It made her wonder what Shane would be like if he’d had a luckier sort of life, with parents who loved him and a stable home. He might be more forgiving and less dictatorial, more affectionate and willing to trust.
What if love walked into his life right now? Did he still have time to change? She knew from the gossip around town that Cody had softened him up a bit. What if he had a woman who loved him too—one who forgave all his flaws and his grumpy spells, one he could be sure would love him forever? Would he feel safe enough then to let go of his anger and mistrust? Would he be able to return that love?
She hoped so. Because seeing him fall had made her realize that whatever his issues, she couldn’t bear to lose him.
She loved Shane Lockhart, deeply and truly. She wanted him in her life, no matter what. But her life would be a whole lot easier if he loved her back.
Chapter 57
The skinniest and smallest of the adult dogs, a fawn-colored Chihuahua, crept up to Shane’s prone body and sniffed his breath, as if testing for signs of life. The dog was a mess, with a short, spiky coat that reeked of urine and snaggly teeth from inbreeding.
Lindsey braced herself as Shane awoke with a faint moan.
He blinked, then stared at the little dog. When he sucked in a deep, life-giving breath, he recoiled slightly from the smell.
“I know, it’s awful.” She tried to shoo the puppy away, but it only dodged her hand and moved closer. “It’s not his fault though. These dogs are innocent, Shane. Like kids. They didn’t do anything to deserve this terrible life.”
Instead of responding to her, he struggled to sit up. When she tried to help, he shook his head and her heart sank.
Propping himself up against the steps, inch by painful inch, he surprised her by picking up the little Chihuahua, who stared into his eyes as if its wounded heart had fixed on a kindred soul.
Seeing the tiny dog cradled in his strong, square hands made Lindsey’s eyes tear up. Once, she’d thought she’d feel those hands on her body every night, wake to those gentle dark eyes every morning. Now, though…who knew?
“We can name him Templeton,” Shane said.
“We?” She regretted the question the moment she’d asked it. He meant himself and Cody, of course.
But he nodded gravely. “We.”
Lindsey looked right, then left. Cody had moved across the room, where he was cradling a long-haired dachshund. The only people nearby were Ozzie, and a couple other guys from the trailer park. They shrugged and splayed their hands.
“He’s not talkin’ about us. We like the guy an’ all, but we ain’t reached the point where we’ll share a yapper dog with him.”
Shane, still cradling the dog against his chest as if it might break, reached up and grabbed the stair railing with one hand. Slowly, he hauled himself to his feet and reached for the bank of cages, using them to support his weight while he took one step, then another, until he was walking up and down the racks of cages.
Lindsey had opened the bottom cages earlier, when she’d been crawling around on the floor, but the rest still held their prisoners. Staring into each one, Shane met the eyes of puppies who sat miserably in their own filth. Some rushed at him, teeth bared. Others could barely lift their heads, and some seemed not to notice his presence.
“I didn’t know,” he said over and over. “I didn’t know.”
At a cage full of Maltese puppies, he stopped and unfastened the latch. Still holding the newly christened Templeton, he reached in and set each puppy gently on the floor. When he reached the mother dog, she bared her teeth and growled, but he didn’t hesitate to pick her up. Gently, he passed her to Lindsey.
“This one can’t stand another second.” His gaze was so filled with pain she almost couldn’t bear it. “She’s had too much of the dark. Too much loneliness. Her life—her life is worse than mine ever was, because she doesn’t understand. She can’t make excuses for Brockman. She can’t hope for a better future.”
Lindsey cradled the dog against her chest, facing Shane, and it was as if they were the only two people in the room.
“All she can do is endure,” he said. “I never thought of that before.”
Lindsey nodded. Shane was right. For dogs, there was no future, no hope—only the now. And if the present was unbearable, they simply endured it.
He understood. He really understood.
Grace had been right. Scars weren’t always a bad thing. They allowed you to understand the pain of others.
Cradling the dog in one hand, she set the other on Shane’s shoulder. He was close, so close. Close enough to kiss.
“I gotta go see a man about a horse,” Ozzie said, turning to the lock picker. “How ’bout you?”
The man put a hand over his pocket, which bore the outline of Ozzie’s Swiss Army knife. “I can’t afford no horse,” the man scoffed. “You can’t either. What you talkin’ about?”
“I gotta go, I said.” Ozzie gestured toward Lindsey and Shane. “Right now. You too.”
“Oh, I get it.” The little man winked. “You gotta go. Me too.”
“All of us gotta go,” said Ozzie.
“That’s gonna be a problem,” said a man in a Mötley Crüe T-shirt. “There’s only one terlet here, and Brockman’s gone and locked himself inside.”
“Then, we’ll go break into the terlet.” Ozzie grinned. “That ought to be as good as a Bruce Willis movie.”
“Aw, you all go on, then.” The lock picker sat down at the top of the stairs as if he was about to play audience to Shane and Lindsey’s production of Romeo and Juliet. “I like love stories better.”
Shane grinned down at Lindsey. “Romantic comedies,” he murmured.
Ozzie reached down and jerked their one-man audience to his feet. “Now, doofus! They don’t want you watchin’!”
Slowly, the men filed out, the lock picker grumbling to himself. Lindsey, still staring into Shane’s eyes, was startled when he broke his gaze to call after them.
“Hold up,” he said. “Wait.”
He climbed halfway up the stairs. Was he leaving too? Just like that?
The men turned.
“I want to thank you all for your help,” Shane said. “You’ve done a good thing today, and I owe you.”
The men waved away his thanks, mumbling embarrassed acknowledgments.
“I wondered if you’d help us some more.” He glanced at Lindsey, then back at the men. “All these animals need to be moved over to the Lazy Q. There are kennels in the barn. If there’s not enough room there, go ahead and put ’em anywhere you can find room.”
Lindsey felt her heart swell to twice its normal size as she rose to stand beside him, her shoulder touching his as Templeton and the Maltese cautiously touched noses.
“They’ll need to be fed,” she said. “Anybody know how to get hold of the owner of the feed store? He volunteered to provide kibble for our first two months of operation.”
The lock picker grinned from ear to ear. “I know RaeLynn real well. I’ll go get her.”
“She’ll be in bed,” somebody hollered from the back of the crowd. “And knowin’ RaeLynn, she might not be alone.”
“That’ll just make it more fun,” said the volunteer. “She’s mighty cute when she’s mad.”
Shane smiled at the thought of how surprised RaeLynn would be to have company, then faced the rest of the men.
“There’s going to be a lot of work to be done around the Lazy Q in the next couple of months,” he said. “Any of you that came here tonight has the qualifications I’m looking for. I need men who are loyal, hardworking, and honest, who right a wrong when they see one.” He cleared his throat. “And I need men I can trust to help Lindsey, and who can set a good example for my son. From what I’ve seen today, that’s all of you. Anyone who needs work, come see me on Monday.”
Ozzie turned, flashing his broken teeth in a smile that was oddly angelic. “Well, thanks.” He flushed almost as red as Lindsey’s best blush. “
Boss.”
Shane grinned back, then sobered and looked down at Lindsey. “I hope that’s okay. I’m still foreman, I figure, for now, but if you have a problem with that…”
Lindsey laid a hand on his chest to feel his gentle heart beating against her palm and smiled up into his dark eyes. Those eyes, so forbidding when she’d first met him, fixed on hers with a softness that found an answer in her own.
“You’re foreman forever, as long as you want to be,” she said. “Boss.”
Chapter 58
Shane stepped aside, pulling Lindsey out of the way as the men swarmed the basement, filling their tattooed arms with dogs and puppies.
“Excuse me,” Ozzie hollered, clearly on his best behavior. “I need volunteers to get Mr. Brockman out of the shitter.” He flushed. “Sorry, Doc Ward.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “When Mr. Brockman’s in there, that’s a perfectly accurate term. What do you plan to do with him?”
“I figure we’ll take him downtown.”
Ozzie shoved his hands in his pockets while one of the men did a surprisingly accurate imitation of the chung-chung of jail doors slamming that marked every episode of Law & Order. Everyone laughed but Ozzie, who looked utterly serious.
Looking past Shane, he met Lindsey’s eyes. “You don’t want Animal Control or the police in here just yet. They might take the cowboy’s little dog away from him.”
Shane glanced up, expecting to see mockery in Ozzie’s eyes, but the man was dead serious.
Maybe Ozzie, too, understood the dark and the loneliness.
Why had he never thought about where these men might have come from? Maybe they hadn’t been as lucky as him. Who might they be if they’d had a Bill Decker to haul them out into the light? Someday, he’d have to join them at the Red Dawg and find out.
“I hope Ozzie turns up on Monday,” he said as he and Lindsey watched the big man climb the stairs. “We definitely ought to hire him.”
“We?” Lindsey asked.
A sudden crash resounded from upstairs, then a louder one that shook the house. Next came the thundering of heavy shoes on wood floorboards, and then Brockman’s voice, hollering about his rights and his Smith & Wesson.
Shane pulled Lindsey close, bracing for gunshots, but there was only a thud, and then the scraping sound of a body being dragged across the kitchen floor. The front door slammed, and gravel peppered the window at the front of the house.
“Guess that takes care of his rights and his Smith & Wesson,” Shane said. He was almost smiling—which was amazing, considering what he’d just been through. And Lindsey was smiling back, which was even more amazing. Wasn’t she mad at him? After all, this was all his fault. If he’d just gone along with her whole puppy rescue idea, she wouldn’t have been in the basement alone. She wouldn’t have been hit over the head.
When he thought about what might have happened…
No, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t think about it.
He glanced over at Cody, who was slumped in a corner with three puppies in his lap, all of them lost in the sleep of the innocent. Taking Lindsey’s hand, Shane eased down onto the steps and drew her down beside him. He clasped his other hand over hers and thought through what he was about to say. He’d never said the words to anyone, but it was time. And it was Lindsey. And it was right.
“Look, I know there’s a lot to do here, but I need to talk to you,” he said. “I’ll make it quick.”
Seeming to sense the gravity of his mood, Lindsey looked into his eyes and nodded.
She continued to look into his eyes as he told her, in a low, sometimes unsteady tone, about the closet, the dark, and the loneliness. He told her how he’d come to believe that letting people see your feelings was like handing them a knife so they could stab you with it when you least expected.
He told her about the hopelessness and then the hope. About the foster families he’d tried so hard to please, and the ones who hadn’t understood why he could do everything but love them. He told her how they’d thrown him back into the foster system like an unworthy chub pulled out of a trout stream. Then he told her about Phoenix House, not as it was now but as it was in the dark times, before Sierra brought the light.
He told her about the basement, how much like the closet it was, and then he told her about Bill Decker and his wife, Irene—how they’d saved him, along with Brady and Ridge, when he was almost past saving.
When he finished, she had tears streaming down her cheeks. Wiping them gently with the back of one finger, he stroked her hair and gazed earnestly into her eyes.
“I know what it’s like, Lindsey. But until today, until I saw Templeton here, I didn’t realize—they feel it just like we do. Just like I did. Only worse.” He looked down at the little dog nestled in the crook of his arm. “He didn’t know it might end someday. He thought that was life. How it was, how it always would be.”
Lindsey put her arms around Shane and he held her as close as he could with Templeton between them.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry you had to live like that, and sorry there are people who can treat a child that way.”
“Or a dog.”
“Or a dog.”
“I’m sorry too.” He stood, shoving his hands in his pockets, and paced. “Sorry I didn’t understand that you know, somehow, without ever having been there yourself. You feel what they feel—the dogs, Cody, even me. I know that’s not easy. I’m not sure anybody ever understood me before. Heck, I don’t understand myself most of the time.” He laughed, ill at ease, and she laughed with him, but it was awkward.
This whole confession was going off the rails somehow. He was just no good at this. Maybe it was too late to show how he felt. Too late to change.
He looked down at the dog, avoiding Lindsey’s eyes. He’d never spilled his heart like this before. Inside, the old Shane Lockhart was screaming at him, Stop! Stop! You’re handing her the knife!
But he kept on going, forcing himself to meet her eyes.
“Your heart’s big enough to hold the whole world’s pain, but you shouldn’t have to hold it alone.”
“Stop.” She put one finger to his lips, just one, as if to shush him. “Don’t say another word.” She gave him a sad, sorrowful look, and he knew she was about to shatter his dreams.
But at least he’d tried. He’d never have to wonder if it could have been different between them.
“I have to ask you something,” she said.
He nodded, wondering what was coming. He could feel her holding back, mistrusting him. He hoped she was about to tell him why. Because once he knew what was wrong, he’d fix it, somehow. No matter what it was, he’d find a way.
“I heard Ed talking about a job he’d promised you.” She stepped away to pick up a wandering spaniel puppy. Stroking the puppy, she kept her eyes averted from him, but he suspected that if she looked up, he’d see tears forming. “I promised myself I’d never be with a man who lied to me, and you told me you didn’t really know Brockman. When I said I didn’t want to sell the land to him, you acted like you didn’t care one way or the other.” Her voice grew tight, as if the words were strangling her. “But you had a deal going. He’d offered you a job.”
Shane sincerely hoped, at that moment, that Ed Brockman was lying in a windowless cell. And he hoped Ozzie and his neighbors had worked him over before he got there.
“There was no job,” he said. “And no deal. He offered. I refused.”
She simply looked at him, her eyes examining every detail of his face as if she could read the truth in the set of his mouth, the sheen of his eyes.
He hoped she could. He was telling the truth, but how could he convince her?
She frowned, and he could see doubt in the shadows that haunted her eyes.
He knew where those shadows came from. She’d been betrayed by her husband—by the man who should have loved her and cherished her. How could he convince her he was different?
He couldn’t. That was
the sad truth. Either she believed him, or she didn’t. And just then, at the moment that mattered most, it looked as if she didn’t.
A stirring from the corner made him remember where he was. He needed to get back to work. Gather up the puppies, find places for them. Feed them, water them. There’d be so much to do, and whether Lindsey could love him or not, he loved her—and he wouldn’t let her down. He’d work harder than ever at the ranch, creating a haven for the homeless.
Maybe, in time, she’d learn to love him. Maybe not. But there was one person he could depend on, and in all the excitement, he’d almost forgotten Cody was there.
There and crying. Shane passed Templeton to Lindsey and hurried to his son’s side.
“What’s the matter, Son?”
He cussed himself inwardly. It had all been too much for the boy. The danger, the excitement. The tragic condition of the kennels. The evil in Brockman’s eyes.
And now, hearing his father screw up his future. Cody had wanted Lindsey for a mother from the first time he’d met her. And it wasn’t just because she looked like Tara. It was because Cody understood who she was. One pure heart could sense another.
But Shane didn’t have any sense at all, and he’d blown it.
Shoving Shane aside with a furious flailing of limbs, Cody ran to Lindsey and grabbed her around the waist. The boy was wild-eyed and red in the face.
“He didn’t!” He shook Lindsey hard, and she set a comforting hand on the boy’s head. “He didn’t do the deal!”
“What do you mean?” Extricating herself from the boy’s grasp, Lindsey knelt. “What happened, Cody?”
The boy sniffed. “Mr. Brockman wanted Dad to tell you the grass was bad or the cattle were sick. That was the deal he wanted, but Dad wouldn’t do it. He just let Mr. Brockman think he would, so I could have a puppy.” Tears streamed down the boy’s face. “My dad would never do anything bad. Never! And I was there. I was right there!” Cody pointed toward the ceiling, indicating the spot upstairs where he’d played with the puppies while Shane and Brockman talked.
How to Wrangle a Cowboy Page 36