Her room smelled like her, he thought through the haze of desire wrapped around him. Like apples and sunshine. Intoxicating and sweet at the same time. Like Annie.
She was only wearing that terry cloth robe and it was easy for him to untie the sash and pull it free. Underneath she was soft and smelled fresh and clean, like spring.
He shed his own clothes quickly and joined her on the bed. Where their lovemaking earlier had had a fierce urgency he had been helpless against, this time he took her slowly, gently. Her response was the same, though, a sweet eagerness that took his breath away.
Afterward, he laid in her old-fashioned bed and held her close while she drifted off to sleep. He didn't want to let go, ever, and the realization scared the hell out of him.
All of his reasons for keeping his distance from her seemed hollow and worthless when he held her. It didn't seem to matter to her that he was just another no-account Redhawk.
It had never mattered to her, he admitted. He was the one with the inferiority complex, who saw all the differences between them. Who thought she deserved far better than an ex-con with a dark past and not much future.
Annie couldn't have cared less about his past. She had always given her affection to him freely, regardless of how screwed up his life had been.
He thought of her sweet, generous lovemaking and wondered if he'd been a fool, if there was a chance they could break free of the past and find their own future together, the future they might have had if he hadn't gone to prison and she hadn't married Charlie.
A snippet of memory from their conversation suddenly flashed through his brain.
He frowned. "Why did you marry him?" he asked suddenly, forgetting she had dozed off.
She blinked awake and stared up at him in confusion. "What?"
He rolled away and sat on the edge of the bed. "You said you didn't marry Charlie to give Leah a name. Why did you marry him, then?"
He had asked her before—hell, he'd asked her a thousand times—but she had always ducked the question. This time she paused as if trying to reach a decision about something, then she looked away from him.
"You," she said simply.
Just that. A single syllable. He waited for her to continue but she didn't. "What are you talking about?" he finally asked.
She sat up as well and wrapped the quilt around her without meeting his gaze. "He came to me after you were arrested and said he heard you threaten to kill your father at Lulu's on the day he died."
"I did." He shrugged. "There's no secret about that. Half the guys in there heard me. I'd had enough of his garbage. I thought things were better, but then I came back to town and found my mother with a broken nose and a cracked rib. I decided I couldn't stand by anymore and do nothing. The only thing Al seemed to understand was a fist so I was going to tell him that if he touched her again, it would be the last time."
She sent him a quick glance then looked down again, her fingers tracing the pattern of the quilt. "Charlie said he thought you were just talking big, that it was the beer talking, really, but he decided to follow you home just in case."
She paused. "He said he reached the house just in time to see your father go down and then you slammed his head against the hearth bricks over and over and over again until he stopped moving. He…He said if I didn't marry him, he would go to his boss at the sheriff's department and tell him everything."
Disbelief and shock warred within him. "And you believed him?"
"Of course not!" Her mouth twisted with impatience. "I could never believe you were capable of killing your father deliberately, no matter how much he might have deserved it. I know it was just like you said, an accident. You were fighting and you punched him and he fell backward."
He thought of all the things she didn't know about what happened that night, things he couldn't tell her. Things that were not his to tell.
"If you weren't buying his story, why go through with the marriage?"
"Because I was young and naive and I was afraid others who didn't know you the way I did would be quick to believe him. You know how Charlie could be. If he wanted to, he could sell popsicles in Siberia. Plus he had his own tight little group of drinking buddies. The sheriff, the other deputies. Even Judge Walters whenever his wife kicked him out of the house. It was your word against his and I knew exactly whose story everyone else would believe. He was a deputy sheriff and you were…you."
"A troublemaking punk who had already had my share of run-ins with the law."
She blew out a breath. "Charlie would have done his best to make the whole town think your father's death was premeditated, that you went there fully intending to kill him from the beginning. You would have faced first-degree murder charges. A death sentence. I couldn't let that happen."
The magnitude of what she had done slowly began to sink through his shock. She had married Charlie because of him. Everything she went through for all those years—her whole nightmare of a marriage—was his fault.
"I never asked you to be a martyr for me."
His anger took her completely by surprise. She didn't know what she expected—shock, certainly. Amazement, maybe. Whatever she might have anticipated, it wasn't this seething fury radiating from him.
"I know you didn't. And I didn't see it that way."
"Dammit, Annie. I didn't ask for your help. I didn't need it and I wouldn't have wanted it. You gave up your whole damn life to him!"
Her temper spiked along with his. "You were my best friend. I was pregnant with your baby! What else was I supposed to do? Let you be sentenced to death, or worse, spend the rest of your life dying by inches in prison for a crime you didn't commit?"
"Yes! If it would have protected you from Charlie and what you went through. Absolutely."
"So it's okay for you to martyr yourself to protect me, but not for me to do whatever I could to help you?"
"I never wanted your help."
"I know," she snapped. "You never wanted anything from anyone. You've always thought you're some kind of damn island, completely isolated from the rest of the world, emotionally self-sufficient."
He stared at her for a moment, then turned away and yanked on the rest of his clothes with abrupt movements.
When he was done, he walked to the doorway but before he walked out of the room, he looked at her one last time. All the fury was gone from his expression, leaving just that cold emptiness she hated so much.
"You suffered years of abuse, Annie," he finally said, his voice low, intense, in contrast to his stony expression. "Do you have any idea how much I hated you for staying with him, for being just like my mother? For letting him hurt you, time after time?"
She had always suspected it. But hearing him say the words, hearing the accusation and the contempt in his voice, was worse than any of Charlie's blows could ever be.
Tears burned behind her eyes but she blinked them back. She wouldn't let him see them. Not now.
He looked away and his chiseled features seemed as bleak and forbidding as the Spanish Peaks. "How am I supposed to feel now, knowing the only reason you put yourself in that hell of a marriage was because of me?"
"I don't know," she whispered.
"Neither do I." He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, her heart cracked apart at the desolate sadness there. "And I don't know if I can forgive either one of us."
Without another word, he walked out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
* * *
The remaining days of Joe's time at the Double C passed in a haze of misery for Annie, as winter grudgingly gave way to spring.
They still worked together, branding calves, riding fence line, preparing the soil for planting as the snow finally began to melt. But through it all, he remained distant and aloof, taking all of his meals in the foreman's cottage and deliberately assigning himself to work with the other hands whenever possible.
Any conversation between them was abrupt, awkward, and she sometimes sensed him watching h
er out of brooding dark eyes while they worked around the ranch.
But he didn't refer to their final confrontation again and she couldn't bring herself to dredge it all up again.
The night before he was to leave, Annie sat in her office trying again to catch up on paperwork in a futile attempt to keep her mind and hands occupied. As of the next day, she would truly be on her own at the Double C and the weight of that responsibility scared her to death.
She hadn't found a foreman yet, although she had a couple possible candidates coming in later in the week for interviews. Until she found one, the ranch would be short a man during one of the busiest times of the year and she would have to handle everything on her own, from managing the stock to managing the ranch hands.
She had come a long way in the last nineteen months but she had to admit, she was petrified. She gave herself pep talk after pep talk but she still worried that she wouldn't be able to make decisions on her own, that she wouldn't have the authority with the men necessary to run a smooth operation, that she would drive the ranch back into the ground where Charlie had left it.
A sudden movement in the doorway distracted her from her angsting and she looked up to find Leah standing there, wearing the droopy flannel pajamas she loved so much.
"What are you doing still up? It's almost eleven."
"I couldn't sleep. I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water and saw the light on in here."
She probably couldn't sleep because she just as upset as Annie was about Joe's departure in the morning.
At least his coolness hadn't extended to Leah, to her great relief. She was so pleased to see the two of them begin to forge a new relationship these last two weeks.
As the weather warmed and March's lion weather gave way to a soft, spring lamb, Leah began to spend more time with her father, riding with him after school or just hanging out at with him while he went about his regular chores.
She soaked up his attention like a desert flower after a hard rain and Annie was overjoyed to witness the gradual return of the sweet daughter she used to be. More often than not, C.J. joined them. He seemed to have completely forgiven Joe for leaving.
Annie was uncomfortably aware that both of her children had accepted the reality of Joe's departure with far more grace than their mother. Every time she thought about not seeing him regularly, her chest ached and her stomach trembled.
"Are you okay?" Annie asked Leah now.
Her daughter shrugged. "A little sad about my…about Joe leaving. But it's not like he's dying or anything. Or like I'll never see him again. He said he'll write me and we can talk on the phone all the time and he still wants me and C.J. to go to Wyoming to visit this summer."
She paused. "You know, it's pretty cool the way he includes the brat in everything, so he doesn't feel weird about the way things are now."
Annie smiled at this evidence of Leah's new maturity. A month ago she would have been livid at C.J. butting in to what she probably considered her own time with the father she'd just discovered.
Love washed over her for this beautiful, headstrong child she and Joe had created together and she smiled. "You're a very good big sister to worry about his feelings," she said quietly, then on impulse she rose from her desk and pulled her daughter into a hug.
Leah stood stiff and unyielding in her embrace for just a heartbeat, then her arms came around Annie and she returned the hug. Her heart swelled. Maybe they both might make it through this whole teenage thing relatively unscathed after all. She rested her cheek against Leah's shining dark hair. "I love you, sweetheart."
"I love you, too," Leah responded and Annie felt tears burn behind her eyelids. For a while there, she had been afraid she would never hear those words again. It amazed her that this part of her life could be going so well when the rest of it still seemed like such a mess.
Leah pulled away and cleared her throat, fidgeting with the hem on her pajama top. "I guess you know I was pretty mad at you for not telling me Joe was my dad."
"I think I figured that out," Annie said wryly.
Leah gave an abashed grin, then looked down at the floor. "I said some pretty rotten things to you in the last few months. I…I've been meaning to tell you before, I'm sorry. I didn't mean them."
She hugged her daughter again. "I know, sweetheart. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth. I know you can't understand this, but I really thought I was doing what was best for everyone involved. I can see now that I was wrong. I'm glad we have no more secrets between us."
"Me, too."
"And now you need to get to bed," Annie said firmly. "Come on. I'll tuck you in."
Although Leah protested she was much too grownup for something as babyish as being tucked in, Annie could tell she was secretly pleased to be fussed over.
After she left her daughter's room, she walked through the quiet house, double-checking the locks on the doors and the windows. Although Charlie seemed to have taken her warning to heart and hadn't been seen since their altercation in her bedroom, she didn't want to take any chances.
As she checked the last door, the one going off the back porch from the mudroom, she looked through the small window and saw the lights of the foreman's cottage glimmering through the spruce windbreak.
Joe was still awake, probably packing.
The thought stabbed at her sharper than any blade. It was here, the day she had dreaded for almost two months. Tomorrow he would be gone, taking his strength and his decency and his rare, sweet smile with him.
And she would be alone again.
She rubbed at her chest, at the ache there she knew she couldn't ease. For just a moment she was tempted to go to him, to force him not to shut her out like this.
But what good would that accomplish? It couldn't change the fact that he despised her for what she had let Charlie do to her or that he blamed himself for the choices she made.
The click of claws on linoleum alerted her that Dolly was awake and had left her favorite spot by the family room woodstove. The dog brushed past her to the door and began to whine in agitation. When Annie opened the door to let her out, Dolly rushed out, barking.
She squinted into the darkness trying to determine what had upset the dog so much. At first glance she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary but it only took her a moment to figure out what was wrong.
One of the ranch buildings was on fire.
Chapter 17
Fear clutched at her heart as she saw flames shooting out the roof of the horse barn.
The old, weathered wood of the barn would go up like dry tinder, taking a dozen valuable and well-loved horses along with it.
The Double C would never survive such a blow, and neither would she.
Fueled by panic and adrenaline, she rushed back into the kitchen and fumbled to dial county dispatch, sickly aware that it would take at least twenty minutes for the volunteer fire department to reach the ranch from town.
She couldn't wait that long, she realized as she hung up the phone after reporting the blaze. The animals trapped inside would be dead before the firefighters could reach them.
Her heart pounding, she threw on her boots and raced toward the barn. She stopped only long enough to pound frantically on the door of the double-wide trailer. When none of the ranch hands answered immediately, she remembered that it was Friday night and the men had been paid that afternoon. They'd probably all gone into town to spend their paychecks at Lulu's.
Joe was still there, at least for one more day. But she would waste valuable time retracing her steps the quarter mile to the foreman's cabin, time she didn't have. Already she could hear the frightened screams of horses above the low crackle of flames consuming wood.
She would just have to handle this on her own while she prayed that Joe would smell the acrid smoke and come to help.
Her breath was coming in sharp, hard gasps by the time she reached the horse barn less than a minute later. She tried to stay calm and assess the scene.
&nbs
p; From what she could see, most of the flames were at the front of the barn. She might have a chance of saving some of the animals—and staying alive in the process—if she entered through the door in the back, leading to the corral.
She didn't want to do this.
As she raced along the side of the barn, sweat from more than just the heat of the flames dripped down her back and her stomach roiled with nerves. The fear made her nauseous and she clamped her teeth together against it, angry at herself. She was such a coward. Even now, when animals' lives depended on her, she couldn't get past her own self-doubts.
She was so busy chastising herself that she didn't notice the object in the path until her feet stumbled over it with a hollow clang and the ground rushed up to meet her so hard it knocked the wind out of her.
Gasping, her ribs aching, she lay there for just an instant trying to catch her breath, then saw what had tripped her—a rusted metal two-gallon fuel can. The sharp scent of gasoline still clung to it.
The implications of that gasoline can sent a chill coursing through her. Arson. Someone had deliberately torched her horse barn, had condemned a dozen horses to a gruesome death.
She didn't have to be a crack detective to figure out who might have done such a thing. Charlie Redhawk was the only person who had the motive and the viciousness.
Damn him. Would she never be free of him?
The sheriff had searched the whole county and hadn't been able to find a trace of him. Charlie still had a few friends in the area and several of them claimed he'd taken off to California. They must have been lying for him.
She had been so confident he was gone for good this time, now that he finally realized he had no power over her anymore. There had been no more sinister events on the ranch: no more poisoned animals, no more deliberately cut fences, no more strange photographs.
He must have been biding his time while he plotted this latest, horrible revenge.
Fury exploded in her with more power than any blaze. She would not let him do this, would not let him turn her into a cowering mess again. And she sure as hell was not about to let him destroy her ranch.
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