The Hero of Hope Springs

by Maisey Yates

  He didn’t quite know what to say to that. “I don’t know. Is Pansy normal?”

  “She’s getting married. She fell in love. I told myself that I didn’t ever want to be normal anyway. But the problem is I kind of suspect that I just can’t be. Because nobody ever attached to me, and I had to force my way into this...quilt.”

  “We were always happy to have you,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “But you can’t erase the early memory stuff.”

  “You can’t?”

  “I talked to Logan last night.”

  He curled his hands into fists, a strange sensation raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Jealousy? Was he genuinely jealous of Logan because she talked to him?

  Well, yeah. Because she talked to him after she left his bed. And what the hell was that?

  “I ran into him on my way out. So he may have figured out that something is going on between us.” She sighed. “He’s like me. I mean, we’re not really family, are we? And we both want to be. We both... We both have parents that are out there. They don’t want us. He got me thinking. About how much you all mean to me. And about the things that I try to avoid. Namely that however much I might want to be, I’m not part of you guys. Not in any way other than this kind of enforced way. And sometimes... Sometimes that hurts me. The reminder of it hurts me. And...”

  “And you think that maybe you wanted to have a baby with me to become part of the family?” Just saying it was bitter.

  “No!” She shook her head vigorously. “No. That’s not it. I wouldn’t... I would never do that. But I do think I wanted to use you to try and fix me. To make me normal, and that wasn’t fair. Not to you. Not to any potential baby. It’s just not... I’m done with that. I’m not going to do it anymore. That’s what I wanted to say.”

  “So now you don’t want to have a baby?”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to have one. I mean, not that I don’t want to ever have one. I do. I just think that I need to sit with this for a while. And deal with myself.”

  “You know,” he said, working to talk around the gravel in his chest. “It might be too late.”

  “It was just once,” she said.

  But her words were thin, and he had a feeling that she knew as well as he did they didn’t mean anything. It was just once. Once and it had changed everything. It had changed the way his skin felt. Changed the way the world was. It was just once. It had changed everything.

  “So you’re telling me that you’re happy enough to have been in my bed once. And to never be in it again?”

  “Ryder...”

  “I don’t know that I’m ready to be done, Sammy.”

  “I love you,” she said. “So much.”

  He felt those words resonate in his body. In the back of his teeth. Like a shock wave. Except that he knew what she meant. There wasn’t even a question.

  “I’m so afraid that that might undo what we are. This is the strongest, best relationship I’ve ever had in my life. The closest thing to family. And I just don’t...”

  “You came to me,” he said.

  “I know.” And he might have been confused before the two of them had actually made love. But he felt a lot less uncertain now. Like he knew exactly where he was supposed to be. Because she might be abandoning her pregnancy plan, but that didn’t mean he was ready to release her so that she was free to be with someone else.

  And he knew Sammy. She wasn’t going to be with someone for the long term, not any more than he was.

  They were the longest term relationship the other one had had. That was true enough.

  Whether or not they were functional was another story. But they were in each other’s lives.

  And whatever happened after this...

  They had to see it through. That he knew. He was sure of it.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Maybe instead of making pronouncements you see what happens.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “You? Spontaneous, bohemian Sammy? I thought thy name was spontaneity.”

  She leaned in, a sad smile on her lips. “It’s a lie,” she whispered. “Don’t you know that? I keep everybody around me guessing. But that’s how I make sure I’m never guessing. I do something, you all react. And I stay one step ahead. I’m not spontaneous. I’m a control freak.”

  And suddenly, some things crystallized for him that he had never realized before.

  All the way down to the sugar cubes.

  Sammy liked to take the lead so that she knew what was going to happen.

  Of course.

  And he hadn’t seen it because he was happy enough to labor under the impression that he was protecting her. That he was standing sentry, that he was the steady one. The rock. And by the very nature of those words, that he was in charge.

  But it was her. And those careless dances she had done clearly had more intricate and carefully plotted footwork than he ever realized.

  He took the sugar cube from the center of his plate and held it up. She looked at him quizzically. “Hold out your hand,” he said.

  She obeyed, and then he held the sugar cube out just over her palm, hovering over the skin there. But he didn’t drop it in. Instead, he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips, kissing the tender skin on the inside of her wrist gently, knowing full well that his stubble scraped across her skin there. He felt her shiver. Her blue eyes were wide, full of questions, but she didn’t ask any of them. And then, he set the sugar cube in her hand.

  “You’re not the only one who knows how to lay bait, Sammy Marshall.”

  He took the cup of coffee off the table and lifted it as he stood. “I don’t need any bacon this morning. I have work to do. I will see you later, though.”

  That was a promise. Both to him and to her.

  And he knew Sammy was a smart enough woman to know that he always kept a promise.

  He didn’t know exactly what the end goal of this game was. But what he knew for sure was that they were finally playing his, and not hers.

  And that was a victory he was going to take.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SAMMY’S WRIST STILL burned hours later where Ryder had kissed it.

  She had the sugar cube in her pocket, and her head felt fuzzy.

  She had been filled with resolve this morning. She had laid a trap, very calculated. And she had spent all night planning that. She hadn’t even slept. Because she needed to make sure that she was in the house before anyone else got up, and she had needed to be sure that she was on hand to cook their bacon. A way to get back on the right footing. Almost a restart, she had purposed.

  Because she had a lot of apologizing to do. And she was very good at apologizing. Because when you lived your life using spontaneity as a weapon you often had casualties, and she was just used to that.

  Overstepping, stepping back, saying she was sorry. And as long as she smiled broadly enough people tended to be okay with it.

  But he wasn’t... He wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do.

  He was a rock. And he was hardheaded. But he was a smart man, and she had been certain that he would see sense.

  She shifted where she sat, all her jewelry laid out in front of her on a blanket outside her camper, and her top scraped against her nipples.

  Arousal coursed through her body and she let out a frustrated growl.

  He had turned her into some weird sex fiend.

  She had always considered herself sensual. Somebody who liked touch. Somebody who was completely relaxed about it, in fact. And until he had gotten in her face about orgasms she had thought that she was neatly organized on that score.

  That she knew where to have them and when, and that sex itself served the kind of spiritual function of creating human connection.

  But Ryder had t
aken it and he had melded those things, and when he had done that he had stolen her control. Her neatly ordered way of looking at things.

  She felt absolutely vile about it. And she wasn’t someone who normally kept things to herself. But her confidantes were all deeply tied to Ryder, or they were Ryder himself.

  If there was anything more annoying, she couldn’t think of it.

  She heard the sound of footsteps and looked up. But it wasn’t Logan or Ryder, and for some reason she had expected it to be either of them. No, it was a red-faced and angry-looking Rose, picking through tall grass.

  “What’s wrong?” Sammy called.

  “Did a calf wander this way?” Rose asked. Her cowboy hat was askew, her dark hair falling out of its braid. Her white tank top was dirty, and so were her jeans.

  “No,” Sammy said. She scrambled to her feet, setting her jewelry fixings down. “But I can help you look.”

  “You look pretty,” Rose said, not as a compliment but in kind of a regretful tone.

  Rose was dressed for practicality and sweat. Sammy wasn’t. But she always dressed like this and all of her clothes were machine washable anyway, so it didn’t matter.

  “Oh, I wear skirts every day. I’m not particularly dressed up.”

  “Well, fine,” Rose said skeptically. “But at your peril.”

  “What happened?”

  “A calf must’ve gotten through the hole in the fence, and I’m just really hoping that that’s what happened, and a predator didn’t take him. But I went charging down the hill back there, and I fell on my face, so now I’m just mad.”

  “Where’s Logan?”

  Rose waved a hand. “Oh, I told him to go look in the other direction.”

  “You know, it’s not a crime to take help,” Sammy said, feeling every inch the hypocrite as she spoke those words.

  It was so easy for her to fall into a role of giving advice, usually advice contrary to what Iris would give when it came to Rose and Pansy.

  She had installed herself in a kind of counterbalance position. One that was a little bit more loose and free than their older sister. And every so often she gave advice to Iris, as well, but really, they all did try to help each other.

  She had a fair amount of unvarnished honesty between her and the sisters. But right now she couldn’t be.

  She couldn’t ask for help.

  Because the source of her issues was their brother. And she knew that they wouldn’t want to hear about the fact that he was the best sex that Sammy had ever had. And also...

  It felt too personal. For the first time in her life she didn’t want to share details. Didn’t want to get into anything like that. For the first time sex felt intimate. And she just... She couldn’t bring herself to speak any of it out loud. Like it was a sacred verse that she had to hold to her own chest. A wish that might not come true.

  She didn’t know what she was wishing for.

  “I just didn’t need any,” Rose said.

  They weren’t all the same. For some reason that revelation hit her hard and real as she looked at Rose’s red face. It was easy to think that Ryder, Iris, Rose and Pansy were the same because they had been raised by the same parents, whom they had lost.

  But Ryder had assumed a parental role, and Iris had taken a somewhat secondary position to that. Pansy and Rose had been children. Pansy had taken on the mantle of preserving her father’s legacy to an extreme place. And Rose...

  Rose was such a little, vibrant thing. Brimming with life and vigor. Almost as if she was daring the world to come at her. Except, she also stayed in her very safe space.

  It was easy for Sammy to think of Rose as being a child, but of course she wasn’t. Of course she was a woman now, and she was still here. Working the ranch. Staying in her place that she had carved out for herself.

  Sammy had to wonder if Rose ever felt like she did. If she ever felt like she was stuck behind a wall that she couldn’t break through.

  Of course, Rose was twenty-four, not thirty-three. So whatever Rose had to work out it was a little bit less sad than Sammy.

  “Is this your dream?” Sammy asked.

  Rose wrinkled her nose and cast Sammy a strange look. “Is what my dream?”

  “Staying here. Working on the ranch.”

  “I love what I do,” Rose answered simply.

  “I know.” Of course, Rose was always making suggestions for other people’s lives. Meddling in the kindest and sweetest way possible. And it made Sammy wonder why she wasn’t quite so active in her own life.

  So good at psychoanalyzing other people, Samantha.

  She ignored that mean inner voice.

  They started walking down an informal path, beaten by the cows, through the field. They moved the cows all around, and currently they were in a pasture across the property.

  The calf they were searching for was so small, there was a serious concern about him being separated from his mother for too long. And she knew that Rose’s real concern was that it had been taken by a cougar. Which, in this area, wasn’t an unfounded concern.

  “Wait.” Rose stopped, putting her hand out. “Do you hear something?”

  Sammy strained to listen over the sound of the rustling plants, and the breeze moving through the trees. And then just faintly she could make a plaintive sound out.

  “Yes,” she said. “I hear it.”

  They moved quickly toward the sound, picking through brambles and trees, and making their way into a thicket on the edge of the wood.

  And that was where they found the little calf, tangled around thornbushes, looking desperate and thin and dehydrated.

  Poor little thing.

  Sammy knelt down next to the tragic creature. She put her face on his, listening faintly to the sound of him breathing.

  “Oh, dear,” she said.

  “I’ll text Logan,” Rose said. “We need him to bring the pickup truck out here. And call Bennett Dodge. He’ll need help.”

  “Of course,” Sammy said.

  She kept her hand on the pitiful animal while Rose sprang into action. Sammy appraised the situation as best she could, looking at the brambles wrapped around the little creature.

  “Trust me,” she said, her voice soothing. He began to thrash as she grabbed hold of him where the stickers were buried in his skin.

  “Trust me,” she said again, knowing full well that the cow couldn’t understand her, but hoping that he would somehow get her intention.

  He was horribly tangled and she tried to help get him undone, sticking herself every few minutes with one of the terrible thorns. At least the animal tired after only a few moments and didn’t struggle anymore. Although, she wasn’t sure she should be relieved about that or concerned. Concerned, likely. If he didn’t even have enough energy to fight for himself...

  She swallowed a lump in her throat, unsure why this was affecting her quite so deeply.

  But the calf didn’t know any better. He was innocent. And he had wandered off and gotten himself into trouble. And she just wanted... She wanted to help.

  She wanted to do something good and make a difference.

  She fought harder with the brambles, her hands a bloody mess.

  Rose was finally done with phone calls and turned her focus back to the spot, back to Sammy. “Holy hell, Sammy. What did you do?”

  “Nothing intentional,” she said. “I just wanted to help.”

  It sounded so feeble when she said it out loud.

  “The boys will come with something to cut all this with. And Bennett will be here soon with his whole mobile unit.”

  “Good,” Sammy said.

  But still, she sat with the calf and worked at the thorns. Because she couldn’t stand for him to be in pain.

  By the time the truck rolled up with Logan and Ryder, her hands were a disa
ster, and Rose was pacing angrily.

  She had asked Sammy to stop several times, but Sammy wasn’t listening.

  “What did you do?” Ryder approached her directly, sinking down to his knees beside her and taking her hand in his.

  A bolt of electricity shot through her.

  “I couldn’t stand him being stuck,” she said.

  When her eyes caught his shamefully, her throat started to close. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she didn’t know what had her feeling so emotional. She wasn’t normally like this. But there was something about the tender fury in his gaze that struck her deep.

  “Come here,” he said, hauling her to her feet, bringing himself with her. “You’re going to have to make sure you get medicine on these. And Band-Aids.”

  “I know,” she said, feeling stubborn and grumpy. Like a little kid getting scolded in the too-hot sun, and the worst thing was she sort of felt like a petulant kid.

  Plus, her hands hurt.

  But Ryder’s hold on her was firm and masculine, and the feelings he created under her skin made her feel like a woman and not a child at all.

  The contrast of the two warring sensations made her want to sit down on the ground and cry. And why on earth she should feel so emotional over her best friend touching her arm she didn’t know.

  It had been sex.

  Just sex.

  Sex didn’t have to matter.

  It could just be nice.

  It didn’t have to change you.

  As she looked into those whiskey-brown eyes she wondered though if you didn’t get a choice on when it might change you.

  “Sammy...”

  “Hey,” Rose said. “Break it up.”

  And Sammy knew that Rose thought she was being funny. Because Rose had no idea what had happened between her and Ryder last night. But Logan did. And he was giving her a hard, appraising glance.

  She scowled in return.

  She would not be accepting the judgment of Logan Heath, thanks so much.