see Trevor, okay? Do you mind tending the animals this afternoon?"
"Sure thing, Randy," Carson said quickly. Randy could see that his brother wanted to ask for an explanation, to offer help, and he was grateful for Carson’s silence. Randy wasn't sure he could get through what he needed to ask even once. Trying to talk to both of his brothers might just break him.
When he pulled up in front of the B&B, Trevor was already sitting out on the porch waiting for him, two cold bottles of beer lined up on the step beside him. He didn't speak as he handed one over, simply squinted into the golden afternoon sun.
Randy tilted the bottle for a long, almost desperate mouthful, then glanced at Trevor. He took a deep breath, steeling himself. Having heart-to-hearts wasn't exactly in his wheelhouse, but there came a time, as his grandfather had been fond of saying, when a man had to fish or cut bait. For Randy, now was that time.
"I need to ask you a question, Trevor," he said, stumbling over his words but determined to get them out all the same. "And I'm hoping you won't laugh me right out of here."
"Not going to laugh, brother," Trevor said, taking a sip of his beer and fixing an expectant look on Randy. "You can ask me anything. I hope you know that."
"I just need to ask you how you know," Randy said, and then he cleared his throat and shook his head in irritation. "I need to know how you knew you loved Lacey, right at the beginning. How did you know it was the real deal?"
"Honestly?" Trevor said with a faint smile as if he was remembering something fondly. "If you're asking me that question, I think you already have your answer. The whole time I've known you, you've never cared enough to talk about it—before now, that is. It never came up with Sacha, that's for sure."
"Right—but that's just it!" Randy said, getting up to pace back and forth in front of the porch steps and feeling more bothered than ever. "I—walked away from Sacha. We were together, you know? I was supposed to be there for her, and I walked away. Doesn't that mean something?"
"It does," Trevor nodded, looking more closely at Randy. "But I'm curious to hear what you think it means."
"What if I'm broken, Trevor?" Randy asked, stopping in his tracks. He was getting to the heart of the matter now, the fear that had been dogging him ever since he'd first begun to suspect he had feelings for Heather. A part of him had been sure he would never be the kind of man Heather needed. That part of him was convinced he would always let her down in the end.
"You're not broken, baby brother," Trevor said, getting to his feet. He put his free hand on Randy's shoulder. "What happened with Sacha happened because, well, you were young, but more importantly, because you didn't love her. She wasn't the one for you, Randy.
She just wasn't."
"Sacha—," Randy said slowly, letting the words sink in. "That's what she said herself."
"So then, what about Heather?" Trevor pressed, going in for the kill. He held up a hand when Randy started to answer. "This is important. Take time to think about it if you have to. What are your feelings toward her?"
"I think I love her, man," Randy said, his voice raw, his throat thick with the effort it took to not break down. "I think I've loved her since almost the very start."
"So then, go after her," Trevor said, fire in his voice and in his eyes that hadn't been there moments before. "If you love her, fight for her. Love is a special thing—that's what I know—and you can't just let it slip through your fingers. You have to fight. Fight until there's nothing left for you to fight for."
16
"Hello?" Heather said, picking up the phone reluctantly. "Eva?"
"Um, hello," Eva said, her voice heavy with suspicion.
Heather winced at her sister's tone. She'd been hoping that the fact she had been crying wouldn't be evident across the thousand or so miles that separated them. She had thought she would be able to weep in peace after she had put the twins down for their nap, but she knew now, after those few words, she’d been mistaken. Eva had always been able to read her like a book, and following everything that had happened with Brad, Heather’s little sister was more protective than ever. No way was Heather going to be able to shrug things off and end the call without Eva pressing for more details. When Eva wanted something badly enough, she could be every bit as persistent as a pit bull.
"What's going on, Eva?" Heather asked, forcing a bright tone and sitting up straighter on the couch, as if that alone would make her sound more like herself. Even before the question was out of her mouth, she knew that Eva wasn't going to buy it.