A rifle blast split the night and Luc dove, covering Tara Jean with his body.
Eli. About goddamned time.
Dennis flinched and Jacob, the clever boy, managed to slip away. Dennis grabbed onto the hem of the boy’s shirt, holding him in place, while Jacob strained against the fabric, SpongeBob stretching across his belly.
“Let the boy go.” Eli stepped out of the shadows, holding the twelve-gauge, and Luc was relieved that just one thing had gone right tonight.
“Not on your life.”
Eli fired into the porch right between Dennis’s legs and the boy shrieked, the shirt tore, and he ran into the house.
“Who the fuck are you?” Dennis asked, pointing the gun at Eli.
“You okay?” Luc whispered to Tara, who nodded against his arm.
There were a thousand things he wanted to say to Tara, but they would have to wait.
“You the asshole that hit a woman?” Eli asked and Dennis shook his head, his face going red.
“I said who the fuck are you?” he yelled, spittle flying into the night. The moment was slipping out of Dennis’s hands and Luc carefully slid from Tara, easing low and slow across the ground.
“Hold it right there, Ice Man,” Dennis warned, training the gun on him. Luc froze. But then, as if they’d planned it, Eli moved, stepping toward the porch, and Dennis turned to face him. Luc sprang off the ground, flying up the stairs, tackling Dennis and bringing him down.
The gun fired, something hot brushed past his arm, setting his skin on fire, but then Eli was there, kicking the gun away, and Luc used his good arm to wrap his hand around Dennis’s throat.
He leaned a little weight into his wrist and watched Dennis’s eyes bug.
“You touched the people I love and I will see you rot in jail for as long as it is legally allowed, and then when you’re out, I will find you. And I will hurt you so bad, you’ll pray to God to be back in jail—”
“Luc.” Eli touched his shoulder and Luc sat up. Eli tipped his head toward the door where his nephew, sister, and mother all stood watching him with round eyes and white knuckles.
“Keep him down,” Luc told Eli and Eli nodded, holding the barrel of the shotgun against Dennis’s nose.
“Not so funny anymore, are you?” Luc asked.
“Screw you,” Dennis said, and Luc stepped on the man’s belly—delighting in his grunt of pain—to get to his family, pulling them all into his arms.
And they pulled him into theirs. Money and boxes of jewelry fell from Celeste and Victoria’s hands as they clutched at him.
Family.
“You,” he said, crouching to look into his nephew’s eyes, “are one tough kid.”
“I don’t feel tough,” he said, and shook his inhaler before taking another puff. “I feel scared.”
“Me too,” Luc admitted. “But you got away from him.”
“And you knocked him down,” Jacob said.
But I brought him here, he thought, light-headed with grief and guilt.
“You’ve been shot,” Celeste said.
He looked down at the bloody crease in his arm, the raw skin.
Sirens got louder and the lights sliced through the night as the cars turned down the long driveway.
Tara Jean stumbled to her feet, her face as pale as her sweater.
“This wasn’t your fault, Luc,” she said. “Hiring that P.I. didn’t make any difference.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He was going to try and rob you no matter what. You’re just too rich for an idiot like Dennis to pass up.”
“You were going to go with him?” he asked. “Back to conning old men in nursing homes?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I had to get him away from here. It was the only thing I could think of.”
He could think of a thousand other things, like trusting him. Like trusting the cops.
But Tara Jean didn’t trust in anything, so he swallowed his words.
The yard erupted and Luc had to step forward to deal with the police, and he felt Tara Jean melting away from him. Easing into the shadows, perhaps to run, maybe just to hide. He didn’t know which. But he wasn’t going to let her go.
“Maman?” he called, and Celeste stepped off the porch, regal in her purple silk robe, just as if there’d never been a terrible hostage situation on her front lawn. “Look after Tara Jean, would you?”
Celeste approached Tara like one would a wounded animal, carefully, murmuring soft things in French that there was no way Tara would understand, but she responded. Ducking her head, her shoulders shook, and Celeste wrapped her up in her arms and led her into the house.
chapter
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Dawn broke over the mountains, bloodying the sky. Tara watched it from the kitchen window. All the statements had been taken; Dennis had been locked up in the squad car, spitting and kicking at the window.
Jacob, Celeste, and Victoria had all gone back to bed. Ruby made a pot of coffee and then, as if she didn’t know what else to do, took out eggs to start breakfast.
“Go back to bed, Ruby,” Tara said. “No one wants to eat.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, coming to touch Tara Jean’s hair, sweeping it back away from her face, all but clucking like a hen. Tara was just too tired to resist the mothering. “You should eat.”
Tara Jean shook her head and then took Ruby’s hand and kissed it, surprising both of them. But the touch. The contact. It felt good. “Thank you for calling the police.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Ruby said, pulling Tara into her arms. Tara Jean soaked it up, parched to the bone. “Are you going to stay?” she asked, her breath whispering across Tara’s hair.
“This is my home, isn’t it?” Tara tried to make it a joke, but it wasn’t. And Ruby knew it.
“Always,” she said. “Always. Always.”
Another pat. A kiss. A squeeze. Honestly, Tara hadn’t been touched so much by the woman in the four years she’d lived here. “I’ll go and see if I can get some sleep,” Ruby said, and then she was gone.
And it was just she and the dawn, waiting for Luc.
During that drive back out to the ranch with Dennis—with that gun, and the reality of what he was going to try to do with it, she had realized how weak she was. Because if she could have gone back in time and not pushed Luc out the door, she would have done it. In a heartbeat. Not to save herself or the Bakers from whatever nightmare Dennis had planned, but because the ugliness of her life, the wretchedness of her past and her decisions, terrified her.
She had thought she was so tough pushing Luc out that door, putting on this ridiculous outfit that hung in tatters around her battered body. But she’d just been a fool, rejecting love for pain.
Who the hell cared if she didn’t deserve Luc? Luc didn’t, so why should she? If he wanted to tie himself to a monster, she should be delighted to let him. She should tie the damn knot.
He came in the front door, his chest streaked with blood and dirt, a white bandage across his arm. Her hands useless, always so useless, flinched in her lap.
In the doorway, he paused at the sight of her.
She felt small in her skin. As if she’d been put in a bag and shaken so hard pieces of her had fallen off, crumbled and broken, and she couldn’t quite tell what was left of her.
“You all right?” he asked, still so far away. Still watching her.
The shaking started again, and she wanted to clutch herself, gathering up—like laundry—what remained of who she was.
“Tara?”
“I’m fine,” she said, pleased her voice was still part of what she had. “How are you?” She pointed, uselessly. “Your arm.”
“Flesh wound.” His laugh was brief and surprising; she felt herself start at the sound of it. “Eli called me a pussy when I asked for painkillers.”
Amazingly, she smiled and then, suddenly, she was laughing, the sound torn from her gut, and she couldn’t stop. She pressed her fingers to her lips, knowin
g she sounded hysterical, and then she was crying. The tears hot and blinding and Luc was beside her, his strong arms around her. And suddenly, she didn’t need to hold onto herself because he was doing it.
“Everything’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “Everyone’s all right. Dennis is gone and will be gone for a long, long time.”
She nodded, trying to beat back the storm of her madness.
Pulling away, she wiped her eyes with her scraped hands. He touched her knees, the tiny tears in her leather pants.
“You were right,” he said. “Having him followed blew up in my face. I just wanted to take care of my family. Of you.”
Responsibility settled around his shoulders in a way she could see, weighing him down, suffocating him.
She prayed she wasn’t too late, that she hadn’t killed everything he felt for her.
“Maybe someone needs to take care of you.”
He blinked at her and she held her breath, waiting for her courage to be rewarded. Waiting for him to sweep her up in his arms, to rain a thousand kisses on her face, to promise a future so bright she’d forget about her past.
“You’re going to stay?”
“If … if you’ll have me.”
“It’s your home.”
This was not the reaction she expected and she reeled for a moment, realizing he must have changed his mind about her.
“You said you loved me,” she whispered, not above using guilt. See, she was a total monster.
His smile was so sad. “I do.”
“You’re not acting like it.”
“How do I prove it, Tara? How do I prove it so that you’ll believe me? Not just for right now. But forever.”
His hand twitched as if he were going to reach for her but then he dropped his arms at his sides, his fingers curved over his knees as if keeping himself there. They both stared at his hands, as if they would point the way to safety. To home.
She opened her mouth to tell him she did believe him, but no words came out. She tried to force it, to make herself believe, but she didn’t know where belief lived. How to manufacture it. Was it in her brain? Could she convince herself? Was it in her heart? Could she dream it, wish it into being?
But inside, she was a wasteland, a frozen desert thick with mistakes and betrayals. And in the end, under the heat of his gaze, in the face of his love and faith, she couldn’t do it.
She didn’t believe him.
In front of her eyes, she watched him break. Watched the belief in him turn to doubt.
“I would stay here,” he whispered, looking around the kitchen. “I would run this ranch that I’ve hated my whole life. I would make this my home. For you. And it wouldn’t be enough, would it?”
She stared at her hands; those fists knew what to do even when she didn’t know what she was fighting. But there was no fight in her anymore; she was so beaten she could barely sit upright.
“I’m broken, Luc. I am. Deep down. You’re right, you deserve more than I can give you. More than—”
But then he kissed her, sweetly, tenderly, and she sighed into his lips. Hope a match strike against her chest.
Her hands reached for him but he pulled away, violently, his eyes burning into hers. “I love you, Tara. But the problem is you don’t even like yourself. You don’t even see the woman you are and until you do, I don’t have a chance of convincing you. And I would stay here and I would fight every day and I would try to fix you. Try to make you see yourself the way I see you. Because that’s what I do, Tara. That’s … that’s what I do. And it wouldn’t work. It never has worked. Not with my sister. My mother. Fuck, look what happened tonight …” He swallowed hard, blinking up at the ceiling until he turned to her, burning with sudden purpose that made her lean back, made her try to stand up, but he stopped her, his hands holding her in place.
“Tara. Listen to me, because this is the truth. My truth. When you are ready, I will be waiting for you. Your life will be waiting for you.”
He kissed her again, a hard seal, as if she were a letter he was marking as his, and then he stood and braced himself for a second against the table, like a man in rocky seas.
She waited, after he left, in a shaft of sunlight that grew and spread like a leak, unstoppable. Until she realized she was blinded by the sunlight—and numb to its warmth.
Victoria lay in bed next to Jacob, feeling the rise and fall of his little rib cage against her stomach. His hand was curled into hers, and his feet rested flat against the tops of her own. His lips parted on each breath, a little snore in his nose every time he inhaled, and the sound was so sweet, so alive, it brought a smile to her lips.
Which cracked and then bled into her mouth. Carefully, she pressed the bloody Kleenex to her lip as she had all night long.
There was a soft knock on her door, and even that had the power to send her heart screaming into her throat.
Celeste opened the door, wincing when she saw Jacob sleeping. “Luc has asked for all of us to meet in the den,” she whispered.
Victoria twisted, trying not to disturb Jacob to look at the clock. “So early?”
“He’s got a flight out of Dallas at noon.”
“What?”
Celeste shrugged and left the door open as she walked down the hallway. Victoria eased out of bed and nearly ran to the den, wondering what had happened in last night’s nightmare to make him leave the ranch.
Leave Tara.
There was no glee in Victoria. No victory.
Particularly when she got a good look at Luc’s hard face as he sat behind her father’s desk, looking oddly as though he fit there.
“What’s going on?” Victoria asked.
“Good, you’re here,” he said on a big sigh, his arm in a sling at his side. “I have a flight at noon back to Toronto, so I just want to tell everyone what’s happening.”
Victoria glanced around and saw Eli and Celeste, and Ruby.
“Where’s Tara?”
Luc stared at his hands for a second. “I’m not sure,” he said.
“Is she staying at the ranch?”
“I … I don’t know, Vicks. Please, let me just get this stuff taken care of so I can leave.”
The naked appeal in his eyes, in his voice, stilled her tongue. And she dropped like a rock onto the couch next to Celeste.
“I’m not totally sure if I’m breaking the rules of the will, since my off-season is now indefinite and I’m leaving before my five months are up. Vicks, I don’t think you’re going to get that million.”
She held up her hand. “It’s okay. It is. I don’t need it.”
“What are you going to do?”
She shrugged, not sure, but wanting to put on a brave face for her brother’s sake. “I’ll get a job.”
“That’s … good, Vicks. Eli—” He looked up at the cowboy, who stood in the back of the room. “The ranch is in escrow and I leave it in your hands to run it until the year is up and then you can buy the ranch, but I want your promise that my sister and Tara—”
“You’re selling the ranch?” Victoria asked.
Luc nodded.
“The house too?”
“Victoria, it’s just easier—”
“What if I want it?” she asked, and felt everyone staring at her. Their collective gazes, particularly Eli’s from behind her, were heavy and she couldn’t quite think past the weight.
“Want what?” Luc looked as baffled as if she’d asked for Santa Claus to come to the ranch and give her a pony.
“The ranch.”
“The house—”
“The whole thing.” She pushed the weight of everyone’s flabbergasted shock, everyone’s skepticism, away. For the first time in her life she acted on her own impulse. Her own gut.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Eli said. “Luc—” Luc held up his hand and Eli crumpled his hat in his fist.
“What are you going to do with the ranch?” Luc asked, and Victoria felt as if she were lifted above her body,
floating, watching herself do this.
Watching her take charge of her life.
This woman with the lightning in her eyes, the purpose in the muscles of her body, the smile broken on one side by a man’s fist.
That woman was her.
“I don’t know. Horses?” she said. “Like we used to.”
“What do you know about horses?” Eli demanded.
“Not much.” She looked at him, feeling challenge and entreaty fill her eyes. “But you do.”
Eli’s chest heaved and it looked like he was chewing on a whole bunch of words, probably none of them nice. His eyes raked her, and she could tell the poor man was not comfortable hating a woman as much as he hated her right now.
“Luc—” Eli said, and then stopped as if he knew what Luc was going to say.
“Vicks, the ranch is yours to run for the year. After that if you want it, it’s yours. You want to sell it to Eli, that’s fine too. I’m sorry, Eli.” Luc smiled slightly at Victoria, as if giving her his blessing, as if he was happy to be doing it. “But family comes first.”
“It always has with you people,” Eli growled and left the room.
Sitting ramrod straight, eyes on Luc while he talked about Tara Jean and the greenhouse, Celeste reached over and patted Victoria’s hand.
Victoria, feeling as if she were filled in equal parts with helium and lead, grabbed onto that hand like a lifeline.
chapter
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Tara Jean sat in Lyle’s old room, watching the rain make tracks across the window, distorting the wet world outside. She wished she drank. A little alcohol, a blistering hangover, something to distract her from the throbbing numbness. Something to fill the vacuum Luc’s departure had created in her chest.
But even candy, her sweet comfort, had lost its appeal.
So for three days straight she had done little but lie in a fetal position in Lyle’s blue robe, staring out the window and wondering who the hell she was.
Tara Jean flopped over onto her back just as the door to the room opened and Celeste walked in.
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