Sandi had never understood it. She’d never been able to feel that bone-deep connection with animals. She’d never even been willing to try—but this crazy spike-haired city girl had found the magic in just one week.
Charlie could hardly be more different from him. She faced the world with fists clenched and feet planted, ready for a fight; he confronted it with a clenched jaw and an unshakable determination to keep his emotions under control. But when it came time to recover from their battles, they each reached for the same shelter. For all their differences, they were alike where it really mattered.
Charlie stood at the gate to Junior’s stall, standing quietly with her head down—but Junior had lost the magic. The stallion stood with his back to Charlie, trembling in the corner of his stall. He wasn’t kicking, or hollering, or making a ruckus. He was just enduring her presence, watching her with wary eyes.
She opened the gate and stepped into the stall. Alarmed, Nate started toward her, then eased back into the shadows. He’d only make her angry, rile her up—and the horse too. Better to stand back.
“Junior,” she said. “Hey, boy.”
He whinnied and spun to face her, slamming his butt into the corner. Twisting his neck like a striking rattler, he snapped his teeth a foot from her face.
Charlie didn’t flinch, didn’t move a muscle.
“Easy,” she whispered. “It’s me. It’s okay, boy.”
But it was obvious nothing would convince Junior that anything was okay. He made that odd, compulsive gesture with his neck twice more.
Charlie didn’t persist. She had enough horse sense to know Junior’s recovery from the incident with Sandi wasn’t going to happen in a day, and there was no point in pushing him beyond his comfort zone.
She stepped out of the stall, closing the gate quietly behind her, and dropped onto the hay bales set against the wall. She watched Junior a while, her eyes filling with tears, then overflowing.
Nate couldn’t stand it. Charlie didn’t cry. She was the kind of girl who raged, pouted, stamped her feet, or yelled—but she didn’t cry. And Junior—Junior behaved pretty much the same way. Just like Charlie, the horse was impossible, intractable, and fearless.
Now Charlie was crying, and Junior was scared.
Nate’s world was falling apart.
Chapter 35
Charlie heard footsteps and swiped her eyes, setting her face in a dead-eyed mask to hide her despair, but it was too late. As Nate approached, she glanced around the barn. Maybe she could thunk herself over the head with a manure shovel, or strangle herself with a piece of baling wire. Anything to avoid letting Nate see her cry. He’d already seen too much of her weak side. Wiping her eyes, she gave him a hard stare, daring him to pity her as he sat down beside her.
The guy might not be much for talking, but everything he felt showed in his eyes. Her crying demolished him, but the way he looked at her didn’t make her feel pitied.
It made her feel loved.
Gulping in a totally unlovely way, she swallowed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. There was no point in hiding how she felt. Working with the horses had taught Nate the subtle signals of body language, and she was sure her every move had been telegraphing her feelings ever since Saturday night.
She watched him lean back against the wall, lacing his hands in his lap. Together, they watched Junior shift from one leg to the other, shudders rippling his gleaming coat.
“He’s scared,” Nate said.
“Me too.”
“I know,” Nate said. “You and Junior are a lot alike.”
They sat there side by side like strangers on a train, staring straight ahead. Finally, Nate reached over and took her hand.
“What are you scared of?”
“You, mostly,” she said. “And Sandi. And Sam.”
“You shouldn’t be scared of me,” he said. “Sandi—now that I understand. But Sam?”
“You guys are dangerous,” she said. She looked down at his hand and clasped it between hers.
“Oh, yeah. We’re real killers. ’Specially Sam.” His mouth twitched. “She’s a desperado, that one.”
“I think I might be falling in love with you,” she said. “Both of you.”
He brought her hands up to his chest, then bent and kissed them. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
Charlie met his eyes. Was that the cowboy version of a declaration of love? She knew she should hold out for the right words, the Big Three, but from Nate, this was enough. The meaning was in his eyes, in his touch. He’d told her so many times, without a word.
Hadn’t he?
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
Charlie shook her head. “You don’t have to. It’s okay.”
“No, I do,” he said. “You deserve an explanation.”
She met his eyes. “I deserve a lot of things. So do you,” she said. “But it doesn’t look like either of us is going to get them.”
***
Nate stared down at her, marveling at the way her fine features and razored hair looked oddly exotic, yet totally at home in the rustic setting. He remembered an old movie poster, or maybe it was some famous pinup—a busty, dark-eyed brunette sprawled in a cinematic haystack. Even when she wasn’t trying, Charlie issued the same wanton invitation the actress had given the camera. He wanted to accept that invitation more than anything—but they had business to take care of. Kissing her might show her how he felt, but she needed some cold hard facts before she could understand what was driving him to sell the ranch.
He dropped her hands and moved away, just far enough to break the magnetic force that stretched between them.
“There’s something you don’t know about Sam,” he said.
He coughed. His voice hardly sounded like his own. It was hoarse, raspy. His throat was dry, and it felt like it would close up any minute. He was surprised he could breathe—let alone talk.
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I already know.”
“You do?” He was about to tell her the truth anyway, so why did he feel such a rush of alarm at the thought that Taylor might have told her he wasn’t Sam’s real father?
He knew why. The minute Sandi told him Sam belonged to another man, he somehow ceased to be himself. Nate Shawcross was a lot of things—horse trainer, rancher, friend, lover—but most of all, he was Sam’s father. If Sam wasn’t his, he’d lost the biggest part of himself.
He didn’t know who he was anymore.
And the ranch, the horses, the clinic—even Charlie and whatever was starting up between them—lost all its meaning if Sam wasn’t there to share it.
“Yeah,” Charlie continued, oblivious to the fact that all the air had whooshed out of the barn. “I know she was premature. Taylor told me. I know you had to mortgage the ranch, and I know she has health issues.” She fluffed her hair with her fingers. “So now I get why this might not be the best place for her. I guess you’re afraid she’ll get hurt, right? Or overtax herself or something. Is it her heart?”
“No,” Nate said. She didn’t know, then. He felt a surge of relief, followed by a cold rush of dread. Now he’d have to tell her. “Her heart’s fine,” he stammered.
His own, however, was breaking into a million pieces. It was a lot easier to deal with Charlie when she was being her usual combative self. When she was kind and understanding, he felt like he might start crying himself.
He cleared his throat. “Sam’s a little delicate, but she’s so active—the life here is good for her. She loves the horses, and the fresh air’s so healthy…” He couldn’t seem to get to the point. “So, um, it’s not that anything here is bad for her. In fact, it’s good. Really good.”
Charlie turned toward him with an incredulous stare, as if he’d suddenly grown horns and a tail.
“Then why the heck would you leave? Why would you let it go?” She edged away from him and folded her arms protectively over her chest. Judging from the expression on her face, he’d suddenly g
one from an object of desire to a loathsome bug.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said.
“Is it money?”
Nate shook his head. “It’s Sandi.”
Charlie stiffened. He could have smacked himself for being so clumsy. Why couldn’t he think before he spoke?
“Everything’s about Sandi, isn’t it?” She stood up and brushed a stray strand of hay off her jeans with a swift swipe of her hand. “I guess I can understand that. She’s Sam’s mother, after all.” He watched helplessly as more tears welled up in her eyes. “Just forget what I said, okay? Just forget it. I got—I got carried away. All that love stuff—I didn’t mean it.”
He opened his mouth to answer, but she turned away before he could find his voice and strode down the barn’s long alleyway and out the door, her boot heels clicking out a militant drumbeat.
“Stop. Wait. Let me explain. It’s not what you think,” he said. He lurched to his feet and followed her.
“Charlie, listen,” he said. “You don’t understand. She’s not mine.”
Chapter 36
The words put a hitch in Charlie’s step, but she caught herself and kept walking. Of course Sandi wasn’t his. No woman belonged to a man. Maybe that was part of the problem between him and Sandi.
Maybe he felt he owned her.
Maybe he was controlling.
Maybe Charlie had just made a lucky escape from one of those guys who thought he had the right to tell you how to wear your hair and which panties to wear on Sundays.
“Sam,” he said when they reached the door. “Sam’s not mine.”
She couldn’t have heard him right. She stopped and turned to face him slowly, lifting her eyebrows. “What?”
He swallowed hard and nodded.
“Nate, that’s impossible,” she said. “The kid looks exactly like you. It’s almost spooky—like your face on a seven-year-old girl.”
He lowered his head, staring down at the ground, and mumbled something she couldn’t make out. When he looked back up, his face was flushed. “She’s not mine,” he said.
Charlie ran through a litany of emotions, searching for something appropriate to feel. Shock? Surprise? Sorrow?
No. Maybe anger. That was always her fallback position, and mostly, it seemed to work. Anger with a couple shots of distrust kept her safe and uninvolved.
Of course, she was already involved with Nate. The times they’d kissed, the times they’d… She’d been treasuring those memories, but now they were just painful. She shoved them out of her mind and put up a shield of anger, setting her fists on her hips and cocking her head.
“So you lied?” she demanded. “You didn’t get Sandi pregnant in high school?”
“I thought I did,” he said. “She only just told me different. I had no idea there was anyone else.” He shook his head, staring down at the floor. “No idea.”
She relaxed and let her shoulders slump. Being mad at Nate was impossible. There was something helpless about the guy, and the combination of vulnerability and virility was almost irresistible.
But being mad at Sandi was easy.
“Nate, she’s lying,” Charlie said. “Sam looks just like you.”
“So did my cousin,” Nate said. “Cody looked so much like me everyone thought we were brothers.”
“She slept with your cousin?” Charlie tried not to shriek, but the question came out sounding like the screech of an outraged chicken. “And how can she know, anyway? Did she get a DNA test or something? Because if that tramp was sleeping with both of you, there’s no reason you couldn’t be the father.”
“Why would she lie?” Nate spread his hands. “If Sam really was mine, she could leave anytime and get child support. There’s no reason for her to lie. She says Sam’s Cody’s, she’s Cody’s.”
Charlie rolled her eyes.
“I could never figure out how it happened, because we always used—we were careful, you know? But she and Cody… I guess they didn’t… you know. She said he was drunk.” He sighed. “She’s really ashamed, you know. It was hard for her to tell me. Sandi might be kind of difficult, but she’s pretty honest.”
“Oh, yeah,” Charlie said. She kicked at the ground and sent a stone skittering across the yard. “A real stickler for the truth. That’s why she was banging your cousin without a condom while you were paying your dues with romance and flowers.” She hung her head. “I’m sorry. It’s just—that bitch. I could kill her. Just kill her.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Nate said. “You didn’t know Cody. He was—he was really something, like I said. All the girls wanted him.”
Charlie imagined Nate in high school, with those broad shoulders and that tight cowboy butt, making his way down the hallways between classes with his loose-hipped cowboy swagger. She had a feeling he hadn’t been anyone’s second choice.
“So why isn’t he taking care of them?” Charlie asked. “Why doesn’t Cody send her to beauty school?”
“Because he’s not alive to do it,” Nate said, his voice flat and expressionless. “He died before Sam was even born.” His eyes shifted away, staring into a past she couldn’t share. “He was coming back from a rodeo. He’d been drinking.” Lowering his head, he put one hand to his forehead and covered his eyes as his voice roughened again. “He hit a semi head-on. Died instantly, they said.”
He turned away, his eyes shining in the half-light from the night sky. “Nobody knows about Sam. I don’t think Cody’s mom even knows.”
“Your Aunt Gwen, from the store? Is she—was she his mom?”
Nate nodded. Leaning into the wall, he rested one forearm on the rough wood and turned his head away. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse. Charlie couldn’t see his face, but she suspected he was crying.
“Cody was older than me. A bull rider. Fearless.” She could hear the pride in his voice. “He could ride anything. Bring up a demon out of hell, and he’d strap a saddle on it and ride it like a pony in a petting zoo.” He cleared his throat. “When I was a kid, I thought the sun rose and set on that guy. He had a wild streak a mile wide—riding bulls, drinking, driving fast, getting in fights—but he was more alive than anyone I ever knew.”
Charlie thought of Sam’s eyes, the line of her jaw, the way she moved, the way she laughed. The kid was a carbon copy of Nate. If Cody had been his twin, she might believe it. But a cousin?
“No way,” she said. “The kid is yours.”
Nate took off his hat and swept his hand through his hair. “There’s more to the story, Charlie. She and Cody—she was always kind of flirting with him, and he didn’t seem to mind. It used to piss me off. I always felt left out when the three of us were together.” He cleared his throat. “Still, it never crossed my mind they might have been more than friends. I never would have believed Cody would do that to me. That hurts almost as much as losing Sam.”
“There has to be a way to fix this,” Charlie said. “There has to be a way.”
***
Nate nodded, staring down at the toe of his boot. She was right. There had to be a way to fix it—but danged if he knew what it was. The only solution he’d been able to find was to toe Sandi’s line and sell the ranch. Sam was worth it.
“If I sell the ranch and give Sandi half, she’ll let me adopt Sam. If I don’t, she’ll do a DNA test that proves I’m not Sam’s father and she’ll take her away.”
“So she’s selling her child.”
He tightened his lips and nodded, looking down at the floor. “I guess that’s about right.”
“And you’re going to pay.”
He refused to meet her eyes. She couldn’t possibly understand how important Sam was to him. She couldn’t possibly understand that the ranch didn’t matter anymore if his daughter wasn’t there.
The ranch was his inheritance, but it was hardly a gold mine. Someone had once told him that the best way to make a small fortune in ranching was to start with a large fortune—and they were right. When he’d had to put
his grandfather in a home weeks after his grandma passed, he’d figured he’d have to sell the place. He hated to do it, but he was headed for college and the ranch needed full-time management. More than full-time. It had run down in the years since Granddad had started his slow slide into dementia.
But then Sandi got pregnant, and college suddenly became an impossibility, while the ranch looked like salvation. He’d moved them into the old house and struggled to build a horse operation and make it pay. He’d done it too. And as Sam grew and flourished, he realized it had been the right decision. He was creating a legacy for his daughter that would sustain her all her life.
His daughter? No. His cousin. If Cody was her dad, Sam was his first cousin, once removed.
Yeah, right. Nate didn’t feel removed from Sam at all. And blood didn’t matter—not when it came to Sam. Whether she was his or Cody’s or the milkman’s, she was the one thing in his life that mattered. He’d hoped to pass the ranch on to her—but if it had to go to keep her, then it had to go. He couldn’t let Sandi take her away.
“What are you going to do? The ranch is your livelihood.”
“I figure I’ll get a smaller place,” Nate said. “Maybe do more clinics, teach riding—that kind of thing. It’ll have to be near Denver so I can watch Sam while Sandi goes to school.” He took a deep breath. “Denver’s got a lot going on, you know.”
She looked at him like he’d just grown an extra head. “You can’t live in Denver. Neither can Sam. You belong here.” She shook her head. “Denver might have a lot going on, but what’s there for Sam? Do you really think she’ll be happy there?”
“Sandi says…”
“Sandi doesn’t give a rat’s ass about that kid. She doesn’t care about anybody but herself.”
Nate turned away. Charlie was right, but he didn’t have to acknowledge that. He’d already said too much—to her, to Taylor, to Doris. Heck, even Phaedra was in his business. They knew he’d screwed up his life and Sandi’s, and they knew his family was a train wreck.
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