Counting on Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series: Book 3)

by Amelia Rose

  Gracie jumped up and down, clapping her hands together in her excitement. “Absolutely! When do we leave?”

  “Whoa, little sis, we have to get the appointments set up and everything. Joseph will need to be scheduled for certain tests, so those have to be arranged, too. Miranda and I just wanted to let you know about the trip and see if you wanted to go with us.”

  “Of course! And the next Treewalker book comes out next Thursday, maybe we’ll be in Dallas in time to buy it!” She dropped her eyes, a guilty look on her face. “I’m sorry. I mean, the important thing is Joseph, of course. I didn’t mean that some dumb book is more important…”

  Casey grabbed her again but this time, it was to give her a tight, reassuring hug. “We know what you meant, kiddo, and don’t worry about it. You’re allowed to be excited about getting away from cows for a while! And Joseph’s gonna be fine. This trip will be good for him, and maybe we’ll finally get him back up and walking around, good as new.”

  Gracie thanked them and pulled away to run to the house for lunch. Casey and Miranda followed at a leisurely pace, walking with their arms around each other’s waists.

  “Thanks for making her feel like a part of the family, Casey,” Miranda whispered before kissing him just beneath his ear. Casey tightened his grip on her and pulled her closer for a real kiss, one that lingered far longer than usual, before furrowing his brow and answering her.

  “She is part of the family, honey. I don’t need to go out of my way to prove that. You two came into our lives and made a great life even better. You two made it perfect. I know the others feel that way, too. She’s our very own sister, just like she’d been born to us. Just like…” Casey left his sentence hanging, remembering the little sister they’d almost had. He cleared his throat briefly, and Miranda waited silently. “You know, she’s almost the same age now that our sister would have been. Just a few years older. We missed everything about watching her grow up, and it feels like you two just fell right into our lives. I only hope she feels the same way.”

  “Well, I hope so, too, for Joseph’s sake. If this is going to work out, we’re going to need those two to become even better friends.” Miranda searched Casey’s eyes for some sign that he had any doubts, but he met her gaze with an even, confident look before kissing her firmly on the lips.

  “It’s gonna work. It has to,” he said, his own confidence failing him for the moment.

  Chapter Nine

  Dear Tommy and Jennie,

  I want to tell you thanks for everything you’ve done for me. You are the kindest people anyone could ever meet. Anyone else would have turned me away after finding out about me and the things I’ve done, but you didn’t. You gave me a job and a place to live when I really needed them, but more importantly, you were people who cared about me when you didn’t have to.

  And that’s why I have to leave. You’re good, honest people, and you don’t need anyone coming in here causing you problems like the other night. I would never do anything to hurt you after all the help you’ve given me, so it’s for the best that I go.

  Thank you for everything, and good luck with the restaurant.

  --Emma

  Emma placed the letter in the envelope, sealed it, and stared at it for a long time before gathering her backpack and duffel bag and heading downstairs. She left her things outside the back door by the kitchen, then propped the letter up in the groove where food tickets would be lined so Jennie would be sure to find it before the lunch crowd became too big. She wiped the last of the tears from her eyes, then slipped out the back door when Tommy and Jennie were busy with the weekly food delivery.

  She had planned it out carefully, almost immediately after the incident in the bar. Emma remembered the easy to find route to the Carson Hill Ranch, even if the only time she’d ever walked it was in a moment of fearful desperation. From there, it was just a matter of staying out of sight and making her way to the small cabin where she and Dee had gotten clean. She would stay there for a few weeks and do some thinking, deciding what her next move would be.

  She started walking along the sun-baked tire ruts that pointed east, knowing she had a full day’s walk ahead of her and even then, that was just to sneak up to the main property. Surely a ranch that size would have plenty of places to hide for a night or two, then she could cut out for the cabin.

  As she walked, Emma scouted out places to hide in the tall grasses alongside the makeshift and weather beaten road, just in case anyone from the ranch should come driving up. She didn’t love the thought of surprising a snake or some other ground dweller, but she’d take her chances with the wildlife if it would get her to her destination with her secrecy still intact.

  ****

  “Tommy! Tommy, get in here! Quick!” Jennie screamed. Instead of waiting for her husband, she threw herself through the swinging door leading from the kitchen to the main dining room, colliding painfully with Tommy in the process.

  “What the hell, Jennie? What’s the matter with you?” he bellowed, rubbing the red spot on his forehead where the heavy door had made contact.

  “This!” Jennie cried, thrusting the opened letter at him, unconcerned about his injuries for the time being. “She’s gone, Tommy!” Tears had already begun forming in her eyes, but the look of pained disbelief on her husband’s face as his eyes scoured the note were enough to send them down her cheeks, making small rivers in her makeup.

  “But, why?” he asked, looking to Jennie for understanding. “I mean, sure, I know about that guy and all, but why did she have to leave? He’s the one who did something wrong!”

  “Oh, God, Tommy, where do you think she went? The poor kid, that poor, poor girl…” Jennie’s voice trailed off as she began to sob, clutching at the counter top for support. Tommy patted her back methodically, a blank expression on his face.

  “I don’t know, hun, but we can ask around, see if maybe she knows people who will help her. Right? She’s gonna be okay, I know it.” Jennie turned toward her husband and let him pull her into his arms, burying her face in his shoulder as she cried for Emma.

  ****

  Emma walked most of the day, putting as much distance as she could between the town of Hale and her fragile body and even more fragile soul. She couldn’t figure out why she ever thought she could make it work. No one was ever going to let her forget who she was, a fact that had been true since she was a little girl. The whole reason she’d ended up in the hell that was Mack’s prison in the first place was because she’d been trying to outrun who she was back in Michigan.

  Back home, her last name was synonymous with everything bad in the world. Her own parents had never married, mostly because her mom was fifteen when Emma had been conceived, and by the time she actually appeared, her father—such as he was—was serving four years in the state prison for his third drug trafficking conviction.

  Not one to ever be confused with the term “good behavior”, Emma’s dad had served the full four years, plus an additional eight months for assaulting an inmate while locked up. The day this man appeared on the concrete steps that led up to her mom’s trailer, claiming to be her father, was a day she would never forget. It was the first serious beating she could ever remember, which she earned for kicking and crying when this stranger tried to pick her up. He had driven off in a rage at his own child for not recognizing him, the spray of gravel hitting her as his wheels spun out. With her mother’s chances of latching onto a man who at least made an income destroyed, it was several days before Emma could bend her legs without cracking the zig-zagged scabs that ran in lightning patterns down her legs.

  From then on, her entire life had been one constant reminder that she was to blame for the situation they were in. Whether it was waking up to find yet another of her mom’s drunken temporary boyfriends pawing at her in her bed, or having to eat cold, shoplifted Vienna sausages straight out of the can because her mother sold their food stamps, her clan of trashy relatives repeated the mantra to her almost daily th
at she was to blame for them not having anything.

  I’ve been far worse off than this, she thought to herself sadly. At least this mess is one of my own doing for once.

  Hours later, as the sun began to touch the treetops in the distance, the ring of lights from the main house began to cast a glow in the distance. Emma could easily sleep under her blanket close to the back of one of the smaller outbuildings, and still be up in time to move on before anyone noticed her.

  When she finally reached the first large building set back from the family home, she recognized the smaller of the two barn-like buildings immediately. Rather than settling in behind a dwelling like she’d originally intended, Emma had a new plan. She ducked inside a large, open sliding door and immediately climbed the ladder fixed against the wall to her right. She knew from movies that this would lead her to a hay loft, and other than a few mice, she shouldn’t have anyone sneaking up on her.

  Emma settled against some hay in the darkened loft before rooting in her backpack for a small bite from her carefully rationed food. She drank deeply from her water bottle, knowing that she would pass the creek in the morning on her way to the cabin. What she hadn’t bargained for was the visitor, and not the four-legged kind.

  “What are you doing up here?” a young girl’s voice called from across the loft, jolting Emma from a premature but well deserved sound sleep. Emma sat bolt upright, forgetting for a few seconds where she was but remembering it all too soon.

  “Oh, my God, I’m sorry. I just needed to…I’ll leave, just please don’t say anything.” Emma began frantically gathering up her things, shoving the few items she’d taken out down in her bag haphazardly. She stood up to go and had almost made it past Gracie when the younger girl reached out a hand, putting it gently on Emma’s elbow to stop her.

  “Wait, you’re one of the girls who lived in the cabin, aren’t you?” she asked softly. Emma met her gaze with a fearful look in her eyes, but saw something close to compassion from Gracie. Emma nodded without saying a word. “But why are you here? Bernard said everything was arranged for you to live in town. Some couple opened a business, or something like that?” Gracie suddenly grew angry. “Were they mean to you? Did they hurt you?”

  “Oh, no! Nothing like that,” Emma protested immediately. “But there were other people who just wouldn’t let it go and let me move on. I had to get out of there before…anyone was hurt.”

  “So you came here?” Gracie asked, confused. Emma nodded again.

  “I didn’t have anywhere else to go, but I couldn’t stay in Hale. It’s not just the people,” she said, her voice dropping to a frightened whisper. “It’s what happened there. Everywhere I looked, I remembered seeing it before, but when I was high. It was like I was seeing it all over again with different eyes, and everything made me think about drugs. So I thought I would go to the cabin where I got the drugs out of my system. I thought, if no one was living there, I could just hide out there until I figure out what I’m going to do.”

  “But you’ll be all alone out there, and you’re still really far away. Why don’t you stay here?” Gracie suggested, the thought already taking root in her mind and causing an excited smile to light up her face. “I can come up and check on you, bring you stuff, you know…look out for you!”

  Emma didn’t look as convinced. “But what if someone finds me up here?”

  “You’re not breaking the law, silly! You’re not a runaway or anything. Besides, I gave you permission to be up here, so you’re not even trespassing! Please say you’ll stay. I’d love to have someone to talk to, but I’d also love to know that you’re nearby if you needed something, and not half way across the ranch in a little shack by yourself.”

  The more Gracie explained it, the more easily convinced Emma became. What had she been thinking? That she would hole up in the “shack” as the girl had called it, and then all of her problems would be solved? She slowly nodded her again but this time, she smiled a welcome smile of relief.

  “Thank you so much…um…I don’t know your name,” Emma said apologetically.

  “I’m Gracie. And I never knew your name, either. I only saw you and your friend for a little while as we were getting ready for the drive.”

  “I’m Emma. The other girl was Dee, but she’s gone back home to her family.”

  “And you don’t have a home?” Gracie asked pointedly, in a way that only a thirteen-year-old girl could without sounding nosy or rude. Emma shook her head, biting her lip nervously and hoping there weren’t going to be any more questions about that.

  “Well, Emma, I’m really glad you’re here. Let me go get you some blankets and stuff, and I’ll bring you something to eat. Oh, I almost forgot. I came up here to get my book,” she explained, pointing to the e-reader still perched on a hay bale. “Do you want something to read? I have a few magazines, you know, celebrity stuff, and I have a few books. Mostly I read on this so I can just download stuff.”

  “Whatever you have would be just great, but don’t go to any trouble for me,” Emma replied, genuinely touched and very concerned about getting this nice girl in trouble.

  “It’s no problem! I’ll be back in a little while,” Gracie told her with a reassuring look, then turned and headed down the ladder. Emma looked around the loft, darkened now that Gracie’s flashlight had left with her, and sat back down on the hay to wait.

  Chapter Ten

  Carey leaned his head back against the seat of the truck and wrapped his arms around Amy, pulling her closer to him so that her back rested against his chest. Together, shifted in their seats so they could mostly stretch their legs out on the front seat, they looked out through the open windows at the dark sky dotted with millions of stars. Amy sighed happily as Carey kissed the top of her head, breathing in the familiar and comforting smell of her shampoo.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” she teased, snuggling into Carey’s chest and resting her head on his shoulder, breathing in the decadent scent of fresh cut grass and hay that always seemed to permeate his clothes.

  “At least this time it’s not because my drunken brother was making an ass of himself in town,” Carey said with a smile, even though his tone was only half-joking.

  “No, he hasn’t come into town lately. I guess your father reined him in and put a tight leash on him, huh?”

  Carey didn’t answer right away. Besides being a part of the Carson family and making it a family habit not to talk about each other outside of the ranch, Joseph was Carey’s brother, his younger brother at that, and he needed looking after. He wrestled with protecting Joseph’s privacy and dignity, but gave in. Amy was, after all, his fiancé, and would be part of the Carson family soon enough.

  “Actually, no. I don’t think my dad really understands how serious it is,” Carey said quietly.

  “How serious is it?” Amy asked, tensing noticeably in Carey’s arms, her voice becoming stronger when he didn’t answer. “Carey? I said, how serious is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m no doctor, but something isn’t right. The reason Joseph hasn’t been back into town to drink his problems away is because he can’t even get out of bed. He lays there all day long, taking more pills like he has a built in alarm clock telling him when it’s time.”

  Amy sat up suddenly and turned to look at Carey. “I thought he didn’t have any more pills.”

  “Relax, Sheriff, there’s no need to call in the DEA for a drug bust this time,” Carey teased, reminding her of how she landed the job as Sheriff in the first place, when she made the connection between the former Sheriff and Mack’s meth business. He pulled her close to him again. “I did look the other way when he helped himself to what was left off the pills the doctor gave me for my accident a few months back, though. Wait, I hope I didn’t just confess to a crime in front of the county Sheriff.”

  “I think I can be persuaded to look the other way just this once, but only because you’re sexy and because I’ve already strip searched you
once tonight.”

  “You could strip search me again, just to be safe,” Carey answered with a low growl, moving her long red curls away from her neck to give him access to the soft, sensitive skin. He let his warm lips move across her exposed flesh, thrilling at the feeling of her trembling slightly in his arms from his touch.

  “That’s definitely in my plans, but you just keep doing that thing you’re doing with your mouth. Over to the left just a hair,” she answered with a breathy laugh. “But we do still have to talk about Joseph. If your dad doesn’t see the problem in front of him, what are we going to do?”

  A pleasant chill ran up Carey’s spine at her use of the word “we”. He kissed her more hungrily, making his way to her collarbone and pulling back her shirt collar gently to suck at her skin. He increased the pressure of his lips against her when she reached a hand behind her to run her fingers through his hair. Amy finally turned in his arms to face him, letting her lips find his in the darkness, pulling his face toward hers.

  Gasping, she finally broke the kiss, leaning her head back as Carey continued his wonderful assault of her neck. “Carey, I’m serious. Joseph, remember?”

  “Joseph who?” he answered playfully, snaking one hand under the hem of her t-shirt, inching none too slowly toward her breasts.

  “I can’t remember, either,” she answered, returning to kissing Carey once more and arching her back under his touch, begging him silently to move higher, shivering when he finally cupped her breasts tenderly. “Wait, now I remember,” she answered sarcastically, pushing Carey’s hand away and sitting up.