by Raeann Blake
“I’m leaving now, Laine. I’m not stupid. I know he’s on the way home. I’m not going to be sitting here waiting for him, wringing my hands like some little shrinking violet. He made his choice. Whatever his reasons were, he made the choice. I’ll stop by the house and…”
Laine blew out a long breath and shook his head. “Don’t do that. There’s nothing there that you wouldn’t have to fix. Wait outside. I’ll go get some things from Shack. While I do that go down to the next door past Charlie’s office and get a sleeping bag and ground blanket. Goddammit, Hailey. He’s gonna fire me over this. You’re gonna cost me my job and my best friend if I let you go.”
“You don’t have a choice. You can let me ride Soldier or I’ll walk,” Hailey said quietly.
Laine dropped his head and shook it. Her voice was completely emotionless. No inflection, no rise and fall. Just a monotone. “Fuck. Meet me outside,” he muttered.
Hailey muttered something under her breath when Laine came back with Shack right behind him. “You should have plenty to last you a couple of days there, baby. I packed some coffee for you, too,” Shack said then handed her a package wrapped in foil.
“This is some sausage and some biscuits. You didn’t eat last night. You’ll get hungry. How long are you staying?” Shack asked.
“A couple of nights. I’ll be back late Tuesday. I have to go,” she said then swung into the saddle.
“Hailey, you be careful. You don’t know the wildlife up here. You keep your eyes open and watch Soldier. He’ll let you know if anything’s wrong. Okay?” Laine said before she was even settled into the saddle.
“I will. Did you tell Shack that he’s okay?” she asked as she lifted her eyes to the house.
“I told him he’s breathing. I don’t know that he’s okay. I won’t know that until I know what happened.”
Hailey nodded slightly and lifted the reins to turn Soldier away but Shack reached out and took his bridle to stop her.
“Hailey, listen to me. I won’t ask you not to go. I will ask you to remember what we talked about. I know you’re upset and you have every right to be. But try to remember those things I told you about him not always doing or saying the right thing. If you love him, let him try to find his way back to you. You be careful now. And eat,” he said softly.
Hailey gazed down at him then shifted her eyes away when they filled with tears and she nodded slightly. When he let the horse go she walked him away then quickly kicked him into a canter.
“Goddammit. She shouldn’t be goin’ up there alone, Shack,” Lane muttered.
“No, but right now that’s better than her being here. If he comes in here right now and says one wrong word to her, it could be the last one,” he said then turned when he heard Clay’s truck roaring down the dirt road. He slid the truck sideways when he stopped but didn’t get out.
“How in the fuck did he even get home?” Laine snapped and strode straight to him and jerked the door open, reached in and took the keys then tossed them across the yard to Shack.
“Where in the hell have you been? Did you even stop one time to think about how worried we would be? Did it even cross your mind that we might be criss-crossin’ the goddamned county lookin’ for your ass all night long and then pacin’ the floor back here when we couldn’t find you? And why didn’t you answer you fuckin’ phone?” Laine shouted as he pulled Clay out of the truck.
“I’m sorry,” Clay slurred.
“You’re still about half lit. Goddammit, Clay,” he said trailing off in a hoarse whisper when Shack stopped in front of him and looked Clay straight in the eyes.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Shack said. Even in his state, Clay couldn’t miss the tremble in the man’s voice.
“I’m sorry. I…I’m just sorry,” he mumbled and pulled away from Laine to start for the house.
“What happened, Clay?” Laine asked as he started up the steps behind him.
“Leave me alone.”
“You want me to leave you alone? I’ll leave you alone. But first, I’ve got a message for you. Cherry said you left your hat at her place,” Laine said evenly. Clay stumbled on the next step but caught himself and kept going.
“Wondered where it was,” he muttered and went through the door.
“Oh, God. Clay. Where have you been?” Isobell asked when she sat straight up on the couch. “Where’s Hailey. Does she know he’s here?”
“Hailey’s not here,” Laine said quietly.
“What? What do you mean she’s not here?”
Clay turned his head slowly to look at the darkened doorways of her bedroom and her office before he turned to look back at Laine.
“Where is she?”
“She just left to go out to the herd…alone. She answered the phone, Clay. She took the message.”
Clay’s head dropped just slightly but he picked it right back up and started for the stairs. “Did you even remember to use a condom?”
“Yes, Daddy. Happy?” he muttered then stumbled on the next step as Isobell gasped loudly.
Laine swore softly and he followed him up the stairs then went the rest of the way up with him to keep him from falling.
“Hush now,” Shack whispered and motioned for the kitchen.
When Laine came back he found Shack sitting silently on one of the stools with Isobell angrily opening and closing cabinets loudly, banging the skillet down on the stove, and slapping anything she picked up down against the counter.
“Isobell,” Shack said quietly.
“What?” she snapped then closed her eyes and softened her voice. “I’m sorry. What, Shack,” she said more gently.
“What are you doing, dear? He’s not going to eat.”
“Have either of you eaten? I haven’t. And none of us ate last night. Did she take some food? She didn’t eat.”
“We sent some food with her. No, child. We haven’t eaten. Go ahead.”
“How could he do this? If you’d seen her in town yesterday when we were talking to Isaac…”
“Whoa. Back up. Talking to Isaac where, about what?” Laine asked quickly.
“At one of the sidewalk tables outside that coffee place. He just stopped by and out of the blue Hailey pulled out this list of women who have worked here the last six months and asked him if he knew any of them. He said he did and she asked if his father might. He seemed kind of reluctant to answer that but he finally did. According to Isaac, Fiona worked for Yates for two months before she left there and came out here. And…Pepper is his cousin.”
“His what?” Shack asked in surprise.
Isobell nodded as she kept working. “He said she was a distant cousin, but a cousin. After he told us that, Hailey started putting the pieces together. She said Fiona was the one who was working here when Yates started the overcharges. And she thinks he sent Pepper out here for the sole purpose of getting Clay into bed so she could file a sexual harassment suit against him and he’d have to sell the ranch to pay any judgment that was levied against him.”
“I’ll be damned. That sonofabitch. Why would the Yates boy tell you all of this?” Laine asked thoughtfully.
“Think about it, Laine. Clay’s daddy tried to keep him from getting the ranch by giving it to Yates. Yates tried to give the store to Mr. Cardell. Where did that leave Isaac? The same place Clay was. Nowhere. He hasn’t forgotten that.”
“Huh. I always wondered what he thought about all of that.”
“I’m a little ashamed to admit that I never even thought about it. Hailey said she didn’t either. He asked her out. He said he knew she was seeing Clay but he didn’t see a ring so he took a chance. She turned him down. And then he does something like this…” she said then trailed off and shook her head.
Shack ran a hand down his face and shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell’s goin’ on. We half suspect that it was Isaac out behind the house the other night. Clay said he asked her out once before and she turned him down. He thinks the guy might be out here to wat
ch Hailey.
“All I know for sure is that he’s in love with her. Maybe old man Yates called him and told him that she was downtown with his boy or something. You know he already had suspicions about her working with him. I thought he’d let that go, but…”
“Working with him? Are you kidding me?” Isobell snapped.
Laine shook his head immediately. “I told you what happened in town. You could just see it in his eyes after that. It was the first time he’d seen them square off. I’m telling you, nobody could watch that and suspect her of working with him. I know he got really upset the night we ran into the boy when we were in the western store and he saw him and Hailey talking. That was when he asked her out the first time. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Yates called him and told him that they were downtown together and he got it in his head that she was seeing him,” Laine said.
“I don’t know. It’s gotta be something like that to make him do this. He’s been so wrapped up in her the last couple of days…hell even right before he came in the house he was checking his watch every couple of minutes, worrying about where they were.”
“Then why didn’t he just call? And why didn’t he sit his ass right here and confront her when she got home?” Isobell asked angrily.
“Isobell…sugar, you have to calm down. We don’t know the answers to any of those questions. And it’s a good bet he’s not going to be answering them any time soon. He passed out before I could even get his boots off. I don’t know how he even made it home.”
* * *
Hailey swung back into the saddle after she had stopped to let Soldier drink and have a short rest. She had taken the time to try to choke down one of the biscuits but couldn’t manage more than a couple of bites so she had re-wrapped it to save it for later. She glanced up at the darkening sky. She knew she’d made good time. The horse had wanted to run so badly that she had let him have his head for a while but held him to a canter and alternated with a walk after that. Still, she wasn’t sure she was going to make the line cabin before the storm that was brewing hit. Just in case, she had gone ahead and taken her rain slicker out of her pack and tied it on top in case she needed it.
She still hadn’t cried. Yes, her eyes had watered when Shack had spoken so gently to her, but she didn’t let them fall. What was the point? It wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make her feel any better. It wouldn’t make it hurt any less.
She’d warned herself all along that it could happen. But somewhere over the last couple of days she had let herself believe that they were past anything that could take away what they had. She’d been stupid, foolish. Her own words had come back to her. Pity she hadn’t paid more attention to them herself.
I don’t know why you need me right now. But I know it won’t last. And if I don’t stop this somehow I’m not sure that I’ll be ready for the day you say you don’t need me anymore.
I’ll say something wrong. Do something wrong. Talk to the wrong person. It will be something. And then you’ll look at me and you’ll wonder what you’ve been doing and why you’ve been doing it. And you won’t be able to answer those questions. And then you’ll decide I can’t stay here because you’ll be too uncomfortable working with me after…
Would he send her away now? Whatever it was that made him open his eyes and decide he didn’t like what was happening…would that make him send her away?
“If you do you’re gonna have to be man enough to say it to my face,” she muttered under her breath and she urged Soldier into a canter just as she heard the first rumble of thunder in the distance. When the lightening split the sky and thunder started rolling around her but the rain still didn’t come, she urged the big horse into a full gallop. She knew she was close to where the pond was located. If she could get there, she’d stop just long enough to put the slicker on then keep going. When she finally saw the clearing in the distance, she pulled the horse back down to a canter then stopped him just long enough to reach behind her and pull the slicker loose. She quickly slid it over her head then moved him back into a canter again.
“I know you’re tired, but it’s not much farther. I promise you’ll get some water and something to eat when we get there. Come on, buddy,” she urged.
Her nerves were on edge. She could feel the tension in Soldier’s muscles and that told her she was in a bad place. The lightening was flashing all around them and the deluge began with no warning. The thunder was deafening as it crashed around them then rolled into the distance only to be replaced by the next wave. She wiped a hand down her face to wipe away the rain when she thought she finally caught a glimpse of a structure in the distance and shifted their direction enough to head straight for it. When the lightning struck again close by, she glanced around her and shook her head.
“That’s great. Of course it would be in the middle of trees. Jesus, that’s close,” she said when both she and Soldier flinched on the next lightning strike. “Come on, buddy. We’re almost there,” she urged and moved into as fast a walk as she dared weaving in and out of the trees with limited visibility. The quick breath of relief surged out of her when the cabin materialized through the rain and she rode Soldier straight under the lean-to at the side that was meant to shelter the horses. As soon as they were underneath it, she leaned forward and laid her head against the horse’s neck.
“Oh, you did good. You did really good. Hold on. Let me get down and get this gear off of you,” she whispered to him.
She knew they were close enough that she should be able to hear the cows, but that wasn’t possible with the thunder and lightning. She had her fingers crossed that if the storm stampeded the herd that they weren’t sitting in the direct path they took. With it nestled in the trees the way it was, she thought it might be safe from that. It had to have been there long enough for them to print it on a map. Right?
She didn’t even realize that the thoughts going through her head were coming out of her mouth. She had the saddle and other things stripped off of the horse then rubbed him down with the blanket before she searched for and found a brush along the back wall.
“I guess it was stupid to make this trip after Laine told me this was coming. I could have gotten you hurt. But I couldn’t stay there. What was I supposed to do? Sit by the front door and look at him in relief when he came in, just to know he was okay? Then what? Clay, how could you? He probably wouldn’t even have answered me. I don’t own him anyway. He never said forever. Oh, well…actually he did, didn’t he? I guess his forever’s are shorter than mine.
“Were you born around here? Forever doesn’t mean the same thing up here? Maybe it’s just that it doesn’t mean the same thing to a guy that it does to a girl. I’m not like other girls, Soldier. But…I thought he meant…wouldn’t you have thought he meant…dammit. How could he go to her after he said it was different? He said he liked the way we felt together. I…thought…he was…falling in…,” she finally sobbed then leaned her head against the horse and let the tears flow openly.
* * *
He flinched with every lightning strike and the ensuing thunder as he stared out the window. His eyes were turned northward. She was out there in this somewhere. Did she make it to a line cabin? Did she know about them? Are thunderstorms the same in New Mexico as they are in Montana? Do they happen as quickly? Did she get caught out in the open and…
He swore softly and stopped the thoughts running through his head. Not that it mattered to him now other than the fact that she was a good business manager. If he couldn’t remember that, all he’d have to do is go back down there and look at those pictures again, if the continuous reel they were running on in his head ever slowed or dimmed. He rubbed his hand back and forth across his forehead. He knew he had to go down there and face them. He didn’t have any doubt that both Shack and Laine were waiting for him. It wouldn’t surprise him to even find Isobell still there as well. He couldn’t help needing to be away from there before she got back, but he shouldn’t have worried them that way.
; And damn that woman for calling the house. How did she get the number anyway? And to top it all off, he was going to have to go buy a new hat because he couldn’t for the life of him remember what the woman looked like or where he’d spent the night. He was sorry that Hailey had answered the phone. But if it hurt her at all, it couldn’t have hurt her any more than it did for him to open that email.
He’d spent part of the night trying to puzzle through who had sent it. He had called the number it came from and found out it was an Internet cafe downtown. He didn’t remember the exact email address the email itself had come from but he did remember that it was just a bunch of numbers and one of the generic email sites you could find all over the Internet. Then he’d finally decided it didn’t really matter. Knowing who sent it wouldn’t change what he saw. It wouldn’t change what she was doing.