“DO YOU ALWAYS have to talk to Shane that way?”
Andie Lee turned on Gordon the minute he pulled his truck away from the police station. She shouldn’t. Shane was at Gordon’s mercy and Gordon tolerated no questioning, ever.
But she couldn’t pull together enough caution to stop herself. She wanted to punish him for telling Shane—and in front of half the world, too—that he had no father. She wanted to be rid of Gordon Campbell and never have to be indebted to him for another thing as long as she lived.
He took his time getting onto the road, then threw her the briefest of glances, one that slashed her with scorn.
“You mean do I always have to tell him the bare-assed truth?”
“No, I mean do you always have to deliberately humiliate him?”
“There’s the reason your kid’s in trouble today,” he said. “You.”
She turned cold all over, when she’d just been hot.
Pray God it wasn’t true. But of course, she had been afraid that it was, ever since the trouble started with Shane.
Surely, surely, since she’d tried so hard, she wasn’t as bad a parent as Gordon and Toni, her mother, had been.
“A boy needs somebody to grab him by the collar, yell at him, shake him and scare the shit out of him once in a while,” Gordon raved on, “that’s what makes a man out of him.”
“Destroying his pride makes a man out of him?”
“Stay out of this, Andie Lee. You came to me for help, so I’m helping you.”
He clamped his mouth shut in that tight, straight line she remembered so well. For Gordon, the subject was closed.
Well, he’d have to get used to the fact she was no longer a little girl who wanted his approval.
“Oh, right. You’ve got him to the point of kidnapping girls and trying to steal cars, and in only three weeks. I could never have accomplished that all by myself.”
He ignored her.
“And now you’ve left him in jail for the whole night.”
“More than one whole night,” he said. “Know that.”
Fear struck, all through her. She tried for a reasonable tone of voice.
“That’ll only make things worse, Gordon. Shane—”
He interrupted in his usual vicious way. “I got him in a cell by himself. You know that. I saw you hovering around with your ears flapping in the wind while I arranged it.”
She wished with all her being that she hadn’t asked him for help. If only she’d made the decision to sell her practice before she ever dialed his number! Then she could’ve had money to buy help for Shane. But the practice was her livelihood and the only asset she hadn’t already poured into this battle against addiction.
Her reasoning had been that her practice was as important to Shane’s future as it was to hers. So she had destroyed her considerable pride and broken her fifteen-year-old vow never to be at Gordon Campbell’s mercy again. For four days and nights, she had thought about it and agonized over it but in the end she had decided that any amount of pain would be worth the suffering if it could save Shane’s life and sanity.
She would do anything to save Shane. How could she even think about sacrificing this chance of help for him just to cling to her pride and the word of honor she had given to herself?
Gordon had the resources to help the one she loved. She would swallow her pride and call him.
And so she did.
It was still hard to believe that she had broken her vow. That vow, coming out of fury and fear and the unspeakable shocked hurt of a child betrayed by its mother—a feeling she had sworn at his birth Shane would never know—had held her upright while she lived in poverty as a teenaged, single mother. It had driven her to travel with Chase Lomax on the rodeo circuit, painting designs on leather chaps and shirts for a living while he tried to win the big prizes riding roughstock. Later, she waited tables to take care of her baby and pay her way through college and veterinary school.
That vow had pushed her to borrow a lot of money to set up her practice, even after Gordon had offered, at her mother’s funeral, to help her get started. That had been some kind of temporary sentimental aberration—not because he felt guilty or generous toward Andie Lee but because he’d felt suddenly lonely without Toni.
Theirs had been some kind of devil’s pact. They had fought like tigers all the years they’d been married but they never separated. They both thrived on the conflict, even though they both knew that it would come out, always, with Gordon on top.
Only one thing had ever brought them to agree. That was the idea that Andie Lee should date Trey Gebhardt, scion of another prominent family, a political family that could do Gordon some good at the national level. Trey had raped her on their third date and Shane had been the result.
Her mind drew back from the memory fast as a damp finger from a sizzling burner. Her life hadn’t turned out to be all that bad—not until Shane started going downhill. Before that, he had been her greatest joy.
One good thing was that she’d had Chase to help her—although not with money, because back then he’d had none, either—and she still loved him for being the only daddy Shane had ever known. And she loved him for loving her. He just hadn’t loved her enough to quit the rodeo life and make a real family, and she hadn’t loved him enough to keep going down the road with him.
Now she was a professional, accustomed to making life-and-death decisions and giving orders that were obeyed. She’d made another bad choice by asking for Gordon’s help, but she was a grown-up now and she wouldn’t let him push her around.
“I’m taking him away,” she said. “As soon as they let Shane go, I’m taking him someplace else.”
He pressed his foot harder on the accelerator.
“He’s staying here,” he said. “Either on the Splendid Sky or in jail.”
“This is all about your ego,” she said, “and we don’t have time for that. I’ve got to save him before it’s too late and that point’s coming closer by the minute.”
“Andie Lee,” he said, letting a full measure of disgust come into his voice, “I’ll take care of your boy. Go back to Texas and see to your practice before you end up losing it.”
He looked at her again and this time she couldn’t read one single trace of emotion in his blue eyes.
“You’ve put a lot of money and energy into veterinary school,” he said “You’d be losing that, too.”
“My life’s over anyway if Shane goes down the tubes,” she said. “And there’s no way I can leave him here since your idea of taking care of him is to tell him he doesn’t have a daddy to do jack for him.”
“That’s the truth. He doesn’t.”
“And whose fault is that?” she asked, surprised at the depth of bitterness she heard in her voice.
Andie Lee, you’ll fool around and make him really mad and he’ll leave Shane in jail to spite you. He has all the power around here, and you know it. Take care.
But the words were already said and on the table and she would make him acknowledge them. She should have said them to him long ago.
“Yours,” he said. “It’s your fault he has no daddy. I gave you choices. I would’ve arranged for you to get rid of the baby or to marry Trey Gebhardt, either one.”
“Surely you can understand why neither was an acceptable choice,” she said dryly.
“Don’t cry to me,” he said. “All you had to do that night was stay out of the back seat and tell Trey no.”
That accusation stirred the old shame and frustration hidden deep inside her. She pushed it away. No time for that when Shane was hitting rock bottom.
But she couldn’t let it go.
“All I had to do was tell you and my mother no,” she said, “but I didn’t have the guts. I was a silly, seventeen-year-old girl who couldn’t help wanting to please her mother and the stepfather she’d always hoped would be her daddy.”
“Did we tell you to let the boy into your pants?”
She should never have brought this up. It was stirring the rage deep inside her. No way could she tamp it down and think about Shane at the same time.
“No,” she said. “You did not. I made my own choices and—now that I think about it, true to what you always preach—I’ve done a very responsible job of living with the consequences of those choices. The problem right now is that I made another bad choice in asking you for help.”
“You just said you always wanted me to be your daddy.”
“I did. A long time ago. When I was a silly kid whose real daddy had never been around much. A silly, lonesome kid who was eager to please.”
But all that was old news.
Shane was locked up in jail. Shane was skinny and weak and sweating for need of a fix. Shane was in misery and it was all her fault.
But his further misery would be Gordon’s fault. Gordon had had the power to bring him home in this truck with them right now.
“You didn’t have to leave him there overnight.”
Gordon wouldn’t look at her. He was driving like a bat out of hell.
“I got him a private cell.” He bit the words off like bullets.
“We’re not talking about the Marriott!” she cried. “He needs to be out of there.”
“He needs to stop and think about what he’s doing,” Gordon said. “Hard experiences teach hard lessons.”
“He’s defenseless! His arms aren’t as big around as your finger.”
“He’ll survive.”
Andie Lee stared out her window at the landscape hurtling past.
Shane hated her. Shane hated himself, too. She had to save him.
“I’ll call my cousin Boone,” she said. “He’s an attorney and he’ll get Shane out of there.”
“An army of attorneys can’t get him out of there, Andie Lee.”
Now Gordon’s voice was flat with the knowledge of a sure thing. He was king and he knew it.
“He will learn,” he said crisply, “or he will die. The only way human beings ever learn a damn thing is by taking the consequences of the choices they make.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Yeah. That’s your mantra, all right.”
“Right it is.”
Her lips parted and she started to say something else, then she thought better of it. There must be a way to work him if she’d stop and think.
She’d been going about this all wrong. She’d known that from the beginning because she’d known Gordon Campbell almost all her life. Since she was ten years old and her mother brought her to live in his house. That had been just like Toni: she’d met Gordon at the big cutting horse sale in Fort Worth in December and by April she was married to him and moving to Montana, turning Andie Lee’s life upside down.
Twenty-three years Andie Lee had known this man. And in all that time, she’d never seen anybody who’d directly faced him down and managed to win.
“Gordon,” she said, “you’ve been most generous to have Shane accepted into your center free of charge. But it isn’t helping him. I have to look for another treatment center that might fit him better.”
“Free of charge?” he said.
“No, I’m sure I couldn’t find that anywhere else. I’ll have to sell my practice.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s your livelihood.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t be asking you to support us. I can always work for somebody else. I can even go temporary and fill in for veterinarians on vacation. There are plenty of them in North Texas. “
“On a salary you’d never get his bills paid,” he said. “This drug-treatment business costs a freaking fortune.”
“Tell me about it,” she said wryly. “It just about broke me before I ever called you.”
“And it’s a damned good thing you did, no matter what you say.”
He actually sounded almost hurt that she’d said that.
“Get over it, Gordon,” she said. “You’re not God and you can’t have power over everything. Face the fact that you hired a snake of a loser to run your rehab center and it’s doing more harm than good. I made a mistake bringing Shane here.”
“I fired the goddamned loser snake of an SOB, didn’t I?” he growled.
He drove even faster. Why not? He wasn’t God, but around here, he was king. Speed limits didn’t apply.
“It won’t take two weeks to get the whole program turned around,” he said. “I’m on it.”
“I’m out of here,” she said. “If you won’t do it tonight, go back tomorrow and get Shane out on bail. We’ll leave Montana and be out of your hair.”
“Forget it,” he said, in that tone of unbreakable ice she’d also known since the age of ten. “The kid stays where he is until I come back and get him. When I do, I’ll sober him up.”
“As if you know how to do that.”
“I can find somebody who does,” he said. “And I’m going to add some ideas of mine to their program.”
“Sounds like a winner.”
“Come on, Andie Lee, cut the sarcasm. Don’t I always do what I say I will?”
“A combination of a world-class employment agency, plenty of money, and some good, hard, rancher’s common sense will do the trick, huh?”
“Guaranteed. Every time.”
“So which one of those did you leave out last time? When you hired Jason?”
“Will you shut up about Jason? What I left out was work for those kids.”
He clamped his jaw shut tight as a vise.
“I cannot believe it’s come to this,” she said. “I can’t even think. I’m so scared and so mad at Shane I cannot even think.”
“Leave it to me. Quit your worrying.”
“As if I could.”
“You were right about one thing,” he said.
She jerked around to stare at him. That was a rare statement, coming from Gordon. He skewered her with his hard blue eyes.
“It is my ego,” he said. “You won’t find another rehab center on the face of the earth where the owner’s got his ass on the line for your kid to sober up.”
Andie Lee couldn’t say a word.
“He’ll be gone some day,” Gordon said. “Sober or stoned or dead, he’ll be gone. You’re gonna have to make yourself another life. You’ve worked too hard to throw your practice away.”
That was one thing Gordon respected. Hard work.
“It’s no skin off your back. I’d never ask you for help.”
“You never have,” he said, his eyes boring into her again. “Except for this once. You know I refuse to fail at anything I do. Cut me some slack and I’ll save your boy.”
He went back to staring through the windshield, one big brown hand resting easy on the steering wheel of the speeding truck as if he could rule the world with one hand tied behind him. Andie Lee couldn’t stop looking at his chiseled profile.
The man had no earthly clue of how monumental this problem was. He didn’t know the size of the dragon he was promising to slay. The most aggravating thing about Gordon Campbell was his arrogance.
“You might,” she said, “if Micah’s new wrangler stays around to catch him for you.”
He turned, slowly, and gave her a long, straight look that she couldn’t read.
Then he laughed. Gordon didn’t laugh often and when he did, it was always a shock to her.
“You sound like Toni,” he said.
Oh, great. On top of everything else, she was turning into her mother.
But maybe she always had been like Toni—selfish and driven. Maybe she should never have spent all those endless hours and untold amounts of energy on veterinary school instead of pouring them out on the growing Shane.
Gordon had a point, though. Gordon always reached his goals and Gordon always got his way. Shane’s recovery was a point of honor with him now. This wasn’t something Gordon could will into being, but he would put more effort than any stranger would into trying to get the right help for Shane. He would hire a proven professional to replace Jason and he would spare no expense.
It didn’t matter whether his motives were selfish or not. If anyone on earth could do it, Gordon could make things happen so that Shane would recover—if Shane would cooperate.
Gordon was a busy, busy man. He wouldn’t be around Shane all that much to talk down to him.
And she had been half-serious in her sarcastic remark. Micah’s new hired hand might be good for Shane—if their paths could ever cross again. She could arrange that, maybe, with Micah’s help.
What a thought! She didn’t know one thing about the big, blue-eyed Native American with the braid and the muscular shoulders. He could be an axe murderer for all she knew. Truly, she was desperate.
Micah’s instinct for trustworthiness in human beings was usually faultless. Even though he’d been hiring a horse wrangler, not a friend or counselor for Shane, when he brought Blue to the ranch, he wouldn’t want a bad man living in his house or working with his horses.
He had a power, Blue did. She’d felt it this morning, sitting beside him, even with her whole concentration on Shane.
THE ROAN WAS both disrespectful and scared all over again. Whoever said that a horse, like a person, is different every day and therein lies his charm, sure knew what he was talking about. However, at the moment, nothing about Roanie brought the word charm to mind. He was thoroughly pissed after his trip to the fairgrounds.
When Blue walked up to the fence, the horse gave him that “Go to hell” look of his. Then he turned his hindquarters to him and stood all sulled up, looking out across the valley.
He’d been hauled way more than he liked, so he’d kicked all the way back to the ranch and fought the leadrope coming out of the trailer. Blue had left him alone in the tree-shaded pasture to relax for a while. But Blue hadn’t been able to relax, either.
Even while he was riding some of the other horses, all he’d wanted was to get back to the roan. That was a bad sign. It was less dangerous to get attached to a horse than to people, that was for sure, but Blue needed to keep his emotions clear and his mind clear so he could truly be free and focused. An attachment to anything would get in his way.
Probably, though, it wasn’t attachment that drew him to the colt. It was the fact that he owned him now. And the fact that he was the most challenging horse he’d ever known.
He couldn’t let himself get attached to Shane, either. He’d only given in to Micah’s pleas about the boy because if, on some off chance he could help him, it’d be doing something positive in memory of Dannah. If. So what if the boy did offer Blue some slight respect as compared to none at all for anyone else? That wasn’t much to build on in a fight with an enemy as strong as addiction.
He wouldn’t let the boy get him any more tangled up with Micah, or with Andie Lee or Gordon, either. One thing always led to another.
The aggravating thoughts wouldn’t leave him alone. They were still buzzing in him right now, after they’d stirred him up so much that he skipped lunch and the break and kept working. They’d made him feel just as sour as the colt looked.
Blue waited a little while to clear his mind and his mood, then he opened the gate and went in. As he closed it again, Roanie kicked out, so Blue took his time. The colt knew him, yes, but he didn’t fully trust him and he might not for a long time. He had a suspicious attitude that was partly natural to him and partly manufactured by the boys over at Little Creek.
Rhythmically, slowly, Blue moved to approach and then retreat, approach and retreat so the prey animal instincts in the horse wouldn’t signal alarm. From a horse’s point of view, anything that comes at him in a straight line is behaving as a predator would.
Roanie was making it perfectly clear that he didn’t intend to be touched again. Blue started thinking of something to use as an extension of his arm. He found a thin tree limb about three feet long and, holding it down by his side, started working his way to Roanie again. When he finally got close, he stood back the full length of it so the horse wouldn’t feel crowded.
“I’ll just scratch your back a little,” he told him as he took hold of the leadrope with his free hand. “Remember how you like that? Remember how you like for me to rub you with the halter? With my rope?”
He began to scratch him with the limb. Slowly, gently, along his back, over his croup, down to the hock, then up again and along the base of his mane.
Blue watched the horse carefully and concentrated on the best spots again and again. Soon, Roanie admitted that Blue meant no harm. He let his head drop lower and allowed Blue to touch him everywhere he wanted.
Blue replaced the stick with his hand. He could feel through his palm and through every one of his fingers that the colt was really beginning to relax, so he rubbed him all over several times.
Then he concentrated on massaging his legs. He moved the touch on down below the knees and caressed the tendons where the legs were the most sensitive, too sensitive for the stick.
“All I want to do today is pick up your feet,” he told the horse. “That’s all. Then I’ll let you be.”
Gradually, finally, Blue closed everything else out of his mind and they both relaxed into the companionship they were beginning to build. He didn’t know how much time passed but, at last, the roan let him pick up all four of his feet.
Blue whistled as he patted the sleek, warm neck again and again, then he moved to the horse’s head, unfastened the halter he’d left on him all day, and slipped it off.
The roan rolled his eye at him and moved away at a brisk trot. Blue backed up against the fence, hooked one heel in it and leaned back to watch him as he lifted into a lope. He moved so smoothly through the shade and the sunlight that he reminded Blue of water flowing, turning his speckled hide to one liquid color. Red.
In Cherokee lore, red was the color of victory, of success.
The color blue meant failure, disappointment, or unsatisfied desire.
He’d had ten unsatisfied and lonely years to wonder if his mother knew that he would fail her and disappoint her when she named him Blue.
What made him think there was even a chance that he would help Shane after he’d failed Rose and Dannah so completely?
FOR THE SAKE OF positive thinking, Andie Lee went for a long, hard run late that afternoon, trying to clear her head of the negative thoughts that had lived there for so long. While she ran, she reviewed the whole day in her mind, hoping to banish those images forever once she got back to the house.
She hadn’t realized, through these last weeks, that she’d fallen into such a habit of despair until she and Gordon drove into the yard at the main house and he said, “I’ll take care of the Center. And of Shane. Forget him for a week and go find something that’ll make you smile.”
Surprised, she’d leaned back against her door and watched him as he parked and turned off the motor.
“What’s different, Gordon?”
He looked at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You never cared if I smiled before now. You never insisted on helping me with anything until now. What’s the deal?”
He shrugged. “Things change.”
As he threw open his door and got out, he said, “I’ve got a truckload of money sunk in that drug rehab center. Why wouldn’t I want it to produce results?”
She got out and they walked toward the house.
“The question is why did you build it? It’s not something you’d do.”
He shot her a look.
“How do you know? You don’t know squat about me.”
“I know some,” she said. “Or I should say, I did know some about who you used to be. Any kid who wants a parent’s love knows more about that parent than either of them realizes.”
He shook his head.
“You always did read too much,” he said. “You’ve let your imagination run wild.”
With that, he went straight to his office and closed the door.
She went up to her old room and looked at herself in the mirror. It hurt her to look at herself. She looked horrid. She looked exhausted and haggard and old and wrinkled and sad, sad, sad.
She forced a smile. It hurt her muscles. It looked fake. It looked so false that it still hurt her to look at herself.
How could she help Shane to believe in hope for recovery if she looked so hopeless?
She felt like crawling into bed, pulling the covers over her head, and never coming out to be seen again. The thought was scarily tempting.
She stared at her image.
“You’ve never given up,” she told it. “Don’t start now.”
Gordon was in control of Shane. Gordon was talking to her—a little—and listening to her. A little. She wanted some influence over what Gordon did to Shane.
The work, for example. He was finally going to take Micah’s advice and find a director who’d put the inmates to work. She wanted Shane to be with horses because they had great healing power.
Certainly more than hauling hay or digging ditches would have.
So she’d put on her shorts and running shoes and hit the road that ran across the valley to the river. Once there, she walked for a while and then sat for a while and made herself think, for once, about something besides Shane. It was an exercise in will that made her brain feel as stiff as her face had done when she forced a smile.
She looked into the water and tried to see her plans for the future, the ones she’d had two years ago when the nightmare began. Before her every thought had been fixed on Shane and his problems.
Right now, her dreams of buying a cabin in Wyoming where she would go to rest and read and think and learn to paint landscapes—in other words, to actually discover who she was and what she wanted for the rest of her life, since she’d never had a minute free to figure that out since she was seventeen—were hopeless.
Her profession was one she loved, but other than that, what did she want to do? Gordon was right. Someday Shane would be gone. What would be the most important thing to her then?
Her savings had vanished like snow in the sun, along with all the money she’d raised by selling the few luxuries in her life: her show horse and saddle and her sporty little car. Gordon was right about that, too. She couldn’t recover financially if she sold her practice.
She couldn’t let Shane’s troubles take everything else away from her because the stronger she was for herself, the greater the chances she could help him. She’d made the right decision. She’d hang on to her practice, stay here and deal with Gordon the best way she could.
He really was different toward her, and she thought about that. In the past, he would’ve exploded and then chewed her up and spit her out for questioning him and arguing with him on the way back from the jail.
He would’ve been furious at her asking him why he built the Center.
As far as she’d observed, he was still his old hair-trigger self with everybody else. Did he pity her so much that he was trying to be kind to her? Act like a father to her twenty years too late because she was such a lousy mother?
No. Negative thoughts. She was doing, and had done, the best she knew how. That was all anyone could do.
She got up and started slowly jogging back toward the house. No negativity. It was self-fulfilling.
Only positive thoughts. This was the turning point. Shane had hit rock bottom this morning and his only direction now was up.
She would hold that thought.
The houses, barns, pens, arenas, all passed by in a blur. For the first time in what seemed a lifetime, she was comfortable in her body and her mind. For these few minutes. Her blood was pumping warm in her veins and hope was growing in her heart.
When she got back to the house, Gordon’s truck was gone. Andie Lee pounded up the stairs, pretending she had more energy left than she had thought. In her childhood room, she stripped and stood in the shower for the longest time, willing the hot water to wash away the traces of tension left in her muscles and her mind.
Tonight, for the first time in a long time, she’d have a chance of getting some sleep.
She was standing at the window drying her hair when the big white truck came rolling into the glow of the dusk-activated yard light. Gordon got out and slammed the door behind him, but she never heard him come into the house.
When her hair was only damp, she pulled on some soft pants and a T-shirt, stuck her feet into some flip-flops and went down the stairs. All the rooms were still dark except for the lamps they always left on in the huge old living area. She walked out onto the porch. He was standing down on the north end of it, one foot propped on the railing, staring out into the night, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t turn around.
“I guess you know that stuff’ll kill you,” she said.
After a heartbeat he answered. “Somethin’ will.”
She walked halfway to him and sat down in the swing.
“Hmm,” she said, “I thought you considered yourself immortal, Gordon.”
He gave his little bark of a laugh, set his foot on the floor, and turned around.
He looked at her. In the faint lamp glow that came through the window she couldn’t see his eyes.
“That was before the doc said cancer.”
She gasped. “What? You have…”
“Turns out he was wrong,” he said. “Even the experts can’t win ’em all.”
He walked to one of the leather rocking chairs, turned it to face her, and sat. He rocked it slowly back and forth.
“Made me think, though,” he said. “What’ll happen to the Wagontracks when I’m gone?”
The question stunned her. Gordon had never talked to her about anything personal before. He never talked to anyone like this. Not even Micah, as far as she knew.
“I’m thinking that would depend on your choice of an heir,” she said.
He gave a bitter chuckle.
“Just think, Andie. I’m the sixth generation Campbell in Montana, counting the first one who came directly from Scotland. Six generations. We’ve kept this ranch together through droughts and blizzards, Indian wars and rock-bottom cattle markets. Kept it together and added to it, Andie Lee.”
“You’re a famous breeder who believes the bloodline is everything,” she said, “and there’s no seventh-generation Campbell to carry it on.”
He grunted and took another drag on the cigarette.
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“The bloodline is everything,” he said. “Besides, a woman could never manage this ranch in a million years of trying.”
Anger flashed through her amazement to flare in her voice.
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t want anything from you,” she said. “I wish I’d never asked you to help us this time, but here we are.”
“That’s why I’m helping you now,” he said. “You put yourself through college and took care of a baby and graduated veterinary school and wouldn’t take money when your mother offered it. I respect that kind of guts.”
“Then respect my need to see Shane in the morning.”
“No. A week with nobody fawning over him will work wonders.”
“A week! You said overnight! I never thought you’d leave him so long! That’s way too long…”
“It’ll help make a man out of him. Every boy needs a time as a kid when he’s scared shitless and has nobody to depend on but himself.”
“You justify everything you do,” she snapped. “You could justify torture or rustling or murder for your own purposes. You’ve always done that!”
He shrugged and deliberately crossed one leg over his knee to put out his cigarette on the sole of his boot.
He had said a week when they first got back. When he’d told her to forget Shane for a week and find something to make her smile. She just hadn’t really heard it then.
“So. You can’t resist being the great dictator. I ought to leave here.”
“I thought we settled that, Andie.”
“I never said so. You always assume that when you make a decree everybody else agrees.”
“Because I’m always right,” he said. “Now calm down and go on up to bed. Get some sleep. The week’ll be gone before you know it.”
She wanted nothing more than to leave him, but she sat stubbornly in her place and pushed the swing into motion with her toe.
“I’ll go when I’m ready.”
She pushed the swing again.
“What do you know about that wrangler Micah hired?”
He jerked his chin up to look at her and she saw his eyes glint in the dark.
“You got a thing for Indians?”
She ignored that. She also ignored the little voice in the back of her head whispering that she should drop this whole idea because she knew nothing about Blue.
“Micah says Blue’s a real horseman,” she said, “but that wouldn’t keep him from also being an axe murderer.”
“Look, Andie, if you’re desperate there’re a few single ranchers around and a judge and a doctor I could introduce to you.”
“Let’s not repeat past mistakes,” she said tartly. “All I’m looking for is a good male influence and some hard work for Shane, like you and Micah are always talking about. Horses can help heal him.”
Gordon was watching her with his sharp eyes. She could feel them on her, boring into her, as if he didn’t believe her.
“Ask Micah,” he said.
ANDIE LEE PULLED UP to park at Micah’s place in her own truck. She’d told herself that she was driving it instead of a ranch vehicle because she’d already wrecked one truck of Gordon’s, that she didn’t want to owe him any more than she had to. Of course that made absolutely no sense, considering that, as he had said so eloquently, Shane’s treatment was costing a freaking fortune.
Therefore, the real reason, which she was just now able to admit to herself, was that she wanted to be in her own truck with its veterinary box in the back to give her confidence and courage. Pathetic. This was what it was like to be desperate and down to her last chance.
And she didn’t even know if it was a chance. She didn’t know this man from Adam’s off ox, as Micah would say.
But she’d seen with her own eyes that Shane had connected to Blue in some way. He’d been furious with him, yes, but even in the shattered state he was in, he had looked at Blue with respect. Shane hadn’t looked at anybody that way for two years. It was as if he’d refused to respect anyone else ever since he’d lost respect for himself.
She cut the motor, took a deep breath, and opened her door. Micah wasn’t the kind to pick up some day laborer off the street in Deer Lodge to break his horses. He was bound to know something about Blue Bowman.
Even if he didn’t think Shane should ride with the man, she ought to thank Blue for what he’d done yesterday. If he hadn’t stopped Shane, the whole deal could’ve turned into an even bigger disaster.
Andie Lee was on the ground, closing the door behind her, before she noticed that Micah’s truck wasn’t there. For a minute, she just stood and looked around, then she headed for the barn anyway.
She could talk to Blue herself and begin to form an opinion of her own, couldn’t she? She would get Micah’s later.
Blue could be gone with Micah but it was more likely, considering Micah’s eternal determination to get his money’s worth, that Blue was there working. She would thank him and try to get him to talk to her for a little while.
As soon as she glanced into the barn she saw it was empty. She walked the length of it down the center aisle and stepped out the other end.
Her horses nickered as soon as they saw her and ran to the corner of the pasture nearest her but she ignored them for the moment to look at Blue and the roan colt.
She narrowed her eyes and watched the horse. Yes, it was the roan colt. No mistaking him for anything else.
But he was behaving like a broke horse—paying attention to Blue and moving on cue at the end of a long, soft rope. She watched for a minute. Blue was using natural horsemanship, communicating with the horse through that rope. The roan colt was so wild he was already a legend. Who would have believed that anyone could bring him this far this fast?
How long had Blue been here? She’d been so wrapped up in Shane she hadn’t been coming up to Micah’s to ride every day, but she and Shane had only been here three weeks and Blue certainly hadn’t been around when they arrived.
Out in the middle of the unfenced meadow that looked across the valley, Blue was allowing the roan to drift away and then was bringing him back to face him, making serpentine lines through the dewy grass. He was letting him have his space but he was getting his respect from a distance.
After a little while, Blue stopped the horse and approached him, then stopped and moved in another direction. He worked his way closer and closer and finally, he was at his head, petting his neck and rubbing his poll as if they’d been friends forever.
Finally, he let his hand drop to his side and just stood there, looking out across the valley. The colt did the same. Against the purple mountains, they looked like a statue of a cowboy and his horse in repose.
Andie Lee couldn’t stop staring. Her heart beat faster and her hopes started rising. Blue had power. If he could do this, in this length of time, with such an incorrigible colt, he could do some good with Shane.
No. Not necessarily. He could be a doper himself. He could be an alcoholic. He could be any kind of a bad influence that would make Shane even worse.
At last, Blue stroked the nose of the colt and turned to lead him toward the barn. The roan jerked back and Blue held on, going with him as he backed and backed and backed some more. Andie Lee held her breath. If that colt panicked, they both could go right over the edge of the bluff. They weren’t far from it.
She needn’t have worried. The roan settled down and followed Blue’s lead as if he were an old hand at being a working horse. Like a puppy dog.
Blue walked straight toward her at a leisurely pace and stopped a few yards away.
“Don’t let me hinder your work,” she called. “I can ride my own or play with them until you’re done.”
Blue flashed a sharp look at her. Even in the shadow of his battered hat’s brim, his blue steel eyes were as remote as she remembered. Looking into them was not going to tell her one thing about him.
His glance followed her gesture toward her own horses.
“So you’re the one who spoiled those two,” he said.
He didn’t smile as he said it but he wasn’t censuring her, either. He was stating a simple fact—one that meant he knew her horses as individuals. Maybe it was horses that would give her the key to getting to know him.
“Guilty,” she said. “They’re my friends.”
He answered with the barest of nods, then just stood there, looking at her, waiting for her to state her business.
“That’s amazing, what you’ve done with Roanie,” she said. “I held my breath when he pulled back on you. I know Micah’s had quite a time with him.”
“Anybody willing to listen to him can work with this horse,” he said flatly, and that was the end of that line of talk.
Blue had a low, melodious voice. It was a shame he didn’t use it more.
He had a presence, too, that held her captive. He stood easy in his skin, waiting.
The roan was getting restless.
“I came to thank you,” she said quickly. “You may have saved Shane’s life yesterday….”
Saying the words out loud made her throat go tight. She swallowed and went on, “…or Lisa’s. Or both.”
He didn’t say a word.
“Many people in your position would’ve refused to get involved,” she said. “Thank you.”
He touched the brim of his hat. “No problem.”
He clucked to the horse and led him away.
Andie Lee caught her breath so fast it made a knot in her stomach. No. She wouldn’t let it go at that.
But whether for Shane’s sake or her own, she couldn’t have said. Something about the man fascinated her.
You know nothing about him, Andie Lee. Let him go. Wait until you can talk to Micah.
Blue and the colt disappeared around the other side of the old round pen. She turned and went back through the barn.
I know that he’s great with horses. I know horses can help Shane. I know that much.
When she reached the gate, he was just going in.
“Blue,” she called, “please give me just a moment. I need to talk to you.”
At first she thought he would keep going, but he stopped. He turned around and looked at her.
Behind him, she saw that there were five or six other young horses already in the pen, saddled and tied around with their heads to one side. Some were playing, others were chasing each other, bucking, wandering around or standing quiet.
“Wait there,” he said to Andie Lee.
He led the roan into the middle of the pen, coiled up the lead and slipped the hand-tied halter made of the same rope off the colt’s head.
He hung it over his shoulder. Roanie ran away from him and started to buck, but he was halfhearted about it. A couple of the other young horses approached him, but he kicked out and then whirled to bare his teeth at them. They left him alone. Blue watched them all for a minute before he headed for the gate.
He came out and, with a last look at the horses, latched it behind him.
“You tie them around to make them flexible?” Andie Lee asked.
“And humble,” Blue said.
“With the roan, that may take a while,” she said.
He gave a rueful chuckle that sent a sudden warmth into the cold center of her belly. She met his eyes as he turned to her.
Awareness leapt between them like a spark from a fire.
“Maybe a long while,” he said, with a gentle quirk of his mouth.
Then, suddenly deadly serious, he kept looking straight into her eyes as if to make sure she’d listen.
“If you’re ever around here when I’m not, don’t mess with him. He’s still biting and striking at everybody but me.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I have enough trouble with an outlaw boy without taking on an outlaw horse.”
One corner of his mouth lifted again. His lips were nice. Finely shaped. She tried not to look at his mouth too long.
Blue leaned his shoulders back against the wall and bent one leg to hook his boot heel onto a log.
He was waiting to hear what she wanted with him.
She started talking, fast.
Watch what you say, Andie Lee. Wait until you check him out with Micah.
She threw caution to the wind with her very next breath.
“I wanted to thank you for stopping Shane,” she blurted, “but I also wanted to ask if you…might…maybe show him some of those natural horsemanship techniques you use.”
The look in his eyes sharpened.
“He might even talk to you,” she said quickly. “He won’t open up to anybody else, not even the counselor.”
“I told Micah I’m not taking your boy to raise. I’ll tell you the same thing.”
She stared, trying to take that in.
“Micah asked you to…?” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
But Blue wouldn’t fill in the blank. He just inclined his head slightly and waited for her to go on. She was too busy getting her mind around it all.
Micah had mentioned Shane to him! He’d suggested that Blue let him hang around or work for him or something! So Micah knew that Blue was all right. Her hopes grew.
“Shane needs the horses,” she said. “If he’d start riding every day and get emotionally involved with them and start listening to them, it’d make a lot of difference in his outlook.”
“Micah asked me to let Shane come ride with me,” Blue said. “I agreed.”
“You did?”
She sighed with relief, then caught her breath again.
“But wait! What are you riding, the colts?”
“Mostly. And anything else that’s too much for Micah.”
“The colts might be too much for Shane, too. He’s really weak right now and he’s never been on a horse that wasn’t broke.”
In her imagination she saw Shane leaving the saddle of a bucking colt, his thin body flying up into the air, flopping like a rag doll’s before it slammed into the ground.
“I won’t put him on any horse at all until he’s drug free and stronger.”
“But he needs to start in your barn as soon as he gets out of jail.”
“What he does depends on me.”
“Well…and on me. I’m his mother. I have to decide…”
The look in his eyes stopped her tongue.
“Have you noticed yet that whatever you do makes no difference in what Shane does?”
The question came out of his mouth as a statement. The cold, hard truth.
She hated it.
“How do you know? You’ve only seen him—and me—once. And that was in a very extreme situation.”
He just looked at her.
“Listen,” she said. “I know there’s a limit to what I can do for Shane. I’ve had two years of pure hell to teach me that. But I cannot, I will not, give up trying.”
Completely against her will, her voice and her temper had risen on every word she’d just said, so she didn’t say any more.
She felt a terrible anger overcome her.
She wanted to scream at him for saying she had no influence on Shane. But her hunch—and Micah’s—might be right, and he might be important for Shane’s future. And no man wanted to deal with an hysterical woman, especially one who was a stranger. She would not be one.
She wasn’t one. She was calm. She took a couple of deep breaths to prove it.
He was still looking at her, his eyes hard and sharp, willing her to admit to the truth he’d spoken. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
“Shane is all I have,” she blurted. “He’s my heart walking around out there in another body. Gordon says I’m his problem—that he needed to grow up with a daddy in the house.”
The line of his square jaw hardened.
“I can’t be his daddy,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
Stung, she snapped, “I’m not that deluded.”
She took a deep breath while she searched for the right words.
“I’m glad you said yes to Micah’s plan to let Shane ride with you. Thanks, Blue. And I hope you’ll let him talk to you, too—eventually he might do that.”
Andie Lee bit her lip again so she wouldn’t rave on and on. She had already said too much, seemed too desperate and been too verbal about her feelings. Men didn’t like that.
If she had caused Blue to change his mind and say no to Micah now, she would never get over it.