“That’s good to know,” Hatch said, as though they were talking about the weather. He pushed himself to his feet and offered her a hand up. She hesitated and he dropped his hand to his side.
“Don’t get too far ahead,” she said to her son as he bolted toward the ranch house. “How in the world would he come up with something like that?” she asked as he took off.
“Who knows.” Hatch shrugged.
“He’s lonely for a little brother or sister, I guess.” She nibbled on her thumbnail. “Do you figure he understands where babies come from?”
“Trust me, he understands. It goes on all around him. And we talk.”
“Yeah, but I’ll have to have The Talk with him.”
“If you want me to…”
She must have blinked.
“What—you don’t trust me?”
She crossed her arms. “I just don’t know what you’d say…”
“Well, I’d make sure he’s got his facts straight. And I’d answer any questions.”
“What would you tell him about love?”
“It’s not a necessary component of sex. Or baby making.”
“Yes, but what would you tell him?” That he didn’t have an immediate answer was telling. “You don’t believe in love?”
“I don’t believe in a lot of things.”
When it came to words and emotions, Hatch was as tight-lipped as his name implied. She’d figured it out her first time aboard a ship. The area around a hatch was called the lip and when it closed it formed a watertight seal—a seal that held provided watertight intergrity—in Navy terms. Which meant he’d earned his nickname for being a vault of integrity. The keeper of secrets.
A closed hatch.
She just wished he’d open up to her sometimes.
“HATCH?” HE AWOKE TO his murmured name. “Hatch, wake up.” Opening his eyes, he noted with his monovision the glowing face of the alarm clock and Ryder’s worried one for the third time that week.
“What is it?” He propped himself up.
“Mom’s having a bad dream.”
Same as last night. And the night before.
Hatch rolled over to go back to sleep. “Your mother’s a big girl. She can handle her own nightmares. Go back to bed,” he ordered.
Ryder tried to shake him.
Hatch rolled onto his back and gave the kid his stink eye, which was what they called his single-eyed stare. “Ryder,” he warned.
“Please, Hatch.”
The kid looked as scared as Hatch had ever seen him. Like the time ol’ Blue got hit out on the highway and they had to rush him to the vet. He glanced at Blue now and the dog whined.
“I heard her crying.”
Rubbing away the last vestiges of sleep at two o’clock in the morning, Hatch reached for his eye patch on the nightstand and couldn’t find it.
Screw it.
He kicked back the covers and got out of bed. He’d learned a long time ago there was no sleeping in the buff with a kid around. Hatch didn’t bother putting anything on over his shorts for the quick trip across the hall.
Her door was cracked open, as if Ryder had already peeked inside. Hatch heard her thrashing around in bed before he reached it. Her mostly incoherent mutterings were speckled with colorful language and the words No, don’t. And Stop.
“Go back to bed, Ryder. I’ve got this.” He nudged the boy toward his own room. To his surprise, Ryder didn’t argue. Blue followed Ryder back to bed. The heeler had had his own pillow in the boy’s room from the time he was a pup. Charlie on the other hand, as a highly disciplined bomb-sniffing dog, slept kenneled in the kitchen at night. For now, anyway.
“Ange,” Hatch said sharply.
She paused momentarily. But didn’t wake up.
He pulled the rocking chair closer to her bedside and tried to recall if you were or weren’t supposed to wake someone from a nightmare. Or was that sleepwalking?
And what was all that nonsense about waking up from a falling dream before you hit the ground?
He’d fallen plenty of times in dreams and in life, but couldn’t ever remember that feeling of hitting ground until he’d met her. Hatch liked to think he’d landed on his feet. Only he wasn’t quite so sure he’d landed yet.
He leaned forward in the rocker and went with a different tactic. “Angel.” He took her hand in his. “I’m right here. It’s okay now.”
His murmured reassurance seemed to calm her.
Assuming these were post-traumatic dreams, he wondered at the trauma she’d been left to deal with. In a way he was lucky. He couldn’t recollect anything surrounding or following the trauma of losing his eye. Nothing that kept him tossing and turning at night, anyway.
He sat in the chair, watching her sleep, until he felt himself drifting off.
ANGELA AWOKE TO the rooster’s crow. Lifting her head from her pillow, she found Hatch staring at her.
Her gaze dropped to their linked hands.
“You were having a bad dream,” he said, disengaging.
“Did you sit in that chair all night?” she asked.
“Something like that.” He stretched the kinks in his neck. “Sorry about the other night.”
She leaned back against the headboard.
They’d barely spoken a word since. The dreams had surfaced that night. Bits and pieces of something buried so deep she’d almost forgotten it was there until her past collided with her present to remind her.
“I saw a woman stoned to death.” And she’d been absolutely powerless to stop it. “We weren’t allowed to intervene. Though we tried. And she managed to escape. We found her the next day.”
Angela remembered straining against the gunny, who’d held her back as their CO argued with the town’s leaders for leniency. Angela had shouted her own protests, to no avail.
Hatch stared down at her for a moment. “Move over.”
She quirked an eyebrow.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
She scooted back toward the center of the bed and he sat beside her. She didn’t protest.
She simply wanted him to hold her. “Hatch, have you been with anyone else since we’ve been married?”
“No, ma’am. I have not.”
She felt those first tears escape.
“Shh,” he said. “If you want to make a fashion statement we’ll get you that scarlet letter. But nobody’s throwing stones. Least of all me.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be this complicated,” she said, turning into his side.
“Angela,” he said, rubbing her back, “it was always going to be this complicated.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fourth of July County Fair
THE SWEETWATER COUNTY FAIR in Rock Springs, Wyoming, was a seven-day event that opened on a Sunday and ran through Saturday. The main gate and the midway opened at 4:00 p.m. every day, with concerts and fireworks well into the night.
Angela knew the county fair was a big deal to Ryder. She just hadn’t realized how big a deal it was to Hatch. But somehow he convinced her they had to leave the house at 6:00 a.m. because the livestock gates opened at 7:00 a.m.
The Fourth of July fell midweek, but Hatch had been driving up to Rock Springs every morning since Sunday. He’d leave at dawn, pulling an empty trailer, and return by noon, hauling more livestock. She and Ryder would spend their mornings with Char and Blue, getting the cattle dog ready for his trials, and when Hatch got back the three of them would sit down to lunch together.
Then they’d tag along with Hatch for the rest of the day. Following orders came second nature to her and Ryder knew when to stay out of the way. Rather than shooing them off like the pests they were, Hatch always found something for them to do.
Angela had to admit their routine felt comfortable. A sense of calm came over her unlike anything she’d known before. She was no longer a young single mom struggling to get through each day.
And no longer free-falling from thirty thousand feet.
She’d landed.
The Marine Corps had a saying: pain is temporary, pride is forever. Against all odds she’d turned her life around. Not without sacrifice.
But for more days like this one, she’d do it all over again.
“I love you. You know that, don’t you?” She put an arm around Ryder as they left the area where Blue was kenneled. Trials began a half hour from now, at 10:00 a.m. And Ryder had drawn a number in the middle of the roster of thirty competitors. “Good luck out there today.”
“Mom,” Ryder said, eyeballing the competition. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“That’s what mothers are for.” Hatch ruffled her son’s hair as Ryder walked off with the other kids in his division for their precompetition handler meeting.
They’d bought Char along to keep Blue company, and they’d been checking on the dogs and exercising them, as they’d continue to do throughout the day. Angela was more worried about how Ryder was going to hold up.
They joined Maddie in the bleachers and waited for the cattle dog trials to begin. Earlier, they’d strolled through the livestock pens and sat through an auction in which the prize-winning bull had gone for an astronomical price. Angela noticed Hatch didn’t bid on any of those overpriced bulls. Most of his business was conducted while talking to other ranchers.
So she wasn’t surprised or offended when he volunteered to get them water and didn’t come back right away. She and Maddie chatted over the program of events and mapped out the rest of their day. If Ryder made it to the finals they’d be back here at 1:00 p.m. If not, well, they’d still be back to watch.
By the time Ryder was on deck the metal bleachers had worn a groove in Angela’s butt and she shifted uncomfortably. The young girl ahead of him couldn’t catch a break. Her dog had responded to every command by doing the opposite.
Nervous laughter escaped from the audience when she had a hard time getting the animal to leave the arena. Finally the dog exited ahead of her, and the crowd acknowledged her efforts with polite applause.
“Here you go.” Handing out bottles of water, Hatch stepped over the bench from behind.
“Good timing.” She took a sip and set the bottle aside.
“Handler Ryder Adams,” the announcer was saying, “with Blue.” Three Angus calves were released from the opposite end into the ring.
Ryder gave a barely audible command. “Head ’em out.” At the same time he raised his arm as Hatch had taught him, and the heeler took off at a dead run toward the cattle.
“It’s okay,” Hatch said, as Angela squeezed his thigh. He covered her hand with his. “There are no points for commands, only execution.”
Maddie leaned in. “An outrun is worth twenty points.”
Twenty out of one hundred.
Go, Blue. The dog circled behind the three calves, herding them toward the chute. The calf on the left threatened to break away, and Blue moved from back hooves to front.
Back and forth. Side to side.
There were points for a weave pattern.
And circling the post to one side.
Blue kept the three calves together and forced them into the open-ended chute. He stopped the lead calf from coming out the other end, then backed off and lay down to stop the clock.
Ryder called the dog back, letting the three calves reenter the ring. “Blue, walk up.”
He walked up to the calves for a standoff.
“Watch.”
The dog held them in place and then lay down in front of them.
“Head ’em out.”
Blue drove the cattle back to their pen and nudged the gate closed behind them. Hatch was on his feet clapping as Blue ran back to lie at Ryder’s feet.
Angela bounced up and joined the applause. They’d seen only three other dogs ahead of Blue manage that trick. “That’s a perfect score.”
Hatch smiled at her. “That puts them in the finals.”
“Ryder and Blue walk away with a score of 100,” the announcer said. Though they all knew it got harder from here on out. Sorting cattle. Loading trailers.
Ryder shot them a huge grin over his shoulder.
Hatch cupped his hands and shouted loud enough to Ryder to hear over the clapping, “Atta boy!”
Angela could hear the pride in his voice. Could see it in his face. And felt it in his heartbeat as he drew her into a sidelong hug that lasted long after the applause died.
RYDER AND BLUE WENT ON to win third place overall in the junior division of the cattle dog trials. “Next year,” he said, happily skipping along the midway, “I want to teach Blue some more tricks and enter him in the freestyle division, too. And Char. That would be okay, Mom, wouldn’t it? So she won’t get bored now that she’s retired from the service.”
Listening to Ryder’s plans, Hatch watched Angela’s smile become tight. Clearly, she didn’t want to ruin the moment by reminding her son they might not be here for dog trials next year. And Ryder, happy to have his mother home, didn’t seem to grasp all the implications of her leaving the service.
And the pending divorce.
Hatch didn’t want to dwell on that, either. Life was too short for anything except living in the moment. Even if that moment was at the county fair with seventy thousand other fair-goers in the middle of the hottest July on record. There was nowhere he’d rather be right now.
He looped his arm around Angela’s neck, startling her into glancing at him. The truth was he’d surprised himself since he’d implemented that long-ago look-but-don’t-touch policy when it came to her.
Ryder was holding his mother’s free hand, and Hatch drew Maddie into the fold by placing his other arm around her. When had anything in his life ever felt this right?
“What do you say we let your mother show off some of her skills?” They were strolling along and stopping at whatever games interested them. He steered them toward the shooting gallery and slapped down a twenty. “We’re going to want that bear, right there.”
The stuffed bear in question being bigger than Ryder. The carny offered an indulgent smile. A one-eyed shooter wasn’t much of a threat. Hatch wanted nothing better than to prove him wrong, but he went for something subtler than showing off his own marksmanship.
He handed Angela the laser rifle and negotiated a practice shot. The target appeared deceptively simple: a wheel of yellow ducks continually moving counter-clockwise. He’d be surprised if the entire bull’s-eye was light sensitive, as implied by those targets. But a decent shooter could compensate.
Angela took aim, fired and missed her first shot.
“Aim to the right of your target.” He backed up that suggestion by realigning her body to the right. She’d have to hit all twenty in a row, at a dollar a shot, to win the big prize.
Ping. The first duck went down with a cacophony of distracting sound effects. And on down the line, in rapid-fire succession, she targeted light beams on twenty ducks in a row.
The carny handed over the big bear with a reluctant grin, knowing he’d been had by a couple of pros.
TOTING THE STUFFED BEAR on her hip like an overgrown child, Angela got out the sunscreen while they stood in line for the Ferris wheel, and slathered some on Ryder. “Your neck’s getting red.”
“Mom.” He squirmed away in embarrassment.
“What about mine?” Hatch asked.
She reached up behind him and wiped the remaining sunscreen on her hand across his heated skin. “Your neck is always red.”
“A little redneck humor there?”
“If the boot fits…”
“Then I hate to tell you this, but hand over that sunscreen.”
She squeezed some into his palm so he could rub it on her exposed back. The lotion felt almost cold on her skin, making her shiver. They’d begun the day wearing several layers of clothing, and more than a few trips to the truck later they were all down to as few as possible.
He started with her neck, and then moved to her shoulders around the knot of her racer-back top. The longer he went on the
more it felt like a massage. And just when it started to feel really good he stopped.
“Mom, I’m going to go sit with Maddie,” Ryder announced.
“What’s wrong? Too many corn dogs and snow cones?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just want to sit down.”
“Next!” The guy who ran the Ferris wheel was calling them forward as Ryder stepped out of line.
Angela would have followed, but Hatch nudged her toward the ride. “He’s fine.”
Still, she kept her eyes on Ryder those few moments it took him to get to the bench where Maddie was resting her tired feet. Angela waved before stepping inside the cage. She had a love-hate relationship with Ferris wheels and held on to the bear in the seat between them. She loved the way Ferris wheels looked all lit up at night. Hated the rocking motions as they began to turn and then stopped.
Moved and stopped.
She and Hatch inched their way upward.
She rested her chin on the bear’s head. “How’d I let you talk me into this?”
“I seem to recall this was your idea.” His smile seemed indulgent. “Afraid of heights?”
She shook her head. “Falling.”
THEY SAW IT AT THE SAME time, an unfamiliar car parked outside the house. Ryder had gone home to spend the night with the stewarts and Maddie had taken off with the judge after they’d all met up for the evening concert and fireworks. Hatch suspected their friends and family of trying to set them up. But the truth was he and Angela had a pleasant drive home alone with Char and Blue kenneled in the back of the truck. And he’d anticipated making the most of this moment.
What he hadn’t counted on was the intrusion of a stranger.
Hatch got out of the truck and Angela followed.
“Jake?” She got out and walked straight over the driver’s side of the other vehicle. The dark-tinted window rolled all the way down. “What are you doing here?
“Thought I’d surprise you.”
“Well, you did that.”
The other man got out of the car. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he was asking.
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