SHANE was just taking his last bite of Surprise Casserole, or, as Rachel called it, Super Surprise Casserole, when he looked up to find Rachel watching him with worried eyes.
She’d been quiet throughout the meal. He was pretty sure he knew what the problem was.
“Rachel, I apologize for asking you to help me with the horse. I know you’re a city girl, that you’re not very comfortable with large animals and that Rambler’s much bigger than Lizzie. Believe me, if there had been anyone else around I wouldn’t—”
She had placed her hand on his wrist, and now those big brown eyes were looking at him as if she was going to tell him something very bad.
He’d seen that look in someone’s eyes twice before in his life. “Something’s wrong.”
“It’s Ruby.”
His heart dropped like a rock in water. “She’s sick? She’s hurt? No, you wouldn’t have waited to tell me that—”
“Shane, no. It’s nothing like that. It’s just…she’s depressed and hurt that you would come here and then leave without seeing her. And she’s not alone. I know that whatever happened here, whatever made you hate this place so much is none of my business, but…I just can’t leave this alone.”
“Did she ask you to talk to me?”
“She didn’t have to. She told me that she had no children and you and Eric had been like her children. And…it’s not just that. I know part of why you hate this place has to be tied up with your brother and that room. I just… You’ve done so much for me. You’ve helped me so much and I… Shane, I’ll be gone in four days. You’ll be gone. And I know I’m just your housekeeper, I don’t have a right to your personal business, but—”
He rose from the table, knocking his chair over in the process. Anger washed over him. At himself. At how Rachel was trying so hard to help him, to help Ruby and the others, and how he was mucking it all up. Again. As he had done before.
“You know you’re not just a housekeeper. Damn it, Rachel. You just helped me bandage an animal that weighs ten times what you do. You’ve taken on tasks I know you had no interest in. You’ve befriended my neighbors.”
“I just don’t want to overstep—”
“You’re not. It’s not your fault you’ve been driven to this. Come on. It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Those big brown eyes looked uncertain.
“Time for several things. You’re leaving in just a few days. So am I. But when you’re gone I want you to take some memories. Some real ranch memories. And I want you to leave here knowing exactly what kind of man I am. Ruby plays me like some bad boy who’s good at heart, but I’m not that guy.”
“Who are you, then?”
“I’m a guy who made some serious mistakes and I can’t ever forget them or forgive myself.”
“Are we talking about Eric?” She looked toward the room.
Shane’s heart hurt. His throat hurt. He knew the little-boy items that were in that room, pieces of his brother’s past, baby pictures, so many things frozen in time. He just…couldn’t do this here.
“Rachel, I need to be outside tonight, if you don’t mind. Will you come with me? Will you…mind?”
To his consternation, she didn’t hesitate. “I’ll come.”
He frowned. “You should hesitate. Not follow blindly. I need to know that you’ll be safe when I’m gone, not just walking into danger without thinking.”
“I was thinking. I was thinking that I trust you.”
He scowled. “See, that’s a mistake right there. You call Ruby and you tell her that I’m taking you out to Settler’s Creek, to the camp zone. And that I’ll have you back bright and early tomorrow morning. That’s called insurance, Rachel. You always let someone know where you’re going. When you’ll return. Will you do that?”
“Only because Ruby will worry if I don’t.”
He wanted to swear, but he knew Rachel needed her independence. It was one of the things he loved about her.
That acknowledgment made him flinch. It wasn’t her fault that he had done what he’d said he’d never do: fall in love. She would never know. He wasn’t mixing another person up in his life, especially not Rachel, who was finally, finally, for once in her life, catching a break and on the road to realizing her dreams.
“Will you mind if we ride? I’ll ask Tom to check in on Rambler, but Cobalt needs exercise and Lizzie is always available for you.”
“I’ll get ready,” she said, and soon they were on their way across the fields to the spot she’d once told him would be perfect for a cowboy fantasy.
But fantasies weren’t on the menu tonight. Truth was. Rachel deserved truth. All of it. She’d been bleeding for his sin, trying to make things right with his neighbors, and he wasn’t going to make her do that anymore.
When they got to the camp area he lifted her down from Lizzie and while he savored the chance to hold her in his arms, he didn’t allow himself the kinds of thoughts he always had with Rachel. Instead, he spread a blanket and made a place for her to sit. Then he began to gather firewood.
“I can help,” she said, starting to rise.
“No. Not tonight. Tonight you’re my cowgirl guest. You stare at the mountains and watch as the stars begin to come out.” He knelt by the cleared space and began to stack the wood.
“Shane?”
He looked up from his task. The last drops of sunlight were squeezing from the sky, and the fire-pink reflected back in Rachel’s eyes. She looked more beautiful than ever, this tough-sweet woman. But she wasn’t staring at the glorious sunset. She was looking at him. Was she trembling? Was he making her nervous?
“I’ll keep the tale short,” he said. “And then for the rest of the night you can just enjoy the beauty of the sky. That is, unless you want to go home after you’ve heard my story.”
“In the dark?”
“I’ve got provisions and a lantern. I’d keep you safe.”
“I know you would.”
He breathed in deeply, wondering what he had done to deserve the appearance of Rachel in his life. But he already knew the answer to that. He didn’t deserve her. He’d simply been lucky that day; he’d been blessed.
Now that was over. He’d had his turn. He reached for the last piece of wood, set fire to the kindling and waited for the flames to build. Then he took a place on the blanket, facing her. Not near enough to touch.
And he ripped off the bandage he had placed over his heart long ago. He began to speak.
Rachel realized right away that Shane had placed his back to the fire so that his face was in the shadows and hers was in full light. He’d made it clear that this was not a conversation that he relished. He was doing this because she’d asked. No, she’d needled, practically demanded. And as he began speaking, even though she couldn’t see his expression, she could hear the change in his voice.
He was in pain. Real pain.
“My birth father was friends with my stepfather, and when my mother got pregnant and my father disappeared, Frank stepped in. He’d loved my mother from the first and eventually, when I was three, she married him even though she didn’t love him. She did it for me, so that I would have security.”
“Because she loved you.”
“Yes. I don’t think she would have agreed to the marriage otherwise. I was four when Eric was born, and eight when my mother died from an infected wound. One day she was there, the next day she was dying. By then, it was obvious that Frank didn’t like me at all. I was a symbol of the man my mother really loved. And I was also the healthy brother. Eric was frail when he was young and he followed me around everywhere. Everywhere.”
Shane’s voice cracked a bit. He turned away slightly and waited until he had himself under control. “As she lay dying, feverish and weak and scared, my mother begged me to promise that I would watch over Eric. I think she had grown to loathe Frank, and she was afraid that a man who revered ranching and physical strength as much as he did would grow to hate his fragile son even more than he hated me. And by then she knew that I was the strong one. I was terrified and sobbing but I gave her my promise.”
Rachel couldn’t hold back her murmur of distress. “You were just a child.”
He shook his head. “I was never a child. I had an attitude and a serious disregard for authority figures and rules. I learned to swear and spit, kick and bite, and ignore authority. But I took my responsibility to Eric seriously. And my little brother was my polar opposite. He was the friendliest, most lovable guy, like a big puppy or a very generous friend. He’d give you everything he owned if you’d let him, he’d lend a hand wherever it was needed and he surprised everyone by eventually shedding his fragility. He became an athlete, an outdoorsman, a true rancher, not an angry, spiteful math nerd who felt stuck on the ranch like I did.”
“In other words he became the son Frank wanted.”
“Yes.”
“And you were the troublemaker, the one who wouldn’t fit the mold.”
“I was arrogant and angry at everyone, including my mother for dying, and especially at Frank for insisting he would turn me into a rancher or die trying. He hated the fact that I liked math and science more than raising cattle. I did anything I could to keep from doing the right thing…except where Eric was concerned.”
Rachel could understand Shane regretting his wild childhood, but…the other…the way he still flagellated himself and shut himself off long after his tormentor was gone…
“Did your stepfather beat you?” She heard the horror in her voice.
“No. That wasn’t Frank’s way. That might have brought strangers to our door, and Frank didn’t like strangers. No, Frank was a man of words, slurs, derision. But in public, in the rare times we appeared together, he never said a word. No one ever knew what went on here, and if they did…it wasn’t illegal. A man can tell his sons whatever he wants to tell them.
“The only thing was…as I got older my arguments with Frank became more heated, and more frightening to Eric, who hated conflict of any kind. The day I brought him to his knees, begging me to please just go to my room and let Frank bellow, I decided that it was time to go. I tried to tell myself that it was for Eric’s sake, but the truth was that I felt trapped. By my life, by Frank and…”
He stopped, looked up, clenching his fists.
“You felt trapped by your promise to take care of your brother?”
“Yes. I told myself he was old enough, but he was only sixteen, and I know my leaving hurt him. Tore him up.”
Shane stopped again, trying to regain his composure. Rachel waited, silent.
“After that,” he continued, “I only saw Eric away from here, I’d ask him to come to my hotel. Once or twice I flew him out to where I was. But I had stopped watching over him. And then Frank died, and Eric truly was alone, but I still didn’t come home.”
“How old was Eric then?”
“Twenty-two.”
“A man.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d known Eric. He was a late bloomer, young for his age.”
“But a talented rancher and outdoorsman.”
Shane ignored that comment. “He met a girl, fell in love, got engaged. They were having a party. I was supposed to come, but I got snowbound and missed it. I sent flowers, and when the snow melted I just went back to work. The next day Eric went out to the field with the tractor to feed the cattle alone. He wouldn’t have gone alone if he hadn’t been upset with me. I’m sure of that. Eric was very safety conscious. And while he was pitching the hay to the cattle in a snow-covered field something went wrong. The tractor tipped and he was pinned beneath it. Crushed.”
“You blame yourself?”
“Of course I’m to blame. I left him alone at sixteen, living with an uncommunicative and sullen father. I ignored his life as if only mine mattered. I might as well have been driving that tractor that took him to his death, because I had always been the reckless one, not him. He learned that maneuver, that wildness, from me. Because I cared too much about myself to care about anyone else.”
“Is that why you avoid the people of Moraine? Because they witnessed all of what you consider your sins?”
“Not because they witnessed them. Because they were my victims. I wronged them over and over, cared nothing for their feelings and then I took their brightest sun, the best that Moraine had to offer. Eric was the boy who took in stray animals, he served as a makeshift vet when the real vet was unavailable, he shoveled people out of the snow. He was the go-to guy when anyone needed a strong shoulder, the peacemaker. And I hurt him so much that he…he died. Rachel, he died.”
Rachel couldn’t help herself then. She crawled across the blanket and wrapped her arms around Shane. She just held him while he wrestled with his demons. Silently struggling.
Eventually, when he seemed calmer, she looked up and kissed him on the chin. “The people of Moraine don’t blame you, Shane, or if they ever did, they’ve forgiven you.”
He looked down into her face. “I know. I’ve known that all along.”
Oh, this was bad. This was difficult. “That’s why you won’t let them in? Because they’ve forgiven you but you haven’t forgiven yourself? You don’t want them to forgive you.”
“I don’t deserve their forgiveness.”
Rachel didn’t know what to say. She had spent a lot of time in her life learning how to deal with adversity and unhappy situations, loneliness, friends who could only be friends for the short term, but this was beyond her experience. And yet she couldn’t let it go. This was Shane. This was…the man she cared for far too much, and it was impossible to leave things as they were.
“I know you loved your brother, Shane, but Eric was an adult. He made a choice.”
Shane didn’t answer.
“If he loved you—and I’m sure he did—he wouldn’t want you to be this way.”
Still no answer.
“Shane?”
“Rachel, do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Don’t—please don’t try to save me. Just lie here with me beneath the stars. No touching. Nothing like that. Just be here with me.”
“Anything,” she said, her heart breaking.
He pulled her into his arms and lay down with her. “This isn’t the romantic evening under the stars you once mentioned.”
No, it wasn’t, but she was right where she wanted to be. Not that she could tell him that. Ever. “It’s…peaceful,” she whispered, although it wasn’t really peaceful. It was quiet. It was sad.
“Shh. Sleep,” he said.
And what could she do but give him what he asked. It was all she could do. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, but she tried, and eventually she slept. Because Shane’s arms were around her.
Some time after that the stars disappeared behind a threatening cloud and Shane gathered up their things and gave Rachel a helmet with a light on it. He led them home.
“Don’t go now,” he said. “The roads are dark and deserted. You can have my room. I’ll sleep in the spare.”
She wanted him to hold her again, but he didn’t. He simply walked away.
So she lay there in the dark, thinking about how she’d only made things worse for him by pushing. She’d forced him to face things he had put in a box. And now the scab had been removed from the wound and he was distant and unhappy.
Shane woke and got dressed the next morning feeling as if some of the heaviness he’d been carrying in his chest had been lifted and yet…it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Probably because he’d done what he hadn’t wanted to do. In his urgency to give Rachel the truth he’d felt she deserved, he’d saddled her with more worry.
That wasn’t right. There were a whole lot of things that weren’t right. And it was no longer just about his pain now. He’d seen her face when he’d lost it last night. He’d dragged Rachel in. Down.
“Fix it, Merritt,” he ordered. Yeah, and the first thing he was going to do was what should have already been done. The open house was in four days. Rachel had offered to let him off the hook and find a place to store the contents of Eric’s room. But that wasn’t fair or right.
Tension rose within him, hard and hot, as he thought of opening that door. But he beat it back.
Silently, he walked toward the room and turned the knob.