Erin's Way

by Laura Browning

  “Erin…”

  “Go to hell.” It was barely an audible whisper, not her usual high volume bluster.

  Sam raked his hand across his short hair in frustrated patience as he tried to explain. “The only room with a bed that’s made is mine….”

  “Thanks, but no thanks, Sheriff. As you’ve already made clear again and again, you don’t want me there.”

  But he did want to be fairly certain she would still be in his house come morning. “You can have my room, and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “Afraid I’ll take off?” she asked, some of her bluster returning, but only for an instant. “No, I’ll sleep on the couch. You’re too big to be comfortable here,” she mumbled. “I’m used to sleeping on a berth on board ship. This is fine for me. Leave me alone. I’ll be all right, and I will be here in the morning. Like I said earlier. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  It was the most she had said since he’d found her in the pasture, and it was without an attitude. She still had her back to him, still refused to look at him.

  “Do you need anything?” he finally asked quietly.

  “No.”

  “Well, good night then. I’m down the hall if you need me.”

  She snorted. “I won’t.”

  * * * *

  Stoner parked Sam’s truck behind the house and stepped into the kitchen. Catherine had already gone upstairs. She sat propped in their king-size bed. Seeing her made him smile. That was something else that had changed in the last six months. She had moved back into his bed. It had been a long time, not since they’d taken Erin and gone to Washington. Dear God, that was more than a third of their married life. Their daughter’s teenage years had been rocky not only for her, but for them too. In fact, their marriage hadn’t been on a solid footing since Erin’s birth.

  When Catherine glanced up from what she was reading, he smiled, praying like hell Erin’s sudden reappearance wouldn’t erode what they had rebuilt. Guilt stabbed him for feeling that way. He wanted what was best for Erin, but in the past that had always translated into sacrificing the rest of the family.

  “Did you find the problem?” His wife’s gaze held only mild curiosity. Most of the time loose cattle were the result of a gate left open or a broken wire, common enough occurrences in a rural area.

  “Yes.” Stoner kept his tone casual. “There was an accident. A driver ran off the road and took out part of Sam’s fence. It was his cattle that were loose.”

  “I hope no one was hurt.”

  He smiled. “Just a minor injury. She’s okay. Carter and I helped Sam get the cattle back in and put a temporary fix on the fence.”

  “Well, that’s good.” She was too intent on what she was reading to pay much attention, and he was relieved. After stripping, Stoner showered, wrapped himself in a thick robe, and returned to the bedroom.

  As casually as he could he asked, “Did you ever hear anything back from Erin after you e-mailed her with the pictures of Tabby’s wedding?”

  “No…not a word.”

  “Was she still in the—where was it? The Virgin Islands?”

  “Yes. That job as a cook on the sailing ship must agree with her. She’s been there longer than anyplace so far. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Just curious.” As soon as it came out of his mouth, he knew he’d said the wrong thing. Even his casual tone wouldn’t fool her.

  He had her attention now. Catherine was anything but stupid. “Stoner, you said ‘she’ when you mentioned someone taking out Sam’s fence. Would that ‘she’ be Erin?”

  He sighed as he sat next to her on the edge of the bed. They’d promised each other honesty when they’d healed their rift. “Yes.”

  “Where is she, Stoner? Is she hurt?” There was a pause. Disillusionment colored her voice when she spoke again. “Was she drunk…or stoned?”

  “She’s at Sam’s sleeping it off. She was stoned, Catherine. She hit her head, but nothing serious.”

  There was a long silence before Catherine touched his arm. “Stoner… Something’s wrong. She only came back last fall because of Tabby, then immediately took off again. Now she turns up out of the blue?” She shook her head. “Honey, do you think she’s in some kind of trouble? It’s not like her to come back home willingly.”

  The truth of that statement cut him to the core. Stoner knew how much it pained Catherine to acknowledge the depth of the rift between them and their daughter, but it was true. There had always been something about Erin that Catherine had never been able to touch, even when she was a little girl. Stoner might have been able to once, when Erin was small, but as the years passed his relationship with his daughter had gotten even worse than the one between mother and daughter.

  Stoner laughed, but it wasn’t with any true amusement. “When has Erin ever not been in trouble, Katie?” He raked a big hand through his gray hair. “God! She makes it so hard to love her. It’s like from the moment she was born, she took one look at me, and thought ‘what can I do to piss him off?’ I don’t want to feel that way about her, damn it. She’s my daughter.”

  “I know, honey.” Catherine took his hand and stroked the back of it. “Just a year ago, I would have chalked up your worry to concern about how Erin’s behavior would reflect badly on our family, but in the last six months you’ve changed.”

  He took her hand. “How do I get through to her?”

  She shook her head. “I wish I knew the answer. The two of you may be too much alike in some ways to ever have an easy relationship. You’re both hot-tempered.”

  Stoner snorted. “Yes, but where I hang on to a mood for a long time, Erin is a flash fire.”

  Catherine nodded. “There’s a lot to that. She could never understand how you could still be mad at her hours later when she had long since moved beyond whatever it was that triggered your argument.”

  “And I thought she was trying to deliberately provoke me with an attitude that seemed uncaring and unrepentant.”

  Catherine leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “God forgive me, Stoner. I don’t want to turn her away if she needs our help, but I can’t go back and relive what it was like all through her teenage years. It made our marriage nearly impossible to endure, and we weren’t on a great footing to start. We’ve come such a long way recently.”

  She paused and took a deep breath. “There’s a part of me that wishes she would stay away.” When she didn’t say anything more, he looked at her. Her expression pleaded for understanding, guilt and sorrow mixing in equal measure. “Whatever happens, for whatever reason she’s come back, please don’t let it come between us. I need you, honey. I need what we’ve found again. These last six months…”

  “…have been the best we’ve ever had,” he finished with a gentle smile as he leaned forward to kiss her lingeringly. “We could put her in the guesthouse.”

  “Stoner!” She drew back in horror.

  “Think about it. She’d have her privacy. We would have ours. She’s nearly twenty-seven, Katie. I’m sure there are areas of her life I don’t want or need to know about. And quite frankly, I think we’re due for a little privacy.” He grinned at her. “Maybe a lot of privacy.”

  Chapter 2

  Sam woke up and lay still for a moment, instantly alert, darkness thick around him. The time he’d spent in the military had left a lasting effect. He assessed his surroundings, listening for what had awakened him. He heard it again. Crying. Who? Erin.

  She never cried. Even as a kid. It was one of the things he’d always remembered about her. With Stoner in her face, she’d been dry-eyed and defiant, as tough and hardheaded as any of the Richardsons.

  Sam bolted out of bed, snatched a pair of sweat pants over his boxers, which were already a concession to having a female in the house, and padded silently along the hallway. She lay on the couch, curled on her side toward the woodstove. He started to say something to her, then realized she still slept. He approached
her cautiously. God, when had he ever approached Erin with anything but caution? He squatted next to her.

  “Don’t hurt them,” she mumbled. “Not Matty!”

  “Erin,” he coaxed. “Come on, baby, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

  Suddenly he was pinned by her dark, blue-gray gaze. With awareness of where she was and who stared at her, her expression changed. She wiped away the emotion and her look became unreadable.

  “You okay?” he asked, knowing any additional sympathy would put her on the attack.

  “Yeah.” She laughed cynically. “It was a stupid dream. Sorry if I woke you up. Was I yelling?”

  Sam half smiled. “Yeah.” No way would he tell her she had cried. He had never, ever seen Erin cry, not when she broke her arm, not when Stoner put her pony down because it jumped the fence and was hit by a car, and not even when he had dragged her out of Sam’s bed. Erin never cried. To hear she did so in her sleep? It ripped his guts right out. Even if she believed him, he couldn’t imagine how mortified she would be. “Uh. I was up anyway. You want a cup of tea?”

  Erin snorted. “Only if you can lace it with some bourbon.”

  He looked over his shoulder at her. “Sorry, I got enough of alcohol when my father was alive.” Sure he took a drink now and then, but he wasn’t about to tell her he had booze in the house.

  She rolled away from him. Once again, he stared at her stiff back. Obviously their conversation was over as far as she was concerned. Sam forced himself to walk away. He shouldn’t think about her. He didn’t want or need a complication like Erin. The problem was that every time he started dating other women, he compared them to her. Somehow, they ended up too boring, too stupid, or too weak-spirited. And boy would that be embarrassing if anyone knew, the bachelor lawman and the wild child of Richardson Homestead. Too much history stretched between them. He thought of the birth control pills again. She had moved on, and so should he.

  Sam heated water in the microwave, dumped a teabag in, and waited for it to steep. He remembered when Erin had crashed the party at the country club last fall. She had been stoned out of her head, maybe drunk as well, but underneath, the feisty defiance that had always called to him was still there. It had been enough to make him step between her and Stoner when her father would have slapped her.

  “Sam?”

  He turned so abruptly he nearly spilled his tea. Erin stood there leaning against the doorjamb. She had changed into some kind of baggy cotton pants and a long sleeved, high-necked shirt that hung nearly to her knees. Such modest attire for sleeping made for a contrast that was hard to reconcile with what she wore in public.

  “What is it?” he asked, rubbing the ache in the back of his neck. He didn’t want to play any more games.

  “I—tea would be okay.” The defensiveness was gone from her voice. It actually sounded like she was making an effort to be friendly, even if she didn’t quite meet his gaze. Sam wanted her to look at him with the same intensity; he was relieved she didn’t. It didn’t make sense, but then whatever it was between the two of them never had.

  While he grabbed another mug, filled, and nuked it, she wandered restlessly around the room, her delicate fingers touching things here and there until finally she stood next to him. Next to, but not touching him. He’d encountered wild animals less wary than Erin.

  She was still no bigger than a mosquito, he thought, smiling inwardly. The top of her head was no higher than his chest. He thought of Stoner…taller still than him, and Catherine…herself a tall, slender woman. Evan was also tall. Erin must have felt like a misfit from the very beginning in that family. Meeting Tabby wouldn’t have changed her mind. Her half sister was somewhere around five-ten.

  “Why did you come back?” Sam asked. He hadn’t meant to. God only knew it was none of his business, and he didn’t want it to be his business. He needed to be smart, remain aloof, but sometime what he knew logically, his heart wouldn’t obey.

  “Would you believe me if I said I discovered a desire for hearth and home?”

  Sam chuckled. “No.”

  She grinned at him, but the shadows still lingered on her elfin face. “I came back because I have the hots for you. Would you believe that?”

  His heart pounded, and other parts too, at just the thought of it.

  “No.” But he wanted to. Man, did he want to. “I hardly think we would be a perfect fit, Erin.”

  She flashed a smile. “The druggy and the lawman. Probably not.” She prowled the room again, stopping and striking a dramatic pose and tone. “What if I said I ran away from a member of a notorious crime family, and I believe he might still try to find me and kill me?”

  Sam stared at the way she had her hand clutched to her chest, and he laughed.

  Erin tilted her head and grinned. “No one would believe that, would they? Silly of me. I’ll simply have to think of something more plausible.”

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  She shook her head. As she took the tea, he noticed the faint tremor in her hands and wondered if it was leftover from her nightmare, or a function of all the substance abuse. He pulled a chair out and sat, but Erin continued to prowl. If it wasn’t so much a part of who she was, it would have made him uneasy, but she had been constantly on the move as a child too, always searching, always looking for the next diversion.

  “I’m sorry about your fence.” She paused, but almost immediately her gaze shifted restlessly around, looking anywhere but at him, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Once upon a time, she’d worshiped him, now her avoidance was as painful as a slap. “I—I saw a deer, a cow, or something in the road and swerved. Let me know what I can do to fix it.”

  Sam studied her, sizing her up. He wanted her to stick around. Somewhere deep inside, he knew she was looking for an excuse as well. Gut feeling told him this might be the last chance they had to find out what, if anything, there was between them. As much as logic and reason told him to stay away, his heart had always carried another message. His heart won.

  “I could use some help around the farm. My hired hand has pneumonia and calving season just started. I’d pay you, minus the cost of the fence of course.” Before he’d even finished speaking, his subconscious was screaming at him. What was he thinking?

  Erin stared at him. “Of course. What exactly did you want me to do? Cook? Clean?”

  Sam blinked. Have her in the house? That would be too close for comfort. “I need help with the livestock. You’d have to check fences, water troughs. Ride out during the day when I have to be at work. Help feed and muck out.”

  Erin wrinkled her aristocratic, little nose. “You want me to shovel cow shit?” Her voice rose on a note of incredulity as she finished.

  Sam grinned. “And horse manure too. How long do you plan to stay?”

  Erin shrugged. “A few hours, a few weeks. I don’t know, Sam. I guess until I’ve worn out my welcome. Last time that didn’t take long. In fact, I think it was worn out before I even arrived.”

  “Are you on vacation from that job on the ship?” She never had given him a straight answer about why she’d returned.

  “You could say that.” She avoided his eyes, continued her prowling.

  Sam clenched his teeth in frustration. She was as forthcoming with information as usual. “Isn’t this your busy time?”

  Erin set her cup in the sink with a distinct click of ceramic against porcelain. “I’m tired. If you want help, I’ll help, but let’s leave examining my life out of it, okay? It’s not part of the deal.”

  “Right.” Sam stood and came up behind her to put his cup in the sink next to hers. For a moment their bodies touched, and it was like the completion of an electrical circuit; sparks shot between them. Sam jerked away. “I’ll show you what to do over the next couple days. Then I’m back to work on Monday.”

  She nodded warily, shifting away from him. So she felt it too, and it made her nervous.

 
* * * *

  Erin caught the coveralls and baseball cap Sam tossed at her the next morning. “I’m going to ride out and check fences. While I’m doing that, you can muck out stalls.”

  Erin wrinkled her nose at the heavy, insulated coveralls. She preferred softer materials, but she knew this would keep her warm.

  “Try some of the boots near the back door. You might find a pair that fits.” Sam ducked out the door so fast Erin had to believe he was trying to get away from her. Her mouth twisted. Nothing new there.

  After finding a pair of boots that would actually stay on her feet, Erin slogged across the barnyard. She paused inside the door and inhaled the familiar scents. She’d spent a lot of time in the barn at Richardson Homestead as a kid…until Daddy had put her pony down. Her gaze skittered around the storage area just inside the door. Erin grabbed a manure fork and the wheelbarrow and began shoveling the soiled bedding.

  About mid-morning, she heard a vehicle pull into the farmyard. The nervous flutter in her stomach was beyond her control. The wheelbarrow was full, so Erin pulled the cap low over her eyes and pushed it outside, partly to empty it, partly to see who was there. With the cap on, chances were excellent no one would recognize her immediately. That might be the advantage she needed if… No, she wasn’t going there. She was safe here.

  “Hey, kid!” a voice she hadn’t heard in years called. “You seen Sam? I brought his truck back. I need to pick my sister up and get him to drive us back to my parents’ house.”

  Erin let the wheelbarrow drop to the ground and pushed her cap back. Evan’s gray eyes, so like Daddy’s, widened.

  “Erin? What… What the hell are you doing?”

  His tone, as much as his words, put her on the defensive. She stuck her chin out pugnaciously. “You’re the freaking brain, Evan. What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m shoveling horse shit.”