by Jami Alden
Not seeing her every day, not having her in his bed every night.
Had he fallen in love with her?
Oh shit.
"Are you okay?"
He realized he'd been sitting there with his beer halfway to his mouth. "I'm fine," he said and quickly pushed back from the table. He gathered up their empty plates and moved to the sink as his mind struggle to wrap itself around a concept he'd never even entertained.
Could he be in love with Sadie?
He'd thought he was in love once, with Jessica Ferguson back in high school. But when she'd moved to Billings their junior year it had only taken a few months for him to decide the drive was too much of a hassle.
Looking back, he could chalk it up to being a dumb teenager whose hormone-soaked brains mistook simple biology for emotion.
He'd never felt anything approaching this. The urge to seek Sadie out at every opportunity. When they weren't together, he missed her, even if it had been only a few hours since he'd last seen her.
Holy shit.
His brain started to swim, hard enough that he put one hand on the counter to hold himself steady.
Was this why they called it falling in love? Because right now he felt like he was sailing off a cliff.
There's no rule this has to end when you go back. Lots of guys do the long distance thing.
Yeah they do. And seventy percent of the guys you know who started out married got divorced after their second deployments.
It was no secret military life was hell on relationships. And life as a Delta Operator was even worse. His work meant having to leave at the drop of a hat, unable to tell anyone where he was going or when he'd be back.
Sadie came up behind him and slid her arms around his waist. He closed his eyes, drinking in the warmth of her touch as bitter reality settled in. Even if he did love her—and he still wasn't a hundred percent sure on that—it would be supremely selfish of him to ask her to put up with that kind of life.
He turned in her arms, bent his head to kiss her as he shoved thoughts of the future from his head. He'd known from the start he would have to let her go.
###
Sadie woke up to an empty bed, something she'd gotten used to with Dylan. She climbed out of bed, pulled on his t-shirt, and wandered into the living room.
The TV was tuned to ESPN and set to such a low volume she wondered how he could possibly hear. But when she got closer, she saw it didn't matter. Dylan's head was flopped back against the cushions, sound asleep.
She started to tiptoe back to bed, not wanting to disturb him when he was actually getting some rest, and caught sight of his laptop sitting open on the little kitchen table. Though the screen was dim, she could see the lines of text filling a page.
You never find out anything good by snooping, a little voice warned even as she padded across the room. Guilt pinched at her stomach, but it wasn't enough to overcome the curiosity driving her over how he spent his sleepless nights.
She gave a furtive glance over her shoulder, reassuring herself Dylan hadn't stirred, and traced her finger across the mousepad to illuminate the screen.
Khalid had just turned twenty-two, but he'd lived a hundred lifetimes by the time he became our translator. Six feet tall and rail thin, he had dark, fathomless eyes full of deep compassion that would have been beaten out of a man with a weaker heart…
Sadie sat down, immediately drawn into the story of the young Afghani, who had volunteered to act as the translator for Dylan's company, despite the danger he knew it would pose to his family. She was struck by Dylan's talent, his writing so vivid it was as though she was there with him.
She smiled as he described Khalid's literal interpretations of American idioms, felt her heart warm as Dylan and the other members of the team took him under their wing, taught him about American football and offered unsolicited advice on how to treat his young, pregnant wife.
Then the burn of tears as he described what happened when the local warlords exacted their revenge on Khalid for his betrayal.
"What are you doing?"
Sadie jumped in her chair, startled, and wiped at the tears coursing down her cheeks. She'd been so absorbed she hadn't heard Dylan rise from the couch and come up behind her.
"I'm sorry," she said, her stomach clenching at Dylan's dark frown, mouth tight with anger. "I didn't mean to snoop—"
"You shouldn't be reading that," he snapped and reached past her to slap the laptop closed.
He snatched the computer off the table and stuffed it into the bag resting on the floor.
She jumped out of the chair. "I'm sorry," she said again.
Dylan was silent, his anger radiating off of him in waves. "You had no right to read any of that. It's none of your business."
Tears once again clogged Sadie's throat, hurt spearing her like an arrow to the chest. What she'd read offered a glimpse into what she could sense going on beneath Dylan's easy-going demeanor. Insight into the way his time in the Army had changed him from the carefree charmer he'd been in high school.
Pieces of himself he had no interest in sharing with her.
"I should go," she said, hating the way her voice quavered. She started down the hall, hoping she could make it before she made an idiot of herself by bursting into tears.
###
Dylan swore softly under his breath, his gut clenching at the wounded look he'd caught on Sadie's face before she hustled down the hall. He hadn't meant to be so harsh, but his entire being rebelled at the idea of someone reading his private journals, seeing all the rawness, the ugliness seething inside of him.
But Sadie hadn't meant any harm, and she didn't deserve to have her head bitten off about it.
He found her in the bedroom, jeans on, in the process of buttoning her shirt. Her hair fell in her face, hiding it from his view.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have jumped down your throat like that."
She gave her head a little shake. "You made it clear you didn't want me to see whatever you spend your nights working on. I shouldn't have pried."
The telltale sniff that followed made him feel like something she'd scraped off her shoe. He closed the distance between them and reached out to brush her hair back from her face, urging her to meet his gaze.
"You have to understand, what I write... it's the only way I can deal with everything that's going on up here," he circled his hand around his own head. "It's not just you I don't want reading it, I don't want anyone reading it."
"I understand," she said with a little smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
He hated seeing that look on her face. There was only one way he knew of to erase it.
###
Sadie lay with her head on Dylan's chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart as his hand lazily stroked up and down the length of her spine. As the haze of satiation faded, the heartbreaking images from Dylan's story crept back into her brain.
"How long have you been writing?" she said into the darkness.
His hand stilled on her back. "I started keeping a journal during my first tour in Iraq."
"You're really talented."
His muscles jumped against her as he made a scoffing sound.
"I mean it," she said, propping herself on her elbows. "That story... I was blown away."
He shrugged. "It's a way to keep everything straight in my head."
"It's more than that. If that story is any indication, you really have a gift. I mean, if for some reason things don't work out the way you want them to, you could be a writer."
His body tensed against her. "Yeah right, like anyone would want to read my f'd up ramblings. Doesn't matter anyway, because everything will go the way I want it to."
"Dylan—"
He cut her off. "In any case, like I said, what's in my journals is for me, and me only. No way I'm letting anyone that far into my head."
Or your heart.
Too bad he'd already crawled inside hers. So deeply she was afraid she
'd never get him out.
Chapter 15
The next morning Sadie and Dylan forced themselves from bed at their usual early hour. Though the workload had eased considerably now that they'd finished the haying, there was still plenty to do.
Horses needed to be tended to, arrangements needed to be made to deliver the hay to their customers in Texas, and Sadie needed to catch up on the projects she'd neglected over the last week.
Not to mention, now that the most stressful period had passed, it was time for Sadie to tell her father the whole truth about the ranch's finances.
The thought of telling her father that one of the people he'd trusted for decades had been stealing from him made her coffee curdle in her stomach. Good thing his most recent check up with his cardiologist indicated his heart was healthy enough to take the news.
"Do you want me there when you tell him?" Dylan asked, regarding her over the rim of his own mug.
She shook her head. "It's best if I just tell him." Not only because her dad would be humiliated that anyone else knew he'd been taken advantage of. But also because she knew that she'd come to depend entirely too much on Dylan these past few weeks. And with Dylan's medical evaluation coming up in just a few days, she knew she had to wean herself off of that, one small step at a time.
After a breakfast where Sadie shifted uncomfortably under the pointed looks her father shot at her and Dylan, she asked her father if she could speak privately with him.
She followed him up the stairs to his office, tension tightening her shoulders as she considered the best way to break the news.
As soon as he closed the door behind them, he turned on her. "You better not be about to tell me Dylan knocked you up. Not unless he plans to marry you."
"No!" Sadie said with a startled laugh. Although, to be fair, she wouldn't be a hundred percent sure of that for another week, but she wasn't about to share that information with her father.
"I know you two are 'involved,'" he said, his face set in stern lines. He took seat behind a wide wooden desk piled high with haphazard stacks of papers and notes.
She resisted the urge to start straightening. Honestly with a desk like this it was no wonder he lost track of his money.
"We're not involved," she sighed as she took a seat across from him.
"Yeah? What do you call what happened in the barn yesterday? And you heading over to his cabin last night and not coming out till just before breakfast?"
Her cheeks flamed, her stomach clenching like she was a teenager getting scolded. Except for back then, she'd been scolded for staying up too late reading or losing track of time studying at Molly's and missing curfew.
Her father had never had to worry about any shenanigans with boys.
"We're adults who enjoy spending time together," she said.
"I don't want anyone taking advantage of you."
"Nobody is taking advantage of anyone. That's not what I wanted to talk about." Then, as calmly and quickly as she could, she repeated what Molly had discovered when she'd gone through their financial records.
Her father's reaction was identical to hers. His jaw dropped to his chest and he shook his head. "No. There's absolutely no chance either one of them would steal from this place. For Christ's sake I've known Pete since we were practically in diapers! And June? She can barely work the telephone, much less pull off all this computerized shit!"
"I'm sorry, Dad, but there's no mistake." She pulled out the file of information Molly had put together, and went over everything in painstaking detail.
When she was finished, her father sat back in his chair, shoulders slumped. His face had gone ashen, and panic rose in her chest as she wondered whether she should have kept the secret longer, if maybe his doctor had been wrong about the state of his health.
"Dad, do you feel all right? Do you need me to call your doctor?"
"No, Goddamnit, I don't need a doctor." He slammed his palm down on the desk. The shocked pallor disappeared as his cheeks flushed in anger. "How long have you known about this?"
"A couple of weeks."
"You mean to tell me I have continued to employ and pay salary to someone who's been robbing me blind? Why the hell didn't you tell me as soon as you found out?"
Sadie's hand flew to her chest, as if that could stop the burst of pain at the anger directed at her. "I didn't want to cause you any more stress! There was so much to do, and I wasn't sure about your heart-"
"I never asked for you to coddle me like a Goddamn child!"
She fought the urge to flee from his ire, told herself it was stupid to feel hurt. What had she expected? That he'd follow up his scant words of praise from yesterday with an outflow of gratitude? "That's right, you didn't ask. That doesn't mean you didn't need me to."
He stayed silent, his stony glare never wavering.
Forcing herself to keep her shoulders straight under a look that would have had her cowering in the past, she said, "Now you need to decide how you want to handle the situation. We can hire an investigator to find out who set up the money market account—"
"Screw an investigator. I'm going to find out right now who's been taking it."
Before she could stop him he picked up the walkie talkie he used in favor of a cell phone for communicating around the ranch and summoned Pete back to the house.
Then he stalked to the door, flung it open, and bellowed for June.
Sadie could hear June's footsteps, bustling up the stairs, and within minutes Pete had arrived.
"This better be important," Pete groused. "I've got about a thousand feet of fence to fix before we can move the mares into the south pasture."
"You bet your ass it's important," her dad said as he rose from his chair. "I want to know which one of you low down snakes stole from me!"
So much for Sadie's admonishments to take a calm approach.
"Stealing?" June gasped, her blue eyes going wide behind her glasses. "Why would you think either of us would do such a thing?"
"I didn't think it would be such a big deal," Pete said. Sadie's stomach sank at the sheepish look on his face, the way his fingers clenched and unclenched around his hat brim.
"Of course it's a big deal!" Jim exclaimed, looking like he'd been punched in the chest at his friend of decade's admission of guilt.
"I figured, I took a little bit here and there, never thought you'd notice." He fished in his back pocket and slammed the can down on the desk. "You buy cases at a time. I never figured you'd be okay with me helping myself."
"You've been stealing my chew?" Jim reached for the can.
Pete nodded. "I can pay you back, if it's such a big deal. Though I don't know why you had to bring June in. I don't imagine she's in the market for Copenhagen."
"We're not talking about chew," Sadie sighed. "We're talking about over a hundred thousand dollars that's gone missing."
"You think I stole money from you?" Pete sputtered.
"It was probably Andy," June interjected. "I would always find him sneaking around the house at odd hours."
"Only you and Pete can access any of the accounts," Sadie said, her stomach sinking at the way the color leached out of June's cheeks.
"You say that," June retorted, "but I see you and Dylan have gotten mighty close. Now, I've always thought he was a nice boy, but can you really ever trust a man?" Her high-pitched laugh was forced.
"Dylan wasn't here two years ago, and someone has been taking money for at least that long."
June's mouth pulled into a tight line, her shoulders hunching. "It's his fault!" she said, her finger pointing accusingly at her father.
"How the hell could it be my fault?"
"I gave up my entire life for you!" June cried. "Fifteen years I've been here, doing everything for you. Cooking, cleaning, putting up with your ornery moods. And what thanks do I get? You got divorced and brought that little witch to come in and boss me around, treat me like a second class citizen, after all I've done."
Her father scrubb
ed his hand across his forehead, and gave Sadie a helpless look.
"I loved you!" June wailed. "After Denise left, I was ready to forgive you, but even then you didn't give me the time of day." She sank down into a chair, shoulders heaving. "Then my mom had her stroke."
"I told you I'd give you a loan to tide you over," Jim said.
"A loan! You gave your little tramp a half a million free and clear, and all I get is a loan after everything I've done."
Whatever Sadie was expecting, it wasn't to find out that June, simple June, had been nursing a secret crush on her father all of these years.
Or that she would sink so low as to steal from her father when he continued to ignore her.
Pete shook his head helplessly, looking as dumbfounded as Sadie felt.
"Why don't you get back to work," Sadie said.
"And, June, you can go on home," Jim said, sounding wrung out. "Sadie or I will give you a call when we figure out how we want to handle this."
###
"Jesus, I never would have pegged June for an embezzler," Dylan said that night after dinner.
"And I never would have guessed she's been carrying a torch for my father all these years," Sadie said. She accepted the vodka tonic he'd mixed for her and took a grateful sip.
After June had fessed up to the crime, she and her father had gone back and forth on how to handle it. On the one hand, her father was beyond furious that he'd been betrayed by someone he'd trusted implicitly.
On the other hand, neither of them had a burning desire to see June hauled off in handcuffs.
"So you're just letting her get away with it?"
Sadie shrugged. "There's still a some money left in her account. Dad says if she gives it back, he's content to just put it all behind him." She wandered over to the couch and sank down, the emotional exhaustion of today's events as intense as any physical strain she'd been under.
"We talking about the same guy? That sounds awfully soft hearted for your father."