by Christa Wick
For the first hour after he left, she put together the reports he had shown her. Lindy came in at ten, as promised, and spent some time with Leah before waving at Sage on her way out. With everything Adler had left her to do done, she looked over the other spreadsheets in the folder, created a duplicate folder she named TEST and proceeded to automate some of the data transfer between workbooks that Dawn had done manually.
The entire time, her mind kept drifting back to Adler’s demeanor as he wrapped up the initial orientation. By the time he departed, he had been like a toy soldier carved from some inflexible hardwood.
With nothing left to do until Adler ran her through more of the record keeping duties, she pulled out her favorite pen and notebook. She brushed her hand down the sleeve of her blouse to unbunch the material. Her thumb grazed one of the azurite beads as a small sneeze erupted from Leah.
Leaning forward, Sage watched as her niece reached across the drawing table, plucked a tissue and dabbed at her nose. Finished, she marched on toddler legs over to the trashcan then returned to the table.
Watching Leah do anything was like having massive fists curled around Sage’s heartstrings, tugging at them constantly. She knew she couldn’t freeze the little girl in time, wouldn’t want to because there were so many more stages filled with wonder for Leah to live through. Sage only wanted to always be a part of her niece’s life.
Adler walked down the hall, back from his errands around the ranch. His face was set, his head down. He didn’t pop into Leah’s area or Sage’s office. He went straight to his room. A call ensued, the words mostly garbled but his voice rough-edged steel.
And then this: He lied to me! He looked me straight in the face and lied. He’s through with this family!
Blood fled Sage’s extremities, her fingertips going cold as she crossed her office and glanced through the door at Leah drawing, the activity absorbing all the child’s attention so that she didn’t notice Sage peeking in or the volume and emotion of her uncle’s voice one room over.
Sage pushed the door until there was just a two-inch gap through which she could continue to watch Leah.
The call ended, Adler left his office, his attention laser-focused on the space ahead of him instead of the rooms he passed. Once he had left the corridor, Sage fully opened the playroom door then returned to her desk, pen in hand and her notebook open.
Good times never last, she thought, drawing a small circle as a bullet point. The sweeter the time, the briefer the experience. And Sage’s time with Leah had been so very sweet. What was important now was making sure Jake didn’t lose his daughter.
She wiped at her eyes, carrying away the tears before they could escape down her cheeks.
Coming to Montana had been wrong and entirely selfish. Once she had Jake tracked down and a number for him, she could have just called. But she’d jumped on a plane and only contacted him once she was stranded at the Billings airport late at night, the car rental booths shut down.
Jake’s worry that the Turks wanted to take Leah away had been paranoia hardcoded into him as a child. How many times had they been told, their mother clutching at their arms, that if they ever told anyone about her special friend, someone from the government would take them away, lock them in rooms with children who had done very bad things, watched over by cruel adults the government paid—
Enough! she scowled at herself and at the memory of her mother’s tear-streaked face, mascara tracking black lines down her cheeks. Sage didn’t want those memories in her head, had exorcised them as she took care of her dying mother, the woman otherwise friendless because of the man she had chosen to fall in love with no matter how shabbily he treated her.
What Sage wanted was to fix the problem her arrival had created. Jake would have gotten past his paranoia. He could not, absent Sage’s help, get past the lies he had told.
Jake wouldn’t tell the truth, wouldn’t confess to how, looking up at that family tree, surrounded by his future wife’s loving relatives, he had felt small and unworthy. Surrounded by people who wanted to embrace him as one of their own, he could only feel the pain of an outsider, his life as alien to theirs as some creature visiting from another planet or the bottom of the ocean.
Grip on the pen tightening, Sage put a header above the small bullet she had drawn.
Give Jake a reason for denying I exist
She added a subheading.
Rules—no danger to others, not in front of or around Leah, nothing criminal
Re-reading the constraints, Sage frowned with doubt that she was clever enough to come up with something.
Touching pen to paper, she added a second rule.
Must accomplish before Leah gets any more attached to me
It was too late in terms of her own attachment to the little girl. But Sage had learned to live with her brother’s back turned to her for almost half a decade. Eventually, the pain of leaving Leah would fade.
Sage could even look at it as a fresh start. She would leave Jake an email contact created solely for him. Then she could make herself invisible to the people so interested in her parents’ affair. Maybe she would even change her name.
But first, she needed to undo the damage done upon her arrival to Willow Gap.
Her first idea was best described as “meh.”
Pretend to be drunk? Pro: no actual danger. Con: never drunk in my life.
Definitely a backburner idea, Sage thought. If her ploy was obvious, it would backfire on Jake.
Crazy talk? What kind? Rabid hate speech? Pro: easier to fake. Con: shockingly, what if they agreed? Feel sick even thinking about what I would have to say.
Honesty, Sage thought. Honesty and family were at the root of the problem she had created in Willow Gap. Her solution had to include those elements.
Run off with advance, make them sue me, or at least demand return under contract? Con: Could hurt business reputation. Pro: not a state I’ll ever step foot in again, biz rep not likely to spread; unlikely to result in criminal charge (well, not if I burn this note before doing anything); doesn’t endanger anyone; Leah not exposed. Question: is it enough for them to believe Jake had a reason for walking away from the family? Should I tell him I’m doing this so he can say I did it to him in the past?
Absorbed with plotting the demise of her reputation among the Turks, Sage jerked when Leah touched her arm.
“Oh, Honey Bee,” she said, her smile genuine but shaky. “I didn’t hear you. Do you need something?”
Eyes glancing coyly to the side, Leah rolled her lips together as her hand crept toward the notebook.
“Paper gone,” she said.
Sage glanced at the table to see that the toddler had filled all the sheets on the table and stuck them to the wall with washi tape.
“Do you want big sheets from the printer?”
Leah answered with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, her gaze never straying from Sage’s notebook.
Sage looked at the perforated pages. The paper was an unprofessional shade of pale lilac that she mostly used as a scratchpad for things like coding and list making. The color soothed her and improved focus—a portable pleasure for those rare times when work became an unwelcome labor.
Carefully she detached five sheets and handed them to Leah just as Adler appeared in the doorway, his mother standing next to him.
Careful not to overtly study the man, she noted he carried a small canvas duffel and a clipboard with a pen attached.
“The water stations need checked,” Adler said, the clipboard bouncing against his thigh.
Leah forgot about her precious lilac sheets for a second and did a little jump while clapping her hands.
“No, Honey Bee,” Adler said. “Today Sage is learning how to do everything. Next time she checks, you can go with her.”
A pout instantly formed. Grabbing her pretty paper and holding it to her chest, she cast a serious side eye at her uncle and returned to the playroom, Lindy following after her.
“She’ll forget she’s mad at you after I take her to the kitchen for lunch.”
Still acting like he had a two-by-four nailed to his spine, Adler shrugged.
“It’ll take about two hours,” he told Sage. “I already have lunch and something to drink for the two of us packed in the truck. You probably want to visit the restroom first.”
Grabbing her bag, she nodded. “Shall I meet you by the garage?”
“Sounds good,” he answered, already walking away.
10
Hitting the last water station before heading back to the ranch, Adler instructed Sage to go through the testing process out loud, telling him what she was doing, what the value ranges were and so on. Basically, anything and everything he could think of to prolong the amount of time he had alone with the woman.
The delay tactic was about more than basking in her company, watching the sunlight run its fingers through her hair while listening to her soft voice. He was stalling because he hadn’t said any of the things that had rolled through his head during the long night after their kiss in his office and half the workday.
He still wasn’t sure what to say. He had to play it safe, not drive her away from the family. Yesterday had been a mistake, especially after the bad history they had going.
But seeing her first on the verge of tears and then actually crying had driven him over the edge. A primal need to protect her had pushed him too close. Everything escalated from there—touching her, stroking reassuringly at her arms, kissing the wet cheek and not pulling away before she turned her mouth to his and let him go deeper.
Adler was pretty sure the only reason she had put a stop to the kiss was because of her brother. Jake was a wedge between the two of them.
That was its own problem. Up until Adler found out about Sage, he had trusted Jake to do the right thing despite all the reticence to talk about his past. Heck, Adler didn’t even think the event that started Jake lying was because of something the man had done wrong. Jake was honest, meticulous. His boss crowed about what a good worker he was. And not once had Adler ever seen a hint of unhappiness in his sister.
A fresh lump of grief swelled his throat. Surrounded by four brothers and mostly male cousins, Dawn had always wanted a sister. Adler was sure she would have adored Sage. With Leah as a bridge, their bond would have been unbreakable.
“Did I get that right?” Sage asked, showing him the colored lines on the testing kit and what she had recorded on the clipboard.
Adler nodded. That was the last of it. Time to head to the truck and back to the ranch. Slowly, he returned the kit to the duffel.
“I was a bit of a bear earlier,” he said, closing the lid on the water station. “You could probably hear me through the walls or the air vent.”
He had been a bear even earlier than that, halfway through the orientation, but he hadn’t worked up enough nerve to address the issue.
“I always leave that kind of call for when I’m away from Leah’s little ears. Heck, I keep it from my mother and Dawn, too. I’m sorry you had to hear the shouting.”
Sage nodded, her tongue flicking out for a nervous lick at her lips.
“Thankfully that kind of call is rare. Most vendors around here won’t risk cheating our ranch. This was a man I thought I could trust.”
Her pale rose lips parted, his chest tightening at the sight of it.
“Oh, it was a vendor? I didn’t actually hear what you were saying.”
Something skittered across her face that made him think she had heard at least a little of his side of the conversation. He shrugged the doubt away and offered a short explanation.
“We’re redoing the plumbing in the bunkhouse. That’s kitchen and bath. Vendor tried to switch parts on us then lied about what the contract said, that’s why I had to come back to the office. Unfortunately, that was our lawyer listening to me yell. But half of it has to be dug up, refitted and all before the ground gets too hard. And now I’m wondering what else the man lied about. He just finished a heating station in the eastern fields six weeks behind schedule.”
She nodded in understanding, the relief on her face plain from how much time he’d already spent memorizing her expressions.
“I always take that away from the house,” Adler repeated before a long hesitation. Bellowing over the phone was the least of what he had to apologize for.
“I just haven’t been myself lately.”
“I understand,” Sage answered. “The loss of Dawn and Brody has touched everyone. There’s not a conversation I’ve had around Willow Gap where the other person hasn’t expressed how much they missed them.”
“True, but that wasn’t what I meant,” he confessed. “I’m saying I haven’t been myself since you showed up.”
There, his feelings were out. He just hoped it wasn’t too much, too soon.
Sage nodded, a gentle smile on her face. “My presence has been a shock to everyone.”
He laughed, the sound half strangled because of the thick knot in his throat that refused to be swallowed down.
“I’m still not talking plain enough,” he grinned. “I’m sorry for kissing you last night, you were clearly upset. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done wrong from the moment I met you.”
“Oh…”
He couldn’t read the meaning behind the single word, if it could be called a word, or the way she froze in place. He hurried along with what he wanted to say before he lost his nerve.
“I’m not sorry for knowing what it’s like to kiss you—to touch you.”
Her cheeks flamed red. Her mouth worked around something for a few seconds but she didn’t manage to say anything.
Adler soldiered on. The main thing was making sure Sage didn’t bolt.
“I am truly sorry,” he repeated. “I wanted to let you know I can work from the offices in the stables. Will doesn’t smell that bad most of the time.”
She attempted a false smile at his joke, but it was quickly buried under the weight of whatever she was feeling.
“I don’t want you leaving any part of the job…or the family because you’re uncomfortable being around me. I just want you to know that. You only have to point in whatever direction you want me to go and I will.”
The last thing he wanted—more tears—threatened to escape her watery gaze.
Reaching out, she placed her arm against his bicep.
“I don’t need you to work in the stables.”
The weight wound across his chest, constricting his breathing, finally eased.
“Leah would be heartbroken if she didn’t get to see her Addy. The whole drive in she was talking about you.”
Fresh sadness tugged at Sage’s mouth. “With Jake’s hours and travel time, she’s probably seen more of you since her birth than her own father.”
Adler wanted to tell her it didn’t have to be that way. Jake could have been closer from the beginning, could have been in the truck on both sides of the trip, could have had lunch on the back porch, could have taken the toddler to the water stations and more. The man had made his choice.
But the wedge between Adler and Sage was big enough without throwing Jake’s lies and reclusive habits into the mix. For now, he would settle for remaining just down the hall from this woman who had turned his head and heart upside down since her arrival.
“So everything’s good?” he asked.
She replied with a nod that seemed too eager. He would accept it for the time being.
Extending his hand in the direction of the truck, he smiled, the expression easy to conjure up in her presence.
“Your carriage awaits, Miss Ballard.”
Walking into the great room with Sage, Adler found his mother sitting in her rocker. Across from her on the couch, Leah napped.
Before his mother could stand up and approach, Adler knew something was terribly wrong. The expression she wore wasn’t quite like the one she had on after the police called with news of the accident that ultimately took his father and
sister’s life, but it wasn’t far off.
Even Sage picked up on the fact something new was amiss.
Lindy walked toward them, gait stiff and her hands folded behind her back. She kept her gaze on Sage, not him, and he had a sudden sick feeling that something had happened to Jake. When she actually opened her mouth and spoke, his mother’s first words had him convinced something really had happened to the man.
“I’m so sorry, Sage…”
“Mama—” He stopped short as she pulled her hands from behind her back and shoved a notebook in his direction, the leather cover a deep purple wrapped around lilac colored sheets.
“Leah,” she started with a whisper, “brought it to me to fix. She tried to sneak a page out.”
He didn’t understand. Why was she telling Sage she was sorry but handing the notebook to him.
“I’ll stay with her,” she said with a nod over her shoulder at the sleeping toddler. “But this is something you and Adler should discuss.”
He glanced at Sage. Minus the ash, she looked like the people wandering the streets of downtown New York after the towers collapsed. She was in shock, feet frozen to the ground, eyes rapidly blinking. He could see the pulse fluttering wildly in the shallow depression where her collarbone rose up to greet her graceful neck.
Once again, this time with absolute dread, he extended his hand as a gesture for her to go ahead of him.
Whatever his mother had seen in the notebook, Sage didn’t kick up a fuss. She walked numbly into her office and folded like an accordion into her chair. He sank down onto the love seat and skimmed past the first few pages of what looked like code and a few math computations until he saw what had so distressed his mother.
Give Jake a reason for denying I exist…accomplish before Leah gets any more attached…Pretend to be drunk…Rabid hate speech…Run off with advance…Should I tell him I’m doing this so...