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Sam Kenady hung out in the barn as long as she could, shoveling out the stalls. Everyone else had already headed in for their afternoon showers. She told herself she was just waiting for the water heater to catch back up after Heaven and Lindy drained the damn thing dry, but she knew better.
Zack Baker. The girls were right—it had been a long while since any man had set foot on the ranch. Baker hadn’t seemed dangerous and God knew she had enough foxes on her land. But she couldn’t risk letting someone like that around here, someone who more than likely had an angle, some agenda he was working. For all she knew, he might even be working for the Gundersons.
No, she had rules for a reason around here. And rule number one of the Lost Cause Ranch was: no men. Especially good-looking men with smoldering smiles.
To put her mind at ease, Sam cleaned the saddles. Saddle cleaning was a mindless task that most of her hired help hated more than life itself. Sam loved it and had ever since she’d come to the ranch. She loved taking the saddle apart, cleaning each piece, and reassembling it, good as new. The repetition freed her mind from a past she couldn’t control and couldn’t change. There was a right and a wrong way to do it, and Sam knew the right way by heart.
Maybe that was why she took in lost causes. By her count, Heaven was the twelfth and Lindy the thirteenth Sam had given one last chance to start all over again. Fourteen, if she counted herself. She didn’t count the girls that only stayed for a week or a month because the law needed to hide them for a little bit. Those girls weren’t lost. There was a right way and a wrong way to take in strays.
Sam hadn’t been wrong yet. Not once.
Finally, she couldn’t put it off any longer. Every saddle shone—even the bridles were parade-ready. The dust of the day was itching at her skin, and Zack Baker was itching at her mind. The moment her hands were empty, her thoughts turned right smack back to him.
What kind of man thought he could just show up here and hope to sweet talk her? A man who didn’t know who she was, that’s who. A man who drove a foreign truck with weird bumper stickers all over the back end—“Give peace a chance?” Really? A man who wore his pants just a little too tight and his reddish blonde curls a little too long, a man who talked about foxes like they were his kids.
The shudder was involuntary. She needed a shower. Now.
She didn’t get far, just into the kitchen.
“Weren’t you a little mean to him?” Of course Heaven would be the one to start it. Heaven Jones was the one who had trouble with rule number one. She was also the one who needed it the most.
“Haven’t had my shower yet,” Sam said as she stalked through the kitchen. Showers first was rule number two.
“Let her alone.” Granny came to her defense. “You had your chance to clean up. Give the girl a break.”
“Thanks, Granny.” Sam stopped just long enough to give her grandmother a peck on the cheek before she headed up the two flights of stairs to the attic.
Granny lived on the ground floor, her bedroom close to her kitchen domain. The rest of the women lived on the second floor. But Sam kept the third floor for herself. She’d always stayed up here when she’d visited the ranch as a little girl. She just felt safer tucked away from the rest of the world. Granny had understood—Granny always understood these things. When Sam had come out here to hide a decade ago, the first thing they’d done was add on a private bath.
The water heater was working overtime today, but Sam let it run. The hot water peeled off the layers of dust and muck that hundreds of calves did their best to grind into every fiber of her being every dang day. She didn’t feel human until she’d lathered up with something that smelled a whole heck of a lot better than cow.
Sam reviewed her shampoo choices. Today, she felt like piña coladas. Too bad it wasn’t Saturday. She could go for a real one, but that was rule number three: no alcohol on the ranch, Saturdays excepted. Today was Thursday.
She shaved her legs. She had no reason to shave them. She hadn’t had anyone to shave them for in, well, longer than she wanted to admit. Old habits die hard, though. She’d shaved her legs every day in high school, before the attack. It was just about the only holdover from a past long gone.
Since she’d gone piña colada for the shampoo, she went coconut-scented for the lotion. After climbing out of the shower, she brushed her hair and let it air-dry.
She slid on clean jeans, a bright white tank top, and her favorite short-sleeved green blouse. She liked this look, although she didn’t have a mirror to check it out. No mirrors allowed in her room, but Heaven had once told her that she looked nice in this shirt and that was all Sam needed. Now that she’d finished riding for the day, she passed on the boots. Barefoot was the order of the afternoon—and it made it easier to sneak past Heaven.
By the time she got down to her office, tucked behind the TV room where Lindy had the latest reality show blaring, Andy was waiting for her.
“I think you scared the hell out of that one,” Andy said. She was wearing her good boots, the snakeskin ones. Those boots were on Sam’s desk.
Sam forced a glare for her oldest friend, Andrea Two Bulls. They were two of a kind. In high school, they’d been the only two girls with boy’s names in school. They’d been the only two members of Lakota tribes, too, although from different branches. It hadn’t made them friends—not at first. That came later.
“He was some sort of eco-nut.” Sam pushed the boots off her desk. Which was a lame excuse. Yes, he’d been saying something about foxes being a threatened species—although she wouldn’t have guessed that by the numbers on the ranch—and yes, he drove a flake truck. But eco-nut? “And he grabbed me,” she added. She didn’t really believe that he’d meant any harm. Hell, the look on his face had made it perfectly clear that he hadn’t even realized she was a female.
Hadn’t realized she was a female. The hackles on the back of her neck went up again. She’d known from the second she came over the hill that he was a man. And what did she get? Nothing. No spark of recognition—not even a hint of appreciation until she pulled off her glasses. And then he tried to turn on the charm. Did she look like a woman who could be charmed?
Sam caught herself. She did not want the locals to recognize, appreciate, or charm her, under any circumstances. Period, end of sentence. Why was she upset that she hadn’t gotten that from Zack Baker?
Andy grinned at her. Yeah, they both knew that Baker guy had been harmless. “You’ve lost your touch entirely. You didn’t even make him beg for mercy.”
No, but she’d come close, before everyone else had gotten within earshot. Her mind danced back over the way his hand had touched her arm—firm, but soft. Not painful or terrifying. If she hadn’t been so guarded, she might be forced to admit that it felt almost...good. And that his charming smile actually had been charming. She hadn’t been charmed in...well, hell. Now was not the time to get into that. “If I ever see him again, I’ll make sure to do that, okay?”
“What did he want?”
This was normal. After they all got cleaned up, Heaven helped Granny cook dinner while Sam and Andy discussed ranch business. Lindy would do the dishes and, with any luck, she wouldn’t break any.
Today, however, it didn’t feel normal. “He wanted to study foxes or something.”
“And you kicked him out for that?” Andy had the nerve to tsk her. “You need to get out more.”
Sam glared at her. “For all I know, he was working for the Gundersons.”
“In those shoes? Not likely.” The way Andy said it made it sound like she was almost agreeing with Heaven—and Andy never agreed with Heaven.
True. Royal Gunderson would probably spit on those canvas sneakers. “Doesn’t matter. He’s gone. End of discussion. Is there something else you needed?”
Andy gave Sam the look that meant she was going to let this go—for now. “I’m missing twenty bucks.”
Sam dropped her head into her hands. This was turning out to be one hell of an afternoon. First that guy—that hot guy—wanted to study foxes. Now things were disappearing. What next? A range fire? “Lindy?”
“Heaven hasn’t taken anything after that one time.”
Sam nodded. When Heaven had first come to the ranch, beaten and beat down, she’d done a few things that were against the rules, like lifting a couple of Granny’s crystal trinkets. It wasn’t until Lana, the other woman they’d had on at the time, had noticed her one good pair of earrings was missing that Sam and Andy had tossed Heaven’s room and found a small pawn store’s worth of merchandise squirreled away in the closet.
Heaven hadn’t been defiant, though. Through tears, she’d explained that she’d thought her old pimp would be back for her and she’d have to run and she’d wanted to make sure she’d had something she could sell.
That had been when Sam taught her how to shoot both the rifle and the pistol. No man was going to come to the L/C Ranch thinking he could take a woman and expect to walk away with all his limbs intact. After that, Heaven hadn’t fingered so much as a bauble in a year and a half.
Lindy, however, was a different story. Carol Wallette wouldn’t take her granddaughter back and her parents were not an option. It was either the L/C Ranch or jail.
“I already checked under Lindy’s bed. Nothing. She’s getting more careful about hiding stuff.”
This was not what Sam wanted to hear. Lindy was only seventeen. Sam hated like hell that she might have to give up on a kid that young.
But she had rules, damn it. And what was more, ‘not stealing other people’s stuff’ wasn’t just one of Sam’s rules, like no men on the ranch. Not stealing was the law. If Lindy couldn’t get that rule down here on the ranch, she sure as hell wasn’t going to make it out in the wide world.
“Tell Heaven to check her stuff, too. If there’s anything else that’s gone missing, we’ll tear Lindy’s room apart. I’ll check with Granny, see if anything happened at bingo.”
That was another rule. Every woman who came to this ranch to work her way back up went to bingo on the nearby White Sandy reservation every Saturday night with Granny—excepting Sam and Andy. Granny needed someone to drive her, but there was more to it than that. Going to bingo gave the women a chance to socialize in a controlled environment. The most trouble people could get into was yelling, “Bingo!” at the wrong time.
Except for Lindy, of course. Her granny went to bingo, too. Carol Wallette was an old friend of Granny’s, which was the only reason Sam had taken Lindy in. As far as Sam could tell from Heaven’s reports of the evening, Carol and her granddaughter got on exactly as well as oil mixed with water.
“That girl is trouble,” Andy pronounced. “She’s been here for almost three months.”
“I know,” Sam admitted. “But we’ve had tougher cases. Remember Kiki? An arsonist on the ranch was not the best idea I’ve ever had.”
“True,” Andy said in a tone that wasn’t entirely an agreement. “But Kiki was in her late twenties. And she’d already done hard time. She wanted to change and she never actually managed to burn the house down. Lindy... I don’t think she was ready to come out here.”
Sam gaped at her oldest friend. “You’d rather she’d have gone to jail? You know what that’s like.”
“The girl’s got to follow the rules,” Andy said with more force. “And she doesn’t. Which means you’ve got to decide what you’re going to do about her when she crosses over from a twenty out of my wallet to something you can’t overlook, Sam.”
“I know,” Sam snapped. “I don’t bend the rules for anyone, no matter how young they are.” That’s why that fox guy had found himself shown right off the property. No men. Rule number one.
Sam pushed thoughts of Zack Baker away, but they didn’t seem to stay gone. She had bigger problems to worry about than a man who hadn’t realized she was a woman until she’d practically had to deck him.
If Lindy couldn’t follow the rules, she’d find herself someplace a lot worse than the Lost Cause Ranch.
Andy held her gaze for a moment longer. “You’ll do what’s got to be done. You always do.”
She always did. Sometimes, though, it got tiring. Sam rubbed her eyes. “Maybe I do need to get out more. Or at all.”
Andy grinned like a rattler with a chicken egg in its gullet. “Speaking of getting out more, you need me for anything else today?”
Sam began to shuffle through the day’s mail. “Got a hot date?”
Andy managed to blush. “Yeah, actually. You know, I was thinking...”
Her tone of voice stopped Sam cold. Andy had dates—lots of dates. But she never talked much about them. “What?”
Andy stood and began to pace, as much as a woman her size could pace in a room this small. “I’d like to bring her out here. Show her what I do.”
Sam looked down so Andy couldn’t see her mouth twist into something that felt like a scowl. Andy had never expressed any interest in bringing her dates home—not once. Something was off. “No boyfriends, and you know that means no girlfriends.”
“This is different.”
Sam looked up, and noticed that not only was Andy wearing her good boots, but she had on her best shirt too. The black one with the white edging. “Different how?”
Andy stopped, looking plainly miserable. “Sam, I’d do anything for you. It’s just that...you know...”
Sam held still. She didn’t know and she didn’t want to. Just when she thought this day couldn’t get any worse.
Andy took a deep breath. “I want her to know what I do. To be a part of it.”
Warning bells—old ones—went off in Sam’s head. “Did you tell her about me? About us?”
“I...she...”
It wasn’t like Sam ever really forgot the pain, but sometimes, when she hadn’t thought about it for a long time, the intensity of it caught her off guard. Suddenly, she was lost in the daymare of the past she couldn’t forget. The whole thing was bad enough in her nightmares. Daymares were the worst.
In her imagination, Sam saw what she’d only seen on the grainy security footage at the trial: Andy yanking Sam’s boyfriend, Tim, out of his car. Andy breaking Tim’s neck with the one punch. Andy pulling an unconscious and bloodied Sam from the car and running back into Taco Bell, crying for help. Andy being hauled off in handcuffs.
Andy being convicted for saving Sam.
Sam shook herself back to the here and now. Here was the ranch, safe in the middle of nowhere. Now was ten years after the fact. Normal people wouldn’t still be having flashbacks after all these years. But Sam had given up normal a long time ago. Maybe she’d go back out and clean the saddles again. Or paint the barn. Or do anything to let her mind rest. Anything but sit here and watch Andy’s eyes water. “You promised! No one knows, and you told some woman?” The only other person who knew was Granny. Sam and Andy and Granny. And now some woman.
Andy ran her hands through her hair and then leaned down on the desk. “I’m in love.” It came out in a sudden rush. “She’s the one.”
This shouldn’t feel like a betrayal. Despite what the rest of the world might think about the two of them, she and Andy were nothing more than friends, to the bitter end. When Sam had visited Andy in jail during the trial, they had made a pact that they would always watch out for each other, and they would never talk about it.
Now? Now Andy had broken that pact. Sam hid her face in her hands. It shouldn’t feel like a betrayal—but it did.
“I had to tell her.” Andy sounded like she was on the verge of choking up. That, Sam decided, was the worst part of it all. “She’s a lawyer. A prosecutor for the state. If I hadn’t told her, she’d have run a background check on me, and then she would have accused me of being a criminal. A murderer.”
Sam knew that was Andy’s deepest fear, that people would see the crime, not the reason why, when the why was everything. Of all the women in the world, Andy had to go fall for a prosecutor.
Every word she said hit Sam in the gut like a slow-swung sledgehammer. Her first reaction was to say, “I thought you were happy here,” but she knew that wasn’t the right thing.
She took a deep breath. “And?” she said for the second time that day. It was all she had.
“And she believed me. She trusts me, Sam.” Andy’s voice was shaking. “She says she loves me.”
Everything normal about Sam’s world—everything that had been close to normal for the last ten years—was suddenly upside down. Damn. Maybe she would break the rules and go ahead and drink that piña colada tonight. Maybe several. “What’s her name?”
“Celine.”
“Like the singer?”
“Celine Ruzekia.”
The name hung in the air between them. Andy was in love with a woman named Celine. A soft, pretty name. Andy would like someone soft and pretty. Sam’s gut twisted.
“She knows about me, Sam, and she says it doesn’t matter. She wants to meet you.”
Oh, no. How could a woman who knew about that say it didn’t matter?
Get yourself together, Sam scolded herself. The good friend would be happy. The good friend would welcome this new woman to the ranch with open arms. The good friend wouldn’t be so confused that she was on the verge of tears.
Sam sucked it up. After all, she was a good friend. Up until recently, the best one Andy had ever had. She looked at Andy and tried to smile. “When?”
Andy brightened considerably. “Sunday. In two weeks.”
“Tell Granny.” Although, knowing Granny, she was probably already fully aware of the situation.
Andy looked like she wanted to hug Sam, but she didn’t. The two of them didn’t touch. That was the rule. “Thanks, Sam. I will.” She shut the door behind her, leaving Sam to stare at the unopened mail.
I thought Andy was happy. Sam’s thoughts churned in a confused mess as she rubbed the angry scar on her cheek.
I thought I was happy.
Zack Baker came back to her.
She’d thought she was happy here.
Now she wasn’t so sure.