Sage Creek

by Jill Gregory

  A quick glance reassured him that none of Tanner’s wranglers were around. No other vehicles were in the drive, ’cept for the McPhee woman’s Blazer. And no sign of Tanner’s kid.

  He had the place all to himself. Except for that dog inside the house that started up barking the moment he drew near the outbuildings. The dog didn’t matter either though.

  He had plenty of time to do what he’d come to do. Only now he could kill two birds with one stone.

  Payback times two.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It didn’t take long for Deputy to catch Belle. Sophie tossed Rafe a smile as the gelding pulled alongside her. She slowed her mare to a trot, and they crossed the meadow together, Rafe checking his horse’s pace, matching Deputy’s strides to Belle’s so that he and Sophie could talk.

  “Where are Jake and Travis these days?” she asked as they followed the trail through open land and a sky as big as the world.

  He told her Jake was in South Dakota somewhere on the rodeo circuit. And Travis was assigned to the FBI field office in Phoenix.

  “Will they come visit after the baby’s born?”

  “They’d better, or Lissie’s gonna kick their butts.”

  The trail dipped, twisting off between an outcropping of rocks and sagebrush. Rafe took the lead as they neared a grassy clearing less than twenty feet from the creek bank.

  Rushing water tumbled over rocks beneath the branches of cottonwoods. The creek looked exactly as she remembered it. She breathed in the clean mossy scent of the clearing and the earthy creek banks as they tethered their horses by a clump of cottonwoods. Sophie flung herself down on the deep grass, lush with wildflowers whose names she’d forgotten.

  Lying on her back, she gazed up at the sky.

  “I’ve missed this,” she breathed. “The peace of it. The quiet. I can almost hear myself think for once.”

  “What are you thinking about?” Rafe dropped down to stretch out beside her, close enough so that their hips were almost touching. She could see the five o’clock stubble across his lean jaw, and could almost feel the heat of his body.

  You, she thought, intensely aware of him beside her. I’m thinking about you. But she just closed her eyes and murmured, “Stuff.”

  “You’ve been away a long time.”

  “Too long. On a day like this, I wonder why I ever left. Montana . . . Lonesome Way . . .”

  She sat up, brushing a hand through the soft grass. “I didn’t know how much I missed them . . . missed this”—her arm swept out to encompass the clearing—“until I got back.”

  “You’re a Montana girl at heart.”

  “I guess I am. I’m beginning to think I always will be.”

  Rafe sat up beside her, his long legs stretched before him as he gazed into the distance. “We’re the lucky ones. We can connect to a place, to people who’re important in our lives. Not everyone can. Take my ex-wife—please,” he added with a tight smile that never reached his eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I . . . don’t really know what happened.” Sophie chose her words carefully. “Lissie mentioned something, but I didn’t ask her the details.”

  A part of her hadn’t wanted to know. Perhaps because knowing what Lynelle had done to hurt Ivy—and Rafe—might make her feel closer to them.

  “Hard to believe no one’s told you.” Rafe shook his head. “It was the talk of the town for a long time, though it’s pretty much died down by now.”

  “I’m guessing it was worse than leaving the front door open on her way out,” she said, and saw the lines tighten around his mouth.

  “You could say that. And a large part of it was my fault, for getting involved with Lynelle in the first place.”

  Sophie fell silent. She could hear the creek water rushing over rocks. A squirrel raced across a fallen branch, its feet making a skittering sound before it disappeared into the brush.

  Rafe spoke into the quiet air. “I fell for Lynelle when I was twenty-two and stupid as a rock. It was the spring of my final year of college, and I thought I knew everything. Talk about being a dumbass.”

  She studied him, trying to decipher the distant look in his eyes. Was it there because he loved and missed Lynelle Tanner, or because he wished he’d never married her?

  “She was a waitress at one of our campus hangouts—and she was good.” Rafe sighed. “The best waitress I ever saw—fast and fun and flirty. There was something about her. Lynelle got more tips than everyone else combined. She had this great body, which seemed hugely important to me at the time, a stunning cover-model face, and a personality that screamed look at me. I looked. And unfortunately, I did a hell of a lot more than that. We went out and partied a few times, all within a couple of weeks. And I got carried away, decided I was in love with her—a woman I barely knew.”

  He thrust a hand through his hair and shook his head. “She said she loved me too. So like a couple of fools, we ran off, rounded up a justice of the peace, and got ourselves married. Just the two of us, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Several weeks later, when I finally started to realize the mistake we’d made—before I’d even brought her home or told my parents—we found out Lynelle was pregnant.”

  There was pain on his face, but also pride.

  “I don’t regret that for a second,” he said quickly. “Because then I’d regret having Ivy. And I could never do that. She’s the best thing in my life. Bar none.”

  “I know.” Sophie’s throat tightened. “I’ve seen you two together. It’s clear how close you are.”

  He smiled and brushed a stray wisp of hair from her eyes.

  “Sure you want to hear this story, Sophie? It wasn’t part of the bargain. I promised you a horseback ride and a barbeque. Not a tale out of Dickens.”

  “I’m the one who asked. Tell me the rest.”

  The wind sighed through the cottonwoods, a low, lonely sound. Rafe was staring at the creek, his eyes seeing something she couldn’t in the haze of the lateafternoon light.

  “I had no idea how Lynelle had been raised,” he said slowly. “That her father owned a small traveling rodeo out of North Dakota, and that every night from the time she was fourteen, she dressed up in some glittery costume and performed for the crowd. They called her the Queen of the Rodeo, and she sang, danced, rode—generally showing off and, as she got older, flirting with the crowd. She loved it. Craved it. Unlike her sister, Brenda, who was ten years older, and couldn’t wait to escape the rodeo life, Lynelle grew up as a petted, adored little star, and she licked up all that attention on a spoon—like it was ice cream with caramel sauce. She was a natural-born gypsy, roaming from town to town, never sticking around longer than a month in any one place. It was the only way of life she knew, and for her, it was heaven.”

  “She had no home at all? Just the rodeo?” Sophie tried to take it in. “She must have been homeschooled.”

  “She was, until her mother died when Lynelle was sixteen. Then, around the time she turned twenty, her father took sick and he died too. She couldn’t hold on to the rodeo—there were debts, injuries—she lost everything just a few months before I met her. So she started waitressing. What I didn’t know,” he added, as a lateafternoon breeze gusted through the clearing, fluttering the leaves of the cottonwoods and blowing Sophie’s hair across her face, “was that she still couldn’t stay in one place. Every few months she quit whatever job she had, moved away, started over. Found another job, another place to live, another man to sleep with and help her pay the bills. Lynelle didn’t like being tied down any more than a mustang that finds itself roped and dragged and eventually saddled with a bit between its teeth.”

  Sophie’s heart constricted. She was amazed that there was no bitterness in his tone. But beneath the evenness of his words, she thought she could detect pain—a long-ago pain that carried with it sadness and regret.

  She knew about sadness and regret. And a marriage that didn’t turn out at all the way you expected.

  “The upshot i
s, after we found out she was pregnant, I brought Lynelle home—here to Sage Ranch to live with my parents—though not in the main house—in one of our cabins north of the creek. I figured she could use the family support with a baby on the way. And my parents, well . . .” He shook his head. “They were plenty upset at first about the way we got married, but then once they realized it was already done and there was a baby on the way, they were just plain excited at the prospect of a grandchild.”

  Rafe met Sophie’s eyes. “You know how they were. They wanted to help in any way they could. Lynelle seemed to like that. But five months after Ivy was born, she ran away for the first time.”

  The first time? How many times did she run? Sophie wondered. “She couldn’t take it,” he continued, his expression grim. “She couldn’t take any of it—the responsibility, the work of caring for an infant, the sameness of life lived day to day on a ranch. She took off three times during the first few years of Ivy’s life.”

  A frisson of sadness touched Sophie. “That must have been . . . a nightmare.” Her eyes were wide with shock. “I’m so sorry, Rafe. Did she come back on her own, or did you bring her back?”

  “Well, I didn’t drag her back by the hair or anything like that,” he said ruefully. “Each time I caught up with her, Lynelle cried like a baby herself. She swore to me she wanted to come back.”

  He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “She was screwed up. I realized it by then. But we were married, and we had Ivy. So we tried couples therapy, but Lynelle refused to stick with it. I never knew what the next day would bring, Sophie. If she’d be there or take off again. There was an engine revving inside her, and it was as if she couldn’t control it, much less turn it off. Then my parents died in that plane crash, and I moved us into the big house.”

  She could picture it—Lynelle, flighty and beautiful, wanting to run. Rafe trying to take care of his family, take care of the ranch. And Ivy, a very young child, at her most vulnerable.

  “It was just the three of us in the house then, and it suddenly felt huge and empty. Jake and Travis came home for the funeral, of course, and popped in now and then. But I think being home at Sage Ranch without Mom and Dad was hard for them—it brought their deaths home to them more somehow. So for a few years, it was just the three of us, and for a while, Lynelle seemed better. I think she understood that Ivy needed her and she stuck it out, stayed put, and seemed happy most of the time. We were making it work.”

  “And you . . . you loved her?”

  The question just slipped out and Sophie wished she could grab it back. She wasn’t even sure why she wanted to know. But she did.

  He didn’t answer at first. When he looked at her, his gaze was somber. “I thought I did in those first few crazy weeks after we met. And I tried to before Ivy was born—and after. After that first heady rush when we met, I wanted to love her and keep loving her. But I didn’t,” he said quietly as the wind picked up, whistling through the cottonwoods. “I wish to hell I had. Maybe then, somehow . . . Hell, I don’t know. Maybe things would have turned out different.”

  The words hung between them.

  Rafe cleared his throat. “One day when Ivy was seven, I was at a meeting in Livingston with a rancher who wanted to buy two dozen horses for a guest ranch he’d invested in. We’d just got down to talking terms when I got a call from Sheriff Hodge. He’d come across Ivy.”

  “Come across Ivy?”

  “She was in town. Alone. Sitting all by herself on a bench in the hot sun.”

  The chill that blew through Sophie started at her scalp and tingled all the way down to her toes. “I don’t understand.”

  Rafe hadn’t had to tell anyone the story in a long time. It didn’t ever get easier though.

  “Lynelle brought her to Lonesome Way and left her. She sat Ivy on that bench right in front of the Laundromat, and she skipped out. Ivy told me later that a man in a car stopped and her mother got in. And blew her a kiss out the window as the car took off.”

  Sophie couldn’t speak. She tried to take in the thought of a seven-year-old girl, with bright wavy hair and eyes too big for her face, abandoned on a bench in Lonesome Way.

  “Apparently Lynelle decided it would be safer to leave her on her own in town than at the ranch. I guess she figured someone in Lonesome Way would come along before too much time passed and take care of her, then get in touch with me. That Ivy would be fine.”

  Sophie realized her hands were clenched, and carefully relaxed them. She could only imagine how frightened Ivy must have been. It was unbearable to even think about.

  Did Lynelle have any idea how lucky she was that her daughter hadn’t been found by a stranger passing through town, someone who’d prey on a vulnerable child? The newspapers were full of such horrors.

  Or Ivy could have wandered away, gotten lost, or run into the street, been struck by a car. . . .

  What kind of woman would take a chance like that with her child’s life?

  “How long did she sit on that bench?”

  “We’ve no way of knowing. But she was crying, sunburnt, and dehydrated when Hodge happened by—and still crying when I got there. I held her in my arms for hours until I could get her to calm down.”

  The tension in his lean jaw made her want to wrap her arms around him. Instead she reached out, touched his hand.

  “I’m . . . sorry. It’s awful.”

  “Almost as bad is the fact that Ivy hasn’t seen Lynelle since that day. Neither have I—which is fine with me.” His eyes were cold. “She sent Ivy a couple of notes, a birthday card here and there. And let me know where she was long enough so that we could get our divorce. She didn’t fight me on full custody, didn’t want a penny. Just her freedom, apparently. And now . . . who knows if Lynelle even remembers she has a child, much less ever thinks about her.”

  “What about Ivy? Does she ever ask about her mother?”

  “She had nonstop questions at first. That ended a few years ago. Now she never mentions Lynelle—in fact, she changes the subject if anyone else does. The last time Lynelle sent a birthday card, Ivy read it, tucked it in a drawer, and didn’t say a single word about it. At least, not to me.”

  But she must think about her mother, Sophie realized. She tried to imagine what it would feel like to have a mother who ran off and never looked back. Who’d leave her child alone and vulnerable on a town bench and desert her husband without a word. She thought about her own mother, who’d brushed her hair until it shone every morning when she was small, and taken her to the library whenever she wanted to go, and read her stories for nearly an hour at bedtime each night. Who’d somehow always known when she most needed a hug. Who’d made Halloween costumes for her and Wes, and smoothed things over when Hoot was at his most critical. Who’d gone to bat for her when Doug Hartigan was the bogey man making Sophie’s life miserable.

  And who had welcomed her back to Lonesome Way with open and supportive arms.

  She swallowed. Ivy had Rafe, and she was far luckier than she knew, but Sophie’s heart grieved for everything the little girl had missed out on.

  And at the mountain of hurt that must still ache inside her.

  And Rafe? Did he miss Lynelle too? It didn’t seem so. He claimed he’d never loved her, but he’d never married again....

  “More than you wanted to know, I’d bet.”

  “No, I’m glad you told me.”

  “You sure?” His lips curled in a rueful grin. “It’s a lot more than you bargained for. You must be wondering what kind of a date this is.”

  “This isn’t a date, remember? You said so.”

  “Did I?” The heaviness seemed to have fallen from his broad shoulders. With that grin spreading across his face, Rafe looked suddenly much more like that mischievous young cowboy she remembered. Only harder, tougher, and if possible, sexier than he’d been back then. His eyes glinted beneath that shock of dark hair, and he suddenly rolled over and swept her beneath him on the grass.

  “We need
to lighten things up,” he said softly, bracing himself above her. “Have some fun. For the rest of the day, we’re concentrating on us.”

  “Us? There’s an us?” She tried not to stare at the bulge of impressive chest muscles beneath his white tee. And instead found herself staring at his mouth. Equally dangerous. Feeling breathless, she pushed herself up on her elbows, trying to regain her equilibrium, but that only brought her closer to his mouth—and to that powerful chest. She was in trouble now.

  She wanted to kiss him.

  “There’s definitely an us.” Rafe’s smile could’ve melted rock. Shifting, he smoothed a wisp of her hair back from her cheek, his touch gentle, but the look in his eyes would make any woman moan in anticipation. She knew everything, what he wanted to do, what he was going to do . . . unless she stopped him.

  But she didn’t want to stop him.

  A fire started deep inside her, and she knew if it wasn’t banked soon, it would go out of control....

  “I’m going to kiss you now, Sophie. More than once. Just so you know. If you have any objections, speak now or . . . you know the rest.”

  Maybe she should listen. Maybe she should push him away. But she didn’t. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

  Just for a little while, she’d pretend not to hear the warning voice telling her to keep him at arm’s length....

  “Go for it, cowboy,” she heard herself dare him breathlessly, her hands digging into his shoulders, pulling him down toward her because she not only wanted to kiss him, Sophie knew she needed to right that very minute.

  Tingles raced through her as he brushed his mouth against hers. His lips were firm and warm and they felt just right, molding against hers as if memorizing them for all time.

  It was a long kiss, deep and slow. Excruciatingly sexy.

  Besides the kiss in the kitchen at the Good Luck ranch, it was the best kiss she’d ever known. But the next one took her under. It was even deeper, softer and somehow more intimate than the one before.