ANDIE LEE STOOD on the porch and stared at Micah without hearing a word he was saying. Her insides had gone stone cold the minute she heard the news. How could this be happening to her? And her son? She was Andie Lee Hart. Her life was not supposed to be this way.
Growing up, she’d been given whatever she wanted. Except love and attention, of course, but she’d always believed that those treasures would be granted to her someday, by magic.
After she grew up overnight at seventeen, she had done whatever she wanted—waitressing and leather-painting notwithstanding. She could’ve walked away from that life any day if she’d let Toni send her money. Even after she kept the baby, Toni had begged her—not to come back to the Splendid Sky, of course, but to settle in Texas near her relatives and let them find her a respectable rich man to marry.
Andie Lee had refused. She had proved she could succeed in everything she’d started by using her will and her brains and her pride.
But dealing with Shane had worn every part of her down to nothing. Using up every one of her strong qualities had not moved her one millimeter closer to saving him.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Gordon driving his pickup out of the circle drive that surrounded the house, going off to his usual day’s work. The yard was empty. Gordon. Acting like the ass he was. Why had she expected anything different?
Because he’d been different lately. Somehow. To her, at least.
Not really. Hadn’t he left Shane in jail for a whole week? Gordon would never really change. It was only the pathetic little girl still living inside her that had thought that he would. The little girl who’d expected magic to happen.
She looked over Micah’s shoulder one more time but there was no sign of Blue near the old truck. And why was she looking for him?
Because he seemed to have the guts to go against Gordon and he didn’t like Gordon and he didn’t work for Gordon. Now why was she thinking that when Blue had already cut Shane loose?
Expecting magic again. A knight on a white horse. Well, on the Splendid Sky it was the wicked stepfather who rode the white horse and the little girl who’d been all alone was now a woman alone.
Except for her surrogate grandpa.
“So I’ll pack us a horse,” Micah was saying. “Thataway, we’ll have another mount, jist in case we find the boy afoot—or, God forbid, hurt.”
“Micah,” she said, turning toward the door, “I’m gone as soon as I grab some clothes and a medical bag. You don’t have time to pack a horse.”
His face fell. He was so dear and she did not want to hurt his feelings, but he’d be another burden for her.
“You think I’m too stove up to ride, don’t you?”
“Well,” she said, “Shane’s got a good head start and you can’t stay in the saddle all day.”
“Time will tell,” he said, turning toward his truck. “Git your gear. I’ll meet you at the barn.”
All the time she was running up the stairs and then while she was pulling on jeans and a shirt, she took slow, deep breaths and tried to get her thinking under control. The trouble was, she could understand Gordon’s reasoning and his refusal to help. He had a huge ranch to run, work that was never done, and Shane had given him a symbolic slap in the face.
She needed an additional someone to be furious with—someone to blame besides Shane—but there was no one.
Except herself.
Gordon was right. He had invested a lot in Shane, including a portion of his ego and his reputation along with the money and time, and in return he had lost Old Ian’s rifle, a precious possession that no amount of money could replace.
It was unfathomable to her that anyone would refuse to look for an impaired child on a wild horse in the wilderness, but when she stepped back and looked at it rationally, the man was certainly within his rights. He owed her nothing. It was too late for him to be a father for her childhood and maybe he had never even owed her that.
What if he cut his losses now? What would she do?
Andie Lee jerked a pair of jeans off the hanger in the ancient armoire, rolled them up and stuffed them into one of the saddlebags, then crossed the room to its little closet. She’d hidden in there as a child, covering her ears against Toni and Gordon’s fights until she fell asleep, and now she wished she could crawl in there and not come out for a week.
A whole new series of decisions was looming and she didn’t want to make them. She’d done nothing but make the wrong ones for two years now.
She jerked her mind off that useless, well-worn track and tried to think of tactful reasons she could use to make Micah stay home. That was better than thinking about where Shane was this minute and what he was doing and whether he’d tried to fire that ancient gun and whether the horse had killed him yet.
Or what she was going to do and say when she found him.
This latest bad behavior had driven her to the limits of the amount of humiliation she could take. If she were very honest, she’d have to admit that she’d never been so furious with Shane in all his life.
Micah. First, she had to get away from Micah. He would slow her down considerably.
But she did need help. One thing she meant to do today, if it were humanly possible, was bring Blue’s horse back to him. That would ease her debts a little. The man was working sixteen hours a day for the pittance Micah could pay him and he needed his horse back.
If she found either the horse or Shane hurt, she would more than have her hands full. Micah knew that and he did not mean to be dissuaded.
That was one of Micah’s basic traits. He felt perfectly comfortable butting into anybody’s business and he had always felt especially free to jump right in the middle of hers. She might as well forget about leaving him behind. Knowing him, he’d follow her even if she rode off without him.
She pulled out her quilted Carhartt jacket because she might have to stay out overnight, and threw it over one arm. With her saddlebags over one shoulder, she stood still for a second and tried to think if there was anything else.
She’d need her binoculars. They were in her truck.
Andie Lee was out of the room and into the wide, dim hallway when she brushed back a strand of hair and realized she still had the ponytail and her silver clip was lying on the dresser. She had to have her silver barrette.
Chase had given it to her on that starry Montana night so long ago when they’d run off from the Splendid Sky. He’d bought it for her at the Plaza in Santa Fe when he went down there for a rodeo. Before they’d ever even kissed or flirted very much at all. Soon after he came to the ranch, soon after he saw her for the first time.
When he gave it to her, it was in a solemn, almost ceremonial way, as if it were an engagement ring. Neither of them had mentioned marriage—not until many years after that night—but the gift he had shined on his jeans before he offered it to her had been like a promise between them.
When she’d tried to give it back the day she left him in San Antonio, he had refused to take it.
Keep it, Andie. Then we’ll still be together even if we’re apart.
Chase had loved her, in his own selfish way. He still did. And she would always love him in her own selfish way because he was the only person who’d helped her keep her baby without having to marry Trey Gebhardt.
She picked up the barrette and looked at it.
He had helped her keep her baby, who didn’t love her any more. Chase still loved her but Shane didn’t. Shane couldn’t love anyone, he hated himself so much.
To think that she’d never considered anything else but that she would keep him and raise him. She’d done it so she’d always have someone of her own, someone to love her.
The weight of the old Navajo silver in her hand was a comfort. The worn edges of its hand-worked pattern caressed the pad of her thumb and soothed her a little. It was her worry-stone. Pretty soon, if Shane didn’t get well, she’d have the ancient Two Gray Hills pattern worn away.
She thought about what Blue had said. Shane only wanted to ride so he could impress his dad.
Maybe she should find Chase wherever he was and ask him to come. He would do it—unless he was really high up in the standings or had an especially important ride coming up. Even so, eventually, he would appear, world-stopping grin and all.
But that would only reinforce the myth that Chase was Shane’s biological father. She had let Shane believe that far too long. Obviously, that had been another of her major mistakes.
And maybe refusing to marry Chase four years ago when he had finally asked her had been another. Shane had never forgiven her for saying no.
Maybe if she’d sacrificed it all for Shane one more time it would’ve made him happy.
But she and Chase were both too bent on doing what they wanted to have time to make a home—she was trying to be the most famous, sought-after, successful equine lameness specialist in North Texas and he was trying for World Champion in both saddle-bronc and bareback. Homes had to be built on compromises and give-and-take and the two of them could never do that.
If they’d tried and failed, Shane would have suffered even more.
She pushed the clawing thoughts away and ran downstairs, boot heels clattering on the bare oak steps. On the way up to Micah’s she tried not to think at all. She tried not to feel, either.
There was a big job before her and she’d better steel herself to get it done. She needed to go into surgery mode: calm, clear and ruthlessly analytical. All feelings locked away. Every part of her brain on alert.
Micah was at the barn, cinching a pack saddle onto a horse. Bedrolls, packs of food and a big canteen rested on a nearby hay bale. On top of them lay Micah’s personal war bag and his jean jacket.
“Well, I see you haven’t slowed down any on your packing, Micah.”
“No, nor on my ridin’, either,” he said testily. “The food’s all dried stuff and the canteen’s water. No time to make coffee but I’ve brought the pot.”
As he moved around the horse, his limp was worse.
“Micah…” she began.
“I won’t hear it, so save your breath. You got your medical bag packed?”
“I need to check it,” she said, and went to her truck.
“I’ve put my gun in the pack,” he yelled after her. “If we need to put that roan colt down, you cain’t git close enough to him fer a needle.”
Damn. But it was true. Anything could’ve happened to either the colt or Shane or both by now. Somehow, in the heart of the selfish child deep down in her, she was glad Micah was going to stick with her, whether he’d slow her down or not.
When she went back in with her two bags and the jacket, she dropped them with the other packs and went to saddle her horse.
“Where’s Blue?” she asked.
“I dunno. I thought he’d wait for me at the truck but he warn’t there.”
“Which one of your horses do you want?” she asked.
“Shorty, a’ course.”
She picked up a halter and went to the pasture to get the gelding who was nearly as old in horse years as Micah was in human years. He was in good shape, though, and as dependable a horse as ever lived.
While she caught him and led him back to the barn, she thought about her own choice. She would take Sinn Fein. He was bigger boned and stronger and faster if they saw something that needed to be reached in a hurry.
If they saw Shane in danger and needed to save him.
What an irony. How long had she been trying to save him?
She pulled her mind back to the horse. She had no idea who’d bred the tall gray and given him his Irish terrorist name or exactly what his training history was. She’d bought him on the spot one day when she’d been the veterinarian on call at a hunter-jumper show. He’d been too thin, which was considered stylish then, and one reason she’d bought him was to feed him. The other was that he simply struck some chord in her, even though he’d been jerking at the bit and giving a hard time to the young girl who was his owner.
Maybe because he’d been jerking away from her hands. The rider had been quite the little bitch. Sinn Fein had showed patience and restraint by not dumping her.
They worked fast and Andie Lee saddled both the riding horses while Micah loaded the packs. He had taken her and her friends on pack trips while she was growing up, and he was a wizard at judging what to put where in order to get the same amount of weight on each side of the tree.
“I see you’ve performed your usual magic,” she said, when he’d lashed the last rope into place and tied the knot.
“Thank’ee, ma’am. Now go in the house and pee whilst I leave a note for Blue. I aim to ride. I ain’t stoppin’ for no bathroom breaks. Ain’t no bathrooms in the mountains. This here’s yore last chance.”
She laughed and did as she was told. When she came out onto the front porch again, she noticed a rider in the distance, crossing the big hay meadow at the foot of the hill across the road from Micah’s.
That was the way she and Micah would take to hit the trail to the old Lininger place, which was still called by the name of its original settlers although it’d been part of the Splendid Sky since before Gordon was born. She watched for another minute, then ran to the barn.
“Micah, there’s a rider headed west across the meadow. At the foot of Butte Hill. Do you suppose Gordon changed his mind and sent somebody out to look for Shane?”
He came out of the tack room with a tattered yellow paper, probably an old feed bill, in his hand.
“Must be Blue,” he said. “He left me a note instead of the other way around.”
He hurried to the west end of the barn and looked out.
“You can catch him,” he said. “Go on.”
He turned and untied her horse.
“What do you mean I can catch him?”
“I gotta stay here now, don’t you see? Nobody to do the chores.”
She opened her mouth but he held up his hand to silence her.
“No. I ain’t askin’ for none of Gordon’s hands to see after my place. He cain’t afford to pay his men to do nothin’ but run his ranch, remember?”
She stared at him, trying to take in this quick change of heart.
“I hate to send you off alone with a man you don’t hardly know, honey,” he said. “But I’d trust him further than I would a lot of other waddies around here.”
That made her smile.
“Are you worried about my virtue, Micah?”
He looked at her sharply. “I recall one time I oughtta been.”
The old sorrow in his tone struck her in the heart. She felt her smile vanish.
“Oh, Micah, please don’t worry. I’m a grown woman now. I can take care of myself.”
“You’ve got my forty-five,” he said. “Don’t hesitate to use it if he gives you any trouble.”
“I won’t,” she said. “Don’t you worry now. I’ve got my cell phone and there might be a few spots where it’ll find a tower.”
He looked at her a little bit longer, with love in his eyes. Micah loved her and Chase loved her. Two people in the world loved her.
But she felt sick to her stomach. If her child didn’t love her now, would he someday love her again? Ever?
“You’re the one said I cain’t ride all day,” Micah said. “Blue’ll be a whole lot more help to you than I can.”
It was true. Blue was strong and in his prime and in any situation, he could do more to help her than Micah. And she didn’t think he’d give her any problems.
“Note says he’s gone after his horse,” Micah said. “His horse is with your boy.”
“We hope.”
He grinned up at her. Then he pushed back his hat and stared at her, hard, with narrowed eyes.
“Right. And Blue loves that horse like you love your son.”
He was saying that to himself as much as to her.
“Don’t worry, Micah. Don’t be sitting here worrying about me the whole time. I’ll be back soon.”
“Ride safe, honey,” he said.
Andie Lee kissed Sinn Fein.
“Bye, Micah,” she said. “Just hold a good thought for me.”
“I’m already prayin’,” he said. “And I don’t hardly ever do that.”
THE LAND WAS MORE SEDUCTIVE than any woman or any whiskey. It was making Blue drunk to ride through it, this boundless world of dun and green and blue, with white clouds and trees looking black from a distance. It stirred up longings shut away so deep in him that he didn’t even know them anymore.
All he needed more was the feel of the roan between his legs.
That thousand pounds of pent-up power who hated all people except Blue. And, evidently, Shane. He would never believe that the boy had even caught the colt if he hadn’t seen them together that once.
Blue scanned the ground again but still he saw no sign. He lifted his gaze to the purple mountains to rest his eyes and tried to fathom the mystery of the colt. How far would he go as a babysitter, this angry horse with the intelligent eye who had caught Blue’s attention and Shane’s?
Andie Lee was right. If Gordon would take his airplane up, it would help so much. It could save Shane’s life and it could save the roan colt’s. The two of them together were nothing but a wreck waiting to happen.
Could it be that whatever happened would make Shane straighten up? It could, but it was doubtful. Dannie had gone through hell on earth and hit rock bottom a dozen times and none of it had swerved her one inch to the right on the road she was on.
Well, no matter. What happened to Shane was nothing to Blue. He just wished the kid had picked a different horse, that was all.
He took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind and open all his senses so he could hear and feel any direction that might come to him. The boy had done a remarkable thing already—if he really was still astride the horse.
Did he think about the horse and try to read him? Did he listen to the roan and the roan to him? Or did the roan just let him mount and carry him around like a sack of potatoes because the boy was young and sick in heart and body?
If he lived and didn’t get hurt, the roan would prove how special he was. If he was still with Shane, the horse was already proving it.
Blue saw the two horses when they topped the ridge behind him, silhouetted against the sky. His heart gave a little jump. He didn’t want company in this good country. And he didn’t want to take care of anybody or anything but the roan.
A minute or two later, he checked back again.
It was still too far to identify the rider but the lead horse was tall with a long stride to match and he was gray—white, almost, from this distance. The other was a packhorse.
Andie Lee, no doubt, and prepared to stay out for a week from the looks of her outfit.
So much for his hope that he’d be too far ahead for her to catch him.
He couldn’t push his horse any faster and have enough left to keep going all day. And it probably would be all day, since there was no loose horse or limping boy in sight.
Blue cast another glance over his shoulder. Damn. She was gaining on him on that ground-eating gray horse. His mount, one of Micah’s using horses, was built for stamina and not for speed.
He rode on, scanning in almost a 360, looking for any sign that Shane had not made it all the way to the Lininger Trail. But it was big country, way too big to catch a glimpse of a blond head or a dusty red hide without being right up on it. If Andie Lee was wrong and Shane hadn’t started for that cabin where the kids used to go, it would take blind luck or an act of God to find him.
He took a deep breath and tried to forget that she was coming behind him. Thinking about her might make him miss something. Shane—especially if he was high, as Micah had guessed—could’ve headed in any direction. And anything could’ve happened between him and the roan.
She caught up with him at the end of the meadow.
“Hey, Blue,” she said, her husky voice low-key.
Then, “Seen any sign yet?”
Just as if they were in this together. She slowed her mount to the pace of his and rode right beside him with the packhorse trotting along on her other side. Her perfect breasts bounced a little at the jog. He would not be distracted.
“No,” he said.
His hard tone didn’t faze her.
“Micah found your note.”
Blue looked straight ahead. One glimpse at her face and he wanted to look at her all the time.
“He said since you were headed out, he had to stay there to do the chores.”
Damn. The old fox never quit.
And neither did she. She just kept on talking to him in that musical voice that stirred him as sure as a hand stroking his skin.
“He packed everything we’ll need,” she said, “in a heartbeat. Micah always could pack a horse like a magician doing tricks.”
We. She’d said we’ll need.
No. Talk about torture.
They rode along for a minute.
“Oughtta find ’em before dark,” he said.
It was nothing but a wish out loud. Normally, he didn’t let himself have wishes, much less speak them, but he was not going to let himself start thinking about being with her.
“I can’t believe Shane being able to ride that horse for this long.”
She was looking straight ahead now, the lines of her body falling into that posture of straining ahead, her eyes scanning the horizon and everything in between.
“Can you?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you think the colt would’ve thrown him by now?”
“Even afoot, all night he’d cover some ground.”
“Gotta find him. Soon.”
She glanced at him.
“Them, I mean. I want to get your horse back to you.”
Then anger edged out the worry in her tone.
“I’m so mad at Shane, I cannot even think what to do with him. To him.”
He knew how that was. There were times he’d wanted to walk away from Dannie and never look back, but before he did that, he wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled.
The times she went back to that motorcycle-riding dealer and the rest of the scum of the earth and the drugs. Always, eternally, the goddamned drugs.
The times after he’d carried her, kicking and screaming, into some treatment center or other.
The times his mother had looked nearly as bad as Dannie, worn to the bone, to the soul, by worry and fear.
Tanasi Rose, though, had gone to silence during the worst of it. Andie Lee was talking too much instead.
“The day I had to face the fact that my suspicions were right and he was using was the most terrible day I ever had,” she said. “That I ever could have, I thought. But all this today has shocked me that much all over again.”
Her profile looked chiseled out of china. She had her hair pulled back in that big silver clip now, hanging flat down her back like a spill of sunlight coming out of the shadow of her hat brim.
“Somewhere deep inside I must’ve believed a week in jail would scare him straight,” she said. “When I saw that note this morning, it froze every cell in my body.”
She turned to meet his eyes.
“My blood just stopped.”
He nodded.
“Internalizing the fact that he might never be cured—that’s what I was doing. Admitting to myself that I may fail, after all I’ve done and spent and prayed and hoped and tried. Blue, everything else I’ve really wanted in my life, I’ve done but now maybe I can’t pull this off. I may not be able to save him.”
She rushed on as if he would interrupt and stop her too soon.
“I’m determined to win. I still am, at the core. But I’m so scared and so embarrassed and I am so damn pissed at that little wretch I don’t even know how to think.”
She surely was blunt about her feelings. She didn’t know him. And here she was, telling him her heart. And letting it show in her eyes.
“All I know is I’ll show him what tough love really means,” she said.
Like a vow.
Then she hushed and looked away again, staring at the mountains through her horse’s ears.
Staring off into the far distance like she’d done that first day in Micah’s truck. Like his mother had done, sitting silent on the front porch looking for Dannie.
It made him want to help her.
She was good-hearted, Andie Lee was. She was even feeling responsible for getting his horse back to him.
Don’t you go feeling responsible for her, Bowman. Get a grip.
“Any idea what time of night he took off?” he asked.
“Lawrence said he was there at bed-check, completely exhausted. Then his bed wasn’t slept in, so he probably got hold of some meth or something.”
“Hope we’re on his trail.”
“So do I, but how could I possibly know?” she asked, spreading her free hand palm up, helpless. “Jason only took him there once. I just keep going back to the fact that Shane hasn’t been anywhere else on the ranch.”
“Would he be trying to get off it?”
She thought about that.
“Shane’s devious, like any addict, but I believe the note. He’ll try to prove to Gordon he can ride the roan.”
Gordon. Every bit of this mess was made by Gordon. If the roan or the boy got hurt or killed, it’d be on Gordon.
Blue’s legs tightened on the horse and he obediently picked up speed a little. Her horse kept pace.
“The Lininger is the only trail Shane knows. But I don’t know if Jason took the kids from the trailhead at Two Fork or if he used the shortcut.”
“There’s a shortcut?”
“Not far from here,” she said, and turned to look at him full on.
Her fine mouth maybe trembled just a little. Or maybe he imagined it.
Whichever, a sudden urge to kiss her struck through him like a laser light.
“How’d you know which direction to take?” she asked.
“Couple of the hands,” he said.
Her gaze held his. Yes, her mouth was trembling.
Not your deal. You’re not responsible for her. And you’re not going to kiss her. You’ve got enough to deal with without adding that kind of trouble.
He had to stop looking at her.
“Wanta take the shortcut?” he asked. “Cover more ground?”
She hesitated an instant, then she set her jaw and looked away. There was something so quickly lonely in the movement that it stabbed him.
“It’d probably be a good idea.”
She legged her mount into a short lope and rode out—as she threw him a quick backward glance.
With a spark of regret in it. He would swear that was there.
Stop thinking about how she feels or doesn’t feel, Bowman. Find the roan and ride the other way.