by Lily Everett
“Okay, I’m here,” Sam said, kicking a rectangular bale into place so he could sit on it and lean his back against the stack behind it. “What’s going on?”
“Cops came by yesterday, asking questions.” Lucas never wasted time on chitchat and how-are-you’s. He got right to the point, and Sam appreciated it.
“What did you tell them?”
“Exactly what we decided—you’re consulting at the Windy Corner Therapeutic Riding Center, and you traveled there with a horse that needs rehab. I showed ’em Queenie’s documentation.”
Sam’s left knee jittered and he blew out a breath. “Then what?”
“Then nothing,” Lucas grunted. “They left. You sure those papers will hold up?”
There was no way to be sure, but it wasn’t like Sam had any other options. “So long as they don’t dig too deep, I should be okay. I’ve got a history of coming out to Sanctuary Island with problem horses, and if they call the therapy riding center, Jo Ellen will tell them the truth—which confirms what they’ve already heard.”
“I don’t like it.”
The roar of a pick-up truck’s engine in the background gave Sam a picture of his partner. Lucas was out on the road where he liked to be, running down rumors and investigating complaints about mistreatment and neglect of horses. Folks called in or left anonymous tips on the Blue Ridge Horse Rescue website, and Lucas crisscrossed the state to check them out. Weeks could go by without the two men laying eyes on each other, but that suited them both just fine. They weren’t friends—they were more like cell mates. Two loners thrown together by the choices they’d made, who shared a common goal. Only in their case, the shared purpose wasn’t to survive prison and get out, it was a burning hatred of people who abused the animals under their care.
“Sorry you had to deal with the cops,” Sam said, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I hope they don’t hassle you again.”
“Not that,” Lucas growled, the grinding of his teeth audible over the line. “I don’t like that you’re the one taking all the risks. I’m as guilty as you are.”
Sam grinned a little, more touched than he’d like to let on. Maybe they were friends, after all. “Give it a rest, Ricker. We agreed it’s better this way.”
“You agreed. I still think I’ve got a better reason for being out traveling around with a broke-down horse.”
“But you’ve never been to Sanctuary Island,” Sam pointed out patiently. “And this is the perfect place for Queenie to hide out. Who’d ever think to look for a stolen racehorse in a therapeutic riding stable? She’ll be safe here, if I can just get her to the point where she can work with kids. And we can’t leave now, anyway, because it would be dangerous to her health to make her travel again. It’s done. So shut up with your second-guessing and tell me what’s going on at the farm. How’s Galahad progressing?”
As Lucas grudgingly shifted gears into updates about their latest rescue, Sam forced himself to follow along and pay attention. It should’ve been easy—that was his real life, the work he’d dedicated himself to and the calling he believed in. Rescuing abused animals was Sam’s redemption. If he didn’t have that, what was he? Just another drifter, ghosting through life without leaving a mark on the world to say he’d been there. He’d made a difference. He wasn’t worthless, the way his old man always said.
Sam wished to God that felt like enough anymore, because it had to be enough. There was nothing else for him. He wasn’t cut out for love and family, or even friendship. He was better off alone.
And, Lord knew, Andie and Caitlin were better off without him.
*
Taylor froze with one hand on the loft ladder. She made a frantic shushing gesture with her other hand as her mind dipped and swirled with new information. Little Caitlin’s baby blues went wide and worried, but she mimed zipping her lips and throwing away the key as if she’d seen that a lot in her young life.
On her way to find Sam and ask if he had time for a quick riding lesson, since Andie’d had to work a double, Taylor had heard his deep voice coming from up in the loft. She’d been about to climb the ladder and poke her head up to let Sam know she wanted to talk to him when the content of his conversation had filtered through. Taylor couldn’t believe her ears.
Still in shock, Taylor stared down at Caitlin and whispered, “Did he just say ‘a stolen racehorse’?”
Chapter Twelve
“Ivy, I’m calling it for the day. Got to go pick up my niece from the barn.” Andie strode into her office just long enough to grab her jacket from the back of her desk chair, then pivoted and walked out again. She stopped by the dispatcher’s desk to appraise her friend and coworker’s red cheeks and furious eyes.
“You do that, Sheriff. I’ll stay here and hold down the fort until Deputy Fred manages to haul his sorry butt in to work.” Ivy rummaged under her desk and came up with a handheld compact mirror. The face she made when she flipped it open to check her makeup told Andie her dispatcher was more than a little off her game.
“Go easy on Fred,” Andie begged. “I can’t handle him quitting again this week.”
Fred Stanz was older than dirt. He’d been a deputy for the last five sheriffs, and he was known for having so little ambition to be promoted to the office of sheriff himself that he periodically quit, just to keep people’s expectations low. He’d quit on Andie four times before she hired Ivy Dawson to run the office and handle the phones. Now Deputy Fred, as everyone called him, was known for two things: total lack of ambition and total obsession with the pretty new dispatcher who dressed like a fifties pin-up girl and had a smile for everyone—usually.
“He better just stay out of my way,” Ivy grumbled.
Andie frowned. “You’re usually so sweet and patient with him. If his flirting is starting to get to you, I’ll put a stop to it.”
Sighing, Ivy gave up on dabbing at her smudged black winged eyeliner and snapped the compact closed. “No, he’s fine. Fred’s harmless and I usually don’t mind a bit of target practice myself, but I’m not looking for another useless man to hit on me today. I filled my quota when I picked up lunch from the Firefly.”
“I’ve never heard you talk like this.” Amusement tickled at Andie’s mouth but she held back a smile. “Has Sanctuary Island’s biggest flirt finally met her match?”
Ivy sat bolt upright in her chair, green eyes flashing. “If Nash Tucker is my match, I’ll flush all my Chanel lipsticks down the toilet, stop showering, and start wearing a bonnet.”
“Nash Tucker?” Andie froze, the name running through her like a sword. “Dabney Leeds’s grandson.”
“And the new horse in the sheriff race.” Ivy twisted her mouth guiltily. “Okay, I know technically he’s your nemesis, not mine, but please—can’t I have this one? I promise I’ll hate him forever and completely! No one could be a better mortal enemy for Nash Tucker than I will be.”
Andie blinked, a little dazed by all the dramatics. “Hold up. Let’s be clear. Did he threaten you in some way? Make you feel unsafe?”
Ivy tucked her tongue in her cheek. “If I say yes, will you throw him in the pokey?”
“If it’s true,” Andie emphasized, staring her flighty friend down. “Then there’s nowhere he can hide that I won’t hunt him down and make him pay for scaring you.”
The rhythmic click of Ivy’s long, scarlet-varnished fingernails drumming against her desk punctuated the way her gaze shifted around. Bless her, Andie thought fondly, but Ivy was not a good liar.
“What if I told you he’s a jackass?” Ivy said, wheedling. “Like, a big one.… Pokey time?”
“Sadly, being a jackass is not on the books as being against the law in Sanctuary,” Andie told her, finally breaking a grin at her friend’s outraged growl. “Hey, if you don’t like it, take it up with the town council. Or run for mayor and change the laws yourself. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”
“Well, there ought to be a rule against waltzing into the town you swore you
’d never go back to looking all gorgeous and handsome and charismatic and charming, and talking to your ex-girlfriend in a diner. I mean, anyone would agree that’s beyond the pale. Right?”
“Nash Tucker should be tarred and feathered,” Andie agreed, filing all this interesting info away for later thought. “If it were up to me, he’d be run out of town on a rail, along with his self-serving, money-flaunting grandfather. But it’s up to the people of Sanctuary Island to choose who they want as their sheriff. So we’ll see what they say come election time. I’m willing to abide by the people’s decision.”
Easy to say, Andie reflected as she made the now-familiar drive across the island to Windy Corner. Harder to live up to.
If she lost this job, what would she have? Nothing but the bitter knowledge that a whole town full of people agreed with her father that she wasn’t a good cop.
The only positive thing about her worries over her job was that they took her mind off her worries about her personal life. She hadn’t heard from Owen since that one, too-short phone call, but Caitlin was actually settling in okay. They were learning to rub along smoothly, the two of them, and Andie counted it a big step forward that her niece no longer looked ready to bolt at the first sign of affection. They’d graduated to an actual kiss good night, on the forehead or cheek. Caitlin still didn’t exactly come flying into her arms when Andie showed up at the barn to take her home after her riding lessons, but that was mostly because Caitlin would happily bed down in the sawdust outside Queenie’s stall and live there full time if Andie would allow it. So all of that was going well.
As long as Andie didn’t allow herself to think about Sam Brennan, or the fact that after one scorching hot kiss, he’d basically disappeared off the face of the earth.
Oh, he was still around. She heard stories and tales about his ease with the horses, his amazing ability to get them to do whatever he wanted without even touching them, his comments to Caitlin as she mastered the basics of horseback riding. But though Caitlin saw him almost every day, it had been more than a week since Andie had caught even a fleeting glimpse of Sam. For such a big, heavily muscled man, he sure could slip into the shadows when he wanted to.
At first, Andie hadn’t understood. She’d thought maybe Sam was giving Caitlin and Andie time alone together, to get used to each other without him around as a distraction. And then she’d started to wonder if he regretted that kiss … and once she considered the humiliation of that, she supposed she ought to be grateful that Sam was so obviously staying out of her way.
Maybe he meant to spare her the embarrassment of throwing herself at him again. Maybe that was the gentlemanly thing to do—maybe that was how it usually worked on the dating scene. Andie wouldn’t really know, considering that her one foray into adult relationships had ended with her quitting the Louisville police force, breaking ties with her father, and running away to Sanctuary Island.
Clearly, Andie was no expert when it came to relationships. But she still wished Sam had the balls to talk to her, face-to-face, and tell her straight out that he wasn’t interested. And if she ever managed to run into him again, she was going to have to seriously work to keep herself from confronting him about it.
I thought we had the start of something good, she imagined saying as she pulled up to the barn and climbed out of her SUV. Maybe we don’t know each other all that well, but I wanted to know more. And I thought you did too. What changed?
She was so intent on silently rehearsing a conversation she was, realistically, never going to have, that she almost tripped over Caitlin. Curled around her own skinned knees, bony arms clutching tight, Caitlin was waiting just inside the barn doors. Alarm pushed every other thought out of Andie’s head. She crouched down to run a quick, assessing hand over the girl’s shoulders and head. “Hey there! Are you okay?”
“I’m ready to go,” Caitlin told her, pushing to her feet and flipping her pink backpack onto one shoulder.
Andie let her hand drop. “Sure. But I usually have to drag you away from Queenie kicking and screaming, or bribe you with promises of mac and cheese. Did something happen during your riding lesson?”
“Didn’t have one. Sam was … busy.”
The brief hesitation sent up a signal flare, but all Andie said was, “Is Taylor around? I should pay her for babysitting.”
“I’m not a baby,” Caitlin snapped. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
Brows climbing, Andie opened the car door and stood back rather than helping Caitlin get in and situated. Something was going on here, and Andie was going to find out what. “Hang out for a sec, I’ll find Taylor and then we can go home.”
But once she marched into the dim, cool interior of the barn, it wasn’t hard to figure out where Taylor was. A murmur of voices from the office drew Andie in. She raised her hand to knock on the cracked-open door just as she heard Jo Ellen Hollister say, “How could he not tell us? Does he think we wouldn’t understand?”
Sam. They were talking about Sam.
Andie breathed in, a slow, silent breath and shifted her weight closer to the opening … and a board creaked under her foot. She winced, and there was a beat of silence from inside the office before the door swung open and Taylor peered out at her.
“There you are,” Andie said, pasting on a nonchalant smile. “I was looking for you.”
“Why?” Taylor glanced over her shoulder hastily, nervous fingers tucking her tousled blonde hair behind her ears. “I mean, here I am. What’s up?”
“What’s up with you?” Andie countered, still smiling.
Taylor smiled back, a little too bright. It reminded Andie of the expression the teenager wore that night she busted Taylor and Matt Little for underage drinking. “Nothing’s up! Just a regular old boring day here at Windy Corner.”
Andie looked past Taylor to make eye contact with Jo Ellen, who looked calm, if a little tense. Jo nodded briskly. “Sheriff.”
They’d closed ranks, Andie understood. Whatever was happening with Sam, they weren’t going to tell Andie—the Sheriff—about it. Doesn’t matter, she decided, returning Jo’s nod and reaching for her wallet to fork over Taylor’s babysitting pay. Andie would find out on her own.
From the moment she met Sam, she’d sensed he was dangerous. She should have listened to her gut. It was time to do her job and investigate what he was hiding. Even if it meant finding out that she’d been taken in, yet again, by a handsome face and a sizzling attraction.
*
The next day, when Sam’s borrowed truck backed out of the Harrington House driveway onto Island Road, Andie was ready for him. From her position across the town square, in an unmarked sedan, behind sunglasses and a baseball cap, she carefully tailed Sam all the way down Main Street and out of downtown. They were heading in the direction of Windy Corner, and she fully expected him to drive there. Her plan was to park off the road nearby and surreptitiously stake out the barn to see if she saw anything unusual or illegal taking place.
She planned, also, to stubbornly ignore how much she hoped she saw nothing out of the ordinary. This was her job, like it or not, and if it gave her a little bit of vertigo to blur the lines between her personal and professional lives, so be it.
But Sam didn’t take the turn for the barn. Instead, he maintained his course along the coast road, taking them deeper and deeper into the island. As other vehicles thinned out around them and the road narrowed to a single lane, Andie pulled back to keep plenty of distance between her sedan and Sam’s truck. She lost sight of him for moments at a time as they wound around curves and up and down hills through the thick maritime forest. She had to trust that when he finally made a turn off, she wouldn’t miss it completely.
She came close to missing it when it happened at last, but as she rolled quietly past the barely–there dirt track that led out to Heartbreak Cove, something made her pause. Cutting the engine, she rolled down her window and listened to the sound of a truck engine grumbling off to the left.
Wh
at in the world was Sam Brennan doing out here? Her gut clenched. There was no reason she could think of. No business he could have, on his own or for the barn or for his family. It was a tiny, out of the way pocket of nature nestled in the heart of Sanctuary Island. The way the island curved created a small inlet and cove, complete with gritty pebbled beach and calm, lapping waves cut off from the wind that crashed towering surf against the rocks on the eastern shore. No one came to Heartbreak Cove except the wild horses.
Well, the horses and a couple of teenagers, looking for privacy. But what did Sam need privacy for, all by himself like this? Something was definitely weird. Maybe not illegal weird, but off enough to get her heart hammering and adrenaline pumping.
Andie wheeled the car into a U-turn and parked it a couple hundred feet up the road, off to the side and sheltered under a big wax myrtle. Then she doubled back and took the path to the cove on foot.
With every step, she wondered if she was being paranoid. Maybe Sam just wanted to see the wild horses! Was she was so busy berating herself for trusting the wrong guy—as if she’d learned nothing from the worst event of her entire life—that she was inventing reasons to be suspicious?
Her brain was buzzing back and forth so rapidly by the time she caught up to Sam, it took her the space of a few quiet breaths to understand what she was seeing.
From where she’d crouched in the underbrush, her boots sunk in marshy wet ground and nothing but the waving willows to shield her if Sam turned around, Andie watched him stride purposefully down to the edge of the marsh and out onto the glittering sand. Broken shells crunched under his boots as his steps slowed, his gait going liquid and graceful in a way that tightened Andie’s body and made her breath come shaky.
No man that big should move like that, like a dancer or a warrior, light on the balls of his feet and every muscle loose and ready. She blinked, registering the change in Sam’s posture—it was the way he looked when he went into the ring with Queenie. It was the way he moved when he wanted to be ready for whatever came his way.