| |
Thirsty.
Hot.
Bright.
Fire?
The near-simultaneous occurrence of those thoughts shoved Sam’s eyes open before her brain was fully awake. Grabbing for the hose, she scanned for the flare-ups. But, no, it wasn’t a fire—it was just sunlight streaming in through her bedroom window. She was in bed, dressed, on top of the covers.
Ugh, she reeked of stale smoke. Her clothes, her hair, even her sheets were making her eyes water.
11:37. Really? She’d slept until almost noon? What time had she gone to bed? Why didn’t she remember going to bed?
Her head a mess, she stripped down, stumbled into the bathroom, and drank straight from the tap until she was on the verge of throwing it all right back up again.
Water washed away the haze from her mind, and the horror of last night came back to her slowly, like one of them Polaroids. The fire—the biggest one she’d ever seen. Walking behind the truck. Riding Stitch through the flames. Riding with Zack.
Where was Stitch?
A knife-sharp pain cut behind her eyes. Where was Zack?
For a moment, she felt herself come apart at the seams, but the shower washed away any tears that snuck free. Crying wouldn’t help a single thing. After all, she’d woken up in her bed, and was showering in her shower. The house had been saved. She didn’t feel a single burn on her.
Clarity sucker-punched her. What the hell was she doing, soaking her head? She needed to see what else was still here, and what had gone up in a black puff of hungry smoke. What had she lost this time?
The stink hit her again when she opened the bathroom door, so she stripped the bedding and carried it all downstairs. The house was silent. No screaming, no weeping—but no talking, either. The washer already had a load in it. Things seemed almost normal. Where was everyone?
The soft sound of chatter slipped in through the kitchen window. Sam got her boots on and headed out, not sure what was waiting for her.
The whole world smelled of wet, burned grass and propane. Despite the residual smoke at ground level, the sun was high in the air, momentarily blinding her. By the time her eyes adjusted, Heaven was already talking.
“So, you know Duke? He totally didn’t shoot off any flares.”
Duke. Royal. Sam saw the flares pierce the night sky again. Shaking the awfulness from her vision, she asked, “Did Duke show?” She recalled some vague promise that he was going to help.
Katydid padded up to her and leaned against her legs. You made it home, Sam thought to the wolf as she rubbed her ears. Unexpectedly, tears welled up again. She blinked until they went away.
“He got here about twenty minutes after you left—pulling a water tank with his ATV—and, well, I couldn’t leave Granny, so he stayed here and we did the burning around the house.” Heaven’s mouth was moving at a good clip. “He was really sorry about the fire. Promised that it wouldn’t happen again. Gave me his word, Sam.” She sucked in a hard breath. “You won’t, you know, shoot him, will you?”
Sam looked over Heaven’s nervous shoulders. Charred ground as far as the eye could see, but the barn was in one piece, and even the pines seemed untouched. Granny was leaning on the paddock gate, talking to Andy. They were both looking at something in the paddock.
“Sam? You won’t shoot Duke, will you?”
A horse let out a low whinny. Someone was in the paddock, maybe brushing a horse? Duke?
Sam took a step around Heaven, straining to get a better look at the paddock. “Where is he?” Two horses in the paddock. Taylor’s big body was screening the other horse and the person from her view.
“He left about four, when we got word the fire was out. Granny’ll tell you. He helped save the hay barn.” She put a gentle hand on Sam’s arm. “Sam?”
Sam looked at Heaven. Tired circles made the other woman look older, and her skin had a sunburned redness about it on one side that had nothing to do with the sun. After all of this, she was worried about Duke Gunderson? “No, I won’t shoot him.” Royal—now that was a different matter.
Relief broke across Heaven’s face in a big smile. “Okay. Thanks, Sam.”
Sam kept moving toward the paddock. Granny was talking to whoever was in there. Andy came off the fence, rubbing her head under her hat. “How you doing, Sam?”
Sam fought the urge to hug her oldest friend. But they didn’t touch. That was the rule. “What did we lose?”
Andy nodded, as if silently agreeing that, yup, that was the rule. “I’m going to ride out later. Heaven and Duke saved the hay barn. I need to check on the other outbuildings.” Andy glanced back over her shoulder. “I’ll do a count of the cattle. We can talk later tonight.”
Tonight? They hadn’t talked business in a while. The world got a little closer to normal. “Okay.” Sam didn’t know why it was okay, but the drive to ride the line herself was gone. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to stay in.
Andy headed back to the house. Only Granny stood between Sam and the paddock. “Sweetie, promise me you’re not going to go looking for trouble anymore,” Granny said, her attention still focused on the animals.
“I won’t.” Sam sidled up next to her grandmother until their forearms were touching. The horses shifted, and she saw the second horse was Stitch.
She choked back a sob. He’d found his way home.
“I’m sure glad you made it back,” Granny said, her voice more quiet than usual as she patted Sam’s arm. “Couldn’t bear it if you hadn’t.”
“Zack saved me.” That was the simple truth of the matter. Without him, she would have gone up in smoke with her land.
“Maybe you should think about returning the favor.” Granny shot Sam an unreadable smile. “Lunch will be ready in a few.”
“Get up, Taylor.” Zack’s voice—clear and strong—rang out on the other side of Stitch. Taylor obligingly plodded to a different part of the paddock.
Stitch was a bona fide mess. He had a good deal of fur missing, and his legs were wrapped with gauze. A bucket was on the ground. She smelled the Absorbine, a pain-relief gel they used for the horses.
Zack was tending to the horse.
No matter what was about to happen, she loved Zack. Even if the answer to the question was still I can’t, that love would never die. She knew that now.
“Need any help?” Shoot. Her voice sounded funny. She swallowed a few times to get things cleared out.
Zack’s head popped up from behind Stitch’s back. “If you’re offering,” he said with one of those melting smiles.
She slipped between the gate bars and cautiously walked up to her horse. Stitch threw his head around, but Taylor came up behind him and rubbed his jaw along Stitch’s backside, the equine equivalent of a reassuring pat on the back. Sam touched a spot of brittle fur on Stitch’s neck, felt the prickly ends where his mane had burned off, and rubbed his nose.
He’d saved her—well, him and Zack. She wrapped her arms around the horse’s neck as he snuffled her hair. “We made it,” she whispered to him.
“Granny called the vet. He’ll be out later.” Zack was standing close enough to her that she could almost feel his hand on her shoulder. A sense of calm radiated through her.
When she met his eyes, he had that intent look on her face. She sort of expected him to kiss her, but her mouth managed to interrupt the moment. “Where’s your beard?” Which was not the most important question—but she was sure he’d had one that had looked good on him yesterday.
He handed her the sponge with a shrug. “It was half gone when I woke up this morning, so I shaved the rest of it off.” His eyes moved over her with methodical steadiness. “You don’t look like you caught any ash.”
She felt heat—a soft, gentle heat—rush to her cheeks. “I have you to thank for that.” She wanted to touch his new/old face—the face that she’d been dreaming of for so long now—but that I can’t came back to her.
She forced herself to look at her horse. “So, um, what time did you get up?” That was the most important question she could come up with? Again?
She’d stand here all day and say stupid things if he kept smiling at her like that. “Stitch woke me up around ten. I was up in the barn. Hope that was okay.”
“Sure.” It shouldn’t seem odd—after all, his tent was probably charcoal by now—but Zack not in the house felt weird.
For lack of anything better to do with her hands, she started working liniment cream/oil/ointment into Stitch’s muscles.
“Poor guy was exhausted,” Zack went on. “But I had to shower because the smell was freaking him out again. I put him out here with Taylor to calm him down. Been rubbing him down since.”
All that had happened while she’d been passed out upstairs? “Good thinking.”
That—oh, that was the best smile she’d seen in ages. All that soft and gentle heat was bringing tingles back. Fast. “Thanks.”
They worked on Stitch in silence, Sam’s wheels spinning at top speed the whole time. She didn’t want Zack to go, because she knew with abiding certainty that this was it. This was her very last last chance. But damned if she knew how to tell him to stay. Even less, how to ask him. All she knew was that precious time was slipping past her. She had minutes—maybe less—before Granny called them into lunch.
Just do it, she scolded herself, dropping the sponge into the bucket, digging deep, and finding her backbone. “I’m sorry.” Seemed as good a place to start as any.
He paused, sponge mid-rub. “You mentioned that last night.”
I can’t. It hung between them.
Well, she wasn’t going to go wait for her fate to be sealed for her. Zack had taught her what it meant to be a woman—now was the time to show him that, even if she wasn’t book smart, she could still learn. “I’m mentioning it again. I missed the hell out of you. I’ve been kicking myself every single day for what I did. It was a stupid, hysterical thing to do.”
He didn’t miss a beat. He just leaned his head against Stitch’s flank and said, “So why did you do it?” in a gentle voice.
“His face—that’s what my face looked like. I...” Damn word. Always tripping her up.
She had to close her eyes, but that only made the wounds pop up before her again. No, she told herself. She didn’t want to do this anymore. She pushed the bruises and scars back. They didn’t control her. She was the boss and that was final.
“I got scared and confused, and for one insane moment, I thought you were going to do that to me too. It’s not because you broke the rules. It’s because of me. It’s all my fault.”
He didn’t say anything. The I can’t got louder and louder in the silence. Finally, Stitch seemed to get bored with them and shook Zack off like a fly.
Zack turned to face Sam. She saw the raw pain that she’d glimpsed last night, before the world went up in smoke. “I would never hurt you, Sam. I thought you knew that.”
“I did. I do. I have no excuse.”
He ran a hand over his eyes, but she couldn’t stop talking now. She was so tired of the guilt holding onto her. “I made a mistake and by the time I figured that out, you were gone. I went looking for the fox kits—you were right about them—but you weren’t there, and you weren’t at that first campsite and I didn’t know how to find you.”
This time, she did touch him. Her fingers traced his familiar face, memorizing it all over again—just in case the answer was still I can’t. “I’ve missed you, Zack. More than I can tell you.”
His hand dropped from his eyes, but they were still closed. He didn’t say anything, but he pulled her close and kissed her—lightly at first, but then he was devouring her lips with a hunger that ached down to her very center.
The I can’t seemed to dissolve into thin air.
“I managed to stay away for two weeks,” he whispered, his arms trembling around her waist. “I looked up some college friends, slept on some couches, filled out some job applications—but I wasn’t home. I wanted to come home.”
“I wouldn’t have shot you.” Damn it, she was crying, and these were tears that couldn’t be choked back or blinked away. “I waited for you. Why didn’t you come back?”
“I was going to.” He brushed the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs, and then kissed away the rest of the dampness. “I didn’t want to be some lost cause you found by a river and took pity on. I wanted something to offer you besides a piece-of-crap truck.”
“But—”
He cut her off with a little kiss. “I wanted to walk in here with my head high, Sam.” His gaze locked onto hers. “I was going to finish my thesis and get a job so I could buy you a ring with my own money. And when I was someone you could be proud of, I was going to come back here and see if you wanted to marry me.”
Nothing came out of her mouth, not a single word. She couldn’t do anything but stare at him in shock.
A cloud of worry passed over his eyes. “Would you want to marry me?”
“Stay with me,” she whispered, tracing his face with her fingers. Her voice was trembling—hell, all of her was trembling. She clung to him, knowing he’d hold her up. “Don’t go.”
His eyes took on a wet shine. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes.” Just the one word. But it was the right answer to the right question. Finally.
He kissed her until she was breathless. “I won’t ever leave you again.”
In the midst of laughing and crying and hugging and kissing and Stitch sniffing the crazy people next to him, Granny called out that lunch was ready.
He was staying. For good.
Things were back to normal.
It had just taken some time, that’s all.